ABSTRACT
In the long intervals between holidays, enlisted men had the choice of furnishing their own amusements or of risking their money, their health, and sometimes their lives to enjoy the commercial pleasures offered by neighboring civilians. During the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s, when recruiting offices had to suspend business for months at a time because the army had reached its statutory limit of 25,000 men, the speed with which the ranks filled shows that most enlisted men were displaced workers. More than a quarter of a million men served in the ranks of the army during the twenty-five years that followed the Civil War. Enlisted men seem to have been left most alone when producing variety shows, officers preferring to stage light comedies by themselves. During the post-Civil War years, a number of all-black minstrel troupes flourished, and the early 1880s seem to have been the peak years of their activity.
