"Most grocery stores were really general stores. They sold groceries, meats, wines, liquor and hardware. Fresh geese and hares hung from barrels in the dorrway. Prices were a wartime outrage. Firkin butter was 30 cents a pound, coffee was hard to get at 21 cents, salt cost 50 cents a bushel, corsets cost $1.50 (extra strong ones $1.75). Hoop skirts wholesaled for $1 apiece and figured prints retailed for 15 cents a yard.
The anguish of housewives was met by the complacent shrugs of the merchants, who denied that outrageous profiteering was ruining the American dollar. They now had plenty of merchandise, the bins, barrels and jars were filled to brimming with flour, crushed meal, brown sugar, green and black tea, spices, sauces, jellies, starch and yeast, tobacco, cigars and snuff, oil of coal, sperm and ethereal, kerosene lamps, marble table tops and foot warmers. The favorite whiskeys were Baker 1851, Overholtz 1855, Ziegler 1855 and Finale 1853. Holland gin was sold loose from barrels. The highest-priced meats were ham, at 28 cents a pound, and turkey at 30. A barrel of Boston crackers, enough to last a season, cost $6.50."
Source: The Day Lincoln Was Shot, by Jim Bishop, chapter 7 a.m., page 10.