Civilian men and women who accompanied armies in the 18th century, camp followers provided various skills and services to the military establishment. The military and civilian components of the community that gathered around the army recognized their need for one another and that their mutual survival was vital for success. In the REVOLUTIONARY War (1775-83), the Continental army patterned much of its camp follower employment and organization after the long-established model of its enemy, the British. The army regulated the living and working arrangements, and under the articles governing them, camp followers could not be asked to perform military duty, but they were bound in every other way to maintain the peace and order of the command structure. Although a common assumption has been that camp followers were predominantly female prostitutes, the number of such women was actually small. Female camp followers were generally family members of the officers and soldiers, who were either refugees needing the protection of the army or women simply wanting to be near their loved ones and to tend to their needs. Countless wives and daughters worked as laundresses, cooks, seamstresses, and nurses during the war. However, the majority of non-military personnel attached to the army were men. Many were sutlers, the name given to merchants and traders who were licensed to sell goods to the troops. A variety of employees, such as laborers, artificers, wagoners, cooks, and launderers, provided much-needed services to the army and freed soldiers from these noncombatant duties. Some of the staff members in the quartermaster and commissary departments also were civilians working under contract. And African American camp followers of both sexes, slave and free, performed domestic and labor-intensive tasks.
For those with a choice to do so, motives for following the army were undoubtedly as varied as the people themselves: contracts or financial arrangements with the military, devotion to family members, the need for protection, belief in the political cause, or the hope of personal freedom. Camp followers received various forms of rationing or compensation, but most also experienced equal portions of deprivation and suffering during the war. Sutlers and contract laborers did not get rich from their bargains with the military, and they frequently lost provisions and tools. African-American slaves did not necessarily obtain freedom by their service to either the British or Continental armies. Women and children often lost their husbands and fathers in battle. And everyone was susceptible to the disease and epidemics that spread through the camps. Though camp followers provided vital services to the army establishment and thus figured largely in the success of military ventures, when peace came and the troops disbanded, the civilian support services faded into oblivion, their contribution to the war effort generally overlooked.
Further reading: Holly A. Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
—Rita M. Broyles
World History
