Confederate Logistics in the East

Proverbially armies march on their stomachs but, as veteran Civil War re-enactor Michael Hardy noticed, historians may mention food shortages but rarely speak about how an army is fed, which inspired this book. He began working on Confederate food supply in the 1980s. Hardy often makes use of first person accounts drawn from more than 300 letters, diaries, and other primary sources, which often offer day-to-day accounts of the role of rations in the lives of the soldiers, particularly in the Army of Northern Virginia. He notes that almost every letter written home by soldiers throughout the war concerned food and lack of sufficient rations.

Hardy’s studies of the logistical issues affecting the supply of food to Confederate armies show us how these affected the daily lives of the common soldiers, their officers, and even the camp servants. He argues that Lee’s army was rarely well-rationed, the troops experiencing food shortages much of the time, save for period of the First Manassas Campaign and during the Gettysburg Campaign, the latter due to extensive foraging in Pennsylvania.

Hardy looks at the ways in which food reached the army. Chapters cover rations issued by the War Department, food sent from home to those at the front, purchases, often at outrageous prices, from sutlers, and food collected by foraging. He also looks at what senior officers were accustomed to eat and the supply of food to hospitals, where proper nutrition was vital to the care and recovery of the wounded. In addition, he discusses the effects of food supply on troop fitness, morale, and desertion, which soared in the final months of the war.

Food supply was affected by many factors, droughts, floods, growing seasons curtailed by operations, fungal diseases, deliberate destruction of crops and food stocks, the Union blockade, and more. As the war went on, the increasing shortage of wagons and draught animals and the deterioration of the railroad network meant that available food stocks often could not reach troops and civilians. The ineptitude of Lucius Northrop, Commissary-General of the Army, and close friend of Jefferson Davis, contributed to the problems in food supply. Thus, as the war went on, not only soldiers often went hungry, but also many civilians. Eventually, food shortages were common all across the Confederacy, sparking food riots by women in some towns and cities, and causing some soldiers to seize crops from farmers, causing resentment toward the army and the government.

Confederate officials urged farmers to grow more crops, which the government would pay for with promissory notes, but planters and farmers feared they would not be reimbursed.

One of the strengths of Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is the many anecdotes from the pens of common soldiers, who tell us how food occupied their thoughts, the numerous ways in which they prepared what food they had, and how it affected their lives. Hardy’s book gives the reader a good education in why Confederate troops often went hungry. A good read.

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Note: Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is also available in e-editions.

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