The year 2020 was a challenging time for research. I was trying to finish Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virgina. Most libraries were shut down. While I have several Francis Lord books, I did not have his volume on sutlers, and I really did not want to buy a copy. A library just forty-five minutes away had a copy, but I was not able to view it, as the library was closed for an unknown time. So I ordered the book. I had been warned that the information regarding sutlers catering to Confederate regiments was slim. That was very true. Lord spends eighty-nine pages on Federal sutlers and just three on Confederate sutlers. “Records of Confederate sutlers are extremely fragmentary,” Lord writes, and states “most Confederate units never had sutlers.” Lord then takes the next two pages to talk about Southern patent medicines.[1]
Lord does take
about two-thirds of a page to list twenty-six sutlers attached to Confederate
regiments, and even one gun boat. This is in comparison to over ten pages of
sutlers attached to Federal regiments.[2]
Confederate regulations stated that every military post could have one sutler, “appointed by the Secretary of War. . . and approved by the commanding officer.” Regiments not attached to a post were also allowed one sutler for every regiment, also appointed by the commanding officer, and subject to the approval of “the general or other officer in command.” Sutlers were not allowed to have “ardent spirits, or other intoxicating drinks,” let others operate their business, or lend on credit more than one-third of a soldier’s pay.[3]
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| Federal sutler outside of Petersburg in 1864. |
Is Lord’s assertion,
that most Confederate regiments never had sutlers, true? Maybe there is some
type of register for Confederate regiments comparable to that which Lord found
for Federal regiments, although he confessed that the Army of the Potomac and
the Army of the James have good records, while the Army of the Tennessee and
other western Federal regiments were not as well represented. To find mentions
of those merchants who catered to Confederate regiments, we have to search
their letters home.[4]
Sutlers first made their appearance in
soldiers’ letters, at least in the east, in the fall of 1861. A member of the 5th
Alabama Infantry noted that a brigade sutler was stationed nearby. The sutler
was “crowded with men eager to buy.” However, the sutler “Charges double price
for every thing he sells, yet is busy all the while.”[5]
As inflation and scarcity rose, so did the prices that sutlers charged. Captain
R.E. Parks, 12th Alabama, noted that as the men were paid, the sutler’s
wagons were being patronized. “Ginger cakes, porous
and poor, cost 25 cents each. Vegetables and fruits are out of reach of the
privates.”[6]
In December 1863, Parks noted that after their sutler brought oysters for
$20.00 a gallon, that he “couldn’t be a sutler. Their prices seem cruel and extortionate.”[7]
Soldiers could buy
a wide variety of items. A member of the 9th Alabama recorded buying
two chickens in November 1861; in July 1862, a member of the 15th
Georgia was purchasing fruit pies and loaves of bread; also in July 1862, a
soldier in the 53rd Georgia wrote of his regimental sutler having coffee,
sugar, butter, chickens, and cabbage; right before the battle of Fredericksburg
in December 1862, the regimental sutler of the 5th Alabama arrived,
and the men were able to get “some nice cakes & Candy. . . suag &
coffey…” That sutler returned to the regiment on January 2, 1863, and the
soldiers “hastened up to his wagons & bought
a number of sugar cakes & ginger cakes which all hands pitched into, &
I ate a good many before getting up. Our mess... invested $3 each in cakes
principally & some apples."[8]
While sutlers were forbidden to sell liquor, some did. A soldier in the
5th Alabama noted in mid-January 1864 that they now had two sutlers
in camp, “and one of them has gotten half the regiment drunk today.”[9]
The hospital steward of the 4th Virginia Infantry noted that the Provost
Marshall had confiscated one sutler’s post when a search yielded twenty gallons
of liquor hidden in sacks of rice and corn. The liquor was sent to the hospital
for their use.[10]
Ralph H. McKim, 2nd
Virginia Cavalry, wrote that while on the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1864, he
had to “rebuke the sutlers for selling their merchandise on the Lord’s Day.”[11]
One member of the 17th Virginia Infantry recalled after the war that the
regimental sutler once cleared $6,000 in one day.[12]
Some sutlers served as banks to soldiers. Ted Barclay, 4th Virginia
Infantry, wrote home that “Mr. Trenton, the sutler of the 27th [Virginia]
Reg.,” had lent him $20 in September 1862.[13]
Sutlers could also help transport boxes for soldiers – probably for a fee. A
member of the 26th Virginia noted in January 1863 that his
regimental sutler had brought his “old blank trunk” from Richmond to the
regiment’s camp.[14] Other
sutlers could be generous. Chaplain William E. Wiatt was able to get one sutler
to donate $2.00 “for the Fred[ericksburg] sufferers.”[15]
Where did sutlers get their wares that they sold to the soldiers?
Usually, they came from merchants in Richmond. Chas. Bayne & Co ran an advertisement
in August 1861, telling the public that they carried an assortment of cigars
and manufactured tobacco, with “Special attention paid to orders from Sutlers
and Merchants who are supplying the army.”[16]
G.B. Stacy advertised that he was selling “The Confederate Mattress” to those
soldiers opposed to sleeping on the hard floor.[17]
Lee and Durham were selling not only tobacco, but soap, sugar, tea, raisins, matches,
Mustard, paper, pencils, pens, and hair and tooth brushes.[18]
Spense and Garey were selling waterproof items, like coats, blankets, leggings,
haversacks and knapsacks.[19]
L.D. Brigg’s Bakery sold Crackers, cakes, Gingerbread, and Spicenuts.[20]
Johnson and White advertised that they were selling York River Oysters, in
cans, or by the firkin or barrel.[21]
Wagons were used to transport the wares close to the camps. At times, the sutlers would be set up close to their regiments. In November 1861, a correspondent for a Richmond newspaper noted that at Manassas, several “Board shanties roughly thrown together” were being used as sutler shops.[22]
This article primarily deals with sutlers connected to the Army of Northern Virginia. Was the experience the same in the Army of Tennessee?
[1] Lord,
Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 90.
[2] Lord,
Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 131.
[3] Confederate
Regulations (1862), 22-3.
[4] Lord,
Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 95.
[5] Hubbs,
Voices from Company D, 56.
[6] Parks,
“War Diary of Captain R. E. Park,” SHSP 26:9.
[7] Parks,
“Diary of Capt. R. E. Park,” SHSH 26:26.
[8] Carter,
Welcome the Hour of Conflict, 107; Ivy
W. Duggan Diary, UGA, 73; Ronald, ed. The
Stilwell Letters, 21, 22; Hubbs, Voices
from Company D, 123, 131.
[9] Hubbs,
Voices from Company D, 139.
[10] Roper,
Repairing the “March of Mars,” 419.
[11] McKin,
A Soldier’s Recollection, 237.
[12] Glasgow,
Northern Virginia’s Own, 111.
[13] Barclay,
Ted Barclay, Liberty Hall Volunteers, 107.
[14] Fleet,
Green Mount, 194.
[15] Wiatt,
Confederate Chaplain, 21.
[16] Richmond
Enquirer, August 20, 1861.
[17] Richmond
Dispatch, November 15, 1861.
[18] Richmond
Dispatch, November 26, 1861, January 11, 1862.
[19] Richmond
Dispatch, January 1, 1862.
[20] Richmond
Dispatch, January 10, 1862.
[21] Richmond
Dispatch, January 17, 1862.
[22] Richmond
Dispatch, November 1, 1861.
