ARMY RATIONS: WHAT THEY WERE.—HOW THEY WERE DISTRIBUTED.—HOW THEY WERE
COOKED.
“Here’s a pretty mess!”
THE MIKADO.
“God bless the pudding,
God bless the meat,
God bless us all;
Sit down and eat.”
A HARVARD STUDENT’S BLESSING, 1796.
[Illustration]
“Fall in for your rations, Company A!” My theme is Army Rations. And
while what I have to say on this subject may be applicable to all of
the armies of the Union in large measure, yet, as they did not fare
just alike, I will say, once for all, that my descriptions of army life
pertain, when not otherwise specified, especially to that life as it was
lived in the Army of the Potomac.
In beginning, I wish to say that a false impression has obtained more or
less currency both with regard to the quantity and quality of the food
furnished the soldiers. I have been asked a great many times whether I
always got enough to eat in the army, and have surprised inquirers by
answering in the affirmative. Now, some old soldier may say who sees my
reply, “Well, you were lucky. _I_ didn’t.” But I should at once ask him
to tell me for how long a time his regiment was ever without food of
some kind. Of course, I am not now referring to our prisoners of war,
who starved by the thousands. And I should be very much surprised if
he should say more than twenty-four or thirty hours, at the outside. I
would grant that he himself might, perhaps, have been so situated as to
be deprived of food a longer time, possibly when he was on an exposed
picket post, or serving as rear-guard to the army, or doing something
which separated him temporarily from his company; but his case would be
the exception and not the rule. Sometimes, when active operations were in
progress, the army was compelled to wait a few hours for its trains to
come up, but no general hardship to the men ever ensued on this account.
Such a contingency was usually known some time in advance, and the men
would husband their last issue of rations, or, perhaps, if the country
admitted, would make additions to their bill of fare in the shape of
poultry or pork;—usually it was the latter, for the Southerners do not
pen up their swine as do the Northerners, but let them go wandering
about, getting their living much of the time as best they can. This
led some one to say jocosely, with no disrespect intended to the people
however, “that every other person one meets on a Southern street is
a hog.” They certainly were quite abundant, and are to-day, in some
form, the chief meat food of that section. But on the point of scarcity
of rations I believe my statement will be generally agreed to by old
soldiers.
[Illustration: THE “COOPER SHOP,” PHILADELPHIA.]
Now, as to the _quality_ the case is not quite so clear, but still
the picture has been often overdrawn. There were, it is true, large
quantities of stale beef or salt horse—as the men were wont to call
it—served out, and also rusty, unwholesome pork; and I presume the
word “hardtack” suggests to the uninitiated a piece of petrified bread
honeycombed with bugs and maggots, so much has this article of army diet
been reviled by soldier and civilian. Indeed, it is a rare occurrence for
a soldier to allude to it, even at this late day, without some reference
to its hardness, the date of its manufacture, or its propensity for
travel. But in spite of these unwholesome rations, whose existence no
one calls in question, of which I have seen—I must not say _eaten_—large
quantities, I think the government did well, under the circumstances, to
furnish the soldiers with so good a quality of food as they averaged to
receive. Unwholesome rations were not the rule, they were the exception,
and it was not the fault of the government that these were furnished,
but very often the intent of the rascally, thieving contractors who
supplied them, for which they received the price of good rations; or,
perhaps, of the inspectors, who were in league with the contractors,
and who therefore did not always do their duty. No language can be too
strong to express the contempt every patriotic man, woman, and child must
feel for such small-souled creatures, many of whom are to-day rolling in
the riches acquired in this way and other ways equally disreputable and
dishonorable.
I will now give a complete list of the rations served out to the rank and
file, as I remember them. They were salt pork, fresh beef, salt beef,
rarely ham or bacon, hard bread, soft bread, potatoes, an occasional
onion, flour, beans, split pease, rice, dried apples, dried peaches,
desiccated vegetables, coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, vinegar, candles,
soap, pepper, and salt.
It is scarcely necessary to state that these were not all served out at
one time. There was but one kind of meat served at once, and this, to
use a Hibernianism, was usually pork. When it was hard bread, it wasn’t
_soft_ bread or flour, and when it was pease or beans it wasn’t rice.
[Illustration: THE UNION VOLUNTEER SALOON, PHILADELPHIA.]
Here is just what a single ration comprised, that is, what a soldier was
entitled to have in one day. He should have had twelve ounces of pork or
bacon, _or_ one pound four ounces of salt or fresh beef; one pound six
ounces of soft bread or flour, _or_ one pound of hard bread, _or_ one
pound four ounces of corn meal. With every hundred such rations there
should have been distributed one peck of beans or pease; ten pounds of
rice or hominy; ten pounds of green coffee, _or_ eight pounds of roasted
and ground, _or_ one pound eight ounces of tea; fifteen pounds of sugar;
one pound four ounces of candles; four pounds of soap; two quarts of
salt; four quarts of vinegar; four ounces of pepper; a half bushel of
potatoes when practicable, and one quart of molasses. Desiccated potatoes
or desiccated compressed vegetables might be substituted for the beans,
pease, rice, hominy, or fresh potatoes. Vegetables, the dried fruits,
pickles, and pickled cabbage were occasionally issued to prevent scurvy,
but in small quantities.
