Refugees

[18thVirginia]

One experiment in Northwest Arkansas involved protection of refugees and an attempt to provide food locally. Professor Leo E. Huff described this new "colony" to try and raise crops that would not be vulnerable to depredations by either the bushwhackers or jayhawkers.

Early in 1865, Colonel M. La Rue Harrison, Union commander of the 1st Arkansas Calvary Regiment at Fayetteville, began to organize the farmers in that part of the state into armed agricultural communities called "Post Colonies," for their protection against Confederate guerrillas and bushwhackers. The men of the various settlements were enrolled and consolidated into Home Guard companies, elected their own officers and were armed. They then selected a site for the colony where water and pasturage were abundant, and where 1,000 to 4,000 acres of cultivated but abandoned land were located nearby. Next, they built a stockade which contained a storehouse for food and ammunition. The farmers' families were then moved into the neighborhood and houses were built for them near the stockade. Crops were raised under the direction of the colonists to prevent bushwhackers from living off the country. The colonies contained about 1,600 men under arms living in communities of from 50 to 100 inhabitants in Benton, Washington, Madison, Carroll, Newton,Marion, and Searcy counties. Working colonies were established at Union Valley, Prairie, Walnut Grove, Mountain, West Fork, Mount Comfort, Elm Springs, Pea Ridge, Osage, Huntsville, War Eagle, Rich,land, and Brush Creek. https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch/ow404s.htm

The colonies had a projected 15,000 acres to be cultivated, but the War ended before much of the project had been successful.

Fayetteville, Arkansas in the early 1890s

 

[18thVirginia]

Another thread in Ladies Tea covered the tragic situation of men, women and children who were refugees from Ft. Smith, Arkansas that were loaded onto boats to travel eastward. You can read the entire thread with its explanation of the circumstances these citizens had to endure at the link http://civilwartalk.com/threads/fort-smith-arkansas-the-300-forgotten-again.107963/.

" December 26, 1864, approximately 300 refugees, at least 40 of them children orphaned and otherwise displaced by guerrilla warfare and extreme poverty in northwestern Arkansas, were loaded onto a steamboat at Fort Smith and shipped down the Arkansas River to vague and uncertain futures in Illinois. Their forced exodus was directed by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis Springer, a citizen of Springfield, Illinois

The order to evacuate Fort Smith, signed by General Edward R. S. Canby, commander of the Military Division of West Mississippi on December 5, 1864, was a military necessity. The onset of winter and the inability of the army to adequately provision the fort for the thousands of refugees who sought safety and shelter there were cited as reasons for the closing. Nevertheless, the order was protested vigorously by Arkansas Governor Isaac Murphy, the state legislature, and several high-ranking Union army officers in the Western theater.

Fort Smith at the time of the Civil War

 

[Yankeedave]

 

[18thVirginia]

Probably the most recognizable portrait of Civil War refugees. Thanks for adding.

 

[Yankeedave]

Granny with her pipe.

 

[18thVirginia]

Refugees in Northwest Arkansas cooking over a campfire


Refugees loaded all kinds of household goods as shown in Yankee Dave's photo, but once on the journey to a new home, their greatest problem was often finding food for themselves. If they'd brought slaves with them, the task became even more difficult.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

I remember the Fort Smith thread got some incredulous attention then faded- this stuff is a part of the war inexplicably overlooked. I mean really- colonists living in stockaded communities? What part of history does that sound like? The thing is, during that time in history Native Americans were losing their own families. Guerillas had no reason to behave like the kind of barbarians no one had heard of since, gosh, Spain wiped out native populations? Post war, we have the whole ' Wild West ', gunslingers legends, such a fascination! These guerillas were far more lawless and bloody than the most ruthless of these could claim yet no one really knows of most. Seems so odd.

It's a little crazy to me. In the east are all the famous battles and generals, all the deeds played over and over in books, movies, heck daily on tours. The pathos suffered out here and the sheer violence attracts no attention, our refugee families shuffle off in their loop through Time less remarked now than 150 years ago. Papers were actually pretty full of it.

Didn't something ridiculous occur with Ft Smith- funding was passed too late to save those kids?

 

[18thVirginia]

I was influenced by watching a Gary Gallagher video in which he opined that the War in the West was unimportant--which ended further perusal of any works by Gallagher--and have sought out information about it and about the women who survived it. Perhaps taking sides for either "the good guys or the bad guys" is more difficult in looking at the West because there were a lot of obviously unpleasant types on both sides. Maybe it becomes less interesting to those who find a need to hold onto a sense of enmity for the other "side" at at 150 years out. Women, though, were still trying to feed children, deliver their neighbor's babies, prepare the dead for burial, nurse the men who came home sick or maimed, and raise crops.

I was less drawn to Mary Chesnut's complaints about having to wear several years old Paris fashions and patching her silk gowns than to the less well known diaries and memoirs of western women during the war. So, before this thread goes further, let's look at some of the women's refugee diaries, from all over:

 

[18thVirginia]

 

[18thVirginia]

Some books about refugees in the Civil War:

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Goodness. It is certainly difficult, not to react emotionally to a statement like that- the war in the west being unimportant. I suspect someone will come along with an explanation all about how this is correct in some way- would remain unimpressed. More correctly it seems the citizens in the western part of the regions where war was waged were deemed unimportant. Seems so odd! I remember finding an account where guerillas in Virginia had hung an old man and his son. It doesn't matter which, does it? Barbaric and ruthless, that was the point. Oh my, talk about the wrong thing to post, as a new member. Gee whiz. It wasn't until much later this western ' war ' was discovered where that was unsurprising, on both sides.

