Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
We bought the potatos, carried them home in our blanket, buried them in the bottom of our tent, to keep them from being stolen, and restricted ourselves to two per day until we had eaten them all. The Rebels did something more towards properly caring for the sick than at Andersonville.
In the Penitentiary for the District of Columbia, Washington city, one pound of beef, twelve ounces of Indian meal, ten ounces of wheat flour, half a gill of molasses; with two quarts of rye, four quarts of salt, four quarts of vinegar, and two and a half bushels of potatos to every hundred rations.
There was quite a little town at that place, but we walked right down the main street without meeting any one. Six miles from the river we saw an old negro woman roasting sweet potatos in the back yard of a house. We were very hungry, and thought we would risk something to get food. Hommat went around near her, and asked her for something to eat. She told him to go and ask the white folks.
The articles for sale were corn meal and bread, flour and wheat bread, meat, beaus, molasses, honey, sweet potatos, etc. I went down to the place, carefully inspected the stock, priced everything there, and studied the relative food value of each. I came back, reported my observations and conclusions to Andrews, and then staid at the tent while he went on a similar errand.
He would sit on the sand for hours imagining that he was at his family table, dispensing his frugal hospitalities to his wife and children. Making a motion, as if presenting a dish, he would say: "Janie, have another biscuit, do!" Or, "Eddie, son, won't you have another piece of this nice steak?" Or, "Maggie, have some more potatos," and so on, through a whole family of six, or more.
After a reluctant farewell to fish, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, green and preserved fruits, etc., he thinks that perhaps under extraordinary circumstances he might be able to merely sustain life for a limited period on a diet of bread and meat three times a day, washed down with creamless, unsweetened coffee, and varied occasionally with additions of potatos, onions, beans, etc.
None of you fellers were ever at our house, even when we had one of our common weekday dinners." First, of course, we'll lay the foundation like with a nice, juicy loin roast, and some mashed potatos. The way may mother does is to pare the potatos, and lay them in the pan along with the beef.
The Federal prisoners, as a general rule, had been reared upon wheat bread and Irish potatos; and the Indian corn so extensively used at the South, was almost unknown to them as an article of diet previous to their capture.
The consideration of the matter was continued during the day and night, and the next morning we determined upon investing our twenty-five cents in sweet potatos, as we could get nearly a half-bushel of them, which was "more fillin' at the price," to use the words of Dickens's Fat Boy, than anything else offered us.
The changeless monotony of the miserable saltless bread, or worse mush, for days, weeks and months, became unbearable. If those wretched mule teams had only once a month hauled in something different if they had come in loaded with sweet potatos, green corn or wheat flour, there would be thousands of men still living who now slumber beneath those melancholy pines.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking