☕ Coffee Chronicles: Caffeinated Bravery—McKinley’s Legendary Coffee Run at Antietam

Another Civil War coffee story

The Ohio boys had been fighting since morning, trapped in the raging battle around Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam, in September 1862. Suddenly a 19-year-old William McKinley [Co. E. 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry] appeared – under heavy fire – hauling vats of hot coffee. The men held out tin cups, gulped the brew, and started firing again. “It was like putting a new regiment in the fight,” their officer recalled. Three decades later, McKinley ran for president – in part on this singular act of caffeinated bravery on the bloodiest day of the entire Civil War.[*]

“It was the greatest coffee run in American History!” [1]

At the time, however, no one found McKinley’s act that strange. For Union soldiers (and the lucky Confederates who could scrounge some), coffee fueled the War Between the States. Soldiers drank it before marches, after marches, on patrol, during combat. In their diaries and letters, “coffee” appears more times than the words “rifle”, “cannon”, or “bullet”. Ragged veterans and tired nurses agreed with one diarist: “No body can ‘soldier’ without coffee.” [2]

Two stalwart Union soldiers with their staples - hardtack and coffee

Union troops made their coffee everywhere and with everything: with water from canteens and puddles, from brackish bays and Mississippi mud, from liquid even their horses wouldn’t drink! They cooked it over fires of plundered fence rails stolen for just that purpose, or heated mugs in scalding steam vents on naval gunboats. When times were good, coffee accompanied beefsteaks and oysters; when they were bad, it washed down raw salt-pork and maggoty hardtack. Coffee was often the last comfort troops enjoyed before entering combat and the first sign of safety for those who survived.

The Union army encouraged this love, issuing soldiers roughly 36 pounds of coffee each year. Some men ground or smashed the beans themselves, while others just brewed it ‘whole bean”.[3]

When they weren’t brewing it, they spent much of their downtime discussing the quality of the last cup. Reading their diaries and letters, one can sense the delight (and addiction) as troops gushed about a “delicious cup of black”, or fumed about “wishy-washy” coffee.

Escaped slaves who followed the Union armies, could always find work as cooks if they if they were good at “settling” the coffee – getting the grounds to sink to the bottom of the unfiltered pots. [**]

In the South, however, coffee was nonexistent. President Abraham Lincoln's blockade of the Southern seaports meant no new coffee was brought in. As a result, Confederate soldiers began making their own, using different items – like asparagus, beets, chicory root, dandelion root, acorns, persimmon seeds, corn meal, sweet potatoes, or any combination thereof – to roast, grind, and mix as a hot beverage. They called these homemade brews, “Lincoln Coffee“. [4]

A source of delicious comfort and a daily norm today, coffee was far more than that in the Civil War. It was a military necessity.

By the time William McKinley was elected President in 1897, his coffee break story had become a political asset. Told and retold in every political campaign in which he was a candidate, it eventually came to be seen – not as a foolhardy action – as an act of derring do.

There are millions of stories from The Irrepressible Conflict. This is just one of them.

Mac

If you enjoyed this topic, dive into more posts on my 'Coffee Chronicles' page to explore the quirky and essential role coffee played in the War Between the States.

[*] The bas relief (shown at the top of this post) is on a large statue at Antietam Battlefield National Park. Historian, Kathleen Logothetis Thompson describes it: “Perhaps the most prominent of the monuments around Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam is not to a regiment who fought there, or indeed any fighting at all. It is a monument to coffee. Well, that and future president William McKinley. Whether or not McKinley’s actions merit such an elaborate monument, it is certainly an interesting point on the Antietam battlefield.” [5]

There also exists ANOTHER bas relief of this same scene of McKinley’s coffee run – although the action depicted is decidedly more dramatic (shown below). This one, however, it is NOT at the Antietam Battlefield Park in MD, but on a street corner in Wilmington, DE.

Located in Brandywine Park on the corner of S. Park Drive and N. West St. in Wilmington, it is called the “William McKinley Coffee Break Monument." (Trivia note: It is the ONLY statue to President William McKinley in all of Delaware!) [Photo from RoadsideAmerica.com]

Works Cited

[1] Grinspan, John. “Opinionator: How Coffee Fueled the Civil War – July 9, 2014 “. New York Times Archive. Retrieved November 3, 2024.

[2] Ebenezer Nelson Gilpin, E.N. (1908) The last campaign: a cavalryman’s journal. Leavenworth, Kansas: Press of Ketcheson Printing Co. p. 659.

[3] Everill, Bronwen. “How Coffee Helped the Union Caffeinate Their Way to Victory in the Civil War – July/August 2024”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved November 3, 2024.

[4] Phillips, Bethaney. “Coffee alternatives that were used during the Civil War – May 27, 2021”. We Are the Mighty. Retrieved November 3, 2024.

[5] Thompson, Kathleen Logothetis. “A Story of Heroism….And Coffee – May 18, 2015.” Civil Discourse: A Civil War Era Blog. Retrieved November 3, 2024.