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Salt, common salt, became a luxury in the south, in spite of its production from the salt springs and "licks" in Virginia, Tennessee and Indian Territory. The price of wheat flour rose to more than $100 per barrel. There was no sugar. After the fall of Vicksburg, which cut off the supply of sugar and molasses from Louisiana, sorghum cane was widely grown and crushed in primitive mills to make molasses or "long sweetenin"'. Its seeds were ground into a meal that made excellent brown bread. A recipe book of that day, which also told how to tan a dog's skin for making gloves, said that "wonderful shoe blacking can be made of sorghum molasses, pinewood soot, neat's-foot oil and vinegar."
Instead of coffee, sweet potatoes were cut into small bits, fried in the sun, roasted, and ground in a little coffee mill or with a mortar and pestle. Parched rye and parched corn were other common substitutes and, in northern regions, roasted ground-up acorns. Acorn meal was also fried for pancakes. Leaves of raspberries, strawberries and mints; blossoms of the linden or basswood tree; and the roots of the sassafras or bark from its twigs; were all brewed to make tea. Sumac berries were used to make lemonade, as a treat. The fruit of the persimmon furnished preserves, a kind of bread or cake, and a beer called "possum toddy".
Clothing was a problem. All old garments, and even carpets, were used. Crops of flax were grown. Spinning wheels, looms and all the old pioneer implements for weaving cloth were resurrected. Instead of the regulation gray uniform, thousands of Confederate soldiers wore
"butternut britches"' of homespun cloth dyed with brown juice from the hulls of nuts of the butternut or white walnut tree so common in the south. Dyes of indigo from South Carolina, of copperas from mineral springs, of sumac bark and the bark of various forest trees, were all used. In the crude newspapers printed on brittle paper made of straw and cotton rags -- or even on wallpaper -- recipes were given for such dyes as "vivid purples, reds, and greens" produced by a composition of coal oil and sorghum, tinted with "the appropriate tree bark".
Buttons of wood, horn or bone were common but many a man or boy
fastened his "britches" to his "galluses" with wooden pins or locust
thorns. Cypress wood was used to make soles for shoes of which the
uppers might be old leather or cloth. Many people, including soldiers, went barefoot all summer. Hats were plaited of straw or the fibers of palmetto leaves, and the skins of rabbits or raccoons made good headgear for winter. Ladies' corsets and crinolines were made with hickory splints in place of whalebone or steel springs. The twigs of dogwood, sweet gum and the Rose of Sharon had to serve as
toothbrushes.
There was mighty little coal oil in the south, little sperm whale oil, and most of the tallow was used by the army. At night, in addition to a "fat" pine knot blazing on the hearth, some light was obtained from an "endless candle" made with a wick, dipped in melted beeswax, wrapped around a stick. Another favorite lamp was merely a saucer of lard on which floated a sycamore seed ball. Verily, grandmother was the mother of invention.
Sources of lighting in the Confederacy were in short supply, such as whale oil, kerosean and candles. Firelight was an obvious choice, but not always practical. Such a predicament called for fuel subsitutes like "fireballs", which was made from a mixture of sawdust, small pieces of coal, water, clay, and sand, which was rolled into small balls and allowed to dry and harden.
"Confederate candles" were another method of streching the limited quantities of wax. There were made by impregnating a strand of twine with a mixture of tallow and beeswaz or besswax and and rosin or fresh turpentine. The strand would then be wrapped tightly around a bottle and a few inches of it pulled above the mouth of a bottle, which could be lit and pulled upward as it burned down. It is said tha six inched could burn for up to twenty minutes.
Kerosene for lamps was replaced by a mixture of cottonseed oil, peanut oail and melted lard (bet that smelled really nice) Other means of producing light included burning knots from pine branches and stalks of candlewick plants that had been soaked in grease or tallow, and "fairy lights" which were make shift lamps makde by floating sweet burning balls of gum in saucers of melted lard. (thank goodness for lard hey?)
After the war began machine made buttons were no longer available in the South. So allot of women took to recycling their buttons from old garments. They often made buttons by hand from wood, bone, horn, and the pits of fruit, which they would recover with fabric, and then take the buttons off when they went to wash the garment. Bark, pasteboard, balls of cloth stuffed with fabric scraps, pieces of dried gourd covered with cloth were also used.
Thread also became scarce, and women went to making their own thread again. Such thread was adequate for hand sewing, but not good in use with a sewing machine, since it was usually too coarse. At the time of the Civil War, one in six women owned a sewing machine. Singer was the first company to actually come up with a payment plan to get more of their sewing machines out there. So, the Southern women who owned these machines were often unable to use them because of the coarse hand made thread.
Oh no doubt!! They had to come up with some crazy stuff. Here's a little more:
By the middle of the war coffee was not to be found in the South. So they experimented with a variety of subsitutes, none of which really fit the bill. Chicory, acorns, beans, beets, bran, corn, cornmeal, cotton seeds, dandelion root, okra seeds, peanuts, peas, sugarcane seeds, and wheat berries were variously parched, dried, browned or roasted to make ersatz coffee. Other versions used tubers like carrots or yams, which were cut into small pieces, dried, toasted and ground up.
