Home to author Sean McLachlan and the House Divided series of Civil War horror novels. A Fine Likeness, the first in the series, is available now. This blog is dedicated to the Trans-Mississippi Civil War and historical fiction, and occasionally veers off into adventure travel when I go somewhere interesting.
Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Midlist Writer blog, where he talks about writing, adventure travel, caving, and everything else he gets up to. He also reproduces all the posts from Civil War Horror, so drop on by!
Friday, September 9, 2011
Civil War Photo Friday: Foraging for supplies
In my Civil War horror novel, A Fine Likeness, the bushwhacker band at the center of the action stops off at a safehouse of rebel sympathizers. One of the residents is a disabled Confederate veteran who tells them his memories of the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Over dinner, one of the veteran's sisters remarks that they might as well have seconds, because Union troops had already taken most of their food, and will probably come back to take the rest.
Foraging for food was a common practice in both armies. Enduring long marches on bad or sometimes no rations, the troops couldn't resist grabbing a chicken or some apples. Multiply these individual thefts across several regiments, and the passage of an army could be worse than a visit from locusts.
This period engraving shows the Union army hard at work putting food on the table. The wagon is loaded with hay and barrels (of molasses? whiskey?) as the horseman on the left is having some trouble with a chicken. While this image is done in a humorous style, scenes like this wouldn't have been funny to farmers in the war zone.
Labels:
A Fine Likeness,
bushwhackers,
Civil War,
Civil War fiction,
Civil War Missouri,
Civil War novel,
Civil War novels,
Civil War Photo Friday,
guerrillas,
horror,
Missouri,
Missouri history,
Trans-Miss
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