confederates and hardtack

[kirklandaustin]

How common would it be to see a confederate with hardtack in the civil war, or would it even be seen in the civil war. i was also wondering if there was something in the confederate army that resembled it. Don't laugh i am some what new to the rations part of the soldiers life. i have been doing some research and have found a couple of things but i was just wondering.

Austin Kirkland
"just a poor man fighting a rich mans war"

[Coatsy]

Re: confederates and hardtack

Austin, as with many things CS, it depends on the situation. For example, many of us have been researching/reading up on Kershaw's Brigade at Chickamauga. After the battle, they took hard crackers from the haversacks of captured/deceased Federals. But, on their train ride to north Georgia, no hard crackers at all.

This is just one instance. Dig into the O.R.s, look at period accounts.

[Palmyra Possum]

Re: confederates and hardtack

Before we start, time, place, unit, blah, blah, blah…

Now with that out of the way, most of the info I have gathered is regarding the ANV, and most of the references I have refer to the soldiers drawing flour or meal rather than hardtack, although hardtack is occasionally mentioned. Here's some samples:

04/28/62: "Henceforth the Ration will be a pound of Beef or a half pound of Bacon or Pork; and the ration of Flour or Meal will not exceed a pound and a half of either. Commissaries are again instructed to save all the Tallow they can, to be used in place of Lard." L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General of Subsistence

05/22/62: "I have received your circular ordering Reveille at 2½ AM and the Brigade to move at 4, with cooked rations for three days… I immediately called upon the Commissary of the Regt to know if he could issue, at once, rations for three days. He replied that he had no rations, except flour for one day, that his beef-cattle escaped from the Brigade Commissary last night & had not yet been found. He added that the Commissary was making efforts to procure bacon." Letter of Lawson Botts, 2nd Virginia Infantry, to the regiment's captain.

09/__/62: "For rations, we were indebted to the fields of roasting ears, and to the apple orchards. Such diet does not compare with bacon and hardtack for long marches, and, before the campaign was over, the straggling from all causes assumed great proportions. Brigades were often reduced nearly to the size of regiments, and regiments to the size of companies." E. Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate (Sharpsburg Campaign)

11/17/62: "The future supply of subsistence for the army is to me a source of great anxiety. I have endeavored all in my power to economize that which now exists, and to provide for future wants. While in the valley, the complaints of the officers of an insufficient supply of food for the troops became so general that after consultation with the Chief of Commissary of the army I increased the ration of flour to 1 1/8 pounds and of beef to 1 1/4 pounds. At that time we were using flour ground in the valley and collecting a quantity of beef on the hoof. No other part of the ration could be furnished to the men except salt, nor could the men increase their fare by the purchase of bread, vegetables, etc. Their whole ration consisted of meat and bread. It was stated that one great cause of straggling was the insufficiency of the ration to appease the hunger of the men." Robert E. Lee, Letter to Governor George Randolph of Virginia and at that time the Secretary of War

Spring, 63: "The troops of this portion of the army have for some time been confined to reduced rations, consisting of 18 ounces of flour, 4 ounces of bacon of indifferent quality, with occasionally supplies of rice, sugar, or molasses." Robert E. Lee, Report to Secretary of War James Seddon, O.R., XXV, Pt. 2, pp. 686-687

03/15-17/63: Rations for 430 for 3 days:
645 Rations Bacon
1290 Rations Flour
1290 Rations Salt
800 Rations Soap
Col T. J. Purdie, 18th North Carolina Infantry, Handwritten note on back of requisition form

04/17/63: "Their ration... consists of one-fourth pound of bacon, 18 ounces of flour, 10 pounds of rice to each 100 men about every third day, with some few peas and a small amount of dried fruit occasionally as they can be obtained." Robert E. Lee, Report to Secretary of War James Seddon, O.R., Vol. 25, Pt. II, p. 730

05/__/63: "We drew battle rations, which consisted of fried bacon and cornbread pone. There was some sugar and coffee gotten out of the haversacks of the dead Yanks and some hardtack. They seemed not to have drawn much rations for themselves, so we had to go short. But there was enough coffee and sugar to go all around for once, and we had "a cup of hot coffee and het mighty well sweetened," as poor old Guinea used to say." Pvt. David Holt, Co. K of the 16th Mississippi Regiment, A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia, Page 175 (Chancellorsville Campaign)

Late 63-Early 64: "Our rations were not abundant while at Taylorsville; one pint of unseived meal and a quarter of a pound of bacon per day. We made coffee of parched wheat, rye and rice. Occasionally some of the boys would get, somehow, potatoes or rutabagas, of which they would make soup. It was said of Aleck Bolton that he could dispense with a gallon at one meal. There was so little of the bacon that we could not well afford to fry it, so we generally eat it raw with an ash cake or johnny cake. We had but few cooking utensils, but taken in connection with the quantities of rations, we had need of few." David E. Johnson, Co. D, 7th Virginia Infantry (later Sgt. Maj.), Four Years a Soldier (he provides a second account of this time period, describing the same rations, in his later book, The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War)

07/28/64: "We get tolerable rations, a pound of meal a day and a third of a pound of bacon. Sometimes we get peas and rice. only the rank gets sugar and coffee." William J. Thompson, Co. B, 13th North Carolina, Letter to his mother

These are excerpts from a work in progress of mine, so I apologize for any botched or incomplete cites.

Having duplicated several of these descriptions for my rations at events, the question that usually comes up is not, "How am I going to get by on so little food?" It's, "What am I going to do with all this flour?" I think the only time I actually finished my rations is when I spent an event living off of the 7th Virginia diet of a pint of meal and quarter pound of bacon a day (see Late 63-Early 64, above). Unlike the original soldiers, I chose to cook my bacon.

There's also some good info on this subject on the "Confederate Hard Tack" thread:

http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/forum/showthread.php?19744-Confederate-Hard-Tack&highlight=confederate+hardtack