Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 06.djvu/11



Vol. VI.

Rations in the Army of Northern Virginia were alternately superabundant and altogether wanting. The quality, quantity and frequency of them depended upon the amount of stores in the hands of the commissaries, the relative positions of the troops and the wagon trains, and the many accidents and mishaps of the campaign. During the latter years and months of the war, so uncertain was the issue as to time, quantity and composition, the men became in large measure independent of this seeming absolute necessity, and by some mysterious means, known only to purely patriotic soldiers, learned to fight without pay and find a subsistence in the field, the stream or the forest, and, on the bleak mountain side, a shelter.

Sometimes there was an abundant issue of bread and no meat; then meat in any quantity and no flour or meal. Sugar in abundance and no coffee to be had for "love or money," and then coffee plenteously without a grain of sugar. For months nothing but flour for bread and then nothing but meal, till all hands longed for a biscuit, or fresh meat until it was nauseating; and then salt-pork without intermission.

To be one day without anything to eat was common. Two days fasting, marching and fighting was not uncommon, and there were times when no rations were issued for three or four days. On one march, from Petersburg to Appomattox, no rations were issued to Cutshaw's battalion of artillery for one entire week, and the men subsisted on the corn intended for the battery horses, raw bacon