All sorts of substitutes were used; grain, roasted and ground, being chiefly used as a substitute for coffee.

Hitherto the South had been principally occupied in raising cotton and tobacco, depending chiefly upon the North for food; and it was necessary now to abandon the cultivation of products for which they had no sale, and to devote the land to the growth of maize and other crops for food.
By the time that the long period of inaction came to a close, Vincent had completely recovered his strength, and was ready to rejoin the ranks as soon as the order came from Colonel Stuart, who had promised to send for him directly there was a prospect of active service.
One of Vincent's first questions, as soon as he became convalescent, was whether a letter had been received from Tony.

It had come, he was told, among the last batch of letters that crossed the frontier before the outbreak of hostilities, and Mrs.Wingfield had, as he had requested, opened it.

As had been arranged, it had merely contained Tony's address at a village near Montreal; for Vincent had warned him to say nothing in the letter, for there was no saying, in the troubled times which were approaching when Tony left, into whose hands it might fall.
Vincent had, before starting, told his mother of the share he had taken in getting the negro safely away, and Mrs.Wingfield, brought up, as she had been, to regard those who assisted runaway slaves to escape in the same light as those who assisted to steal any other kind of property, was at first greatly shocked when she heard that her son had taken part in such an enterprise, however worthy of compassion the slave might be, and however brutal the master from whose hands he had fled.

However, as Vincent was on the point of starting for the war to meet danger, and possibly death, in the defense of Virginia, she had said little, and that little was in reference rather to the imprudence of the course he had taken than to what she regarded in her own mind as its folly, and indeed its criminality.
She had, however, promised that as soon as Tony's letter arrived she would, if still possible, forward Dinah and the child to him, supplying her with money for the journey, and giving her the papers freeing her from slavery which Vincent had duly signed in the presence of a justice.
When the letter came, however, it was already too late.