But the ration thus indicated was a camp ration. Here is the _marching_
ration: one pound of hard bread; three-fourths of a pound of salt pork,
or one and one-fourth pounds of fresh meat; sugar, coffee, and salt. The
beans, rice, soap, candles, etc., were not issued to the soldier when
on the march, as he could not carry them; but, singularly enough, as
it seems to me, unless the troops went into camp before the end of the
month, where a regular depot of supplies might be established from which
the other parts of the rations could be issued, they were _forfeited_,
and _reverted to the government_—an injustice to the rank and file, who,
through no fault of their own, were thus cut off from a part of their
allowance at the time when they were giving most liberally of their
strength and perhaps of their very heart’s blood. It was possible for
company commanders and _for no one else_ to receive the equivalent of
these missing parts of the ration _in cash_ from the brigade commissary,
with the expectation that when thus received it would be distributed
among the rank and file to whom it belonged. Many officers did not care
to trouble themselves with it, but many others did, and—forgot to pay it
out afterwards. I have yet to learn of the first company whose members
ever received any revenue from such a source, although the name of
_Company Fund_ is a familiar one to every veteran.
The commissioned officers fared better in camp than the enlisted men.
Instead of drawing rations after the manner of the latter, they had
a certain cash allowance, according to rank, with which to purchase
supplies from the Brigade Commissary, an official whose province was
to keep stores on sale for their convenience. The monthly allowance
of officers in infantry, including servants, was as follows: Colonel,
six rations worth $56, and two servants; Lieutenant-Colonel, five
rations worth $45, and two servants; Major, four rations worth $36, and
two servants; Captain, four rations worth $36, and one servant; First
and Second Lieutenants, jointly, the same as Captains. In addition to
the above, the field officers had an allowance of horses and forage
proportioned to their rank.
[Illustration: A BRIGADE COMMISSARY AT BRANDY STATION, VA.]
I will speak of the rations more in detail, beginning with the hard
bread, or, to use the name by which it was known in the Army of the
Potomac, _Hardtack_. What was hardtack? It was a plain flour-and-water
biscuit. Two which I have in my possession as mementos measure three and
one-eighth by two and seven-eighths inches, and are nearly half an inch
thick. Although these biscuits were furnished to organizations by weight,
they were dealt out to the men by number, nine constituting a ration in
some regiments, and ten in others; but there were usually enough for
those who wanted more, as some men would not draw them. While hardtack
was nutritious, yet a hungry man could eat his ten in a short time and
still be hungry. When they were poor and fit objects for the soldiers’
wrath, it was due to one of three conditions: First, they may have been
so hard that they could not be bitten; it then required a very strong
blow of the fist to break them. The cause of this hardness it would be
difficult for one not an expert to determine. This variety certainly well
deserved their name. They could not be _soaked_ soft, but after a time
took on the elasticity of gutta-percha.
[Illustration: A HARD-TACK—FULL SIZE.]
The second condition was when they were mouldy or wet, as sometimes
happened, and should not have been given to the soldiers. I think this
condition was often due to their having been boxed up too soon after
baking. It certainly was frequently due to exposure to the weather. It
was no uncommon sight to see thousands of boxes of hard bread piled up
at some railway station or other place used as a base of supplies, where
they were only imperfectly sheltered from the weather, and too often not
sheltered at all. The failure of inspectors to do their full duty was one
reason that so many of this sort reached the rank and file of the service.
The third condition was when from storage they had become infested
with maggots and weevils. These weevils were, in my experience, more
abundant than the maggots. They were a little, slim, brown bug an eighth
of an inch in length, and were great _bores_ on a small scale, having
the ability to completely riddle the hardtack. I believe they never
interfered with the hardest variety.
When the bread was mouldy or moist, it was thrown away and made good at
the next drawing, so that the men were not the losers; but in the case
of its being infested with the weevils, they had to stand it as a rule;
for the biscuits had to be pretty thoroughly alive, and well covered with
the webs which these creatures left, to insure condemnation. An exception
occurs to me. Two cargoes of hard bread came to City Point, and on being
examined by an inspector were found to be infested with weevils. This
fact was brought to Grant’s attention, who would not allow it landed,
greatly to the discomfiture of the contractor, who had been attempting to
bulldoze the inspector to pass it.
The quartermasters did not always take as active an interest in righting
such matters as they should have done; and when the men growled at
them, of course they were virtuously indignant and prompt to shift the
responsibility to the next higher power, and so it passed on until the
real culprit could not be found.
But hardtack was not so bad an article of food, even when traversed
by insects, as may be supposed. Eaten in the dark, no one could tell
the difference between it and hardtack that was untenanted. It was no
uncommon occurrence for a man to find the surface of his pot of coffee
swimming with weevils, after breaking up hardtack in it, which had come
out of the fragments only to drown; but they were easily skimmed off,
and left no distinctive flavor behind. If a soldier cared to do so, he
could expel the weevils by heating the bread at the fire. The maggots did
not budge in that way. The most of the hard bread was made in Baltimore,
and put up in boxes of sixty pounds gross, fifty pounds net; and it is
said that some of the storehouses in which it was kept would swarm with
weevils in an incredibly short time after the first box was infested with
them, so rapidly did these pests multiply.
[Illustration: A BOX OF HARDTACK.]
Having gone so far, I know the reader will be interested to learn of the
styles in which this particular article was served up by the soldiers.
I say _styles_ because I think there must have been at least a score of
ways adopted to make this simple _flour tile_ more edible. Of course,
many of them were eaten just as they were received—hardtack _plain_;
then I have already spoken of their being crumbed in coffee, giving the
“hardtack and coffee.” Probably more were eaten in this way than in any
other, for they thus frequently furnished the soldier his breakfast and
supper. But there were other and more appetizing ways of preparing them.
