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tobacco, of the blackest sort, one dollar and a quarter a plug. Other
than the milk I do not remember any of the prices of canned goods.
The investment that seemed to pay the largest dividend to the
purchaser was the molasses cakes or cookies which the sutlers
vended at the rate of six for a quarter. They made a pleasant and not
too rich or expensive dessert when hardtack got to be a burden.
Then, one could buy sugar or molasses or flour of them, though at a
higher price than the commissary charged for the same articles.
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 COOKING PANCAKES.
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.
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.
Can we all forget the foraging the boys were prone to do,
As with problematic rations we were marching Dixie through;
And the dulcet screech of chanticleer or soothing squeal of
swine,
When occurred the grateful halt or brief excursion from the line?
Prof. S. B. Sumner.
There was one other source from which soldiers—at least, some
soldiers—replenished their larder, or added to its variety. The means
employed to accomplish this end was known as Foraging, which is
generally understood to mean a seeking after food, whether for man
or beast, and appropriating to one’s own use whatsoever is found in
this line, wheresoever it is found in an enemy’s country. It took the
army some time to adopt this mode of increasing its stores. This
arose from the fact that early in the war many of the prominent
government and military officers thought that a display of force with
consideration shown the enemy’s property would win the South back
to her allegiance to the Union; but that if, on the other hand, they
devastated property and appropriated personal effects, it would only
embitter the enemy, unite them more solidly, and greatly prolong the
war; so that for many months after war began, Northern troops were
prohibited from seizing fence-rails, poultry, swine, straw, or any
similar merchandise in which they might under some circumstances
feel a personal interest; and whenever straw-stacks and fences were
appropriated by order of commanding officers, certificates to that
effect were given the owners, who might expect at some time to be
reimbursed. But the Rebellion waxed apace, and outgrew all
possibility of certificating everybody whose property was entered
upon or absorbed, and furthermore it came to be known that many
who had received certificates were in collusion with the enemy, so
that the issuance of these receipts gradually grew beautifully less.
Then, there was another obstacle in the way of a general adoption
of foraging as an added means of support. It was the presence in the
army of a large number of men who had learned the ten
commandments, and could not, with their early training and
education, look upon this taking to themselves the possessions of
others without license as any different from stealing. These soldiers
would neither forage nor share in the fruits of foraging. It can be
readily imagined, then, that when one of this class commanded a
regiment the diversion of foraging was not likely to be very general
with his men. But as the war wore on, and it became more evident
that such tender regard for Rebel property only strengthened the
enemy and weakened the cause of the Union, conscientious
scruples stepped to the rear, and the soldier who had them at the
end of the war was a curiosity indeed.
There are some phases of this question of foraging which at this
late day may be calmly considered, and the right and wrong of it
carefully weighed. In the first place, international law declares that in
a hostile section an army may save its rations and live off the
country. To the large majority of the soldiers this would be sufficient
warrant for them to appropriate from the enemy whatever they had a
present liking for in the line of provisions. If all laws were based on
absolute justice, the one quoted would settle the question finally, and
leave nothing as an objection to foraging. But while the majority
make the laws, the consciences and convictions of the minority are
not changed thereby. Each man’s conscience must be a final law
unto himself. It is well for it to be so. I only enlarge upon this for a
moment to show that on all moral questions every intelligent man
must in a measure make his own law, having Conscience as a guide.
A DISCOVERY. ACT I.
ACT II.
