Ersatz in the Confederacy – When the Shit Really Hit the Fan
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Home Front by Mary Elizabeth Massey. If you really want to understand what a crisis is, this book will make it very clear to you.
So what is an ersatz, it is an item made or used as a substitute, typically an inferior one, for something else. In other words when you don’t have coffee you use roasted chicory root for instance. But if you read this book you will see it was much deeper and traumatic than that for those that lived though this time.
We toss around the term, “shit hit the fan” a lot in the prepper space. Consider though that from the day this nation was founded until today, there has never been a time in America where the shit hit the fan as hard as it did for the south in the war between the states. Great depression you say? Hold on and read this book.
The northern strategy to win the war quickly went from a full on military over run (which didn’t work) to a strangle hold approach. The north had a naval advantage and control of rail and greater ability to communicate with things like the new telegraph system.
Even in the parts of the south were a musket ball never flew in anger, suffering was great. As one reviewer of this book put it,
“During the WW2, men and women on the home-front were encouraged to “Use it up,wear it out, make do, or do without.” After reading this book, however, the men and women of the Southern home-front did that and more.
.
From 1941 to 1945, butchers may have been asked for a free soup bone for the dog, but as the Civil war dragged on, it wasn’t unusual for a Confederate butcher to hang dressed rat in the window…when one was available.”
Talk about hard times! And this book doesn’t just tell you what they went through, it tells you what they did to get through it. If you are worried about stability and long term security of our society. And if you feel that true hardship may again fall our people, this book is required reading.
Additionally if you just have an interest in real history beyond dates and facts you should read this book. It tells the real story of the suffering of civilians in time of war. Our nation has largely been insulated from the direct effect of war since the end of The Civil War in 1865. Hence the American people have a highly disconcerting tolerance for war. Perhaps a reminder of what it is like for those not carrying powder and shot may alleviate that a bit?
Additionally as preppers we should be keen on knowing how people actually survived a true multi year crisis that included a hot war zone in their back yard, advancing and resource taking enemy troops and shortages of anything and everything necessary for survival and comfort. If this sounds like something you would like to know more about check out Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Home Front today.
Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
P.S. – This book was first published in the 50s and reintroduced in the early 90s. I guess that is why no kindle version exists. I have linked to the soft cover, but if you prefer a hard cover version, they have that option as well.
Excellent angle , energizes the thinking process.
This is a good book with a very interesting perspective. Something to ponder: if the blockade was so effective back then, can you imagine what it would be like today to have all supplies cut off? It would be pretty damn brutal!
Anyway, it’s worth the read.
well said………as we all know they are getting ready for just that all over the U.S. just a matter of time. You so nailed it in your comment.
Jack, I came across this book many years ago. Since I love reading and look for books that pertain to real survival it was a choice I was glad I made. Well written …It makes you almost feel like you are living their lives along with them. Forget the survival garbage books written by people today to make money and never had to do a thing they wrote about to survive. This book is real life and real death and real survival. We as Americans are spoiled and fat, lazy people. Yes even those of us who claim we are poor when in fact compared to the rest of the world we are well off. So before you start your day off complaining how bad you have it, read this book and you will see things so much differently. Let your kids read it so they have an understanding of not just history but that history does repeat itself and one day they too may be characters in someones book about a bad time in in their own history. Thank you Jack for reminding me of this great book.
Also don’t forget the Foxfire books for giving one a perspective on the lean times and ways people grew their own food, made stuff, and formed true community in yesteryear.
Another good read for this topic that is more recent is this book. Looking forward to reading Jack recommendation also.
https://archive.org/details/Blockade-TheDiaryOfAnAustrianMiddle-classWoman1914-1924
Man, just finished this book. Great book. Very glad Jack recomended it. easy to read too.
Need an argument for self-sufficiency? Here you go from the very FIRST page: “A lady writing twenty years after cessation of hostilities, remembered that the great fault of the Confederacy lay in its dependence of outside supply ‘for everything from hair-pin to a toothpick, and cradle to a coffin”
By the way, Ms. Massey, who wrote this book is an absolute hero. What an example of how feminism SHOULD be.
Greetings, I was shocked by how dependent the people of the South were on imports for life’s essentials! They didn’t have seeds, leather, mules, cows, or horses. This is a well documented book not just some ones opinion. I rate this book as a must read for any person who thinks of themselves as a prepper.
To Summer,
Who is “they” and why would “they” want to do that? Happy cows provide more milk than sad cows.
I can see no relevance to this comment at all.
Ok, I’ll expand and rephrase.
Why would “they,” in summer’s reply to Chad’s comment, “…who are getting ready for just that all over the U.S…” want to cut us off from all supplies?
If summer is referring to the government as “they,” what could they possibly have to gain from doing that? The last thing they want is a pissed off, hungry united population all pointing their anger and frustration at them. They want us right where we are now. Fat, dumb, happy and productive enough that they can keep harvesting from our labors. The only conspiracy is the constant spoon feeding of BS for us to worry or argue with each other about.
And yea, I do realize that I sometimes make leaps in lines of reasoning that can be difficult or impossible to follow without explanation.
“During the WW2, men and women on the home-front were encouraged to “Use it up,wear it out, make do, or do without.” After reading this book, however, the men and women of the Southern home-front did that and more.
From 1941 to 1945, butchers may have been asked for a free soup bone for the dog, but as the Civil war dragged on, it wasn’t unusual for a Confederate butcher to hang dressed rat in the window…when one was available.”
Check out a BBC comedy called ‘Faulty Towers the rat’
(not very relavlant, I know, but it is very funny)
Rats are very bland tasting.
So you better store salt, pepper and herbs.
I don’t know about eating rats. I shot one dead once with a .22 because I feared a ricochet inside of my old 1955 metal travel trailer that was being used as a storage shed. Luckily, the rat was facing me when I pulled the trigger so that the bullet had its body length to absorb it, otherwise I would have had a hole to caulk. I threw its dead carcass in the yard hoping that my chickens would eat it, but they all just gawked at it from a short distance. It decomposed to almost nothing in a days time. I have never seen something decompose so quickly! I imagine that our stomach acids to dissolve it into nothing within an hour or 2.