Shane - what's wrong with eating sausage?

[hoosier]

Shane, I've noted that your recent posts have contained a postscript consisting of a quote from a member of Bragg's army, in which he refers contemptuously to some members of the Union army as "Blue-bellied, white-livered, sassidge-eatin'" so-and-sos.

Blue-bellied and white-livered I can understand as insults. But eating sausage, seems to me, is every bit as American as eating hot dogs - literally.

Do you happen to know any reason why people of the Civil War era might have felt they had reason to look down upon people who ate sausage?

[johan_steele]

To be honest I'm not certain, though I know there is some reference to "Sausage Eaters" being a term refering to Swiss & German immigrants. Which at least a few Southerners viewed as nothing more than mercenaries.

Amusingly enough a Crimea War term for the French Foreign Legion was "Sausage Eaters" and as they were probably the best known mercenaries of the time; that may well be where the reference comes from. At least one officer of Cleburnes Division was a former Legionarre who had served in the Crimea... which may be another source for the original sausage eaters reference.

An interesting side note to Crimea War vets in the CW during the battle of Chickamauga a Captain of the 2nd MN asked a Corporal of his Company why he had not shot a particular officer he had in his sites... "I couldn't Sir, he was my Captain at Svestapol."

I find quote I'm using in my sig fascinating as it supposedly came from a wounded member of Cleburnes Division to one of Longstreets Men.

I wish I could get the name & providence of the man who made the quote...

[jac]

I wonder if the 'sassage eaters' is a reference to the AOP's 11th (?) Corps, which had a large contingent of 'Dutchmen' (Germans).
O.O Howard's command, in the eastern theater up thru Gettysburg.
They were routed at Chancellorsville by Jackson's flank attack, and routed again at the first day of Gettysburg.

[rbenne]

I had always heard of Sausage Eaters as a derogatory way of saying German. Used till this day actually.