Here’s another contribution to our series Feeding the Revolution which looks at the roll of food in social and political movements. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army provided rations of flour or bread, beef, vegetables, and rum to the soldiers. Soldiers also obtained food in trade with country folks and “camp traders” who followed the army. Most companies had a designated baker who collected flour and money in exchange for producing regularly allotments of soft bread and hefty profits in the process. In addition to producing food for themselves and their customers, women, freemen, and enslaved Africans feed the American Revolution cooking for tens of thousands of soldiers.
