“Send More Butter”: Finding Meaning in Civil War Food

This study uses food to analyze questions about why Civil War-era soldiers, generals, and civilians behaved as they did. Why did Sherman order his soldiers to eat all they could of Georgia’s 1864 harvest, and destroy the rest? What did soldiers really mean when they wrote “I am eating?” Why did Lincoln’s administration — and some generals — undermine Union efforts by giving Confederates food for cotton? What were motives for Southern bread riots?

Using color photographs of Civil War reenactors as well as nineteenth-century sketches and photos, this display seeks to present a brief overview of the research into these and other questions about food in this era. It will feature six short panels, each with some illustration, to pose a question and its attendant argument.

Food has always been part of the Civil War story, primarily as a war materiel. This study lies at the intersection of wars, foodways, and cultural history, allowing us a new approach to reexamining familiar tales. This approach offers insight into emotional content, cultural and social symbolism, and power and personal relationships. For example, the language of food was one nineteenth-century men and women spoke fluently. Thus, when a soldier writes of getting plenty to eat but expresses longing for his mother’s pie, his loved ones understood he also said “I am well,” but also “I miss you.” Breaking bred together also helped form unit cohesion, crucial when going into the line of fire. Food preparation became a means by which African American contrabands and enlisted whites could move up in the social hierarchy of camps. And cooking allowed women like Harriet Tubman to gain access to front lines.

Foodways also offers insight into some large-scale events. Certainly, Stephanie McCurry is right when she posits that Southern women rioting for bread were incensed over the violation of the social contract. However, poor white women also protested their positions in a society where they were nominally superior, but still struggled to find food without the support of their conscripted husbands and sons. Using food both physically and symbolically, Union Major-General William T. Sherman ordered his army to “forage liberally,” giving his men sustenance while denying the same to Lee’s Army and civilians. However, by also destroying supplies, Sherman spoke on a primal level to his enemy: The dominant animal eats, the submissive one goes hungry.

This study reexamines certain aspects of the war by combining the already strong scholarships of Civil War, foodways, and American culture. Through this analysis, we further our understanding of this particular era, and by extension, of our nation, our regional and collective histories, and the social struggles that arose in its aftermath.