Women's Revolt in Rowan County

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The Confederate government offered no direct aid but nonetheless established a small quartermaster station at the North Carolina Railroad Depot to store supplies and equipment before delivery to the army in Salisbury. A sulfuric acid plant was built adjacent to a weapons factory, and the cotton mill southeast of Salisbury was eventually used as a prisoner-of-war camp. These government installations provided some individuals with a means of support.

Supply trains that headed north returned with Rowan County's sick and invalid soldiers. To minister to the wounded who passed through Salisbury, citizens established the Wayside Hospital in July 1862. Under the direction of Dr. Marcellus Whitehead and Matron Jesse McCallum, civilians and soldiers contributed food, clothing, time, and money to patients. The wives and daughters of Salisbury's merchants and officials organized themselves into shifts to work as nurses at the hospital. Few, if any, came in from the countryside to aid with the hospital. In addition to individual contributions, hospital supporters held fairs in town to raise money. This effort represented an admirable marshaling of resources and organizational skill but only for the ultimate benefit of a very specific group--wounded and sick soldiers. Those resources and skills later went untapped when Rowan's desperate citizens cried out for help.

In 1862, as food prices rose and material shortages became increasingly commonplace, the need for organized relief for the poor also climbed. At the same time more men joined the army and left the county. The First Conscription Act, passed in April 1862 by the Confederate Congress, spurred a new wave of enlistments in Rowan County. Recruits filled five new companies between March and July 1862, while large numbers of men enlisted in the four already established companies. This wave of enlistments took at least 524 more men away from home and into the army.

The age and marital status of the 1862 volunteers differed markedly from those who had enlisted the previous year. The 112 recruits in Company C, Fifty-seventh North Carolina, averaged twenty-seven years old and represented many more communities within the county, as residents of Back Creek, Miranda, and China Grove stood alongside men from Salisbury and Gold Hill. Communities lost a greater proportion of their heads of households with the volunteers' departure. For instance, of Company C, Fifty-seventh North Carolina's forty-seven volunteers who can be identified in the 1860 census, twenty-six were married--55 percent, compared with 18 percent of married men who had marched away the previous year. Most of these married men had one or more dependent children ranging from infants to adolescents. Even the unmarried men who enlisted had evidently provided support for dependent families. Of twenty-one unmarried men, fourteen lived with elderly parents or in a household without a father. The occupational profile of this company was vastly different as well. Sixty-six percent listed themselves as farmers, and 9 percent were day laborers or farm hands (designations for children or elderly parents). Only eight were young enough to require support from their parents, and only one, James S. Maloney, a shoemaker, did not work in agriculture in some way.

The departure of these men meant the loss of not only the best source of labor in their households but also families' most experienced link to the public world. For instance, Miranda, a small community of one hundred households, gave four men to Company E, Fifty-seventh North Carolina, in July 1862. The relationship between two enlistees, Joseph and John W. Miller, is unknown but is suggested by their surnames and the proximity of their homes--three doors apart. In Gold Hill, brothers Crawford and Calvin Holshouser, each a head of his own household, lived next door to each other before enlisting in the same company. And in China Grove, four men who enlisted lived within fifteen households of each other. These patterns represented a familial and spatial density not found in the recruiting patterns of 1861.

Once these men had enlisted in the army they suffered the routine shortages and deprivations of military life in 1862. Levi Fesperman, a private in the Sixth North Carolina, wrote to Caleb Hampton of the Back Creek neighborhood, asking him to gather food and send it to the army, "for you know nothing about hard times to what we do." Lack of food and pay shortages caused discouragement within the army. These shortages, coupled with conscription, impressment, and other unpopular governmental measures, caused the morale of North Carolina's soldiers to fall; a few even lost the will to fight. The most telling sign of this disaffection was the effort of soldiers to discourage civilians from joining the army. Felix Miller, a soldier from neighboring Davie County, wrote to his wife, "...if you can manage to get Levi in to anything to keep him out of this war to try to do so." Civilians needed little encouragement to stay at home. J.B. Harris, an unmarried merchant in Gold Hill, recognized that county officers were exempt from the draft and noted gloomily: "The Conscript Law goes into operation soon. We are all to be enrolled on 8th July & will have to report ourselves on the 15th inst. [Tell] R to find a substitute. Tell Mr. F to try and get me one at almost any price not more than $1000." Frustration with conditions at the front also influenced the mood at home, and desertions by Rowan County soldiers began in 1862. Advertisements placed by infantry captains listing deserters and offering rewards for their return began to appear in the Watchman. Soldiers with dependents at home were most susceptible to the lure of desertion. For instance, on August 11, 1862, captains in the Forty-second North Carolina submitted to the paper the names of Henry Morgan, Henry Basinger, John Fulinweder, William Hess, and others. Morgan, Basinger, and Fulinweder might have been unable to endure the rigors of campaigning at the age of forty-three, forty-five, and thirty-five, respectively, but more important, all three had wives and young children at home. While Confederate authorities searched for absent men, many women protected deserters by providing food and refuge from government agents.

