vmicraig
Sergeant
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2018
- Location
- London, England
Pulled from the website, Kitchensisters: Andrew Smith, author of “Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War”. When there was not a battle going on, Confederate soldiers and Union soldiers met in the middle of fields and exchanged goods.” Smith says. The Confederates had access to tobacco and Southern foods; Northern soldiers had access to coffee.
Perhaps the North’s access to caffeine gave them a strategic advantage. At least that’s what one Union officer, Gen. Benjamin Butler, thought. He ordered his men to carry coffee in their canteens and planned attacks based on when his men would be most wired. His advice to other generals was: “If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold.” Desperate Confederate soldiers would invent makeshift coffees, roasting rye, rice, sweet potatoes or beets until they were dark, chocolatey and caramelized.The resulting brew contained no caffeine, but at least it was something warm and brown and consoling.
In 1859 Sharps Rifle Company began to manufacture a carbine with a hand-cranked grinder built into the butt stock – or handle – of the rifle. Union soldiers would fill the stock with beans, grind them up, dump them out and use the grounds to cook the coffee. As the morning began, one Civil War diarist described a scene of “little campfires rapidly increasing to hundreds in numbers that would shoot up along the hills and plains.” The encampment would buzz with the sound of thousands of grinders simultaneously crushing beans. Soon, tens of thousands of muckets [coffee pots] gurgled with fresh brew.
“Here’s an irony,” says Grinspan. “These soldiers who were fighting ostensibly to end slavery are fueled by this coffee from slave fields in Brazil.”
Perhaps the North’s access to caffeine gave them a strategic advantage. At least that’s what one Union officer, Gen. Benjamin Butler, thought. He ordered his men to carry coffee in their canteens and planned attacks based on when his men would be most wired. His advice to other generals was: “If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold.” Desperate Confederate soldiers would invent makeshift coffees, roasting rye, rice, sweet potatoes or beets until they were dark, chocolatey and caramelized.The resulting brew contained no caffeine, but at least it was something warm and brown and consoling.
In 1859 Sharps Rifle Company began to manufacture a carbine with a hand-cranked grinder built into the butt stock – or handle – of the rifle. Union soldiers would fill the stock with beans, grind them up, dump them out and use the grounds to cook the coffee. As the morning began, one Civil War diarist described a scene of “little campfires rapidly increasing to hundreds in numbers that would shoot up along the hills and plains.” The encampment would buzz with the sound of thousands of grinders simultaneously crushing beans. Soon, tens of thousands of muckets [coffee pots] gurgled with fresh brew.
“Here’s an irony,” says Grinspan. “These soldiers who were fighting ostensibly to end slavery are fueled by this coffee from slave fields in Brazil.”