Many of the soldiers, partly through a slight taste for the business but
more from force of circumstances, became in their way and opinion experts
in the art of cooking the greatest variety of dishes with the smallest
amount of capital.
[Illustration: FRYING HARDTACK.]
Some of these crumbed them in soups for want of other thickening. For
this purpose they served very well. Some crumbed them in cold water, then
fried the crumbs in the juice and fat of meat. A dish akin to this one,
which was said to “make the hair curl,” and certainly was indigestible
enough to satisfy the cravings of the most ambitious dyspeptic, was
prepared by soaking hardtack in cold water, then frying them brown in
pork fat, salting to taste. Another name for this dish was “skillygalee.”
Some liked them toasted, either to crumb in coffee, or, if a sutler was
at hand whom they could patronize, to butter. The toasting generally took
place from the end of a split stick, and if perchance they dropped out of
it into the camp-fire, and were not recovered quickly enough to prevent
them from getting pretty well charred, they were not thrown away on that
account, being then thought good for weak bowels.
Then they worked into milk-toast made of condensed milk at seventy-five
cents a can; but only a recruit with a big bounty, or an old vet the
child of wealthy parents, or a re-enlisted man did much in that way. A
few who succeeded by hook or by crook in saving up a portion of their
sugar ration spread _it_ upon hardtack. The hodge-podge of lobscouse
also contained this edible among its divers other ingredients; and so in
various ways the ingenuity of the men was taxed to make this plainest
and commonest yet most serviceable of army food to do duty in every
conceivable combination. There is an old song, entitled “Hard Times,”
which some one in the army parodied. I do not remember the verses, but
the men used to sing the following chorus:—
’Tis the song of the soldier, weary, hungry, and faint,
Hardtack, hardtack, come again no more;
Many days have I chewed you and uttered no complaint,
O Greenbacks, come again once more!
It is possible at least that this song, sung by the soldiers of the Army
of the Potomac, was an outgrowth of the following circumstance and song.
I am quite sure, however, that the verses were different.
For some weeks before the battle of Wilson’s Creek, Mo., where the
lamented Lyon fell, the First Iowa Regiment had been supplied with a very
poor quality of hard bread (they were not then (1861) called hard_tack_).
During this period of hardship to the regiment, so the story goes, one of
its members was inspired to produce the following touching lamentation:—
Let us close our game of poker,
Take our tin cups in our hand,
While we gather round the cook’s tent door,
Where dry mummies of hard crackers
Are given to each man;
O hard crackers, come again no more!
CHORUS:—’Tis the song and sigh of the hungry,
“Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more!
Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore,
O hard crackers, come again no more!”
There’s a hungry, thirsty soldier
Who wears his life away,
With torn clothes, whose better days are o’er;
He is sighing now for whiskey,
And, with throat as dry as hay,
Sings, “Hard crackers, come again no more!”—CHORUS.
’Tis the song that is uttered
In camp by night and day,
’Tis the wail that is mingled with each snore,
’Tis the sighing of the soul
For spring chickens far away,
“O hard crackers, come again no more!”—CHORUS.
When General Lyon heard the men singing these stanzas in their tents, he
is said to have been moved by them to the extent of ordering the cook
to serve up corn-meal mush, for a change, when the song received the
following alteration:—
But to groans and to murmurs
There has come a sudden hush,
Our frail forms are fainting at the door;
We are starving now on horse-feed
That the cooks call mush,
O hard crackers, come again once more!
CHORUS:—It is the dying wail of the starving,
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again once more;
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o’er.
O hard crackers, come again once more!
The name hardtack seems not to have been in general use among the men in
the Western armies.
But I now pass to consider the other bread ration—the _loaf_ or _soft
bread_. Early in the war the ration of flour was served out to the men
uncooked; but as the eighteen ounces allowed by the government more than
met the needs of the troops, who at that time obtained much of their
living from outside sources (to be spoken of hereafter), it was allowed,
as they innocently supposed, to be sold for the benefit of the Company
Fund, already referred to. Some organizations drew, on requisition,
ovens, semi-cylindrical in form, which were properly set in stone, and
in these regimental cooks or bakers baked bread for the regiment. But
all of this was in the tentative period of the war. As rapidly as the
needs of the troops pressed home to the government, they were met with
such despatch and efficiency as circumstances would permit. For a time,
in 1861, the vaults under the broad terrace on the western front of the
Capitol were converted into bakeries, where sixteen thousand loaves of
bread were baked daily. The chimneys from the ovens pierced the terrace
where now the freestone pavement joins the grassy slope, and for months
smoke poured out of these in dense black volumes. The greater part of
the loaves supplied to the Army of the Potomac up to the summer of 1864
were baked in Washington, Alexandria, and at Fort Monroe, Virginia. The
ovens at the latter place had a capacity of thirty thousand loaves a
day. But even with all these sources worked to their uttermost, brigade
commissaries were obliged to set up ovens near their respective depots,
to eke out enough bread to fill orders. These were erected on the
sheltered side of a hill or woods, then enclosed in a stockade, and the
whole covered with old canvas.
[Illustration: AN ARMY OVEN.]
When the army reached the vicinity of Petersburg, the supply of fresh
loaves became a matter of greater difficulty and delay, which Grant
immediately obviated by ordering ovens built at City Point. A large
number of citizen bakers were employed to run them night and day, and
as a result _one hundred and twenty-three thousand fresh loaves_ were
furnished the army daily from this single source; and so closely did the
delivery of these follow upon the manipulations of the bakers that the
soldiers quite frequently received them while yet warm from the oven.
