Whose Cooking Your Food?

The first Mississippi Negro cavalry bringing into Vicksburg Confederate prisoners captured at Haines's Bluff, Courtesy of New York Public Library

During the US Civil War (1861-1865) Union and Confederate armed forces called a détente to celebrate a Thanksgiving Day. Union and Confederate cooks came together to agree on a “standard” Thanksgiving Day menu. One source described it as a “most imposing stuffed turkey, cranberry sauce, turnips, [and] pumpkin” pie. But who cooked and served the food for the troops on both sides of the battle line? Confederates used enslaved African Americans as camp cooks behind their lives and on the battlefield. About 1863, Union generals began using African-Americans in the war effort as “laborers, teamsters, [and] cooks” only.  President Abraham Lincoln later gave the order for black troops to fight as armed soldiers after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in large part as a military measure.

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