PATRON – The food menu was very plain in the South during the Civil War
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This was an interesting article. My great grandmother talked about how they grew okra to eat, but they ground the seed and made “coffee” out of it. Summer meat a huge selection of blackberries and apples and corn, but winter was mostly squirrel and ground corn. I suppose where you lived depended on what you ate.
They ground chicory for coffee too. An old lady in the Ozarks here, told me about 20 years ago, in her childhood, “We got our coffee from the creek bank. It took a minute, but I figured she was talking about chicory that grows wild here.
Yes, in south Alabama they did do chicory, but my family was from an area just south of Chattanooga which was heavily preyed upon by both sides in search of food.
My mother told me of using chicory for coffee. She didn’t like it.
I’ve tried it and don’t care for it either. Mixing it with real coffee does stretch it though
Very interesting. My family had a farm in Mississippi during the War. Three of the men went off to the War. Two of them came home. The women grew food, and the whole family suffered hardships.
According to historian Walter L. Fleming, the Confederate governments urged farmers not to grow cotton but to grow food crops only to feed both the civilians and, especially, the army. The Union seized all cotton shipments and cotton in storage as contraband. Cotton was also seized by federal agents in the first year after the war. As far as food production, also according to Fleming, many civilians in Alabama, especially the north, were close to starvation in the last year of the war and the year following.
SB Wright interesting read.
Very interesting
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Michelle Stauffer
Interesting
As a food historian I always find these articles interesting, but we should remember that different areas had different circumstances. While those in one location suffered mightily, others less so. As a whole though it was a time of want and make-do.