Soft bread was always a very welcome change from hard bread; yet, on
the other hand, I think the soldiers tired sooner of the former than
of the latter. Men who had followed the sea preferred the hard bread.
Jeffersonville, in Southern Indiana, was the headquarters from which
bread was largely supplied to the Western armies.
[Illustration: SOFT BREAD.
Commissary Department, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, Captain J. R.
Coxe.]
I began my description of the rations with the bread as being the most
important one to the soldier. Some old veterans may be disposed to
question the judgment which gives it this rank, and claim that _coffee_,
of which I shall speak next, should take first place in important: in
reply to which I will simply say that he is wrong, because coffee, being
a stimulant, serves only a temporary purpose, while the bread has nearly
or quite all the elements of nutrition necessary to build up the wasted
tissues of the body, thus conferring a permanent benefit. Whatever words
of condemnation or criticism may have been bestowed on other government
rations, there was but one opinion of the coffee which was served out,
and that was of unqualified approval.
[Illustration: APPORTIONING COFFEE AND SUGAR.]
The rations may have been small, the commissary or quartermaster may have
given us a short allowance, but what we got was good. And what a perfect
Godsend it seemed to us at times! How often, after being completely jaded
by a night march,—and this is an experience common to thousands,—have
I had a wash, if there was water to be had, made and drunk my pint
or so of coffee, and felt as fresh and invigorated as if just arisen
from a night’s sound sleep! At such times it could seem to have had no
substitute.
It would have interested a civilian to observe the manner in which this
ration was served out when the army was in active service. It was usually
brought to camp in an oat-sack, a regimental quartermaster receiving and
apportioning his among the ten companies, and the quartermaster-sergeant
of a battery apportioning his to the four or six detachments. Then the
orderly-sergeant of a company or the sergeant of a detachment must devote
himself to dividing it. One method of accomplishing this purpose was to
spread a rubber blanket on the ground,—more than one if the company was
large,—and upon it were put as many piles of the coffee as there were men
to receive rations; and the care taken to make the piles of the same size
to the eye, to keep the men from growling, would remind one of a country
physician making his powders, taking a little from one pile and adding
to another. The sugar which always accompanied the coffee was spooned
out at the same time on another blanket. When both were ready, they were
given out, each man taking a pile, or, in some companies, to prevent
any charge of unfairness or injustice, the sergeant would turn his back
on the rations, and take out his roll of the company. Then, by request,
some one else would point to a pile and ask, “Who shall have this?” and
the sergeant, without turning, would call a name from his list of the
company or detachment, and the person thus called would appropriate the
pile specified. This process would be continued until the last pile was
disposed of. There were other plans for distributing the rations; but I
have described this one because of its being quite common.
The manner in which each man disposed of his coffee and sugar ration
after receiving it is worth noting. Every soldier of a month’s experience
in campaigning was provided with some sort of bag into which he spooned
his coffee; but the _kind_ of bag he used indicated pretty accurately,
in a general way, the length of time he had been in the service. For
example, a raw recruit just arrived would take it up in a paper, and stow
it away in that well known receptacle for all eatables, the soldier’s
haversack, only to find it a part of a general mixture of hardtack, salt
pork, pepper, salt, knife, fork, spoon, sugar, and coffee by the time the
next halt was made. A recruit of longer standing, who had been through
this experience and had begun to feel his wisdom-teeth coming, would take
his up in a bag made of a scrap of rubber blanket or a _poncho_; but
after a few days carrying the rubber would peel off or the paint of the
_poncho_ would rub off from contact with the greasy pork or boiled meat
ration which was its travelling companion, and make a black, dirty mess,
besides leaving the coffee-bag unfit for further use. Now and then some
young soldier, a little starchier than his fellows, would bring out an
oil-silk bag lined with cloth, which his mother had made and sent him;
but even oil-silk couldn’t stand everything, certainly not the peculiar
inside furnishings of the average soldier’s haversack, so it too was not
long in yielding. But your plain, straightforward old veteran, who had
shed all his poetry and romance, if he had ever possessed any, who had
roughed it up and down “Old Virginny,” man and boy, for many months,
and who had tried all plans under all circumstances, took out an oblong
plain cloth bag, which looked as immaculate as the every-day shirt of
a coal-heaver, and into it scooped without ceremony both his sugar and
coffee, and stirred them thoroughly together.
There was method in this plan. He had learned from a hard experience
that his sugar was a better investment thus disposed of than in any
other way; for on several occasions he had eaten it with his hardtack a
little at a time, had got it wet and melted in a rain, or, what happened
fully as often, had sweetened his coffee to his taste when the sugar was
kept separate, and in consequence had several messes of coffee to drink
_without_ sweetening, which was _not_ to his taste. There was now and
then a man who could keep the two separate, sometimes in different ends
of the same bag, and serve them up proportionally. The reader already
knows that milk was a luxury in the army. It was a new experience for
all soldiers to drink coffee without milk. But they soon learned to make
a virtue of a necessity, and I doubt whether one man in ten, before
the war closed, would have used the lactic fluid in his coffee from
choice. Condensed milk of two brands, the _Lewis_ and _Borden_, was to
be had at the sutler’s when sutlers were handy, and occasionally milk
was brought in from the udders of stray cows, the men milking them into
their canteens; but this was early in the war. Later, war-swept Virginia
afforded very few of these brutes, for they were regarded by the armies
as more valuable for beef than for milking purposes, and only those
survived that were kept apart from lines of march. In many instances they
were the chief reliance of Southern families, whose able-bodied men were
in the Rebel army, serving both as a source of nourishment and as beasts
of burden.