Wine, champange, and distilled spirits were generally imported items, and the Federal blockade had a direct impact on their dirstibution in the South. Simpler domestic beverages like apple cider and beer had always been popular among people in lower classes and because of the shortages, the afluent had to make due with them as well. A popular substitute for such finery when it became unavailable was to mix one part cory syrup and/ or molasses with three parts water and then ferment it in a barrel. (Don't know about you, but I would have done without!)
I found this interesting. Shortages were in abundance in Texas too.
Here are some excerpts:
The blockade of southern ports caused tremendous shortages, especially of coffee, salt, medicine, clothing and shoes. Since there was no coffee, many items were roasted as substitutes - barley, corn, okra, peanuts, acorns. Salt was so scarce some Texans dug up the floors of their smokehouse and leeched the dirt to recover the salt drippings. Thorns were used in sewing in place of pins. Homespun cloth again became fashionable. Willow -bark extract mixed with red pepper became a substitute for quinine.
The women also took goods to the Houston market. Friederika Klein hauled farm produce to Houston over the frequently muddy trails. Selling her potatoes, vegetables or other produce, she purchased sugar, flour, and whatever groceries she could. One time she made the thirty-mile trip to Houston to sell watermelons. She sold a load of watermelons for $200 Confederate money and bought a bag of flour for $200. Though she came to town with a heavy load, her wagon was much lighter on the return journey.
Wilhelmina Bahr had immigrated to Texas with her parents in 1847, but her parents died when she was only fifteen, leaving her with five younger brothers to raise as the Civil War loomed over the horizon. On February 13, 1861, Wilhelmina married Jacob Zahn. However, in the summer of 1862 Jacob was drafted into the Confederate Army, and in September 1862 Wilhelmina's older brother Carl had died from battle wounds. Wilhelmina was again left with all the responsibilities of farm and family. The family was so poor that each child had only one set of clothes. On wash day the children either stayed in bed, hid in the barn, or played naked underneath the house.
The war called for courage, fortitude, and determination among the women at home as much as it did among the men on the battlefields. As Wilhelmina Bahr often told her family, "With perseverance and the help of the Almighty we shall overcome and succeed." Some, however, died from their own battles as did men on the battlefield. While Henry Kaiser survived his Civil War military service, his wife and children died of a fever. With every available man called to the army, the women found it increasingly difficult to run the farm and raise food for their own families. On December 15, 1863, Texas approved a law to provide relief to the families of soldiers and indigent persons. Apparently the Commissioner of Galveston County failed to appropriate money for the poor, and a large number of people from surrounding areas migrated to Harris County for help, increasing the poor in Harris County. The "Indigents and Soldiers' Families List for Harris County" in 1864, included several German names from the northwest part of the county, including the mother or wife of the following:
John Bode
Gottlieb Bode
E. Ehrhardt
Michael Fritz
Carl Johlke
William Lem
G. Werner
Carl Bahr
J. Bloecher
F. Froehlich
Henry Jurgen
Henry Keyser
Henry Theiss
Daniel Werner
Even when the war was over, hardships continued. Many of the defeated soldiers had to make the long walk from western battlefields through desolate and war-torn countryside to their families. Johann Kies (1837-1906) was 25 when he enlisted in Co. G, 10th Texas Infantry in Brenham on October 25, 1861. He served as a private throughout the war in the regiment's many engagements, including Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Atlanta campaign as Sherman marched through Georgia, and the Carolina Campaign. After the regiment surrendered near Durham, North Carolina on April 28, 1865, Johann walked home to Texas. He and a companion were so hungry when they passed Jacob and Anna Strack's place, they killed one of Anna Strack's cows for food. Anna caught Johann and made him work to pay for the cow. Anna's husband Jacob died September 30, 1866, and the next year she married Johann Kies!
__________________ Thea
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And what's even more interesting is the fact that Wisconsin set up a similar fund to suppliment the wives and children of these men. It was something like $3.00 per month for each child, or something like that. But the problem was collecting it. Wisconsin didn't have an actual fund set up for this, it was really just a promise to get the men to sign up for service. And if the men died, the likely hood was that widow was never going to see one red cent of cash, since then his name was taken off the list.
Also note worthy is what the article mentioned about the long walk home. We take for granit today that if the war ends they come home on planes, and ships, and cars, but back then, the war ended, most of these guys had no money, and the only way home was to walk and hitch hike their way back. I had read somewhere, can't remember where, that Robert E. Lee made it manditory that the surrender agreement included that the cavalry men were allowed to take thier horses home, because even Lee knew that things were rough, and his logic was that if they took their horses home they could use them in the fields on the farms to get their lives back in order and food back on their family's plates.
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) Other means of producing light included burning knots from pine branches and stalks of candlewick plants that had been soaked in grease or tallow, and "fairy lights" which were make shift lamps makde by floating sweet burning balls of gum in saucers of melted lard. (thank goodness for lard hey?) 
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