- Joined
- Jul 23, 2017
- Location
- Southwest Missouri
General Hobson/General Morgan
We have all heard the story of the "chaff" between the soldiers of the Western and Eastern armies, when the Western man, mindful of the hard bread and salt pork he had consumed as his daily rations for weeks and months without variation, asked the soldier of the Eastern army if the report was true that McClellan issued champagne and oysters to the Army of the Potomac. Without answering this disputed question, I am in position to state, without fear of contradiction, that fried chicken and black-berry pie were issued to General Hobson's three thousand cavalry every hour of the day for the entire distance of our march across the States of Indiana and Ohio, and that after our two days' rations, with which we had started from Somerset, Kentucky, had been exhausted, we lived entirely upon the rations issued to to by the patriotic citizens, at we marched along. All the soldier had to do was to fill his stomach and his haversack—the enthusiastic citizens did the rest!
One of my regiment, a most excellent soldier, named George Lloyd, tells that, having been surfeited with fried chicken and blackberry pie—having it for breakfast, dinner and supper, with half a dozen lunches of the same between each meal—he one day rode off the line of march, hoping to find a farm house where he could get some bacon and corn bread. He soon came to an inviting farm showing every sign of prosperity. He rode up to the house, and told the lady of the manor that he was hungry, and asked for food. With the greatest alacrity the lady brought him—what do you think?—fried chicken and blackberry pie! "Good Lord, madam;" said Lloyd, " won't you please give to some bacon and corn bread; the pin feathers are beginning to grow on me, I have eaten to much fried chicken?"
It would seem that the telegraph had announced our coming in Morgan’s rear, and at this announcement every man, woman and child in Indiana and Ohio began to fry chickens for as (though I desire to say here that we did not belong to the colored troops, and there was not a preacher in the whole command) as the best thing they had to offer us. At first this article of diet was acceptable, bat six hundred miles of fried chicken was more than we could stand. We begged the good people to telegraph ahead to stop this awful slaughter of chickens for our benefit, and provide some hard tack and salt pork, or they would kill at with their well-meant kindness.
It was under the conditions above described that we bad the moat convincing demonstration that veteran soldiers complain only when they have a superabundance of food. The same men had not a whisper of complaint to make, when, later in the war, seven nubbins of corn were issued to each of them, this issue being intended as a full meal for both the trooper and his horse. But when each trooper was fed with at least twenty meals a day for nearly three weeks, and each meal consisting of fried chicken, blackberry pie, straw-berry short cake, crabapple jelly, home-made bread fresh from the ovens in slices two inches thick, and spread with butter half an inch thick, all washed down with sweet milk or buttermilk, that it was that the veterans complained bitterly, crying out in distress for their sustaining food of hard tack and sow belly."
In our procession of three hundred miles between this double line of excited and patriotic citizens, these tens of thousands of citizens greeted as with one song, and only one, always the same, viz: " Rally Round the Flag Boys." This we heard by day and by night. When we halted to feed, we tried to catch forty winks of sleep while the horses were eating. The country people gathered around the sleeping men, and soothed their slumbers with "Rally Round the Flag, Boys." In view of the fact that none of as had more than two hours' sleep out of each twenty-four during the three weeks of the raid, it can readily be imagined that our patriotic serenaders could have easily been dispensed with, but their songs didn't bother us, as we were too deep in the "land of nod" for each trifles as a few hundred people singing at us, to be disturbed, and their singing served the useful purpose of keeping the weary guards awake.
It is related of General Hobson, truthfully no doubt, that being exhausted by the strain both mental and physical, induced by the responsibility of the command and the hardship of the march, with barely one hour's sleep out of each twenty-four for three weeks, he had leave of absence for a few days at the dose of the raid, and went to his home to recuperate. Arrived at home, one of the first things that greeted him was a household servant passing through the hall, singing, "Rally Round the Flag, Boys." The General's nerves were on edge, and he called out, "Stop that singing. I have heard a thousand miles of 'Rally Round the Flag,' and don't want any more of it for a few days, anyhow." Pretty soon the General was in a fitful sleep, from which he woke, saying the clock in his room was ticking "Rally Round the Flag." His wife stopped the clock, and the General rested quietly till evening, when he became a little delirious, and surprised his wife by telling her that sixty thousand katydids had followed him from Indiana and Ohio, and had swarmed into their yard, where they were all singing "Rally Round the Flag." He insisted that she go out in the yard and stop the katydids singing this song. He was only quieted by closing the doors and windows, shutting out the songs of the katydids. Although it has been nearly thirty.five years since the occurrences I speak of, I can hear them singing "Rally Round the Flag, Boys," yet, and I have never had a longing for fried chicken and blackberry pie from those days to this.
By Theodore Allen, Capt 7th Ohio Cavalry
Brevet Colonel, U.S. Volunteers, Wilson’s Cavalry Corps
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