[Illustration: THE MILK RATION.]
When the army was in settled camp, company cooks generally prepared the
rations. These cooks were men selected from the company, who had a taste
or an ambition for the business. If there were none such, turns were
taken at it; but this did not often happen, as the office excused men
from all other duty.
When company cooks prepared the food, the soldiers, at the bugle signal,
formed single file at the cook-house door, in winter, or the cook’s open
fire, in summer, where, with a long-handled dipper, he filled each man’s
tin with coffee from the mess kettles, and dispensed to him such other
food as was to be given out at that meal.
[Illustration: THE COMPANY COOK.]
For various reasons, some of which I have previously hinted at, the
coffee made by these cooks was of a very inferior quality and unpleasant
to taste at times. It was not to be compared in excellence with what the
men made for themselves. I think that when the soldiers were first thrown
upon their own resources to prepare their food, they almost invariably
cooked their coffee in the tin dipper with which all were provided,
holding from a pint to a quart, perhaps. But it was an unfortunate dish
for the purpose, forever tipping over and spilling the coffee into the
fire, either because the coals burned away beneath, or because the Jonah
upset it. Then if the fire was new and blazing, it sometimes needed
a hand that could stand heat like a steam safe to get it when it was
wanted, with the chance in favor of more than half of the coffee boiling
out before it was rescued, all of which was conducive to ill-temper, so
that such utensils would soon disappear, and a recruit would afterwards
be seen with his pint or quart preserve can, its improvised wire bail
held on the end of a stick, boiling his coffee at the camp-fire, happy in
the security of his ration from Jonahs and other casualties. His can soon
became as black as the blackest, inside and out. This was the typical
coffee-boiler of the private soldier, and had the advantage of being
easily replaced when lost, as canned goods were in very general use by
commissioned officers and hospitals. Besides this, each man was generally
supplied with a small tin cup as a drinking-cup for his coffee and water.
[Illustration: GOING INTO CAMP.]
The coffee ration was most heartily appreciated by the soldier. When
tired and foot-sore, he would drop out of the marching column, build his
little camp-fire, cook his mess of coffee, take a nap behind the nearest
shelter, and, when he woke, hurry on to overtake his company. Such men
were sometimes called stragglers; but it could, obviously, have no
offensive meaning when applied to them. Tea was served so rarely that it
does not merit any particular description. In the latter part of the war,
it was rarely seen outside of hospitals.
One of the most interesting scenes presented in army life took place at
night when the army was on the point of bivouacking. As soon as this
fact became known along the column, each man would seize a rail from the
nearest fence, and with this additional arm on the shoulder would enter
the proposed camping-ground. In no more time than it takes to tell the
story, the little camp-fires, rapidly increasing to hundreds in number,
would shoot up along the hills and plains, and as if by magic acres of
territory would be luminous with them. Soon they would be surrounded by
the soldiers, who made it an almost invariable rule to cook their coffee
first, after which a large number, tired out with the toils of the day,
would make their supper of hardtack and coffee, and roll up in their
blankets for the night. If a march was ordered at midnight, unless a
surprise was intended, it must be preceded by a pot of coffee; if a halt
was ordered in mid-forenoon or afternoon, the same dish was inevitable,
with hardtack accompaniment usually. It was coffee _at_ meals and
_between_ meals; and men going on guard or coming off guard drank it at
all hours of the night, and to-day the old soldiers who can stand it are
the hardest coffee-drinkers in the community, through the schooling which
they received in the service.
At a certain period in the war, speculators bought up all the coffee
there was in the market, with a view of compelling the government to
pay them a very high price for the army supply; but on learning of
their action the agents of the United States in England were ordered to
purchase several ship-loads then anchored in the English Channel. The
purchase was effected, and the coffee “corner” tumbled in ruins.
At one time, when the government had advertised for bids to furnish
the armies with a certain amount of coffee, one Sawyer, a member of a
prominent New York importing firm, met the government official having the
matter in charge—I think it was General Joseph H. Eaton—on the street,
and anxiously asked him if it was too late to enter another bid, saying
that he had been figuring the matter over carefully, and found that he
could make a bid so much a pound lower than his first proposal. General
Eaton replied that while the bids had all been opened, yet they had
not been made public, and the successful bidder had not been notified,
so that no injustice could accrue to any one on that account; he would
therefore assume the responsibility of taking his new bid. Having done
so, the General informed Sawyer that he was the lowest bidder, and that
the government would take not only the amount asked for but all his firm
had at its disposal at the same rate. But when General Eaton informed him
that his _first_ bid was also lower than any other offered, Sawyer’s rage
at Eaton and disgust at his own undue ambition to bid a second time can
be imagined. The result was the saving of many thousands of dollars to
the government.
I have stated that by Army Regulations the soldiers were entitled to
either three-quarters of a pound of pork or bacon or one and one-fourth
pounds of fresh or salt beef. I have also stated, in substance, that when
the army was settled down for a probable long stop company cooks did the
cooking. But there was no uniformity about it, each company commander
regulating the matter for his own command. It is safe to remark, however,
that in the early history of each regiment the rations were cooked for
its members by persons especially selected for the duty, unless the
regiment was sent at once into active service, in which case each man
was immediately confronted with the problem of preparing his own food.
In making this statement I ignore the experience which troops had before
leaving their native State, for in the different State rendezvous I think
the practice was general for cooks to prepare the rations; but their
culinary skill—or lack of it—was little appreciated by men within easy
reach of home, friends, and cooky shops, who displayed as yet no undue
anxiety to anticipate the unromantic living provided for Uncle Sam’s
patriot defenders.
