These Television Companies and more, including spark light. The greatest town on earth is the place you call home. At spark light it is our home too. Right now, we are facing our greatest challenge. That is why spark light is working around the clock to keep you connected. We are doing your part so it is little easier. Spark light supports cspan2 as a public service. Welcome. One and all to tonights lecture. At work with key alcohol. My name is molly merce min. Virginia tech is sponsoring this event. The center regularly host talks like this and other activities, which includes sponsoring academic conferences, scholarships and grants, outreach programs, museums and Elementary School classrooms and more. Besides basically sharing wonderful civil war era history with as many different people as he possibly can. You can keep up with what is going on with the center on our website, which is civil war. Bt. Edu or you can go on facebook, youtube or twitter. On to tonights event, iris speaker is dr. Megan bever, who is an associate professor of history and the social Science Department at Missouri Southern state university. She has her phd from the university of alabama but i am a little more excited that she received her undergraduate at purdue university, which is where i went for my graduate work. I am excited to have that connection with her. Probably she focuses on 19th century u. S. History with an f insist on civil war era liquor and food studies. She is the coeditor of the book, the historian behind the history and her most recent work is the brandnew at war with king alcohol, debating drinking and masculinity in the civil war era, which is the subject of this evenings presentation. Dr. Bever will speak for around 30 to 35 minutes , give or take. Followed by a discussion with the audience, you wonderful people. You can all type in your questions at any time using the q a button on zoom. We may not be able to get to every single question but we certainly are going to try. We are going to wrap things up at the latest around it 15 eastern time. I think that is it for me. With that, i would just like to say thank you to dr. Bever that she is joining us tonight. With that, i will turn it over to dr. Bever. Thank you, molly, for that wonderful and generous introduction. I would like to thank the Virginia Center for civil war studies and dr. Paul quigley as well for the invitation to join you all this evening. I really appreciate the virtual welcome. I am so glad that so many of you have decided to join us this evening. If i can share my screen, i would like to begin tonight in the camp of the hundred 18th pennsylvania. Specifically, i would like to join them along the Potomac River in may 1863. This is just days after the union at the feet at chancellorsville. The event is somewhat unrelated. I just want to set the scene. The scene we will step into is a party or a shindig, of sorts, hosted by captain shar would. Captain sharwood had been a caterer because of his line of work. For this shindig, he had treated his guests or other officers to a generous supply of gin cocktail, punch, and ale. To go along with those beverages, the officers found enormous tubs of beef, boiled ham, Chicken Salad and ham sandwiches. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the men really enjoyed them shelves at sharwoods party. His tent became filled with a writhing mass of drunken men who would exchange some pledges of love and friendship. The next morning most of the officers lay asleep on the force , under the tables and on the ground surrounding sharwoods tent. Only one captain, who had remained sober at the party was awake enough to report for duty. Luckily, i suppose, the sober captain found the incident mostly amusing. The problem, which i can thank for giving me a book to write, is the drunken in the army was not always as funny as sharwoods party. Later that year in the same regiment, the 118th pennsylvania, a private shield was found outside the camp limits one october day. He was roaring drunk and disgracing the regiment with an unseemly language and conduct. His captain frames his was at a patients pretty although he was quiet and inoffensive when he was sober, he was eight devil incarnate when drunk. Unfortunate, for private shields, he was drunk most of the time. In this particular instance, after he was taken to the guardhouse, the very combative private shields charge captain donaldson with his musket. Donaldson, being sober, was able to wrestle the musket away from shields. He clubbed the private on the head. The blow killed private shields instantly. Captain donelson felt justified in his actions and he was not punished for the mishap. He still got branded as mn keller by men in regiment he had been nearby. Donelsons negative experience is only part of the problem. Shields ended up dead. It is by what most of us would consider an avoidable accident if he had not been so often drunk and violent. Neither the sharwood nor shield incidents are isolated. It was not that the 118th pennsylvania was uniquely liquored up. These types of occurrences both the henri and funny and the violent occurred throughout union and confederate armies. They did so, at least in part, but the official regulations regarding liquor left the armys unable to read the camps of the disruptive spirits. This is what i would like to talk about tonight in the limited amount of time that we have. How the army was at war with liquor and more than one sense. First, i would like to discuss how union and confederate armies went to war with liquor stocks and their medical and subsistence departments as much as possible. After flushing out the official uses for liquor, i want to turn to the ways that officers and soldiers brought in their usage be on those official rations, drinking and becoming intoxicated when it suited their own medicinal and recreational needs. Ultimately, i would like to discuss how the widespread use of liquor left officers, soldiers and civilians debating how much drinking was appropriate for men who were serving their countries. Let us begin by looking at alcohols official uses, medicinal uses in the civil war armies. In 2023, when we think of alcohol or liquor, we tend to focus on the numbing characteristics, the pain relieving, the cough relieving, even emotional relief that