THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED
brute like Foster could have conceived such a ration to starve men. If the corn meal had been good we might have managed to live upon it and kept off the scurvy; but the meal was rotten—filled with black weevil bugs and worms. The barrels were branded, "Corn meal, kiln dried from Mills, 1861," showing by the brand and date on the barrels that it was four years old; condemned by the quartermaster as unfit food for nigger troops, but excellent diet for helpless Confederate prisoners of war. The acid onion and cucumber pickle was given us it was said, to prevent scurvy; but the fact is this: it was issued to create appetite and add misery to our hunger. To fully understand this ten-ounces-of-rotten-corn-meal-and-pickle order one must compare it with the United States Army regulation ration, which is one and onequarter pounds ground corn—ground with peas—besides coffee, tea, sugar, bread, and meat. But our ration was simply ten ounces of rotten corn meal
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