Influence Food Had on US Civil War

María del Mar Corella

Napoleon once said that “an army marches on its stomach.” He was

completely correct about it. The diet that a soldier in war maintains directly

affects the outcome of the war. In the US Civil War, soldiers sustained an

absolutely unbalanced diet, which came with ineffectiveness on the battlefield. It

is important for a soldier to have high caloric intake throughout the day so that

he will be able to complete his daily tasks and even fight successfully. Having an

unbalanced diet led to repercussions not only on the battlefield but also in the

soldiers’ health. The diseases of scurvy and typhoid, which led to a lot of deaths,

were epidemics that emerged from this same problem in their diets.

Figure 1 (Library of Congress) Confederate Staff meeting drinking coffee

Figure 2 Union Troop soldier eating hardtack

"The History Rat." The History Rat. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2015.

The soldiers’ diets were the same everyday. Union soldiers had the advantage

that they were able to eat 3,500-4,000 calories per day, 1500 calories more than

what a Confederate soldier ate per day. Soldiers’ diets should be high in calories

because they need the energy from these calories to fight. Also, since they are

constantly moving, they burn a lot of these calories, and to obtain energy they

have to consume more calories than what they burn. Soldiers ate approximately

one pound of hardtack, three-quarters of a pound of meat, sugar, desiccated

vegetables, and coffee. Although these portions are a reasonable amount of food,

many times they had to last up to three days on battlefield.

Figure 3 (Library of Congress) Breakfast Ration Including Hardtack

Hardtack was an abominable bread- tasting biscuit primarily eaten by the

Union Army soldiers. They were as solid as rocks, which caused many soldiers to

loose their teeth. At times, the hardtack was so compact that soldiers had to

soften it up with rocks. The reason why hardtack was so famous in the war is

because in the 1800s there weren’t many foods that could be easily preserved.

Hardtack brought a solution to this problem; soldiers usually ate the hardtack six

months after it was produced. However, this nauseating bread was frequently

infested by weevils and maggots, which were sometimes mistakenly eaten by the

soldiers. A soldier from the war even wrote;

While before Petersburg, doing siege work in the summer of 1864, our men had wormy ‘hardtack,’ or ship’s biscuit served out to them for a time. It was a severe trial, and it tested the temper of the men. Breaking open the biscuit and finding live worms in them, they would throw the pieces in the trenches where they were doing duty day by day, although the orders were to keep the trenches clean, for sanitary reasons. A brigade officer of the day, seeing some of the scraps along our front, called out sharply to our men: ‘Throw that hardtack out of the trenches.’ Then, as the men promptly gathered it up as directed, he added, ‘Don’t you know that you’ve no business to throw hardtack in the trenches? Haven’t you been told that often enough?’ Out from the injured soldier heart there came the reasonable explanation: ‘We’ve thrown it out two or three times, sir, but it crawls back’ (Union Army Camp Cooking: 1861-1865, 18).

Figure 4 (Chicago Historical Society) Hardtack

Although hardtack was a hideous food to eat, it was in the soldiers’

advantage to eat this food. Hardtack is made primarily with flour and water.

Since flour contains starch, which is a polysaccharide, it provides long lasting

energy. That being said, a soldier who constantly ate hardtack would benefit

from the energy that comes with this food. Moreover, in times where there was

not meat available, weevils and maggots present in the hardtack would be their

only source of protein.

The meat that was given to the soldiers was limited to salted pork. This

salted pork had such a high quantity of salt that it had to be soaked overnight in

order for it to be bearable to eat. This pork contained a lot of salt because this

was the only solution at the time to preserve the meat for long periods of time. In

addition, big concentrations of salt helped in killing unwanted bacteria. On the

other hand, the consumption of salt should always be limited since consuming a

lot of salt brings several health repercussions like dehydration. In this case, the

soldiers’ intake of salt was extremely high, which made the soldiers suffer from

dehydration. In order to fix this problem, soldiers had to drink more water,

which was an obstacle they faced seeing as the majority of the water was

contaminated. This brought controversy since their diets demanded a higher

intake of water; however, they weren’t able to obtain enough potable water.

Figure 5 (Library of Congress) A Soldier Cooking Salted Pork

Since soldiers didn’t want to drink contaminated water, this made coffee

the drink that soldiers valued the most about their diet. Union soldiers were

provided with green coffee beans, which they cooked in pans and squashed them

with their riffles. On the other hand, Confederate soldiers had to use substitutes

for coffee, which were not as high in caffeine as coffee is. Coffee has the

advantage of having a great concentration of caffeine, which is known to provide

a lot of energy. This is another advantage that the Union soldiers had in their

favor; Union troops were benefitted from this energy caffeine brought, whereas

the Confederates weren’t fully benefitted from it. This energy was crucial

because they had to fight for a long time with short sleeping hours.

As the war continued, coffee and meat became increasingly scarce. The

deficiency of fiber in their diets caused the appearance of desiccated vegetables

in their food rations. These were a mix of various vegetables that went through a

process of being dried and pressed. At this time, it was believed that this was a

good source of vitamins, but it is now known that this process takes away the

majority of the vitamins that were present. Still, this was the closest they would

get to eat a vegetable, so the soldiers ate it without complains.

The inadequate food given to the soldiers caused diseases such as scurvy

and typhoid to arise. Scurvy was a disease caused by the lack of vitamin C that

caused loose teeth, extreme diarrhea, and the bleeding of mucous membranes.

46,931 of the Union troops were diagnosed with this disease. In 1865, a report

from the federal forces on the Texas Coast said that if they were not given

supplies in the next six weeks, 50% of their soldiers would be unfit for duty

because of scurvy. The Union’s desiccated vegetables brought some cures to this

disease, but unfortunately, the Confederates did not include them in their diet.

Typhoid fever was the second disease that killed the most soldiers. In the Union

troops 75,418 people suffered from the disease and 27,058 of them died from it.

This disease was caused by food and water bacterial contamination present in

the camps. People who had this disease suffered from astringent fever, red skin

lesions, and abate mental functionality. These diseases would have been easily

prevented if the armies would have paid more attention to what the soldiers ate

and cared about the hygienic conditions their food was in.

In order to be successful in war, a soldier’s diet should always be taken

into account. The diet they maintain could even go as far as affecting directly the

outcome of the battles. One can even say that in the US Civil War, the fact that the

Union troops were better fed than the Confederate troops was what brought

victory to the Union. In battlefield, the fact that a soldier ate one more piece of

bread than their rival could lead to his survival. Disregarding the side in which

the soldier was, they had a nutritionally unbalanced diet which led to less

effective soldiers. It even had health repercussions such as the diseases of scurvy

and typhoid, which led to a lot of deaths that could have been avoided with a

better hygienic and nutritious-rich diet. If armies start paying attention and

caring about the food that their soldiers consume, then they will have better

chances of succeeding in battlefield.

Figure 6, (Library of Congress) The Way They Cooked Dinner in Camp

Primary Sources

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 "What Did Civil War Soldiers Eat?" Union vs Confederate (n.d.): n.

pag.Civilwar.org. Web.

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