Authentic One Ration - Yum or Not

[NH Civil War Gal]

From The National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Rations during the Civil War was no feast to write home about, at least in a positive manner. Generally, the Army issues two types of rations, marching rations, and camp rations. Marching rations generally consisted of about 12-14 ounces of hard tack, 12 ounces of salted meat and coffee, and maybe some sugar if they were lucky.

Camp rations were a little more substantial if one could say that. Hardtack could occasionally be substituted for hardtack, dried peas or beans were available, as well as rice, vinegar, and molasses. As the war raged on, both sides saw a quick and dramatic decline in both the quality and quantity of the food being supplied to them.

This meant that soldiers would frequently buy food from local farmers or sutlers, or even pillage the towns they marched through to attain better quality food. However, this lack of quality food led most soldiers to significant malnutrition, weakened immune systems, and extreme exhaustion.

 

[Dan Kohli]

Hardtack could occasionally be substituted for hardtack,

I think you may have made a typo, or autocorrect has struck again.

 

[Northern Light]

No wonder they were always picking fruit and were glad to get milk and bread from civilians, yikes!

 

[JOHN42768]

Was a bottle of Pepto Bismo included?

 

[James Brenner]

After a constant diet of hardtack, coffee, and bacon, it's no wonder that the patent medicine business too off after the war. Advertising all kinds of cures for stomach and indigestion problems, the veterans were a vulnerable market.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

For the average soldier how much worse were were army field rations than food at home?

Salted meat was really common before refrigeration.

Coffee was probably no worse than back home, and probably a lot of farm boys didn't have any at home.

Hardtack was a definite downgrade as back then daily fresh-baked bread was the norm.

The absence of vegetables would have been missed by the farm boys, but for poor city boys it might have been a rarity already.

I wonder if Irish-American soldiers went to great lengths to acquire potatoes to supplement rations since they were such staple of their usual diet?

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

I think you may have made a typo, or autocorrect has struck again.

Autocorrect is always striking on my iPad!

 

[Northern Light]

After a constant diet of hardtack, coffee, and bacon, it's no wonder that the patent medicine business too off after the war. Advertising all kinds of cures for stomach and indigestion problems, the veterans were a vulnerable market.

And as Garry Adelman tells. "constant imagines of evil" Oh wait ... the war?!!!

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Stomach cancer was the leading cause of death up till about the 1960s. It was because preservation was mainly salted and/or smoked. My aunt died of it in 1967, born in the late 1890s raised on salted/smoked food on the farm and one of her brothers (one of my uncles) had it too but survived it.