Comments

Ersatz in the Confederacy – When the Shit Really Hit the Fan — 16 Comments

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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”

  5. By the way, Ms. Massey, who wrote this book is an absolute hero. What an example of how feminism SHOULD be.

  6. 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.

  7. To Summer,

    Who is “they” and why would “they” want to do that?  Happy cows provide more milk than sad cows.

  8. 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.

  9. “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)

     

     

  10. 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.