posted on May, 9 2013 @ 09:57 PM
Reading Civil War letters and personal accounts, it seemed this was something that the Confederate soldiers ate often. It seems to have been their
primary source of nutrition for much of the war, considering they were undersupplied, unlike the Union forces which rarely if ever went hungry. I have
even read accounts of the soldiers having to soak these biscuits in coffee, which both softened them, and caused the weevils to float to the top. They
would sometimes make stew out of them, because attempting to eat them was so very difficult.
Here is a joke I remember reading in a Civil War related book some time ago: A sergeant goes up to some soldiers and said "Boys, I was eating
hardtack the other day, and I bit into something soft. What do you think it was?" And they gave some wrong answers, then the sergeant says, "No, by
God, it was a tenpenny nail." So there is a joke for you guys from the 1860's, lol.