Authentic Hardtack
By Craig L Barry
February/March 2009 Civil War News

About a year ago it was widely reported by The Boston Globe that the G.H. Bent Cookie Company of Milton, Mass., suppliers of what is considered an “authentic” hardtack, was being sold with the building rumored to be converted into either an office park or a delicatessen.

The buyer was supposedly a catering company that paid the full $700,000 asking price for the historical property without haggling and with the deal to be finalized in a few weeks.

As a result, I placed an order for a case of G.H. Bent hardtack to hold things over until another source was found, or, as a last resort, a recipe to make my own.

A bit of background is in order on the enterprise, as well as an update on the company’s status.

G.H. Bent Company's original product (208 years ago) was a dense flour and water biscuit that needed no refrigeration and was a mainstay originally on sea voyages and later of Civil War troops. It is still ordered from Bent by Civil War aficionados for reenactments, college history departments and campers.

Originally, though, hardtack was probably the single most castigated item of sustenance provided by the government in the form of rations. Desiccated vegetables would no doubt run a close second.

In 1861, Civil War soldiers called them “tooth-dullers, molar-breakers, sheet iron crackers, reserve ammo, dried mummies,” but not by the term “hardtack,” which came into usage later. “Tack” is British slang for “food.”

According to John Billings, writing in Hardtack and Coffee: Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life, “The name hardtack seems not to have been in general use among the men in the Western armies…. For some weeks before the battle of Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, where the lamented Lyon fell, the 1st Iowa Regiment had been supplied with a very poor quality of hard bread (they were not then [1861] called hardtack).”

The original purveyor of “water crackers” that began in 1801 was not G.H. Bent; rather it was Josiah Bent and the Bent Cracker Company. Bent was a retired sea captain who adapted the recipe for “sea biscuits” into something more palatable for general consumption.

This “hard bread” or “hard cracker” was the product which later supplied the Federal government during the Civil War. The company was purchased by NABISCO in the 1880s.

In 1891 Josiah Bent’s grandson, George Henry Bent, started a competing business, which became one of the largest cookie manufacturers and wholesalers in the country. The G.H. Bent Company eventually drove the original Bent Cracker Company out of business. The slogan on the G.H. Bent Web site stating “Bakery Specialties since 1801” is a bit disingenuous.

Mining that same vein, you will see wooden hardtack boxes in camp and at Civil War living history demos painted with the title “G.H. Bent hardtack” which, of course, would be anachronistic for any Civil War historical re-creation since the company was not in business then under that name.

The sale of the G.H. Bent Company fell through and another offer had not been tendered and accepted as of a recent phone call. Bent family members have not operated the bakery since the 1940s, and hardtack is currently accounts for only about 2 percent of its total business.

There is a strong possibility that the hardtack piece will be broken off (no pun intended) and operated as a separate entity under another name. For information about the Bent company write info@bentscookiefactory.com or visit www.bentscookiefactory.com.