Transportation of Food: Ships: The Civil War and Afterward

During the Civil War ships played a very different role in the foods that Americans ate. When the war began President Abraham Lincoln declared a blockade of Southern ports; its intent was to prevent the South from exporting cotton and tobacco and importing military equipment and supplies from abroad. In addition, the blockade cut off imported food to the South. Such luxury items as wine, coffee, tea, and chocolate largely disappeared from Southern tables, although blockade runners did import some of these items, and wealthy Southerners could acquire such goods even up to the last few months of the war. Meanwhile, although considerable food was grown and raised in the Confederacy during the war, there was no way to transport it easily from where it was grown to where it was needed because the blockade prevented these goods from being transported along the coast and rivers. As a result, civilians in many Southern cities, as well as some Confederate troops, suffered from malnutrition and starvation during the war. It was the lack of food due to the blockade that contributed to the Confederacy’s defeat in 1865.