History Weaponizing Food

[Fairfield]

I've just read a long and interesting article that sent me into further research; it included a discussion of the "war on food" by both sides.

Water was poisoned by both armies--not only with poison but with the carcasses of animals and even dead soldiers. Union troops followed a "scorched earth" policy of destruction of farms & agricultural fields. Both sides were victims of the failure of transportation of foods--for the Union it was the logistical problem of getting food to its troops and for the Confederacy there was the problem of getting food to market (apparently much simply rotted in warehouses). Then there were the Salt Wars: mainly the Union attempts to destroy the Confederate sources. Lastly there was an unproven charge by the Confederates that the Union army had introduced the Harlequin Cabbage Bug to damage crops (unproven because of the unlikeliness of soldiers traveling with a supply of bugs and because this animal was common in Mexico--and may have slipped in with smuggled food).

This surprised me: I hadn't realized that biological warfare went back so far! With all the other problems, the addition of warfare-by-food was (IMO) unfair.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Although the following isn't food related, it is an example of biological warfare.
Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn of Kentucky, a close friend of President Jefferson Davis, was considered an expert in the treatment of yellow fever although he did not understand at the time that the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes. He became the Confederacy's unofficial head of biological warfare for their secret service when he hatched a plot to infect Northern civilians with yellow fever by sending trunks of clothes stained with "black vomit" and other excretions of yellow fever victims he had collected in Bermuda, to various cities in the North to be distributed as charitable donations to the poor. Blackburn who operated out of Canada, hired as his transporter of the trunks, Godfrey Hyams of Arkansas who had fled to Canada to evade conscription but wanted to still do his part for the Confederacy. Blackburn promised Hyams $100,000 to deliver the trunks to selected cities in the North and Union controlled cities in the South. Hyams ended up delivering yellow fever infected trunks of clothing to about a half dozen cities including New York City and Washington D.C. before he decided that Blackburn was trying to pimp him on payment for his work so he went to the Federal Attorney in Detroit and snitched on Blackburn's operation. This resulted in a manhunt for the doctor who now was called "Dr. Black Vomit", which ended the Confederacy's attempt at biological warfare in the North.
Blackburn remained in Canada after the war ended and did not return to the U. S. until 1868, to help combat yellow fever outbreaks over the next 10 years in various locations in the South. He was hailed a hero by Southerners and elected governor of Kentucky in 1879.

 

[USS ALASKA]

The Wicked Dr. Blackburn | Medical Care

A question in another thread on the likelihood of the Lincoln administration choosing to use chemical weapons had they been available, reminding me of this old blog post I did three years ago, about an actual attempt at biological warfare -- including as a means of assassination -- during the...

civilwartalk.com

Yellow Fever Plot to Kill Lincoln | Famous People of the Late Unpleasantness

In the summer of 1864, Dr. Luke P. Blackburn, a Kentucky-born physician turned Confederate agent, allegedly instituted a bioterrorism plot against United States cities and President Abraham Lincoln. Blackburn’s goal was to “release” Yellow Fever through the distribution of infected clothing...

civilwartalk.com

Unfortunately, NBC warfare has been going on for a long time.

Not so cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[Fairfield]

to be distributed as charitable donations to the poor

That's pretty cold. Civilians really took the brunt of a lot of the war. In the article on ACW and food, it was mentioned that retreating Confederate troops at New Orleans drove horses & mules into the water--and then shot them. The idea was to contaminate that water supply. How cold: those affected by the tainted water would include the civilian population as well! What a terrible time to be a civilian.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Proposals for Chemical Weapons during the American Civil War | Small Arms & Ammunition

http://militarymedicine.amsus.org/doi/full/10.7205/MILMED.173.5.499

civilwartalk.com

USS ALASKA

 

[donna]

Interesting. Had heard of them poisoning water. Also that they tore up crops and destroyed fields. During war, at any time I guess all kinds of tactics were used.

 

[Zack]

Didn't this happen at Vicksburg?

 

[Locke]

The earliest I know of biologic warfare was with Vlad Dracul. Yeah the vampire guy. After he escaped his stint as a hostage to the Islamic hoards, he ran back to Transylvania where he would take plague victims and have them march and spread disease within the invading Islamic armies. These armies so feared the plague that they would desert and run back to the Empire.
Other examples of biologic warfare were with European armies who would toss semi rotten and diseased corpses, animal and human, into castles via catapults to taint water and food supplies and weaken those trapped inside.
Our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are and just as tenacious. They just didn't have our knowledge. I've read other accounts like these in just about every war. While they didn't know how disease worked, they understood it's application.

 

[Fairfield]

The earliest I know of biologic warfare was with Vlad Dracul. Yeah the vampire guy. After he escaped his stint as a hostage to the Islamic hoards, he ran back to Transylvania where he would take plague victims and have them march and spread disease within the invading Islamic armies. These armies so feared the plague that they would desert and run back to the Empire.
Other examples of biologic warfare were with European armies who would toss semi rotten and diseased corpses, animal and human, into castles via catapults to taint water and food supplies and weaken those trapped inside.
Our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are and just as tenacious. They just didn't have our knowledge. I've read other accounts like these in just about every war. While they didn't know how disease worked, they understood it's application.

And some people say that the "war on civilians" is recent.

 

[Jaywalker]

The poisoning is not a big surprise to me. Field Sanitation for the military of either side were afterthoughts. Privies were usually haphazardly constructed upstream, riverbanks would swell in the rain, and lots of tents would end up washing e-coli bacteria rich water into the tents of the solders sleeping on the ground in their fart sacks. You washed your canteen, and utensils in the same river. You would fetch your water and fill your canteen from the same stream. If you boiled your water for breakfast (same water). The same boiling water would be used to wash clothing. Most soldiers had one uniform, and some of those uniforms were appropriated from those who died. Lice was common, so to get temporary relief of lice, you would boil water and cook the critters out of your uniform, and then bathe in the river while your uniform dried.

One of the reasons you never wanted to get injured on the battlefield was that doctors who were skilled at removing bullets, were not skilled at washing their hands. If you were shot a field surgeon would locate the bullet with a metal probe with a ceramic tip so that when the tip hit the lead, it would mark the ceramic tip. Then he would either use a big pair of wiped down tweezers to extract a bullet, or a finger would fish it out. The process would be repeated again after wiping the blood off the instruments and fingers with a damp rag. Usually, damp from the same stream of water... and on to the next patient. There are more soldiers who died in the civil war from diseases and infections, than died from actual combat.

Field sanitation, and sanitary medical prep/practices were not really developed until WWI. Things like sleeping head to toe in close quarters came about from the Spanish Flu pandemic. Head to toe sleeping was about the distance of 6 feet. (Which, is still practiced to this day in all branchs of the service).