Civil War Sutlers: Battlefield Merchants, Brass Tokens and Vice Dens

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A sutler, or victualler, was a civilian merchant who followed an army and sold provisions from a wagon or canvas tent, often close to the front lines. This episode traces the trade from the Dutch word soetelaar, meaning a drudge or scullion, related to a root meaning to foul or sully, to its role in the American Civil War and beyond. Sutlers needed a license from the post or army commander, set up within army limits or just off the defense line, and were subject to military rules on what they sold and at what price.

Because commanders needed sutlers to keep soldiers supplied with coffee, sugar, tobacco and alcohol, rules were often loosely enforced, and sutlers held a monopoly on comforts in camps far from towns. During the Civil War, when coins were scarce, they minted brass and copper sutler tokens redeemable only at their own wagons. Between 1865 and 1890, at permanent forts in the American West, sutler stores just outside post boundaries became centers of gambling, drinking and prostitution. Today the word survives among Civil War reenactment vendors and in the British Army's Honourable Artillery Company.

• Sutler wagons loaded with sugar, coffee and whiskey were prime targets for enemy raiding parties.
• Dealings with a sutler feature in MacKinlay Kantor's 1955 novel Andersonville.
• Soldiers sometimes handed over a whole paycheck for a sack of tokens, locking them into one merchant much like a company store.
• Commanders tolerated frontier vice dens because unbroken discipline in isolated posts risked desertion and mutiny.
• At its Finsbury headquarters in London, the Honourable Artillery Company calls its all-ranks bar the Sutling Room, and in the field it uses a Sutling Tent or Sutling Lorry.