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This item appeared in The Princeton Clarion on September 7, 1861.
The Princeton Clarion
Princeton, Indiana
September 7, 1861
Page One
The sutler’s tent is the same in all camps I have ever visited. Be it understood, for the benefit of those who are ununiformed, that the sutler is the merchant of the regiment. He sells lemonade-tobacco,in papers and plugs-cigars, of cabbage and tobacco-red herrings, crackers, and molasses cakes. He would sell whisky if he dared. This tent is always lumbered up with barrels and boxes, and at the customers’ end of it, a board across two pork barrels does the duty for a counter. Here the men come in crowds, every hour in the day, to get some delicacy, (after salt fat pork and no vegetables, with the sun at 98 deg., even molasses cakes are a delicacy) to eat, or for a glass of cool lemonade to drink and make much of.
As the regiments are mostly supplied with water from muddy springs of their own digging, (to prevent poisoning by our amiable Virginia neighbors), and as the sutler generally has the only ice in camp, a glass of even sutler’s lemonade is a most grateful beverage under the torrid circumstances.
The currency used with the sutler is pasteboard tickets, representing respectively the value of 5 cents, 10 cents, or 25 cents, payable in goods at the sutler’s store. When a soldier desires to enter into commercial negotiations with the sutler, and has no money wherewith to achieve that mercantile desideratum, he naturally concludes to anticipate some portion of his pay. He therefore obtains from his captain a printed order on the paypaster for one dollar or more, as the case may be, which is signed by himself, of course, as drawer of the order, and is then countersigned by the captain, as a guaranty that the sum of money called for in the order is actually due the man. This document is now negotiable, and the sutler will take it, and give for its “face,” not in money, but in tickets, which are simply due bills on himself, which he binds himself to redeem in goods.
As the goods are sold at his own prices, and as the tickets must eventually all find their way to his establishment, it follows that office of Regimental Sutler usually pays better than that of Major General. When pay day comes round, the men having spent all their “tickets,” have as a general rule, little interest in the paymaster. The sutler presents all the orders for pay which are in his possession, and from the paymaster receives the gold. This whole system is a very objectionable one, and the French plan of paying the soldiers every ten days would be an infinite improvement. As it is, the men do the work, and dare the danger, while the sutler pockets the lion’s, or rather the sutlers, part of it.
All the sutlers’ stores, or tents, are alike-are always thronged, and always make money. There is usually a rear entrance for the officers, who are thus admitted behind the counter, and occasionally a sportive Major takes fancy to ride a frolicsome horse in at the back door, and a smashing sensation is the result.
But the whole sutler arrangement is bad, though it is so intimately connected with the system of army payments, that a reform touching only the sutler’s department would be but half skin deep.
The Princeton Clarion
Princeton, Indiana
September 7, 1861
Page One
The Army Sutler
The sutler’s tent is the same in all camps I have ever visited. Be it understood, for the benefit of those who are ununiformed, that the sutler is the merchant of the regiment. He sells lemonade-tobacco,in papers and plugs-cigars, of cabbage and tobacco-red herrings, crackers, and molasses cakes. He would sell whisky if he dared. This tent is always lumbered up with barrels and boxes, and at the customers’ end of it, a board across two pork barrels does the duty for a counter. Here the men come in crowds, every hour in the day, to get some delicacy, (after salt fat pork and no vegetables, with the sun at 98 deg., even molasses cakes are a delicacy) to eat, or for a glass of cool lemonade to drink and make much of.
As the regiments are mostly supplied with water from muddy springs of their own digging, (to prevent poisoning by our amiable Virginia neighbors), and as the sutler generally has the only ice in camp, a glass of even sutler’s lemonade is a most grateful beverage under the torrid circumstances.
The currency used with the sutler is pasteboard tickets, representing respectively the value of 5 cents, 10 cents, or 25 cents, payable in goods at the sutler’s store. When a soldier desires to enter into commercial negotiations with the sutler, and has no money wherewith to achieve that mercantile desideratum, he naturally concludes to anticipate some portion of his pay. He therefore obtains from his captain a printed order on the paypaster for one dollar or more, as the case may be, which is signed by himself, of course, as drawer of the order, and is then countersigned by the captain, as a guaranty that the sum of money called for in the order is actually due the man. This document is now negotiable, and the sutler will take it, and give for its “face,” not in money, but in tickets, which are simply due bills on himself, which he binds himself to redeem in goods.
As the goods are sold at his own prices, and as the tickets must eventually all find their way to his establishment, it follows that office of Regimental Sutler usually pays better than that of Major General. When pay day comes round, the men having spent all their “tickets,” have as a general rule, little interest in the paymaster. The sutler presents all the orders for pay which are in his possession, and from the paymaster receives the gold. This whole system is a very objectionable one, and the French plan of paying the soldiers every ten days would be an infinite improvement. As it is, the men do the work, and dare the danger, while the sutler pockets the lion’s, or rather the sutlers, part of it.
All the sutlers’ stores, or tents, are alike-are always thronged, and always make money. There is usually a rear entrance for the officers, who are thus admitted behind the counter, and occasionally a sportive Major takes fancy to ride a frolicsome horse in at the back door, and a smashing sensation is the result.
But the whole sutler arrangement is bad, though it is so intimately connected with the system of army payments, that a reform touching only the sutler’s department would be but half skin deep.
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