What Did Civil War Soldiers Actually Eat?

Four hard crackers and a piece of salt pork the size of a deck of cards, to last three days. So what did Civil War soldiers actually eat, day after day, for four years? In this documentary we follow a young Union private from Ohio in Chattanooga in October 1863, when both armies in that valley were going hungry, and rebuild the whole menu: hardtack and its weevils (and the "B.C." joke), coffee at every halt, the sergeant who shared it out with his back turned, cornmeal coffee on the Confederate side, the salt beef soldiers called salt horse and once buried with honors, beef that marched behind the army until Wade Hampton's cavalry stole about 2,500 head of it, Sherman's bummers, "desecrated" vegetables, the bean hole, the sutler's rancid butter, boxes from home with whiskey hidden in the turkey, the Richmond bread riot, mule meat at Vicksburg, Sam Watkins's rat hunt, and the supply line the soldiers named after a cracker. How bad was it really? It depended enormously on where, when and which side. The Union ration was generous on paper and often thin in practice; many Confederate units went hungry for long stretches, and historians still debate how much of that was a lack of food and how much a lack of railroads, wagons and sound money. Some famous stories (like Grant's "no onions, no move" telegram) are told here as stories, because nobody has found the document. Built from soldiers' own letters, diaries and memoirs and the work of historians of the common soldier. #CivilWar #CivilWarHistory #AmericanHistory