https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-coffee-helped-the-union-caffeinate-their-way-victory-civil-war-180984502/Bronwen Everill
July/August 2024
Ten months into the Civil War, the Union was short on a crucial supply, the absence of which threatened to sap the fighting strength of the Northern army: coffee. This critical source of energy and morale was considered almost as vital as gunpowder; Union General Benjamin Butler ordered his soldiers to carry coffee with them always, saying it guaranteed success: “If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold” your position.
Luckily for the Union, Stephen Allen Benson, president of the relatively young Republic of Liberia, had a plan. In February 1862, he sent a message to Americans in the North: “In Liberia there are about 500,000 coffee trees planted … [and] there is now more coffee exported from Liberia than in any previous period.” Born in Maryland to free Black American parents, Benson had emigrated with his family to the West African colony at the age of 6. By the outbreak of the Civil War, in April 1861, he was one of the largest coffee farmers in Liberia—and he hoped that this new country, to which several thousand Black Americans had fled to escape American racial animus, could provide an essential fuel in the Union’s own fight against slavery. A ship that left the port at Monrovia in August 1862 carried 6,000 pounds of premium African coffee. It was the first major shipment to the Union—and would prove vital in the North’s victory.
Coffee replaced tea as the U.S. drink of choice around the time of the American Revolution. From the moment patriots tossed chests of tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773, drinking coffee—and boycotting tea—became a sure sign of loyalty to the cause of independence. Pretty soon, the country was obsessed: By the 1830s, coffee consumption was outstripping tea by five to one.
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