Guessing Burn's documentary, while splendid in so many ways, was unhelpful in choosing mostly Mary Chestnut's diary as a back piece. It's a terrific piece for what it is, certainly, the Southern woman of her position writing of her war. It's just that hundreds of diaries written by women tell powerful, poignant stories of their war far at variance, unique, clear voices from Time. They can be awfully tough to hear, the woman whose husband was shot and thrown back into the couple's home, set ablaze by guerillas. The families in that town, from what I remember, became refugees- or perished.

Thanks very much for continuing this thread. We have so many ferociously heroic women whose stories break through war's darkness like beams from a lighthouse strike through night at sea that it is far too easy, losing important stories out there in the storm. But we can't. All their voices together compose that of our women at war, during those awful years in this country's history.

 

[18thVirginia]

What happened in Missouri seems to be more superficially well-known, but Arkansas seems to have had its share of acts committed against ordination citizens, perhaps in a less organized fashion than in Missouri. According to Arkansas's online history site, the military authorities struggled throughout the War to deal with the ever-increasing amount of refugees. Garrisons at Little Rock, Fayetteville, and Fort Smith were all swamped by refugees, many of them who would starve otherwise. Crops had been destroyed by predators from either side, sometimes in retaliation for their choice of Confederate or Union, others as part of the ongoing thievery.

Some farmers tried growing cotton instead of corn or wheat to try and recoup some needed funds, which added to the scarcity of food for Arkansas families.

Union troops at the Arkansas State House, 1863.

 

[18thVirginia]

One citizen in Arkansas explained the situation in a letter to a Confederate general:

"We have been tossed and tumbled about considerably by both the Federals and our own soldiers and then by bands of independent marauders---calling themselves 'guerrillas' and having authority from almost any or every general in the Confederacy or out of it...."

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch/ow404s.htm

 

[18thVirginia]

An Arkansas woman wrote to her brother serving in the army in 1864 that:

Parson Nolan is our sercut rider now. He says that God has plainly promisedto be on our side, an drive the accursed Yankees from off our soil. Parson Nolan is a splendid preacher, but it don't look to me as if God was drivin the Yankees any too much outen Arkansas just now. There's one thing I don't like at all, and that is the gerrilla bisness. They don't do any good at all, and just rob everybody. Parson Nolan prayed agen em at our house last Sunday, and I was right glad of it, for that sneaken thief Robinson was there, and pa says he is nigh onto the meanest man in Arkansas. May you live happy, die happy and get into the everlastin kingdom above.
​

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch/ow404s.htm

 

[18thVirginia]

REFUGEES IN LOUISIANA

Sarah Morgan's diary is often cited by historians touching on the War on the other side of the Mississippi and although she was a young girl who sometimes seems quite wrapped up in the concerns of the young--I'm glad no one will be quoting what I'd have written at 16--she does give a view of the movements or refugees, the congestion of hundreds of people taking to the roads.

"Three miles from town we began to overtake the fugitives. Hundreds of women and children were walking along, some bareheaded and in all costumes. Little girls of twelve and fourteen were wandering on alone. I called to one I knew and asked her where her mother was; she didn't know; she would walk on until she found out...it was a heart-rending scene. Women searching for their babies along the road, where they had been lost; others sitting in the dust crying and wringing their hands." ​

Sarah Morgan
May 28, 1862
Baton Rouge, LA

https://www.alexandriava.gov/historic/fortward/default.aspx?id=40306#RefugeeCamp

 

[18thVirginia]

The major city of New Orleans fell quite early in the War, in the spring of 1862. Elizabeth Massey points out the difficulty for Louisianans, where the southeastern part of the state had been captured by the Union, its northern neighbor was not regarded as a place of any security, and escape to the east was hindered by Federal gunboats, so many Louisianans moved from place to place throughout the state, or eventually chose a route to Texas. However, they thought of Texas as an uncivilized place, "the end of the earth."(I'm afraid my Louisiana husband agrees with that view even today).

Let me note that I'm going to talk about Texas in a separate thread, "GONE TO TEXAS," because there were lots of quotes from people from other states who found themselves in Texas and from the Texans who watched their arrival, so hold onto your stories about Refugee Life in Texas until we get to that thread.

After New Orleans fell to the Union, Baton Rouge was evacuated quickly and state government moved to Opelousas. Opelousas was the site of crowds of refugees for awhile, but when it became insecure, they moved on to Shreveport. Henry C. Millery of Opelousas wrote to his sister that he would move to North Louisiana where he could rent a farm and then he might have to move on to Texas. But, he thought that it would be easier to travel to Texas from North Louisiana than "to start out from [Opelousas] across prairies and woods with nothing to eat except what you take with you." Refugee Life in the Confederacy, Massey, p. 91.

Catholic Church at Opelousas.

 

[18thVirginia]

@RobertP has already offered us a terrific example of Louisiana refugees on the first page with a letter from his own family. I know we have some others who've spent some time in or have relatives from Louisiana--please feel free to jump in with family stories or documents.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/dawson/dawson.html

You can frequently find these diaries in an archive somewhere, perfectly legal, free. The only down side is not being able to read it unless given time to do so cover to cover. It's a crazy-good read albeit tough in spots.

 

[18thVirginia]

Several letters from H. Winbourne Drake, born in Mississippi but settled in Tensas Parish, Louisiana prior to the ACW as a planter. Drake served a few months in the Confederate Army and then fled to Bienville Parish where he and his family lived on a farm. Census records indicate that Drake owned 35 slaves. After the war, he taught school, then resumed his legal studies and became a lawyer. He and family managed to survive their refugee period better than most. Tensas Parish is right along the Mississippi, while Biennial is further west in the Shreveport area.