Now, you know were you to start a nice hindquarter of beef, which had to pass through all these hands, and every commissary take a choice steak and roast off it, there would be but little ever reach the company, and the poor man among the Johnnies had to feast like bears in winter--they had to suck their paws--but the rich Johnnies who had money could go to almost any of the gentlemen denominated commissaries (they ought to have been called cormorants) and buy of them much nice fat beef and meal and flour and sugar and coffee and nice canvassed hams, etc.

I have done it many times.

They were keeping back the rations that had been issued to the army, and lining their own pockets.

But when General Johnston took command, this manipulating business played out.

Rations would "spile" on their hands.