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Food, Farming, and the Domestic Economy

Introduction

New focus on food, food production, and accessibility today has led historians to rethink how people have eaten and farmed in the past. Wartime Kentucky is a particularly interesting site to explore 1860s foodways and food economies. The state's rural areas and farm families were disrupted by military recruitment of white and later enslaved African American men, not to mention the devastation that both regular armies and irregular bands of guerrillas brought to individual farms and farming communities. Urban food production and distribution systems were strained as overall production dropped, the military consumed significant resources, and new populations of soldiers, immigrants, and refugees strained the infrastructure of Kentucky cities. Individuals who had taken agricultural products and refined them into flour or distilled them into alcohol for the market faced new wartime regulations and taxes that infringed on prewar business models. Below are some selections from Civil War Governors documents that suggest themes in need of deeper research.

Food, Farming, and the Domestic Economy