Title of Dissertation: 
ABSTRACT 
"SISTERS OF THE CAPITAL": WHITE WOMEN IN 
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1860-1880 
Edna Susan Barber, Doctor of Philosophy, 1997 
Dissertation directed by: Professor Gay L, Gullickson 
Associate Professor David A, Grimsted 
Department of History 
This dissertation examines the effects of the Civil War and 
Reconstruction on elite, middle-, and working-class white women in 
Richmond, Virginia. Anne Firer Scott has written that the Civil War 
was a historical watershed that enabled southern women's movement into 
broader social, economic, and political roles in southern society. 
Suzanne Lebsock and George Rable have observed that claims about white 
Southern women's gains must be measured against the conservatism of 
Southern society as the patriarchy reasserted itself in the postwar 
decades. This study addresses this historiographical debate by 
examining changes in white Richmond women's roles in the workforce, in 
organizational politics, and the churches. It also analyzes the war's 
impact on marriage and family relations. 
Civil War Richmond represented a two-edged sword to its white 
female population. As the Confederate capital, it provided them with 
employment opportunities that were impossible before the war began. By 
1863 , however, Richmond's population more than doubled as southerners 
emigrated to the city in search of work or to escape Union armies. 
This expanding population created extreme shortages in food a nd 
housing; it also triggered the largest bread riot in the confederacy. 
With Confederate defeat, many wartime occupations disappeared, 
although the need for work did not. Widespread postwar poverty led to 
the emergence of different occupations. Women had formed a number of 
charitable organizations before the war began. During the war, they 
developed new associations that stressed women's patriotism rather than 
their maternity. In the churches, women's wartime work led to the 
emergence of independent missionary associations that often were in 
conflict with male-dominated foreign mission boards. 
Although change occurred, this study concludes that white women's 
experiences of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Richmond, Virginia, 
were far more complex than Scott's notion of a historical watershed 
indicates. The wartime transformation in women's lives was often 
fraught with irony. Many changes were neither sought nor anticipated 
by Richmond women. Several came precisely as a direct result of 
Confederate defeat. Others tended to reinforce patriarchal notions 
about white women's subordinate status in Southern society. 
"SISTERS OF THE CAPITAL": 
WHITE WOMEN IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1860-1880 
by 
Edna Susan Barber 
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland at College Park in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Advisory Committee: 
Doctor of Philosophy 
1997 
. ' ·1 
I I 
/
'. I . 
i! -
/ . 
Associate Professor David A. Grimsted, Co-Chair 
Professor Gay L. Gullickson, Co-Chair 
Professor Emeritus George H. Callcott 
Professor Claire G. Moses 
Associate Professor Robyn L. Muncy 
©Copyright by 
Edna Susan Barber 
1997 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
I have accumulated many professional and personal 
debts while writing this dissertation. Early in this 
project, Elsa Barkley Brown, who was also doing research on 
Richmond, Virginia, graciously invited me to lunch in 
Washington, o.c., and shared information with me about 
Richmond sources and repositories. Her advice proved to be 
an invaluable guide and I thank her for her generosity. 
My research has taken me to a numbe r of Richmond 
repositories, including the Virginia Historical Society, 
the Library of Virginia, the Museum of the Confederacy, the 
Valentine Museum, the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, 
and the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives Trust. In all of 
these institutions, I have benefited from the expertise and 
advice of skilled librarians and researchers. In 
particular, I would like to thank Minor Weisiger at the 
Library of Virginia for his wise counsel and for keeping me 
apprised of documents pertaining to my topic. Sandra Gioia 
Treadway, also of the Library of Virginia, shared her 
research with me on an early Richmond suffrage association. 
At the Virginia Historical Society, I benefited from 
numerous discussions with Frances Pollard, whose extensive 
ii 
iii 
knowledge of the Society's collections made my work much 
easier. Also at the Society, Nelson Lankford, Giles 
Cromwell, and the late Waverly Winfree shared their 
expertise with me on a variety of subjects. 
Teresa Roane at the Valentine Museum once told me that 
Gregg Kimball could even get information from a rock and my 
frequent talks with Gregg over the course of this research 
never caused me to doubt her word. The Valentine Museum 
staff--especially Teresa, Gregg, and Barbara--also cared 
for my psychological well-being on extended research trips 
by inviting me to join them for dinner and conversation. 
At the Museum of the Confederacy, Guy Swanson 
diligently searched the library's collections to fill my 
requests. He also copied portions of some collections for 
me when my visits proved all too brief to thoroughly mine 
the Museum's vast holdings on Richmond women. 
Doris and Torn Pearson invited me into their Richmond 
home where Doris Pearson allowed me to interview her about 
her life in Richmond, Virginia, and her grandmother's work 
as a Brown's Island cartridge maker. While we talked, Torn 
Pearson prepared us a home-cooked Southern meal. I am 
thankful to the Pearsons for their generosity and their 
Richmond hospitality. 
My research has also taken me to the Library of 
Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, 
the Southern Historical Collection at the University of 
iv 
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the American Jewish Archives, 
the William R. Perkins Library at Duke University, the 
Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, and the 
Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary. 
At all of these locations, I was welcomed cordially and 
served by friendly and efficient staffs. I would also like 
to thank Mary Beverungen and Cindy McCabe of the Inter-
Library Loan Department of the Loyola-Notre Dame Library 
for cheerfully and efficiently honoring all my requests for 
books and microfilm. 
My research has been supported by the Department of 
History of the University of Maryland, College Park in the 
form of generous travel grants from the Hearst Travel Fund 
and a shared Walter Rundell prize in American history. At 
College Park, I had the opportunity to present an early 
version of my research on Richmond women's wartime 
associations at the History Department's Graduate Student 
Colloquium. 
I was also the recipient of two generous Mellon 
Fellowships from the Virginia Historical Society for doing 
research in the Society's collections. In addition, I was 
able to discuss my research project in colloquia attended 
by the Historical Society staff and the community of Mellon 
scholars--especially Tracey Weis, Sally Hadden, and Al 
Tillson--who were in residence during portions of the 
summer in 1991 and 1993. I also presented pieces of my 
V 
research at the Valentine Museum in March 1995, and at the 
Northern Virginia Community College Conference on the 
history of women in the Chesapeake in November 1996. 
I am extremely indebted to the members of my 
dissertation committee--Gay L. Gullickson, David A. 
Grimsted, George H. Callcott, Robyn L. Muncy, and Claire G. 
Moses. Their careful reading and insightful comments on 
this particular phase of my work sharpened and deepened my 
analysis and saved me from many errors in both content and 
style. I especially would like to acknowledge the 
contributions of my two co-directors, David A. Grimsted and 
Gay L. Gullickson. Their advice has always enriched my 
work, and I am grateful for their faith in me. I alone am 
responsible for any errors that remain. 
I have also benefited from the wisdom and friendship 
of many other history graduate students at the University 
of Maryland, College Park, especially those who were part 
of the Breakfast Club--Cynthia M. Kennedy, Anne Apynys, 
Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Mary Beth Corrigan, Bruce Thompson, 
Samuel Brainerd, Mary Jeske, and Jeffrey Hearn. Cindy, 
Marie, Anne, and Mary Beth have read and commented on 
dissertation chapters. All have listened to me discuss my 
work and have helped me resolve research and writing 
problems over coffee and pancakes at our monthly meetings 
at a series of diners between Baltimore and College Park. 
vi 
Knowing they were travelling the same path made my journey 
easier. 
At the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, where I was 
first a student and am now a teacher, I have been able to 
continue a life-long career of learning in a vibrant 
community of scholars whose comments and prayers have 
sustained me in these last years of dissertation writing. 
My department chair, Jeanne H. Stevenson, taught me the 
first women's history I ever learned and set me on the path 
of my future work. She has nurtured my career and found a 
place for me on the faculty at Notre Dame, for which I am 
very thankful. Charles Ritter has been my teacher, mentor, 
colleague, and friend. He believed in my potential to do 
graduate work in history before I ever recognized it 
myself. It is partly because of him that I have reached 
this point in my academic career and for that I am forever 
in his debt. Charles also read and commented on portions 
of the dissertation and corrected several errors in my 
descriptions of Civil War battles. 
My final thanks belong to my family, not because they 
did the least, but because they sustained me the longest. 
My late father, Milton, took me on picnics to Gettysburg 
Battlefield when I was a child. I didn't realize, then, 
that researching the Civil War would occupy so much of my 
adult life and I am sorry that he did not live to read my 
findings. My mother, Juanita, and my children, Steve, 
vii 
David, and Chris, have taken an interest in my work and 
have patiently given me ••time out" from my roles as 
daughter, mother, and mother-in-law in order to bring this 
project to closure. My grandchildren, Kaylynn and Aaron, 
have provided me with many delightful, necessary diversions 
from my work as only they can. I look forward to many more 
of these in the future. 
To Bob, my partner of more than thirty years, I owe my 
most profound debt of gratitude. His steadfast devotion 
has sustained me over the course of our lives together. He 
has endured summertime separations while I was away in 
Richmond doing research and has listened to hours of 
discussion about the lives of women long since dead. In 
these last few months, he has taken over all the domestic 
responsibilities of our household. He also read the entire 
dissertation and offered perceptive comments. It is to Bob 
and to my late sister, Sandy, that I dedicate my 
dissertation. 
viii 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Acknowledgements . ........................................ ii 
List of Tables . .......................................... ix 
List of Figures ........................................... x 
List of Abbreviations .................................... xi 
Chapter 1 Introduction .................................. 1 
PART I: 1860-1865 
Chapter 2 Richmond: A Southern Paradox .........•....... 30 
Chapter 3 At Work for the Confederacy: 
Hospital Matrons and Government Clerks ....... 76 
Chapter 4 More Work for the Confederacy: 
Seamstresses, Cartridge Makers, and 
Prostitutes ................................. 13 9 
Chapter 5 "Sisters of the Capital": White Women's 
Organizations in Confederate Richmond ....... 176 
Chapter 6 Espionage and Protest ....................... 224 
PART II: 1865-1880 
Chapter 7 Teachers and Writers: Middle-Class White 
Women's Work in Postbellum Richmond ......... 279 
Chapter 8 Textile Workers and Cigarette Girls: 
Working-Class Women and Work in 
Postbellum Richmond ......................... 304 
Chapter 9 Christians Soldiers: Richmond Women and 
the civil War Churches .....................• 321 
Chapter 10 Ladies' Postbellum Associations and the 
Discourse of the Lost cause ................. 377 
Chapter 11 "The White Wings of Eros": Marriage and 
Family Relations in Confederate and 
Postbellum Richmond ......................... 407 
Chapter 12 Conclusion .................................. 454 
Bibliography .................... ........................ 463 
ix 
LIST OF TABLES 
5.1. Female Humane Association Yearly Income, 
1860-1880, by Percent .......••.......•............ 222 
6.1. Comparison of Food Prices for an Average Family, 
Richmond Virginia, 1860 and 1863 ....••............ 259 
9.1. White Baptist Sunday School Attendance, 
Richmond, Virginia, April 1867 ...••..•...•...•.... 338 
11.1 Grooms' Occupation, Marriage Sample for 
Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880 .........•........... 412 
11.2. White and Black Marriages, Richmond, Virginia, 
1860-1880 . .................................. 41 ••••• 416 
11.3. Median Age at First Marriage, White and Black 
Women, Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880 ......•....... 420 
11.4. White Widows and Widowers as a Percent of 
All Marriages, Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880 .•...• 430 
X 
LIST OF FIGURES 
2.1 Map of Richmond, Virginia, 1861-1865 .....•......... 38 
5.1. Masthead of the Magnolia, December 20, 1862 ....... 195 
5.2. Masthead of the Magnolia, June 20, 1863 ........... 196 
8.1. Cigarette Rollers in Richmond, Virginia ........... 317 
8.2. Allen & Ginter Cigarette Rollers .................. 318 
AJA 
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 
American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio 
Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives Trust, Richmond, 
Virginia 
William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, 
Durham, North Carolina 
Eleanor s. Brockenbrough Library, Museum of the 
Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia 
Manuscripts/Rare Books, Library of Congress, 
Washington, D.C. 
Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia 
National Archives and Records Administration, 
Washington, D.C. 
southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, 
Virginia 
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia 
Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia 
xi 
CHAPTER 1 
INTRODUCTION 
The American Civil War is hardly a neglected topic. 
No other single event in the history of the United States 
has commanded more attention from the reading and listening 
public than the four years from 1861-65, when Americans 
faced each other in bloody conflict. By the time the Ken 
Burns ·serialization appeared on the Public Broadcasting 
System in 1990, Newsweek magazine placed the number of war-
related publications--including 800 regimental histories, a 
number of single- and multi-volume comprehensive texts, and 
countless personal diaries and reminiscences--at more than 
50,000. 1 since that time, Hollywood representations of 
1H.F. Waters, "An American Mosaic," Newsweek, 17 
September 1990, 68-70. since the complete historiography 
of the Civil War and Reconstruction is too voluminous to be 
discussed in the scope of this review of the literature, I 
have chosen to limit the discussion to the two aspects 
which are most pertinent to this dissertation: scholarship 
examining the social consequences of the war to the 
Southern home front, and scholarship on Confederate women 
during the Civil War and Reconstruction. I use the term 
"Confederate women" to c6ver this entire period of time 
(1861-1880) because of some scholars' willingness to argue 
that a large majority of Southerners, and especially the 
women, remained "unreconstructed" until the end of the 
nineteenth century. For example, see James M. McPherson, 
Ordeal by Fire: The civil War and Reconstruction (New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 4~4-95. 
1 
civil War events--"Glory," "Gettysburg," and 
"Andersonville"--have continued to popularize the century-
old conflict for millions of American moviegoers. 
Despite this outpouring of information (accurate or 
not), much remains to be learned about the profound effect 
of the Civil War on American society, and especially on 
American women. In raw numbers alone, more than 618,000 
men lost their lives on both sides of the war, while 
countless more were permanently disabled. Approximately 6 
percent of Northern white males between the ages of 
thirteen and forty-three died, while in the South, where 
the white population base was proportionally smaller, the 
casualty rate rose to 18 percent. 2 Yet, until recently, 
most civil War histories have not added to the historical 
descriptions of the social results of the war on home front 
communities or on people behind the lines, despite 
pioneering works by Bell Irvin Wiley, Paul Escott, Clyde 
Olin Fisher, and Charles Ramsdell. 3 Most social 
2Maris Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the 
civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations," 
Journal of American History 76 (1989): 38-39, reprinted in 
Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: 
Exploratory Essays, Maris A. Vinovskis, ed. (Cambridge, 
Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1990). All subsequent 
citations are to the 1990 reprinted version of this essay. 
3Bell Irvin Wiley, The Plain People of the Confederacy 
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943); Paul 
D. Escott, "'The Cry of the Sufferers': The Problem of 
Welfare in the Confederacy," Civil War History 23 (1977): 
288-40; Clyde Olin Fisher, "The Relief of Soldiers' 
Families in North Carolina during the Civil War," Atlantic 
Quarterly 16 (1917): 60-72; and Charles Ramsdell, Behind 
2 
historians writing community studies in the 1980s either 
ignored the war's impact completely or only mentioned, in 
passing, its effect on organized labor, prompting social 
historian Maris Vinovskis to ponder, in a speculative 
article, whether social historians had "lost the Civil 
War." 4 
Recent studies, however, by Matthew Gallman, Philip 
Paludan, and Steven Ash have deepened our understanding of 
the impact of the Civil War on both southern and Northern 
communities, while at the same time calling for more work 
to fill in the missing gaps in the history of the Civil War 
at home. 5 In April 1990, the Virginia Magazine of History 
the Lines in the Southern confederacy, Wendell H. 
Stephenson, ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). 
4vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the civil 
War? 2, and fn. 3 and 4. According to Vinovskis, studies 
that either ignore or pay little attention to the war's 
impact include Stephan Thernstrom's Poverty and Progress; 
Clyde Griffen and Sally Griffen's Natives and Newcomers; 
Alan Dawley's Class and Community; Daniel J. Walkowitz's 
worker city. company Town; Robert Wells's demographic study 
Revolutions in Americans' Lives; and Steven Mintz and Susan 
Kellogg's Domestic Revolutions. Vinovskis's anthology 
focuses on the Civil War in the North. Unfortunately no 
similar book has yet been published that examines the 
social history of the Civil War South, although half of the 
essays in The Edge of the south are devoted to the history 
of Civil war Virginia. Edward c. Ayers and John c. Willis, 
eds., The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century 
Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 
1991). 
5Philip Shaw Paludan, "A People's Contest": The Union 
and Civil War. 1861-65 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); 
Matthew Gallman, Mastering Wartime: A Social History of 
Philadelphia during the Civil War (New York: Cambridge 
university Press, 1990); Steven B. Ash, "White Virginians 
under Federal Occupation," Virginia Magazine of History and 
3 
4 
and Biography devoted an entire issue to recent scholarship 
on the Civil War in Virginia which reflected these new 
scholarly trends. 6 
Despite the outpouring of women's history since the 
1970s, published works on American women have tended to 
focus on antebellum New England or on plantations in the 
antebellum south. For example, studies undertaken by 
Thomas Dublin, Barbara Berg, Christine Stansell, Barbara 
Epstein, and Barbara Welter all examine the lives of 
Northern women up to 1860, while monographs by Catherine 
Clinton and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese deal exclusively with 
Biography 98.2 (April 1990): 169-192; Steven Ash, Middle 
Tennessee Society Transformed, 1960-1870: War and Peace in 
the Upper south (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 
Press, 1988): and Steven Ash, "War and Society: New 
Directions in Virginia History" (Paper presented at the 
Virginia Historical Society conference on New Directions in 
Virginia History, Richmond, Virginia, October 1990). I am 
grateful to Steven Ash for providing me with a copy of this 
paper. 
6virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98.2 
(April 1990). Titled, "The Trumpet Unblown: The Old 
Dominion and the Civil War," this issue's opening essay by 
Gary W. Gallagher pointed to the paucity of recent 
scholarship on the Virginia home front during the Civil 
War. See Gary w. Gallagher, "Horne Front and Battlefield: 
some Recent Literature Relating to Virginia and the 
Confederacy," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 
98.2 (April 1990): 135-36, and 153. William Blair's recent 
dissertation on the Civil War Virginia home front makes a 
contribution to this research, although it relies primarily 
on information from three Virginia counties--Albernarle, 
Augusta, and Carnpbell--and includes little on Richmond. 
William Alan Blair, "Virginia's Private War: The Contours 
of Dissent and Loyalty in the Confederacy, 1861-1865" 
(Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1994). 
5 
women on Southern plantations before the Civil War began. 7 
Even Suzanne Lebsock's Free Women of Petersburg--one of the 
first books to examine the lives of white and black women 
in a southern urban community--ends in 1860, and treats the 
Civil War only in a thirteen-page epilogue. 8 In addition, 
a survey of 603 books and doctoral dissertations on 
American women, written between 1970 and 1987, shows that 
only 2 percent (thirteen) deal with either the Civil War or 
Reconstruction. Most of these concentrate on Northern 
women. 9 
7Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of 
Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts . 1826-1860 (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Barbara J. Berg, 
The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism, The 
woman and the City, 1800-1860 (New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1978); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and 
Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 
1986); Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: 
Women, Evangelism. and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century 
America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 
1981); Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860," American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151-74; Catherine 
Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Women's World in the Old 
south (New York: Pantheon, 1982); and Elizabeth Fox-
Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White 
Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1988). Nancy Cott's study also focuses on 
New England women during a similar period of time. Nancy 
F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New 
England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University 
Press, 1977). 
8 suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status 
and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York: W.W. 
Norton, 1985). 
9Gerda Lerner, "Priorities and Challenges in Women's 
History Research," Perspectives 26 (April 1988), 1, cited 
by James McPherson, "Introduction," Divided Houses: Gender 
and the Civil War, Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds. 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), xvi. 
6 
A few scholarly works written before 1970 attempted to 
restore Southern women to the Civil War canon. Francis 
Simpkins and James w. Patton's Women of the southern 
Confederacy, originally published in 1936, offered a pro-
South interpretation of white women's lives in the wartime 
South. 10 Mary Elizabeth Massey's Bonnet Brigades--written 
for the Civil War centennial celebration in 1966--provided 
a well-researched and more balanced study of women's Civil 
War experience, while her earlier Ersatz in the Confederacy 
demonstrated the myriad ways in which Southern women coped 
with wartime shortages of food and other domestic 
commodities. 11 Although all of these works redeemed 
Southern women from historical invisibility, they were 
written well before the explosion of writings about women 
in the 1970s and 1980s deepened and problematized the uses 
of gender as a category of historical analysis. 12 Like 
Bell ·Irvin Wiley's Confederate Women, published in 1975, 
1
°Francis Butler Simkins and James Welch Patton, The 
Women of the Confederacy (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1936; 
repr. st. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1971). 
11Mary Elizabeth Massey, Bonnet Brigades (New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966); Mary Elizabeth Massey, Ersatz in 
the Confederacy (Columbia: University of South Carolina 
Press, 1952). Massey's Bonnet Brigades is arguably the 
best of this earlier scholarship, and includes information 
recently rediscovered by some Civil War scholars, including 
data on the civil war bread riots conducted by southern 
women. 
12Joan w. Scott, "Gender: A Useful category of 
Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 91.5 
(December 1986): 1053-75. 
most also limited their discussions to elite white women , 
usually plantation mistresses, who were considerably more 
likely than poor women to have left behind journals, 
letters, and published reminiscences. 13 
One of the most important books on this topic to 
emerge from the early groundswell of interest in women's 
history is Anne Firor Scott's The Southern Lady: From 
Pedestal to Politics, a pathbreaking study written in 1970 
which argued that the Civil War "passed over the South like 
a giant tidal wave," reshaping Southern society and paving 
the way for the "New Woman" of the post-Reconstruction 
south. 14 For Scott, these "New Women" were Southern 
ladies of the antebellum period who had been transformed by 
the crucible of war into educated, resourceful, social 
crusaders who were "influenced by Frances Willard, Susan B. 
Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later Anna Howard Shaw 
and Carrie Chapman Catt" to pursue their own agenda for 
13Bell Irvin Wiley, Confederate Women (Westport, 
conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975). Excluded from this 
discussion is Matthew Page Andrews's The Women of the South 
in War Times, which is really little more than an assembly 
of excepts from women's diaries and reminiscences, compiled 
by a former Confederate Treasury clerk. Matthew Page 
Andrews, comp. The Women of the South in War Times 
(Baltimore: Norman Remington Co., 1920). 
14Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal 
to Politics. 1830-1930, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: 
University Press of Virginia, 1995), 80-102. All 
subsequent citations are to this revised edition, which 
includes a new afterword in which Scott answers some of her 
critics, and evaluates her original thesis. 
7 
Southern women's rights. 15 Scott's analysis was so 
sweeping and her command on the sources so masterful, that 
for more than a decade her argument remained relatively 
unchallenged as the definitive interpretation of southern 
women. 16 Instead, throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, 
historians of American women in wartime concentrated their 
attention on fleshing out the experiences of women during 
the War for Independence. 17 
Recently, however, scholars have begun to build on 
Scott's work, or to chip away at some of her conclusions. 
New works by Victoria Bynum and Marjorie Spruill Wheeler 
have extended Scott's analysis, respectively, to the yeoman 
15Anne Firor Scott, "The New Woman and the New South," 
South Atlantic Quarterly 65 (1962): 573-83. 
16For Scott's role as a role model and mentor, see 
Nancy Weiss Malkiel, "Invincible Woman: Anne Firor Scott," 
in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, Nancy A. 
Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock, eds. (Urbana: University of 
Chicago Press, 1993), 381-92. 
17A detailed discussion of women during the American 
Revolution is beyond the scope of this review of the 
literature. The most important works on this topic are 
Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and 
Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W.W. Norton, 
1980); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The 
Revolutionary Experience of American Women. 1750-1800 
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); Joan Hoff Wilson, "The 
Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution," in 
The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of 
American Radicalism, Alfred F. Young, ed. (DeKalb: Northern 
Illinois Press, 1976), 383-446; Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. 
Albert, eds. Women in the Age of the American Revolution 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the 
United States Capitol Historical Society, 1989); and Joy 
Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman 
and Her Family in Revolutionary America (New York: W.W. 
Norton, 1984). 
8 
9 
women of upcountry North Carolina, and the genteel founders 
of the late-nineteenth-century southern States Woman 
Suffrage Conference. 18 Anne Scott's own Natural Allies, 
published in 1991, builds on her thesis about the Southern 
lady by expanding historical understanding of 
organizational politics for both white and black women in 
the South and North throughout the nineteenth century. 19 
Two recent anthologies edited by Carol Bleser, and by 
Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, have added to our 
knowledge of Southern marriage and family relations through 
much of the nineteenth century, and the ways in which the 
Civil War represented a crisis of gender for both white and 
black Southerners. 20 Although she has long been a 
compelling scholar of the wartime South, historian Drew 
Gilpin Faust has more recently fixed her gaze on the 
wartime experiences of Southern women as well, first, in 
her analysis of Confederate women's wartime disaffection 
18victoria E. Bynum, Unruly Women: The Political of 
Social and Sexual Control in the Old south (Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Marjorie Spruill 
Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the 
Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: 
oxford University Press, 1993). Despite Bynum's title, her 
examination of women in the North Carolina piedmont extends 
its coverage to include the Civil War years. 
19Anne Firer Scott, Natural Allies: Women's 
Associations in American History (Urbana: University of 
Chicago Press, 1991). 
20carol Bleser, ed., In Joy and in Sorrow: Women, 
Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900 (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Clinton and 
Silber, eds., Divided Houses. 
and, then, in her book-length study of white female 
slaveholders. 21 In addition, the many papers on this 
topic presented during the Ninth Berkshire Conference on 
the History of Women, held in 1993, suggests that further 
scholarship is forthcoming. 22 
10 
21Drew Gilpin Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate 
Women and the Narratives of War," Journal of Americ an 
History 76.4 (1990): 1200-28; Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers o f 
Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American 
civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 
1996). 
22Fourteen papers relating to women during the civil 
War and Reconstruction were presented at this conference: 
LeeAnn Whites, "Women and the Lost Cause, or 'Stand by Your 
Man': The Ladies' Memorial Association and the 
Reconstruction of White Manhood in the New South"; Marjorie 
Spruill Wheeler, "Southern Suffragists and the Rejection of 
'Indirect Influence;'" Tracey Weis, "'She Refused to Obey': 
African-American Domestic Workers and the Reconstruction of 
Richmond"; Jane E. Schultz, "'Seldom Thanked, Never 
Praised, and Scarcely Recognized': Black and White Women in 
Civil War Relief Work"; Elizabeth D. Leonard, "Extreme 
Pressure and Limited Tolerance: The Civil War Story of Mary 
Edwards Walker, M.D."; Laura Edwards, "Sexual Violence and 
Political Struggle: Finding Women in Reconstruction 
Politics"; Hannah Rosen, "Struggles over 'Freedom': sexual 
Violence during the Memphis Riot of 1866 11 ; Megan 
Mcclintock, "Breadwinners Go to War: The Case of civil War 
Pensions''; Carolyn Stefanco, "'A Matter of Honor': Female 
Patriotism in the Confederate South"; Grace Elizabeth Hale, 
"'Some Women Have Never Been Reconstructed': Mildred L. 
Rutherford, Lucy M. Stanton, and the Racial Politics of 
White Female Identity in the New South"; Elizabeth R. 
Varon, "From Partisanship to Sectionalism: White Women's 
Political Consciousness in Virginia, 1840-1861"; Rachel 
Filene Seidman, "Blasphemous Harlots and Poor Widows: 
Women, Politics, and Culture in Pennsylvania during the 
American Civil War"; Elizabeth Hayes Turner, "From Private 
Entertainments to Public Rallies: The Transformation of the 
Texas Woman Suffrage Movement"; and Lana Ruegamer, "Female 
Moral Authority and Politics in Post-civil War America: 
Toward 'the Matriarchal Moment.'" Program Committee of the 
Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 
"Transformations: Women, Gender, Power," program guide for 
the Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 11-
11 
Recent studies have questioned Scott's work in three 
general areas: her suggestion that many slave mistresses 
disliked slavery intensely and often opposed its 
continuation; her contention that the social upheaval of 
the Civil War and Reconstruction significantly broadened 
women's social, political, and economic choices; and her 
focus--like that of other scholars of the time--on the 
(more accessible) records provided by elite white women. 23 
Scott's presentation of Southern ladies as closet 
abolitionists has been most eloquently opposed by Elizabeth 
Fox-Genovese who argues that, although they 
13 June, 1993, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. 
Four papers on the same topic were also presented at the 
55th Annual Conference of the Southern Historical 
Association, 8-11 November 1989, Lexington, Kentucky. 
These four papers were Victoria Bynum, "The Struggle to 
Survive: Poor Women in Civil War North Carolina"; Donna D. 
Krug, "The Enemy at the Door in the Confederacy: A Crisis 
of Hdnor"; Earl J. Hess, "The 'Face' of Battle and the 
Experience of Combat in the Civil War"; and Reid Mitchell, 
"The Union Soldier and the Local Community." As an 
indication of how recent most of this Civil War scholarship 
is, only two of the titles from the Ninth Berkshire 
conference (Wheeler and Bynum) were mentioned as works-in-
progress in the expansive historiographical essay on 
southern women by Anne Firer Scott and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall 
which appeared in Interpreting Southern History in 1987. 
In fact, with the exception of works by Massey, Simpkins 
and Patton, and Scott's own Southern Lady, scholarship on 
the Civil War, per se, is hardly mentioned at all. See 
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and Anne Firor Scott, "Women in the 
south," in Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical 
Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham, John B. Boles 
and Evelyn Thomas Noland, eds. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana 
state University Press, 1987), 454-509. 
23Anne Firor Scott, "Afterword: The Southern Lady 
Revisited," in The Southern Lady, 270-79. 
12 
were known to grumble in private about certain 
aspects of their lives and even, on occasion, to 
blame slavery for the most disagreeable ones 
.the complaints of slaveholding women never 
amounted to a concerted attack on the system, the 
various parts of which, as they knew, stood or fell 
together. Slavery, with all its abuses, constituted 
the fabric of their beloved country--the warp and woof 
of their social position, their personal relations, 
their very identities. 24 
Scott's contention that the Civil War and 
Reconstruction led to a permanent transformation in 
Southern white women's status--economically, politically, 
and socially--has been challenged by George Rable and 
Suzanne Lebsock who reject Scott's war-as-watershed 
24Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, 290. 
In the afterword to the revised edition of The Southern 
Lady, Scott addresses this criticism, noting that she 
"would now be more cautious in attributing antislavery 
views to large numbers of white women," although she still 
maintains that "a considerable number of women objected to 
the institution because of the work and worry of managing 
slave labor or because they abhorred miscegenation." Anne 
Firor Scott, The Southern Lady, 273-4. Scott's analysis in 
the original relies heavily on two sources, Mary Chesnut's 
diary, and the abolitionism of Sarah and Angelina Grimke. 