Having injected so much, by way of further explanation I come now to
speak of the manner in which, first, the fresh-meat ration was cooked. If
it fell into the hands of the company cooks, it was fated to be boiled
twenty-four times out of twenty-five. There are rare occasions on record
when these cooks attempted to broil _steak_ enough for a whole company,
and they would have succeeded tolerably if this particular tid-bit
could be found all the way through a steer, from the tip of his nose to
the end of his tail, but as it is only local and limited the amount of
nice or even tolerable steak that fell to the lot of one company in its
allowance was not very large. For this reason among others the cooks
did not always receive the credit which they deserved for their efforts
to change the diet or extend the variety on the bill of fare. Then, on
occasions equally rare, when the beef ration drawn was of such a nature
as to admit of it, _roast beef_ was prepared in ovens such as I have
already described, and served “rare,” “middling,” or “well done.” More
frequently, yet not very often, a _soup_ was made for a change, but it
was usually boiled meat; and when this accumulated, the men sometimes
fried it in pork fat for a change.
When the meat ration was served out raw to the men, to prepare after
their own taste, although the variety of its cooking may not perhaps have
been much greater, yet it gave more general satisfaction. The growls most
commonly heard were that the cooks kept the largest or choicest portions
for themselves, or else that they sent them to the company officers,
who were not entitled to them. Sometimes there was foundation for these
complaints.
In drawing his ration of meat from the commissary the quartermaster had
to be governed by his last selection. If it was a hindquarter then, he
must take a forequarter the next time, so that it will at once be seen,
by those who know anything about beef, that it would not always cut up
and distribute with the same acceptance. One man would get a good solid
piece, the next a flabby one. When a ration of the latter description
fell into the hands of a passionate man, such as I have described in
another connection, he would instantly hurl it across the camp, and break
out with such remarks as “something not being fit for hogs,” “always his
blank luck,” etc. There was likely to be a little something gained by
this dramatic exhibition, for the distributor would give the actor a good
piece for several times afterwards, to restrain his temper.
The kind of piece drawn naturally determined its disposition in the
soldier’s _cuisine_. If it was a stringy, flabby piece, straightway it
was doomed to a dish of lobscouse, made with such other materials as
were at hand. If onions were not in the larder, and they seldom were,
the little garlic found in some places growing wild furnished a very
acceptable substitute. If the meat was pretty solid, even though it
_had_ done duty when in active service well down on the shank or shin, it
was quite likely to be served as beefsteak, and prepared for the palate
in one of two ways:—either fried in pork fat, if pork was to be had,
otherwise tallow fat, or impaled on a ramrod or forked stick; it was then
salted and peppered and broiled in the flames; or it may have been thrown
on the coals. This broiling was, I think, the favorite style with the
oldest campaigners. It certainly was more healthful and palatable cooked
in this wise, and was the most convenient in active service, for any of
the men could prepare it thus at short notice.
[Illustration: BROILING STEAKS.]
The meat generally came to us quivering from the butcher’s knife, and
was often eaten in less than two hours after slaughtering. To fry it
necessitated the taking along of a frying-pan with which not many of the
men cared to burden themselves. These fry-pans—Marbleheadmen called them
_Creepers_—were yet comparatively light, being made of thin wrought iron.
They were of different sizes, and were kept on sale by sutlers. It was a
common sight on the march to see them borne aloft on a musket, to which
they were lashed, or tucked beneath the straps of a knapsack. But there
was another fry-pan which distanced these both in respect of lightness
and space. The soldier called in his own ingenuity to aid him here as
in so many other directions, and consequently the men could be seen by
scores frying the food in their tin plate, held in the jaws of a split
stick, or fully as often an old canteen was unsoldered and its concave
sides mustered into active duty as fry-pans. The fresh-meat ration was
thoroughly appreciated by the men, even though they rarely if ever got
the full allowance stipulated in Army Regulations, for it was a relief
from the salt pork, salt beef, or boiled fresh meat ration of settled
camp. I remember one occasion in the Mine Run Campaign, during the last
days of November, 1863, when the army was put on short beef rations, that
the men cut and scraped off the little rain-bleached shreds of meat that
remained on the head of a steer which lay near our line of battle at
Robertson’s Tavern. The animal had been slaughtered the day before, and
what was left of its skeleton had been soaking in the rain, but not one
ounce of muscular tissue could have been gleaned from the bones when our
men left it.
The liver, heart, and tongue were perquisites of the butcher. For the
liver, the usual price asked was a dollar, and for the heart or tongue
fifty cents.
The “salt horse” or salt beef, of fragrant memory, was rarely furnished
to the army except when in settled camp, as it would obviously have been
a poor dish to serve on the march, when water was often so scarce. But
even in camp the men quite generally rejected it. Without doubt, it was
the vilest ration distributed to the soldiers.
It was thoroughly penetrated with saltpetre, was often yellow-green with
rust from having lain out of brine, and, when boiled, was four times out
of five if not nine times out of ten a stench in the nostrils, which
no dedicate palate cared to encounter at shorter range. It sometimes
happened that the men would extract a good deal of amusement out of this
ration, when an extremely unsavory lot was served out, by arranging a
funeral, making the appointments as complete as possible, with bearers,
a bier improvised of boards or a hardtack box, on which was the beef
accompanied by scraps of old harness to indicate the original of the
remains, and then, attended by solemn music and a mournful procession, it
would be carried to the company sink and dumped, after a solemn mummery
of words had been spoken, and a volley fired over its unhallowed grave.
