Part one
For the United States military, coffee is and has been the beverage of choice! Why? Coffee is often a pleasant reminder of home when soldiers are away for training at a base or at duty overseas.
But the interest in coffee for American, began at midnight December 16, 1773, when rallying colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of Great Britain’s “taxation without representation”. From that historic moment, the birth of a new nation and American’s devotion to coffee emerged. Since the Boston Tea Party on that faithful night, the taste for coffee would grow strong over time.
Coffee houses became the center of formidable political discussions prior to the American Revolution.
During the Civil War, coffee was the only fresh food troops on the battlefield could get. It might even have been the difference maker in the outcome of the war, if morale means anything at all.
In the South , a pound of coffee could run you upwards of $1000 in today’s dollars. Confederate troops desperately used things like roasted corn, rye, okra seeds, sweet potatoes, acorns, and peanuts as substitutes. One substitute, Chicory, is still popular in New Orleans.
