Women on the Warpath

It was a response to starvation conditions in a male organized society. The authorities were baffled because, like slaves, women were not members of the political society.

'In Atlanta first, on March 18. Then Salisbury, N.C., the very next day. Then came Mobile, Ala., then Petersburg, Va., and Macon, Ga. Richmond, the biggest street action of all, happened on April 2—followed by six more riots. It was an unnervingly coherent set of events, each local, but so closely spaced, so similar in pattern, that by the time the wave hit Richmond, conspiracy theories abounded. “That they are the emissaries of the Federal Government…is difficult to doubt,” the Richmond Daily Examiner claimed. Such seemingly connected and highly organized events were beyond the capacity of mere women; this had to be the work of men, professionals, Yankee operatives.' (Taken from link in OP)

It seems you were right here @jgoodguy There was no expectation that women could organize in the way men could.

Marker Text: On April 11, 1863, during the American Civil War, sixty-five Columbus women armed with knives and pistols rallied at this site and marched down Broad Street raiding the stores of speculators before police could restore order
'The riots were spectacular, and they were numerous. Mobs of women numbering from a dozen to 300 or more, armed with Navy revolvers, pistols, repeaters, bowie knives and hatchets, carried out at least a dozen attacks (there were rumors of more) on stores, government warehouses, Army convoys, railroad depots, salt works and granaries. The attacks occurred in broad daylight, and they were all perpetrated within the space of one month, between the middle of March and the middle of April 1863.

Southern officials could hardly say they hadn’t been warned. For months their mailbags had been filled with angry letters from poor white women demanding relief from their suffering condition: the return of husbands and sons from the army to help them make bread, more food or money from the commissioners of the poor, government controls on runaway inflation in food prices, crackdowns on speculators, revision of conscription laws. Some had threatened to take matters into their own hands.

And then at least some of them did
' (Taken from link in OP)

I imagine it was quite shocking to see women armed and 'dangerous'. Desperation will do that, especially where starving children are concerned.

It also appears true that the government took a number of steps towards relief. So, to my mind, 'big business' had a lot to do with the subsequent suffering. Not being willing to crackdown on speculation may have been part of the reason for the defeat of the Confederacy. We could create a divide between men and women based how society operated at the time, but I do wonder if women had been in business then, would it have been any different? Business is business after all.
 
Unfortunately for many Southern women and indeed for many Northern women they had to turn to " man's oldest profession" to feed their children.
One estimate was 1,500 prostitutes in Memphis alone.
Google prostitution in the Civil War and many articles pop up. No doubt we have past threads on this issue.
Leftyhunter


Neglected this thread and shouldn't- this aspect is one that has always filled me with horror. Some stories are so tragic. One woman left us a story of a young girl forced into prostitution who she protected as well as she could. It's hair raising. It was that or perish, armies being fully supplied with laundresses and other jobs. They were the lucky ones, as hard a life as that was. Washing a soldier's clothing- worn for weeks, infested, a big bacteria factory with unidentifiable stains? Or SOCKS! Can you imagine? Better than prostitution, good indication how awful both were.

One thread, remember someone saying it was their choice, becoming prostitutes. Ouch. Well, if the choice was be one or die, condemns most to death.
 
It also appears true that the government took a number of steps towards relief. So, to my mind, 'big business' had a lot to do with the subsequent suffering. Not being willing to crackdown on speculation may have been part of the reason for the defeat of the Confederacy. We could create a divide between men and women based how society operated at the time, but I do wonder if women had been in business then, would it have been any different? Business is business after all


I don't know. Really not arguing but it seems to let the government off the hook. Problem here is, because it's the Confederate government, there's a knee jerk tendency to defend it- like it was the single government who never failed women, ever on the planet. Historically, women have been pitched under the budgetary bus. And children ( mostly attached to women ).

Haven't had time to dig them up, have various resolutions published through the war. They did that, government business was hugely a public concern. Position seems reflective to me, of Davis's ' Take one for the team, Ladies ' speech. That particular event tends to be written of in praise of Davis, what a patriotic, wonderful talk he gave them. Tell you what, it would have inspired any starving soldier's wife to throw a tomato at his head- if they could find one. I'd have used the nearest horse dropping.

In the North, civilians stepped up to fill gaps- the Sanitary Commission worked side by side with the army but it was necessity. I'm sorry but no, the government did not tuck soldiers' wives under their wings. Civilian organizations tried to fill gaps in response to suffering. In the south, civilians tried mightily to help. Again, civilians. Here's a pretty typical ad- NC.

widow nc blacksmith 1863.JPG


By 1862 Zebulon Vance saw the handwriting on the wall. Issued a 30 day stop on goods take from his state. He proclaimed a need to forestall famine and suffering in NC.
 
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Really not arguing but it seems to let the government off the hook. Problem here is, because it's the Confederate government, there's a knee jerk tendency to defend it- like it was the single government who never failed women, ever on the planet. Historically, women have been pitched under the budgetary bus. And children ( mostly attached to women ).
Not arguing either, but there is no knee jerk tendency here to defend the Confederate government. The position of women and children during the war interests me, especially as they were the more vulnerable members of a male dominated society. The suggestion in the OP that the Confederate government had moved to provide relief via policy and make this a budgetary priority interests me. That they failed to make it lasting makes me wonder why, and speculation by business owners seems to form part of the answer. So, a critical look at business owners could be a worthwhile pursuit, but ultimately war, and the need to feed an army, is what pitched women and children under the bus.

