If you read mainstream historical works on the American Civil War, you’ve probably encountered lines like this:
“The Confederates held another advantage: their soldiers had been using guns and traveling through the country all their lives, unlike their northern counterparts, who held factory and clerical positions.”
This is debateable, but what has recently been revealed is that a by far more profound cultural difference separating the North and the South was the order of introducing cereal and milk into the bowl. Indeed, the Yanks’ habit of pouring milk before cereal nullified their industrial advantage in the early years of the war and retarded overall progress. It was only Grant’s emphatic shift in pouring order (not Lincoln’s conciliatory attitude toward reintegration with the South) that ended the war and truly united a broken country. Join us at MilkAfterCereal over the next few weeks as we examine the history of the American Civil War in terms of cereal consumption via a series of ongoing posts.