Happy Thanksgiving

[Anita]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am grateful to be celebrating with family and dining on turkey with stuffing instead of herring and hardtack. Did they really have to buy Thanksgiving dinner? See below.

"Thanksgiving in Camp" by Winslow Homer 1862

   

Can you read the signs on the tent? The one that says “Sutler” tells us that the tent is a soldier’s store, where they would have come to buy their Thanksgiving meal. “Cider” would have been an alcoholic drink, which was only rarely available to soldiers. “Herrings”, a pickled fish, was an unusual and nutritious food for Civil War soldiers, but not particularly festive, as indicated by the attitude of the soldier on the far left! The same soldier also holds pieces of hard tack, a bland biscuit of flour and water that was a major staple of the military diet. The image documents the sparse physical comforts of army life but makes sure to include emotional aspects of camp life, too—its fun as well as its loneliness. Such an image reminded readers that their loved ones probably missed them as much as they missed their soldiers. Although an annual feast to give thanks had been celebrated on various days for more than a hundred years before this, it was Abraham Lincoln who established Thanksgiving on a fixed day beginning in 1863, one year after this image was made. - See more at: http://www.civilwarinart.org/items/show/89