Although clouded by other narrative threads, Fox-Genovese's 
chapter which offers a corrective to Scott's original 
analysis (Chapter 7: "And·Women Who Did Not") is based on a 
broader sampling of the sources. Elizabeth Varon's recent 
dissertation, "We Mean to Be counted," engages this 
criticism by Fox-Genovese and, in some ways mediates 
between Scott's original claim and those of her critics. 
varon's evidence on Virginia women's work in antebellum 
anti-slavery societies contends that "hundreds of white 
women in antebellum Virginia publicly expressed their 
opposition to slavery" through their work in these 
antebellum associations. According to Varon, this 
opposition to slavery was muted and eventually 
transmogrified into a defense of the peculiar institution 
during the sectional crisis of the 1850s. Elizabeth Regina 
Varon, "'We Mean to Be Counted': White Women and Politics 
in Antebellum Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 
1993), 84-167. 
13 
argument. Rable's analysis finds Southern women picking up 
the traces of their tattered domesticity at the war's end, 
while Lebsock's more nuanced examination suggests that 
Confederate defeat might not have killed white male 
authority in the South, but rather left it wounded, and 
thus more dangerous, to Southern women. 25 For Rable, this 
post-bellum reversal was due to the relentless pull of 
conservative forces in Southern society which turned back 
the tide of wartime gains. 26 For Lebsock, the reassertion 
of white men's protection and domination of white women and 
the negation of their wartime accomplishments was a 
necessary domestic balm to the political and economic 
losses white men sustained as a result of black 
emancipation. "Losers," Lebsock observes, "are not 
inclined to be generous. 1127 
Both Rable and Lebsock fault Scott on two points. The 
first is that some changes that Scott attributes to the 
25George C. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the crisis of 
Southern Nationalism (Chicago: University of Illinois 
Press, 1989); Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg. 
Although Lebsock treats the effects of the Civil War on 
Southern women only in her epilogue, the entire body of her 
work demonstrates her contention that Petersburg's white 
women and free women of color were making slow steady 
progress in gaining autonomy from Petersburg men throughout 
the entire antebellum period. Rable's book, on the other 
hand, appears to be a richly-textured if somewhat subtle 
attack on the Scott thesis which can be largely read in the 
text's footnotes. Rable, civil Wars, 367, fn. 24; 372, 
fn.2; 373, fn. 12; 376, fn. 38; and 377, fn. 50. 
26Rable, civil Wars, 286-88. 
27Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, 247-48. 
14 
war--including the movement of Southern women into business 
enterprises, and their increasing participation in clubs 
and organizations--were actually taking place on a limited 
scale before the war began and, therefore, cannot be seen 
purely as a result of the social upheaval Scott claims the 
war engendered. 28 Second, both argue that Scott's 
findings are skewed by the fact that her study rests almost 
completely on qualitative sources like diaries and letters 
and, thus, documents the experience of the planter elite, a 
group which may have actually enjoyed enhanced social roles 
in the postbellum South, while their counterparts who lived 
further down the economic scale suffered, sometimes 
precisely because of the higher position enjoyed by their 
more affluent sisters. 29 In addition, Lebsock has noted 
that the war might actually be interpreted as a setback for 
some of the South's free women, if one considers the 
28Rable, Civil Wars, 367-68; Lebsock, Free Women of 
Petersburg, 239-40. Elizabeth Varon has recently made this 
same argument for Virginia women's political roles. 
Elizabeth Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White 
Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia," Journal 
of American History 82.2 (September 1995): 494-521, and 
Varon, "'We Mean to Be counted.'" 
29Rable, Civil Wars, 372; Lebsock, Fre e Women of 
Petersburg, 239-40. Scott raises this criticism, herself, 
in the afterword to the revised edition of The Southern 
Lady. Referring to a quote by Alice Walker about the 
importance of seeing a subject from different points of 
view, she observes: "If I had understood this necessity 
better, I would have paid more attention to the way various 
relationships, experiences, and structures were perceived 
by poor women and black women whose point of view would 
have provided some of the missing parts of the story." 
Anne Firer Scott, The Southern Lady, 276-77. 
15 
failure rate of female-dominated businesses in the 
postbellum years. 30 
Rable and Lebsock raise important objections. My 
research concludes that white women's experiences of the 
Civil War and Reconstruction in Richmond, Virginia, were 
far more complex than Scott's notion of a historical 
watershed indicates. Instead, optimistic assessments about 
Richmond women's wartime advances must constantly be 
measured against the reality of life in a conservative, 
reactionary Southern society anxious to contain the social 
fallout from emancipation and defeat. One way to do this 
was to limit women's postwar gains. 
One of the major flaws in Scott's original work, and 
one which also mars Rable's challenge, is that both Scott 
and Rable--and, to some extent, Drew Faust in Mothers of 
Invention--engage in a wide-ranging examination of the 
entire South in more-or-less monolithic terms, thus 
blurring distinctions between rural and urban communities; 
between older and newer Southern states; between Deep South 
communities and those along the border between South and 
North. Before the question of the effects of the Civil War 
on southern women's status can be successfully answered, 
more research needs to be done on the experiences of 
southern women in discrete and disparate communities 
throughout the South, to see if the war was, indeed, a 
30Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, 244. 
16 
liberating force in Southern society. 31 This study seeks 
to contribute to this debate about the effects of the war 
on Southern white women's status through an examination of 
the public and private lives of white women in Richmond, 
Virginia. 
Urban histories focusing mainly on the experiences of 
white men in civil War and Reconstruction Richmond have 
been written by several amateur and professional 
historians, including W. Asbury Christian, Emory Thomas, 
Virginius Dabney, and Michael B. Chesson. 32 In addition, 
several excellent studies have begun to sketch out the 
lives of African-American women and men in the antebellum 
31George Rable, Anne Scott, and Suzanne Lebsock have 
all called for this to be done. See Rable, Civil Wars, 
xii; Anne Firer Scott, The Southern Lady, 276-87; and 
Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg, 247-48. 
32w. Asbury Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present 
(Richmond: L.H. Jenkins, 1912); Mary Newton Stanard, 
Richmond: Its People and Its Story (Philadelphia: J.B. 
Lippincott, 1923); Leslie Winston Smith, "Richmond during 
Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867" (Ph.D. diss., 
University of Virginia, 1974); Michael B. Chesson, Richmond 
after the war. 1865-1890 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 
1981); Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: 
A Biography of the Capital (Austin: University of Texas 
Press, 1971); Virginius Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a 
city, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of 
Virginia, 1990) (All subsequent citations are to this 
edition.); Marie Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls: Richmond, 
Virginia. and Its People (Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1994). All of these sources include some 
information on women, but none breaks fresh ground in its 
attempt to incorporate white and black women into the 
history of Virginia's capital city. Excluded from this 
discussion is the often erroneous and unreliable Alfred 
Hoyt Bill, The Beleaguered city: Richmond. 1861-1865 (New 
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946). 
and postbellum capital. Stephanie Cole's comparison of 
domestic work in five antebellum border cities places 
Richmond's black female domestics in the context of black 
women who labored in similar occupations in Washington, 
D.C., Baltimore, Maryland, Louisville, Kentucky, and 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 33 Tracey Weis's examination of domestic 
work in Richmond from 1850 to 1880 has revealed the 
contours of labor negotiations and the redefinition of 
urban space as the city's domestic workers and their 
owners/employers moved from chattel slavery to wage 
labor. 34 Peter Rachleff's study of black labor traces the 
lineaments of African American society in the postwar 
capital and provides a detailed analysis of the 
relationship between white and black labor in the cauldron 
of post-civil War politics. 35 Elsa Barkley Brown's 
dissertation provides a richly textured study of African 
American community development in the postemancipation 
city. 36 But although published and unpublished wartime 
33stephanie Cole, "Servants and Slaves: Domestic 
servants in the Border cities, 1800-1850" (Ph.D. diss., 
University of Florida, 1994). 
34Tracey Weis, 11Negotiating Labor: Domestic Service 
and Household Relations in Richmond, Virginia, 1850-1880" 
(Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1994). 
35Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-
1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). 
36Elsa Barkley Brown, "Uncle Ned's Children: 
Negotiating Community and Freedom in Postemancipation 
Richmond, Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 
1994). 
17 
18 
diaries and letters by Richmond women abound, no study 
exists that analyzes the experiences of white Richmond 
women during this turbulent period in American history 
(with the exception of an earlier documentary text edited 
by Katharine M. Jones). 37 
Richmond, Virginia, is an important place in which to 
study the short- and long-term effects of the Civil War and 
Reconstruction on southern women--not because of the city's 
typicality, but because it was the capital of the 
confederacy. Situated on the banks of the James River in 
the southeastern portion of the state, Richmond in 1860 was 
a major Southern metropolis. On the eve of the war, its 
population was surpassed in the .urban areas that later 
joined the Confederacy only by New Orleans and Charleston; 
in 1880, by New Orleans alone. 38 An industrial and 
commercial center, Richmond led the world in the production 
of flour, which was shipped from the Gallego and Haxall 
37Katharine M. Jones, ed., Ladies of Richmond, 
confederate Capitol (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 
1962). For a discussion of the historiography of Virginia 
women during the war and Reconstruction, see Suzanne 
Lebsock, "A Share of Honour:" Virginia Women, 1600-1945, 
rev. ed. (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1987), 79-103 
(All subsequent citations are to this edition.); and Sandra 
Gioia Treadway, "New Directions in Virginia Women's 
History," Virginia Magazine of History and Biograph~ 100.1 
(January 1992): 16-23. 
38Howard N. Rabinowitz, "Continuity and Change: 
southern Urban Development, 1860-1900," in The City in 
southern History: The Growth of Urban Civilization in the 
south, Blaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield, eds. 
(Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), 83, Table 
4 .1. 
19 
mills throughout the world, especially to South America. 
Fifty-two tobacco processing warehouses and factories 
testified to its importance as a leader in the production 
of chewing tobacco. Tredegar Iron Works--one of the few 
iron manufactories in the South--produced locomotives and 
iron rails for railroads throughout the region. 
Richmond had long been the capital of Virginia, and, 
in May 1861, it became the capital of the Confederate 
states of America, thus making it simultaneously the seat 
of a municipal, a state, and a national government. 
Confederate President Jefferson Davis occupied a house on 
the corner of Twelfth Street and Clay, and many cabinet 
members and Confederate congressmen called the wartime city 
their home. The Confederate legislature met in the 
Virginia Capitol, and hundreds of Confederate bureaucrats 
and government offices vied with the city and state 
government to occupy municipal buildings for the war's 
duration. 
such importance many Richmonders came to view as more 
of a curse than a blessing. Although Richmonders believed 
--or at least hoped--that the city's seven hills would 
render it impregnable, its short distance from Washington, 
o.c., made its capture a primary military objective for the 
union Armies; Richmond was under serious assault at least 
seven times between 1861 and 1865.· As a result, large 
numbers of confederate troops were frequently stationed in 
20 
or near the capital city, usually for its defense, but also 
at times awaiting deployment to other locations in the 
war's eastern theater. The armies' presence attracted 
prostitutes who emigrated to the city to provide sexual 
services to the military population. As Union armies cut 
deep into the South's heartland, the city became home to 
thousands of refugees who streamed into Richmond to avoid 
Union troops, or to seek work in one of the government 
departments. By 1863, the city's population had swelled 
from less than 40,000 in 1860 to somewhere between 100,000 
and 120,000. (In 1870, after the postwar exodus of white 
government workers and refugees and the influx of rural 
blacks, the Richmond population stood at 51,000; by 1880, 
it had reached 63,600.) 
Richmond's role as the Confederate capital proved to 
be a two-edged sword for the city's white female 
population. As white men enlisted or were later 
conscripted into the Southern army, the Confederate 
bureaucracy provided white Richmond women with extensive 
opportunities for employment in traditional and 
nontraditional occupations on a scale unheard of before the 
war began and far exceeding those available to women in 
most Southern communities. But the city's rapid population 
growth in such a short period of time stretched its 
resources to the limit, creating acute shortages in food 
and housing, and driving the inflation rate to nearly 900 
21 
percent in 1863. Nearly everyone suffered and did without, 
but the deprivation was hardest on the poor and laboring 
classes who clustered in the city's working-class 
neighborhoods of Rocketts and Oregon Hill. 
Wives and mothers of Confederate soldiers were 
especially hard-hit because their husbands' wages of $11 
per month could not keep pace with the city's escalating 
inflation. Many people applied to the overseers of the 
Poor for help. In the spring of 1863, several hundred 
women staged a rampage through the city's market district, 
stealing bacon, flour, and other commodities. In the 
riot's wake, Richmond leaders established "free markets" to 
. . . . . 1 d 39 provide relief and maintain socia or er. 
On April 3, 1865, the city fell to Federal troops. 
In the early morning hours, embers from burning tobacco and 
cotton warehouses touched off a conflagration in the city's 
business and financial district that levelled a twenty-
block area. For the next five years, as a "New South" city 
rose from the ashes, white and black Richmonders negotiated 
the social terrain of Reconstruction under the eyes of the 
Union army. For a number of white Richmond women, this 
negotiation took the form of reconfiguring household 
relationships that had been severed, or at least 
39E. Susan Barber, '"The Quiet Battles of the Home 
Front War': Civil War Bread Riots and the Development of a 
Confederate Welfare System" (M.A. thesis, University of 
Maryland, 1986). 
22 
transformed, by emancipation. Many also had to deal with 
the searing loss of husbands, fathers, or sons, or struggle 
with returning menfolk whose bodies were injured and whose 
sense of Southern manhood and honor had been damaged or 
destroyed. Some women formed associations to redeem the 
heroism of dead Confederate soldiers, or to care for the 
hundreds of women and children left destitute in the war's 
wake. Many labored--sometimes outside the home for the 
first time--to restore vigor and stability to family 
household economies depleted by the cost of the conflict. 
The Civil War, thus, led to a wartime relaxation in 
gender roles for white Richmond women that permitted many 
of them to gain entry into social, political, and economic 
activities that had previously been closed to them. 
Briefly during the conflict, some Richmond women began to 
perceive of themselves as Confederate "sisters," self-
appointed comrades in arms who shared with Confederate 
soldiers the responsibilities and burdens of creating and 
, t' 40 defending a new na ion. This new self-perception of 
Southern women as confederate sisters was not open to all 
40By "sisters," I mean women "who share a common 
ancestry, allegiance, or purpose" with other women. 
American Heritage Dictionary, 3d ed. (New York: Dell 
Publishing, 1994). I do not use "sisters" or "sisterhood," 
here, to mean the bonding of women in a recognition of 
shared oppression by patriarchal society as it is sometimes 
used by contemporary feminism. Lisa Tuttle, Encyclopedia 
of Feminism (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1986), 
302; Maggie Humm, The Dictionary of Feminist Theory, 2d. 
ed. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1995), 268. 
23 
Richmond women, although it found validation that cut 
across class lines to include working-class white women's 
labor in munitions factories and elite women's organization 
of gunboat societies. Nor did it represent a singular 
model for all wartime Southern women. Rather, it existed 
alongside more traditional representations of Confederate 
women as pedestaled "Southern ladies" or conceptualizations 
of them as Spartan mothers who sent their sons into battle 
with dry eyes and care-filled hearts. 
While the war dramatically changed all women's lives 
for its duration, its effects were short lived for many. 
The city's fall in 1865 led to a postwar narrowing of 
expectations about the appropriate roles of Richmond women. 
Some women sought to return to the comforts of the past, 
while others struggled to preserve, or even expand on, 
gains the war made possible. The 1870s and 1880s were, 
thus·, marked by tens ions over women's appropriate re les, 
which occasionally erupted in conflicts that tore at the 
fabric of Richmond society. During this period of time, 
ideas of Richmond women as Confederate "sisters" 
disappeared, and were replaced by more traditional notions 
of southern women as the subordinates of Southern men. 
Historians have noted similar relaxations and 
contractions of gender roles for women during other 
American wars. While they differ in their assessments of 
women's wartime gains--liberalized divorce laws, increased 
24 
educational opportunities, or the emergence of a new 
postbellum role as "republican mothers''--most historians of 
women during the American Revolution concede that it 
stopped short of its revolutionary potential by failing to 
confer full citizenship on American women. 41 Maurine 
Greenwald's examination of American women's wartime work 
during World War I concluded that it did not lead to a 
permanent alte r ation in the nature or scope of women's 
employment. 42 Similarly, World War II placed thousands of 
American wives and mothers into nontraditional employment 
in shipyards and airplane factories, and then at its 
conclusion in 1945 closed these doors again, relegating 
women to postwar work as sewing factory operatives, 
waitresses, and domestic workers. As the birthrate 
skyrocketed in the post-World War II decades, American 
women also faced increasingly restrictive views of their 
41Kerber, Women of the Republic; Linda K. Kerber, 
"'History Can Do It No Justice': Women and the 
Reinterpretation of the American Revolution," in Women in 
the Age of the American Revolution, Hoffman and Albert, 
eds., 3-44; Linda K. Kerber, "May All Our Citizens Be 
Soldiers and All our Soldiers Be Citizens: The Ambiguities 
of Female citizenship in the New Nation," in Women, 
Militarism, and War: Essays in History. Politics, and 
social Theory, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Sheila Tobias, eds. 
(Savage, Md.: Roman & Littlefield, 1990), 103; Norton, 
Liberty's Daughters; Mary Beth Norton, "Reflections on 
Women in the Age of the American Revolution," in Women in 
the Age of the American Revolution, Hoffman and Albert, 
eds., 479-98; and Joan Hoff Wilson, "The Illusion of 
Change." 
42Maurine Weiner Greenwald, Women, War, and Work: The 
Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United states 
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). 
25 
roles in American society, which in some ways harkened back 
to the circumscribed gender expectations of the nineteenth-
century cult of domesticity. 43 
Although these expansions and contractions of 
opportunities for women occurred during the American 
Revolution and the two world wars of the twentieth century, 
the defining difference in this particular instance is that 
the South ended the Civil War in defeat. 44 For Southern 
men, the war's loss precipitated what some historians see 
as a "crisis of masculinity" that grafted Northern 
accusations of cowardice and battlefield inefficiency onto 
Southern men's own feelings of failure over their inability 
to protect their families and defend their new nation from 
Northern invasion. This postbellum crisis of southern 
43William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her 
Changing social. Economic. and Political Roles. 1920-1970 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Connie Field 
(director and producer), The Life and Times of Rosie th~ 
Riveter (Emeryville, Calif.: Clarity Productions, 1980). 
Sara Evans argues that the American Revolution and the 
civil War both led to postwar gains, but that World War II 
ushered in a period of hostility during the 1950s which 
resulted in the Second Wave of feminism in the 1960s. Sara 
M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America 
(New York: The Free Press, 1989), especially 239-41. 
44c. Vann Woodward has commented that the postbellum 
south experienced a historical understanding of war that 
had more in common with nations in Europe than it did with 
the rest of America in the late nineteenth century. c. 
Vann Woodward, "The Search for Southern Identity, 11 in The 
Burden of Southern History, by C. Vann Woodward. (Baton 
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), 18-19. 
This essay was originally published in The Virginia 
Quarterly Review 32 (1956): 258-67. America as a nation 
would not suffer a wartime defeat until the end of the 
Vietnam war in 1974. 
26 
manhood was also complicated by emancipation, which 
stripped another layer of patriarchal control from white 
male slaveholders. All of this sharpened and intensified 
debates about appropriate roles for women in the postbellum 
South. 45 
This study focuses on the public and private lives of 
white women from a variety of social classes living in 
Richmond, Virginia, from 1860 to 1880. 46 As this study 
will show, although white Richmonders had gone to war to 
preserve a culture and an economy built on slave labor, 
they failed. Regardless of their place in Richmond 
45The idea of the Civil War as a crisis in gender 
underpins all of the essays in Divided Houses, Silber and 
Clinton, eds., and many that appear in In Joy and in 
Sorrow, Bleser, ed. It also provides the foundation for 
Donna Krug's analysis of the war and So~thern honor. Donna 
Rebecca Dondes Krug, "The Folks Back Home: The Confederate 
Homefront during the Civil War" (Ph.D. diss., University of 
California, Irvine, 1990). Feminist scholars from a 
variety of disciplines have also taken up this question in 
Women, Militarism. and war, Elshtain and Tobias, eds. Jean 
Elshtain's Women and War examines images of women and men 
in wartime but does so from a relatively ahistorical 
perspective. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New 
York: Bantam Books, 1987). 
46Although I have tried to remain sensitive to the 
ways in which issues of race permeated and informed the 
experiences of all Richmond women, I have chosen to confine 
my dissertation to white women in keeping with the practice 
established by other scholars of women in the Civil War 
south, including Anne Firer Scott's The southern Lady, 
George Rable's civil Wars, and Drew Faust's Mothers of 
Invention. While this may set up artificial distinctions 
that blur the lines of conflict and cooperation between 
white and black women, it permits a deeper study of a 
particular group of Southern women that could later be 
incorporated into a comprehensive analysis of the 
experiences of white and black women and men in the Civil 
war South. At present, no such synthesis exists. 
27 
society, the lives of all white women were marked by the 
war and its aftermath. My study of Richmond women confirms 
Anne Scott's conclusion that the Civil War created new 
economic roles for women as hospital workers, government 
clerks, and munitions manufacturers. Unfortunately, for 
Richmond women, none of these occupations was as liberating 
as Scott's original thesis would suggest. Some women in 
Richmond moved into new lines of wartime work, but this 
movement was not endorsed by everyone. As this study will 
demonstrate, many Richmond women confronted resistance 
rooted in antebellum expectations about women's appropriate 
place in the southern workforce. Worse yet for women 
facing postwar poverty, all of these occupations came to an 
abrupt end with Confederate defeat. In the long-run, they 
were replaced by other jobs that were unexpected 
consequences of the war and Reconstruction. 
In addition to their entry into new paid work, 
Richmond women, like women throughout the South, also made 
significant organizational gains during the war and 
Reconstruction. Where Scott finds a direct route between 
soldiers' aid societies, cemetery associations, temperance 
work, missionary groups, and suffrage, I find that the path 
in Richmond was not so direct. In Richmond, women's 
cemetery work reinforced notions of Southern women's 
subordination to Southern men. It also obliterated the 
wartime sacrifices of Southern women at the same time that 
28 
it extolled the heroism of confederate soldiers. In 
addition, in Richmond, even women's volunteer work was 
opposed by men who feared it would lead to women's 
enfranchisement. This finding supports George Rable's and 
Suzanne Lebsock's contentions that the influence of 
Southern patriarchy and postwar conservatism were often too 
large for even the civil War to overcome. 
The eleven subsequent chapters are organized primarily 
by topic but also trace the narrative chronologically from 
its beginnings in 1860 to its conclusion in the early 
1880s~ The next five chapters (Part I) analyze events that 
occurred during the war; the six chapters that follow (Part 
II) examine the social consequences for women of 
confederate defeat. 
Chapter 2 offers a ''snapshot" view of Richmond and the 
status of its white women on the eve of secession and war. 
Chapters 3 and 4 examine the experiences of women who 
worked for, or provided services to, the confederacy. 
Chapter 5 focuses on Confederate women's organizational 
politics and the emergence of new perceptions of women in 
wartime. Chapter 6 traces the contours of women's wartime 
disaffection as evidenced by the bread riot of April 2, 
1863, and an espionage network under the direction of 
Elizabeth Van Lew. Chapters 7 and 8 address the work 
experiences of white women in the postwar capital. Chapter 
g outlines the struggles ·of women in several religious 
29 
denominations to carve out a more autonomous role for 
themselves in the postwar churches. Chapter 10 discusses 
the creation of Confederate memorial associations in the 
postbellum period. Chapter 11 examines the war's impact on 
marriage and family relations. A brief conclusion (Chapter 
12) summarizes my findings. 
CHAPTER 2 
RICHMOND: A SOUTHERN PARADOX 
on April 12, 1860, exactly one year before the 
confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina 
signalled the start of the American civil War, Richmonders 
were engaged in a lavish celebration marking the life of 
Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. since December 1844, more 
than two thousand women throughout Virginia had contributed 
funds to an organization whose goal was to erect a marble 
statue in Clay's honor. Finally, after years of anxious 
waiting, the statue was complete and ready for installation 
in Richmond's Capitol Square, a public park surrounding the 
Virginia state capitol building designed by Thomas 
Jefferson in 1785. More than twenty thousand Richmond 
women and men witnessed the statue's unveiling, and 
listened as speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of 
the Whig politician revered for his role in the keeping the 
country together by "compromising" sectional tensions from 
the Nullification crisis of 1833 through the Mexican War 
and the Compromise of 1850. A brisk breeze blew through 
the crowd that day, ruffling the silken skirts of the white 
Richmond ladies who promenaded in and out of Capitol square 
30 
31 
to admire sculptor Joel Hart's handiwork. A few ladies, 
whom the Richmond Whig described as being "more circumspect 
than the others of their sex," were accompanied by a female 
slave who followed along behind, keeping her mistresses' 
skirts in place so the wind did not expose the ladies' feet 
to public scrutiny. 1 This event provides an ideal starting 
place from which to examine Richmond, Virginia, and the 
place occupied by white women in the city on the eve of the 
civil War. 
The Richmond Economy 
White women living in Richmond, Virginia, in 1860 
inhabited a city that straddled the line, economically, 
politically, and socially, between the slaveholding 
agricultural regions of the Deep South and the northern 
industrial metropolises. 2 By 1860, Richmond possessed a 
1Richmond Whig, 14 April 1860. The numerous 
descriptions of this ceremony have been distilled by 
Elizabeth R. Varon in "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: 
White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia," 
Journal of American History 82.2 (September 1995): 509-17; 
and Elizabeth Regine Varon, "'We Mean to Be Counted': White 
Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., 
Yale University, 1993), 168-267. 
2several Richmond historians have described the city's 
contradictory nature. See Marie Tyler-McGraw, At the 
Falls: Richmond, Virginia, and Its People (Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Michael B. 
Chesson, Richmond after the War, 1865-1890 (Richmond: 
Virginia State Library, 1981); Emory M. Thomas, The 
Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital 
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971); Tracey M. Weis, 
"Negotiating Freedom: Domestic Service and Household 
Relations in Richmond, Virginia, 1850-1880 11 (Ph.D. diss., 
32 
thriving commercial and manufacturing economy that rivaled 
the economies of some Northern cities, and included eight 
lumber yards, six brickmaking establishments, three flour 
mills, a nail factory, fifty-two tobacco processors, eight 
box factories, four textile mills, and the largest iron 
foundry in the South. Of the 332 businesses listed in the 
manufacturing schedule of the 1860 Richmond census, ninety 
employed between twenty and a hundred workers, each. 
Fourteen more, including the Old Dominion Iron and Nail 
Works, the Eagle Machine Foundry, the Haxall and Crenshaw 
flour mills, Tredegar Iron Works, and seven large tobacco 
processors, hired crews that were sometimes well in excess 
of a hundred laborers. 3 
Although the industrial production of iron spikes, 
locomotive engines, and woolen cloth contributed more than 
$1.7 million to the Richmond economy in 1860 and made it 
unique among Southern cities, the bulk of the city's 
revenue came from the processing of agricultural products 
raised by slaves working on farms and plantations in the 
Rutgers University, 1994); and Virginius Dabney, Richmond: 
The Story of a City, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University 
Press of Virginia, 1990). All subsequent references are to 
this edition. 
3The Tredegar Iron Works employed more than 800 men; 
the Old Dominion Iron and Nail Works, 225. Manufacturing 
schedule for the 1860 Census, Richmond, Virginia, NARA. 
33 
surrounding counties. 4 In 1860, the city's three flour 
mills ground more than 1.3 million bushels of wheat into 
flour for a revenue of more than $2.8 million, while 
Richmond's fifty-two tobacco warehouses processed almost 
twenty-three million pounds of leaf tobacco into chewing 
plugs for a net worth of $4.8 million. 5 
In the city itself, a significant portion of the 
industrial labor was performed by hired slaves who worked 
side-by-side with the city's free blacks and white 
immigrant and native-born workers in a labor system unique 
to southern cities. 6 Richmond slaves and free blacks 
4Manufacturing Schedule for the 1860 Census,· Richmond, 
Virginia, NARA. This is conservative estimate based on 
production figures for the Tredegar and Eagle foundries, 
the Crenshaw Woolen mill, and seven other smaller iron 
works. Marie Tyler-McGraw includes the total production of 
all of the city's iron and metal works (sixty shops), 
regardless of size, to arrive at an annual value of $2.3 
million in the same year. Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 120-
23. For a discussion of antebellum Southern cities, see 
David R. Goldfield, "Pursuing the American Urban Dream: 
cities in the Old South," in The City in Southern History: 
The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South, Blaine A. 
Brownell and David R. Goldfield, eds. (Port Washington, 
N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), 53-91. 
5Manufacturing Schedule for the 1860 Census, Richmond, 
Virginia, NARA. Agricultural processing also supported a 
number of ancillary industries, including barrel making, 
tobacco box manufacturing, and the production of 
agricultural machinery and tobacco cutters. 
6 rra Berlin and Herbert G. Gutman, "Natives and 
Immigrants, Free Men and Slaves: Urban Workingmen in the 
Antebellum South," American Historical Review 88.5 
(December 1983): 1175-1200; Gregg D. Kimball, "The Working 
People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 
1865-1920, 11 Labor's Heritage 3.2 (April 1991): 45-48; and 
David R. Goldfield, "Pursuing the American Dream," 65-67. 
Goldfield has estimated that about 52 percent of the city's 
34 
comprised the bulk of the city's 3,400 tobacco hands, and a 
large proportion of the 800 foundry workers at Tredegar 
mill. 7 In more affluent Richmond households, slave and 
free women of color toiled as domestic workers, freeing 
white Richmond ladies to work for various social reforms, 
or to engage in the endless round of visiting some found 
appealing. Others, like the slave woman who followed 
behind her white mistresses at the Clay statue unveiling, 
worked as personal retainers whose very presence both 
assured and reinforced some white women's privileged status 
in Richmond society. Nearly three dozen slave and free 
women of color labored as stemmers in the city's tobacco 
houses. 8 Slave and free women and men were also employed 
as maids, cooks, porters, or butlers for the city's five 
hotels. 9 
In the 1830s and 1840s, waves of Irish and German 
settlers immigrated to the city, finding work in industry 
or the construction trades, or establishing private 
slaves in 1860 worked under hiring contracts arranged by 
hiring agents. 
7teslie Winston Smith, "Richmond during Presidential 
Reconstruction" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 
1974), 7-11. Commercial agent John R. Anderson first 
bought slave laborers to work as puddlers at Tredegar in 
1842. Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 120-23. Because of the 
heavy industry in Richmond, black men outnumbered black 
women in the antebellum Richmond population. 
8Thirty-five women are listed as tobacco house 
employees in the 1860 Richmond census. 
9Richmond Enquirer, 2 January 1860. 
35 
businesses as butchers, bakers, brewers, and confectioners. 