liquor provides. When the civil war began, the medical community did not describe liquor this way at all. In fact, the manual manacles medical manuals discuss it as a stimulator. The idea it could reinvigorate a body that had lost a lot of blood and restore Nervous Energy when men were suffering from shock. In the civil war, surgeons are instructed to prescribe liquor when the soldiers are sick or wounded in order to stimulate the body and help it recover. Every use of liquor is designed to give the body a jolt, if you will. In practice, what this looks like is both union and confederate armies publishing guidelines to use liquor to treat wounds and illness in their hospitals. And beyond this, the medical departments also use whiskey rations to try to prevent malaria. They makes quinine with whiskey. If you know anything about the 1860s, you may know that positions in that decade positions at the start of the civil war, do not understand that malaria is a mosquito borne illness. The u. S. Army does know that malaria occurred in swampy or lowlying areas and they also know that quinine can treat malaria. They also think it can prevent it. The problem with quinine is that it is incredibly bitter. If youve ever tasted tonic water, you know best to an extent. You have to cut the quinine was something to help get it down. Civil war soldiers cut their quinine with whiskey. Anytime the arbys are in camp near water, medical departments dole out whiskey and quinine rations if those supplies are available. Be on the medical departments, military regulations stated that whiskey or other types of liquor could also be used in cases of exposure. What this meant was that soldiers got whiskey rations when ever they were stuck in extreme elements. Typically water, snow or mock. If they are cold or damp, they get rations. Again, if supplies allows this hopefully prevents them from becoming ill. This is particularly common if soldiers are serving picket duty and bad weather. And then the final official use of whiskey rations is that they are using in cases of extreme fatigue. Officially, this means that soldiers can have rations anytime they are performing a fatigue duty building bridges, digging trenches, burying the dead. In practice, this often gets expanded to include anything that is exhausting. Marching long distances, for example, is sometimes lumped together with fatigue duty. Now, i think at first glance, these guidelines seem straightforward enough. They appear to be clearly defined. When liquor is going to be used or doled out as a ration, it is also measured. It is usually a gill or a health gil. Liquor ration is about a shot, maybe two just to give a measurement we are more used to been a gill. These guidelines are not really very specific at all. In large part, the confusion and lack of specificity came from the fact that supplying the rations was often left to the discretion of a Commanding Officer. In some cases, commanding generals actually decide and take control over how liquor is going to be dispensed. For example, after the battle of fredericksburg in 1862, robert e lee, who was commanding the army of northern virginia, he for bid christmas rations throughout the ranks. He just controls from the top how the whiskey is going to flow or not flow in this case. Just down the road, in the army of the potomac, youve got general joseph booker. He is celebrating christmas and his new promotion by doling out whiskey rations pretty widely. You can see in two cases, both in fredericksburg or after fredericksburg in 1862, you have generals really controlling the ebb and flow of liquor rations at the top. That is pretty rare. Most of the time, the decision about rations gets passed down the chain of command. The implementation varies all but by who is in charge. If a kernel or a major in your chain of command is a teetotaler , you are probably not getting any rations. Other times, your Company Officer might have the authority to be doling out whiskey. What this means is you have a lot of low ranking officers making decisions of what constitutes exposure and what constitutes fatigue. When men had to march, for example, there are plenty of Commanding Officers thought that a ration of whiskey would stimulate them, so to speak, for the journey. This did not actually work that well. In plenty of cases, whiskey and other forms of liquor are responsible for a lot of struggling. Perhaps, the most infamous instance of it not working well are the whiskey related problems that occurred during the monday march. This is shortly after the battle of fredericksburg. Soldiers and the army of the potomac are incredibly demoralized anyway. There officers decided to give them whiskey rations to cheer them up in the midst of the bad weather and everything else. And the men become drunk and begin fighting. Be on marches, there are other officers who decide that battle constitutes extreme fatigue. This is absolutely, most assuredly, not what the military considers to be fatigue duty the officers seem to think that if you needed whiskey to dig a ditch, you definitely needed whiskey to charge a. The general understanding seem to be that liquor could stimulate but also calm the nerves are still unsold back best mecca does not work the way that officers intend. There are instances when officers will give whiskey rations during battle and it backfires. In one case, during the siege of petersburg in june 1864, a federal captain gave his men whiskey right before they were going to be engaged. Instead of fighting, the men dropped into a ditch just outside of a line of trees and the captain, who had given the whiskey ration was left with tears streaming down his face. He was screaming at his men, prodding them and begging them not to disgrace themselves or also to disgrace him. Despite this fear that men might stop fighting if they were drinking during battle, there were plenty of officers who gave men rations if they have been under heavy fire. I think this is especially true and after the men were done fighting, if they had experienced a victory. This is the biggest stretch of these official regulations for officers, in a way i will give another example to illustrate the point. When a federal general john porter heard of union arty successes in tennessee. Porter is in virginia on the peninsula. He hears