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All soldiers suffered hardships, but many succumbed to disease. The winter of 1861-62 witnessed 109 deaths of Rowan County men from disease. Meanwhile, Rowan County men were becoming increasingly involved in combat. The fighting around Richmond during the spring and summer of 1862 claimed the lives of sixty-six local soldiers, and fifteen more died at the autumn Battle of Sharpsburg. Fredericksburg and other actions that year in Virginia claimed another twenty-eight men. In the campaigns of 1862 Rowan County lost 228 men, approximately 20 percent of the soldiers it sent to the army. In addition to deaths, ninety-nine men were wounded and sixteen captured.

Too often, consequences of battles are given simply in numbers of men killed and military advantages gained or lost. However, the death of a husband and its immediate and long-term impact on his family has been largely overlooked. Links between a soldier and his home were critical to both. Food, clothing, moral encouragement, and the ever-watchful eye of the community were directed to the soldier, while he, in turn, provided a focus for patriotic zeal and, through visits and sending letters and money, a source of familial guidance and support. In addition to anxiety and grief, the loss of a soldier destroyed this focus and could lead to bereaved families becoming unsupportive of the war effort.

The death of a husband or son often sent the next of kin, especially those in perilous situations, in search of monetary support beyond the helping hands of family. The most immediate source of money and property was the estate of the deceased. Application made by the widow to the county court for a year's provisions, or dower, allowed her access to one-third of her husband's estate before division by creditors. The estates of Rowan's 1862 enlistees averaged only $2,464. The number of widows who made applications dramatizes the immediate impact of the high number of deaths in the 1862 summer campaigns and also points to the period in which widespread need began to settle over Rowan County's communities.

Prior to the war, elderly widows petitioned the county court for a year's provisions at the rate of about five per quarterly session. The onset of the war, however, caused an immediate increase in that rate, and the widows were generally younger. The eight widows who applied to the August 1861 session of the county court were in their thirties and each had one to three children. Soldiers' wives or not, the increasing number of families in need caused a greater strain on the resources of the community. The following year, the August 1862 court received applications from sixteen women with an average age of twenty-seven and two children each. However, the true cost of the summer campaigns of 1862 can be seen in the February session of the 1863 county court. During that session fifty-three women applied for a year's provisions.The average age of these women remained high--twenty-nine--reflecting the higher age of recruits during 1862. Again, the widows averaged two children each. The husbands of the February 1863 applicants had enlisted primarily in early 1862, in regiments formed under the threat of conscription. Interestingly, applications for a year's provisions in February 1863 reflected the 1862 geographic enlistment pattern as well. Twenty-five widows lived in Rowan County's back-country communities. Back Creek, Bringles, and Deep Well, each with less than fifty households, had widows who applied. Four women from four different households with seven dependent children applied from Miranda, which had one hundred households.

A deceased soldier's bounty and back pay represented another potential source of support for his family. Soldiers often received bounty money upon enlistment from the county, the state, and the Confederate government that could amount to several hundred dollars. With proof of a son's or a husband's death, the next of kin traveled to the courthouse to place a claim on any uncollected money. At least fifty mothers, wives, and sisters of Rowan County's dead soldiers placed claims during the autumn and winter of 1862.

In some cases needy women could also rely on traditional sources of community support. The Reverend Samuel Rothrock, pastor of the Organ Church and exempt from service, frequently traveled to the army to deliver letters and packages and returned with the bodies of Rowan's dead soldiers. Rothrock recorded in his diary on numerous occasions that he aided widows with their applications for provisions, brought in their hay, and made shoes for his barefooted parishioners.

