Cooking pancakes.

 

The commissary, I think I have explained, was an officer in charge of government rations. From him quartermasters obtained their supplies for the rank and file, on a written requisition given by the commander of a regiment or battery. He also sold supplies for officers’ messes at cost price, and also to members of the rank and file, if they presented an order signed by a commissioned officer.

Towards the end of the war sutlers kept self-raising flour, which they sold in packages of a few pounds. This the men bought quite generally to make into fritters or pancakes. It would have pleased the celebrated four thousand dollar cook at the Parker House, in Boston, could he have seen the men cook these fritters. The mixing was a simple matter, as water was the only addition which the flour required, but the fun was in the turning. A little experience enabled a man to turn them without the aid of a knife, by first giving the fry-pan a little toss upward and forward. This threw the cake out and over, to be caught again the uncooked side down—all in a half-second. But the miscalculations and mishaps experienced in performing this piece of culinary detail were numerous and amusing, many a cake being dropped into the fire, or taken by a sudden puff of wind, just as it got edgewise in the air, and whisked into the dirt.

Then, the sutler’s pies! Who can forget them? “Moist and indigestible below, tough and indestructible above, with untold horrors within.” The most mysterious products that he kept, I have yet to see the soldier who can furnish a correct analysis of what they were made from. Fortunately for the dealer, it mattered very little as to that, for the soldiers were used to mystery in all its forms, and the pies went down by hundreds; price, twenty-five cents each. Not very high, it is true, compared with other edibles, but they were small and thin, though for the matter of thickness several. times the amount of such stuffing could have added but little to the cost.

I have said that these army merchants were dry-goods dealers. The only articles which would come under this head, that I now remember of seeing, were army regulation hats, cavalry boots, flannels, socks, and suspenders. They were not allowed to keep liquors, and any one of them found guilty of this act straightway lost his permit to suttle for the troops, if nothing worse happened him.

I am of the opinion that the sutlers did not always receive the consideration that they deserved. Owing to the high prices which they asked the soldiers for their goods, the belief found ready currency that they were little better than extortioners; and I think that the name “sutler” to-day calls up in the minds of the old soldiers a man who would not enlist and shoulder his musket, but who was better satisfied to take his pack of goods and get his living out of the soldiers who were doing his fighting for him. But there is something to be said on the other side. In the first place, he filled a need recognized, long before the Rebellion, by Army Regulations. Such a personage was considered a convenience if not a necessity at military posts and in campaigns, and certain privileges were accorded him.

 

Cook’s Shanty.

 

In the second place, no soldier was compelled to patronize him, and yet I question whether there was a man in the service any great length of time, within easy reach of one of these traders, who did not patronize him more or less. In the third place, when one carefully considers the expense of transporting his goods to the army, the wastage of the same from exposure to the weather, the cost of frequent removals, and the risk he carried of losing his stock of goods in case of a disaster to the army, added to the constant increase in the cost of the necessaries of life, of which the soldiers were not cognizant, I do not believe that sutlers as a class can be justly accused of overcharging. I have seen one of these merchants since the war, who seemed seized with the fullest appreciation of the worth of his own services to the country, and, with an innocent earnestness most refreshing, applied for membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, into which only men who have an honorable discharge from the government are admitted.

There undoubtedly were Shylocks among them, and they often had a hard time of it; and this leads me to speak of another risk that sutlers had to assume—the risk of being raided-or “cleaned out,” to quote the language of the expressive army slang. This meant the secret organization of a party of men in a regiment to fall upon a sutler in the darkness of night, throw down his tent, help themselves liberally to whatever they wanted, and then get back speedily and quietly to quarters. It did not do to carry stolen goods to the tents, for the next day was likely to see a detachment of men, accompanied by the sutler, searching the quarters for the missing property. Sometimes this raiding was done in a spirit of mischief, by unprincipled men, sometimes to get satisfaction for what they considered his exorbitant charges. Sometimes the officers of a regiment sympathized in such a movement, if they thought the sutler’s exactions deserved a rebuke. When this was the case, it was no easy task to find the criminals, for the officers were very blind and stupid, or, if the culprits were detected, they were quietly reminded that if they were foolish enough to get caught they must suffer the penalty. But sutlers, like other people, profited by the teachings of experience, and, if they had faults, soon mended them, so that late in the war they rarely found it necessary to beg deliverance from their friends.

The following incident came under my own knowledge in the winter of ‘64, while the Artillery Brigade of the Third Corps lay encamped in the edge of a pine woods near Brandy Station, Virginia. Just in rear of the Tenth Battery camp, near company headquarters, the brigade sutler had erected his tent, and every wagon-load of his supplies passed through this camp under the eyes of any one who cared to take note. A load of this description was thus inspected on a particular occasion, and while the wagon was standing in front of the tent waiting to be unloaded, and without special guarding, an always thirsty veteran stole up to it, seized upon a case of whiskey, said to have been destined for a battery commander, and was off in a jiffy. Less than three minutes elapsed before the case was missed. At once the captain of the company was notified, who immediately gave his instructions to the officer of the day. The bugler blew the Assembly, summoning every man into line; and every man had to be there or be otherwise strictly accounted for by his sergeant. What it all meant no one apparently knew. Meanwhile, two lieutenants and the orderly were carrying on a thorough search of the men’s quarters. When it was completed, the orderly returned to the line, and the company was dismissed, in a curious frame of mind as to the cause of all the stir. This soon leaked out, as did also the fact that no trace of the missing property had been discovered. All was again quiet along the Potomac, except when the culprit and his coterie waxed a little noisy over imbibitions of ardent mysteriously obtained, and not until after the close of the war was the mystery made clear.

It seems that as soon as he had seized his prize he passed swiftly down through the camp to the picket rope, where the horses were tied, and there, in a pile of manure thrown up behind them, quickly concealed the case, and, at the bugle signal, was prompt to fall into line. Under cover of darkness, the same night, the plunder was taken from the manure heap and carried to a hill in front of the camp, where it was buried in a manner which would not disclose it to the casual traveller, and yet leave it easily accessible to its unlawful possessor, and here he resorted periodically for a fresh supply, until it was exhausted.

I have quoted a few of the prices charged by sutlers. Here are a few of the prices paid by people in Richmond, during the latter part of the war, in Confederate money:—

Potatoes $80 a bushel; a chicken $50; shad $50 per pair; beef $15 a pound; bacon $20 a pound; butter $20 a pound; flour $1500 a barrel; meal $140 a bushel; beans $65 a bushel; cow-peas $80 a bushel; hard wood $50 a cord; green pine $80 a cord; and a dollar in gold was worth $100 in Confederate money.