The nineteenth-century "Kentucky breakfast" was popular among militia colonels on "muster days." It consisted of a quart of whiskey, a beefsteak, and a bulldog that ate the steak.
Until 1850, each Kentucky county was required to hold military training for all men ages 20 to 45. This continued until the new Kentucky Constitution of 1850 (the third), which included no language for the continuance of the State Militia. The Quakers and temperance crusaders played a part in this.
A few years after the Second War with England, the War of 1812, the militias began to deteriorate, or at least the training did. These musters were a farce during this era of the so-called Cornstalk Militia (because few men owned guns).
But muster days became serious large-scale socializing, picnicking, horse trading, horse racing, and betting. In Muhlenberg, races were held at Russell Old Field, southeast of Greenville. That is, until the preachers and churchgoers closed it down, for a few years, after the murder of Isom Sheffield (see below).
Musters were also days of severe drinking and fist-to-skull fighting. In 1842, Bob Jenkins murdered Isom Sheffield after Sheffield hit Jenkins with his sumac stick (a better training weapon for mustering than a cornstalk). The two musterers had a long-standing argument over siding with or against the so-called Regulators, a vigilante group of citizens who patrolled an area of several counties (Muhlenberg, Christian, and Todd) in the 1830s-1840s, keeping personal morality in order. Or so they tried.
So, after the demise of the Cornstalk Militia and its required "training," the 1850s fell into more sedate and bucolic times. That is until the approach of the Civil War revived the militias with their mustering with a few guns and lots of cornstalks and sumac sticks.
The actual fighting, with real guns, in the Civil War killed some 750,000 men (if we include death from diseases). They were little trained for this.
And the antebellum Regulators had given up their "regulating" after several decades of using violence to improve public morality. It did not take.
The severe drinking and fighting never stopped. For this, many men of Muhlenberg and other counties had more specific and practical training. And bulldogs ate steak at least several times each year.
Source: Richard G. Stone, Jr., A Brittle Sword: The Kentucky Militia,1776-1912 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,1977).
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