Here is something on relief efforts by the government:
'Governments at the local, state, and federal level responded with unprecedented efforts to control prices, supply provisions, and ease suffering, and yet neither the Confederate government nor the Virginia state government found a way to take effective action against inflation, speculation, or extortion. Direct relief, free markets, city-sponsored stores, and other innovative measures came into being. Nevertheless, these efforts proved inadequate, and the very idea of being dependent on charity was unsatisfactory to the yeoman class. Consequently, the problems of poverty seriously undermined the war effort in Virginia and throughout the Confederacy.
Governments responded to poverty in unprecedented ways. As early as 1861 local governments encouraged donations for the poor and appropriated modest stipends to help those in need. Augusta County, for example, gave widows and children of soldiers $1 or 50 cents per week, respectively. Some localities issued small notes to increase the amount of money in circulation, a practice that the state legislature banned in 1863. These efforts expanded as the problem grew. By 1863 the state legislature supported local governments' efforts to help the poor by authorizing them to borrow up to $10,000 per one thousand white residents for poor relief.
Urban areas tried to alleviate hunger by expanding the supply of provisions. After the food riot, Richmond's leaders established a free store where poorer residents could exchange special tickets for needed goods. Other cities or towns included salt and fuel among the goods that they made available to the poor. In 1863 Lynchburg set up a public store that sold necessities to the poor at cost; customers could purchase one month's supply at a time. Lynchburg also offered a four-month's supply of salt to its taxpayers at below-market prices. The town of Staunton doubled its taxes in order to purchase meat, flour, and wood for the families of soldiers. In Charlottesville and Lynchburg, officials appropriated money that poor residents, faced with becoming homeless, could use to help pay their rent. Charity drives in these cities raised substantial sums to aid the poor.
By 1863 the Virginia legislature felt compelled to do more for poor relief. First it required railroad lines to give high priority to shipments of food and took action to limit the distilling of grain into alcohol. To aid families of soldiers, it also empowered local governments to use the tax-in-kind and local impressment to obtain food, with farmers being paid at price levels established by the Confederate government. Counties compiled lists of the indigent, and by the autumn of 1864 Campbell County was distributing each month twenty-five pounds of meat and twenty pounds of flour to its poor. In 1864 a new law appropriated $1 million to help families of soldiers in occupied areas, where local governments were not able to help. Another bill suspended state taxes.
But the greatest capacity for dealing with the crisis lay with the Confederate government. From time to time Virginians petitioned the Confederate administration to exempt hard-hit regions from conscription or to support transportation of food on the rails. Many individual requests were granted. Another possible step, which attracted great interest among the public, was price control. Confederate general
John Winder attempted to control prices in Richmond under martial law in 1862. Although his efforts failed and were rescinded, the idea of price control was very popular, and a considerable public clamor for state action arose in 1863. Ultimately, the proposed step failed.
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. When Congress revised the exemption for overseers, it required that the exempted planters supply specified amounts of meat or grain, at attractive prices, to selected civilians in their neighborhood. Other farmers were exempted on an individual basis, often with the condition that they supply food to those in need.'
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poverty_and_Poor_Relief_During_the_Civil_War#start_entry