Letters of Peyton Smith

One of Adams County’s little-known Civil War veterans is
Peyton C. Smith, a transplanted Ohioan who lived in Lima, Illinois, before the
war. While in Lima, Smith operated a
general store from the time of his arrival in 1855 until the time of his
enlistment in the 119th Illinois Infantry in September 1862. The 119th was comprised of men
from five Illinois Counties — Adams, Brown, Hancock, McDonough, and
Schuyler — and was mustered into the army one month
later in October. These men saw action
in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana; the group’s fame resulted from its
actions in the Red River Campaign of 1864.

Several years ago, the Historical Society of Quincy and
Adams County purchased a cache of letters from Smith to his wife. There is a great deal of interesting
information found in these missives; the contents include observations related
to many aspects of the war including descriptions of soldiers’ living
conditions, especially the food available to them. It is this area, available food, which is the
focus of this article.

One of Smith’s first letters was posted from Jackson,
Tennessee, in early November 1862 and included this remark: “Myself and Lt.’s
Corey and Dennis are boarding with a negro family and the woman is as good a
cook as I ever ate after. We are living
better now than we have since we left home.
Sweet potatoes and roast beef is the principle [sic] bill of fare.” In a short note dated 9 November 1862, Smith
wrote, “I had a good dinner today down to old Uncle Billys – the
negroe [sic] who is boarding us. They
had beef chicken and sweet potatoes all roasted in a fine style and just to
suit my taste if they are dark.…We pay $2.50 per week for board – we
buy flour of the commissary government and sell it to them to pay for our board
at the same price.”

Soon thereafter, in early December, Smith mentioned that he
and his men “have plenty to eat and nothing to do but to get wood and keep our
guards and hunt. Squirrels and quails
are plenty the secesh have no guns so we can kill plenty of them. They had broiled quail and squirrel for
dinner so I tell you it is good. Ed and Doc has just come in from the country
— they went out to get their dinners and are bragging highly about what a good
dinner they had.”

On 14 January 1862, Smith was referring to contrabands and
their willingness to share when he wrote, “I must say I never saw people so
glad to see anyone in my life. They
first danced and jumped around and said that if they had nothing but bread to
eat we should eat there. They flew
around and got us a good supper and we ate hearty for we was hungry.”

Skipping 1863 since there are no letters available from that
year, the next mention of food is contained in a communique from Memphis on 11
January 1864. In this note, Smith commented about their cook: “The dried fruit you sent us is doing us the
most good of anything we have ever had, but we had to move them out of our kitchen
into my tent to keep [him] [name redacted by author] from trading them off – He
got started into a regular trading business with all our provisions before we
knew what was up. We thought it was
costing us an immense amount to live but did not know the reason until we found
that out. So now we keep our things
locked up and only deal out to him what we want cooked each day.”

One month later, Captain Smith described meeting the enemy
near Meridian, Mississippi. Union troops
had just defeated the Rebels, and when Smith and his men entered town, they
found provisions readily available. “Our
boys got lots of turkeys, chicken, ham — flour meal and molasses and got up a
royal supper, I can assure you out of rebel supplies…I fared too well and I was
sick all night for it but took a blue pill next morning and before we left was
better than ever.”

Shortly thereafter, on 5 March 1864, Smith wrote from
Vicksburg that, “a wagon came out of the city with some bacon for us and as
hunger is no stranger to our camp of late, you may be sure our boys was
considerably built up. You could hear them all over the hills, hollering ‘meat,
meat’ and running to get their portions, then the frying pans and boiling
sticks were put to work and made a glorious feast on fat pork, hard tack, and
coffee.”

Another anecdote from the end of the 119th’s Red
River Campaign is discussed in a 14 May 1864 letter. Smith noted:
“Had a dry hot dusty march of about twenty miles and camped on the banks
of the Red River just behind the levee.
During the night a drove of cattle was passing and when near our
regiment they got up a stampede and run in all among where our boys were sleeping
on the ground – spoiling our rest and injuring some of the men
severely — one of Company E seriously — one
of the steers threw fire all over my bed and routed me completely — we
rallied behind a log and drove them back and if we had not been afraid of
shooting some of our men the 119th would certainly have had a supply
of fresh beef steak for breakfast next morning.”

While there are certainly documented instances of hunger and
lack of provisions affecting both sides during the Civil War, Peyton Smith’s
comments indicate that there were also times of abundance of food for the men
of the 119th. Apparently, the
situation suggests “feast of famine” was the prevailing principle.

Beth Young is a retired Quincy educator. After thirty three years in the Quincy Public Schools, she held part time instructional positions at both John Wood Community College and Qunicy University. She holds degrees from Quincy College and Northern Illinois University and did additional graduate work at Oxford University.

Sources

Peyton C. Smith Collection, Historical Society of Quincy and
Adams County.

Memorial and
Biographical Record of Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri

. Lewis Publishing Company, c 1896.