The county court's efforts at relief for soldiers' wives were limited during the first half of the war. The warden of the poor continued his work, expending $1,609 in 1862. However, as an extension of the antebellum system, it is unclear who received this money. The first effort to directly address the growing wartime shortages suffered by Rowan County's citizens came in May 1862 when the court appointed Salisbury merchant James McCubbins salt commissioner. The court instructed McCubbins to purchase salt with funds raised on county bonds and distribute it equitably, with preference to families of soldiers. McCubbins actually expended less cash in the fulfillment of his duty than the warden of the poor; however, he probably reached more people. Needy families reported to McCubbins' home or mill on appointed days and received an allotment of salt. The commissioner's report for 1862 indicated that he distributed salt to "797 families of soldiers." Salt was also given to 1,419 other families without soldiers. Of 354 bushels, the citizens paid for slightly less than half, while the remainder was given away. Altogether, McCubbins reported having aided 2,216 families with approximately one-half bushel per family. A "Special Committee," also appointed in May 1862, reported the expenditure of fifty-one hundred dollars in "aiding and assisting the families of soldiers now in the service, or who died in the service, whether soldiers were Volunteers, conscripts or drafted men." It is unknown how this money was spent.

Rowan County's slight expenditures in 1862 predated larger efforts by many other North Carolina counties in 1863. Rowan's fifty-one-hundred-dollar disbursement paled in comparison to the $45,866.85 Orange County spent on its poor. Some within the county actually failed to notice the efforts made by McCubbins and the Special Commission. In February 1863, a full year after poor relief began, the Watchman stated, "It has been suggested...that the County Court should appoint a Commissioner to buy and sell provisions for the relief of the poor in and around town."

McCubbins' unheralded work failed to avert anxiety about food shortages early in 1863, and a general sense of lawlessness and despair spread through the countryside. Robbery of food and household items, condemned as common thievery in early 1862, were recognized as the increasingly bold acts of a desperate populace by 1863. In February 1863, the Watchman reported that a few citizens iized as the increasingly bold acts of a desperate populace by 1863. In February 1863, the Watchman reported that a few citizens in the countryside aided neighbors by providing cheap food and help with tending their crops, but these Samaritans were fewer than thought necessary. A soldier in the Fifty-seventh North Carolina agreed. In a letter to the Watchman, he described scenes of home-front starvation that wives related to husbands in the ranks. "One woman writes that she is barefooted and can get no shoes on any pretense; that she has not a stick of wood to burn, and that good people of town will not give her a stick with out the money; that her children often cry from cold and hunger, and all that she can do is mingle her tears with those of the little ones and pray for a brighter to-morrow, and what can a husband do?" He stated that "one should shudder...when it is considered that [such scenes] came from a town boasting the wealth and influence of Salisbury." Advertisements appeared in the Watchman offering salt for barter. Caleb Hampton wrote his nephews in the army that "We have some talk in old Rowan about peace. But that has very often been the case and would suit us a great deal Better if such talk would be over and peace...[restored]. No news to tell you at this time only plenty of work and but few people remains in this part of the world."

Indeed, the loss of labor, even of a single man, to the army was acutely felt by a large number of people. Mill owner Edward Rufty appealed to the Watchman that his miller had been conscripted and the mill by necessity would shut down, "leaving 125 women and children who will suffer."

As the war continued, prices of food and other commodities rapidly inflated on the open market. The county court offered salt and food at government-fixed prices, while merchants sold the same items for twice, even three times as much. Government salt and flour, for instance, sold in the spring of 1863 for approximately twenty dollars a barrel, while the market value was nearer fifty dollars for the same amount. Soldiers' wives might have relied on their husbands for cash, but the eleven dollars a month in soldiers' pay proved infrequent at best.

Inflation was debated in the Watchman and revealed a popular opinion divided on the cause and effect of food and money shortages. "A Citizen" complaining of depreciating money in March 1863 blamed speculators in currency and Salisbury merchants who refused to accept Confederate script. Those who suffered the most, "A Citizen" claimed, were the wives and children of soldiers. In the following issue, in which the Watchman announced a severe shortage of meat, "Justice" replied that the recent rapid depreciation resulted from a flood of currency and the general hardships of war. In the third week of March the paper announced the state legislature's appropriation of a million dollars "for the relief of the Wives and Families of Soldiers."

