Soldiers Loved a Refreshing Cup of Coffee

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Soldiers Loved a Refreshing Cup of Coffee

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BY KIM A. O’CONNELL
8/25/2016 • CIVIL WAR TIMES MAGAZINE

Strong Enough to Float an Iron Wedge

Few things were as welcome to soldiers in camp and on the march as a fresh, hot cup of coffee

Somewhere amid the horror and bloodshed of Antietam, a small act of kindness was rendered that would be remembered decades later. The battle had begun before daylight, leaving harried soldiers no time for breakfast. By that afternoon, a 19-year-old commissary sergeant with Company E, 23rd Ohio Infantry, decided to see what he could to ease the suffering. Exposing himself to fire, he organized a mobile field kitchen, along with several volunteers, to serve warm food and coffee to the men. That enterprising young man was William McKinley, who became the 25th president of the United States. Today a monument at Antietam commemorates McKinley’s battlefield service and includes a panel depicting him handing a cup of coffee to another soldier. As much as it is a memorial to the late president, it can also be seen as a monument to coffee, which was held in tremendous esteem during the war. Coffee was, after all, one of the few items in a soldier’s food ration that was both reliable and highly coveted.

Between half-rotten meat and iron-tough bread, the Union food ration was often a disappointment. (The Southern apportionment was usually worse.) “Sore feet an’ damned short rations, that’s all,” a soldier laments in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage—a common complaint. Coffee, by contrast, tended to hold up well in a soldier’s pack and was appreciated whenever it could be consumed.

“Coffee was one of the most cherished items in the ration,” wrote Bell Irvin Wiley in his classic The Life of Billy Yank, published in 1952. “The effect on morale must have been considerable. And if it cannot be said that coffee helped Billy Yank win the war, it at least made his participation in the conflict more tolerable.”

Coffee’s power had been known around the world for centuries. It was prepared and drunk with reverence in the Middle East and Africa from the 15th century on. (The prophet Mohammed reportedly stated that, under the influence of coffee, he could “unhorse forty men and possess forty women.”) By the 17th century, the caffeinated beverage had spread throughout the western world, with the first coffeehouse in America opening in Boston in 1689.



This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of Civil War Times.
 
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