Foraging

Foraging during the CiViL War was widespread and controversial. There are two kinds of foraging: unofficial and official. The unofficial occurred when soldiers on the march or in camp indulged in unauthorized raids on civilian property. For example, soldiers would seize pigs, chickens, eggs, and other foodstuffs to ease their hunger. This type of foraging occurred with as much regularity in the Confederate ARMY as it did in the Union army, and often with little care as to whether the civilians were friends or enemies. Southern families at times had as much to fear from their own countrymen as from Union soldiers. Robert E. Lee’s men foraged liberally off the rich Pennsylvania farming countryside during the Gettysburg campaign of June and July 1863, as did Ulysses S. Grant’s soldiers in Mississippi during the Vicksburg campaign at exactly the same time. Occasionally, groups of soldiers would go far beyond feasting and plunder the countryside. They would deliberately steal money, jewels, silver, and other valuables from helpless civilians. This type of behavior was branded as criminal, and soldiers caught in such acts were punished by military courts.

Official foraging, by contrast, was allowed under the international rules OF war. Military commanders had the right to sustain their armies from goods taken from the countryside. This type of foraging was supposed to be conducted under strict rules and regulations. Even so, in the first two years of the war most Union commanders discouraged or prohibited foraging, fearing rightly that the behavior could degenerate into simple theft. William T. Sherman, the Northern general most associated with the successful use of foraging, commented on the dangers: “The feeling of pillage and booty will injure the morale of the troops, and bring disgrace to their cause.” As the war became harder, however, foraging became much more of a military necessity than expected and especially affected the tactics of the Northern side.

The most famous example of the dramatic expansion of the use of authorized foraging was in Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” begun in September 1864. His western soldiers confiscated and/or destroyed crops, food, livestock, and other valuables in an attempt to end the war by undermining the Southern economy and morale. Although Sherman’s March became notorious for its supposedly wanton destruction, his raid was conducted under strict guidelines. The Union policy was to differentiate between sympathetic and hostile Southerners and act accordingly. It mattered, therefore, whether families in any one area were Unionist, took a neutral stance, or professed to be rabid secessionists. The “secesh” fared by far the worst. Admittedly, there were times when soldiers ignored their orders and engaged in behavior far outside the regulations, sometimes with the approval of their officers. This was especially true in South Carolina, where many Union soldiers expressed an intense desire to punish the place “where treason began.” Yet most historians now agree that far from being an uncontrolled spree, Sherman’s soldiers acted with restraint and well within the bounds of the rules of war.

See also Gettysburg, Battle of; Sherman’s March through Georgia.

Further reading: Joseph T. Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannahs and Carolinas Campaigns (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995); Bell Irvin Wiley, The Common Soldier of the Civil War (New York: Scribner, 1973).