What (and how) Civil War soldiers ate

This month marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War, and our current exhibit is on the first year of the war.  What follows is the substance of a presentation I gave at an Afternoon With The Curators last week.

When I went looking for collections of civil war letters with references to food and eating, I found them using a remarkable tool that’s been developed here at the Clements over the past 8 years: The Food and Society References Database. This searchable database in effect annotates source material in the manuscript collections.  Dedicated volunteers, led by Phil Zaret are identifying material on American food and related social topics. Manuscript
collections (approximately a quarter of the 2500 collections held by the Manuscript Division) have been extensively tagged for food and culinary-related content. The records also note other social phenomena, under such headings as transportation, medicine, and education. To date, we’ve created an index of about 80,000 records

Using the database, I was able to efficiently find mentions of army camp food and eating in such collections as the Hacker letters, which contains many letters written from Union army encampments by Rohloff and Philip Hacker, two brothers from Michigan who served from  1861 to 1863.  The Finding Aid for the collection is here

The brothers’ letters give a detailed picture of what Union soldiers ate and what deprivations they felt. There’s a good deal about what home food they missed, one way or another.  Many of these come in responses to news from home: mention of food-related activities at home, such as harvesting, created cravings for home food. Memories of eating are woven into their memories of home life, with remembered meals standing in some way for the security and comfort of life at home

Rohloff Hacker, in a letter home dated November 16-17th 1861

“I am glad that your crops have done so well this year …  Chester told me that they were at buckwheat already. Oh! Father, would I not like to eat with you some cold morning those hot cakes, sausage, yes, and many other things which cannot get here”

Moreover, as farm boys they’re aware of crops in the areas they pass through, and there are many reports of crops similarity or difference to what they’re used to at home. In a letter written October 5, 1861Philip writes home

“We have roasted a great deal of green corn this last week and I doubt whether the corn is riper here than in Michigan”

And in another, (August 11, 1861) Rohloff says

“I do not understand how that potatoes can grow here for the ground is so clayey and hard that while building baterys it must be all picked with the mattock”

And in yet another (September 29, 1861) Philip says

I will send you a few tomatoes different from any I have seen in Michigan. The vines when stretched are taller than 2 [ The tomatoes small smooth and long and sweeter than the common kind.

Looking just at the 1st year of the war, the letters show the range of ways soldiers were fed in camp and on the march:

• They were issued rations, typically very basic: cornmeal or flour , sugar, coffee, molasses, salt pork, fresh or salt beef, hard tack or crackers, sometimes with the addition of beans, fresh or desiccated vegetables (which the soldiers hated, and called “desecrated vegetables”) and rice or hominy.

• Another way soldiers got food was in boxes sent by friends or families, soldiers asking for and commenting on the arrival of boxes is a frequent feature of letters, this particularly shows what foods soldiers craved

Rohloff Hacker on receiving a box, early November 1861:

“I felt so glad that you in Brighton have not forgotten me. So many nice things both for wear & eat, especially that cake from Lilly it was some broken (the box was cracked all about but string held) Now whom sent those round cakes and that great large square one – they were all so good it made me think of great times in old Mich”

• It seems they sometimes had the option of buying extra food from the quartermaster, although this was a privilege usually reserved for officers, who, instead of drawing rations were issued a monthly cash allowance with which to buy their supplies.

Rohloff C. Hacker  around October 1861

” When we …  gets only coffee and bread we feel cross and go to the Brigade Quartermaster and buy such as we think best.”

• Union Soldiers throughout the war bought food and drink from sutlers, authorized merchants who had an established business selling to the regiments: Sutlers sold beer, whiskey, and tobacco but also foodstuffs . There are numerous references in the Civil War letters of soldiers going to the sutler’s to satisfy their cravings for more palatable food than their  rations: milk, butter, fresh fruit, and canned goods

• Sutlers weren’t the only ones who sold food to the soldiers, of course.  Soldiers also bought food from  what some of the writers refer to as Hucksters: locals who came to camp to sell food or sold by the side of the road: these seem to have been mostly ready-to-consume foods, cakes, pies, fruit, cider, and candy are all mentioned in our Civil War  letters.

• Soldiers also bought eatables from locals who sold food out of their houses or off their farms.

• Soldiers also got some of their food by foraging, either under orders, or on their own initiative. Foraging meant a number of things to the writers of our letters.  In the most straightforward  “living off the land” sense it meant things like picking fruit or gathering nuts, fishing, and hunting

Rohloff C. Hacker October 27, 1861

“I with 2 of my comrades off went in the woods and around sight seeing & eating walnuts butternuts and hickory nuts had a good time”

• Soldiers also appropriated  food from houses and farms, either abandoned or still occupied.  This was another meaning of “foraging.” Another term for it was “cramping”

Rohloff Hacker,  undated

“We had not been there long when some of the boys went out for what we call cramping and soon returned with a 12 or more of hogs and pigs which they had shot.

• Many soldiers, from the evidence of their letters, considered it perfectly fair game to take food from an inhabited farm or homestead, I found  mentions of procuring fresh corn, other kinds of produce, and honey, of milking pastured cows, and of killing livestock for meat

Consider this quote from a letter dated October 5th, 1861, by Philip Hacker. Speaking of a householder whom he characterizes as “an old secessionist preacher that lives near us … a double tonged man and a regular hipocrit” he says

“… when we retook the place last Saturday night they revenged themselves a little by helping themselves to his hogs fowls milk cakes and etc. Last Sunday morning he wanted us to give him two cts. for each canteen of water but we took all the water we wanted in spite of him. He had some cakes and pies for which he charged an enormous price which so exasperated some of our men that they took all without even thanking … one of our men shot one of his cows and for a while milked his other two. He also has a large cornfield near us and we use of it all we want”

Food has always borne an especial importance for soldiers, who have extra trouble procuring it but who need it more than ever–for morale as well as their extra nutritional requirements. Ingenuity is valued, and gratitude heartfelt. From the evidence of our Civil War letters, meals were a significant source of comfort and interest in soldiers’ day to day lives. The letters provide documentation of the variety of official and unofficial ways the soldiers were fed, and of their attitudes towards and feelings about all things gustatory. For exploring these matters, the above examples show how our Food and Society Database is an invaluable tool for saving the researcher’s time.

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