The appropriation, however, was too late for many to avert extreme helplessness and destitution. Caleb Hampton wrote again to his nephews that same week and expressed frustration with "original Secessionists." Hampton wished "this hellish war will Stop," and if the leadership of the warring parties did not cease hostilities, "I think that Starvation will Stop it." Nine days later, the soldiers' wives entered Salisbury. Following the action, the women's representative, Mary Moore, through Salisbury attorney Luke Blackmer, composed an apology to Governor Vance. She explained the women's motivations and begged the governor's counsel. Efforts to obtain money were woefully inadequate, and "without much or in many cases any assistance from them [the soldiers] how far will eleven dollars go in a family now...[?]" Sewing uniforms paid less than a dollar a day, and "we still have upon an average from three to five helpless children to support." Soldiers' wives did not want charity, Moore claimed, and were willing to pay government prices. But speculators drove prices up by hoarding and sending food out of state. "Now Sir how We ask you in the name of God are we to live[?]," queried Moore. The soldiers' absence and the deprivation due to war had forced the women to take action. Unlike women from the social elite, they could not retreat to the refuge of large farms and wealth. Rowan's women "were from Stern necessity compelled to go in search of food to sustain life."

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Editorializing on the riot, the Watchman's John J. Bruner wrote that he recognized genuine need on the part of poor families: "It is said there are many families in this town and vicinity who have not tasted meat for weeks, and some times, months altogether. Of course they have not had butter, molasses, or sugar. Many of them have no gardens and consequently no vegetables of their own raising; and the scarcity and high prices of potatoes, peas, beans, &c., render it extremely difficult if at all possible, for them to obtain these articles. What, then, have they to support life? Bread and water!" The editorialist laid blame for want squarely on the shoulders of "speculators" and "horders" and equally cast opprobrium on the ineffective poor relief policies of the county court. The editor similarly scolded the women for the arbitrariness of their action, for ignoring some speculators while attacking others, and for bypassing the efforts of the county court and poor relief committees altogether. He concluded by renewing a call for hard work and sacrifice.

Salisbury's brief feminine tumult was a singular action that resulted from conditions that began in the spring of 1862 and culminated a year later, and those conditions would not be duplicated in the future. Indeed, prices continued to rise, food remained scarce, families continued to harbor deserters, and Federal military incursions increased in 1864 and 1865. Yet, unlike in the first half of the war, never in the latter half of the war did Rowan experience the sudden instability caused by a swift reduction in its labor force, the heavy losses of its soldiers to battle and disease, and the rigors of destitution without a functioning poor relief system.

From 1863 to 1865 only eighty-five men from Rowan entered the army, and the widespread rendering of family ties that accompanied the 1862 enlistments was not repeated. Soldiers of Rowan never experienced losses of the same magnitude. The 203 battle casualties and other deaths during 1864 and 1865 were high but spread over a two-year period, as opposed to the 228 deaths in ten months during 1861 and 1862. The number of new dependencies sinking into destitution did not increase as dramatically as it had in 1862. The large number of deserters who returned home may have provided a modicum of stability, while their struggling families perhaps learned to better cope with hardship.

Families that did seek governmental relief after the spring of 1863 found a more prolific, if not more effective, county system in place. Poor relief in 1862 had been negligible, and the efforts at distributing salt and money reached only a relatively few families. After the riots the efforts of McCubbins and the Special Committee continued at an increased volume. The Special Committee reported that in 1863, $22,147 was distributed. The warden of the poor even increased his expenditure to $2,555. The salt commissioner continued to collect and distribute that commodity to 2,261 Rowan County families. However, the amount Rowan spent on aiding the needy remained less than that distributed by other North Carolina counties. The women of Rowan were certainly weary of war, but the Salisbury riot was less a conscious subversion of the Confederate war effort than an attempt to simply survive a suddenly much more difficult life. True, many women did actively work against Confederate authority but through more subtle and indirect means. Others remained loyal to the Confederate cause throughout the war. The period from spring 1862 to spring 1863 constituted a vacuum; all of Rowan County's resources in men and money had been drawn away, causing instability for the neediest citizens. Food shortages and other deprivations continued, but organized protest gave way to more mundane and individual efforts to scratch out a living in Confederate North Carolina.