Tag Archives: Coffee

“Like the Genuine Moca”: Ersatz Coffee and Confederate Nationalism during the American Civil War

By Anne Sarah Rubin

Coffee, I must have coffee,
and if anyone wants to give me a treat,
ah!, just give me some coffee!

Although written by J.S. Bach and the librettist Picander in the 1730s, the Coffee Cantata’s homage to the world’s favorite stimulant certainly rang true in the Civil War South. Recipes for coffee substitutes pepper the pages of Confederate newspapers and reminiscences. Elite white women wrote down their personal formulas and debated the virtues of one concoction over another, while scientists weighed in on the chemical composition of different tinctures. Coffee, because it was entirely imported, was one of the first commodities affected by the Union blockade of Southern ports.[i] Doing without coffee, or cheerfully drinking an ersatz variety, became a symbol of patriotic sacrifice, like wearing homespun or a palmetto hat.

“Good Coffee Sweet Potatoes” reads the heading handwritten on the back of a Confederate $100 bond. We can imagine the writer, probably Martha Gourdin DeSaussure, at her home in Charleston during the war, following the steps she carefully enumerated. More likely it was one of the three Black women the DeSaussures enslaved who did the work: first peeling the sweet potatoes, and slicing them into strips, 3/8 or ½ inch thick, then cutting the strips “into squares so as to average the same size.” The squares then had to “dry in the sun three days,” before they could be bagged up. The final step was to “parch a good brown, grind and make as you would coffee berry.”[ii]

A group of Black freedpeople stand, with hoes, over a field of sweet potatoes. Another group sits on the ground beside them, sorting the crop.
Fig. 1. Freedpeople planting sweet potatoes on the Hopkinson plantation, Edisto Island, SC, April, 1862. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010651644/

.

In fact, Confederates turned to almost anything that could be burned, ground, and steeped to make a bitter brown liquid. Some, like rye or chicory are still used today; others, like okra seed, acorns, cotton seeds, or sorghum fell by the wayside after the war. Each had their champion. “To see the earnest face with which each lady discussed her own particular mixture, and her great delight when some courteous old gentleman smacked his lips, and declared, he ‘had not tasted anything so like the genuine moca [sic.] for years, Madam,’ was most edifying,” recalled one Confederate matron.[iii]

An etching depicts a white woman in voluminous dress kneeling and praying in an outfitted cave
Fig. 2. This depiction of a white Southern woman living in a cave during the siege of Vicksburg prominently displays her coffeepot, a touch of home in uncomfortable surroundings. Adalbert John Volck, “Cave Life in Vicksburg,” in Confederate War Etchings, Creative Commons image from The Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/421364

.

Of course, people could simply have done without. No one ever died for lack of coffee, and the vegetable and grain varieties all lacked caffeine, so they didn’t provide much physical stimulation. In fact, one advocate for acorn coffee noted that he no longer suffered from headaches, not realizing that he was no longer suffering from daily caffeine withdrawal.[iv] Psychologically, though, there was something to the ritual of drinking something hot, brown, and slightly bitter. It represented a moment of normalcy, a chance to offer some hospitality, to warm up, to momentarily forget one’s troubles.

When the war ended, coffee returned to the South. Freedmen’s Bureau and US Army rations (distributed to both Black and white Southerners in the months after the war) sometimes contained rye coffee.[v] Southern cookbooks published after the war trafficked heavily in nostalgia for antebellum abundance and rarely mentioned harder times. Maria Massey Barringer did include a recipe for Blockade Coffee (made of rye) in her 1867 Dixie Cookery, billed as “a practical cook-book for southern housekeepers,” but few other regionalists did the same.[vi] In fact, Mrs. Porter’s New Southern Cookery Book tartly noted that “those who are not particular as to quality, but only want something that looks like coffee” could try “roasted acorns, chick peas, beans, rye, cocoa shells, burned wheat bread, dried and roasted turnip, carrot and dandelion root,” but pointedly did not recommend any of them.[vii] Mentions of ersatz coffee became staples of nostalgic reminiscences, about hardships overcome without interrogating real struggles and hunger. They were given with almost a wink and a laugh—suffering for coffee was funny, actual starvation was not.

.

[i] Mary Elizabeth Massey, Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront, Southern Classics Series (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 72-73. Andrew F. Smith, Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War, 1st ed (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 14.

[ii] The receipt book was donated to the Museum of the Confederacy by Martha Gourdin DeSaussure, the wife of South Carolina Brigadier General Wilmot Gibbs DeSaussure. It appears to have been compiled sometime after the Civil War. Frances M. Burroughs, “The Confederate Receipt Book: A Study of Food Substitution in the American Civil War,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 93, no. 1 (n.d.): 31–50. The recipe is on p.6 of the book, pp 44-45 in the article. The number of enslaved people is from the 1860 slave census. Porcher describes sweet potato coffee as “used on several plantations in lower Carolina.” Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, 400.