Potentially more important was the use of the tax-in-kind. After the national legislature passed this measure in the spring of 1863, the Confederacy began to take possession of large quantities of food. Local officials soon began to request that they be allowed to buy back some of the tax-in-kind at the below-market prices established under the impressment law. Because the Confederate government controlled the most food, it had the greatest ability to relieve suffering, and, although records are fragmentary, it is clear that the Confederacy provided some aid, at least for a time. But feeding the armies was always a higher priority. The commissary general of subsistence reported that "we have to elect between the army and the people doing without." As the crisis deepened, the War Department cut back on aid to civilians.

That meant that other measures by the Confederacy were palliatives, rather than solutions

" He backed up "...... :D
:D
 
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Not arguing either, but there is no knee jerk tendency here to defend the Confederate government. The position of women and children during the war interests me, especially as they were the more vulnerable members of a male dominated society. The suggestion in the OP that the Confederate government had moved to provide relief via policy and make this a budgetary priority interests me. That they failed to make it lasting makes me wonder why, and speculation by business owners seems to form part of the answer. So, a critical look at business owners could be a worthwhile pursuit, but ultimately war, and the need to feed an army, is what pitched women and children under the bus


Not from you, my point is that we see it frequently. It tends to send the conversation galloping over in a whole, ' nother direction leaving women and children in the dust. North and South, there's a lot of dust. Plus, it's tough. Provisions were made for awhile, only NC accepted the responsibility when the government stopped the program. I'm not convinced business owners alone can be held responsible. They could get away with it because well, no one stopped them despite vociferous calls they be held accountable.
 
I'm not convinced business owners alone can be held responsible. They could get away with it because well, no one stopped them despite vociferous calls they be held accountable.
Agree with you here JPK. I think 'speculation' forms part of the answer, which goes back to business owners. But, there are a lot of factors that feed into the issue (pardon the pun)! One of these could be the inability or lack of desire on the part of the Government to hold these people accountable. Which is 'self defeating' when you think about it.
 
'Many planters and merchants on the homefront began to fear rioting women even more so than the Yankees. Local organizations called Homeguard were responsible for fighting the war on the homefront if the Yankees were to invade.

David and Teresa Williams recovered a telegraph from late 1863 that alerted for Homeguard in Thomasville. Initially, the men thought that the Yankees were coming up through Florida.

“They were actually called because the merchants were scared the women would riot again," said David Williams.

Teresa Williams said they began to be proactive and were not waiting for the aid of their men.

“They helped themselves to bushels of corn," she said.

The rioting and thievery by women got so bad that some, such as one man who signed himself as “A Stock Raiser," began placing notices in local newspapers to stop.

“What would your husbands and fathers think if they should see your names in a public print as stock stealers?" read a notice placed in the Blakely’s Early County News.

Women's riots were news to David and Teresa Williams. They were initially digging through history because they were puzzled by high Confederate desertion rates.

“It sheds light on another aspect of the war of why the Confederacy failed," said David Williams.'

http://www.tiftongazette.com/the-un...cle_cb04cbda-ef16-5f4b-844a-517468a133d3.html
 
Is anyone aware of any study of inflation in the Confederacy? Price controls never work and the black market emerges in its shadows.

I'd also like to know if there's any study of the greenback in California during the war? I know it was generally rejected in favor of gold and if one paid in greenback, they were generally shunned and their business afterward declined.
 
'When the Civil War began in April of 1861, the South was viewed as a vast agricultural region that could easily sustain an army fighting to secede from the United States. However, because of greed, the troops and their women back home were going hungry.

“They were constantly hungry," Williams said. “The planters were growing way too much cotton and not enough food.”

Early in the war, the price of cotton skyrocketed. This led greedy farmers to grow more cotton which eventually resulted in a shortage of food. It became such a problem that newspapers began printing stories and ads begging planters to stop growing cotton and start growing food.

The planters did not heed the cry of a starving South. By late 1861, the food shortage affected the quantity of men volunteering for the war effort. In the beginning, there was this rush to glory. However, after the first Battle of Manassas (also known as the Battle of Bull Run), the soldiers began to realize that the war was real. That reality combined with starvation led many Confederate soldiers to desert.

In April 1862, the first draft in American history was held and forced many men to fight for the Confederacy. The war quickly turned to a poor man’s fight for a rich man’s war when the draft exempted Southerners who owned 20 or more slaves, according to Williams' book.

“Their excuse was that they needed to stay back and be the food producers," Williams said. “That wasn’t what they did.”

Aside from starving the soldiers that were fighting a war that the rich planters and politicians started, it also birthed the origin of economic inflation.

“When they didn’t plant enough food the price of food skyrocketed," Williams said.


By the spring of 1863, women’s riots broke out all over the Confederacy because the women back home were starving and poor because all of the working men were gone and all of the planters were only growing cotton'

As per previous link.

Is anyone aware of any study of inflation in the Confederacy?
It appears from this article that economic inflation originated in the South in the circumstances of the Civil War for the reasons given. I'm not aware of any studies, but I'm sure they would prove interesting.
 
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