Ebook The Civil War Diet
America saw the loss of 260,000 of her sons in the Civil War. The number one killer was not the bullet, but rather disease. Illness accounted for sixty percent of all Union fatalities and sixty-seven percent of all deaths among Southern troops. The role played by unsanitary conditions, poor hygienic practices, and bacterial infections all of which could be interrelated should not be understressed. However, poor diets and inadequate nutrition, which were just as prevalent as disease among the men, had a strong correlation to much sickness during the war. As Civil War historian William C. Davis wrote, “[n]o one completely escaped the rotten meat, the worm-infested bread, the illness from want of fruits and vegetables, or the utter absence of even the basic principles of nutrition and a balanced diet.”
Civil War nutrition has been a topic that many authors have flirted with but never really delved into in any great depth. The subject earns some recognition in Richard Cummings’ 1940 work American and His Food, but only briefly. Richard Hooker’s Food and Drink in America: A History, released in 1981, treats the topic with no more importance that Cummings- simply a chapter in a chronological account of America’s eating habits. In Hardtack and Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals, Barbara Haber only discusses hospital nutrition during the war. Soldiers’ diets receive more attention in Mary Gillett’s Army Medical Department: 1818-1865, the middle piece of a three-volume work. Gillett relates inadequate nutrition to the poor health of the soldiers but gives the subject more passing mention in a medical rather than nutritional account.
In 2002 Alfred Bollet released Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs, a medical account of the war. Though the focus of the book is not on nutrition’s impact, he gives it more space than did Gillett and in particular describes the connection between nutrition and certain afflictions. However, like his predecessors, Bollet gives very little attention to the actual diet of the soldiers. The following year this subject received its due focus in Davis’ A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray. In his book, Davis outlines the diet of the soldiers, detailing the different foods and their sources, methods of preparation, and the difficulty in supplying the men with adequate provisions; he even includes recipes for various dishes. Davis concludes that while the diets of the soldiers were for the most part all together lacking, they did not contribute decisively to the outcome of the war.
“The biggest impact of food on the war, one still elusive of precise measurements, was its negative contribution through malnutrition,” wrote Davis. This idea provided the impetus for this thesis. Absent in both Bollet’s and Davis’ works are nutritional analyses of the soldiers’ diets and a framework of mid-nineteenth century nutritional habits and beliefs. The latter provides a connection between the American diet and the soldier diet as well as establishing an understanding of contemporary perceptions of nutrition and their relation to the war. Through analysis, the soldiers’ diets can be explained in terms of nutritional sufficiency or insufficiency. The intake of macronutrients- fats, carbohydrates, and protein- as well as micronutrients vitamins and minerals- can be compared to recommended values based on the average soldier’s biostatistics and daily needs to determine the adequacy of his diet. Biostatistics in this sense refers to the average soldier’s age, height, and weight, while daily needs is determined by daily caloric expenditures- how many calories he burned in one day. Such an approach to discussing the average soldier during the Civil War creates a certain connection to the present-day public, when Americans are becoming more conscious of their nutritional intake and can relate to others in terms of calories and carbohydrates.
The average soldier in this work is defined as the private or non-commissioned officer of the infantry. Officers generally ate better, and typically the higher-ranked the officer, the better he ate. Above the company level, they also usually did not march with their men, but instead rode horses. So too did the cavalry, which excludes them from the definition of the average soldier used in this thesis. The artillery often rode either on the caissons or horses hauling the guns.
The amount of macronutrients consumed in one day determines a person’s daily caloric intake. One gram of fat yields nine Calories, while carbohydrates and protein provide four Calories per gram. In nutrition, a Calorie refers to one kilocalorie and is often written simply as calorie, which is how it will be used in the rest of this thesis. The activities performed by a person’s body and the energy required in one day yields a daily caloric expenditure. Therefore, the recommended caloric intake is dictated by the recommended caloric expenditure.
The average soldier did not perform the same daily functions for the entire duration of the war. At times he was expending or burning more calories, such as during training camp or marching, than at others. Likewise, his diet often changed as well, including items on some days that he lacked on others. As such, no one value can be determined for daily caloric intake and daily caloric expenditure, and it will be shown that at times the average soldier ate enough calories for his daily needs, and at times he did not.
Micronutrients, unlike macronutrients, are determined mostly by age and sex for normal populations. Therefore, these remained constant throughout. It should be noted that aging and weight loss will be factored into the nutritional needs of the average soldier. While the diets of the men more than sufficed in meeting recommended levels of some vitamins and minerals, it seriously lacked in others.
Just as the focused definition excludes officers and cavalry , and artillery, the navy, prison camps, and black soldiers are not included. These populations are better left for a separate work where they would receive the amount of space and focus deserving of them. Absent in the discussion of diets and nutrition are certain items such as coffee and alcohol. The caffeine in coffee has thermogenic and diuretic effects that can impact dietary intake, but at such a level that it would not lend itself to a more comprehensive understanding of the nutrition’s impact on health. Furthermore, Confederate units quickly ran short on coffee and many used peanuts, rye, and other substitutes in their place. The amount of carbohydrates such items would add to the diet is vague, because not only is the total quantity consumed in one sitting uncertain, but so too is the identity of the substitute, how much was used, and how often. Alcohol, though removed from the ration officially and prohibited in camp, was on occasion issued by the officers, and often sold by sutlers. Though it does provide seven calories per gram and also acts as a diuretic, it yields no nutritional benefits and is known as an ‘empty calorie.’
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: Meat and Grease: The American Diet
The American Diet
- Regional differences in diet
Land of abundance
The Temperance Movement
- Sylvester Graham and the health reformers
Restricted Diets
- Slave diet
Frontier diet
Transportation and Agricultural Advancements
CHAPTER 2: Bread and Beef the Usual Diet of a Soldier: The Civil War Diet
The U.S. Army Medical Department
The U.S. Army Ration
- Camp life
Marching
Our living is not very rich: Camp diet
- Training camp
Campaign season
Winter quarters
Thanksgiving and Christmas
This food will kill me in a week: Culinary and food quality problems
Forgive us our shortcomings: Supply and distribution problems
We are suffering many privations now: Marching and campaign diet
Send me a box as rations are scarce and inferior: Boxes to soldiers
The whole class was regarded with contempt: Sutlers
Pig sticking, chicken taking: Foraging
- Shenandoah Valley
Enemy supplies
West
CHAPTER 3: It Has Been Sickly Times: Outcomes
My bowels are not co-operating: Diarrhea and dysentery
Black-mouthed, loose-toothed fellows: Scurvy
My eyes would not last long: Night blindness
Sickness, starvation, and death: Immune suppression
The silent killer: Calcium deficiency
It don’t give me strength enough for our severe exercise: Carbohydrates
The success of a campaign: Nutrition’s impact on battles
Hideous sights: Nutrition’s impact on corpse appearance
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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