So salt was this ration that it was impossible to freshen it too much,
and it was not an unusual occurrence for troops encamped by a running
brook to tie a piece of this beef to the end of a cord, and throw it into
the brook at night, to remain freshening until the following morning as a
necessary preparative to cooking.
Salt pork was the principal meat ration—the main stay as it were. Company
cooks boiled it. There was little else they could do with it, but it was
an extremely useful ration to the men when served out raw. They almost
never boiled it, but, as I have already shown, much of it was used for
frying purposes. On the march it was broiled and eaten with hard bread,
while much of it was eaten raw, sandwiched between hardtack. Of course
it was used with stewed as well as baked beans, and was an ingredient
of soups and lobscouse. Many of us have since learned to call it an
indigestible ration, but we ignored the existence of such a thing as a
stomach in the army, and then regarded pork as an indispensable one.
Much of it was musty and rancid, like the salt horse, and much more was
flabby, stringy, “sow-belly,” as the men called it, which, at this remove
in distance, does not seem appetizing, however it may have seemed at the
time. The government had a pork-packing factory of its own in Chicago,
from which tons of this ration were furnished.
Once in a while a ration of ham or bacon was dealt out to the soldiers,
but of such quality that I do not retain very grateful remembrances of
it. It was usually black, rusty, and strong, and decidedly unpopular.
Once only do I recall a lot of smoked shoulders as being supplied to
my company, which were very good. They were never duplicated. For that
reason, I presume, they stand out prominently in memory.
[Illustration: MESS KETTLES AND A MESS PAN.]
The bean ration was an important factor in the sustenance of the army,
and no edible, I think, was so thoroughly appreciated. Company cooks
stewed them with pork, and when the pork was good and the stew or soup
was well done and not burned,—a rare combination of circumstances,—they
were quite palatable in this way. Sometimes ovens were built of stones,
on the top of the ground, and the beans were baked in these, in mess
pans or kettles. But I think the most popular method was to bake them
in the ground. This was the almost invariable course pursued by the
soldiers when the beans were distributed for them to cook. It was done
in the following way: A hole was dug large enough to set a mess pan or
kettle in, and have ample space around it besides. Mess kettles, let
me explain here, are cylinders in shape, and made of heavy sheet iron.
They are from thirteen to fifteen inches high, and vary in diameter from
seven inches to a foot. A mess pan stands about six inches high, and is
a foot in diameter at the top. I think one will hold nearly six quarts.
To resume;—in the bottom of the hole dug a flat stone was put, if it
could be obtained, then a fire was built in the hole and kept burning
some hours, the beans being prepared for baking meanwhile. When all
was ready, the coals were shovelled out, the kettle of beans and pork
set in, with a board over the top, while the coals were shovelled back
around the kettle; some poles or boards were then laid across the hole,
a piece of sacking or other material spread over the poles to exclude
dirt, and a mound of earth piled above all; the net result of which,
when the hole was opened the next morning, was the most enjoyable dish
that fell to the lot of the common soldier. Baked beans at the homestead
seemed at a discount in comparison. As it was hardly practicable to bake
a single ration of beans in this way, or, indeed, in any way, a tent’s
crew either saved their allowance until enough accumulated for a good
baking, or a half-dozen men would form a joint stock company, and cook in
a mess kettle; and when the treasure was unearthed in early morning not a
stockholder would be absent from the roll-call, but all were promptly on
hand with plate or coffee dipper to receive their dividends.
Here is a post-bellum jingle sung to the music of “The Sweet By and By,”
in which some old veteran conveys the affection he still feels for this
edible of precious memory:—
THE ARMY BEAN.
There’s a spot that the soldiers all love,
The mess-tent’s the place that we mean,
And the dish we best like to see there
Is the old-fashioned, white Army Bean.
CHORUS.—’Tis the bean that we mean,
And we’ll eat as we ne’er ate before;
The Army Bean, nice and clean,
We’ll stick to our beans evermore.
Now the bean, in its primitive state,
Is a plant we have all often met;
And when cooked in the old army style
It has charms we can never forget.—CHORUS.
The German is fond of sauer-kraut,
The potato is loved by the Mick,
But the soldiers have long since found out
That through life to our beans we should stick.—CHORUS.
Boiled potatoes were furnished us occasionally in settled camp. On the
march we varied the programme by frying them. Onions, in my own company
at least, were a great rarity, but highly appreciated when they did
appear, even in homœopathic quantities. They were pretty sure to appear
on the army table, fried.
Split peas were also drawn by the quartermaster now and then, and stewed
with pork by the cooks for supper, making pea-soup, or “Peas on a
Trencher”; but if my memory serves me right, they were a dish in no great
favor, even when they were not burned in cooking, which was usually their
fate.
The dried-apple ration was supplied by the government, “to swell the
ranks of the army,” as some one wittily said. There seemed but one
practicable way in which this could be prepared, and that was to stew it;
thus cooked it made a sauce for hardtack. Sometimes dried peaches were
furnished instead, but of such a poor quality that the apples, with the
fifty per cent of skins and hulls which they contained, were considered
far preferable.
At remote intervals the cooks gave for supper a dish of boiled rice
(burned, of course), a sergeant spooning out a scanty allowance of
molasses to bear it company.
