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had a mouthful to eat all day. I was then in command of a brigade, and I was very well content, after the fight at Ox Hill or Chantilly, to make my supper on two very small ears of green corn, which I roasted in the ashes.
On the next day and for a day or two afterwards, all that I had to eat was a piece of cold boiled fresh beef without either salt or bread, which I carried in a haversack.
This was the strait to which a Brigadier General was reduced in our army.
I have many a time on the march, while a division and corps commander, been glad to get a hard cracker and a very small piece of uncooked bacon for my dinner, and I have been often thankful on the road to a soldier for a biscuit from his haversack which he himself had baked, after mixing up the flour on an India rubber cloth, which he had secured on some battlefield.
When our money became so depreciated as to be worth only from five to ten cents on the dollar, many of the company officers were compelled from necessity to eat with their men of the scanty food furnished them.
I have seen commissioned officers often, marching on foot with their pantaloons out behind, their coats out at the elbow and their toes sticking out of their shoes, with but a pretence for a sole, while they had but the shirt that was on their backs as their whole supply of linen.
I have seen this the case with gentlemen of refinement, whose means before the war had enabled them to live with every desirable comfort, yet they submitted cheerfully not only to this, but to actual hunger; and I have seen them go into battle with the proud tread of heroes, encouraging their men, cheering over the victory, or bravely meeting death in defence of a country which could treat them no better.
What these men were content with, the prisoners taken by their valor, and who had been so well pampered in their own country, thought proper to regard, when furnished them, as evidence of a disposition to starve them.
Not only was our army so meagrely supplied with
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