We recently announced Andrew F. Smith’s new book, STARVING THE SOUTH: How the North Won the Civil War, then we later described an   exciting book launch in mid-September complete with a well-researched Civil War dinner menu at the ever-fun Roger Smith Hotel, NYC.

Just one interesting North/South aspect of Smith’s talk that evening was disclosing the North singled out Southern port cities and cut off the South’s imports of food — imports that were essential because Southern planters continued to grow their profitable cotton and tobacco crops rather than switch to food crops. Smith went on to state the Confederate Army grew thin while Union soldiers ate well.

Read the New York Times’ account of the gala evening.