news of grants successes in tennessee in 1862. He gives all of his kernels permission to issue a celebratory ration to their men. He is pretty far away from the successes of grant. He is all the in the eastern peter but he gets excited and he predicts that the union army will take richmond in about six weeks. I say that the celebration, such as porters a show that the official use of liquor is being used to raise morale. So to stave off emotional exhaustion or mental fatigue, if you will to try to steal the men and convince them to keep going. That is what i would consider to be the official uses of liquor in the ways that officers use liquor. What is important to remember is that even that soldiers use rations beyond with their Commanding Officers intend i think it is important for me to note that officers are allowed to drink but enlisted men, unless they receive an official ration are not allowed to drink. There is a difference in the status. Officers during the war are keeping private stores of liquor and they could buy liquor from merchants and get passes to go to town and drink at times. Captain sharwood, that we met at the beginning of the talk, he is not out of line. He had permission to keep the private stores. He had permission to share them with fellow officers and party. Enlisted men in the war were not supposed to procure their own spirit. They are not supposed to buy them from the camp merchant but they are not supposed to drink in town. Not even supposed to go to town without a pass. This is why private shields was in so much trouble. He had left camp without permission and he procured his own spirits. On top of it all, he had become violently drunk. To be clear, shields is not alone. I said that at the beginning. Enlisted men are drinking all of the time, even though it is against the rules. What i find is that even though there drinking is officially against the rules, they are basing their own uses of liquor off of expansions of army regulations. The root of soldiers drinking is that they have grown up using liquor medicinally. Soldiers here are not unlike medical professionals they are but they believe that liquor treats illness. They have grown up in homes where wine, brandy are kept on hand in case someone became ill. When soldiers became sick in the army, which was fairly often, they typically try to find liquor to treat themselves. Federal soldiers could typically get whiskey rations from the medical department but confederate soldiers, who were much less adequately supplied in their medical departments, they tended to try to scrounge up their own whiskey. And they use it really broadly to treat what ever is ailing them. What of my favorite examples is a texas man, his name is elijah patty. He reports in a letter to his wife that he used about four fingers of brandy and also a bath. He is combining the drinking with the bath he is trying to treat a fever brought on by a severe cold. And a very sore and painful fingernail. I think it is infected. And also a case of piles. This brandy is supposed to cover a lot of ground. For patty. He actually think that it works pretty announces after his randy bath that he is ready for a full discharge of his duty. Soldiers really be on this medicinal use they expand their use or understanding of liquors usefulness. They are treating head colds. They are treating infected thumbs but they are also interpreting exposure and exhaustion and fatigue even more probably than their Commanding Officers, if that is possible. Soldiers, much more than official documents talk about they talk about mental fatigue. One of the places where i see this happening are in their winter camps. Again, those of you who studied the civil war know a lot about it and are being familiar with this. Civil war soldiers and spent a lot of time in winter camp, much more so than they do in battle. By and large, when the campaigning stops in the winter months, soldiers end up living for months in the tent cities that are fairly massive. What they do is they try to make these shelters as homelike as possible. They tried to make them warm. They build little pieces of furniture and they do anything they can to make them comfortable. One of the ways that they attempt to make themselves warm and comfortable is by drinking. There are men, especially officer, who speak with jugs of wood knee by their beds. They think they are staving off the cold. That is not you how liquor works but they do not really understand that. Men also write about keeping warm by playing whiskey poker. This seems to be just a little bit more than combating exposure. It is clear they are trying to pass the time but it is clear there trying to relieve boredom. There is certainly trying to create some kind of familial atmosphere or environment that may have had to leave behind. When they talk about drinking in their tents at night while playing games, there seems to be an element of emotional care here. I think that this emotional element to drinking becomes clear around holidays, like christmas. This is really where i see a lot of soldiers drinking combined with angst. It is a time that most soldiers were used to drinking with their families and being with their families. They go to really fantastic links to find liquor around the christmas holidays. What example is from texas excuse me, Walker Texas Division for a group of men pulled their resources together to purchase whiskey at about 40 a gallon in order to have what they called a frolic on christmas day. Those prices were not isolated for those of you who are shocked. There are other soldiers who report paying between 30 and 50 for a gallon of liquor to help celebrate christmas. What these men are trying to do is make christmas in camp as much like christmas at home as they can but it does not work. They will sometimes wait for their families to send care packages. When those care packages that include whiskey or not dont arrive, the men become melancholy. A floridian named Robert Watson said that after he drank, he still did not feel married because his thoughts were of home. These descriptions of sadness and loneliness, they are similar to the ways that men describe picket duty, the way they describe other illnesses. Liquor becomes an attempt curative, if you will, for homesickness as well as these other illnesses.