I had originally planned to post this for New Years Day but I forgot all about it. So it's a little late but better than not at all!
New Year's Day in Lee's Army
CHARLESTON [So. Carolina] MERCURY, January 5, 1865, p. 1, c. 3
[From the Richmond Examiner.]
Virginia's New Year's Greeting to the Army of Northern Virginia--The Great Dinner and the Monster Preparations--The Quantity Cooked and the Manner of its Cookery, &c.
With the view of informing the public--especially that part of it who have contributed to the fund--of the progress making in the preparations for the gastronomic ovation to the army of General Lee, as well as to sharpen the appetite of the veterans, and give them, in anticipation, a fore-taste of what is in store for them, we yesterday visited the Ballard House, which has been converted for the nonce into an immense _cuisine_ for the reception and preparation of the meats for the feast. The proprietor of the establishment, Mr. John P. Ballard, with a patriotic liberality that is worthy of all praise, has given up the whole unoccupied portion of the Ballard to the committee charged with preparing the viands with the unrestricted and unlimited use of his cooking range, boilers of great capacity, and all the other appurtenances and conveniences attached thereto, and not to be found elsewhere in the city.
To afford an idea of the magnitude of the scale upon which the cooking is conducted, we will enter a little into the details of the operations off the department. In the basement of the Ballard is located the steam power used when the house was occupied as a hotel for heating the same, but capable also of forcing the water into the cooking department for all boiling and steaming purposes. This engine is in full blast now, and is presided over by George R. Saarpe, Jr., long in the employment of Mr. Ballard in the capacity of engineer, and a capable, energetic and trusty man. On the first floor over the engine room is the mammoth brick bake oven of a capacity sufficient to bake three hundred fowls or pieces of meat every four hours, when the meat is ready at hand.
Under the direction of Mr. Thompson Tyler, the well known caterer, appointed by the committee to superintend the cooking, the entire cooking apparatus of the house has been in operation night and day since Tuesday last. The quality of flesh and fowl purchased, donated and prepared for the soldier's palate, so far, is of the most superior kind, while the quantity is enough to excite astonishment in the minds of those who were fearful that the resources of the "Old Dominion" were showing signs of exhaustion. The variety of meats embrace rounds of beef, saddles of mutton, venisons, whole shoats, hams, sausage of country make, rich with sage and redolent with pepper, turkies, geese, ducks, chickens, with vegetables, such as potatoes, turnips, large as cannon balls, and beets like oblong shells.
A dusky Ethiopian, redolent in sweat and enveloped in savoury smoke and vapour issuing from the great oven, is the presiding genius of this sombre place. In the second story is the champion kitchen range, formerly used for bread baking, but now flushed to a red heat, embrowning turkeys and other meats for the great affair. Its capacity for bread baking is for one thousand loaves per day, and this is about a fair average for meats. Here also the boilers, supplied with water from the great boiler below, are bubbling and hissing over their savoury contents of hams and other meats that are destined to spend an hour in hot water.
Mrs. McDonald, for many years the housekeeper of the Ballard, and known to the travelling public as a most kind-hearted and exemplary lady, presides over this department, with a black _retinue_ of her old imps of the _cuisine_. The whole machinery of cookery, from bottom to top, moves on like clock work as the perpetual stew goes on and the smoke of the great bake rises up in cloudy vapors. Where there is smoke there must be some fire; so where there is so much boiling, baking, stewing, and frying there must be a corresponding amount of refuse and grease extracted. Up to yesterday four or five barrels had been filled, every pound of which Mr. Tyler intends to account for to the committee, so that nothing may be lost.
The large and commodious bar room of the Ballard, once filled with liquors, is now filled with the fowl and flesh that has passed through the fiery ordeal of the oven and boiler, and now lie piled into miniature mountains awaiting the knife of the carver, and the pleasure of those for whom they were sacrificed. A guard is constantly stationed here, as well as at the cook room, for the savoury meats are too tempting to be trusted alone. Gentlemen, members of the several committees, alternate with each other at night in keeping watch and ward, and setting up with the dead turkeys, deceased porkers, departed pullets and the general hecatomb of slaughtered animals--slaughtered to make a soldier's holiday.
During yesterday a large number of visitors, including some of the first and most patriotic ladies of the city, visited the Ballard, and the ladies particularly were delighted with the way the dinner progressed, and the promise of the sight afforded of a beautiful feast.
It is estimated by good judges of provisions in bulk, that enough flesh and fowl is already cooked to feed thirty or forty thousand men, and as additions are hourly being made by purchase and donation of fresh lots, all idea of a lack of anything is dispelled, and it is believed there will be enough and to spare, sufficient to send a specimen dish to "Useless" Grant, under flag of truce, just to show him that "Old Virginia never tires," and is far from being exhausted of her cattle on a thousand hills, although he has managed to steal as many of them.
In short, the Confederacy, and particularly Virginia, is doing a "big thing," as Lincoln would say, if the Yankees had the doing of it.
The Thanksgiving dinner of the North to Grant's Ghouls was an eleven o'clock lunch to what the people propose to do for their sons, brothers, fathers and kindred in Gen. Lee's host of veterans. Already there are rumors of the hospitals being depopulated, the laggards and skulkers returning, all hastening to Gen. Lee's lines, to the end that they may partake of a nation's gratitude and a nation's pride in the dinner to the whole army, in which the commonest private will be entitled to the first helping and the best.
We understand that the dinner will not be served to the army until Monday, Sunday (New Year's) intervening. The question of the best plan of serving a dinner along a line twenty miles and more in length is under consideration by the Committee, and will be perfected to-day.
Meanwhile, those who desire to contribute money or provisions for the dinner, and have not yet done so, will have an opportunity.
Dade Battlefield
1 month ago