[iii] “What the Confederates Ate,” by Clara Minor Lynn VHS, 2.

[iv] [No Title], Arkansas True Democrat, January 9, 1862.

[v] Orders for Rations Issued, 1865, Governor Sharkey, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

[vi] Barringer, Dixie Cookery; or, How I Managed My Table for Twelve Years. A Practical Cook-Book for Southern Housekeepers (Boston, 1867), 108.

[vii] M. E. Porter, Mrs. Porter’s New Southern Cookery Book and Companion for Frugal and Economical Housekeepers (John E. Potter & Company, 1871), 379.

.


Anne Sarah Rubin is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she was the 2016-2017 Lipitz Professor of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. She was also the Associate Director of the Imaging Research Center from 2017-2020. Her most recent book is the co-edited memoir, The Perfect Scout: A Soldier’s Memoir of the Great March to the Sea and the Campaign of the Carolinas (University of Alabama Press, 2018). Dr. Rubin’s first book, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy (UNC, 2005), received the 2006 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians, for the most original book on the Civil War era. Her study of the place of Sherman’s March in American culture and history, entitled Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March in American Memory was published in September 2014 by UNC Press. The project also has a multimedia component, which can be found at http://www.shermansmarch.org. She is currently working on a project called A Mouthful of Nothing: Food and Famine in the Civil War South, 1860-1868.

Revisiting Lisa Smith’s Coffee: A Remedy Against the Plague

Editor’s note: Today, we revisit a post by our editor Lisa Smith on the use of coffee as an eighteenth century cure-all against smallpox and the plague. The botanist Richard Bradley claimed that coffee would be effective in treating such diseases because it ‘lifted the spirit’. I certainly find that caffeine lifts my spirits, even if temporarily, but we know that high spirits are unfortunately no protection against COVID-19 and other viruses. Still, there is no harm in taking a break – caffeinated or not – and I hope that this post will give you good cheer. Laurence Totelin


By Lisa Smith

1721, London: The plague raging in Marseilles threatened London’s busy ports. The British government took action, asking a core group of physicians to devise a plan in case the plague reached London. Smallpox was already rampant and the King had ordered a series of inoculation experiments on prisoners. Troubled times.

Enter the impecunious botanist Richard Bradley. (I discussed his interesting life in a recent blog post.) When he wasn’t in debt to booksellers, he made a living from popular medical and scientific writings, such as The virtue and use of coffee, with regard to the plague, and other infectious distempers (London, 1721). He wrote: “At this time, when every Nation in Europe is under the melancholy Apprehension of an approaching Plague or Pestilence, I think it the Business of every Man to contribute, to the utmost of his Capacity, such Observations, as may tend to the Service of the Publick.”

And in the face of the plague and smallpox he offered… coffee. Remedies prescribed by other physicians, he insisted, “are little different from each other.” Coffee, however, “is of excellent Use in the time of Pestilence, and contributes greatly to prevent the spreading of Infection.” Who knew?

Apparently the Turks. Bradley explained: “in some Parts of Turkey, where the Plague is almost constant, it is seldom mortal in those Families, who are rich enough to enjoy the free Use of Coffee.” In his treatise, he discussed coffee’s efficacy and provided (most tantalizingly for the coffee-mad Brits) “an Account of the best Method of roasting the Berries, and preserving them after roasting.”

Coffee tree (Coffea arabica). Line engraving by H. Burgh, c.1726
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

I present to you Bradley’s instructions for preparing coffee. First, he recommended spreading out the ripe berries to dry and harden beneath the sun. The husks were then to be removed so that the berries could be toasted in an “airy place to clean them.” Finally, the berries were ready for the roaster, and this was an important step: the roasting process, Bradley claimed, would determine “the Goodness of the Liquor.” Never fear, though, Bradley had “taken some pains to experience the best Method of roasting it.” His conclusion was that the berries would be heated most equally by placing them in an iron vessel and turned on a spit over a clear or charcoal fire. His personal preference was “roasted in a middle way, not overburnt.” To modern readers, this seems like a lot of work, but Bradley reassured his readers that this process could easily be done at home, as apparently many “Persons of Distinction in Holland” did.

Making the beverage also required special equipment and techniques. To prepare the decoction, earthen or stone vessels were best, as metal spoiled the flavour. Boiling the coffee evaporated “too much of the fine Spirits”. Pouring boiling water over the powder of ground berries and infusing it for four or five minutes in front of the fire would be better and “much exceeds the common way of preparing it.” He provided an alternative, too: grinding the berries into powder, adding the powder and water into a stone or silver coffee pot and leaving the pot in front of the fire for a couple minutes. The liquid was always “thick and troubled” after brewing, but could be made “clear enough for drinking” by adding a spoonful or two of cold water to force the grounds to sink.

