Ellis Spear

“ It then appeared that the men were selected not for courage or endurance, which could not be examined into, but for good grinders, and the wonder now is that men enough to put down the rebellion could have been found with teeth equal to the task of putting down the army hardtack. ”

“ Indeed, instances have been reported, though perhaps not in the official records, where the haversack of a soldier stopped the bullet of the enemy, and these perhaps are the only cases where it was found that the hardtack saved life. It is well known that the army mule would not eat it, and it is another proof of the high intelligence of that noble animal, without whose constant aid the rebellion never would have been put down. ”

“ He should have a monument appropriately placed amongst the unknown dead built of some quality of stone most nearly approximating hardtack in quality and shape, and surmounted by a marble block carved in imitation of a hunk of rusty salt pork.
In the formative period of enlistment, when we raised companies and enlisted men no greener than ourselves, I used to wonder at that requirement of the army regulations which related to the teeth of the recruit. ”

“ Did any comrade ever study this article in a geological way? It was a solid, there was no doubt about that. It was not a stratified rock. It was homogeneous and amorphous, excepting when wormy. It did not resemble anything in the vegetable, animal or mineral kingdom, excepting brick. It was inflexible, inelastic, infrangible, and indigestible, suited neither to the stomach nor bowels, and was adapted, except in shape, better as armor. ”

“ The Hoe Cake of Appomattox.
In considering the unity of that great brotherhood of men who composed the armies of the United States in the war for sustaining the government, and perpetuating the form of it made by the founders, we have been giving attention to every phase of the many common conditions which formed our common experience and bound us so firmly together, excepting those of a social and physical character. ”

“ It was sheer grinding and mastication, but the flavor developed can be understood only by one who has exercised the process, under like conditions, to wit: hunger and the hoe cake. It brought out the ethereal sweetness of the Indian corn, a flavor as of sunshine and mother earth, of [12] the neighborhood of oak and pine and sassafras and wild flowers, combined in the subtle chemistry of nature. I Fletcherized before Fletcher, and looked regretfully on the last fragment. I learned, too, that important lesson that the pleasure of eating depends more on the appetite than upon the diet. ”

“ It is true that our diet had not always the same monotony. At Wapping Heights, in what the men called the “Molasses Gap,” in July of 1863, we had marched away from these regular rations, and our diet was more varied and scanty. ”