Book Quotes: Getting Supplies in an Occupied Town

From A Woman's Civil War by Cornelia Peake McDonald (page 123):

We find it so hard to live. So hard to get anything to eat. The [Union] soldiers would willingly exchange meat, sugar, and coffee with us for fresh bread or flour, but are not allowed. The prohibition, however, does not prevent me from getting Aunt Winnie to bake bread and give it to them surreptitiously as they pass on their way to the spring and receiving from them in return things which we can get in no other way.

Sometimes I sit in the dining room reading till midnight, and a low knock on the door. I get up and admit a Yankee soldier with a black camp kettle and a bundle in his hands. I take him to the pantry, lock the door on the inside and inspect the contents of the kettle and bundle. The kettle has coffee and sugar in it with a paper between to keep them apart. The bundle has a piece of fat bacon, but it is very welcome to us who have nothing but bread. I fill his kettle with flour and let him out to go his way back to the camp, while I lock myself in and hide the things. If they suspected him they would punish him as he is acting without permission.