Hard Crackers Come Again No More Lyrics
Let usa shut our game of poker, take our tin can cups in our manus
As we all stand past the melt'due south tent door
As dried monies of hard crackers are handed to each human.
O, hard tack, come again no more than!
CHORUS: 'Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry:
"Hard tack, hard tack, come once more no more."
Many days you have lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O, hard tack, come again no more!
'Tis a hungry, thirsty soldier who wears his life abroad
In torn clothes–his ameliorate days are o'er.
And he'southward sighing now for whiskey in a voice as dry as hay,
"O, hard tack, come over again no more than!"–CHORUS
'Tis the wail that is heard in military camp both nighttime and twenty-four hours,
'Tis the murmur that'due south mingled with each snore.
'Tis the sighing of the soul for jump chickens far abroad,
"O, hard tack, come again no more than!"–CHORUS
Hardtack (Baked and photographed by the author)
Simply to all these cries and murmurs, there comes a sudden hush
As delicate forms are fainting by the door,
For they feed us now on horse feed that the cooks call mush!
O, hard tack, come again once more!
Final CHORUS: 'Tis the dying wail of the starving:
"O, difficult tack, hard tack, come again once more!"
You were onetime and very wormy, but we pass your failings o'er.
O, hard tack, come up again again![i]
That wonderfully sobering song honors, commemorates, and complains near a staple food in a Civil War soldier's diet. Called a variety of names – hard crackers, hardtack, hard breadstuff, regular army crackers, worm castles, sheet-iron crackers, tooth dullers, and other colorful sobriquets – this "nutrient" won itself a legendary place in the minds of the soldiers and in the history of the conflict.
What is hardtack? Flour, h2o, and sometimes salt. Seriously, that's information technology. It's about a six to 1 ratio of flour to water mixed and kneaded together, rolled apartment, cut into approximately iii inch squares, pricked with a fork, stick, or blast, and baked. And and so packaged into wooden crates or barrels and sent off to the regular army. Or sent to a dock or storage facility to sit out in the hot sun or pounding rain to dry-rock hard or a wet, moldy mess of rations. And don't forget the worms! Some soldiers claimed their tossed their rations into the outer trenches and the hardtack came crawling back.
In his volume A Sense of taste For War, William C. Davis wrote: "…as many as three or 4 million hardtack [was] being consumed every day [by 1864], conspicuously too big a need for whatsoever i baker to supply, and thus companies all across the North received contracts that kept their ovens at blistering heat around the clock."[ii]
And so how did they eat this stuff? A variety of cooking methods were recorded, involving this infamous ration. Union soldiers soaked information technology in java – some claiming that six hours was the minimum soaking time to make it palatable. Others soaked the hardtack in water, and then fried in it salary cracking or lard to make a military gourmet dish called "skillygalee."[iii] Other soldiers beat the hardtack with a mallet or rifle butt to brand a sort of flour that they added to soup, grease, or whatsoever else they had to cook. And there are a host of "recipes" and other hardtack cooking details which vary from unit to unit or private to individual.
I've made hardtack. (No, non for dinner!) I've made information technology for living history events because it's a great teaching tool and conversation starter with elementary schoolhouse age kids. Information technology's real uncomplicated to make, merely the challenging part is when it'southward fresh out of the oven. This is going to audio a little weird, simply fresh, hot hardtack is delicious. A friend – who also liked fresh, hot hardtack – and I were joking that if it was served with lycopersicon esculentum sauce it would taste like actually good pasta. (Maybe? Or maybe we were being a little silly?) However, when I make hardtack, I make a small piece that I can relish when I pull the pan out of the oven.
Over the years of making hardtack for school living history days, I've discovered that calculation salt makes it get moldy much quicker. Now, I leave the salt out because I only make hardtack about in one case every eighteen months for display purposes. My hardtack is "healthy" and definitely low sodium! I have yet to notice a worm in my hardtack, merely perchance anytime I'll find some authentic creepy-crawlies inhabiting a "worm castle."
Hardtack isn't on our carte du jour for Thursday's feast, but enough of Civil War soldiers had the misery of eating their wormy, moldy, or simply dry hard crackers for their Thanksgiving dinner. And – despite the weary monotony of the rations and the unpleasant surprises – it was meliorate than starving. Perhaps they were thankful.
[i] A traditional Civil War vocal. Lyrics accessed at http://www.civilwarpoetry.org/union/songs/hardtack.html
[ii] William C. Davis, A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Bluish and the Gray, 2003, Page 42.
[iii] Ibid., Page 43-44.
Source: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2017/11/20/civil-war-cookin-hard-tack-come-again-no-more/
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