John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

[140] and adds, “the first and only regular issue of whiskey I ever made or know of being made to an enlisted man.” But although he belonged to the arm of the service called “the eyes and ears of the army,” and was no doubt a gallant soldier, he is not well posted; for men who belonged to other organizations in the Army of the Potomac assure me that it was served out to them much more frequently than I have related as coming under my observation. I think there can be no doubt on this point.

The size of the whiskey allowance was declared, by those whose experience had made them competent judges, as trifling and insignificant, sometimes not more than a tablespoonful; but the quantity differed greatly in different organizations. The opinion was very prevalent, and undoubtedly correct, that the liquor was quite liberally sampled by the various headquarters, or the agents through whom it was transmitted to the rank and file. While there was considerable whiskey drank by the men “unofficially,” that is, which was obtained otherwise than on the order of the medical department, yet, man for man, the private soldiers were as abstemious as the officers. The officers who did not drink more or less were too scarce in the service. They had only to send to the commissary to obtain as much as they pleased, whenever they pleased, by paying for it; but the private soldier could only obtain it of this official on an order signed by a commissioned officer,--usually the captain of his company. In fact, there was nothing but his sense of honor, his self-respect, or his fear of exposure and punishment, to restrain a captain, a colonel, or a general, of whatever command, from being intoxicated at a moment when he should have been in the full possession of his senses leading his command on to battle; and I regret to relate that these motives, strong as they are to impel to right and restrain from wrong-doing, were no barrier to many an officer whose appetite in a crisis thus imperilled the cause and disgraced himself. Doesn't it seem strange that the enforcement of