By the mid-1850s, Richmond's German community had a German-
language newspaper, a yearly Oktoberfest, a German music 
society, and a scattering of beer gardens. 10 Some of 
these immigrants were German Jews who mingled with earlier 
Jewish settlers to form a small but vigorous Jewish 
community that supported three congregations in 1860, 
including one of the oldest synagogues in the nation. 11 
10Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a City, 153-54; 
Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 110-13. 
11Beth Shalome Congregation was one of six temples in 
the United states to send a letter congratulating George 
Washington on his election as the first president of the 
United States. Other Richmond congregations in 1860 
included Beth Ahabah, formed in 1834, and Knesseth Israel. 
In the 1880s, Russian Jewish immigrants formed the Moses 
Monetfiore Congregation. Herbert Ezekiel and Gaston 
Lichtenstien, The History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 
to 1917 (Richmond: Herbert T. Ezekiel, printer, 1917), 236-
56, and 279. Other information on Southern Jewry or Jews 
in Richmond can be found in Myron Berman, Richmond's Jewry, 
1769-1976: Shabbat in Shockoe (Richmond: University Press 
of Virginia, 1979); Claire Milhiser Rosenbaum, Universal 
and Particular Obligations (Richmond: Beth Ahabah Museum & 
Archives Trust, 1988); Catherine Anne Wilkinson, "To Live 
and Die in Dixie: German Reform Jews in the Southern United 
States" (B.A. thesis, Princeton University, 1990); James D. 
Apple, "Jewish Christian Relations from 1861 to 1881 11 (Term 
paper, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 
1965); Allen I. Freehling, "The Acculturation of the 
American Jew" (Term paper, Hebrew Union College-Jewish 
Institute of Religion, 1965); and Martin Sklar, "'And the 
walls came Tumbling Down': Jews in the Old South, 1840-
1861" (B.A. thesis, Princeton University, 1981). No 
wartime figures for Southern Jewish communities can be 
found; but by 1878 Richmond's Jewish population of 1,200 
placed in the middle of population figures for Southern 
communities, succeeded only by Baltimore, Maryland; 
Memphis, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; and New Orleans, 
Louisiana; but well ahead of those in Nashville, Tennessee; 
Galveston, Texas; and Charleston and Columbia, South 
Carolina. 
36 
Although inunigrants tended to cluster in certain lines of 
work, many more labored in occupations--blacksmiths, 
ironworkers, drivers, and factory hands--that included men 
who were both slave and free, white and black, immigrant 
and native-born (Table 11.1) . 12 
In 1860, most white upper- and middle-class women 
remained at home, or engaged in charitable work for one of 
the city's orphanages, or the churches, or Richmond's 
temperance or colonization societies. 13 Only two white 
women headed businesses that were listed in the city's 1860 
census. Bettie Bragg operated a corn grist mill that 
employed two male workers, who were possibly slaves, and 
did a yearly business of $4,600. Rachel McDermott's 
regalia manufactory made insignia and flags with the help 
of three male workers for an annual income of $1,500. 
Other white Richmond women worked in family-run 
confectionery or bakery shops, maintained private 
12 1 have extrapolated this information from my sample 
of the Richmond marriage register, which is explained in 
Chapter Eleven, Table 11.1. See also Berlin and Gutman, 
"Natives and Immigrants, Free Men and Slaves. 11 
131n 1860, the Richmond chapter of the American 
Colonization Society reported collecting more than $3,700 
during the month of December for the repatriation of 
slaves. Richmond Enquirer, 12 January 1860. For a 
discussion of anti-slavery work by Richmond women, see 
Elizabeth Varon, "'We Mean to Be Counted,' 11 especially 
Chapters 1 and 2. Varon's dissertation challenges the 
interpretation of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Catherine 
Clinton, and Jean Friedman that Southern women lagged 
behind Northern women in the work of benevolence, and the 
critics who claim that Anne Scott over-estimated the number 
of white Southern women who were closet abolitionists. 
37 
dressmaking or millinery businesses, or sewed for some of 
the city's merchant tailors or shoemakers. At least ten 
middle-class women taught in Richmond's six female 
academies, usually music, art, English, or conversational 
French. Working-class women found employment in one of the 
textile factories, or at Keen, Baldwin & Williams, a 
clothing factory that moved to Richmond in January 1860. 14 
Richmond Society 
By 1860, Richmond was a richly textured, cosmopolitan 
city with an economy that linked it to the industrialized 
North, but with a social organization that reflected its 
status as a Southern slaveholding society. White Richmond 
elites--a number of whom could date their ancestry to the 
city's founding in 1742--lived in the stately Greek revival 
homes in hillside communities in the eastern and western 
sections of the city, or in an affluent neighborhood just 
north of Broad Street that included the former home of 
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who had died in 
1836. In 1860, the city could claim two public libraries, 
a medical college, thirteen primary schools and private 
academies, five theaters, at least eight newspapers, and 
thirty-two churches and synagogues. 
14Richmond Enquirer, 2 January 1860. 
e~ , ' I . ;-~ ,~ 
Figure 2.1. Map of Richmond, Virginia, 1861-1865 
(Source: Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate State of 
Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Austin: 
University of Texas Press, 1971). 
',! 
38 
39 
German and Irish laborers resided in the working-class 
neighborhoods of Oregon or Navy hills, or in Fulton. 
Others lived in Manchester, a working-class community on 
the southern banks of the James River, which was linked to 
the city by Mayo's Bridge. Poorer residents, both white 
and black, found homes in Rocketts, Screamersville, and 
Penitentiary Bottom. 15 Some hired slaves who labored in 
industrial manufacturing returned to their owners' homes in 
the evening, while others lived independently in slave 
housing that dotted the city, making for a semi-autonomous 
slave· population, but one in which slaves still lived 
largely cheek-by-jowl with their white owners. 16 
Beginning shortly after the discovery of Gabriel 
Presser's conspiracy in 1800, the Richmond Common Council 
had passed a series of codes aimed at controlling slave 
mobility; but most of these regulations went relatively 
15Richmond is comprised of a number of steep hills. 
Most community names, therefore, indicate something about 
the city's topography. Affluent and middle-class 
communities in antebellum Richmond included Union, Church, 
and Libby hills on the city's east end, and Shockoe Hill to 
the west. Michael B. Chesson, Richmond after the War, 117-
43; Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 110-15; Dabney, Richmond: 
The Story of a City, 153-54. 
16Boarding out slaves, according to Tracey Weis, was a 
widespread practice in antebellum Richmond. Tracey M. 
Weis, "Negotiating Freedom," 64-81. Also Peter J. 
Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890 (Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 1989), 7-10; and Stephanie 
Cole, "Servants and Slaves: Domestic Servants in the Border 
Cities, 1800-1850" (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 
1994). Both Weis and Cole argue that the lines between 
free blacks and slaves were blurred in antebellum border 
cities like Richmond. 
unenforced until 1859 when John Brown's aborted raid on 
Harper's Ferry led to the passage of more restrictive 
measures. 17 Under the 1859 law, free blacks and slaves 
were required to carry freedom papers or passes at all 
times. Slaves were also prohibited from engaging in a 
variety of behaviors, including public swearing, 
congregating on street corners, purchasing liquor or guns, 
joining secret societies, and renting city lodging. 18 
As a nineteenth-century center of industrial 
manufacturing, Richmond in some ways resembled Northern 
cities. White Richmonders frequently found themselves 
traversing an antebellum axis that linked Richmond to 
Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, o.c.--two border 
cities with which Richmond shared a lot of similarities, 
but which remained in the Union during the Civil War. 19 
40 
17Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 117. Gabriel Prosser 
was a Richmond slave who, in 1800, orchestrated a 
conspiracy of slaves and free blacks to seize weapons from 
the Richmond arsenal and hold the city hostage until all 
slaves were freed. The conspiracy was discovered before 
Prosser had time to put it into effect, and he and his 
followers were executed. Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 74-
76; Dabney, Richmond: The story of a City, 50-60. 
18oabney, Richmond: The Story of a City, 157; Tyler-
McGraw, At the Falls, 131. 
19aaltimore and Washington both had larger populations 
in 1860, but all three cities derived a portion of their 
economy from slave labor. Stephanie Cole's examination of 
antebellum domestic service contends that border cities had 
more in common with each other than they did with cities to 
either the North or South. Her study includes Richmond, 
Virginia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Maryland, 
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky. Cole, 
"Servants and Slaves," 1-52. In his analysis of Southern 
41 
Episcopal minister Joshua Peterkin, for example, began his 
life in Baltimore in 1814, where he grew to adulthood and 
became part of a local shipping firm. In 1837, he entered 
the Virginia Theological Seminary, and upon his graduation 
in 1839, married Elizabeth Hansen of Georgetown. Following 
the ceremony, the couple moved to Baltimore, where Peterkin 
served as a priest to St. James's Episcopal parish. In 
December 1854, he answered a call from St. James's 
Episcopal Church congregation in Richmond, a position he 
held until his death in 1892. 20 Baptist clergyman William 
E. Hatcher followed a similar route. After graduating from 
Richmond College in 1858, Hatcher served as spiritual 
leader to Manchester Baptist Church during the Civil War, 
but moved to Baltimore in 1866 to preach for a larger 
Baptist congregation, probably the Eutaw Street Baptist 
Church. In May 1875, Hatcher returned to Richmond to 
cities of the Old South, David Goldfield has concluded that 
"southern cities had stronger economic ties and were more 
similar to northern cities on the eve of civil war than at 
any other time." Goldfield, "Pursuing the American Urban 
Dream," 63. 
20orphaned at the age of two, Peterkin was a partner 
in Wilson & Peterkin, a Baltimore shipping company, before 
entering the seminary in his late teens. In addition to 
the two St. James's churches, Peterkin pastored three other 
congregations in Maryland and one in Princeton, New Jersey, 
before settling in the Virginia capital. Minor T. 
Weisiger, Donald R. Traser, and E. Randolph Trice, Not 
Hearers Only: A History of St. James's Episcopal Church, 
Richmond, Virginia, 1835-1985, Margaret T. Peters, ed. 
{Richmond, Va.: st. James's Church, 1986), 21-23; Murray M. 
McGuire and John B. Mordecai, St. James's Church. 1835-1957 
(Richmond: n.p., 1958), 10. 
42 
become the pastor of Grace Street Church for the remainder 
of his life. 21 
Clergymen weren't the only Richmonders travelling the 
150 miles between Richmond and Baltimore. German Jews 
connected to the cities' retail trades also travelled the 
Richmond-Baltimore route, often on business, but sometimes 
in search of a suitable mate. Richmonder William 
Flegenheimer, for example, married Rosa Cohn in Baltimore's 
Lloyd Street Synagogue in early 1861, after pursuing her 
for more than six years between Baltimore and Richmond. 22 
21Annie Florence Weeks, Grace Baptist Church, 
Richmond, 1833-1958 (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1958), 39-
40; Charles Hartwell, ''Struggle's Hoax," Richmond Times-
Dispatch, 5 July 1936. The Richmond and Baltimore Roman 
Catholic dioceses also frequently shuttled clergy back and 
forth, although the relationship between these two dioceses 
was often contentious. Baltimore's James Cardinal Gibbons, 
for example, first served as bishop of the Richmond 
diocese. James Henry Bailey II, A History of the Diocese 
of Richmond: The Formative Years (Richmond: Whittet & 
Shepperson, 1956). 
22william Flegenheimer was born in Leutenshausen in 
the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1832. In 1851, Flegenheimer's 
family moved to Richmond, Virginia, where his uncle, 
William Thalheimer established a dry goods business. In 
1853, Flegenheimer came to Baltimore to work for the Hecht 
Brothers of Baltimore, who later established a chain of 
department stores in Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington, 
D.C. While in Baltimore, Flegenheimer met Rosa Cohn who 
was visiting from Elizabeth City, North Carolina. In 
September 1859, Rosa Cohn's family moved to Richmond to 
open a dry goods store on Main Street. In 1860, the Cohns 
relocated in Baltimore, where Rose Cohn and William 
Flegenheimer resumed their courtship and were married a 
year later. The couple settled in Richmond. where William 
Flegenheimer became a well-known Richmond attorney. In 
1861, he engrossed the secession ordinance for the state of 
Virginia and, in 1862, the credentials for the diplomatic 
mission of James Murray Mason and John Slidell. In 1865, 
he drafted the bail bond agreement for ex-Confederate 
43 
Baltimoreans Charles and James Talbott moved to Richmond in 
1838, where they established a series of businesses for the 
manufacture of fire engines, tobacco processing machinery, 
and wrought iron railings. 23 And seven of ten women in 
Louly Wigfall Wright's graduating class at Mary Pegram's 
Richmond school for girls later married men with either 
Baltimore or Washington connections. 24 
Some historians of Southern women have argued that a 
fully developed "cult of domesticity" did not exist in the 
antebellum South, and that the cult's influence, 
everywhere, tended to wane during the 1860s. The evidence 
for Richmond supports neither suggestion. 25 Indeed 
President Jefferson Davis. Manuscript autobiography of 
William Flegenheimer, written in November 1905; and 
obituary from Jewish Record, 6 February 1910, both in 
William Flegenheimer Papers, BAMAT. An acrostic 
Flegenheimer penned for his fiancee can be found in the 
William Flegenheimer Papers, Valentine Museum, Richmond, 
Virginia. In 1963, it was published in The Journal of the 
Southern Jewish Historical Society. 
23Baltimore-born William Greanor, a tobacco 
manufacturer, arrived a year after the Talbotts. Mary 
Wingfield Scott, Houses of Old Richmond (New York: Bonanza 
Press, 1941), 144 and 276. 
24Louisa W. [Mrs. D. Giraud] Wright, A Southern Girl 
in '61: The War-Time Memories of a Confederate Senator's 
Daughter (New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1905). I have 
drawn this information from a list of illustrations in 
Wright's book. 
25The earliest articulation of the "cult of 
domesticity" (or "Cult of True Womanhood" or "separate 
spheres ideology" as it has also been called) can be found 
in Barbara Welter, "The cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," 
American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151-174. I am enclosing the 
words in quotes here to suggest that an actual cult did not 
really exist. Nonetheless, the image it created served as 
44 
Richmond newspapers in the early 1860s are filled with 
articles and literary contributions which suggest that 
white Richmond women inhabited a gendered and hierarchical 
society in which Northern expectations about women's 
particular "sphere of influence" were deepened and 
reinforced by a Southern society that relied on the 
subordination of women by men to provide an object lesson 
for the subordination of black slaves by their white 
owners. A four-part defense of slavery that appeared in 
the Religious Herald in January 1861, for example, began 
with a comparison between a "well-governed" hierarchical 
a singular ideal or model which, although it did not 
represent the reality of most nineteenth-century women's 
lives, remained the standard by which all were judged. 
other major works on Northern women which are informed by 
the idea of a separate spheres ideology include Nancy F. 
Cott, The Bonds of womanhood: "Woman's Spherell in New 
England. 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1977); Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: origins of 
American Feminism, The Woman and the City. 1800-1860 (New 
York1 Oxford University Press, 1978); Kathryn Kish Sklar, 
Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New 
York: W.W. Norton, 1973); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the 
Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-
1865 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1981); 
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of 
Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1985). For a discussion of the cult of domesticity 
as it applies to southern women, see Suzanne Lebsock, The 
Free Women of Petersburg: status and Culture in a Southern 
Town, 1784-1860 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); Elizabeth 
Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and 
White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of 
North Carolina Press, 1988); Jean B. Friedman, The Enclosed 
Garden: women and Community in the Evangelical south. 1830-
1900 (Chapel Hil : University of North Carolina Press, 
1985); and Anne Firor Scott The Southern Lady: From 
Pedestal to Politics. 1830-1930, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: 
university Press of Virginia, 1995). All subsequent 
citations to The Southern Lady are to this edition. 
family and the proper governance of slaves. "In the 
family," author Thornton Stringfellow opined, 
some have endowments to advance the general 
welfare--some are so dwarfed as to be incapable 
of a higher function than that of executing what 
another contrives--some have powers fitting them 
for control--others have qualities fitting them 
for humble submission and grateful dependence. 
In this most ancient organization, experience 
unfolds the principles for constructing a social 
body out of parts unequal--by which each member 
shall be rendered useful--made a contributor to 
the general welfare--and a partaker in the 
general result. 26 
Although subordinate to Southern men, within the 
family circle a white southern woman was expected to fill 
an important duty as the family's spiritual mediator, "a 
royal Priestess of our faith, helping, cleansing, 
purifying, and saving man by the enduring meekness and 
unselfish sacrifice of her love and friendship." 27 In 
addition, she was expected to serve as caretaker to the 
sick, and the educator of small children. "Woman, 
evidently by the law of Nature, is designed to stand as the 
26Thornton Stringfellow, "Slavery: Its Origins, 
Nature, and History," chapter 1, Religious Herald, 3 
January 1861. Thornton Stringfellow was a Baptist minister 
from Culpeper County, Virginia. The other articles in the 
series appeared in issues dated 10, 24, 31 January 1861. 
See also Drew Gilpin Faust, "Evangelicalism and the 
Proslavery Argument: The Reverend Thornton Stringfellow of 
Virginia," in Drew Gilpin Faust, southern Stories: 
Slaveholders in Peace and War (Columbia: University of 
Missouri Press, 1992), 15-28. 
27G.H. Nedham, "Woman's Sphere," paper read before a 
meeting of the Menokin Female Missionary Society and 
reprinted in the Religious Herald, 30 May 1861. 
45 
46 
chief personage in domestic life," wrote an anonymous 
author in the Southern Illustrated News in May 1861. 
Woman was never formed to "ride upon the 
Whirlwind and direct the storm. " She is more 
interesting when attending to her household and 
family; there is her kingdom and there only can 
she be happy .... When she aspires to ambitious 
situations, she steps out of the sphere allotted 
her by nature, and assumes a character which is 
an outrage upon her feminine delicacy and 
loveliness. There is one situation which claims 
the attention of women, and which points out 
still stronger the impropriety of their being 
ambitious of worldly distinctions; that is where 
they are mothers. In the hallowed occupation of 
rearing their children, the mild and benevolent 
feelings of their hearts beat in unison to the 
pulses of love and tenderness. A true mother 
... is more valuable in the sight of God and man than 
all the blood-thirsty Catherines or cruel and bigoted 
Marys that can be gathered from the four corners of 
the globe. In fine, the natural endowments of woman 
are essentially different than those of man. She is 
all passion and imagination--he has more of reason and 
judgement; she is delicate and timid--he is rough and 
courageous; she is calculated to move in quiet and 
peaceful situations--he, to bustle amid the uproar and 
contention of the world. Man is well enough in his 
place--but it takes a woman to make his happiness 
complete. 28 
Like their sisters to the North, Richmond women were 
admonished not to greet their husbands at the end of the 
day with "troubled brows," but to "check angry words" and 
try "to look cheerful and bright. 1129 Other writers made 
28southern Illustrated News, 22 November 1863. For 
more examples, see the Religious Herald, 9 December 1858, 6 
March 1862, 22 May 1862; the Richmond Whig, 14 January 
1860; the southern Illustrated News, 13 September 1862, 4 
October 1862, a November 1862, 7 March 1863; the southern 
churchman, 7 March 1862, 12 June 1863. 
29"Be Gentle to Thy Husband," Richmond Enquirer, 26 
March 1860; Janet H. Weaver, "A Perfect Woman," essay for 
her daughter, 11 April 1862, Randolph Family Papers, VHS; 
47 
careful distinctions between a "ballroom belle--a mere 
parlor ornarnent--whose highest ambition is to expend large 
sums annually in decorating her person and feeding her 
insatiate vanity," and a "pure-hearted woman" whose ''little 
deeds of kindness" and "beacon light" of love made her the 
"brightener of man's existence. 1130 While most messages 
such as these were aimed at upper- and middle-class white 
women, an anonymous writer to the Southern Illustrated News 
in 1862 also extolled the virtues of the mechanic's wife 
who eased her husband's labor through her "constant 
diligence," and acted as "an affectionate and ardent 
instructress" for her children. "Mechanics' daughters," 
the writer declared, "make the best wives in the world. 1131 
"No Gloom at Horne," Southern Illustrated News, 13 September 
1862; "Female Delicacy," Southern Illustrated News, 4 
October 1862; Mrs. A.J. Graves, Woman in America: Being an 
Examination into the Moral and Intellectual Condition of 
American Female Society (New York: Harper & Brothers, 
1841), 143-49, 152-64; Samuel K. Jennings, The Married 
Lady's Companion, or Poor Man's Friend, rev. 2d. ed. (New 
York: Lorenzo Dow, 1808), 61-68. These excerpts from 
Graves and Jennings can be found in Nancy F. Cott, Root of 
Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American 
Women, 1972 ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 
1986), 113-16, and 141-47. 
3011what can Woman Do?" Southern Illustrated News, 7 
March 1863. Articles appearing in the Baptist newspaper, 
the Religious Herald criticized fashion-conscious women for 
wearing too much jewelry, or hoops skirts, which took up 
too much space in the pews and at the Communion tables. 
Another piece took them to task for wearing elaborate hats. 
Religious Herald, 30 September 1858, 6 December 1860. 
3111Mechanics' Wives," Southern Illustrated News, 13 
September 1862. 
What the women cast in these roles actually thought and 
felt is, of course, another question. 
The Politics of Secession 
48 
That Whig ladies attended the unveiling of the Clay 
statue in Capitol Square was not an anomaly in the Richmond 
of 1860. Politically, Richmond had long been at odds with 
the Democratic politics of the state. A Federalist enclave 
in the early nineteenth century, by the mid-nineteenth 
century Richmond was a Whig stronghold. Whig ideology, 
which favored protective tariffs and internal improvements 
such as railroads and canals, accorded with the vision of 
the city's political leaders, many of whom were lawyers, 
bank presidents, heads of corporations, or owners of stock 
in the Kanawha Canal Company, or one of the city's five 
railroads. 32 The majority of the state remained loyally 
Democratic; but Richmond consistently voted for Whig 
candidates throughout the mid-nineteenth century. Although 
they could not vote, Richmond women participated in Whig 
party politics from the early 1840s, attending rallies, 
sewing banners, and opening their homes to overnight guests 
32David R. Goldfield, "Pursuing the American Dream," 
58-60; Leslie Winston smith, "Richmond during Presidential 
Reconstruction," 14-15. In the 1860 city elections, for 
example, the president of the city council, and seven 
councilmen all fit into this category. Richmond Enquirer, 
5 April 1860; Manufacturing Schedule for the 1860 Census, 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. 
49 
during the Whig convention in September 1840. 33 It was 
after Henry Clay's defeat in the presidential election of 
1844 that Richmond women spearheaded a state-wide campaign 
to erect a statue in his honor. 
As Virginia edged toward civil war in the spring of 
1861, Richmond struggled to maintain its position as a 
bastion of Unionism in a state increasingly preoccupied 
with thoughts of secession. Richmonders had voted two to 
one for Constitutional Union candidate John Bell in the 
fall of 1860, helping him carry Virginia, one of only three 
states to vote for him in the presidential election that 
brought Abraham Lincoln to the White House and precipitated 
the departure from the Union of seven Lower south 
states. 34 When the Virginia secession convention convened 
in Richmond in February 1861, two of the city's three 
delegates--Marmaduke Johnson and William H. Macfarland--
, • • t 35 were determined Unionis s. Early indications were that 
Virginians, like the people of Richmond, were content to 
adopt a wait-and-see attitude regarding the new Republican 
President. A secession vote taken on April 4, revealed 
33varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too," 494-521. 
34Tennessee and Kentucky were the two other states 
that voted for Bell. 
35The third delegate, George Wythe Randolph, was an 
ardent secessionist. 
50 
that Virginians favored what James McPherson has called a 
"conditional Unionist" position by nearly two to one.36 
As Virginians considered the role their state would 
play in the secession controversy, Richmond women--whose 
position on secession ran the same political gamut as the 
male delegates and spectators--thronged the western gallery 
of Mechanics' Hall to listen to the debates. Some women 
who, like secessionist firebrand Parke Chamberlayne, had 
already cast their lot with the south, occasionally raised 
small Confederate flags to reveal their sympathies, while 
other women--like seventy-year-old Ellen Mordecai who 
listened to the debates with her sister Emma and her next-
door neighbor Mrs. Robertson--were still waiting to be 
convinced. 37 "[The] speakers use such strong arguments," 
36James McPherson has argued that secession sentiment 
in early 1861 fell into three major categories: immediate 
secessionism which was favored by regions with large 
slaveholding populations; cooperationism, which he further 
subdivides into cooperative secessionism, ultimatumism, and 
conditional Unionism; and unconditional Unionism. James M. 
McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 127-29. McPherson's 
schema underpins Elizabeth Varon's discussion of 
secessionism in Virginia in her dissertation. Varon, "'We 
Mean to Be Counted,'" 385-446. 
37In February 1860, the seventeen-year-old 
Chamberlayne had e ngaged in a spirited debate with Robert 
Saunders, a noted Virginia Unionist, on a carriage ride 
between Richmond and Williamsburg. While there, 
Chamberlayne also argued repeatedly about secession with 
E.s. Joynes, a young professor at the College of William 
and Mary who, according to Chamberlayne, "rode the fence 
and never told what side he would take." Lucy Parke 
Chamberlayne Bagby, "Chronicle of Lucy Parke Chamberlayne 
Bagby, 11 pp. 115-19, and 123, Bagby Family Papers, VHS; 
hereafter cited as "Bagby Chronicle." Born in 1842, Lucy 
51 
Ellen Mordecai later wrote in a letter to her niece, 
"which, if they have no other effect, keep lady politicians 
in a state of indecision. 1138 Other Richmond women 
demonstrated their Unionist leanings by presenting Unionist 
delegate John Baldwin with a poem and a floral wreath.39 
Those who lived through or looked back on the 
secession crisis point to several different events as the 
one that catalyzed Richmond's support for the secession 
movement, set the nation and Virginia on the path to Civil 
War, and destined Richmond to become the capital of the 
Confederacy. Richmond lawyer John A. Cutchins believed 
that it was John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in October 
1859 that ignited the "war fever" in the Virginia capital, 
leading to the development of six new militia companies, 
and the return of Southern medical students from 
Philadelphia to complete their studies at Richmond's 
Parke Chamberlayne was the eleventh of fourteen children 
born to Richmond physician Lewis Webb Chamberlayne and his 
wife, Martha. Parke, as she was known, was the sixth 
daughter, and the first hearing girl. At least three of 
her brothers--Lewis Webb, Edward Pye, and Hartwell Bacon--
were also born deaf. Her father established a school for 
deaf children in Staunton where several of the Chamberlayne 
siblings were educated. Shortly after Lucy's birth, the 
Chamberlaynes moved to Richmond where Parke's father died 
in 1854, while she was a student at the Virginia Female 
Institute in Staunton, Virginia. 
38Ellen Mordecai, Richmond, to her niece, Ellen, 23 
March 1861, Mordecai Family Papers, Ms. M847, SHC. 
Emphasis in the original. 
39Richmond Whig, 25, 28 March 1861; Varon, "'We Mean 
to Be Counted,'" 343-35. 
52 
Medical College of Virginia. 40 Within six weeks of 
Brown's raid, the Richmond papers were filled with articles 
praising Southern businessmen for their decision to avoid 
commerce with Northern manufacturers and encourage the 
development of Southern industry. 41 
Thirty-eight-year-old Lucy Fletcher first recognized 
the ominous clouds of civil war in the election of Abraham 
Lincoln in the fall of 1860, and the subsequent secession 
of seven Deep south states. 42 "[T]here is no telling what 
will be the result," she wrote. "I think a terrible 
responsibility rests upon those fanatics who have so long 
been stirring up strife ... for party purposes. If, as 
seems probable, this once glorious Union would be 
dissolved, on them will rest the blame. May God in mercy 
save our country from the evils which threaten her!" 43 
40John A. Cutchins, A Famous Command: The Richmond 
Light Infantry Blues (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1934), 
65; Agreement between Committee on Public Grounds and 
Buildings and the volunteer militia companies for use of 
Military Hall over the First Street Market as a drill room, 
Richmond City Papers, Agreements and Contracts, 1860-
1862,in Minutes of the Common Council, LV; Richmond Whig, 
25 March 1860. 
41Richmond Enquirer, 2, 12 January 1860; Richmond 
Whig, 2, 4 January 1860. 
42 By February 1, 1861, South Carolina, Mississippi, 
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had all 
seceded. 
43Entry dated 25 December 1860, Keystone Diary, Lucy 
Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU, There are seven diaries 
and some loose diary sheets in this collection which I have 
identified as follows: the "Sabbath Notebook Diary," 
written from April to October 1865, in a small Sabbath 
Sally Brock Putnam considered the secession frenzy 
following the Confederate victory at Fort Sumter and 
Lincoln's subsequent call for Virginia volunteers to 
suppress the rebellion as the point of no return. "Up 
until this time, we had scarcely begun to realize that war 
was inevitable," she wrote. 11 We had hoped against hope 
until the battle of Fort Sumter was fought, that some 
53 
Notebook; the "Red Book Diary11 --a name given this volume by 
Fletcher herself--which contains a single entry from 9 
April 1865; an unnamed Diary kept from September of 1865 to 
February of 1867; an unnamed diary kept from 27 April 1865 
to 1894, but largely concerning 1865; the "Keystone Diary," 
kept largely during 1860 in a tablet with "The New Keystone 
Handy Pencil Tablet" on the cover; the "Nothing but Leaves" 
diary, covering 1865; the "Brown Diary" named for its 
cover, which encompasses the period from 1869 and 1879; and 
loose diary sheets for the period from September 4-8, 1864. 
Several of these diaries overlap chronologically; at times, 
too, Fletcher copied portions of previous entries into 
other diaries, sometimes only changing a word or two, but 
occasionally added deeper interpretation to an existing 
portion through further description/recollection. Like 
Fletcher, a number of Southern women kept wartime diaries 
in which they faithfully record their reactions to the 
events surrounding them. Perhaps the best known female 
Civil War diarist was Mary Boykin Chesnut, who lived in 
Richmond for a portion of the War and whose diary and 
reminiscences have received a great deal of attention from 
various authors and editors. The best of these is the one 
edited by c. Vann Woodward, Mary Chesnut's civil War, (New 
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981). Other Richmond 
women have left fascinating wartime accounts which have 
become a good source of evidence for this study. Among 
these women are Emma Mordecai (Emma Mordecai Diary, 
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond Virginia); Sarah 
Benetta Valentine (Sarah Benetta Valentine Papers, 
Valentine Museum, Richmond Virginia); Lucy Parke 
Chamberlayne Bagby, "The Chronicle of Lucy Parke 
chamberlayne Bagby," in Bagby Family Papers, Virginia 
Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia; and an unknown 
diarist whose diary is in the manuscripts collection of the 
Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia. 
54 
compromise might be effected, some specific measures 
adopted to stay the dreaded evil." 44 
Of all these events, it was clearly the battle at Fort 
Sumter and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops to suppress 
the rebellion that finally drew Virginia into the rebel 
camp. Although pockets of Unionist sentiment would 
continue to flourish in Richmond throughout the war, these 
two events worked a transformation on Richmond and the 
state which all of the fiery secessionist speeches had 
failed to accomplish. 45 Less than seventy-two hours after 
Union commander Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to 
South Carolina troops, a torchlight parade snaked its way 
through Marshall Street and a Confederate banner flew from 
44sallie Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War: Four 
Years of Personal Observation (New York: G.W. McCarthy, 
1867; New York: Time-Life Books, 1983), 23. 
