John D. Billings, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts battery of light artillery in the war of the rebellion

The long continued absence of the paymaster, whom we had not seen since our departure from home, was the theme of frequent speculation and the source of much of the grumbling. Our food, too, was not always of the most appetizing kind, and when, on being supplied with flour, we, in the simplicity of our hearts, traded it at the bakery in the town for bread, judge of our dismay on being informed that we had committed a crime of whose enormity we could be little aware. We might cook the flour ourselves (an easy task without stoves or ovens!), or we might hire it cooked, (another easy task with our pay nearly six months in arrears!), or we might leave it undrawn and allow its value to accumulate in that mysterious investment known as the Company Fund,—a bourne from whence no profits ever returned, certainly not to the members of the Tenth Massachusetts Battery, and whose unwritten history would make entertaining reading,— but to swap it off for bread was a heinous offence indeed; and in the interest of the Fund, whose amount was to be divided at the end of the war, so much per capita coming as a kind of endowment, the swapping should cease.

The scarcity of tobacco, through the absence of its purchasing power, acted on the nerves of some; and the slow progress of the war spread a gloom over others, who were ready to make common cause with the copperheads in their discussions. There was probably more downright grumbling in our camps at Poolsville than during our entire subsequent experience, when greater hardships had begotten a spirit of greater patience, and when we had become more accustomed to the constraints that military service entails.