Old-Fashioned Apple Molasses Cookies & Gettysburg NMP (Day 3)

Left, left, left, right, left…we’re marching about 135 hours north from Cape Hatteras to Gettysburg National Military Park. I think I’ll opt to drive however. The drive time is roughly 7 hours. From July 1st to 3rd in 1863, this sleepy, farm community of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was forever altered by the last major battle of the American Civil War.

But to preface what historically happened here, I’ll say this…the Battle of Gettysburg is regarded as the largest and bloodiest land battle fought in North America. Approximately 51,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were casualties of this three-day event. (Troops at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, however, suffered the greatest casualties in one-day...22,720 persons!) The actions leading up to these horrific numbers is attributed to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. He decided to move the Army of Northern Virginia and about 75,000 men north to Maryland and Pennsylvania in June 1863 from Chancellorsville, Virginia. He felt battlefield success in these northern states would help facilitate a peaceful end to the Civil War. His troops also desperately needed to gather provisions to keep moving. When Major General George C. Meade caught word of this movement, he ordered the estimated 93,000 soldiers in his Army of the Potomac to Gettysburg. The result? Well, you know.

Ok. Blog done? I jibber-jabbered about Gettysburg and it’s on to cookie time, right? Nope.

By the time Elezabeth arrived at Gettysburg in June 1863, he was a seasoned, possibly battle-weary soldier. He enlisted in August 1861 in the 28th Regimental North Carolina Infantry; and rose through the Company C’s ranks from a 4th Sergeant to Corporal in February 1862. In May 1862, Elezabeth (listed as Elijah) was a P.O.W. from the Battle of Hanover Court House near Richmond, Virginia. For a short time, he was imprisoned at Fort Monroe near Hampton Roads, Virginia.

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By November 1862, Elezabeth was promoted to a brevet 2nd Lieutenant. This field promotion didn’t last long. He was killed on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

Unlike other Civil War battlefields we’ve visited, Gettysburg is slightly different knowing there is a family connection. We’ve been to Gettysburg a couple of times, and each visit includes a stop at the North Carolina Monument on West Confederate Avenue on the battlefield. It’s one of the 1,328 monuments, markers, and memorials at Gettysburg NMP.

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Another aspect of Gettysburg which can’t be overlooked is the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Gettysburg National Cemetery came out of both necessity and public passion. After the three days’ long battle, some 3,500 Union troops (plus a multitude of Confederate dead) lay scattered where they fell across the Pennsylvania farmland. Obviously fearful of a pandemic in the summer heat, bodies were hastily interred in shallow graves on the battlefields with pencil inscribed wood markers.

However the weather began to weather the ill-prepared graves. Local residents demanded a more fitting final resting place for the nation’s fallen fathers, sons, uncles, and brothers. Judge David Wills, a prominent Gettysburg citizen, suggested to Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin the idea of a national soldiers cemetery. He saw first-hand how the Battle affected the town’s residents. During the bombings, town refugees huddled in the basement of his home. Governor Curtin thought it was a worthy project, appropriated the funding, and put Judge Wills in charge. Organizing and overseeing the construction of the Gettysburg National Cemetery began in earnest.

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The property in which this National Cemetery now sits was intentionally purchased. It’s the center from which the Union troops countered Pickett’s Charge. On October 27, 1863, the reinterment process from battlefield to cemetery began.

When it came time for President Lincoln to give his address, he was succinct. Lincoln’s speech, the now famous Gettysburg Address, lasted seconds over two minutes using 272 words. No where in it is Gettysburg, the Union or the Confederacy mentioned. School-age students for decades afterward were required to memorize and recite it. The Hubby sure can!

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It’s impact was so immediately powerful, Edward Everett wrote President Lincoln on the day after the dedication ceremony stating:

“I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

edward Everett to President Abraham lincoln, november 20, 1863.

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For southern families like The Hubby’s, the majority of Confederate burials weren’t given official placement in the Gettysburg National Cemetery, although some southern soldiers are interred there. Southern veteran associations were able to relocate about 3,200 of the approximate 3,900 Confederate dead in the 1870’s. Most remains went to cemeteries in Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina. Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia is a well-known final resting place for Gettysburg’s victims. (1)

An important aspect of camp life was the soldier’s diet. After all, if they didn’t eat, they didn’t fight well. During the Civil War, the meals for average soldiers or sailors (both Blue and Gray) were meager at best. Union soldiers were generally given rations of salted beef or pork, beans/peas, rice, coffee or tea, sugar, salt, vinegar, pepper, potatoes, and ground pepper. As the war raged on and supplies dwindled, these amounts changed, were substituted and/or eliminated. One mundanely common foodstuff was hardtack…a thick, rock-hard cracker made of flour and water, possibly salt. Union soldiers were given 9 squares of this twice-baked and dried “bread.” Hardtack definitely fit the requirements that daily rations had to be portable and preservable! If you really want to make it, here you go. The image below is of Captain James William Forsyth, Provost Marshall of 18th Regular Army Infantry Regiment, sitting atop a crate of hardtack at Aquia Creek Landing, Virginia. Talk about shelf-life! (Image Credit: Library of Congress) (2)

For the era, and before the war, the majority of cooking was done at home by women. This meant most men literally learned how to cook through trial by fire. I wonder how many times it took before someone was kicked off of K.P. duty for burning water.

Soldiers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line scavenged, scrounged, shot, and cooked whatever looked, smelled or seemed edible. During the growing seasons, fruits and vegetables were more commonly available. Soldiers cooked and ate wherever they were, along with their rationed items. One soldier from New York even wrote home about his efforts acquire a Rebel dollar while watching his brother make apple fritters.

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Cookie making in any form was highly unlikely, dare I say impossible, for the average soldier during the Civil War. Any flour they had was used for hardtack. White sugar. What’s that? Molasses may have been easier to come by, but it was definitely more of a home-front staple for both North and South cooks. This fact, combined with the seasonal availability of apples, inspired me to go old-school again with today’s Old-Fashioned Apple Molasses Cookies. (Giving hardtack for as a holiday gift probably isn’t the best idea, right?)

Old-Fashioned Apple Molasses Cookies are a simple spiced, molasses cookie for all general purposes. I’ve given it a comfort-food upgrade with the addition of finely diced tart apples, rolled in turbinado cane sugar. If you’re not familar with turbinado sugar, it is a coarse, lesser refined sugar commonly marketed under the brand Sugar in the Raw. The coarse sugar is a tribute to the more unrefined sugars common to 19th Century America. Plus, it gives the cookie a nice complimentary crunch to its chewy inside. The final product is flavorful, moist, toothsome, and worthy of a hot cup of coffee (No chicory please!).

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Day 4’s travel itinerary, should you continue on, will find us in the Bluegrass State at the early homes to a “slang-whanging stump speaker.” Hmmm…who could this be? Find out on Day 4!

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