Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison

by Augustus C. Hamlin

XVI.

In the alimentation of armies bread is the basal element. If it be poor, the whole system of the commissariat is deranged. History shows that it is the most important item in the feeding of soldiers, and that many a campaign, since the disaster to the army of Belisarius at Methon, has been lost in consequence of the quality of its munition bread.

France allows to her soldiers 26 ounces of bread, England 24, Belgium 28, Sardinia 26, Spain 23, Prussia 32, Austria 32, Turkey 33, United States 22, Rebel Prisons 4 to 12 ounces!

The quantity of corn meal allowed to the rebel soldiers by the rebel government was about one and one-third pounds daily: this would give about 28 ounces of bread, allowing 30 per cent. of water, which is the rule among bakers; at least it is the average quantity established by the civil tax commission of Paris. Besides the corn meal they had six ounces of bacon, and peas, and rice. This ration was sufficient to preserve life, as it has been shown by the condition of the rebel armies; the bread alone contained 4900 grains of carbon, and 210 grains of nitrogen, without the aid of bacon or the peas. The bread alone has an excess of 1600 grains of carbon, and a deficiency only of about 100 grains of nitrogen, which was readily supplied by the bacon and other articles. Corn bread is one of the chief articles of diet in the Southern States, and it is likewise used extensively in the South of Europe. It makes heavy bread unless carefully prepared and mixed with flour, and when mixed with the cob it often produces a laxative effect, the degree of which depends greatly upon the quantity the meal contains. When properly prepared with milk and the usual ingredients, it becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of diet, but carelessly handled, it is disagreeable to the palate and difficult to digest.

The bread furnished to the prisoners was simply mixed with salt and the dirty water from the brook, or the foul spring in the rear of the bakery, and then dried in the heat of the oven. That bad effects arose from such a quality of bread cannot be doubted; the injurious influences of impure water in panification have been pointed out by Boussingault, in a paper presented to the French Academy in 1857.

It is the common saying in the Southern States, where the use of wheaten bread is comparatively rare, that a bushel of corn contains more nutriment than a bushel of wheat. Yet the southern wheat is superior to the northern varieties, and is richer in the azotized, glutinous principles so essential to the formation of blood and muscle. Vermicelli and macaroni can be made only from the best southern wheat.

Of the varieties of Indian corn in America, the yellow flinty corn is reckoned the sweetest and most nutritive; the white corn of the South makes the fairest, but considerably the weakest flour. We do not find special fault with the coarsely ground meal, provided the cob is not included, for Mayer has pointed out, in discarding the commercial bran we throw away fourteen times as much phosphoric acid as there is in superfine flour. In this bran are contained most of the layers of gluten, in which are lodged the phosphates and the companion nitrogenous compounds—the sources of living tissues. The nutritious Graham bread is an example; also the pumpernickel of Westphalia, the black bread of Russia, the coarse oatmeal of Scotland, contain all the gluten, all the phosphates and nitrogenous compounds, as well as the starch of the grains. Such was the bread that Celsus considered as equal to flesh in its capacity of nourishing.

XVII.

Fresh meat was rarely furnished to the prison, according to the reports and statements of witnesses, and we should doubt that it was furnished at all, if it were not for the number of sections of the horns of cattle which are strewn about the enclosure, and which the prisoners had used for drinking dishes; still, many of these horns may have been taken from the cattle killed for the guards.