The view which the average soldier took was, as already
intimated, in harmony with the international law quoted. This view
was, in substance, that the people of the South were in a state of
rebellion against the government, notwithstanding that they had
been duly warned to desist from war and return to their allegiance:
that they had therefore forfeited all claim to whatever property the
soldier chose to appropriate; that this was one of the risks they
assumed when they raised the banner of secession; that for this, and
perhaps other reasons, they should be treated just as a foreign
nation waging war against the United States, all of which may seem
plausible at first view, and indeed it may be said just here that if the
soldiers had always despoiled the enemy to supply their own
pressing personal needs, or if they had always taken or destroyed
only those things which could be of service to the enemy in the
prosecution of the war, the arguments against foraging would be
considerably weakened; but the authority to forage carried with it
also the exercise of the office of judge and jury, from whom there
was no appeal. If the owner of a lot of corn or poultry was to protest
against losing it, on the ground that he was a Unionist, unless the
proof was at hand, he would lose his case—that is, his corn and
chickens. However sincere he may have been, it was not possible
for him to establish his Union sentiments at short notice. Indeed, so
many who really were “secesh” claimed to be good Union men, it
came latterly to be assumed that the victim was playing a false rôle
on all such occasions, and so the soldiers went straight for the
plunder, heeding no remonstrances. Without doubt, hundreds of
Union men throughout the South suffered losses in this way, which, if
their loyalty could have been clearly shown, they would have been
spared.
A good deal of the foraging, while unauthorized and forbidden by
commanding officers, was often connived at by them, and they were
frequently sharers in the spoils; but I was about to say that it was not
always of the most judicious kind. No one, better than the old
soldiers, knows how destitute many, if not most, of the houses along
the line of march were of provisions, clothing, and domestic animals,
after the first few months of the war. I will amend that statement.
There was one class who knew better than the soldiers,—the
tenants of those houses knew that destitution better—sometimes
feigned it, may be, but as a rule it was the ugly and distressing
reality. I am dealing now with the Army of the Potomac, which
travelled the same roads year after year, either before or behind the
Rebel Army of Northern Virginia. In or near the routes of these
bodies little was attempted by the people in the way of crop-raising,
for their products were sure to feed one or the other of the two
armies as they tramped up and down the state, so that destitution in
some of the wayside cabins and farm-houses was often quite
marked. No one with a heart less hard than flint could deprive such
families of their last cow, shote, or ear of corn. Yet there were many
unauthorized foragers who would not hesitate a moment to seize
and carry off the last visible mouthful of food. So it has seemed to
me that the cup of Rebellion was made unnecessarily bitter from the
fact that such appeals too often fell on deaf ears. Granting it to be
true that the Rebels had forfeited all right to whatever property their
antagonists saw fit to appropriate, yet in the absence of those
Rebels their families ought not to suffer want and distress; the
innocent should not suffer for the guilty, and when nothing was
known against them they should not have been deprived of their last
morsel. But there were exceptions. There were some families who
gave information to the Rebel army or detachments of it, by which
fragments of ours were killed or captured, and when this was known
the members of that family were likely sooner or later to suffer for it,
as would naturally be expected.
Some of these families were so destitute that they were at times
driven to appeal to the nearest army headquarters for rations to
relieve their sufferings. To do this it was often necessary for them to
walk many miles. Horses they had not. They could not keep them,
for if the Union cavalry did not “borrow,” the Rebel cavalry would
impress them; so that they were not only without a beast of burden
for farm work, but had none to use as a means of transportation.
Now and then a sore-backed, emaciated, and generally used-up
horse or mule, which had been abandoned and left in the track of the
army to die, was taken charge of, when the coast was clear, and
nursed back into vitality enough to stand on at least three of his legs,
when, by means of bits of tattered rope, twisted corn-husks, and
odds and ends of leather which had seen better days, the sorry-
looking brute, still bearing the brand U. S. or C. S. on his rump, partly
concealed perhaps by his rusty outfit, was tackled into a nondescript
vehicle, possibly the skeleton remains of what had been, in years
gone by, the elegant and stylish family carriage, but fully as often into
a two-wheeled cart, which now answered all the purposes of the
family in its altered circumstances. One would hardly expect to find
in such a brute a Goldsmith Maid or a Jay Eye See in locomotion,
and so as a matter of fact such a beast was urged on from behind by
lusty thwacks from a cudgel, propelling the family at a headlong walk
—headlong, because he was likely to go headlong at any moment,
from lack of strength, over the rough Virginia roads.
NO JOKE.