The hoe cake of Appomattox

by Ellis Spear

But the same genius which invented the hardtack must also have invented that other main element of the ration, rusty salt pork, an infernal compound of animal fat, with sodium chloride, in which the chloride predominated, a combination of the cheapest of minerals with the basest of animals, and rusted by time and heat of the climate.

I speak of coffee respectfully. It was not “Java and Mocha Mixed.” Do you remember how the men carried it on the march? The detachable lining of the haversack furnished the bag. The ground coffee and the brown sugar, well mixed, made a solid ball held in the bottom under a retaining knot tied in the bag itself. A well-battered tin can served as the pot, and in it the mixture was boiled until the last percentage of caffeine was extracted, and the liquid and solid parts were in equal and uniform mixture. Then came that miracle of simultaneous cooling and settling and diluting by a little cool water poured on the top. What a fountain of life we drank from that flowing bowl, soothing to tired muscles and sore feet.

It is true that our diet had not always the same monotony. At Wapping Heights, in what the men called the “Molasses Gap,” in July of 1863, we had marched away from these regular rations, and our diet was more varied and scanty. The purveyor for my mess who had charge of my led horse and the incidental purveying captured a lean old duck. A few fragments of beet leaves from a trampled garden, and a half handful of cracker dust from his inverted haversack, water, the fragments of duck, and no salt, the whole imperfectly boiled, was offered for our dinner.

It was several years before my stomach would accept duck again.

Later in the day we had a handful of blueberries. The next day, returning out of the gap, the brigade nearly went to pieces in an old blackberry field. Later in the day a lean, wayworn steer was sacrificed, speedily dissected, and passed around while still warm to be broiled in the smoke. As Dr. Johnson said of the beef in the Hebrides, it was “ill-kept, ill-killed, ill-dressed, ill-cooked, and ill-served.” Too tough for chewing, it could be cut small and swallowed. In the night, on picket, there was a shower, by advantage of which some of my men stole a hive of honey. I ate, in the rage of hunger, I think a couple of pounds, comb, grubs and all, and then an oppressive doubt struck me that perhaps beeswax was not digestible. But I slept well, though wet, after a day in which the fare, scanty but diversified, was blueberries, blackberries, tough beef, and honey, served in succession.

But I am rambling. The war ended at Appomattox, in a climax, both in a military and dietetic sense.

The climax of the diet consisted in the fact that, having run away from our wagons and the pork and hardtack, for two days we had nothing, which fact prepared me for an anticlimax.

Some relief came later at Appomattox after the surrender, and while we were waiting for some final details some of us were invited to dine with a family living there. To show that we had no hard feeling we accepted the invitation, and consolidated our rations. We furnished salt pork and coffee, and the family a chicken miraculously spared for the occasion. There were also hot biscuits. There was not enough of the consolidated provisions to go around in full helpings, but the buckles of our belts were in the last hole, and, being guests, we restrained our appetites. The hot biscuits left a good taste in our mouths. Later I had a further relief in the commissary line. On the 12th of April, 1865, we left the Appomattox House, on a not very hurried march back toward Petersburg. There was now no such occasion for haste as when we came up, no occasion except for lack of rations, and lack of rations discourages haste. Our horses were in the same gaunt condition, and showed no tendency to wild galloping. It fell to my lot that morning to ride ahead of the column with a single orderly, and about noon we came upon a solitary negro shanty in the edge of a wood. In the front (and only) door stood one of the emancipated.

Feeling sociably inclined at the sight of a human being unexpected on that road, I accosted her in a friendly way, but omitted the customary preliminary topic in beginning conversation with strangers. The weather was not on my mind, nor the surrender, nor the condition of the country in general, nor of the colored race in particular. I went directly to the most important matter in the world at that time, and from my point of view. Had she anything to eat? Neither the appearance of the house nor of the woman had any suggestion of Delmonico’s, but that did not deter me. I was not expecting terrapin stew or roast beef. Such things had passed out of the memory of my stomach, though scientific men tell us that the memory of the smells is the most acute and permanent of all the senses. I doubt if at that time I should have recognized the smell of roast beef had it been in the atmosphere. There was a distressing hesitation in the old woman’s manner, but finally she admitted that she was the possessor of a hoe cake. A hoe cake! The discovery of America was a less important event (to the orderly and myself), and the shout of “Land” no more exciting to the sailors of Columbus than the announcement of “hoe cake” to the followers of Grant on that occasion. The woman disappeared for a moment, and then produced the goods. It was almost within my grasp. I fear the immediate negotiations were precipitate on my part. She had a corner in the market. There was no standard of prices on hoe cake that we knew of, and doubtless the shrewd old mammy understood the situation and our needs. My memory is not clear as to the details of the negotiations. In my eagerness to secure the cake the details are obscured by the importance of the result. Whether the price was fixed by the woman, or whether I offered all the money I had, is not now clear to me. Probably it was the latter. At any rate, the price agreed upon was a quarter of a dollar, enough, I have since surmised, to buy, at that time, a whole bushel of corn. By favor of an overruling Providence, and against all probability, I had that quarter. It was the extent of my financial assets, and I was on the verge of liquidation. But what of that? The choice between starvation and bankruptcy is soon made. In fact it made itself. The quarter was, of course, of the shinplaster kind, sole currency in those days. It was depreciated in value, as we knew to our sorrow, and hoe cake had appreciated. But I paid over that quarter, the most important property I ever possessed. I justify this statement to incredulous comrades. What might have happened in lack of it? It probably saved me from the crime of highway robbery, of burglary, or even murder, depending upon the obstinacy and resistance on the part of the newly emancipated, refusing to surrender the cake without compensation. But I acquired it honorably, by fair bargain, and at the seller’s price, although possibly, as it now occurs to me, she may have been overawed by the presence of superior armed force. But she did not look it, and I dismiss the unworthy surmise. She had a monopoly and exercised it with moderation, a shining though humble example, which, I hope, will make John D., J. P. Morgan, and the Armours ashamed of themselves when they read this history; and I am proud on my own part to record this transaction as a refutation of the groundless charges that soldiers, on both sides, during the Civil War, stole chickens and other edible things.

I fancy that I hear some inquisitive comrade or even a common civilian, after all this fuss which I have made about a hoe cake, inquiring how large it was. That question cannot be answered so easily. Dimensions are relative, and it will not be expected that I measured it accurately. If I inserted that detail it would, to an unfriendly critic (and there are such among the common civilians above mentioned and sometimes among old soldiers), it would, I say, give an air of improbability to the whole story. This I desire to avoid, for I have in mind the incredulous reception of another story, told by some comrade, in which he represents himself as lying, on a winter’s night, on a blood-soaked field of battle (apparently the sole survivor), and protecting himself from the cold, by dead bodies, one on each side and another at his head; and I do not propose, in this history, to give comrades or others occasion to quote to me the insinuating remark, “Tell that to the marines.”