From
the Rear Ranks:
Greetings
Members!
I
hope everyone enjoyed last month’s presentation by Chris Densmore. Personally I enjoyed learning about the
Quakers and Emancipation as well as hearing about local communities in our
area. This month we are lucky to have
Charlie Zahm back for the third time at our roundtable. We are fortunate to have such a talented
singer and musician perform for us again. I hope to see you all this coming week. For this month I have found an interesting
passage in the New York times regarding General Hooker’s introduction of more
fresh break to the army as opposed to hard tack, perhaps a minor point unless
you have ever had the unfortunate experience of having to live on hard tack
alone…
Respectively,
Chip
Crowe
President,
Brandywine
Valley Civil War Round Table
FRESH BREAD vs.
"HARD TACK."
We are glad to hear of the success of the system inaugurated by
Gen. HOOKER for supplying his army regularly with fresh bread. If we may judge
of the style of ovens used by the pictures of them given in the illustrated
papers they are simple and well contrived, and ought to turn out a good loaf or
biscuit. There are professional bakers enough in every brigade of the army to
work the matter, as well as the dough, properly. As each soldier is entitled to
a pound loaf every other day, we suppose between sixty and seventy thousand
loaves will be consumed per diem by the infantry, artillery and horse-marines
under command of Gen. JOE HOOKER.
DE QUINCEY
says that one can form some conception of the vast mass of human beings who
dwell in London by observing the prodigious droves of cattle that march into it
daily, never to march out again, but to be devoured by the Cockneys; and on the
same principle, some conception can be formed of the magnitude of Gen. HOOKER's
army by pondering upon the prodigious pyramid of bread (not to speak of cattle)
that it makes away with daily. Sixty thousand pound loaves, if put together
endwise, would stretch from the Battery to Seventieth-street; if piled on top
of each other, would reach -- not quite to the Dog-Star; if they were used for
a breastwork, with a hungry army to defend them, all the rebels in the South, with
JEFF. DAVIS at their head, could not capture it.
We hope that as Gen. HOOKER has introduced the fresh bread ration
into his army, he will look around occasionally to see that the bakers furnish
a good, light, digestible article. There is nothing worse for the stomach and
pluck of the troops than damp, heavy, half-cooked bread. A single meal of it,
on the eve of a battle, would almost certainly insure defeat. We are no special
admirers of the bran-bread school of philosophers; but in favor of bran-bread
itself, as an article of diet, there are excellent arguments, which would have
more than ordinary force in the army. Everybody knows that there are some quite
valuable elements of the flour lost in the super-refining process; and many a
dyspeptic can testify to the value of the invention of Rev. Mr. GRAHAM. Corn
bread or "dodgers," also, would form an excellent article for the
army -- cheap, nutritious and wholesome. All the Western troops would far
prefer it to the flour bread, and their preference would be justified by
chemistry, physiology and experience. The rebel soldiers, it is true, live on
this article to a great extent; but we do not see that that furnishes any
argument why our gallant boys should live on an article which is in every way
its inferior. Corn bread and bacon; corn bread and coffee! They're dishes fit
for a sovereign, or an army of sovereigns, such as Gen. JOE HOOKER commands.
(Source
New York Times Article Published March 4,1863)
