Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

COOKING PANCAKES.

Towards the end of the war sutlers kept self-raising flour, which they sold in packages of a few pounds. This the men bought quite generally to make into fritters or pancakes. It would have pleased the celebrated four thousand dollar cook at the Parker House, in Boston, could he have seen the men cook these fritters. The mixing was a simple matter, as water was the only addition which the flour required, but the fun was in the turning. A little experience enabled a man to turn them without the aid of a knife, by first giving the fry-pan a little toss upward and forward. This threw the cake out and over, to be caught again the uncooked side down—all in a half-second. But the miscalculations and mishaps experienced in performing this piece of culinary detail were numerous and amusing, many a cake being dropped into the fire, or taken by a sudden puff of wind, just as it got edgewise in the air, and whisked into the dirt.

Then, the sutler’s pies! Who can forget them? “Moist and indigestible below, tough and indestructible above, with untold horrors within.” The most mysterious products that he kept, I have yet to see the soldier who can furnish a correct analysis of what they were made from. Fortunately for the dealer, it mattered very little as to that, for the soldiers were used to mystery in all its forms, and the pies went down by hundreds; price, twenty-five cents each. Not very high, it is true, compared with other edibles, but they were small and thin, though for the matter of thickness several times the amount of such stuffing could have added but little to the cost.

I have said that these army merchants were dry-goods dealers. The only articles which would come under this head, that I now remember of seeing, were army regulation hats, cavalry boots, flannels, socks, and suspenders. They were not allowed to keep liquors, and any one of them found guilty of this act straightway lost his permit to suttle for the troops, if nothing worse happened him.

I am of the opinion that the sutlers did not always receive the consideration that they deserved. Owing to the high prices which they asked the soldiers for their goods, the belief found ready currency that they were little better than extortioners; and I think that the name “sutler” to-day calls up in the minds of the old soldiers a man who would not enlist and shoulder his musket, but who was better satisfied to take his pack of goods and get his living out of the soldiers who were doing his fighting for him. But there is something to be said on the other side. In the first place, he filled a need recognized, long before the Rebellion, by Army Regulations. Such a personage was considered a convenience if not a necessity at military posts and in campaigns, and certain privileges were accorded him.

In the second place, no soldier was compelled to patronize him, and yet I question whether there was a man in the service any great length of time, within easy reach of one of these traders, who did not patronize him more or less. In the third place, when one carefully considers the expense of transporting his goods to the army, the wastage of the same from exposure to the weather, the cost of frequent removals, and the risk he carried of losing his stock of goods in case of a disaster to the army, added to the constant increase in the cost of the necessaries of life, of which the soldiers were not cognizant, I do not believe that sutlers as a class can be justly accused of overcharging. I have seen one of these merchants since the war, who seemed seized with the fullest appreciation of the worth of his own services to the country, and, with an innocent earnestness most refreshing, applied for membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, into which only men who have an honorable discharge from the government are admitted.

SERVING OUT RATIONS AT THE COOK’S SHANTY.