Coffee was worth the effort, being the ultimate cure-all. Bradley described its many virtues, which included treating head pains, vertigo, lethargy, coughs, moist and cold constitutions, consumptions, swooning fits, digestive problems, sleepiness, running humours, sores, scrofula, drunkenness, rheumatism, gout, intermitting fevers and infection. It could also purify the blood, provoke urination, stimulate the menses and deworm children. Indeed, it was particularly beneficial for menstruating women. According to Bradley, Arabian women drank coffee during their “periodical Visits, and find a good Effect”, such as contraction of the bowels and toned up genitals. Coffee was not for everyone though. Those suffering from melancholy vapours, hot brains, or paralysis should avoid it.

The reason that coffee would be so efficacious in treating infectious disease was that it lifted the spirits—and those “whose Spirits are the most overcome by Fear, are the most subject to receive Infections”. The correct use of coffee supported the drinker’s “vital Flame”, protecting the drinker from fear and despair. To gain coffee’s maximum benefits, Bradley recommended the following dosage: at least twice a day, first in the morning and at four in the afternoon.

Coffee breaks: good for your health!

Coffee: A Remedy Against the Plague

By Lisa Smith

1721, London: The plague raging in Marseilles threatened London’s busy ports. The British government took action, asking a core group of physicians to devise a plan in case the plague reached London. Smallpox was already rampant and the King had ordered a series of inoculation experiments on prisoners. Troubled times.

Enter the impecunious botanist Richard Bradley. (I discussed his interesting life in a recent blog post.) When he wasn’t in debt to booksellers, he made a living from popular medical and scientific writings, such as The virtue and use of coffee, with regard to the plague, and other infectious distempers (London, 1721). He wrote: “At this time, when every Nation in Europe is under the melancholy Apprehension of an approaching Plague or Pestilence, I think it the Business of every Man to contribute, to the utmost of his Capacity, such Observations, as may tend to the Service of the Publick.”

And in the face of the plague and smallpox he offered… coffee. Remedies prescribed by other physicians, he insisted, “are little different from each other.” Coffee, however, “is of excellent Use in the time of Pestilence, and contributes greatly to prevent the spreading of Infection.” Who knew?

Apparently the Turks. Bradley explained: “in some Parts of Turkey, where the Plague is almost constant, it is seldom mortal in those Families, who are rich enough to enjoy the free Use of Coffee.” In his treatise, he discussed coffee’s efficacy and provided (most tantalizingly for the coffee-mad Brits) “an Account of the best Method of roasting the Berries, and preserving them after roasting.”

Coffee tree (Coffea arabica). Line engraving by H. Burgh, c.1726
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

I present to you Bradley’s instructions for preparing coffee. First, he recommended spreading out the ripe berries to dry and harden beneath the sun. The husks were then to be removed so that the berries could be toasted in an “airy place to clean them.” Finally, the berries were ready for the roaster, and this was an important step: the roasting process, Bradley claimed, would determine “the Goodness of the Liquor.” Never fear, though, Bradley had “taken some pains to experience the best Method of roasting it.” His conclusion was that the berries would be heated most equally by placing them in an iron vessel and turned on a spit over a clear or charcoal fire. His personal preference was “roasted in a middle way, not overburnt.” To modern readers, this seems like a lot of work, but Bradley reassured his readers that this process could easily be done at home, as apparently many “Persons of Distinction in Holland” did.

Making the beverage also required special equipment and techniques. To prepare the decoction, earthen or stone vessels were best, as metal spoiled the flavour. Boiling the coffee evaporated “too much of the fine Spirits”. Pouring boiling water over the powder of ground berries and infusing it for four or five minutes in front of the fire would be better and “much exceeds the common way of preparing it.” He provided an alternative, too: grinding the berries into powder, adding the powder and water into a stone or silver coffee pot and leaving the pot in front of the fire for a couple minutes. The liquid was always “thick and troubled” after brewing, but could be made “clear enough for drinking” by adding a spoonful or two of cold water to force the grounds to sink.

Coffee was worth the effort, being the ultimate cure-all. Bradley described its many virtues, which included treating head pains, vertigo, lethargy, coughs, moist and cold constitutions, consumptions, swooning fits, digestive problems, sleepiness, running humours, sores, scrofula, drunkenness, rheumatism, gout, intermitting fevers and infection. It could also purify the blood, provoke urination, stimulate the menses and deworm children. Indeed, it was particularly beneficial for menstruating women. According to Bradley, Arabian women drank coffee during their “periodical Visits, and find a good Effect”, such as contraction of the bowels and toned up genitals. Coffee was not for everyone though. Those suffering from melancholy vapours, hot brains, or paralysis should avoid it.

The reason that coffee would be so efficacious in treating infectious disease was that it lifted the spirits—and those “whose Spirits are the most overcome by Fear, are the most subject to receive Infections”. The correct use of coffee supported the drinker’s “vital Flame”, protecting the drinker from fear and despair. To gain coffee’s maximum benefits, Bradley recommended the following dosage: at least twice a day, first in the morning and at four in the afternoon.

Coffee breaks: good for your health!