45Richmond lawyer John Cutchins noted that Virginia's 
leaders did everything within their power to avoid civil 
war; but when that became impossible, Virginia became the 
"Mother of States," surrendering up "the blood and lives of 
her sons and .•• the heroism and devotion of her 
daughters." Cutchins, A Famous Command, 68. While others 
have endorsed cutchins's observations, examples of 
persistent Unionism serve to undercut this image of a 
passionately loyal state. After the Battle of Roanoke 
Island in February 1862, for example, slogans saying "Union 
Men to the Rescue"; "Now is the time to rally around the 
old flag"; and "God bless the Stars and Stripes," appeared 
on the walls of Richmond buildings. Amidst rumors than 
Union men were holding nightly caucuses, John Minor Botts--
a committed Unionist--was taken into custody. Putnam, 
Richmond during the War, 101-02. 
the top of the Virginia capitol. 46 "Oh! joy and ever to 
be remembered day," one young Richmond woman wrote. 
Virginia has seceded from the abolition 
government. To day at half past 12 o'clock, 
while we were taking our drawing lesson, Archie 
came in with a piece of wood in his hand on which 
were some gilt letters •.. it was part of the 
United States Court, which has just been torn 
down, and he said •.. that the southern 
confederacy flag was then waving over the 
capitol ... [W]e were very much excited and we 
all ran out to see it .•. waving in the breeze; 
we stayed there in the rain, jumping and clapping 
our hands until! [sic] we were obliged to go 
in. 47 
46Torchlight parades were held on April 13, 17, and 
19, 1861. Entries dated 13, 15, 18, and 22 April 1861, 
diary of an unknown diarist, Richmond, Virginia, Ms. 
V.88.20, VM; Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War, 142-3; 
Julia Cuthbert Pollard, Richmond's Story (Richmond: 
Richmond Public Schools, 1954), 142-3; Fannie A. Beers, 
Memories (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1891), 25. A 
short time before the Virginia secession ordinance was 
passed, a group of students at the Richmond Female 
Institute (RFI) designed their own version of the 
Confederate flag, based on the "Southern Cross." This was 
supposedly the flag which flew from the capitol on April 
18th.' The students had never seen an actual Confederate 
flag, so their design, which was blue and white, differs 
markedly from the official Confederate banner. It featured 
a blue cross on a white field surrounded by eight stars. 
Bettie Leftwich Gray, "Virginia's First Confederate Flag," 
Ms. F352, ESBL. 
47Entry dated 18 April 1861, diary of an unknown 
female diarist, Richmond, Virginia, Ms. V.88.20, VM. 
Relatively little is known about this sixteen-year old, 
single woman. Born on October 16, 1845, this "unknown 
diarist" was apparently the middle daughter of three women 
born to a Baptist family with possible connections to 
Charleston, South Carolina. Evidence in her diary suggests 
that her father might have either been a mid-level 
Confederate bureaucrat or else worked at the telegraph 
office. He occasionally brought home rather specific 
information about the war. that he might have learned in one 
of these two ways. 
55 
While some women rejoiced, others, such as Episcopal 
minister's wife Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, were filled 
with an almost palpable sense of foreboding. 
Can it be that our country is to be carried on 
and on to the horrors of civil war? I pray, oh 
how fervently do I pray, that our Heavenly Father 
may yet avert it. I shut my eyes and hold my 
breath when the thought of what may come upon us 
obtrudes itself; yet I cannot believe it 
.... The taking of Sumter without bloodshed has 
somewhat soothed my fears, though I am told by 
those who are wiser than I, that men must fall on 
both sides by the score, by the hundred, and even 
by the thousand. 48 
The Confederate Citade149 
56 
Less than a month after Virginia's secession from the 
Union, Richmond became the capital of the Confederate 
States of America. 50 As the Confederate Congress began 
holding sessions in the Virginia Capitol, and government 
departments created offices in the U.S. Custom House, the 
48Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
Refugee during the War (New York: E.J. Hale & Son, 1867; 
repr. New York: Arno Press, 1972), 9-10. 
49virginius Dabney uses this as the title of his 
chapter on Civil War Richmond. Dabney, Richmond: The Story 
of a City, 159-86. 
50Earlier, the Confederate capital had been located in 
Montgomery, Alabama. While Richmond's proximity to the 
North/South border actually made it more vulnerable to 
Union attack than Montgomery would have been, the decision 
to relocate the Confederate seat to Richmond was based on 
several pragmatic considerations, including the fact that 
Richmond was larger and had more hotels and could, 
therefore, more easily accommodate the influx of thousands 
of government workers and military commanders. It was also 
less likely to be infested with disease-carrying mosquitoes 
in the summer months. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate 
Nation. 1861-1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 99-103. 
Monumental Hotel, and the Mechanics' Institute, Richmond 
was transformed from an Upper South industrial metropolis 
with Northern aspirations into a military and political 
enclave that was the heart and soul of the Southern 
Confederacy. "Every railroad train that arrived in 
Richmond bore its freight of soldiers," Sally Putnam later 
wrote, "[and] from every direction around the city, the 
white tents of the soldiers were seen dotting the 
landscapes." The Central Fair Grounds were converted into 
a kind of "boot camp" to train new recruits, and the bugle 
sounds of reveille and taps echoed throughout the city. 51 
As her husband, Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis, 
took his leave from his Washington comrades following 
Mississippi's secession from the union in January 1861, 
Varina Davis described the scene. "The senator's cloak 
room was crowded to excess, and the bright faces of the 
ladies were assembled together like a mosaic of flowers in 
the doorway," she wrote. "The sofas and the passageways 
were full, and ladies sat on the floor against the wall 
where they could not find seats. 1152 As the Confederate 
government took shape during the spring and summer of 1861, 
several of those women--including Margaret Sumner McLean, 
51Putnam, Richmond during the War, 29-41. 
52varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President 
of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir (New York: 
Belford Company, 1890), reprinted in Katharine M. Jones, 
ed. Ladies of Richmond; Confederate Capital (Indianapolis, 
Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 10. 
57 
58 
Agnes Rice Pryor, Anita Dwyer Withers, and Virginia Clay-
Clopton--followed their husbands and the Davises to 
Richmond, forming a portion of the ••court society" 
comprised of cabinet members, Confederate congressmen, and 
military leaders who surrounded the Confederate 
president. 53 Although initially given a warm welcome by 
Richmonders, Davis and his entourage became increasingly 
isolated from elite Richmond society as criticism swirled 
around the Confederate president and his Cabinet over the 
prosecution of the war. 54 
As the seat of government, Richmond's capture was one 
of the North's primary military objectives and, on numerous 
occasions, the city was threatened with attack by Union 
forces. During the Peninsula Campaign in the spring and 
53Many wives of politicians and military leaders who 
were not from Virginia--including Margaret Sumner McLean, 
Anita Dwyer Withers, Lydia McLane Johnston, Mary Boykin 
Chesnut, and Charlotte Cross Wigfall and her two daughters-
-roomed together in the Spotswood Hotel. Mary Boykin 
Chesnut, Mary Chesnut's civil War, c. Vann Woodward, ed. 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 79-81; Sara Rice 
Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: Macmillan, 
1904), reprinted in Katharine M. Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 
150. 
54The Richmond press was especially vociferous. By 
1862, Richmond newspaper columnist George w. Bagby was 
referring to Davis as tt(c]old, haughty, peevish, narrow-
minded, pig-headed, (and] malignant," while James Moncure 
Daniel, who was initially a supporter, came to view the 
Davis administration as being riddled with ineptness. 
Richmond Whig, 18 March 1862, quoted in James M. McPherson, 
Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1988). Also, Fredericks. Daniel, The Richmond Examiner 
during the War, or the Writings of John M. Daniel (New 
York: privately printed, 1868), 231. 
59 
summer of 1862, for example, Federal troops approached 
within six or eight miles of the city. By late May, cannon 
reverberations from the fighting at nearby Hanover Court 
House shook the window panes in Richmond houses. 55 
In the early spring of 1864, a foiled raid on Richmond 
by Union cavalry under the command of Ulric Dahlgren sent 
shock waves of fear through the city. 56 In May and June, 
55Putnam, Richmond during the War, 133. The Peninsula 
Campaign lasted from March to August 1862. It began with 
Union commander George B. McClellan's movement of 105,000 
Union soldiers southward from Alexandria to the 
southernmost point of a Virginia peninsula southeast of 
Richmond, that was bounded on either side by the James and 
York Rivers. Once there, McClellan's design was to move 
his forces northwest to attack the city. The Confederate 
armies, commanded by Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee, 
were seriously outmanned, but managed to fool a cautious 
McClellan into thinking he faced a larger foe. Eventually 
the two armies met in a number of smaller and bloody 
engagements--including Seven Pines/Fair Oaks, 
Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mill, Frayser's Farm, and Malvern 
Hill. With the exception of the Battle of Gaines' Mill, 
the Union emerged the victor in these clashes, with the 
Confederate armies suffering 20,000 casualties, compared to 
Union losses of 16,500. The Peninsula campaign ended when 
McClellan ordered the Union army to withdraw after the 
Battle of Malvern Hill, over the objections of several of 
his subordinates. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 236-48, 
Patricia L. Faust, ed., Historical Times Illustrated 
Encyclopedia of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 
1986), 571; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North 
Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 1983), 171-76. Rather than a 
detailed analysis of the campaign, Hattaway and Jones focus 
on McClellan's personality and the role it played in 
shaping his military decisions. 
56Twenty-two-year-old Ulric Dahlgren was acting in 
concert with Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick of the 
Army of the Potomac. Their plan was to strike at Richmond 
simultaneously from the north and west, liberate and arm 
the Union soldiers in Belle Isle and Libby prisons, and use 
them in concert with their own forces to kill Jefferson 
Davis and members of his cabinet, murder former Virginia 
60 
Union armies threatened Richmond once more in three bloody 
encounters--the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and 
Cold Harbor, all of which were successfully repulsed by 
Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. 57 Although the 
governor Henry B. Wise, and burn and sack the capital. 
According to contemporary accounts, the plan was foiled 
when Dahlgren was delayed by Ellen Wise Mayo, Henry Wise's 
daughter, who detained Dahlgren at her home on Sabot Hill 
by plying him with blackberry wine and stories about 
Dahlgren's father who was Mayo's former suitor. This 
allowed Henry Wise to make his way to Richmond and sound 
the alarm. Once underway, Ulric Dahlgren was ambushed and 
killed by Confederate soldiers on March 4, 1864. William 
Cabell, "Woman saved Richmond city: The Thrilling Story of 
Dahlgren's Raid and Mrs. Seddon's Old Blackberry Wine," 
southern Historical Society Papers 34 (1906): 352-58; 
Wright, A Southern Girl in '61, 166; and Varina Howell 
Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by His Wife (New York: 
Belford Company, 1890), excerpted in Katharine M. Jones, 
Ladies of Richmond, 204-06. This event was especially 
chilling to Varina Davis who had dandled the young Ulric 
Dahlgren on her knee when he was a young boy. Also 
Patricia L. Faust, ed. Historical Times Illustrated 
Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 202-03; Emory Thomas, The 
confederate State of Richmond, 158-60; and Foote, The civil 
War: A Narrative, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian (New 
York: Random House, 1963), 910-16. 
57aetween May 4 and June 12, 1864, Union troops under 
the command of generals George c. Meade and Ulysses s. 
Grant met Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in three major 
engagements whose twin goals were to wear down Lee's army 
and to capture and occupy Richmond. Between May 5th and 
7th, the Northern and Southern armies first met in "the 
Wilderness," a dense expanse of vines, brambles, and second 
growth pines and scrub oak immediately south of the Rapidan 
and Rappahannock rivers nearly fifty miles northwest of 
Richmond. The fighting here was complicated by the dense 
undergrowth which made it difficult to identify friend from 
foe and to execute battle plans effectively in the smoke-
filled and sometimes burning forest. The Battle of the 
Wilderness eventually ended in a draw when the men of both 
armies became exhausted after two days of intense fighting. 
Although the Confederates were considerably outmanned 
(115,00 Union troops versus 60,000 Confederates), the 
casualty rates for each ~ide hovered at around 17 percent. 
The battle at Spotsylvania Court House--a crossroads 
61 
Wilderness and Spotsylvania fighting took place some forty 
miles north of Richmond, there were skirmishes and pitched 
battles near Richmond throughout much of the month of May 
as Union troops advanced on the capital. The Battle of 
Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, brought the fighting to the 
city's perimeter. For days, the roar of cannons and the 
crackle of muskets could be heard amidst the crash of heavy 
thunderstorms that soaked the battlefields and mired the 
soldiers in mud mixed with the blood of wounded men. "It 
is now about 8 o'clock," Emma Mordecai wrote on May 12, 
village about forty miles north of Richmond--began shortly 
after the Wilderness fighting drew to a close and lasted 
for about two weeks, until May 19, 1864. In this campaign, 
Grant's strategy was to interpose his army between Lee's 
Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate capital, thus 
forcing Lee into a fight to defend the city. Lee responded 
by ordering his men to erect an elaborate breastworks that 
stretched for nearly five miles around Spotsylvania Court 
House. For several days of frenzied and bloody fighting, 
Union soldiers threw themselves at the Confederate trenches 
during a heavy pelting rain. Although a few men 
occasionally broke through the Confederate lines, the 
confederate trenches withstood the assault and the battle 
eventually ended when Grant withdrew his troops. During 
this campaign, Lee's chief cavalry scout, J.E.B. Stuart was 
killed on May 11 in an encounter near Yellow Tavern, an 
abandoned railroad station six miles north of Richmond. 
His body was brought to the capital where it lay in state 
pending interment in Hollywood Cemetery. The final battle 
in this series took place at Cold Harbor, a small town 
seven miles northeast of the Confederate capital, where 
some of the most deadly fighting of the war occurred. 
Within a half hour during that battle on June 2, 1864, 
Grant lost approximately 7,000 men. Weary and exhausted 
from more than a month of trench warfare, and fearing the 
worst, many Union soldiers had pinned slips of paper 
bearing their names on their uniforms before marching into 
the fray. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 414-22; McPherson, 
Battle Cry of Freedom; Patricia L. Faust, ed., Historical 
Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 149-50, 
325-37, and 709. 
62 
when the fighting at Hanover Junction brought Union troops 
within three miles of the city, 11 & another thunderstorm is 
answering the booming of the cannon, and the crack of the 
musketry, which continues .... Heaven's artillery has 
answered peal for peal with ours. 1158 Elizabeth Van Lew 
spent part of the time watching the Union army's progress 
from the rooftop of her house in the city's east end. 
"Since Monday the atmosphere has been heavy with the smoke 
of battle," she wrote. "The stores are all closed, men are 
not to be seen on the streets. The alarm bell has sounded 
out now [but] there are no more to be called by it. 1159 
Other women paced the city's sidewalks, or stood on front 
porches until late at night hoping for news of a 
Confederate victory. 60 
As the war raged in the countryside surrounding 
Richmond, thousands of women and children in the line of 
the Federal assault left their homes and fled to the 
capital where they became a part of what Richmonders 
eventually referred to as a "floating population" of 
wartime refugees and government workers, transients who 
58Entry dated May 12, 1864, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
The day before Mordecai made this entry, Lee's cavalry 
commander J.E.B. Stuart had been killed in the fighting 
near Yellow Tavern about five miles north of Richmond. 
59Elizabeth van Lew, diary entry dated May 1864, 
reprinted in Katharine M. Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 216. 
60Judith McGuire, .Diary of a Southern Refugee during 
the War, 265. 
63 
roamed the city in search of food, lodging, and employment. 
"Richmond was so crowded by the women and children who had 
sought refuge when their homes were taken possession of by 
the advancing Federal forces," Virginia Dade later 
recalled, 
that rents soon became incredibly high, and it 
was rarely the case that a single family, even of 
large means, could afford to occupy a whole house 
to themselves ... . [A] house of average size 
would usually contain from two to six families, 
each occupying one, two, or three rooms, and a 
parlor when the guests to be entertained were not 
intimate enough to be brought in to the family 
room. 61 
Poorer refugees, or those who left their homes hurriedly, 
were frequently less fortunate than those described by 
Dade. Many were unable to find either lodging or work. At 
times, homeless women and men slept on city streets, or 
crowded into working-class tenements. Poor widows with 
young children were occasionally forced to feed their 
offspring on boiled turnip tops, or on table scraps 
supplied by one of the military hospitals. 62 Poorly clad 
orphans competed for corn bread scraps and an occasional 
"macerated ham bone" thrown to them from the windows of 
Libby Prison. 63 
61virginia E. Dade, "Our Women in the War," newspaper 
clipping in Walter H. Lee Scrapbook, SHC. 
62Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee during 
the War, 252-53. 
63 F.F. cavada, Libby Life: Experiences of a Prisoner 
Qf War in Richmond. Va., 1863-65 (1864; Lanham, Md.: 
University Press of America, 1985), 132. 
By March 1862, the city was placed under martial law 
in an effort to deal with the increased criminality that 
accompanied such a huge influx of transients. Writs of 
habeas corpus were suspended, and individuals leaving or 
entering the city were required to carry passports. The 
sale of liquor was restricted, and hotels and railroads 
were required to provide guest or passenger lists. 64 
Despite these measures, throughout the war Richmonders 
continued to complain about the increased disorder brought 
about by the city's rapid population growth. "[W]hat was 
once the pride and boast of Virginia (is] now the 
receptacle and skulking place of vagabonds, loafers, 
renegades, nondescripts, thieves, swindlers, fools, spies, 
alien enemies, and a whole army of would be gentry," wrote 
a Confederate soldier in March 1863. 65 "Richmond, at this 
time, is one of the most undesirable places in the 
Confederacy," observed the editor of the Richmond Whig a 
few months later. 
The offscourings of creation are assembled here 
for the vilest of purposes. It is really 
dangerous for one to walk the streets in some 
parts of the city after night. Burglaries, 
thefts, and robberies are of nightly occurrence, 
and most frequently the papers of the morning 
record murders committed the night previous. 1166 
64Emory Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 151-52. 
65To Dr. Lee, Georgia, from "Charles," Richmond, 18 
March 1863, Dr. Lee Letter, DU. 
66Richmond Whig, 14 May 1863. 
64 
65 
Shortly after the Union army's withdrawal from Cold 
Harbor in June 1864, Ulysses s. Grant launched a final 
Federal initiative aimed at laying siege to the city of 
Petersburg, part of a vital rail network that linked 
Richmond to the South and provided it with supplies. For 
ten months, the Union army kept Petersburg contained while 
at the same time it engaged in a series of battles with 
Confederate soldiers under Lee's command, who were 
ensconced in trenches and breastworks that stretched the 
entire twenty-mile distance between the two cities. 67 
When Union soldiers eventually broke through Lee's line 
near Hatcher's Run on the morning of April 3, 1865, 
Richmond surrendered. One week later Lee's Army of 
Northern Virginia lay down its arms and the Civil War was 
over. 
67Notable among these engagements were battles at 
Chaffin's Farm (September 29-30, 1864), Hatcher's Run 
(February 5-7, 1865), and Five Forks (April 1, 1865), all 
sites on the outskirts of Richmond. Some of the most 
deadly fighting during the siege took place in July 1864, 
when Pennsylvania coal miners under the command of Union 
general Ambrose P. Burnside blew up a portion of the 
Confederate breastworks by digging a tunnel under the 
trenches. Men from nine South Carolina companies were 
blown into the air from the force of the explosion, and the 
fighting in the 170-foot-long crater created by the blast 
yielded scores of casualties. Patricia L. Faust, ed., 
Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 
123-24, 190, 350, and 577-59; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 
446-47, and 479-81; McPherson, Battle cry of Freedom, 756-
60, and 845-46; Emory Thomas, The Confederate State of 
Richmond, 177-95. 
66 
The Postwar Capital 
The city's fall precipitated the fiery destruction of 
the heart of the business and financial district. As 
government departments prepared to relocate in Danville, 
Virginia, Confederate soldiers acting under orders from 
General Benjamin s. Ewell set fire to the tobacco and 
cotton warehouses lining the James at Shockoe Slip. 68 
Liquor manufacturers and retailers began dumping their 
stores of liquor in the street on orders from city 
officials who hoped to avoid a drunken riot when Union 
troops entered the capitol. Throughout the day, the odor 
of apple brandy, whiskey, and rum wafted through the air, 
while papers discarded from the fleeing Confederate offices 
lay ankle-deep in the streets where they were scattered by 
the April wind. 69 Embers from the warehouse fires later 
touched off a major conflagration that burned throughout 
the night. 
68Ewell, himself, acted on the orders of the 
Confederate Congress which had recently passed a law 
detailing the appropriate action to be taken in the event 
of the imminent invasion and occupation of Southern 
territory by Federal troops. Edward H. Ripley, The Capture 
and Occupation of Richmond. April 3, 1865 (n.p.: G.P. 
Putnam's Sons, 1907), 19-20. This pamphlet is in the 
Alfred Whital stern Collection of Lincolnania, Rare Books 
Division, LC. 
69The Richmond Common Council eventually reimbursed 
the distillers and retailers for more than $70,000-worth of 
liquor destroyed during the night of Richmond's fall. 
Richmond City Papers, Minutes of the Common Council, LV. 
Hereafter, these will records will be cited as MCC. 
67 
Five of the city's banks and the former Customs House, 
were completely destroyed. The blaze also gutted the 
telegraph office and the offices of at least four of the 
city's major newspapers and literary publications--the 
Dispatch, the Enquirer, the Examiner, and the Southern 
Literary Messenger. Eight of Richmond's public buildings 
and hotels, plus the Gallego Flour Mill and the Shockoe 
Warehouse, burned to the ground. In all, a twenty-block 
area of the city to the south of Capitol Square, including 
the Richmond & Danville and Richmond & Petersburg railroad 
bridges and the toll bridge connecting the city to the 
working-class community of Manchester, were reduced to 
rubble and ashes. 
At about 5 a.m. on April 3, a series of loud 
explosions rocked the city as overheated ammunition from 
the burning Arsenal and the Brown's Island lab began to 
explode, shaking walls and shattering glass. In the 
distance, Richmonders could hear another series of loud 
percussions as the James River Squadron at Drewry's Bluff 
was destroyed. During the night, Penitentiary guards 
deserted their posts and hundreds of criminals made their 
way into freedom under cover of night. A dense crowd of 
whites and blacks milled around the Commissary Department 
as the warehouses were emptied of their stores. Then the 
crowd turned into the business district and began looting 
68 
some of the merchants. 70 As Union commander Godfrey 
Weitzel entered the city shortly after 7 a.m. on April 3, 
1865, he was greeted with "a sight that would have melted a 
heart of stone." Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women and 
children thronged the grounds of Capitol Square where they 
had fled to avoid the fire, many clutching "a few articles 
of bedding, such as a quilt, blanket, or pillow." Lying on 
the grass, "(t)heir poor faces were perfect pictures of 
utter despair. 1171 
70 I have drawn this description of the Richmond's 
surrender from a variety of primary sources. Lucy Parke 
Bagby, "The Chronicle of Lucy Parke Chamberlayne Bagby," 
Bagby Family Papers, Ms. 1:B1463b27750, VHS; Martha Buxton 
Porter Brent Reminiscence (in possession of the Farrell 
Roper family and used with their permission); Henry Chapin, 
Richmond, to his father in New York, 26 April 1865, Henry 
Chapin Letter, UVA; Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU; 
Amelia Gorgas, "As I Saw It: One Woman's Account of the 
Fall of Richmond," Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, ed. civil War 
Times Illustrated 25.3 (May 1986): 40-43; Emmie Crump 
Lightfoot, Papers Relating Personal Experiences in and 
around Richmond during the Days of the Confederacy, MC 3, 
L575, ESBL; Fanny Walker Miller, "To My Horror," in 
Katharine M. Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 276-77; Emma 
Mordecai Diary, VHS; Pember, A Southern Woman's story; 
Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War; Richmond City 
Papers, MCC, LV; Ripley, The Capture and Occupation of 
Richmond, April 3, 1865; Mary Taylor Diary, Charles Elisha 
Taylor Papers, UVA; Sarah Benetta Valentine Papers, Ms. 
C57, VM; Mary Andrews West, Richmond, to Clara, her sister, 
12 April 1865, Mary Andrews West Letter, VHS; Williams. 
White, "A Diary of the war, or What I saw of It," in 
Richmond Howitzer Battalion, pamphlet no. 2 (Richmond: 
Carlton McCarthy, 1883); and Anita Dwyer Withers Diary, 
SHC. 
71Godfrey Weitzel, Richmond Occupied: Entry of the 
United States Forces into Richmond, Va. April 3, 1865, 
Calling Together of the Virginia Legislature and Revocation 
of the Same, Louis H. Manarin, ed. (Richmond: Civil War 
Centennial Committee, 1965), 52-3. 
69 
Although Richmonders had feared that the entry of 
Union troops into the Confederate capital would initiate a 
reign of terror and usher in a period of drunken plunder, 
Federal forces entered the city quietly and solemnly went 
about the business of restoring order. Once the fires were 
extinguished, gangs of able-bodied white and black men were 
organized and instructed to begin pulling down the charred 
skeletons of buildings in the "Burnt District," as it came 
to be called. The city was divided into four districts--
each with a provost marshal--and a relief commission 
established to distribute rations to hungry whites and 
blacks from the meager supplies left in Confederate 
warehouses, supplemented by donations from the U.S. 
Sanitary Commission. 72 Within the first three weeks, the 
commission dispersed a total of 128,132 tickets that could 
be exchanged for food. 73 The city Soup Association, which 
had been formed in 1864 to feed destitute Richmonders, 
72Leslie Winston Smith, "Richmond during Presidential 
Reconstruction" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of 
Virginia, August 1974), 44-5; Weitzel, Richmond Occupied, 
55-7. Four-fifths of the city's food supply had been 
destroyed by the fire. Virginius Dabney, Richmond: The 
Story of a City, rev. ed. (1976: repr. Charlottesville: 
University Press of Virginia, 1990), 196; all subsequent 
citations are to this edition. 
73Alfred Hoyt Bill, The Beleaguered City, 1861-1865 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), 285. For the next 
several years, the Richmond Relief Association continued to 
provide one pound of meal and one pound of meat, weekly, to 
each member of the families qualifying for assistance. 
Richmond Dispatch, 12, 16, 21, 27 February; 13, 16 March 
1866. 
70 
Worked in cooperation with the federal authorities from the 
headquarters of the U.S. Christian Commission in 
Metropolitan Hall, providing soup made from beef shins and 
heads to starving white and black families. 74 Three 
dispensaries located throughout the city offered free 
medicine to the needy. 75 
As the smoke and soot cleared from the city's skyline, 
with them went the permanent livelihoods of a number of 
Richmond's citizens. Of those whose businesses were 
destroyed by the fire, only 35 percent were restored and 
operating in the city in 1871. 76 For the next several 
Years, persistent poverty dogged the city. Hundreds of 
th0se who were marginally connected to the Richmond economy 
1 
74Soup Association Papers, ESBL; Bundle dated February 87 1, Mee, LV. 
75Two hundred dollars was set aside for . this in 
February 1866 probably in an effort to stern the tide of a 
cholera epide~ic which swept through the city immediately 
after the war. Richmond Dispatch, 13 March 1866; Bundle 
dated 12 February 1866 MCC, LV. For a detailed discussion 
of.postwar poverty and'relief, see Leslie Winston Smith, 
"Richmond during Presidential Reconstruction," especially 
chapter nine. The three dispensaries, which remained in 
o~eration into the 1870s were the Richmond Medical College 
~lsp7nsary, on Twelfth Street between Clay and Leigh; 
ott1ngs 1 Dispensary located on Broad Street between 
Second and Third; and Thomas's Dispensary, .on Main between 
Seventeenth and Eighteenth streets. Report of the 
Co~ittee Appointed by the council to Supply the Poor with 
medicine, 1 April 1871, Bundle dated 3 April 1871, Mec, LV. 
1 
76Michael B. Chesson, Richmond after the War. 1865-~ (Richmond: Virginia state Library & Archives, 1981), 
o. Based largely on evidence from the newspapers and the 
~ecords of Richmond's common Council, Chesson offers the 
est description of the white postbellum community. 
71 
took advantage of the outdoor relief offered by the city's 
overseers of the Poor and other city agencies. By June 
1866, the city council's Committee on Fuel had distributed 
1,300 cords of wood and 1,000 bushels of coal to more than 
1,300 white and black families living in Richmond and 
Henrico County. 77 By 1867, the number of families 
applying for fuel had risen to 1,800. 78 When the 
Freedmen's Bureau ceased its operation in the city in May 
1870, the fuel committee was serving the needs of 876 white 
and 1,932 black indigent households. 79 Many of the most 
destitute were women and children of both races. 
Poverty continued to be a problem and, for some, was 
exacerbated by the failures of the C & o Railroad Company 
and the Tredegar Iron Works during the Panic of 1873. 
Within a few years of the city's fall, however, a new 
modern metropolis began to rise, Phoenix-like, from 
Richmond's ruins, funded largely by affluent citizens who 
had weathered the economic storm the war created. 80 A 
77Report of the Committee on Fuel to Richmond Common 
council, 11 June 1866, Bundle dated 11 June 1866, MCC, LV. 
78Bundle dated 14 May 1868, MCC, LV. 
79Report of Committee on Relief of the Poor, 10 May 
1870, No bundle date, MCC, LV. 
80chesson, Richmond after the War, 1865-1890, 161-62; 
James K. Sanford, ed. and comp., A Century of Commerce, 
1867-1967 (Richmond: Richmond Chamber of Commerce, 1967),; 
Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 181-82. Historians disagree in 
their analyses of the impact of the Panic of 1873 on the 
Richmond economy. Michael B. Chesson maintains that the 
Panic halted plans to rebuild the city's economy and 
72 
committee of stockholders, petitioned the Common council in 
April 1866, for permission to connect the Richmond, 
Petersburg & Potomac Railroad with the Richmond & 
Petersburg line. A month later, a committee for the 
restore its place as an economic leader in the South. He 
concludes that, as a result, by the 1890s, Richmond's 
importance as an economic entrepot was surpassed by both 
Norfolk and Newport News. Christopher Silver has 
challenged Chesson's declension thesis, arguing that the 
decline Chesson describes was temporary and that the 
creation of the first electric streetcar system in the 
nation in 1888 actually stimulated a real estate boom 
which, when coupled with resurgent urban boosterism in the 
early twentieth century, led to an urban revitalization. 
