Slang and Language of the

Civil War

Advanced Female:  A woman seeking equality with men.  Usually used when doctors were referring to nurses.

Antony Over:  A popular boys ball game where two teams would throw the ball over the house to each other.

Apple Jack:  Also Apple Brandy.  Distilled from fermented cider.  Seven days before their Appomattox surrender, 500 ragged and barefoot soldiers of the Army of North Virginia received a ration of Apple Brandy to wash down their meal of rancid pork and worm riddled peas.

Bakers Cake:  A type of sponge cake laced with ammonia to make it light.  It was covered with sweet colored icing.

Baled Hay:  A Union nickname for the dehydrated vegetables, because of the suspicion that straw and grass were ground and added to the vegetables.

Barefoot Coffee:  A slang for black coffee.

Bark Juice:  An amusing name for liquor.

Bean Hole:  In Union camps, especially those with soldiers from lumbering regions, a hole in shich a covered iron pot of pork and beans was covered with hot embers.

Blue Mass:  A mixture of mercury and chalk given by camp doctors in "blue pills" to cure constipation.

Bogus:  The name of a liquor composed of rum mixed with molasses.

Bully Soup:  A common hot cereal served in Union camps.  It was a boiled mixture of crushed hardtack and cornmeal with some added ginger and wine.

Chain Lightning:  A nick name for poor cheap liquors.

Chewer of the Weed:  A person preferred chewing tobacco instead of a pipe or cigarette.

Chicken Water:  A watery soup containing the essence of chicken, often served in Confederate hospitals by the local ladies.

Chigger:  The redbug.  Soldiers found that salt water bathing removed them and some union soldiers layered bacon on their bodies to ward them off.

Clay Eater:  A southerner, especially a poor white or black who ate clay for its nutritional value.

Corn Cob Soda:  A substitute for bicarbonate of soda.  It was used in the south during the blockade to make bread rise.  The ashes from red corn cobs were burned and the ashes collected in jars and water was added.  A teaspoonful or tablespoon of this mixture was then used in bread making to make bread rise.

Embalmed Beef:  A derogatory nick name given by Union soldiers to canned beef, an unusual item issued in their rations.