Bell Wiley in LIFE OF BILLY YANK remarks that a surprising number of Union soldiers commented on the use of tobacco by Southern women.
Illinois Captain in Scottsboro, Alabama: "I went to the nearest house to camp today, to beg a little piece of tallow. . . . I sat down by a fire in company with three young women, all cleanly dressed, and powdered to death. Their ages were from 18 to 24. Each of them had a quid of tobacco in her cheek about the size of my stone inkstand, and if they didn't make the extract fly worse than I ever saw in any country grocery, shoot me. These women here have so disgusted me with the use of tobacco that I have determined to abandon it."
Private John Tallman in Vicksburg: "Thare are some nice looking girls, but they will chew tobaco, Sweet little things. Don't you think 'I' for instance would . . .
make a nice show rideing along in a carrage with a young lady, me spiting tobacco juce out of one side of the carrage and she out the other . . . wall aint that nice, oh, cow!"
In LIFE OF JOHNNY REB he wrote (the below is an extended quote):
Any cataloguing of kinds of diversion in the Confederate Army would be incomplete without a mention of tobacco. It is doubtful if any single item except food, water, and letters from home was so highly cherished by Johnny Reb as "the delightful weed." References to its scarcity, to its availability, to cost, to its quality and to its soothing powers appear repeatedly in soldiers' correspondence and diaries.
"Nancy what do you do fur tobacco to chew?" inquired a Reb of his wife; "I have to pay two dollars a plug fur what I chew."
Another scribbled to his sister:
"Well Bet I herd you got three plugs of tobacco to go on I am glad to here that old Milan [his home county in Texas] can afford it. last Friday I got three plugs of No. one I can't sleep of nights Since for chewing $1.50 per plug and would not take twice the money for it . . . Tell Mass John that I am all right while my Tobacco lasts."
A third wrote:
"Tell Bettie not to be uneasy about my using tobacco. I shall not chew it, nor hurt myself smoking it. I am convinced that it has been of some benefit to me."
This was certainly a case of understatement. More enthusiastic was the Reb who observed "I . . . got my pipe and I woulddant take a dead negro for it," and another who boasted, "I am Sassy as a big house N*ggar got money and tobacco a plenty for the present."
A note of despair creeps into Sergeant Frank Moss's communication to his sister "Lizer" when he observes:
"Tobacco is only worth $2.50 cts per plug and I have taken my last chew this morning So you may guess I will have a hard tim as I dont use that kind of tobacco."
And a few excerpts from this article:
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1964&context=student_scholarship
"The Civil War also occurred at an important moment in the evolution of tobacco usage: the aristocratic obsession with snuff was fading, the relatively understudied cigar, pipe, and chewing tobacco reigned supreme, and the cigarette was only developing the dominance it would finalize in the twentieth century."
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