Unless an Army is properly fed : Foods Impact on War John U.

Rees Brief Biography John Rees over the past twenty-plus years has published numerous monographs on various aspects of 18th and 19th century American soldier life. In 1995 he began writing the military food column for Food History News, eventually completing fifty articles at the newsletters closing in 2010. Besides contributing to several military history journals, his work has appeared in the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink and the revised Thomson Gale edition of Boatners Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Published in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring 2012), 103-105. Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War Andrew F. Smith New York: St. Martins Press, 2011 304 pp. $27.99 (paper) A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray William C. Davis Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003 233 pp. Illustrations. $26.95 (paper)

Andrew F. Smiths new book Starving the South speaks of poverty and plenty, North and South, and offers an interesting take on one of our nations seminal conflicts. Smiths prologue lays the groundwork for the state of American agriculture at the onset of the Civil War, taking the reader from late-eighteenthcentury America to the explosion of Northern food production and industrialization, and the effects that imported goods and the ascendance of cotton had on the Southern prewar and wartime economy. The narrative nicely supports the authors thesis of food deprivation as a crucial Northern weapon, the difficulties that engendered for the Confederacy, and how greed, corruption, and, occasionally, ineptitude often undermined efforts to both feed and strangle the South. Divided into ten fully sourced chapters, each with six to ten short episodes, Smiths work weaves a compelling story of the Souths wartime tribulations, ranging from a discussion of Confederate national laissez-faire attitudes regarding planters continued concentration on cotton production, to a thorough recounting of Major General U.S. Grants campaign to take Vicksburg on the

Mississippi River. The surrender of that city on July 4, 1863, cut the Confederacy in two and laid the groundwork for Major General William T. Shermans 1864 march through Georgia, when he cast loose his supply lines, subsisted his soldiers off the land, and made the state howl. Those Southern handicaps were partly offset by trade between the antagonists, licit and illicit, allowing the barter of Southern cotton for food, munitions, and cash. This necessary (for the South) and unnecessary (for the North) evil was sometimes accomplished under cover of Canadian carriers through the Bahamas, but more often openly through the lines that divided the opposing armies. Sherman noted of these practices, What use in carrying on war while our people are supplying [our enemy with the] arms and the sinews of war? (Smith, p.122) Starving the South takes the reader further afield in the closing chapters, with the Federal Armys 1864 devastation of the Shenandoah Valley breadbasket, latewar efforts on both sides to supply soldiers with special and extra foods for the holidays (Federal soldiers generally fared better, with one Southern soldier noting, New Years dinner had come and gone, or rather, gone, without coming [Smith, p.161]), and 1864-65 food privation in Richmond and its defenses. The penultimate chapter looks at General Shermans transition from a Northerner living and working in the prewar South to being an early opponent of Union Army depredations to Southern farms, and his later realization that we are not only fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war (Smith, p.178). Two caveats. To some readers each chapters episodic framework may seem disjointed, detracting from the narratives overall flow. My advice is to keep goingthe content is well worth it, and you will get used to the structure. In addition, my version of the book, an advanced uncorrected copy, contained no index (the retail volume includes one), and at some few points early on the text contained a smattering of typos, awkward phrasings, and repetitions that likely would only bother someone reading with an editors eye. These slight faults may have been cleared up before the final printing, and in no way detract from the works overall value. Smiths work is a recommended read for anyone interested in delving deeper into our North/South conflict, and in learning how food production and issues of abundance and scarcity, interwoven with military and political affairs, affected common soldiers and civilians and influenced our nations history.

