We Are Always Hungry

Macon, Richmond & Washington, D.C.

1862-1864

Hunger was the dominant note of military and civilian life in the South during the Civil War.1 Food shortages began early in the war, shortly after the men departed for military service. In addition to the farms and plantations being neglected, other factors later came into play, such as the blockade of Southern ports, disruption of railroad lines, and the Union occupation of food producing areas. Two daily menus from hotels in the South during the war reflect the shortages, especially when compared to a Northern menu from the same period.

Lanier House
Macon, 1862
Featuring the largest dining room in the state, the Lanier House in Macon, Georgia was opened in 1845 by Sterling Lanier, the grandfather of poet Sidney Lanier. Marking an early phase of the war, the menu shown below is dated February 26, 1862, about a year after the attack on Fort Sumter. The bill of fare includes local foods like ham hocks and greens, fried oysters, and peach pie. The menu has a wine list and railroad timetable on the back, and exhibits small burn holes caused by the ink that burned through the thin paper over time.

Macon was the location of an important military arsenal and served as the state capital during the last few months of the war. A gala dinner was held at the Lanier House for Confederate president Jefferson Davis on October 30, 1863. By then, the lack of adequate food supplies had been dragging on for years, as expressed by war-weary Julia Johnson Fisher of Camden County, Georgia, writing in her diary two months later, “We are always hungry—hungry the year round, but do not grow fat.”

Battle of Antietam, 1862

Willards’ Hotel
Washington, 1862
The bill of fare shown below reflects a typical table d'hote dinner at Willards’ Hotel in Washington, D.C. Featuring a much wider selection of foods and wines than was available in the South, this menu is dated September 4, 1862, the same day that General Robert E. Lee led a Confederate Army into Maryland for the first time, splashing across the Potomac River only twenty-five miles upstream from this hotel. The invasion sent a wave of panic throughout the North, culminating at the Battle of Antietam thirteen days later.

American Hotel
Richmond, 1864

The menu shown below comes from the American House on Main Street in Richmond. Dated March 13, 1864, the bill of fare includes ham and sallet, a boiled dish comprising ham and greens, using a local plant called poke sallet weed whose tender young leaves appeared in the early spring, the preferred time for preparing this dish. Named after the local custom of planting peas between rows of corn, "cornfield peas" could have been one of any number of legumes grown in Virginia, such as black-eyed peas, cowpeas, green-eye white peas, Bass peas, Shinney peas, and Tory peas.2 Some of the items not found on this menu like tea, coffee, and pastries made with sugar, were particularly scarce in the South by the end of the war.

The American Hotel was destroyed by fire, during the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865, only six days before General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Five weeks later on May 12, 1865, former Confederate president Jefferson Davis once again found himself eating dinner at the Lanier House in Macon, this time while being held there as a prisoner, two days after he was captured by Union cavalry.


Notes:
1. Basil Gildersleeve (1831-1924), soldier-professor at the University of Virginia

2. Charles Vancouver Piper, Agricultural Varieties of the Cowpea, 1912.