Up until World War One most soldiers who used tobacco either chewed it or carried a clay pipe to smoke it with. There was the occasional cigar, but a 'chaw of tobacky' or pipe tobacco was less expensive. Most of America was rural in the mid-19th Century, and men grew what they needed. There were no name-brand consumer products sold, and no national advertising campaigns. A few Civil War era soldiers smoked cigarettes, like the two that I have pictured below, but the vast majority didn't realize how well suited this form of tobacco was for warfare. These fellows, who are soldiers or veterans, were probably from New York City, which is considered the birthplace of the factory-made cigarette industry in the US. Hand rolled cigarettes were manufactured there during the 1850's by Chinese immigrants who kept stands on street corners where they would roll cigarettes all day long. Dressed in long silk robes, felt shoes, and with their long hair queues dangling, these early tobacconists would advertise their harsh Chinese tobacco cigarettes by blowing smoke rings. The most adventuresome of New York's dandies were thus enticed into buying the novel cigarettes. With their beaver top hats, monocles, rattan canes, pointed shoes, plus the decidedly foreign cigarette, these equally exotic urban gentlemen began a trend that eventually became one of America's four great monopolies.

In a McClure’s Magazine interview, General Frederick D. Grant stated that his father, Ulysses Grant, began smoking cigars at West Point because it was against regulations. According to his son, during the 1846 War with Mexico Ulysses Grant smoked light cigars and cigarettes. As a Civil War general, Grant was given thousands of cigars when it was learned that he carried a stump of a cigar during the fall of Fort Donelson, the first major victory for the North. General Grant's reference to his father's use of cigarettes is the earliest that your author has found pertaining to tobacco in this form smoked in the US.