Christopher Silver, Twentieth-Century Richmond: Planning, 
Politics, and Race (Knoxville: University of Tennessee 
Press, 1984), 20-23. James K. Sanford also disagrees with 
Chesson, arguing that, although the recession ran deep in 
the railroads and in iron manufacturing, the city's economy 
relied heavily on its tobacco-producing bases and, thereby, 
weathered the economic downturn more successfully than 
other Southern metropoles. Sanford, A Century of Commerce, 
21-22. Oscar Pohlig disagrees with Sanford's assessment, 
observing that tobacco manufacturing in Richmond was 
damaged by the war and continued to decline in the 
postbellum period as the industry moved to the lesser 
ravaged areas of Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina. 
Oscar A. Pohlig, Jr., Lot 56 of colonel William Byrd II's 
Richmond: Its Use for Tobacco Manufacturing under Miles 
Turpin and Rufus Yarbrough; and for a Confederate Military 
Hospital (Richmond: n.p., 1983), 30. Although the number 
of tobacco manufacturers did fall from fifty-two in 1860 to 
thirty-eight in 1870, by 1880, there were forty-four firms 
in the city. Marie Tyler-McGraw takes a different view, 
asserting that, although the depression was "a genuinely 
devastating setback" for Richmond's economy, it did little 
to "upend the structure of wealth in the city." Whatever 
the sources of economic decline, with the exception of 
Chesson who sees the postbellum period as one of declension 
for Richmond, most scholars agree that Richmond weathered 
the economic downturn more easily than some of its urban 
and Southern neighbors. By 1890, even the railroads which 
had gone into a period of default and receivership in the 
Panic of 1873, were recovering, with 3,368 miles of track 
as compared to the 1,800 miles it owned in 1860, part of 
which was destroyed by .the war's end. Sanford, A Century 
of Commerce, 10. 
.. 
.. 
73 
improvement of the James River recommended the council 
approve a plan to dredge the James to a depth of fourteen 
feet to keep competing cities from diverting trade to more 
convenient ports. This proposed plan was to be 
underwritten with city bonds. A memorandum from the 
Richmond & Danville Railway Company, drafted during the 
same period of time, proposed the construction of a city 
railway connecting the Richmond & Danville to the other 
railway terminals. In addition, the Common Council minutes 
in the immediate postwar period are filled with requests 
from more financially secure citizens who wanted to improve 
existing buildings through the additions of awnings or 
railings, or to erect completely new, usually two-story, 
dwellings, presumably to replace houses destroyed or 
weakened by the war. 81 
During the late 1860s and 1870s, political control of 
the city vacillated back and forth between the 
conservatives--a political party of white male elites, a 
number of whom had controlled the city before the war 
began--and the Republicans--a biracial coalition eager to 
81J.E.B. Haxall, Gustavus A. Myers, P.V. Daniels, 
Charles Ellis, and Thomas H. Wynne, Richmond, to the Common 
Council, n.d., Bundle dated 16 April 1866; Report of 
Committee on the Improvement of the James River to the 
Richmond Common Council, Bundle dated 19 May 1866; 
Memorandum from the Richmond & Danville Railroad to the 
Richmond Common Council, n.d., No Bundle date, all the MCC, 
LV. Wartime destruction did not always mean burning; 
vibrations from the constant shelling of the area 
surrounding the Confederate capitol had so weakened some 
structures that they were deemed unsafe for habitation. 
74 
wrest power away. 82 This struggle was complicated by the 
annexation of additional territory from the surrounding 
Henrico County which doubled Richmond's size from 2.4 to 
4.9 square miles, and created two new political wards on 
the city's eastern and western ends, made up largely of 
rural whites. 8 3 
In April 1870, this contest for political control led 
to a bloody confrontation when Republican Mayor George 
Chahoon refused to vacate his office following the election 
of Henry K. Ellyson, a white Conservative. When Chahoon 
appealed his ouster in the Richmond courts, Richmonders 
crowded into the balcony in such great numbers that the 
balcony collapsed, killing sixty-two men and wounding 
several hundred more. 84 In 1871, a sixth ward, Jackson, 
was gerrymandered for black Richmonders out of the city's 
existing territory as a means of reducing racial and 
82Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 159-83; Dabney, 
Richmond: The Story of a city, 199-219; Chesson, Richmond 
after the War, 87-143. 
83Chesson, Richmond after the War, 127-28. Before the 
war, Richmond's three wards were Madison, Jefferson, and 
Monroe. The new wards were Marshall and Clay. 
84chahoon was at least a moderate integrationist who 
had appointed a police chief who had drilled black militia 
units after the war. Not only did Chahoon refuse to vacate 
his office, he took refuge in the police station where he 
was joined by a large contingent of black police and some 
white ones. Chahoon and his followers were eventually 
surrounded by a deputized citizen posse that tried to 
"smoke them out" by cutting off good, water, lights. 
Skirmishing between the two groups led to deaths on both 
sides. Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 177-78. 
75 
political tensions. 85 Despite this new voice, however, 
Richmond blacks in the postwar city were legally denied 
access to most forms of public accommodation--theaters, 
hospitals, cemeteries, restaurants, hotels--just as they 
had been in the antebellum years. 86 
As it emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction, 
Richmond was transformed into what one historian has called 
the "Holy City of the Lost Cause," a New South metropolis 
dedicated to enshrining Confederate heroism into the 
collective memory of Southern white culture. 87 As 
Richmdnders paused in the late nineteenth century to 
remember the heroic deeds of Confederate soldiers, they 
sometimes, but not as often, recalled the wartime work of 
white Southern women who also labored to give birth to a 
new Confederate nation. 
turn in the next chapter. 
It is to these women that we now 
85chesson, Richmond after the War, 157. For opposing 
interpretations for the creation of Jackson Ward, see Brown 
and Kimball, "Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond." 
86chesson, Richmond after the War, 101-102. 
87Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 6. 
CHAPTER 3 
AT WORK FOR THE CONFEDERACY: 
HOSPITAL MATRONS AND GOVERNMENT CLERKS 
As Southern men marched into battle, southern women 
went to work at a variety of voluntary and paid occupations 
assisting the Confederate war effort. The enlistment or 
conscription of large numbers of white men into the 
Confederate armies, coupled with the confederacy's 
reluctance to train and arm slaves, created a labor 
shortage of immense proportions in the relatively non-
industrialized South at precisely the time that government 
bureaucracies in both regions experienced a rapid expansion 
brought on by the war. In the South, bureaucratic growth 
was complicated by the fact that no national government 
bureaucracy existed; after secession, the southern states 
had to erect one from its'base. 1 The Southern 
1For a discussion of the Confederacy's ability to 
create a government that could engage in a total war, see 
Frank Vandiver, Rebel Brass; The confederate Command System 
(New York: Harper Row, 1970); and Richard E. Beringer, 
Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr., 
Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of 
Georgia Press, 1986), especially chapters 2, 4, and 10. 
For a comparison of Southern and Northern preparedness, see 
James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and 
Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 162-185. 
76 
... 
... , 
.... 
...... 
_, 
..... 
77 
government's demand for workers and the concomitant 
draining of white manpower for the Confederate armies 
permitted women to enter the workforce in far greater 
numbers than they had ever done before, constituti ng what 
Ida Tarbell later called a "great rear guard," a reserv e 
labor force that freed men for military service at the same 
time that it performed vital wartime services. 2 
As the Confederate capital, Richmond provided 
unprecedented numbers of white middle-class women with paid 
work in the various government departments that were 
organized during and after the spring of 1861. Working-
class women in antebellum Richmond had been accustomed to 
laboring outside their homes, but wage-earning work was 
2 Ida M. Tarbell, The Ways of Woman (New York: 
Macmillan, 1915), 49. This idea of women constituting a 
reserve army of labor appears in other discussions of 
wartime work. Alice Kessler-Harris, out to Work: A History 
of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1982); Maurine Weiner Greenwald, Women. 
war, and Work: The Impact of world war I on Women Workers 
in the United States (1980; repr. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell 
University Press, 1990); William H. Chafe, The American 
Woman: Her Changing social. Economic, and Political Roles, 
1920-1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972). George 
Rable sees Southern women's economic gains during the civil 
War as temporary, in part because he ends his study in the 
late 1860s. George Rable, ciyil Wars: Women and the Crisis 
of southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois 
Press, 1989). Anne Firor Scott sees them as more 
permanent. Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From 
Pedestal to Politics. 1830-1930, rev. ed. (Charlottesvil le: 
university Press of Virginia, 1995); all subsequent 
citations are to this edition. My research indicates that 
a larger number of white Richmond women worked outside the 
home in the postbellum period, although not in the same 
occupations that had propelled women into the workforce 
during the war itself. 
--~~-~~-~~~-~,,,..· · ..r + ·rr<"ct•mr:• 
78 
often a new experience for many middle-class women who, 
according to contemporary beliefs about appropriate roles 
for women, were expected to confine their sphere of 
influence to the home. The civil War legitimated work for 
these women, however, by providing a rationale based on 
patriotism. "I loved very dearly these heroes whom I 
served," matron Fannie Beers later recalled. "Every hour 
of toil brought its own rich reward. These were 
Confederate soldiers. God had permitted me to work for the 
holy cause. This was enough to flood my whole being with 
content and deepest gratitude." 3 
For some middle-class women, work outside the home was 
just for the war's duration; but for others, postbellum 
poverty meant that they would have to continue working once 
the war was over. White wage-earning women comprised only 
1.6 percent of the free labor in the Richmond workforce in 
1860; by 1870 this figure had risen to 9.9 percent. 4 
Although some women sought employment as a form of 
patriotic calling, for many more, it was a means of 
offsetting financial hardships created by the absence of 
male wage earners. Some women worked in areas that were 
3 Fannie A. Beers, Memories (Philadelphia: J.B. 
Lippincott, 1866), 46. Beers was a Florida woman who, in 
1862-63, worked, first, at Richmond's Alabama Hospital and, 
later, at Soldier's Rest Hospital, also in the city. 
4Angela Catherine Bongiorno, "White Women and Work in 
Richmond, Virginia, 1870-i884 11 (M.A. thesis, University of 
Virginia, 1978), 11. 
79 
more-or-less natural extensions of women's domesticity. 
others labored in new occupations created by the war. 
This chapter examines clerking and hospital work: two 
occupations undertaken by middle-class Richmond women 
between 1861 and 1865 that provided services to the 
Confederacy. Women had traditionally cared for sick family 
members and friends but, under the exigencies of war, this 
homebound duty was transformed into full-time paid 
employment undertaken by thousands of white middle-class 
women in hospitals both "at home" and in the field. 
Clerking was also an occupation that had not been open to 
middle-class white women before the war began. As white 
middle-class Richmond women moved into both of these 
occupations in ever greater numbers, traditional beliefs 
about working women came into conflict with new 
expectations that were the product of wartime demands. 
Hospital work 
Some of the most vital work a Richmond woman could 
perform involved caring for sick and wounded Confederate 
soldiers. Nursing as a profession for women was still in 
its infancy when the American Civil War began in 1861. 
Florence Nightingale's work caring for British soldiers 
during the Crimean War (1854-56) had revealed the 
importance of a well-trained corps of female nurses; but 
critics still questioned the wisdom of exposing women to 
80 
the types of situations they would likely confront in 
military hospitals: naked male bodies torn and broken by 
warfare; or lewd, profane, or drunken patients or doctors. 
Others wondered whether women would have the strength and 
stamina needed for hospital work. 5 In the North, the 
opening of the Civil War led to the appointment of Dorothea 
Dix as nursing supervisor for Northern hospitals, but in 
the South, no comparable position or separate department 
was created to supervise the southern women's hospital 
work. 6 
Like most communities on both sides of the fighting, 
Richmond was initially ill prepared to cope with the 
carnage of battle; most government officials expected that 
the war would be brief and the casualties few. 7 But as 
wounded soldiers were brought from the field after the 
5Mary Elizabeth Massey, Bonnet Brigades (New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 43-44; Florence Nightingale, 
Cassandra, introduction by Myra stark (New York: Feminist 
Press, 1979), 10-17. Nightingale began her work in the 
1850s with the Crimean War; before this, with the exception 
of white and black women who worked as midwives, the only 
women involved in professional nursing were members of 
religious orders. 
6The Medical Department was part of the War Department 
of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.). The Medical 
Department was headed by Confederate Surgeon General Samuel 
P. Moore. The War Department was headed by the Secretary 
of War; there were six during the Confederacy's brief life: 
Leroy P. Walker, Judah P. Benjamin, George w. Randolph, 
Gustavus W. Smith; James A. Seddon, and John C. 
Breckinridge. 
7McPherson, Ordeai by Fire, 164; Vandiver, Rebel 
Brass, 16. 
81 
first battle at Manassas, Virginia, many public buildings, 
including schools, churches, and factories, were converted 
into makeshift hospital wards. Fourth Street Baptist 
Church and sycamore street Disciples of Christ both opened 
their doors to wounded soldiers in September 1861, and 
other churches, including First African Baptist, St. Paul's 
Episcopal, and Centenary Methodist, soon followed, despite 
objections from some of the clergy and from the religious 
press. 8 The Richmond Female Institute served as a 
hospital from 1862 to 1865 while the girls attended classes 
in other locations. 9 The Catholic sisters of Charity 
8Thomas H. Ellis to Mrs. George w. Munford, 13 July 
1862, quoted in Williams. White, "A Diary of the War, or 
What I saw of It," in Richmond Howitzer Battalion 
(Richmond: Carlton McCarthy & Co., 1883), 183; Religious 
Herald, 5 September 1861; Southern Churchman, 20 December 
1861; 9 May and 22 August 1862. Although initially 
supportive of the measure, by the spring of 1862, the 
Southern Churchman had grown critical of what it considered 
to be the "unnecessary" sacrifice of the ttspirit of piety" 
on the altar of southern patriotism. Southern Churchman, 9 
May 1862. This sentiment was echoed in the Religious 
Herald, 2 April 1863. Manchester Baptist Church actually 
refused a government request to use the church's basement 
as a temporary hospital in July 1862. White, "A Diary of 
the War," 37-8. 
9The Ninth Session attended classes in the home of 
John Caskie, on the corner of Clay and 11th Streets; the 
Tenth Session met at the home of former Supreme Court Chief 
Justice John Marshall. "History of the Alumnae Association 
of the Richmond Female Institute--Women's College of 
Richmond," paper presented at the 100th Anniversary 
Celebrations, 1954, in Lily Becker Epps Papers, UVA; 
Richmond Female Institute Records, VBHS; Ernest Taylor 
Walthall, Hidden Things Brought to Light, (Richmond: Dietz 
Printing Co., 1933), 41; Mary w. Dickinson, "The Diary of 
Mary w. Taylor," w. Harrison Daniel, ed. Virginia Baptist 
Register 19 (1980): 938; and Rees Watkins, Virginia Baptist 
Women: Their story (Richmond: Virginia Baptist Historical 
82 
operated two hospitals: the St. Francis de Sales Infirmary 
on Brook Road, and st. Anne's Military Hospita1. 10 At 
least seventeen businesses and factory warehouses, as well 
as the Old Masonic Hall and the Variety Theatre, were also 
Pressed into use. 11 By October 1862, Richmond's hospitals 
had treated more than 99,500 men. 12 By the war's end, 
more than sixty-five city buildings had served as temporary 
hospitals; at least twenty-eight of these were eventually 
absorbed by the Medical Department of the C.S.A. and 
continued in operation as military hospitals until the 
War's close. 13 
Society, 1984), 6. 
lOJ • • t Ch ames Henry Bailey II, History of St. Peer's 
t;u~ch. Richmond. Virginia: 125 Years. 1834-1959 (Richmond: 
0 wis Printing Co., 1959); James Henry Bailey II, A History 
~.the Diocese of Richmond: The Formative Years (Richmond: 
it~et & Shepperson, 1956), 153-56. Although Ellen Jolly 
~r~~ides extensive lists of the nuns who served in various 
itary hospitals for the North and South, unfortunately 
~o list of the sisters working in Richmond survives. Ellen 
PYan.Jolly, Nuns of the Battlefield (Providence, R.I.: 
rovidence Visitors' Press, 1927), 76-83. 
11 th' A number of tobacco factory warehouse were put to 
0 .is use, including Turpin & Yarbrough's, Atkinson's; il.bre11 1 s; and Greanor's. In addition, this number 
Fncludes R.H. Bosher's carriage factory, and Breeden & 
R0 X's variety store. Richmond Enquirer, 4, 6 June 1862; 
R~bert W. Waitt Jr. confederate Military Hospitals in 
(Richm~nd: Richmond civil War Centennial 
mmittee, 1964), s-10. 
12Religious Herald, 2 October 1862. 
ho , 13Military hospitals were usually called "general 
r sp1.ta1s 11 and referred to by number. But many Richmonders 
Geferred to them by the name of the building they occupied. 
aenera1 Hospital No. 3, for example, was alternately known 
s Byrd Island Hospital, or Gilliam's Factory Hospital~ 
,,,. 
111 
t tr"' 
t I 
-
83 
As more men were drafted into the Confederate armies, 
increasing numbers of women were drawn into hospital duty 
in order to free able-bodied male hospital workers for 
military service. As the war dragged on and casualty rates 
escalated, more women were also needed to care for wounded 
and diseased men. During 1861 and most of 1862, there was 
a two-tiered system of hospital care in the South in which 
Confederate military hospitals coexisted with private 
hos 't Pi als that women operated in their homes. In Richmond, 
Caroline Mayo managed Good Samaritan hospital in her home 
on Clay Street between Fifth and Sixth, while Sally 
Tompkins maintained a small private hospital in the home of 
a local judge. Maria Foster Clopton cared for soldiers in 
th
e home of a married daughter. 14 
In private hospitals such as these, women exercised a 
great deal of autonomy that extended to all facets of 
hospital management, including the types of patients 
accepted for treatment and the regimen of care. The female 
managers of the 4th street Baptist Hospital, for example, 
reserved the right to hire and dismiss male employees, 
~here were at least thirty-four hospitals in the general 
hosp~tal system. In addition to the twenty-eight numbered 
s~spitals, ~his included Chimborazo, Jacks~n, Winder, 
th~art, Louisiana, and Howard's ~rove.hospital~. None of 
C se last six had numerical designations. Waitt, 
~derate Military Hospitals in Richmond. 
c 
14
sa11y Louisa Tompkins Papers, ESBL; Lucy Lane Erwin, 
v~mp:, The Ancestry of William Clopton of York County, 
' (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle Publishing, 1939), 162-3. 
84 
including the attending surgeons. 15 Other hospitals run 
by elite Richmond women limited their patients to 
Confederate officers in an effort to prevent genteel 
Southern ladies from coming into contact with rank-and-file 
soldiers whom they believed constituted the coarser element 
Of the Confederate army. 
The crown jewel of the military hospital system was 
Chimborazo, an assembly of 120 low white buildings on the 
eastern edge of the city. The largest military hospital in 
th
e world when it opened in October 1861, Chimborazo was 
organized into five divisions that grouped men for 
treatment according to the state from which they served. 16 
Each section was further sub-divided into thirty wards, 
With each ward capable of accommodating about thirty to 
forty Patients. The hundred Sibley tents that dotted the 
hos 't P1 al grounds offered additional space for convalescent 
15 Records of the 4th street Baptist Hospital, ESBL. 
16 th Sources vary as to what these divisions were, and 
ey Probably changed some as the war progressed, depending 
~~ the states of origins for military units engaged in 
Dighting around the capital. Confederate Medical 
iepartment information lists the five divisions as follows 
en 18 ~2: No. 1 Virginia; No. 2 Georgia; No. 3 North. 
Raro11na; No. 4 Alabama; No. 5 Miscellaneous. Consolidated 
Records for Chimborazo Hospital, 1862, Vol. 318, Ch. VI, 
w·G. 1?9, NARA. waitt says Chimborazo's five divisions 
We~e Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland. 
aitt, Confederate Military Hospitals in Richmond, 19. The 
;econd largest civil war hospital was Lincoln Hospital in 
hash~ngton, D.c. Prior to 1861, the largest military 
Hospital was scutari Hospital in the Crimea. Edgar Erskine 
ume~ "Chimborazo Hospital, Confederate States Army: 
~erica's Largest Military Hospital," The Military surgeon 
·
3 (September 1934): 161. 
• 
' 
'" 
85 
soldiers waiting return to their units. 17 The hospital 
also had i'ts own · h h ice ouse, soup ouse, soap factory, 
bakery b 
, rewery, bathhouse, vegetable gardens, herds of 
cattle and goats, blacksmith shop, apothecary, carpenter's 
shop, laundry, and shoemaker's shop. 18 
Other military hospitals varied by size and function. 
General Hospital No. 9 operated as a triage unit, taking in 
large numbers of sick and injured men for speedy diagnosis 
a
nd transfer to more appropriate locations. In four days 
du · 
ring the fighting at Chancellorsville, Virginia, in 1863, 
this h . Ospital, which was equipped to care for 900, took in 
a total of 3,752 men, the majority of whom were transferred 
out by week's end.19 Between July and September 1864, 
ace 
17
A Sibley tent was a conical canvas tent that could 
0 I!Unodate about twenty men. 
19 . 
18Waitt, Confederate Military Hospitals in Richmond, 
Co~fPhoebe Yates Pember, A southern Woman's Story: Life in 
~der~te Richmond, Bell I. Wiley, ed. (St. Simons~ Ga.: 
choo ingbird Press, 1959), 3 and 15. Although most editors 
co se to spell Pember's first name by the more 
innventional "Phoebe II I have chosen to spell it "Phebe," 
c the dissertation text as Pember did herself in her 
0 ~rres~ondence. Also virginius Dabney, ~ichm~nd: The Story 
' rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of 
th·ginia, 1976) 177 (All citations in this chapter are to 
st!~ edition); Hume: "Chimborazo Hospital, Confederate 
Mee es Army," 155-65; "Of Chimborazo.Park: Dr. James B. 
Pub!t:-7 Gave It Its Name," interview with.James Brown Mccaw, 
Ch' ished in an unidentified newspaper in 1897, in 
lmborazo Hospital Papers, ESBL. 
Vir . 1~Record Book of General Hospital No. 9, Richmond, 
Batflnia, 1862-1864, Vol. 81, Ch. VI, R.G. 109, NARA. The 
th le of Chancellorsville took place on May 1-4, 1863, on 
~ae·edge of the Wilderness in an area bounded by the 
trPldan and Rappahannock rivers. Although Confederate 
00Ps Were greatly outnumbered, the battle was considered 
86 
d . 
uring the Petersburg campaign, it received 10,100 
SOld' iers, of whom 9,663 were transferred, 96 died, and 341 
remained in the hospital receiving treatment. 20 Other 
hospitals, such as the comparatively minuscule General 
Hospital No. 26 and General Hospital No. 27, which treated 
cases of gangrene, had capacities of fifty and forty, 
respectively.21 
Although reminiscences and speeches delivered by 
doctors and other hospital personnel to veterans groups in 
th
e Postbellum period romanticized military hospitals like 
Chimborazo as models of efficiency, the reality was often 
quite different. Despite efforts to keep the wards clean, 
hospital floors were littered with blood-stained bandages; 
and sudden arrivals of incoming wounded frequently left 
Clean sheets and mattresses in short supply. In winter, 
snow sifted through the open slats in hospital walls. In 
sununer, the stench of infection floated on the air, while 
swarms of flies flew in through open windows, contaminating 
food and annoying patients too ill to brush them away. In 
every season, rats scurried along the ward corridors at 
night, stealing bran-filled pads from under the arms and 
~.tactical masterpiece for the victorious Lee; but it cost 
l:rn the life of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, an 
~ccen~ric but brilliant military tacticia~ who was wounded 
Y friendly fire. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 319-23. 
13. 
20w 'tt ai I Confederate Military Hospitals in Richmond, 
21 Ib 'd i ., 17. 
87 
1egs of wounded men. On one occasion, a group of hungry 
Chimborazo rats performed a minor medical miracle by 
debriding necrotic tissue from an injured soldier's foot, 
helping him avoid both a dangerous operation and further 
complications from gangrene. 22 
An 1861 article in the Richmond Enquirer comparing 
care in private hospitals run by women with treatment in 
those operated by the C.S.A., concluded what others already 
surmised: that patients in hospitals run by women were 
"better lodged, better fed, better nursed, and in every way 
more comfortable" than soldiers in military hospitals 
operated by the Confederate Army. 23 The newspaper's 
conclusion about the superior care in hospitals organized 
by women provided a comfortable fit with popular beliefs 
about gender that defined women as natural nurturers whose 
closer relationship to God and their children made them 
better suited than men to care for the infirm. Ladies in 
the private hospitals, according to the writer, "count(ed] 
22 Phebe Yates Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, 
to Eugenia Levy Phillips, 30 January 1863, Phillips-Myers 
Papers, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A Southern Woman's Story, 
112; Pember, A Southern Woman's Story, 61. 
23Richmond Enquirer, 3 September 1861. Descriptions 
of private hospitals run by women frequently stressed their 
cleanliness. Fannie Beers's description of Richmond's 
Soldiers' Rest hospital often refers to the whiteness of 
its surroundings: the sheets, the whitewashed walls, the 
curtains, the damask cloths covering the food baskets 
delivered by lady volunteers. Beers, Memories, 42-43. In 
addition to Beers, the women at Soldiers' Rest included 
Frances Gwathmey, Catherine Poitreaux, Susan Watkins, Mrs. 
Booker, Mrs. Grant, and Mrs. Edmund Ruffin. 
88 
the sick by souls, ... consoling every affliction, [and] 
reviving the tender memories of home." Male military 
surgeons, by comparison, were thought to be "preoccupied 
with personal ambitions or blinded by pride and the 
etiquette of rank [that caused] too many of them to forget" 
that the "soldier's life and his attachment to public 
service" depended on their vigilance. 24 The lengthy poem 
excerpted below, which appeared frequently in the Richmond 
newspapers, probably as a means of encouraging more middle-
class women into hospital work, stressed women's patience, 
sympathy, and "delicate .fingers," as characteristics that 
fitted them for hospital duty. 25 
Fold away all your bright tinted dresses, 
Turn the key on your jewels to-day, 
All the wealth of your tendril-like tresses 
Braid back in a serious way; 
No more delicate gloves, no more laces, 
No more trifling in boudoir or bower, 
But come with your souls on your faces, 
To meet the stern wants of the hour! 
·Look around. By the torch-light unsteady, 
The dead and the dying seem one--
What? trembling and paling already, 
Before your dear mission's begun? 
These wounds are more precious than ghastly 
Time presses her lips to each scar, 
While she chants of that glory which vastly 
Transcends all the horrors of war. 
24Richmond Examiner, 3 October 1861. 
2511Ladies! To the Hospital," Southern Churchman, 26 
September 1862. According the Katharine Jones, this poem 
first appeared in the Richmond newspapers after the Seven 
Days' battles during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862. 
Katharine M. Jones, ed. Ladies of Richmond, Confederate 
capital (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 94. 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
Wipe the sweat from his brow with your kerchief· 
Let the old tattered collar go wide! ' 
see--he stretches out blindly in search if 
The surgeon still stands by his side. 
"MY son's over yonder--he's wounded, 
Oh! this ball that has entered my thigh!" 
And again, he burst our all atremble, 
"In Thy mercy, o God! let me die!" 
Pass on; it is useless to linger, 
While others are claiming your care--
There is need for your delicate finger, 
For your womanly sympathy there. 
There are sick ones athirst for caressing, 
There are dying ones raving of home, 
There are wounds to be bound with a blessing, 
And shrouds to make ready for some. 
They have gathered about you the harvest 
of death in its ghastliest view; 
The nearest as well as the farthest, 
Is here with the traitor and true. 
And crowned with your beautiful patience, 
Made sunny with love at the heart 
You must balsam the wounds of the nation, 
Nor falter, nor shrink from your part. 
Up and down through the wards where the fever 
stalks noisesome, and gaunt, and impure, 
You must go with your steadfast endeavor 
To comfort, to counsel, to cure. 
I grant you the task's superhuman, 
sut strength will be given to you 
To do for these dear ones what woman 
Alone in her pity can do. 26 
Records from Maria Clopton's private hospital on 
Franklin street suggest that it was the epitome of caring 
and precisely the sort of place that every wife or mother 
would have wanted for the treatment of her wounded 
2611 Ladies! To the Hospital," southern Churchman, 26 
September 1862. 
89 
t ' 
90 
confederate, if she could not be with him herself. Letters 
from grateful soldiers and their families fill this slim 
collection with words of thanks that mirrored the type of 
personalized, motherly attention described by the Enquirer. 
"I shall never forget the kindness with which I have been 
treated whilst under your Care," wrote Frank B. Phister, of 
Mount Albion, Mississippi. "I know that only your close 
attention to me (with assistance of a few of your Friends) 
saved me from the Clutches of Death. 1127 "I have an 
opportunity of sending letters through to Richmond," wrote 
Elizabeth Randle in September 1862, 
and cannot let it pass without expressing my 
sincere thanks to you for your kind attentions to 
my son .... He wrote us that you took him to 
your house and cared for him so kindly that he 
owed his recovery probably to the circumstance. 
Let me assure you, dear Madam, that such tender 
treatment falls as gratefully on the mother's 
heart as it does upon the senses of the poor sick 
soldier. 28 
References to the care in other private hospitals also 
conflated medical treatment with maternal devotion. 
"Should [my son] Alick return to Richmond sick or wounded," 
a.w. Hunter wrote to Sally Tompkins, 
I should be most grateful if you could have him 
carried to your hospital. The poor fellow would 
27Frank B. Phister, Mount Albion, Mississippi, to 
Maria G. Clopton, Richmond, Virginia, 6 January 1863, Maria 
G. Clopton Papers, ESBL. 
28Elizabeth Randle, Mt. Lebanon, [n.p.], to Maria G. 
Clopton, Richmond, Virginia, 26 September 1862, Maria G. 
Clopton Papers, ESBL. 
91 
not then feel so much the loss of a home and the 
absence of a mother's care.29 
At thirty-one years of age, Sally Tompkins was probably too 
young to have been the biological mother of most Civil war 
soldiers under her supervision; but her care and devotion 
nevertheless evoked maternal images in the minds of her 
patients and their families. 
From the time Clopton Hospital opened in May 1862, 
until its closing some six months later, Maria Clopton and 
her staff of hired workers and slaves treated a total of 
565 patients with only eleven deaths, a ratio of one death 
for every fifty-one cases. By comparison, the larger 
military hospitals experienced a death ratio which varied, 
for the same period of time, from between one in nine to 
one in twenty. 30 At Chimborazo Hospital, 41.2 percent of 
the 17,000 men who were treated there died, a statistic 
which later prompted Medical Director-in-Chief James Brown 
Mccaw to remark that Chimborazo Hospital had "created 
29B.W. Hunter, to Sally Louisa Tompkins, 12 October 
1864, Sally Louisa Tompkins Collection, ESBL. Alick Hunter 
was in the Black Horse Cavalry. A newspaper article 
praising the female operator of the Good Samaritan Hospital 
also emphasized her "motherly care and skillful attention.'' 
Religious Herald, 9 October 1862. 
