Supplying the troops
North-Western Sanitary
Commission.
Soldiers' Aid Society Reports,
Broadsides, Circulars, Box 3,
James V. Campbell papers
The Civil War sent men to battle on a scale that the nation had never experienced. Just prior to the Civil War, the standing army of the United States stood at about 16,000. By the end of the war, over one million had been called into service. A single battle in the Civil War could involve more troops than an entire previous conflict. For example, the number of US forces involved in the Mexican War number approximately 78,000. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Mead’s army consisted of almost 94,000 soldiers.
The troops in the field needed enormous amounts of supplies and equipment. Numerous men were required behind the lines to supply every soldier in the front line. The vast quantity of materials needed to supply the troops taxed the government’s capabilities to and created a logistics problem on a scale not seen before.
Abstract of Receipts from the
21st Michigan Infantry
Of particular note are the Colt
Revolving Rifles, which the regiment
won the right to use during target
competitions with regiments from
Illinois and Wisconsin.
Wm. B. McCreery Coll. Misc. 1863-1864
concerning operations of 21st MI infantry,
Box 1, McCreery Family papers
To further complicate the situation where, efforts to implement standard arms and equipment were not always successful. This could cause problems on the battlefields when a regiment running short of ammunition could receive supplies which did not fit their firearms. For example, the Abstract of Receipts for the 21st Michigan Infantry shows the regiment receiving at least four different styles of long arms of incompatible calibers.
Soldiers' Aid Society .
Soldiers' Aid Society Reports,
Broadsides, Circulars, Box 3,
James V. Campbell papers
Commissary Dept. Headquarters, Army of the
Potomac.
Box 1, Michigan and the Civil War
According to army regulations for camp rations, a Union soldier was entitled to receive daily
12 oz of pork or bacon or 1 lb. 4 oz of fresh or salt beef; 1 lb. 6 oz of soft bread or flour, 1 lb. of hard bread, or 1 lb. 4 oz of cornmeal. Per every 100 rations there was issued 1 peck of beans or peas; 10 lb. of rice or hominy; 10 lb. of green coffee, 8 lb. of roasted and ground coffee, or 1 lb. 8 oz of tea; 15 lb. of sugar; 1 lb. 4 oz of candles, 4 lb. of soap; 1 qt of molasses. In addition to or as substitutes for other items, desiccated vegetables, dried fruit, pickles, or pickled cabbage might be issued.The marching ration consisted of 1 lb. of hard bread, 3/4 lb. of salt pork or 1 1/4 lb. of fresh meat, plus the sugar, coffee, and salt.
Hard Crackers Come Again No More
Tune: Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More"
Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in hand
While we gather 'round the cook tent's door
Where dry mummies of hard crackers are given to each man,
Oh, hard crackers, come again no more!
Chorus:
'Tis the song and the sigh of the hungry
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more
Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore
Oh, hard crackers, come again no more!
Stories of the quality of rations, or lack thereof, abound. John Billings, in his classic memoir "Hardtack and Coffee" provides the following description:
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.
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.
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.
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.
John Davis Billings, Hardtack and coffee; or, The unwritten story of Army life, including chapters on enlisting, life in tents and log huts, Jonahs and beats, offences and punishments, raw recruits, foraging, corps and corps badges, the wagon trains, the army mule, the engineer corps, the signal corps, etc. (Boston: G. M. Smith & co., etc., etc., 1888), http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000464403.