Hilarious AND Depressing!

During the Civil War, the South endured major economic hardships.  They were constantly outmaneuvered by the economically/industrially superior North.  Their trade was slowed from a boom to a slow trickle by Union blockades in their harbors as well as the increasing loss of use of the Mississippi River, made total by the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, 1863 (poetic, no?).  What is more, foreign nations refused to acknowledge them as a nation independent of the U.S. government, and the feeble currency they printed was a joke in the world market, with inadequate backing in the form of precious specie or industrial strength.  Draconian cost-cutting measures were employed to cope with these straits.  One of them was in the form of some very pathetic coffee substitutes, some descriptions of which I have conjured for your reading pleasure and outright disgust.


Here's One!


Disgusting, yet informative.


2nd half of article, for our purposes.


Even the affluent Southern aristocrats, influential politicians and ranking generals had to resort to this vile, distinctly uncaffeinated swill.  All the while, on the other side of the Mason-Dixon, what were the Northerners using for coffee?  Why, coffee, of course!  Shelby Foote once said, "that the North fought [the Civil] War with one hand behind its back."  That is, while the South put everything they had into fighting on their own territory, the Northern civilian population was comfortably removed from these battles (Sharpsburg and Gettysburg excepted) and only needed a part of their resources, while they were elsewhere able to expand and develop.  Aside from the ~300,000 dead (a hefty butcher's bill, admittedly) the North enjoyed some degree of prosperity during the war, including the foundation of M.I.T., the establishment of the state of West Virginia and, of course, the wholesale abolition of slavery.  Coffee was a mere feather in the cap of Northern prosperity