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 favourite 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.

 

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 delicate 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.

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.

 

Mess kettles and a mess pan.

 

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 we ‘en cooked in the old army style

It has charms we can never forget.—chorus.

 

The German is fond of sauerkraut,

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 homeopathic 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 someone 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 beefscraps 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 insolvable 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.