30william A. Carrington, Report of Inspection for 
Clopton Hospital, Richmond, Virginia, 4 October 1862, Maria 
G. Clopton Papers, ESBL. Clapton's Hospital was apparently 
not an exception. An article in the Religious Herald in 
the fall of 1862 placed the death-rate in all military 
hospitals in Richmond at an average of 10 percent, compared 
with a rate of 6 percent for women's hospitals during the 
same period of time. Religious Herald, 2 October 1862. 
oaJc~0 
92 
od [Cemetery], which up to that time had been 
ratively but a small burial place.1131 
coin.Pa 
E~planations for this disparity in survival rates 
ed from the higher degree of cleanliness, improved 
rang 
t ilation, restful atmosphere, and better nutrition ven 
provided in the hospitals run by women to the overcrowding, 
filth, mismanagement, and inept medical treatment in 
Pitals run by the Confederate Medical Department. "Some hOS 
of the hospitals in this city are kept in a wretched 
condition, and consequently are nuisances to those confined 
in them and to the public outside," began the author of an 
article critical of the military hospital system in 1862. 
In one, the dead body of a soldier was suffered 
to remain in the cellar for four days, and was 
only removed then after the odor had become so 
offensive as to drive nearly all the nurses from 
the building •... This duty (of keeping the 
hospitals clean and in good order] is really 
incumbent upon the military authorities, and 
should be made independent of the aid of the 
citizens •••• To some extent, the real working 
men .under the orders of the military authorities, 
have exerted themselves successfully, but there 
has as yet been nothing like a general, 
continued, and systematic course pursued in 
relation to this important subject. 32 
other articles, like the one praising Winder matron Sallie 
swope, claimed that the women were simply better suited to 
be good health care managers. 33 As a result of reports 
3111of Chimborazo Park: Dr. James B. Mccaw Gave It Its 
Name." 
32Richmond Enquirer, 11 June 1862. 
33southern Churchman, 11 September 1862. 
93 
and testimonials like these and statistics showing their 
lower mortality rates, private hospitals occasionally 
became the refuge of higher-ranking Confederate officers, 
who could afford to dip into personal funds to pay for the 
extra attention and better diets these private facilities 
provided. 
Despite its exemplary record, however, by October 
1862 , Clopton Hospital, as well as the other private 
Richmond hospitals operated by women, were under attack by 
the Medical Department of the c.s.A., which proposed 
closing the less successful private hospitals and absorbing 
the better ones into the military system. Suggested as a 
cost-cutting measure and endorsed by the Confederate 
Congress, this plan also enabled the Medical Department to 
assume a greater measure of control over treatment and 
personnel than it was able to exercise over private 
facilities headed by women. 34 A report on Clopton 
Hospital by hospital inspector William A. Carrington 
offered contradictory explanations for the hospital's 
closure which had less to do with Maria Clapton's 
management than it did with the fact that soldiers avoided 
military treatment in favor of care in hospitals run by 
women. 
34Robert s. Holtzman; "Sally Tompkins: Captain, 
Confederate Army," American Mercury (March 1959): 129. 
..__ 
....... -
. -... 
. -
.... ... 
. .,. 
ictr • ,.. 
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ac:• I 
A 
" 
.. ' 
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,. 
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., 
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94 
Carrington opened his report by describing the 
hospital as being "situated in a thickly settled 
neighborhood" where "the wealth and patriotism of its 
inhabitants has caused the Hospital to receive a much 
larger amount of contributions in comforts for the sick 
than most others." Other portions of the report praised 
clopton for her low death rate and her "excellent sanitary 
measures," but concluded that the hospital should be 
closed, because of concern by the neighbors that the 
hospital was too small and that the patients were forced to 
exercise in the street. These patients, Carrington 
concluded, should be used to fill the "several thousand 
vacancies" in the city's military hospital where "proper 
attention may be given to the patients at less expense. 1135 
rt is possible that some of Clopton's neighbors might have 
been worried about the possibility of contagious diseases 
being spread by ambulating patients; but the more likely 
35William A. Carrington, Report of Inspection for 
Clopton Hospital, Richmond, Virginia, 4 October 1862, Maria 
G. Clopton Papers, ESBL. Emphasis mine. Although 
Carrington in his report claimed that the majority of 
clopton's patients were severely wounded, this might not 
have been accurate. A register of the 249 patients treated 
at Clopton Hospital from June to October 1862 reveals that 
only seventy-three cases (29.3 percent} involved either 
gunshots or other battlefield injuries, while at least 153 
(61.4 percent} were from diseases such as dysentery, 
bronchitis, pneumonia, typhoid fever, measles, influenza, 
erysipelas, and parasitic hemoptysis. The remaining 
twenty-three cases (9.2 percent} included chronic 
conditions such as hypertrophy of the heart or torpidity of 
the liver, and fourteen incidents of rheumatism which may 
have been brought on or made worse by exposure. 
explanation for the hospital's forced closure must be the 
medical bureaucracy's determination to reduce competition 
between the military hospitals and the more efficient and 
successful institutions run by female volunteers. 36 
Clopton protested, and was joined in her objection by 
her attending surgeon, H.A. Tatum, who sent an impassioned 
letter to Confederate surgeon General Samuel P. Moore 
praising Clopton and her staff and criticizing the Medical 
Department's low rate of pay for hospital nurses. "I do 
not mean to use the language of mere panegyric," Tatum 
wrote 
when I say that Mrs. Clopton and the other ladies 
performed the most laborious duties of dressing 
wounds, etc., not only without a murmur, but with 
joy that they possessed the power to serve the 
suffering soldiers •... The ladies were most 
particularly of benefit during the period the 
Hospital was filled with the wounded, as we found 
it difficult to procure intelligent nurses for 
the wages paid by the Confederacy, and our 
patients have reason to bless them for their 
labors of love ..• [M]Y best convictions are 
that the Hospitals where ladies have the general 
management of nursing, the patients are much more 
comfortable and happy. 37 
Although Clapton's hospital was closed in October 1862, her 
hospital work did not end with its closure. She followed 
36carrington's Report included no interviews with or 
correspondence from Clapton's neighbors to support his 
contention. 
37 H.A. Tatum, Richmond, to s.P. Moore, Surgeon 
General of the C.S.A., 15 September 1862, Maria G. Clopton 
Papers, ESBL. This letter was written after Carrington 
visited the hospital, but before he filed his report. 
95 
I • 
96 
her patients into two Winder Hospital wards bearing her 
name in an arrangement struck with the Surgeon General, 
She worked there until the end of the war. 38 
The law closing private hospitals stated that no 
Confederate soldier could be treated in a hospital 
administered by an individual with a rank lower than 
captain. This wording effectively excluded women from 
hospital administration. A number of Richmond women, 
however, continued to take one or two soldiers at a time 
into their homes for brief stays that were apparently 
tolerated by the Confederate government. These were most 
likely men who had been furloughed to their homes to 
recuperate, but who were too feeble to travel. Richmonder 
Lucy Fletcher, for example, cared for several soldiers like 
this who had befriended her son, Wattie. 
The only Richmond woman able to avert the Medical 
Department's forced closing was sally Louisa Tompkins. on 
September 9, 1862, Jefferson Davis commissioned her as a 
captain in the Confederate cavalry, which allowed Tompkins 
to continue operating Robertson's Hospital until the war's 
end. The precise circumstances surrounding the conferral 
of Tompkins's rank are unclear. some sources maintain that 
Jefferson Da.vis was reacting to public outcry and made 
Tompkins a captain to prevent her hospital from being 
38Medical Director's Office, Richmond, to Maria G. 
Clopton, 11 October 1862, Maria G, Clopton Papers, ESBL. 
' .... 
.... -
.... ,., 
... -· 
"'!l .. :,,, 
I., -~·· r: .. L ..,..,,fl 
.. 
••4 
... 1d 
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97 
closed under the Medical Department's consolidation plan. 
Others suggest that it was a favor granted at the request 
of Lee's brilliant cavalry officer J.E.B. Stuart. Whatever 
the case, a handwritten note at the bottom of her 
commission says that she never collected the pay to which 
her rank entitled her. Although a woman of some means 
before the war began, Tompkins expended a lot of her own 
resources in seeing that her patients were well fed. 39 
Several Catholic nuns of the Daughters of Charity of St. 
Vincent de Paul also managed to keep st. Anne's Military 
Hospital and the Infirmary of st. Francis de Sales on Brook 
Road open despite the forced closures. These hospitals 
were not full military hospitals--although they were 
subsidized by the Confederate government. 40 
39After the war, Tompkins's continued charitable works 
depleted her resources even further. When she died at the 
age of eighty-two she was buried with full military honors. 
In 1961, St. James's Church, of which she had been a 
member, installed a stained-glass window in her honor. 
Church bulletin of program dedicating stained glass window 
in Sally Louisa Tompkins Papers, MC T840B, ESBL; Karen 
Schultz, ''Descendant of Woman Captain Remembers Heroine of 
civil War," Richmond News Leader, 21 July 1966; Richmond 
Times-Dispatch, 13 March 1960; Murray M. McGuire and John 
B. Mordecai, st. James's Church. 1835-1957. (n.p.: n.p., 
1958), 26; Elizabeth Dabney Coleman, "The Captain Was a 
Lady," Virginia cavalcade (summer- 1956): 39-41; and 
Holtzman, "Sally Tompkins," 127-130. 
4
°For a discussion of religious women and hospital 
work, see Jolly, Nuns of the Battlefield; George Barton, 
Angels of the Battlefield: A History of the Labors of the 
Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil War (Philadelphia: 
Catholic Art Publishing co., 1898); Bailey, History of St. 
Peter's Church. Richmond. Virginia, 28; Bailey, A History 
of the Diocese of Richmond, 153-56; and Barbara Roberts, 
''Sisters of Mercy: From Vicksburg to Shelby Springs," 
98 
A woman entering a Civ1.·1 War 'l"t h · 
mil. ary ospital entered 
a world that was both strange yet familiar. The care of 
the sick was t f i par o woman's spec al province as the family 
nurturer; and many Southern women were, therefore, 
accust0med to nursi·ng thei'r h'ld t c i ren, paren s, spouses, and 
0th
er family members and friends through a variety of 
ninete 
enth-century illnesses that sometimes resulted in 
death.41 A Confederate recipe book published in Richmond 
in 1863 · instructed women in how to prepare household 
remedies to treat dysentery, chills, sore throats, 
diphther1' a, 
scarlet fever, asthma, croup, camp itch, burns, 
Warts "f 
' elons," corns, toothaches, sick headaches, and 
troublesome coughs.42 
But few if any Southern women were prepared for the 
blood 
and gore of bodies disfigured by combat. Although 
doctors and 
matrons possessed a wide variety of drugs for 
treating the suffering caused by disease, including quinine 
sulphur 
, ipecac, castor oil, magnesium sulphate, calomel, 
~ 11 (winter 1989): 2-17. 
41 
.§..outhern Illustrated News, 22 November 1862. 
42 
Rec . [West & Johnston publishers], eds., Confederate 
~t Book: A Compilation of over One H~ndred Receipts. 
Coui ed to the Times rev. ed., Introduction by E. Merton 
21-2;er. f1863; Athe~s: University of Georgia Pr7ss, 19~0), 
~ec· · Richmond publishers West & Johnston compiled this 
Pur~Pe book from southern newspapers. A felon is a 
o~ tlent infection of the deep tissues of either the finger 
Dict~e, often near the nail. Oorland's Pocket Medical 
~, ~0th ed., abridged ~rem Dorland's Illustrated 
1959 )al Dict1onar (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., 
' F-3; all subsequent citations are to this edition. 
99 
and various forms of opium, severely wounded limbs were 
most commonly treated by amputation. 43 Frances Harriet 
Crane, a matron at General Hospital No. 9, told her 
daughter of often seeing "amputated legs and arms piled as 
high as her head. 1144 At times, war-hardened surgeons 
simply tossed these limbs into the hospitals' back yards 
outraging passersby. 45 Sara Pryor fainted the first time 
she encountered a nurse kneeling beside a hospital cot, 
holding a pan containing the stump of an amputated arm. 
"The next thing I knew," she wrote, "I was ... lying on a 
cot and a spray of cold water was falling over my face." 
Although Pryor recovered and eventually was able to work 
twelve-hour hospital shifts, she never became reconciled to 
43Magnesium sulphate was used for treating jaundice; 
quinine, for chronic hepatitis; and quinine sulphur, for 
recurring fever. opium was used for typhoid fever; opium 
and ipecac were both prescribed for dysentery. Diet and 
Prescription Book, Clopton Hospital, Maria G. Clopton 
Papers, ESBL. A mercury compound, calomel was commonly used 
as a laxative; it blistered the mouths of some patients. 
Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old south: A 
Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana state University 
Press, 1982), 376-77; Pember, A Southern Woman's Story, 57. 
44Stella Crane French Blanton Papers, MC C248A, ESBL. 
45Richmond Enquirer, 11 June 1862. Wyndham Blanton 
has calculated the mortality rate for amputations of the 
lower leg in Richmond military hospitals at 43 percent in 
1862; for amputations of the thigh, the rate was 59 
percent. Although amputations attract a lot of attention 
because of their sometimes macabre descriptions and their 
permanent disfigurement, disease actually claimed more 
men's lives. The three most prevalent diseases which 
resulted in death were malaria, typhoid, and pulmonary 
tuberculosis. Wyndham a. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in 
the Nineteenth-Century (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1933), 
286 and 292. 
100 
the sight of gravely wounded men, often wearing a dark veil 
as she walked to her home to avoid the sight of amputated 
limbs and wagons filled with dead soldiers. 46 
The entry of a large number of women into the male 
world of the military hospital caused many to reexamine 
their beliefs about appropriate roles for women. Women had 
traditionally cared for male family members in the privacy 
of the home, and private hospital work by Richmond women 
had preserved an aura of that respectability by shielding 
that work from public view and by allowing some women to be 
selective in their choice of patients. But work in 
Richmond's military hospitals brought women into close 
contact with sometimes naked or nearly naked men who, in 
this case, were not beloved brothers, fathers, and sons, 
but rather strangers who were often drawn from the ranks of 
the poor and working class. In Chimborazo No. 2, a 
mentally-ill soldier under matron Phebe Pember's care 
adopted the practice of jumping out of bed and removing all 
of his clothes every time she entered the ward. 47 On 
another occasion a convalescent soldier, whom Pember 
described as a "rough looking Texan," boldly circled her, 
46sara Rice (Mrs. Roger) Pryor, "The Hospital Was 
Filled to Overflowing," Reminiscences of Peace and War (New 
York: Macmillan co., 1904), reprinted in Katharine Jones, 
Ladies of Richmond, 126-31. 
47 Phebe Yates Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, 
to Mrs. J.F. (Lou] Gilmer, 16 April 1864, Phebe Yates Levy 
Pember Papers, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A Southern Woman's 
Story, 138. 
101 
"his eye never fixing upon any particular part ... but 
travelling incessantly all over me." When Pember shifted 
her position to break his gaze, the soldier did 
likewise. 48 
Actions such as these, as well as occasional reports 
of sexual misconduct, raised doubts about the wisdom of 
admitting female employees into the system, regardless of 
the need. 49 Some believed that hospital life might injure 
"the delicacy and refinement of a lady--that her nature 
would become deteriorated and her sensibilities 
blunted. 1150 "There is a good deal of trouble about the 
ladies in some of the hospitals in this department," Kate 
Cumming wrote. 
Our friends here have advised us to go home, as 
they say it is not considered respectable to go 
into one. I must confess, from all I had heard 
and seen, for awhile I wavered about the 
propriety of it; but when I remembered the 
suffering I had witnessed, and the releif I had 
48Pember, A southern Woman's story. 30. 
49 I have not uncovered any blatant incidence of sexual 
harassment or sexual misconduct in Richmond hospitals. 
Jane Schultz cites a case in a federal hospital in 
Stoneman, Virginia, where an attending surgeon made 
unwelcome advances to a New York woman who had travelled 
south to nurse her dying husband. She also cites the case 
in the same hospital of a "suspicious nurse who had no 
duties to perform." Jane Schultz, "The Inhospitable 
Hospital: Gender and Professionalism in Civil War 
Medicine," Signs 17.2 (winter 1992): 363-92. 
50Pember, A southern Woman's story, 16. 
102 
given, my mind was made up to go into one if 
allowed to do so.sl 
Shortly after her arrival at Chimborazo, Phebe Pember was 
~ounded by remarks made by a female acquaintance who 
insinuated that Pember's decision to engage in military 
hospital work was not based on economic need, or patriotic 
altruism, but rather on her determination to live a life of 
licent · · ious independence away from the gaze of friends and 
family. "How can that be?" Pember retorted. 
There is no unpleasant exposure under the proper 
a~rangements, and if even there be, the 
circumstance which surround a wounded man, far 
from friends and home, suffering in a holy cause 
and dependent upon a woman for help, care, and 
sympathy, hallow and clear the atmosphere in 
Which she labors. 52 
Northern nursing supervisor Dorothea Dix attempted to 
quell criticism that hospital "nurses" were little more 
than gl 'f' · ti f 0 ri ied prostitutes by adopting the prac ce o 
hiring only plain women over thirty years of age, who were 
required -to dress simply in brown or black with no bows, 
curls · 53 
, Jewelry, or hoop skirts. While no list similar 
too· 1X's "requirements" can be found for women in Richmond 
c 
51Kate Cumming, A Journal of ~ospital Life in the 
~ederate Army of Tennessee (Louisville, Ky.: John P. 
(~rton & Co., 1866) 44. At the time of this entry 
~1ePtember 7, 1962); Cumming was visiting hospitals in abarna M. . . . d . 
, 1ss1ss1pp1, an Georgia. 
52 Pember, A Southern Woman's Story, 105. 
Cu • 53Schultz, "The Inhospitable Hospital," 366-67; ,Kate 
8 llllning, Kate: The Journal of a confederate Nurse, Richard parksdale, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 
ress, 1959), xiii. 
103 
hospitals, the poem quoted on pages 88 and 89 of this 
chapter encouraged female hospital workers to remove their 
jewelry, put away their "bright tinted dresses" and lace, 
and braid back their hair "in a serious way," all practical 
measures for hospital workers to be sure, but perhaps ones 
also aimed at avoiding accusations of impropriety. 54 
Sally Tompkins drew an additional mantle of respect around 
herself by carrying a bible and effecting quasi-military 
garb including a kepi and a black veil, which she wore for 
the remainder of her life. 55 
Most middle- and upper-class white women in Richmond's 
military hospitals were employed as "matrons," a term which 
the Confederate Medical Department conferred on them as an 
indication of their higher status in the hospital 
hierarchy. 56 Working-class white women were hired as 
5411Ladies! To the Hospital," Southern Churchman, 26 
September 1862. 
55Holtzman, "Sally Tompkins," 129. A kepi was a 
military cap with a short flat crown and a small leather 
visor patterned after French army headgear. 
56Northern hospitals called these women "nurses." 
Jane E. Schultz, "The Inhospitable Hospital," 369-70. My 
research on female hospital workers in Richmond takes 
exception to the conclusion made by Drew Faust in Mother's 
of Invention that more affluent southern ladies "regarded 
matron's duties as too laborious, too indelicate for women 
of their social standing." Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of 
Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American 
Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 
1996), 99. Evidence from Richmond military hospitals 
indicates that a larger number of upper-class women may 
have worked in the Richmond wards than Faust believes. 
Maria Clopton was the widow of a state supreme court judge, 
while Phebe Pember applied for a position at Chimborazo on 
104 
, a road category of laborers that also included nurses b 
convalescent soldiers and black women and men, either slave 
or free. Working-class white women and free black or slave 
Women also worked as laundresses, although the number of 
White laundresses i'n Richmond hospitals was smaller than it 
may have been in other locations. 57 
the ad . Who vice of the wife of the confederate Secretary of War 
sin was a family friend. Sally Tompkins was a wealthy 
fam~~! woman descended from one of Virginia's "first 
Chiibies." Kate Ball, who worked with Phebe Pember in 
Manm orazo No. 2, was a refugee from a large farm near 
of ~ssas. Constance Cary's father had been a judge. Some 
all-hese women were recently widowed, and several--but not 
-were either impoverished, or refugees, or both. 
57 Howa For example, the smallpox hospital located at 
sla rd 's Grove extensively contracted male and female 
lauv~s through labor brokers to work as cooks, nurses, and 
fivn resses. This hospital employed a total of eighty-
mil7' and treated smallpox cases among the civilian and 
bl itary populations. General Hospital No. 24 employed both 
emack and white laundresses, as did Chimborazo which 
18
~loyed a total of 115 women in this capacity in September 
Joh2 · Mary Westwood, Rebecca Elliott, Anne Wilkins, 
wo anna Costello, and Mrs. s.F. Charles were all white 
Gemen Who worked as nurses in either Chimborazo No. 4 or 
me~eral.Hospital No. 9. In addition t~ blac~ women and 
us' this occupation was also shared with white men, 
du~ally convalescent soldiers who were not yet fit for 
Why. Convalescent soldiers also served as ward masters 
Ot~ performed such tasks as delivering food to the wards. 
in er soldiers who were considered "skillful and competent" 
Unlmedical work were permanently detailed to hospital duty, 
Th ess "neglect or inattention" necessitated their removal. 
24
;se latter were known as "detailed men." Ch. VI, Vol. 
p 
2 
pp. 34 and 40; Vol. 318; Vol. 170, p. 161; Vol. 122, 
th. 56 ; Vol. 715 p. 153, all in R.G. 109, NARA. In 1862, 
e Conf d ' 't · em e erate Congress passed a law permi ting the 
fe~loyment of either free blacks, slaves, or whites--both 
lstale and male--to serve as cooks in any of the hospitals. 
P
~ Cong., 1st. sess Ch. 64, 21 April 1862. For the act 
40V • d' •' us i ing for female nurses as well as a discussion of the 
toe of convalescent soldiers and detailed men, see "An Act 
ho P~ovide for the sick and wounded of the army in 
spitals," 1st. cong., 2d. sess., Ch. 17, 27 September 
105 
In her essay on Civil War nursing, Jane E. Schultz has 
est· 
imated the number of Northern and Southern military 
hosp't i al workers at more than twenty thousand women, based 
on her extrapolation of information from the service 
records of Union nurses found in the National Archives in 
Washington, o.c.sa The precise number of Southern nurses, 
laundresses d · · · bt · · 
, an matrons is impossible too ain, in part 
because no such records · t f f d t 1 exis or cone era e emp oyees, 
s· 
ince none of them ever received pensions from the U.S. 
government, and in part because none of the Confederate 
Surgeo 
n General's papers survived the Richmond fire. For 
Richmond hospitals, a reasonable estimation of the number 
Of h 
ospital matrons is probably in the neighborhood of 300 
to 35 0 women, based on the fact that most of the city's 
twenty-eight general hospitals average six matrons, each, 
While th e six large ones averaged between thirty and forty-
five. The number of white women who worked as nurses or 
laundresses is even more difficult to ascertain. 
Ch' 
imborazo was known to have employed about sixty 
-------------
186,2 · · · 1 Gov' in C.S.A., The statues at Large of the Provisiona 
~nment of the confederate States of America, James M. 1:6~~~ws, ed. (Richmond: R.M. Smith, printer to Congress, 
58 1 0 Schultz estimates that records for roughly 800 to t~ 00 hospital workers are contained in each of the twenty-
ffo~ ~oxes comprising R.G. 94, carded Service Records of 
"zn PJ.ta1 Attendants Matrons, and Nurses, NARA. Her phrase 
nu ore than" is the ~losest she gets to estimating the 
Sc~ber of Southern hospital workers there might have been. 
Ultz, "The Inhospitable Hospital," 363, fn. 2. 
.. 
• ,, 
,, 
.. 
LI 
106 
laundresses, but notations about these women rarely 
appeared in any of the hospital records. None of this 
takes into account the ministrations of hundreds of female 
volunteers who rolled bandages, wrote letters, and cooked 
food which they routinely delivered to the hospital of 
their choice. Nor does it account for the female relatives 
of wounded or sick soldiers who trekked to hospitals in 
order personally to assist in the care of loved ones. 
Although precise numbers of hospital workers remain 
elusive, a survey of 115 white women whose names appear in 
the city's hospital records helps to flesh out the contours 
of female hospital employees. The women in this particular 
group ranged in age from nineteen to seventy. Of the 
eighty-two women whose marital status is known, fifty-four 
women (66 percent) were either married or widowed, and 
twenty-eight (34 percent) were single. 59 The 
preponderance of married women among this list of hospital 
employees suggests that marital status might have been used 
59The marital status of the remaining thirty-three 
women is unknown. I have developed this group of female 
hospital workers by reading all of the records of the 
Richmond military hospitals, including hospital morning 
reports, lists of furloughed female employees, and 
correspondence by the various hospital surgeons, contained 
in Chapter VI (Medical Department) of R.G. 109, NARA. Much 
of the information I obtained was from the "remarks" column 
on the morning reports which sometimes noted that a matron 
had been hired, fired, or transferred. Less frequently, 
this column might also yield more specific information, 
such as her age, name, or marital status. This group 
includes 104 women whose names appeared in these records, 
plus eleven additional unnamed women who worked at other 
hospitals than those where the women's names were known. 
107 
as a criterion for hospital employment as a means of 
offsetting accusations of impropriety that accompanied the 
thought of young single women caring for partially clad 
strangers. 60 
Jane Schultz has argued that most Confederate women 
served voluntarily, or else received a modest $30 a month, 
"which in inflated Confederate currency did not give them 
much purchasing power.•• 61 Payroll records for Richmond 
hospitals, however, reveal than most female employees 
received regular wages which, like the salaries of hospital 
workers in the North, varied with rank. Chief matrons who 
were responsible for supervising the work of the other 
female employees were paid $40 per month, while assistant 
matrons received $35. Ward matrons earned $30 per month; 
laundresses and nurses, $25. All matrons of any rank were 
also entitled to purchase limited quantities of bread, 
flour, wood, meat, and meal each month at discount rates. 
Chief matrons were provided with lodging on the hospital 
grounds. Laundresses who worked in the smallpox hospitals-
-usually free blacks and slaves--drew additional pay for 
the hazardous duty involved in washing contaminated 
60The only extant set of regulations for female 
employees in a Richmond hospital are the "Rules for matrons 
of Jackson Hospital," written by Surgeon-in-Charge, F.W. 
Hancock. These deal with the specific duties matrons were 
to fulfill and do not discuss appropriate appearance or 
comportment at all. F.W. Hancock, Rules for matrons at 
Jackson Hospital, MC3 H471, ESBL. 
61Schultz, ''The Inhospitable Hospital," 367. 
108 
clothing and bed linens. 62 By comparison, Union nurses 
earning forty cents per day plus rations collected less 
money but may have gained substantially more buying power, 
due to the inflated rate of Confederate currency. 63 
Since these rates of pay were often insufficient in 
providing for the "necessaries of life," matrons frequently 
62samuel P. Moore, surgeon General, Medical 
Department, c.s.A., Richmond, to s.H. stout, surgeon-in-
Charge, District of Chattanooga, 10 March 1863, Samuel P. 
Moore Letter, MC3 St.4, No. 9, ESBL. The salaries earned 
by slave women were paid directly to labor brokers who 
acted on behalf of the slaveowners or to the owners 
themselves. It was not uncommon in the Confederate capital 
for slaveholders to hire out several of their slaves for 
this sort of wartime work. Clopton & Lyne and Turpin & 
Eacho were two of many slave labor brokers that worked to 
place slaves in a number of Richmond hospitals. Ch. VI, 
Vol. 247, p. 34, R.G. 109, NARA. Refugees to Richmond 
often brought a few slaves with them which they rented out 
to provide income for their owners' room and board. For 
example, see the applications of Mrs. Mary Ann Galt, 14 
February 1863, and Mrs. Mary c. Jeter, January 1863, both 
in Applications of Ladies for Clerkships on Virginia 
Treasury Notes, 1861-1864, Virginia, Records of Office of 
the Assistant to the second Auditor, Auditor of Accounts, 
LV, hereafter cited as OASA Records. 
63union cooks and laundresses--frequently black women 
who contracted their service to the U.S. government--earned 
between $6 and $10 per month. Schultz, "The Inhospitable 
Hospital," 367-9. All confederate currency carried a 
message promising to pay the bearer "after the ratification 
of a treaty of peace between the Confederate States and the 
United States of America." since no such treaty was ever 
negotiated, Confederate currency was worthless at the war's 
end. Shortly after the war, Virginia adopted a schedule 
determining the inflation rate for Confederate currency for 
each year of the war. This schedule was used for 
determining the value of claims paid to private citizens by 
the state. According to this schedule, currency worth 
$1.10 in May 1861 was valued at $1.50 in 1861. By 1863, 
the same currency was listed at $5.50; by 1864, it was $18 
to $21. A.c. Gordon, "Hard Times in the Confederacy," 
Century Magazine 36 (1888): 761-71. 
109 
supplemented their incomes by doing other kinds of work. 
Phebe Pember and Constance Cary both wrote for literary 
magazines; Pember also worked at as a copyist for one of 
the government departments. Monimia Cary signed Treasury 
notes in her spare time from her duties at Winder 
Hospital. 64 In February 1865, the Confederate Congress 
finally passed an act "regulating'' the pay of all female 
hospital workers to be comparable with salaries paid to 
women in the rest of the government departments. 65 
Unfortunately this measure came far too late for scores of 
female hospital workers who left exhausting work in the 
wards to sit for additional hours before a writing desk in 
order to make ends meet . 
A reminiscence by Phebe Yates Levy Pember, chief 
matron of Chimborazo No. 2, provides a glimpse into 
hospital life in confederate Richmond which reveals that, 
in their relations with patients, families, and male 
64constance Cary [Mrs. Burton] Harrison, Recollections 
Grave and Gqy (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911), 
118, and 190; Phebe Yates Levy Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, 
Richmond, to Eugenia Phillips, 30 January 1863, in 
Phillips-Myers Collection, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A 
Southern Woman's Story, 112-13. 
65see "An Act to regulate the pay and allowances of 
certain female employees of the Government," 2d. Congress, 
Sess. II, Ch. 56, 8 February 1865, in C.S.A., Laws and 
Joint Resolutions of the Last Session of the Confede rate 
Congress {November 7, 1864 - March 18, 1865) together with 
the Secret Acts of Previous Congres ses, Charles W. 
Ramsdell, ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1941). 
According to this new law, Pember's rate was raised to 
about $3,000 per annum. 
110 
hospital workers, matrons frequently walked a fine line 
that often left them marginalized and powerless. 66 The 
scope of Pember's duties at Chimborazo clearly extended 
well beyond the "superintendence over the entire domestic 
economy of the hospital" described by the 1862 statute 
providing for her appointment. 67 In addition to seeing 
that the wards were swept daily, the linens properly 
laundered and changed, the food tastefully prepared, and 
66Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, thirty-
eight-year-old Pember was fleeing from an unpleasant family 
situation when she applied for work in Chimborazo Hospital 
in November 1862. Phebe Levy was the fourth of seven 
children born into a prosperous Jewish family. When the 
civil War began in April 1861, she was living in Aiken, 
South Carolina, caring for her husband, Thomas Pember, a 
Bostonian who had moved south in hopes that the South 
Carolina climate would help him recover from a persistent 
case of tuberculosis. When Thomas Pember died on July 9, 
1861, Phebe Pember did what many young widows of limited 
means did at the time--she returned to her father's home, 
then in Marietta, Georgia. Pember, A Southern Woman's 
Story, 2-3. Life in the Levy household was not pleasant. 