Occasionally, a ration of what was known as desiccated vegetables was
dealt out. This consisted of a small piece per man, an ounce in weight
and two or three inches cube of a sheet or block of vegetables, which
had been prepared, and apparently _kiln-dried_, as sanitary _fodder_ for
the soldiers. In composition it looked not unlike the large cheeses of
beef-scraps that are seen in the markets. When put in soak for a time,
so perfectly had it been dried and so firmly pressed that it swelled to
an amazing extent, attaining to several times its dried proportions.
In this pulpy state a favorable opportunity was afforded to analyze its
composition. It seemed to show, and I think really _did_ show, layers
of cabbage leaves and turnip tops stratified with layers of sliced
carrots, turnips, parsnips, a bare suggestion of onions,—they were too
valuable to waste in this compound,—and some other among known vegetable
quantities, with a large residuum of insoluble and in_solvable_ material
which appeared to play the part of warp to the fabric, but which defied
the powers of the analyst to give it a name. An inspector found in one
lot which he examined _powdered glass_ thickly sprinkled through it,
apparently the work of a Confederate emissary; but if not it showed how
little care was exercised in preparing this diet for the soldier. In
brief, this coarse vegetable compound could with much more propriety have
been put before Southern swine than Northern soldiers. “_Desecrated_
vegetables” was the more appropriate name which the men quite generally
applied to this preparation of husks.
I believe it was the Thirty-Second Massachusetts Infantry which once had
a special ration of three hundred boxes of _strawberries_ dealt out to
it. But if there was another organization in the army anywhere which had
such a delicious experience, I have yet to hear of it.
I presume that no discussion of army rations would be considered complete
that did not at least make mention of the whiskey ration so called. This
was not a ration, properly speaking. The government supplied it to the
army only on rare occasions, and then by order of the medical department.
I think it was never served out to my company more than three or four
times, and then during a cold rainstorm or after unusually hard service.
Captain N. D. Preston of the Tenth New York Cavalry, in describing
Sheridan’s raid to Richmond in the spring of 1864, recently, speaks
of being instructed by his brigade commander to make a light issue of
whiskey to the men of the brigade, and adds, “the first and only regular
issue of whiskey I ever made or know of being made to an enlisted man.”
But although he belonged to the arm of the service called “the eyes and
ears of the army,” and was no doubt a gallant soldier, he is not well
posted; for men who belonged to other organizations in the Army of the
Potomac assure me that it was served out to them much more frequently
than I have related as coming under my observation. I think there can be
no doubt on this point.
The size of the whiskey allowance was declared, by those whose experience
had made them competent judges, as trifling and insignificant, sometimes
not more than a tablespoonful; but the quantity differed greatly in
different organizations. The opinion was very prevalent, and undoubtedly
correct, that the liquor was quite liberally sampled by the various
headquarters, or the agents through whom it was transmitted to the
rank and file. While there was considerable whiskey drank by the men
“unofficially,” that is, which was obtained otherwise than on the order
of the medical department, yet, man for man, the private soldiers were as
abstemious as the officers. The officers who did not drink more or less
were too scarce in the service. They had only to send to the commissary
to obtain as much as they pleased, _whenever_ they pleased, by paying
for it; but the private soldier could only obtain it of this official
on an order signed by a commissioned officer,—usually the captain of
his company. In fact, there was nothing but his sense of honor, his
self-respect, or his fear of exposure and punishment, to restrain a
captain, a colonel, or a general, of whatever command, from being
intoxicated at a moment when he should have been in the full possession
of his senses leading his command on to battle; and I regret to relate
that these motives, strong as they are to impel to right and restrain
from wrong-doing, were no barrier to many an officer whose appetite in
a crisis thus imperilled the cause and disgraced himself. Doesn’t it
seem strange that the enforcement of the rules of war was so lax as to
allow the lives of a hundred, a thousand, or perhaps fifty or a hundred
thousand sober men to be jeopardized, as they so often were, by holding
them rigidly obedient to the orders of a man whose head at a critical
moment might be crazed with commissary whiskey? Hundreds if not thousands
of lives were sacrificed by such leadership. I may state here that
drunkenness was equally as common with the Rebels as with the Federals.
The devices resorted to by those members of the rank and file who
hungered and thirsted for _commissary_ to obtain it, are numerous and
entertaining enough to occupy a chapter; but these I must leave for some
one of broader experience and observation. I could name two or three
men in my own company whose experience qualified them to fill the bill
completely. They were always on the scent for something to drink. Such
men were to be found in all organizations.
It has always struck me that the government should have increased the
size of the marching ration. If the soldier on the march had received one
and one-half pounds of hard bread and one and one-half pounds of fresh
beef daily with his sugar, coffee, and salt, it would have been no more
than marching men require to keep up the requisite strength and resist
disease.
By such an increase the men would have been compensated for the parts of
rations not issued to them, or the increase might have been an equivalent
for these parts, and the temptation to dishonesty or neglect on the
part of company commanders thus removed. But, more than this, the men
would not then have eaten up many days’ rations in advance. It mattered
not that the troops, at a certain date, were provided with three, four,
or any number of days rations; if these rations were exhausted before
the limit for which they were distributed was even half reached, more
must be immediately issued. As a consequence, in every summer campaign
_the troops had drawn ten or fifteen days marching rations ahead of
time_, proving, season after season, the inadequacy of this ration. This
deficiency of active service had to be made up by shortening the rations
issued in camp when the men could live on a contracted diet without
detriment to the service. But _they_ knew nothing of this shortage at the
time,—I mean now the rank and file,—else what a universal growl would
have rolled through the camps of each army corps while the commissary was
“catching up.” “Where ignorance is bliss,” etc.
[Illustration]