I'm not going to call BS on the above statement. I'm going to let a Yankee soldier, who was there, do it for me. The following is not Southern propaganda. It's from the regimental history of the 47th Indiana.
"We found a dead Confederate lying on his back, his outspread fingers stretched across the stock of the rifle lying at his side. He was one of Rogers' Texans. Fifty-seven of them we had found lying in the ditch of Battery Robinette. I covered his face with the slouch hat still on his head and took off the haversack slung to his neck that it might not swing as we carried him to his sleeping-chamber, so cool and quiet and dark after the savage tumult and dust and smoke of that day of horror.
"Empty, isn't it?" asked the soldier working with me. I put my hand in it and drew forth a handful of roasted acorns. I showed them to my comrade. "That's all," I said.
"And he's been fighting like a tiger for two days on that hog's forage," he commented. We gazed at the face of the dead soldier with new feelings. By and by my comrade said:
"I hate this war and the thing that caused it. I was taught to hate slavery before I was taught to hate sin. I love the Union as I love my mother - better. I think this is the wickedest war that was ever waged in the world. But this" -- and he took some of the acorns from my hand -- "this is what I call patriotism."
"Comrade," I said, "I'm going to send these home to the Peoria Transcript. I want them to tell the editor this war won't be ended until there is a total failure of the acorn crop. I want the folks at home to know what manner of men we are fighting."
That was early in my experience as a soldier. I never changed my opinon of the cause of the Confederacy. I was more and more devoted to the Union as the war went on. But I never questioned the sincerity of the men in the Confederate ranks. I realized how dearly a man must love his own section who would fight for it on parched acorns."
From "The Drums of the 47th," Robert Burdette, pp.127-29.