In a letter to her sister, Eugenia Phillips, Pember 
complained not only of her father's indifference, but also 
of "false accusations" and "daily jealousies and rudeness," 
suffered at the hands of her siblings. It is not clear 
from her correspondence whether the "false accusations" to 
which Pember referred had anything to do with questioning 
her Southern loyalties, which her family might have 
believed were compromised by her marriage to a northerner, 
or whether the "daily jealousies and rudeness" were due to 
frictions surrounding her interfaith marriage. What is 
clear, however, is that, by November 1862, the acrimony 
within the Levy household had become so great that Pember 
determined to leave. Phebe Levy Pember to Eugenia 
Phillips, Marietta, Georgia, 29 November 1862, Phillips-
Myers Collection, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A Southern 
Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, 109-11. 
67
"An Act to provide for the sick and wounded of the 
army in hospitals," 1st. Cong., 2d. sess, Ch. 17, 27 Sept. 
1862, in C.S.A. The Statutes at Large of the Provisional 
Government of the Confederate States of America. 
111 
the med· · 1c1nes accurately dispensed to the 600 or 700 
Pat· 
J.ents under her care, Pember also cleaned and bandaged 
Wound s and assisted during the ubiquitous amputations that 
Were the solution of choice for limbs shattered by Union 
muskets. At times, she placed her finger in spurting 
arteries to stem the flow of blood until a doctor could 
determine if the patient would survive. On one occasion, 
She helped to manufacture a pasteboard cylinder out of 
Sheets of brown paper and a thick paste, which was molded 
around her kitchen stovepipe and baked to provide an 
orthopedic · 68 h d th ~ device for a deformed hip. Wen ea proved 
th
e final resolution to a soldier's suffering, it was 
sometimes Pember herself who instructed a convalescent 
carpenter to build a coffin which she conveyed to Hollywood 
Cemetery in a Chimborazo ambulance. 69 
But although Pember found most of the surgeons to be 
"se · · 
nsib1e kind-hearted efficient men .•• who gave their 
t· 
ime and talents generously to further the comfort and 
Well-being of their patients," and who were not afraid to 
"l. 
isten kindly and respectfully to (herJ suggestions," a 
few Who feared that the presence of female workers would 
Usher in an era of "petticoat rule," bristled at any hint 
Of female interference.70 on one occasion, a disgusted 
-----------68 
· Pember, A southern Woman's story, 46. 
69Ib' d J. • ' 71. 
70Ib'd 1 ., 57. 
' I 
· ' 
.. 
112 
surgeon t 
ossed her herbal remedy contemptuously out the 
Window, despi' te the fact that surgeon General Moore had 
Officially gone on record as encouraging their development 
and use. 71 And shortly after her arrival in 1862, 
Pember's refusal to surrender the keys to the whiskey 
supply initiated a "paper war" with one of the assistant 
surgeons that lasted 72 for more than two years. When she 
resp d 
on ed sternly to one surgeon's repeated requests for 
71 
Fran . Moore urged newspapers to publish excerpts from Dr. 
Whic~is P. ~orch7r's Resources of our F~eld:s and Forests, harv c~ntained information on the cultivation and 
incl~~~lng of various medicinal herbs, plants, and insects, 
tuli ing sassafras roots and leaves, dogwood bark, the 
~ree poplar, the opium poppy, and the Cantharis 
e~cer , ~r blistering fly. The Richmond Whig published 
tn itPts in its April 23d, 24th, and 28th issues in 1863. 
Plea~ Ju~y 11, 1863 issue, the Magnolia also carried a 
Purv O Virginia women from E. w. Johns, of the Medical 
gardeyor's Office of the c.s.A., asking them to cultivate 
hosp~~ Poppies as a means of supplying the military 
era als with both opium and poppy seeds for a future 
werp. According to Porcher, cottonseed or willow bark teas 
bloe a good substitute for quinine, while wild cherry or 
Hop Odroot provided an acceptable replacement for digitalis. 
lau~ and -motherwort could be prescribed in lieu of 
ma1 a~um; willow and dogwood barks could be used to treat fora~~a; and blackberry root or sweetgum bark could be used 
natu iarrhea. Watermelon and pumpkin seeds provided 
Nine~al diuretics. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the 
eenth Centur, 284. 
72 
fort Un~er ~he 1862 act, matrons were to ,be respo~sible 
given he ~istribution of liquor, usually w~iskey, which was 
tre t daily to every patient and was considered a good 
c 01~ ment for such ailments as measles, mumps, pneumonia, 
att s , and camp fever. This provision in the law was an 
Per empt to stop abuses in the system by other hospital 
tha~onne1, and one which was apparently based on notions 
the Women would be less likely to imbibe the liquor 
Por~~elves. In frustration, Pember finally nailed the 
sup f0n of the law giving her responsibility for the liquor 
~omp Y to the door of her quarters. Pember, A Southern 
' 25-26, 32-33, 51-55, 88, and 100. 
I ' ~ .,. 
113 
:mor 1· 
e iquor, he replied by asking if Pember "consider[edJ 
herself a lady when she wrote such notes. 1173 
At times, female hospital workers overrode doctors' 
0rd
ers when patient well-being was at stake. In 1864, for 
example, when wounded began to pour into the city after a 
hatt1 
eat Drewry's Bluff, Pember countermanded an order by 
th
e acting surgeon-in-charge to send the men elsewhere for 
treatment, ordering convalescent patients placed on the 
floor in blankets so incoming casualties could have their 
beds. 74 The female manager of the Good Samaritan Hospital 
0
nce fo · · f · 1 it rci?lY removed a patient from the care o a mi ary 
surgeon who had neglected to provide the appropriate 
treatment.75 
Incompetence complicated relationships, not only 
hetw 
een matrons and male medical professionals, but also 
among 16 f 1 members of Pember's own staff. Three ema e 
nurses that Pember hired shortly after the battle of 
Preder · 1 · · 1Cksburg commandeered a portion of her iving 
<?Uarters for their own use. Their drunken ambulance ride 
through the streets of Richmond a few days later led to 
------------73Ib 'd 1 • , 52. 
74Ibid.' 37. 
~,~7~~~ William Jones, Christ in the camp or Religion in 
(Richmond: a.~. Johnson, 1888), 198. 
76 
Pember, A southern's woman's Story, 57. 
I 
.,. 
~; 
••• 
' ., 
,., 
,. .. 
I ~I 
I 
: "! ;,,, 
I :, .,, , 
114 
their dismissa1. 77 At times, shoddy medical treatment 
resulted in injury or death. For instance, in early 1865, 
a Chimborazo soldier whose leg had been broken in a wagon 
mishap died of an untreated typhoid infection of the bone 
after a drunken surgeon 11 set" the wrong leg. 78 
Visits by patients' relatives often provided matrons 
With an extremely important extra set of hands whose 
presence eased the burden of care for the overworked staff 
and also speeded recovery. 79 Unfortunately, the constant 
stream of visitors that poured unchecked into Richmond 
hospitals also tested the matrons' diplomacy and endurance 
by upsetting hospital routine. A group of cigar-smoking 
Virginia women invaded Pember's office at ten o'clock one 
evening in 1864 demanding a place to sleep; they remained 
for six days in the hospital laundry. 80 On another 
occasion, Pember was summoned to the bed of a convalescent 
Virginia soldier, only to find that his visiting wife had 
given birth a few minutes before. Pember immediately 
77Ibid., 31-36. 
78Ibid. , 88-89. 
79For examples of the helpful care of friends and 
families, see Pember, A southern Woman's Story, 68; 
Margaret Baldwin Cabell Brown, Richmond, to Alexander 
"Sandy" Brown, 23 December 1862, Alexander Brown Papers, 
DU; Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS; and Mason-Smith Family 
Letters, Daniel E. Huger smith, Alice R. Huger smith, and 
Arney Robinson Childes, eds. (Columbia: University of South 
Carolina Press, 1950}, reprinted in Katharine Jones, Ladies 
of Richmond, 224-28. 
80Pember, A southern Woman's story, 66. 
115 
administered tea and toast and found the woman a bed in an 
empty Ward. She then organized a few local women to sew a 
layette and provided the mother with a one-way ticket home. 
After a short recuperation, the mother departed, but left 
the hapl · · d ess infant behind. Pember procured a pass an a 
quart of milk for the father so the baby could be returned 
home.81 
Food was often another source of conflict, this time 
between matrons and their patients. Most of the food at 
Ch' 
imborazo was provided through an ingenious scheme devised 
by Chief Surgeon James B. Mccaw of commuting the soldiers' 
rations and then using the reimbursements to purchase food 
Wh' 
lch Was brought to Chimborazo by means of a hospital boat 
th
at travelled the Kanawha canal between Richmond, 
Lynchburg, and Petersburg. 82 But not everyone was 
satisfied with the food this system provided. In November 
1862
, 360 Chimborazo patients petitioned the Confederate 
Cong 
ress for better 
about food that was 
81
Ibid., 67-68. 
food, and others complained unceasingly 
not prepared like the food "back 
A:t 82Hume, "Chimborazo Hospital, Confederate states 
OflnY," 161. commute in this case.means to change one kind 
hosP~Yment (in this case army rations of food for 
s Pitalized soldiers) · into another (money), as by 
Ubstitut· 
.ton. 
home."83 At Winder Hospital, angry men threw peas on the 
84 floor and wa11s, and rioted for bread. 
116 
Unlike female clerks who worked in groups of ten or 
twenty or more, matrons often endured grisly and gruelling 
hospital work in relative isolation from other women. Many 
were tethered to their hospital lodging for long periods of 
time by the unpredictable nature of work dependent on 
battlefield losses. Matrons' rooms were located as far as 
possible from the wards as another way to address concerns 
about impropriety. "I never see a human being but the 
sick," Pember wrote in January 1863. "I am sitting all 
alone writing, for everybody but the sick soldiers and the 
nurses have gone away."85 
Of course, many matrons were exposed to communicable 
diseases and noxious medicines. Hospital matrons in 
Tennessee contracted typhoid fever from treating infected 
patients; laundresses became infected with erysipelas after 
83
Pember provided food for holiday celebrations such 
as Easter, Christmas and New Year.rs Day out of her own 
rhes~urces. In 1863, 'tor example, she raised funds for a 
C ristmas dinner by condemning and selling old comforters. 
Pember, A Southern Woman's story, 20-21; 48-49; and 89-90; 
Ph7be.Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, to Eugenia 
Phil~ips, ~O January 1863, Phillips-Myers Papers, SHC, 
reprinted in Pember, A Southern Woman's Story, 114. 
84
Horace Herndon Cunningham, Doctors in Gray: The 
Co~fede~ate Medical service (Baton Rouge: Louisiana state 
Un1vers1ty Press, 1958), 85 . 
. . 
8
~Phebe Levy Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, 
V1rg1n1a, to Eugenia Phillips, 30 January 1863, Phillips-
Myers Collection, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A Southern 
Woman's Story, 112. 
- - -- .. 
117 
washing contaminated clothing. 86 Still others were 
wounded by stray bullets. Juliet Opie Hopkins, a matron at 
Richmond's Alabama Hospital, was wounded accidentally in 
the arm while trying to evacuate wounded soldiers after the 
Battle of Seven Pines. 87 
Marginalized in a hospital command structure which 
overtaxed their physical endurance but which failed to 
confer on them any form of military rank commensurate with 
their duties, some women's mental and physical health broke 
down. Fannie Beers suffered a nervous breakdown while 
nursing Alabama soldiers in a Richmond hospital. 88 By 
April 1864, Pember was complaining of night sweats and 
constant pains in her side and chest. 89 some matrons 
apparently coped with the strains of hospital work by 
86
cumming, A Journal of Hospital Life in the 
Confederate Army of Tennessee, 5D, 61, and 72. Erysipelas 
is defined as a "febrile disease, characterized by 
inflammation and redness of the skin and mucous membranes," 
usually due to a Streptococcus bacterium. Dorland's Pocket 
Medical Dictionary, E-27. 
87The wife of an Alabama judge, Hopkins migrated to 
Richmond shortly after the war began to nurse Alabama 
soldiers. Beers, Memories, 43-44; Cumming, A Journal of 
Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, 184; 
Lucille Griffith, "Mrs. Juliet Opie Hopkins and Alabama 
Military Hospitals," Alabama Review 6 (1953): 99-120. 
88Beers, Memories, 50-51. 
89Phebe Pember, Richmond, to Lou [Mrs. J.F.] Gilmer, 
Savannah, Georgia, 16 April 1864, Phebe Yates Levy Pember 
Papers, SHC, reprinted in Pember, A Southern Woman's story, 
139. 
app1 . Ying for recuperative leaves of absence. 90 
118 
In October 
1864 f 
' a ter seventeen months of uninterrupted labor, Phebe 
Pember was granted a one-month leave to visit her sister, 
Caroline.91 Chimborazo No. 4 employees Mary Cassels and 
V.c. Read each took leaves-of-absence in August 1863; and 
Winder matrons Anne · Pease, Nannie Taylor, E. Braddy, M. 
Smith 
, and T.H. Butts, were all granted furloughs between 
January and March 1864. · Two matrons at Jackson hospital, 
Where t 
urnover rates for female employees were the highest 
for any Richmond hospital, took brief vacations, 
respectively, in December 1863 and March 1864. 92 
Unlike other government workers whose labors came to 
an abrupt halt with the city's surrender, matrons continued 
-------------
oc :
0
rncluded in the Medical Department records are 
mocasional lists of women applying for furloughs. As with 
on~t 0 th7r hospital information ~once:ning women, most list 
th¥ their names, the hospitals in which they worked, and 
re~~r dat7s of absence. My conclusion that these were 
ap Perative leaves is based on reasons the women 
exfarently gave in the few instances when leaves were 
he ~nded; most women asked for more time because their 
foa th had not recovered. Virginia Reed and Mary Cassels, 
la~ example, both requested furlough extensions in August 
let3 • The surgeon answering their request, closed his 
re ters with the hope that the extension would "fully 
lU s~ore [their] health." w.A. Davis, Chimborazo No. 4, 
Aue mond, to Mary Cassels, and to Virginia c. Reed, 19 
th~Ust 1863, Ch. VI, Vol. 317, R.G. 109, NARA. Except for 
ab case of one treasury clerk who was given a leave-of-
Ofsence for the delivery of her child, there is no record 
n1 Women workers in other confederate departments in 
abchmond ever applying for, or receiving, leaves of 
sence. 
91 Pember, A southern woman's Story, 78. 
92 NARA. Records of various'Richmond hospitals, R.G. 109, 
119 
to care for wounded patients of both armies for a time. 
Both Phebe Pember and Maria Clopton met with Federal 
officials in the days immediately following Richmond's fall 
to arrange for keeping their wards open until all their 
patients either were cured or died. In time, however, this 
work ended, too. Clopton remained, in the city with her 
children and their families; Pember returned home to South 
Carolina where she wrote a memoir about her hospital work. 
Clerking 
Many middle-class Richmond women also served the 
Confederate government as departmental clerks. As was the 
case with female hospital workers, however, precise numbers 
of female clerks in Richmond, or the Confederacy-at-large, 
are impossible to ascertain. 93 A conservative estimate of 
female clerical workers in Richmond would place their 
number at somewhere between 375 and 500. All the evidence 
that remains for female clerks in Richmond are occasional 
references in letters and diaries and scattered records in 
confederate government documents, including two registers 
of applications from women who sought work in the 
93No secondary sources attempt to answer this question 
for the Confederacy. Massey, Bonnet Brigades; Anne Scott, 
The Southern Lady; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire; Suzanne 
Lebsock, Virginia Women. 1600-1945: "A Share of Honour", 
rev. 1984 ed. (Richmond: Virginia state Library, 1987) (All 
subsequent citations are to this edition.); James 
McPherson, Battle cry of Freedom: The civil War Era (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Rable, Civil Wars; 
Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention. 
... 
120 
Confederate Treasury between 1861 and 1865. surviving 
Payro11 lists for Richmond Treasury clerks indicate that, 
by 18 63, as many as sixty women may have worked in this 
department alone.94 By 1864, when the department was 
relocated to Columbia, South Carolina, the number of 
Treasury clerks had climbed to more than 250. 95 Literally 
hundreds more women sought Treasury jobs. Lists of women 
applying for Treasury work in Richmond between 1861 and 
1865 bear the names of more than six hundred applicants. 96 
In addition to Treasury clerkships, evidence from the 
sources suggests that women clerked for other government 
departments, including the Quartermaster's Office, the War 
Department, the Post Office, the Treasury Department, the 
0rd
nance Bureau, the Navy Department, the Conscription 
Bureau t . · 97 
, he Medical Department, and the Commissary. 
94L, 
0 ist of Signers and Numberers, Confederate Treasury ReGPartment, Richmond, Virginia, [1863], Ch. X, Vol. 267, 
• • 109, NARA. 
Tuck 95Mary Magill, Richmond, Virginia, to Ann Evelina 
Mag'elr Magill, Winchester, Virginia, 26 April 1864, Mary 
l. l Letter, VHS. 
96L' ' ' f Cl k h ' . th ist of Women Filing Applications or er sips in 
Are Confederate Treasury in Richmond and the Surrounding 
inea, and List of women Filing Applications for Clerkships 
Ch the Confederate Treasury from Areas Other than Richmond, 
• X, Val. 156~, R.G. 109, NARA. 
~
97Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
186~~~e during the war, 2d ed. (New York: S.J. Hale & Son, 
subs' repr. New York: Arno Pres~, 19?2~, 244 (All 
s~· equent references are to this edition.); Edward N. 
an~th , Richmond, to Mattie Pierce, 23 January 1864, Dorsey 
Ch Coupland Papers Ms. 39.1 073, WM; Lucy Parke 
amberlayne Bagby, 1 "The Chronicle of Lucy Parke 
121 
In most government offices, female clerks recorded 
letters received by the department, and copied letters that 
Were ready for mailing. Female clerks in other departments 
gummed stamps, kept account books, and sorted mail. 98 In 
th
e Treasury Department, Parke Chamberlayne, Monimia 
Fairfax 
I and Sallie and Lucy Grattan signed, clipped, and 
numbered Confederate currency in a room called "Angel's 
Retreat" from nine o'clock in the morning until three in 
the afternoon.99 
Clerking provided well-educated but financially 
st
raitened middle- and upper-class women with a respectable 
form of employment at the same time that it freed able-
bod' ied male clerks for field duty. "I have just written to 
Colonel Northrup, commissary General, to ask for an 
appointment," Judith McGuire wrote in December 1863. "So 
many of the young men have been ordered to the field that 
~:amberlayne Bagby," in Bagby Family Papers, YHS, 135, 
Chreafter cited as Bagby Chronicle, VHS; Sallie Grattan, 
Al~rch Hill, Richmond, to Alexander "Sandy" Bro~n, 
Si Xander Brown Papers, 10 December 1862, DU; List of 
R'gners and Numberers, confederate Treasury Department, 
B~chmond, Virginia, n.d., ch. X, Vol. 267, R.G. 109, NAAA; 
F rtholomew Fuller Richmond, to Wilhelmina Fuller, 
F~Yetteville, North'carolina, 9 March 1864, Bartholomew 
ller Papers, #3521-Z, SHC. 
F 98Sallie A. Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War: ~ Years of Personal Observation (New York: G.W. 
arieton, 1867; repr. Time-Life Books, 1983), 169-74. 
~av~9~~~g~y Chronicle, 135, VHS; Harrison, Recollections 
, 190-91. 
122 
this office has been open to ladies."100 After female 
Clerks were hired into the Post Office department in the 
spring of 1864, Bartholomew Fuller and the other male Post 
Office l k c er s saw several weeks of military action at 
Chaffin's Farm and Bottom's Bridge--both a short distance 
from the . city--for the first time since the war began. 
Treasury clerk Frank Wise of Fauquier County, Virginia, 
served a . 
s part of a company of male clerical workers that 
Was formed shortly after the first female clerks were hired 
into the department. Used for local defense, Wise's unit 
Was sometimes detailed to Lee's army for maneuvers around 
Richmond. 101 
The hiring of female clerks became common in the 
decades after the war, but in the 1860s it was rare. As 
W't 1 h hospital work, the war foreshadowed changes in this 
occupation, especially in the North. Despite the paucity of 
sources, it is still possible to draw some comparisons 
betw · 
een Treasury clerks in Richmond, Virginia, and the 
100Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, 244. 
F 101Bartholomew Fuller Richmond, to Wilhelmina Fuller, 
Faietteville North Carolina 18 June 1864, Bartholomew 
f~tler Paper~, SHC; Frank Wi~e, Richmond, Virginia, to his 
Other, 7 July 1863, Peter and Frank Wise Letters, DU. 
t her women clerked for the confederate government at home 
fo help with family expenses. Maggie Tucker wrote at home 
t~r the ~aval Department to help paf her son's t~it~on at 
Me Virginia Military Institute, while May and Lizzie 
a~nford contributed to their family's finances by clerking . 
Ric home for the Conscription Bureau. Marga~et K. Mu~ford, 
~i h~ond, to Powhatan Ellis, Lauderdale Springs Hospital, 
~ ssissippi, s October [1864?], in Young-Munford-Ellis 
apers, UVA. 
,.,, 
.,,. 
.. , ,t:. 
lif t 1' 
',, . 
' .. 
.. ,:I~ 
~: ;:;,., 
123 
Federal treasury clerks in Cindy Aron's study of female 
clerks in wartime and postbellum Washington, D.C., 
especially for 1862 and 1863. 102 Although Aron cites the 
passage of the 1862 Legal Tender Act as the starting point 
for female clerking in the U.S. Treasury, the greater 
manpower drain in the South and the larger amount of women 
in need of employment meant that three Richmond women were 
probably already at work in the Confederate Treasury 
Department by the fall of 1861. 103 In addition, Richmond 
102cindy Sondik Aron, "'To Barter Their Souls for 
Gold': Female Federal Clerical Workers in Late Nineteenth-
Century America" (Ph.D. diss. University of Maryland, 
1981). These records for federal female clerical workers 
comprise more than a thousand boxes containing letters of 
application; letters of recommendation; other occasional 
correspondence concerning job performance; requests for 
promotion; and information surrounding disciplinary 
actions, demotions, and dismissals in two records groups--
R.G. 56, General Records of the Department of the Treasury, 
and R.G. 48, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the 
Interior, both in the NARA. Aron's study is based on the 
records of 1,639 female clerks in four target groups: 1) 
all of the women who were listed as federal treasury clerks 
for 1862/3--the date when the first female clerks were 
hired in the department (128 women); 2) all of the female 
treasury clerks appearing in the list of federal treasury 
clerks for 1870 (101 women); 3) the 598 women who clerked 
for the Department of the Interior in 1880; 4) the 812 
women who clerked for the census Office of the Department 
of Interior in 1890. 
103Aron, "'To Barter Their Souls for Gold,'" 13. The 
three Richmond women applying in 1861 were Fannie Wray, 
Sarah E. Wise, and Mrs. M. Taylor. List of Women Filing 
Applications for Clerkships in the Confederate Treasury in 
Richmond and the Surrounding Area, List of Women Filing 
Applications for Clerkships in the Confederate Treasury 
from Areas Other than Richmond, Ch. X, Vol. 156~, R.G. 109, 
NARA. None of the actual applications survives, just these 
lists of applicants, including their names, their location, 
and the date the application was filed. I have been able 
to accumulate additional background information for twenty-
124 
women a ppear to have sought Treasury work in slightly 
greater numbers. Between 1862 and 1863, 146 Richmond women 
applied for Treasury work, a number that exceeds by 
eighteen the number of Northern women Aron reported as 
applying for u.s. Treasury clerkships during the same 
Period of time. In 1864, a groundswell of 473 women sought 
Confederate Treasury work in that year alone. 104 
Nearly three-fourths of the 636 confederate Treasury 
app1. icants (74.4 percent) came from Richmond or Henrico 
county h. . . 
, wile the remaining 163 applicants, many of whom 
Were r f e ugees, came from nearby locations in the state, 
such as Lynchburg, Petersburg, Charlottesville, or Norfolk. 
A third of the out-of-state applicants were·from Columbia, 
South Carolina, where the confederate Treasury Department 
!ive.of these applicants by crossmatching their names to 
siPlications they filed for similar jobs in the Virginia 
ci!te T7easury in 1863. Applications of Ladies for ... OAsrkships on Virginia Treasury Notes, 1861-1864, Virginia, 
a A.Records. This last collection contains the 
siPlications of 159 women who sought work with the Virginia 
18:te Treasury after the passage of a bill on March 3, 2
, authorizing the state to issue one dollar notes. 
of 104Aron, '"To Barter Their souls for Gol.d, "' 260; List 
Con Women Filing Applications for Clerkships in th! 
L' federate Treasury in Richmond and the Surrounding Area, 
c~st of Women Filing Applications for Clerkships in the 
Vo~federate Treasury from Areas Other than Richmond, Ch. X, 
a · ,156\, R.G. 109, NARA. Although the number of female 
i~Pllcants slowed after the confederate Treasury relocated 
filcolumbia, South Carolina, in April 1864, 138 women still 
ed applications for clerkships with the Richmond office. 
125 
Was relocated in April 1864. 105 Other applicants were 
from · points further south, including New Orleans, 
Lou· · 
.1s.1ana; Augusta, Georgia; Wilmington and Raleigh, North 
Carolina; and Meridian, Mississippi. 106 Eight women 
crossed enemy lines from Washington, D.C., to cast their 
lot · 
with the Confederate government. 107 
Of the 475 Richmond women seeking treasury work 
between 18 61 and 1865 whose marital status is known, 318 
( 66 · 9 percent) were single, and 157 (33.1 percent) were 
married or w.i'dowed · · 11 1th f , figures which para e ose or the 
federal clerks profiled in Aron's study. 108 The marital 
statu 
s of the remaining 161 Richmond women (25.3 percent) 
the C105List of Women Filing Applications for Clerkships in 
Are on~ederate Treasury in Richmond and the Surrounding 
theac List of Women Filing Applications for Clerkships in 
Ch Xonfederate Treasury from Areas other than Richmond, 
. , Vol. 156\, R.G. 109, NARA. 
l06Aft . c01 . er the Treasury Department's relocation to 
of ~~b.1a, South Carolina, in the spring of 1864, one-third 
Cit e out-of-state applications were from women of that 
Ply. Some of these women were no doubt hired to take the 
ofa~es of ~i~hmond women who decided not.to :elocate. List 
Co fomen F.1l.1ng Applications for Clerkships in the 
Vo~ ecterate Treasury from Areas other than Richmond, Ch. X, 
• 
156\, R.G. 109, NARA. 
Mi 107These women were Sarah E. Wise, Frances Ballard, 
M.:s Ups~aw, Catherine L. Davis, Mrs. L.W. Ja~kson, M~s. 
Wo · Davis, Lucilla s. Mason, and Mrs. R.H. Riggs. List of 
~rmen Filing Applications for clerkships in the Confederate 
Areasury from Areas other than Richmond and the Surrounding 
ea, Ch. X, Vol. 156~, R.G. 109, NARA. 
ap 1 .
108Aron found that about two-thirds of the federal 
mi~ lcants between 1862 and 1880 were well-educated, 
docdle-class, single women whose fathers were of~en 
Ar tors, lawyers or other "white collar professionals." 
on, "'To Barte; Their souls for Gold,"' 61-91. 
"' 
,. 
126 
is unknown. 109 These percentages of single and married 
workers are nearly the reverse of the married and single 
women who worked in the city's military hospitals, which 
may reflect the importance of marriage in lending an air of 
respectability to military hospital work. 
Applications from women seeking similar wartime work 
in the Virginia state treasury suggest that female job 
seekers probably fell into one of two groups: financially 
needy women who fit the Confederacy's criteria of giving 
preference in employment to "females whose labor is 
necessary for their support," or, women who secured 
appointments through political patronage or social 
influence. 110 Of the twenty-five confederate Treasury 
applicants who also sought employment in the Virginia 
Treasury office, twenty-one claimed to be in "destitute" or 
"dependent" situations, usually brought about by 
unemployment or the absence or death of a husband or 
father, often in the service of the Confederate Army. 
1091 am basing this on the presence or absence of 
titles of address denoting marital status. Aron does not 
include statistical information on marital status, arguing 
that "it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine 
their [married and single women's] numbers with much 
certainty," since some married women concealed their status 
to avoid criticism that they were usurping work from 
married men or from more deserving women who were the sole 
support of families. Aron, "'To Barter Their Souls for 
Gold,'" 76. 
1101st Cong., 3rd. sess., Ch. 62, 1 May 1863, C.S.A., 
Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the 
Confederate State of America; Richmond Examiner, 18 
February 1864. 
127 
India Trowers, for example, identified herself as the 
daughter of a War Department engineer who had recently died 
while on maneuvers with the army near Lynchburg. She 
begged for an appointment so that she could support her 
widowed mother and sisters. 111 Pattie Bates's 
application r ecounted the story of her father, Micajah 
Bates, a former superintendent of the city streets, who had 
died in 1863, leaving behind eight little sons and 
daughters dependent on Bates's support. 112 Mary Jeter 
applied for work after her son, a captain of a Petersburg 
cavalry unit, was killed in battle. 113 Three married 
applicants--Mary Louis Lewis, Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, 
and L. Neimeyer--sought work because their husbands' 
salaries were inadequate.114 
111Application of India Trowers, 28 March 1863, OASA 
Records. 
112Application of Pattie Bates, 21 March 1863, OASA 
Records. 
113Application of Mary c. Jeter, 1 January 1863, OASA 
Records. 
114Application of L. Neimeyer, 2 February 1863; 
Application of Mary Louisa Lewis, 26 March 1863; 
Application of Judith w. McGuire, 4 March 1863, all • in OASA 
Records. Judith W. McGuire is the Judith White 
Brockenbrough McGuire whose diary about her wartime 
experience is cited in this dissertation. McGuire and her 
husband, refugeed to Richmond from Alexandria, Virginia, in 
early 1861, after the are around their home was overrun by 
Union troops. Her husband, J.P. McGuire, was an Episcopal 
minister who had gotten a job in the Post Office Department 
for $1,500 a month. A note on her application said the 
"she write a rapid fire & excellent hand." Lewis's 
husband, William, was a second lieutenant in the Wise 
Legion, a Richmond unit named for the o. Jennings Wise, the 
128 
At least a third of the women in this group were 
refugees. When Judith McGuire took up her duties in the 
Commissary Department, she discovered that many of her 
coworkers were refugees like herself. Like her, some were 
also recently bereaved. 115 "It is melancholy to see how 
many wear mourning for brothers or other relatives," she 
wrote. "One young girl sits near me, whose brothers have 
fallen in the field, but she is too poor to buy 
mourning. 11116 Mary Ann Galt was a widow with an adopted 
daughter; she lost all of her property except for a few 
slaves when she fled to the capital from her home in 
Norfolk. 117 Nannie J. Pendleton was a refugee from 
Richmond County; she requested work in order to provide for 
herself, her sister, and her aging parents. 118 When A. 
