Who cooked the meals and where did the soldiers eat their meals in the civil war?

Answer 1

The answer varied from unit to unit, and as time went on. At the start of the war men volunteered in locally raised companies, usually of 100 men. Ten of these companies would then be collected together at the biggest town in the area and they would become a regiment. Since just about every company was raised in a single town or county, there tended to be several members of families in the same companies, and everybody was a neighbor back home. These companies were informally divided into "mess groups". These were groups of eight or ten men, who pooled the rations they were issued and cooked them together and ate together. They had a supply of pots and pans, plates and silverware to start with. If one of them was a good cook, he might be called on to do most of the cooking, probably extracting from the others an exchange of doing his other chores around camp. If none of them was a particularly good cook, they might take turns. Occasionally in some southern units a man had brought along a favorite "servant" - a slave - who might be a good cook, and would cook for the mess group. Some units went into duty at forts, or more or less permanent locations, and there might be mess facilities there. Men would be "detailed" to mess duty, and to many other things that needed doing. Armies in the field though, constantly moving during the warm months, had the mess groups. In the early days there was a tremendous amount of baggage, including a big, heavy wooden "mess chest" for each mess group, so in a single company of 100 men there would be ten or twelve of those, plus other paraphernalia, two or three wagon loads for every single company. What usually happened was that eventually things would work around until there was obviously about to be a big battle. Everything got loaded into the wagon and the wagon drove off, and they never saw it again. There went the pots, pans, plates, cups and silverware. Also the tents and personal baggage. By the second year of the war the average man carried his rifle and ammunition, a blanket roll, a haversack, and a canteen. In his haversack he might have a spoon and a cup, but he might not. In the Confederate army the rations, on paper good nourishing and plentiful, never amounted to what the men were supposed to get. When the army (of both sides) was geting ready to move, the men would be issued "three days rations" and told to cook them. Many also ate the entire skimpy amount right away, because you didn't know what the future held. They were supposed to carry the cooked food in their haversack - wrapped up if they had anything to wrap it in, or not. Southern troops, if issued flour, might make dough, and wrap the dough around the ramrod of their rifle, and use that to bake the dough over a fire. Any chunk of meat might be speared on his bayonet, and propped close to a fie to roast. "Hardtack" was what was frequently issued for rations. This was big, unsalted crackers, very dry, very hard, frequently with vermin and maggots in it. If you were hungry enough, you'd get past the squeamishness. If they had a tin cup, they might crumble some of these hardtack crackers, add whatever meat there might be, and water, and make "cush", a sort of stew. There is a published anecdote of the "joint stock frying pan company" about a mess group of Yankees, who pooled their money and bought a frying pan from a sutler. As time went by some sold their share in the frying pan to others. At certain times the value of a share of the frying pan went up, and before a battle it would plunge to near zero. Whoever carried the frying pan that day got to be the first to use it when they went into camp that evening. Sutlers were always present with the northern armies. These were traveling merchants, with a wagon load of items to sell to the soldiers, everyting from writing paper, candles, candy, tobacco, and good canned food. But the sutlers wares were expensive. Southern troops loved to capture a sutler's wagon. In 1862, Stomewall Jackson's Second Corps of Lee's Army captured a massive Yankee supply depot at Manassass Junction. The men talked and dreamed of that time for the rest of the war. Jackson allowed the men to eat all they could, and carry off all they could manage, before burning the rest. Some stuck entire hams on their bayonet and walked off. Others crammed haversacks full of canned peaches, or lobster. The guy who did the best carried nothing but jars of mustard, which he was able to trade later for any delicacy he fancied that someone else had. In 1861, the Rebel Army at Manassass had established a meat packing house, to slaughter animals to feed the army. When they went to fall back from that line, they threw open the warehouse to the people living in the area, and let them carry off all they could, then they burned the warehouse. In Virginia, after that, for the rest of the war, it was hand to mouth. The armies of both sides did a lor of "foraging". This was robbing every farm they could find of all foodstuffs, including barnyard fowl, milk cows, beef cattle, and whatever was in the smokehouse and corn crib. The armies in Tennessee ate better than those in the east. Cooking vesels and eating utensils were always a problem. A visitor to General Beauregard's headquarters late in the war remarked that there was exactly one spoon, and that they took turns with it.