Review - "Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia" by Michael Hardy

[Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia by Michael C. Hardy (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, map, photos, illustrations, footnotes, appendix section, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,129/175. ISBN:978-1-61121-731-5. $27.95]

A clear takeaway message from reading Michael Hardy's Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is that describing how well, or how badly, Lee's army was fed during the war lacks easy generalization. Perhaps the best way to describe that army's food situation throughout the war might be feast and famine along a generally declining curve. Depending on a variety of circumstances, even when the army was static and its logistical tail secure, the availability of supplies (either through domestic sources or through the blockade) proved highly variable. This made stockpiling foodstuffs for the lean times very difficult to accumulate in enough tonnage to sustain consistent soldier rations, especially during the winter months.

The most senior government official directly involved in keeping the Army of Northern Virginia fed was Commissary-General Lucius B. Northrop, an administrative figure not presented favorably in the literature. Hardy himself does not lean heavily toward either end of the spectrum when it comes to weighing Colonel Northrop energy and competence level (or President Jefferson Davis's questionable decision to sustain his beleaguered friend at the post for nearly the entire war). Instead, when discussing Northrop, the author focuses mostly on recounting the Commissary-General's frequent disputes with Lee over food supplies and ration orders. You don't often read of Lee fighting with the administration's War Department (even to the point of disobeying official directives) as much as and for as long as he does against Northrop's ration cutting. Hardy does note that Northrop's February 1865 successor (Brigadier General Isaac St. John) made an immediate positive impact on supply, even at a time when the Confederacy as a whole was in dire straits, but his appointment came far too late in the war (just two months before Appomattox) to make comprehensive comparative analysis possible. Highlighting the efforts of lower-level commissary officers is a useful appendix that names a number of officers who served in the army as commissaries of subsistence and summarizes their duties. The standard view that the South produced at least adequate amounts of food for its armies for most of the war but a large percentage of it could not get to the army due to insufficient transportation (especially over the South's overworked and under-maintained rail system) and storage capacity is supported by Hardy's evidence assessments.

As Hardy explains, a number of alternate ways of procuring food, including through private purchases and activities such as foraging and fishing, were available to supplement meager official rations. Connecting soldiers at the front with family and local communities were boxes from home. A vital source of necessities and delicacies alike, these care packages boosted morale and helped soldiers feel appreciated by those for whom they were fighting. However, as sources indicate, sending those boxes was often very expensive and receiving them intact was far from assured, as even from the very beginning of the war shipment of non-essential goods was unreliable and freight thievery common. As one can imagine, neither situation improved as the war progressed and general privation hit all segments of Confederate society. As Hardy notes, official government impressment and tax-in-kind measures also limited the ability of families and aid society donators back home to set aside extra food to send to local soldiers fighting at the front.

In addition to those associated with the long periods of encampment between campaigns, the measures and challenges involved in feeding Lee's army while on the march and on the firing line are also addressed in the book. An added bonus of sorts for Lee's men was the opportunity active campaigning offered to feast upon foodstuffs left behind by or taken from their more lavishly supplied foes. The process involved with either seizing or purchasing food from enemy civilians, most relevant to the 1862 Maryland and 1863 Pennsylvania campaigns, is also accorded due attention.

For the most part, officers had it better than the rank and file when it came to food, and how the army's high command, including Lee himself, fared is also considered in the book. Just like a soldier marches on his stomach, food played a major part in keeping an over-stressed general officer's mind clear and focused, and Hardy notes at least two instances in which severe bowel complaints impaired Lee's performance in battle. Freeing generals and their staffs from the day to day concerns surrounding the procurement of food and its preparation were camp cooking servants. That position was frequently occupied by slaves, but paid individuals (black and white) also served as cooks. According to Hardy, their numbers and overall proportions in the ANV can only be guessed at, but it's clear there were never enough and the most skilled ones were priceless additions to officer messes.

Every Civil War reader knows that coffee was especially prized by soldiers of both sides, and this book offers an interesting revelation related to that treasured commodity. The literature often claims that supplies of real coffee, for soldiers and civilians alike, largely disappeared as the war progressed, replaced by variations of 'ersatz' coffee alternatives (all disappointing to some degree or another). Thus many readers will be surprised to find how many references there are in Hardy's book to ANV units being issued regular rations of real coffee, undoubtedly sourced through Wilmington and its direct rail connections with ANV warehouses and commissaries, well into the late-war period.

The main reasons but forth by Civil War scholars to explain Confederate collapse and defeat are numerous and commonly known to Civil War readers, and Hardy suggests that inadequate food supply ranked at or near the top. Due to a variety of factors, food supply levels in the southern armies clearly trended downward (regardless of temporary times of plenty), and it is not unreasonable to claim that deficiencies in the quantity and quality of foodstuffs occurred so regularly across the Confederacy as to seriously, perhaps even fatally, impair the morale and efficiency of its armies. Additionally, winter food shortages were arguably the chief driving factor behind the flood of desertions that plagued Confederate armies, including the ANV, during that most challenging time of year.

This slim volume was obviously not intended to be exhaustive in nature, but it would have been interesting to read Hardy's thoughts on some additional matters. Food-related problems in Lee's army, which is considered to have been the Confederacy's best supplied in comparison to the others, are often deemed structural in nature, and one might wish to have read Hardy's views in regard to where, if anywhere, he thought clear improvements controllable at the army administrative level were possible. More in-depth analysis of the depot system supplying the Virginia front, and its prospects for improvement, would also have been appreciated. Nevertheless, there is powerful substance to be found this fine study, which incorporates a large and diverse collection of pointed and informative food-related commentaries and perspectives left behind by the officers and men who served in the Confederacy's premier field army. Michael Hardy's Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is both an elegantly written narrative overview of the topic as well as an insightful observance of the grave consequences involved with failing to maintain the vital link between food and sustaining soldier health and morale.