Above: A group of Union pickets at mess. Military & Historical Image bank 2011 and Don Troiani 2011 with all rights reserved. (www.historicalimagebank.com )

In A Taste for War William C. Davis provides his take on 1860s soldier foods and foodways.i In eight chapters, plus a fifty-five-page recipe section, Davis describes the plight of soldiers initial experiences with army rations, early efforts to centralize cooking within units, and the sensible segue to small mess groups. He goes on to discuss printed guides and regulations for soldier-cooks, components of the official food allotment, army bread and bread production, how meals were prepared, the mens efforts to procure extra non-issue edibles, and foods for special occasions. Also included are thirty-three food-related photos and drawings, an excellent addition to the volume. The fare served in A Taste for War is not entirely satisfying. The author would have benefited by considering 1861-1865 soldier cooking in the context of foods eaten by American soldiers from the War for Independence onwards, as well as a general knowledge of military foodways. At the end of an introductory section lacking in any thoughtful, focused thesis, he writes of soldiers North and South, In the process [of creating their meals] they overturned centuries of cultural and

gender habits, [and] demonstrated enormous ingenuity in devising things to eat from raw materials at hand (Davis, p. xiv). Such innovation was hardly new in the American army, nor was this the first time troops took over the female task of preparing comestibles. The author also states, every soldiers letters and diary commented more on the awfulness of his diet than on anything else (Davis, p.x). Davis overdoes his emphasis on soldiers complaints; while army food could be awful and monotonous, the men often leavened their meals with extra and extraordinary foodstuffs (via purchase, pilfering, and packages from home) and eventually learned to make do with the issued ration. Having studied American soldiers food for some years, I am constantly impressed that many thrived on the rough diet and hard living, and, with reduced expectations, periodically had satisfying meals. Neither does Davis satisfactorily address the troops seasoning in service. Here is Massachusetts private Walter Carters telling testimony, beginning with his July 1863 protest that We have been living on hard bread, pork, coffee and sugar for over three weeks now, and our systems are completely run out... I cannot drink the coffee; it hurts me, and consequently I live on raw salt pork, (lean), hard bread and sugar. I cannot sustain a working life on that 'fod.'ii By the following year Carter was a hardened campaigner, writing from Virginia, "May 29, 1864 ... my health is excellent, and I can now eat hardbread, pork, and drink coffee with a keen relish; I depend a good deal upon sugar, and manage to have a good supply with me generally."iii Other soldiers mirror Private Carters transformation. And then there are the men who tell of having plenty to eat and gaining weight, perhaps an indication of both proper food supply, and that starvation mentality affected Civil War soldiers, too. One minor flaw is a scattering of misspellings or editing errors; besides some phrasing mistakes, we have regiment instead of regimen, Indian for Indiana, melts for milts (spleens), and army bread made of sawdust and aleratus. The recipe section is problematic, too. It is good to correlate soldiers meals with home-cooked foods, but any similarity was often in the minds of the military gourmand (Private Wilbur Fisk noted, the boys [are eager]to get that to eat that will bear some resemblance to a favorite dish they were fond of at home [Davis, p.56]). On the plus side, these recipes are mostly sourced, but perhaps giving the original cited passage followed by the modern practical recipe would have provided much-needed context. That said, there are some real gems here, and much that is worthwhile. Davis has intimate knowledge of the war and soldiers letters and diaries, and it shows. He dug deep to uncover accounts of Northern industrial baking during the war, and foods in hospitals and prisons. These last are my favorite chapters, perhaps because they are too little known. Two examples illustrate their charm. Mary Mother Bickerdyke, a noted volunteer nurse and indomitable presence in the western armies, made a special dish called panado for soldiers recovering from a wound or illness. It consisted of hot water, brown sugar, whiskey, and

crumbled hardtack, mixed into a mush. She once joked, when I get home, boys, I shall publish a starvation cook-book, containing receipts for making delicious dishes out of nothing (Davis, p. 65). The prison chapter especially shows soldiers ingenuity in getting enough to eat under trying, often horrendous, conditions. Amusing, uplifting, and horrifying by turns, one passage tells of prisoners eating warders four-legged friends: at Camp Douglas in Illinois, a Confederate prisoner left a note after a Union officers pet was killed and cooked: For lack of bread the dog is dead, For want of meat the dog was eat (Davis, pp. 106-107). All in all, A Taste for War covers the subject in a readable and detailed manner, but does not entirely do justice to American soldiers and their sustenance. For an online military foodways primer see "`The foundation of an army is the belly': North American Soldiers' Food, 1756-1945" at
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http://revwar75.com/library/rees/belly.htm.

Quoted in Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue (Austin, TX and London: University of Texas Press, 1979), 340. iii Ibid., 414.
ii