Ruskell applied on March 16, 1863, she identified herself 
as a refugee from Maryland and completely dependent on a 
son former Virginia governor, Henry A. Wise. Jennings Wise 
was killed early in the war. 
115Two of McGuire's nephews had been killed in the few 
months before she began her commissary work. William 
Newton died on a cavalry raid near Culpeper County, 
Virginia, in October 1863. Another nephew died of 
pneumonia in January 1864 following an amputation. 
116Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, 251. 
117Application of Mary Ann Galt, 14 February 1863, OASA 
Records. 
118Application of Nannie J. Pendleton, 21 February 
1863, OASA Records. 
129 
married brother with a large family to support on his pay 
as a clerk in the Quartermaster's Department. 119 
All applicants were expected to furnish references 
from influential citizens, usually ministers, politicians, 
or prominent businessmen, who could vouch for their good 
character and their deservedness, a measure which prompted 
critics to charge that political influence rather than 
"need" more frequently determined a woman's 
employment. 120 But although a few women like Bettie 
Waring tried to secure their posts by patronage alone, most 
applications combined the two criteria, suggesting that 
both economic need and the type of education that was 
frequently available only to more affluent women were 
equally important. 121 In addition to describing herself 
as the half-orphan of a Confederate soldier, for example, 
India Trowers's application bore recommendations from 
Hustings Court Judge William H. Lyons, and the Rev. J. 
119Application of A. Ruskell, 16 March 1863, OASA 
Records. 
120Richmond Examiner, 18 February 1864. The same was 
true in the North. Aron, "'To Barter Their Souls for 
Gold,'" 97-106. 
121It is true that a number of Richmond clerks--like a 
number of the women in Aron's study--were women of upper-
or middle-class backgrounds who had received good 
educations in one of the region's private female academies. 
Bettie Waring offered no explanation as to why she was 
entitled to the appointment. Instead, in her letter to 
Virginia Auditor Jonathan Bennett, she simply stated her 
endorsement would come "from Jefferson Davis himself." 
Application of Bettie Waring, 1 January 1863, OASA Records. 
130 
Lansing Burrows, minister of First Baptist Church in 
Richmond. 122 Josie Sharpe's request containe d ref erenc es 
from the pastor of St. John's Church and the treasurer of 
the Richmond & Peters burg Railroact. 123 Mary Jeter's 
application left no potential reference ignored. Included 
in her long list of referees were the names of two 
Confederate senators and two members of the House of 
Representatives. 124 A number of women also included neat 
rows of letters and numbers at the bottom of their 
applications as silent witness to their expert 
penmanship. 125 
The hiring of female cle rks e xposed a sexual double 
standard that affected the rates of pay that women and men 
received. Female and male clerks frequently did the same 
kinds of work, and when male clerks were called out to 
defend the city, female clerks performed all the tasks 
necessary to keep government departments open. Yet male 
clerks were paid more money, even in cases of widowed women 
122Application of India Trowers, 28 March 1863, OASA 
Records. 
123Application of Josie M. Sharpe, 5 March 1863, OASA 
Records. 
124Application of Mary c. Jeter, January 1863, OASA 
Records. 
125Applications of Mary Roy, 10 February 1863; L. 
Neimeyer, 2 February 1863; Fannie Halyburton, 9 March 1863; 
E. Harwood, 18 February 1863; Julia E. Lindsay, 25 February 
1863; Bettie Price, 18 February 1863; and Mrs . Susan 
Taylor, 18 March 1863, all in OASA Records. 
Who Were th 
e sole providers for their families. In 1862, 
fentale Clerks 
earned between $500 and $600 per year while ltlale 
131 
employees earned $1000. B 6 y 18 4, women were paid $900 
to $1,000 per 
s1 ,soo.126 
annum, while men received $1,200 to 
The sexual double standard also appears to have held 
female clerks 
to a different code of workplace behavior 
t:roltl the . 
ir male counterparts. Endorsements by prominent 
IU Ch1t1ond 
men that accompanied the clerkship applications of 
Young 
er Women occasionally shaded over into testimonials 
emPhasi · 
zing not only the women's economic worthiness and 
the! 
l:" genteel lineage, but also their purity and Christian 
devat· 
ion, qualities that were animated by concerns about 
the a 
PPropriate behavior of women and men working in close 
Pl:"OJCi1t1ity 
to each other. 
A. Duncan, f 
or example, referred to E.A. Duval, Susan 
Duva1 
Christian Advocate editor James 
' and Rebecca coulling as "ladies of. · .high 
Cha:r 
acter and Christian worth" while Baptist clergyman John 
Lansing 
Burrows called Mary Ballow "a very worthy and pious 
Youn g lady. 11121 
7 
12, 
Coulli Application of E.A. Duval, Susan Duval, ~nd ~ebecca 
0 :riginng, 22 October 1862, OASA Records. Emphasis in the 
~@c0 l:"d=~· Application. of Mary Ballow, 18 March 1863, OASA 
' If 
' ,, 
I 
I/ 
132 
e possible sexual misadventures of Fears about th . 
female clerks i'n Richmond must have arisen in May 1864 when 
accusat' ions surfaced about the u.s. Treasury Department in 
Washington 
' 
o.c. 
Some claimed that it was little more than 
a common whorehouse in 
which currency chief Spencer Clark 
anct t o her male supervisors engaged in menages a trois and 
ine trysts with cross-dressing female clerks in clanctest' 
return for salary increases or promises not to dismiss them 
from service. Most of these accusations eventually proved 
to be f . alse, but not before the reputations of several 
1nnoc ent women were ruined in the process.
128 
In 
R' J.chlTtond ' no such lurid accusations were ever made. A few 
attempted to finesse their appointments with offers wolTten 
Of h ome-made eggnog or invitations to men in positions of 
Power to visit them in their rooms, but no specific 
alluding to the use of sexual influence to secure accounts 
in th . , h d · 129 Work e Confederate Treasury 1n Ric mon survive. 
In April 1864, the confederate Treasury Department was 
128 'Noth' Charles F. cooney ·~estate of ~e Treasury--1864: 
ll!i.is ing More than a Whor'ehouse, '" g_ivil war Times 
Their trated 21. 8 (December 1982); 4Q-43; Aron, "•To Barter 
of H' Souls for Gold,. 136-37" sarah Booth conroY, "Hints 
istoric Harassme~t," washi~gton pos.t., 1 December 1991. 
129 femal Post Office clerk Bartholomew Fu11er was beset by 
"quit: applicants in the spring of 1864 who conducted . 
ta 
1 
a levee" in his room in an attempt to persuade him 
Acc~re~d their case with his superior, Judge Roge:s, 
Fu1
1 
ding to Fuller Judge Rodgers may have exercised what 
appo!r called his "'achelor taste" i~ making some.of th' 
Fu1ientments. Bartholomew puller, Rictunond, to Wilhelmina 
Barth~' Fayetteville, North carolina, 9 and 25 March 1864, 
lo1Ttew Fuller Papers, sffC. 
133 
relocated to Columbia, South Carolina, to streamline the 
Department and ease concerns about the transportation of 
unsigned notes between Columbia and Richmond. A number of 
female clerks opted to transfer to the new facility. 130 
The scene at the railroad depot on the morning of their 
departure was captured in a letter War Department clerk 
Mary Magill wrote to her mother in Winchester, Virginia. 
Miss Waring reached here last night and went off 
this morning to Columbia with her sister, India, 
who had to go with the Treasury Department. We 
have been shaking in our shoes about going also, 
but are tolerably easy now as the Secretary of 
War has remonstrated against any of his Bureau 
being sent away ... . Mr. Memminger has rented a 
college [the Ursuline convent school] about four 
miles from Columbia. They are all to live 
together. Imagine one hundred seventy women shut 
up in one house. Ask Mr. Graham how he would 
like to have a room there. Alice Waring went 
down to the cars to see them off and gave a very 
funny account of the scene. She says she never 
imagined such confusion--talking--laughing--
crying--screaming--and everything else going on 
all at once .... I felt so sorry for the girls--
theirs is really the greatest distress caused by 
the movement. so many young girls are 
necessarily thrown out of employment & poor women 
who have families dependent upon them and who 
have nothing else to live on. There have been 
eighty resignations. 131 
More surprising than the number of resignations is the 
number of Richmond women willing to move away from home and 
family to work for the Confederate government. Although 
rumors of the bureau's departure had been reported by the 
130Putnam, Richmond during the War, 288. 
131Mary Magill, Richmond, Virginia, to Ann Evelina 
Tucker Magill, winchester, Virginia, 26 April 1864, Mary 
Magill Letter, VHS, emphasis in the original. 
134 
Richmond press as early as February 1864, between March and 
April of that year the Treasury Department was besieged 
with applications by 228 Richmond women willing to pull up 
stakes and move to Columbia. Of this group, 130 women (57 
percent) were single, and fifty-two women (22.8 percent) 
were married or widowed. 132 
Clearly, relocation was easier for single women than 
it was for married women encumbered with children or other 
kinship obligations, and it is tempting to suggest that 
this willingness to relocate reflects a new-found sense of 
independence, gained as a result of workplace experience. 
For some women, this might indeed have been the case. But 
a number of these single women may have also chosen 
relocation as a means of keeping a job on which they and 
their families depended. 133 Women who chose to remain 
behind would have to compete for work with thousands of 
unemployed refugees who filled the newspapers with 
advertisements seeking work. The Richmond Examiner called 
it "a painful alternative either way" brought about by the 
"hard master" poverty, and an unfeeling treasury chief who 
132The marital status of the remaining forty-six women 
cannot be determined. List of women Filing Applications 
for Clerkships in the Confederate Treasury in Richmond and 
the Surrounding Area, Ch. X, Vol. 156\, R.G. 109. NARA. 
133Thomas Dublin, women at work: The Transformation of 
Work and Community in Lo~ell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1979). 
135 
thought that women were like "swallows ., who migrate quite 
without trouble at the change of season.
11134 
easily , 
conclus i on 
To the extent that warwork had been liberating (and 
that is a debatable proposition at best), it was a short-
iberation. Although middle-class Richmond women had lived 1· 
made s. . ignificant inroads into new wartime professions as 
hosp' ital workers and government clerks, all of these 
governrn ent occupations came largely to a close with the 
Confederacy's collapse in 1865. This was markedly 
d' ifferent in the North. The work of Northern women such as 
Clara B arton, Dorothea Dix, Mary Livermore, and Mary Ann 
Bickerdyke had led to the creation of the u.s. sanitary 
Comrniss. . ion in June 1861 and to the development of 
Profess' ional nursing careers for women that extended into 
the Postwar decades. By 1873 , nursing schools for Northern 
Women were established in New York, Massachusetts, a
nd 
Connect' icut. In 1881, Clara Barton would found the 
American Red ld 1 d nti'l Cross, an organization she wou ea u 
1904. But despite their exemplary wartime care, 
Prof . essional nursing opportunities remained relatively 
scarce f 135 1 or women in the immediate postwar south. On Y 
134R· ichmond Examiner, 25, 27 April 186
4
· 
13Sp , , l' h Th ~ hilip A Kalisch and Beatrice J. Ka isc, ___.!t 
Lipa~ce of American NursinJI, Jd ed. Philad~lphi~: J.B. 
Pincott, 1
995
), 38_84 . Here, ram agreeing with Drew 
a handful of Richmond women, including Rebecca Peterkin, 
and Mrs. R.A. Payne established hospitals or found 
employment as hospital matrons in the postbellum 
years. 136 And the first training school for white 
Virginia nurses did not open at st. Luke's Hospital in 
Richmond until 1886.137 
136 
Faust's assessment that Civil War nursing did not mark 
Southern women's entry into the health profession, as it 
did for Northern women during this time. But I disagree 
with her explanation for this: that southern women's 
hospital work should be regarded as a "failure" because too 
few women volunteered for the job and because those who did 
struggled--sometimes unsuccessfully--to overcome 
conventional notions about female delicacy and propriety. 
Faust's contention that it was actually hired slaves who 
did the bulk of hospital work has some merit, although I 
think her discussion of their numbers is somewhat inflated, 
at least for Richmond, and it dismisses too readily the 
work of many dedicated women. In my estimation, the real 
reason why nursing in the south did not follow the Northern 
path had more to do with the need in the south to reassert 
patriarchal control over southern women. Public nursing 
challenged too many Southers' beliefs about appropriate 
work for middle-class women. Although it had been 
extremely important in wartime with the war now over, the 
expansion of teaching as a postwar career for middle-class 
Southern women provided a more acceptable alternative to 
nursing. Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention, 92-113. 
136Rebecca Peterkin founded the Sheltering Arms 
Hospital for destitute whites in 1889. Annabell Gibson 
Jenkins co-founded the Retreat for the sick with Dr. Hunter 
Holmes McGuire in 1877. several Richmond women found 
postwar work as matrons in the Alms House or in the 
Protestant Episcopal Church Home for Ladies that was 
established in Richmond in 1875. See Chapter Nine. Few if 
any of these women, however, appear to have nursed in 
military hospitals during the war. Blanton, Medicine in 
Virginia in the Nineteenth Century, 208-17. 
137sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women 
in America (New York: Free Press, 1989), 141-42; Blanton, 
Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century, 188-90. 
The St. Luke's school was one of only three in the South. 
The other two were located in Charleston, south Carolina, 
137 
The work of Confederate clerks came to an end, too. 
Northern women streamed into federal clerkships by the 
thousands in the postbellum decades as clerking became 
another career path for educated middle-class women; but 
few Southern women ever became part of this growing 
clerical workforce in the late nineteenth century, in part 
because they were deemed disloyal for having supported the 
Confederacy. 138 Nor did the state of Virginia reward its 
female clerks for their loyal service. In January 1866, 
the Virginia legislature vetoed a bill that would have 
permitted women to be hired as copyists in the state's Land 
Registrar's Office, on the basis that clerking was not the 
"appropriate sphere" of Southern women. 139 Of all the 
Richmond women who clerked for the Confederate government 
during the war, only Parke Bagby was able to convert her 
wartime experience into a government clerkship in the 
postwar capital, and this only after her husband's death in 
1883 . 140 
and New Orleans, Louisiana. By 1891, Virginia opened the 
Hampton Training School for Nurses for educating black 
nurses. 
138Aron, '"To Barter Their souls for Gold,"' 65, fn. 6. 
139Richmond Dispatch, 24 January 1866. 
140After the war, Parke Babgy seems to have 
concentrated her efforts on her growing family. With her 
husband, George's, death in 1883, she resumed clerking in 
the Virginia State Treasury Office, a position she held for 
twenty-one years. Bagby Chronicle, VHS. 
138 
As they had taken up wartime occupations as hospital 
matrons and government clerks, middle-class women in 
Richmond had challenged conventional notions about the 
appropriateness of their working outside the home. 
Manpower shortages and battlefield losses had provided 
reasonable justifications for permitting middle-class 
Southern ladies to leave their homes to engage in work that 
contributed vital services to the Confederate war effort. 
Their entry into military hospitals had provoked 
discussions about female fortitude and propriety; their 
work as government clerks had held them to a sexual double 
standard as a means of assessing their worthiness for the 
job. Their work in these two fields had tested their 
mettle and had found them to be capable, efficient, and 
sometimes even exemplary workers. With Confederate defeat, 
however, patriotic rationales for their work evaporated 
and, in the social chaos in the South following 
emancipation and defeat, middle-class Richmond women saw 
these doors of opportunity close. 
,~· 
,,, 
I ,, 
I I 
,I 1 
,,, 
• ,1, 
.• ;::$ ,..,. 
CHAPTER 4 
MORE WORK FOR THE CONFEDERACY: 
SEAMSTRESSES, CARTRIDGE MAKERS, AND PROSTITUTES 
Working-class women i'n Richmond had labored outside 
the home 
long before the civil war began. Of the 171 white 
and free 
black women who appear in the manufacturing 
schedule 
of the 1860 Richmond census, the majority (69 
Percertt 
, N=118) · worked as shoemakers' assistants (15), or 
in the 
needle trades as milliners, hoop skirt makers, 
tailors, h 
elpers, and mantua makers (103), all occupations 
based on 
their skill with a needle. Twelve women comprised 
one-th' 1rd of the labor force that made paper at the 
Be1vid 
ere Paper company; other women manufactured bricks 
(4) 0 • 
r distilled bitters (1). 1 Thirty-five women, most of 
Vlhont 
v.rere black, worked in the tobacco manufacturing, 
Probably 
as tobacco stemmers. 2 Still more must have taken 
l 
Virgi ~anufacturing schedule for the 1860 Census, Richmond, 
v.ronte nia, NARA. one woman also worked in a sawmill. Some· 
'l'rect~--White, free black, or slave--probably also worked at 
Untorfar Preparing food for male laborers but, 
1rede unately, no payroll records for female workers at 
has n~ar have survived. The 1860 Manufacturing Schedule 
category for race. 
Oft 
2
The lone exception might be one woman listed as one 
our employees for Johr Fry, who manufactured cigars. 
139 
' ii 
:.I 
in 1 
aundry, sold home-made 
Capitol 
foods to the legislators in 
Square, rented out rooms, worked in family shops, 
or labored at 
one of the cotton textile factories in 
Manchester.3 
Al though White Richmond women had sewed women's and 
Chil dren's cloth' ing, or worked as tailors' helpers before 
thew 
ar began, the demand for uniforms and tents drew 
thou 
sa
nd
s more into large-scale clothing production, both 
at home . 
and in government shops. By 1863, the Richmond 
Exami ~ claimed that as many as three thousand Richmond 
seam t 
· s resses sewed for the confederate government. 4 In 
addition 
, the need for black powder cartridges and small 
arms 
ammunition opened up a new wartime occupation for 
Work· 
ing-class Richmond women as munitions workers in the 
Confederate 
tra 
nsformed 
the City to 
laboratory on Brown's Island. As Richmond was 
into a military town, prostitutes converged on 
swell the ranks of the brothel women and femmes 
des ~ Who had engaged in sexual commerce in Richmond 
before the 
war began. 5 Although not regular "government 
~· 
--.!_chmond Whig, 24 January 1860. 
~· 
-!.£hmond Examiner, 27 July 1863. 
SN 
Prost· ewspaper accounts attest to the i~flux of . 
fore itutes from other locations. The ~ichmond ~xaminer, 
~cu~:~m~le, in 1862, claimed the "cyprians, resident and 
th~ since the removal of the seat of government to 
fros Place, as well as loose males of abandoned character 
~ocm ~ther arts of the confederac "were now plying their 
~ayation in the confederate capital. Richmond Exam~ner, 13 
coun
1
~
62. Emphasis mine. In 1864, the mayor and city 
cil Paid a blockade runner $600 to "deport" a 
140 
141 
' proSt itution nevertheless provided services to work 11 
Confederate soldiers far from the conjugal comforts of 
home. Few of these working-class women have left written 
records of 
re-created 
informat' ion 
the · picture 
their own, but their wartime experiences can be 
through the use of court and payroll records and 
in the Richmond newspapers, to help round out 
of wartime work in the confederate capital. 
ordnance work 
A cluster of single-story white frame buildings on a 
sma11 outgrowth of land in the James River, the Brown's 
Island ordnance plant employed nearly three hundred women 
and , girls and a handful of men and boys from the city's 
working-class neighborhoods. 6 
Between July 1861 and 
1865 , the Brown's Island operatives supplied Robert January 
E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with 46,901,250 
Percus . sion caps, 1,456,190 friction primers, and 72,413,854 
Prostit ~aiuin utes to "the north banks of the Potomac." RichmonJ;! 
er, 2 7 July 1864. 
one of e ordnance lab was a part of the Richmond Arsenal, 6Th IUen a dthe largest in the confederacy. In all, about 900 
IUanufn boys worked in the arsenal but only a few males 
Addit~ctured ammunition with the Brown's Island women. 
Cara1~ona1 arsenals were located in Fayetteville, North 
Charlina; Columbus Macon Atlanta, and Augusta, Georgia; 
Gorgaeston, South Carolin~; and Selma, Alabama. Josiah Vand's, The Civil war oiar of Josiah Gar as, frank E. 
Pres~ver, ed. (University, Ala.: university of Alabama 
was ch· 1947 ), entry dated s April 1864, PP• 90-91. Gorgas Anter' ief of Ordnance for the confederate states of 
arseica. For a history of the earlY years of the Richmond ~n~~' see Giles cramwell'S T_he Virginia M~nu~a~tory of 
harlottesville: university press of Virginia, 1975). 
szna11 
arms cartridges 
142 
for use in its clashes with Federal 
forces in the 
war's eastern theater. 7 
Wages for female workers varied with marital status 
th
e type of work performed. Evidence from the 
arsenal's t' 
ime record book for female employees indicates 
that · 
' in January 
Percent 
1863, the unmarried women who comprised 84 
of the workforce (N=242) earned a daily wage of 
$l.G2\, While 
the twelve married women (4.2 percent) were 
Paid$ 1
·
75
, based on the Laboratory's rationale that 
Inarr· iect Women 
Wag 
were more likely to be contributing their 
es to the 
support of families. Six women who trained 
anct super . 
vised the other female operatives received between 
$2 0 
• 
0 
and $2.50 daily; and twenty-seven other women earned 
Piecer t 
a es that varied from eighteen to thirty-five cents 
Per h 
u
nd
rect for performing such tasks as charging 
1w·1 · Brown 1 11am LeRoy Brown "The Richmond Arsenal," 457. 
Was ' · 1 · report conunander-in-chief of the Richmond Arsena, His 
Percus~·PUblished in 1869, can be found in the LV .. 
de~ice io~ caps are small, conically-shaped, detonating 
Prict·s filled with fulminate of mercury and black powder. 
gunp0 lon Primers are small metal cylinders filled with 
cann Wder Which are used to set off black powder charges in 
Wate~ns. Both were coated with varnish to make them 
~ere ~r~of. By the time of the civil War, percussion caps 
Bure eing manufactured by machine. Confederate Ordnance 
Orctnau. Xhe Field Manual for the Use of Officers on ~ (Richmond: Ritchie & Dunnavant, 1862), 56 and 
~un· ~n S. Thomas, Ready .•• Aim ... Fire! Small Arms 
n in the Battle of Gettysburg, Stephen v. Ash, ed. 
ervi11e, Pa.: Osborn Printing co., 1981). 
143 
cartridges and covering ammunition boxes with paper 
1abels. 8 
During the course of the war, these rates of pay rose 
considerably for all female workers, due to the importance 
placed on providing ammunition for the Confederate armies, 
and the abilities of the Brown's Island operatives to 
engage in successful work protests. By November 1864, 
single women were paid $5 per day, and married women, $7. 
And by March 1865, cartridge makers were paid between $12 
and $14 daily. 9 In addition to their wages, female 
operatives by late 1864 were also entitled to purchase 
weekly rations of wood, flour, bacon, and cloth at reduced 
rates. 10 
A letter to the editor of the Richmond Examiner in 
October 1864 invites a comparison between the wages of the 
Brown's Island operatives and the salaries of middle- and 
upper-class women who clerked in government departments. 
8Time Record Book of Female Employees, Richmond 
Arsenal, Richmond, Virginia, January 1863 - April, 1865, 
Ch. IV, Vol. 99, R.G. 109, NARA. No time book exists for 
male employees at the factory. 
9Piece rates for women working in Colt Room No. 2 also 
increased during this period of time and, by May 1864, some 
women earned additional income by working overtime on 
Sundays. 
10Richmond Examiner, 13 October 1864. The plan to 
provision ordnance workers was adopted in November 1863, 
with a proposal to erect a bakery, slaughterhouse, and 
store house on Laboratory grounds for the facility's 300 
female and 900 male workers. Religious Herald, 26 November 
1863. 
144 
Although the anonymous letter writer was clearly 
sympathetic to the working-class cartridge makers and 
referred to the female clerks as "pets" who earned salaries 
equal to or better than the best male clerks, "for doing 
very little work," in fact it was the Brown's Island 
operatives who were the Confederacy's best-paid female 
11 $ employees. At 5 per day in late 1864, even the lowest 
paid Brown's Island operative earned approximately $1320 
per year, not counting Saturdays and overtime. 12 Female 
clerks never earned more than $900 to $1,000 during this 
same time period; and hospital workers, whose work was 
definitely the most gruesome wartime occupation for women, 
were earning, at best, a depressing yearly salary of $480. 
when compared with male ordnance workers, however, the 
wages of the Brown's Island operatives, like those of most 
female workers, were limited by a sexual division of labor 
that paid male workers more money and, in this case, for 
1ess hazardous work. In March 1865, for example, when 
female cartridge workers were earning an all-time high of 
$12 to $14 per day, men working in the Ordnance 
· 1 13 Department's harness shop earned $19.50 da1 Y· 
11Richmond Examiner, 15 October 1864. 
121 am basing this on a daily wage of $5 per day for 
twenty-two days per month for an unmarried worker. 
13James Dinwiddie to George w. Taylor, Raleigh, N.C., 
25 March 1865, Ch. IV. Vol. 92, R.G. 109, NARA. In 
addition to being able to _purchase wood, bacon, and flour 
at reduced rates, the men were entitled to purchased one 
145 
Like antebellum textile workers, the Brown's Island 
operatives appear to have experienced a good deal of 
workplace solidarity that derived, in part, from the fact 
that some workers labored in close proximity to female 
, 14 • 
relatives. Fifteen-year-old Emma Ashmore made cartridge 
forms in Colt Revolver Room No. 2, while her mother, forty-
six-year-old Elizabeth, sewed ammo bags in the Sewing Room. 
Five sets of sisters also worked on the island, including 
teenagers Annie, Maggie and Mary Ryan, and Mary and Delia 
Daily and their married sister, Ann Dodson. 15 
When coupled with the importance of munitions 
manufacture for the Confederate war effort, the operatives' 
workplace cohesion undoubtedly accounts for their ability 
to engage in successful work stoppages or strikes. In 
December 1863, and again in October 1864, striking workers 
succeeded in getting their daily wages increased; in the 
1864 strike, they also managed to get the wage differential 
pair of shoes yearly at government prices. 
14oublin, Women at Work. 
15other sisters included fourteen-year-old Eliza 
Priddy and twelve-year-old sister Lucy; Anny and Mary 
cushin, who worked side by side in Cartridge Rao~ No. 5; 
and Margaret Divine and her seventeen-year-old sister, 
Mary. Time Record Book of Female Employees, Ri~hmond 
Arsenal, Richmond, Virginia, January 1863.- April 1865, Ch. 
IV, Vol. 99, R.G. 109, NARA; 1860 Manuscri~t Census, 
Henrico County Virginia, both in NARA; ~oris Rose Pearson, 
interview with author, Richmond, Virginia, 16 March 1995. 
Delia Daily was Mrs. Pearson's grandmother. 
146 
between single and married workers narrowed from $2 to 
$1. 16 In the second strike, which brought the plant to a 
standstill for five days, Laboratory commander William 
Brown initially took a tough stand--refusing the workers' 
demands and placing ads in the Richmond papers for 300 new 
operatives. Within a short time, however, Brown caved in 
amid concerns that a new group of unskilled laborers might 
seriously jeopardize the quality of ammunition being 
shipped to the armies. 17 
Although the Brown's Island operatives were better 
compensated than most female ·government employees, ordnance 
work was an extremely dangerous occupation that required 
the use of wooden mallets and cloth shoes with India rubber 
soles to guard against black powder explosions caused by 
sparks. On Friday, March 13, 1863, an explosion at Brown's 
Island leveled part of a fifty-foot building, sending 
plumes of flame into the gray morning sky. 18 Laboratory 
16Richmond Examiner, 7 December 1863, in Nancy Bowman, 
"Richmond's Free Working . Women, 1850-1870," research paper, 
University of Maryland, 1991; Richmond Examiner 13, 14 
October 1864. I am grateful to Nancy Bowman for sharing 
her research information with me. 
17Richmond Examiner, 13, 14 October 1864. 
18The explosion at the Brown's Island arsenal was not 
an isolated occurrence. The Sea coast Ammunition Room at 
the Confederate Laboratory near Petersburg, Virginia, blew 
up on January 27, 1862, resulting in several injuries but 
no loss of life. Richmond Examiner, 28 January 1862. on 
May 2 of the same year, an explosion at Brown's Island 
mortally wounded two men; a blast on November 7, 1862, at 
the Natches, Mississippi, arsenal killed twenty-nine 
workers, mostly female cartridge makers. Richmond 
., 
147 
super· intendent Wesley w. S . mith was seated in his office 
When the blast occurred. Racing to the scene, he saw more 
than f orty dazed women and girls, some with hair and 
ablaze, shrieking and crying, or searching 
and friends among the burning r~ins. 19 A few 
Cloth' ing still 
for . sisters 
girls wh ose burns were too intolerable to bear threw 
themsel ves into the rushing waters of the James River. 
eyewitnesses who beard the dull roar hurried to Parents and 
the Plant b ut were blocked from entering it by armed guards 
stationed at the footbridge connecting the island to the 
Shore1· ine. 
On a grassy knoll by the river bank, wounded girls 
ing treatment lay side by side with the blackened await· 
corpses of dead coworkers. Frantic family members rushed 
amon g the rows of bodies, hoping to identify their loved 
the survivors. others administered first aid by 
ones among 
Slather· ing 
the victims with oil-soaked flour or cotton and 
~' 3 May 1863· Nat!;heS weeklY coµrieX, 12 November Exam.: __ 
Dece~b A third explo~ion took placed at Brown's Island in 
Augu ter 1863. Religious aeral4, 17 oeceJOber 1863. The 
leasts a, Georgia arsenal exploded on April 13, 1864° At 
A 
two ' · th · 1 · '1lllll! women were seriously hurt 1n 1s exp os1on. 
a fo~;~ Daily Chronicle, 14 April 1864. On April 21, 1864, 
contain~ explosion rocked erown's rs1and when a pan, 
sma
11 
ing fulminate of mercury was detonated: burning a 
ll1sb shed and injuring several female operatives. 
mend Examiner, 21 April 1864° 
19 Conuui Testimony of wesleY w. smith, report of the 
Marchttee investigating the erown's Island explosion, 25 
1863, Entry 453, BOX 4, R.G. 109, NARA· 
administering chloroform to relieve the pain. 20 All 
through the day ambulances carried injured workers to 
hospitals or homes. 
Forty-three female workers ranging in age from ten-
year-old Eliza Willis to sixty-seven-year-old Sarah 
Marshall eventually died of their injuries. Among the 
injured, only nineteen women and girls survived. 21 
Thirteen-year-old Annie cushin lost her fourteen-year-old 
sister, Mary, and of the three Daily sisters, only Delia 
survived. 22 Cartridge Room No. 4 sustained the brunt of 
148 
20This description of the explosion was taken from 
numerous accounts. Richmond Examiner, 14 and 16 March 
1863; Richmond Whig, 14 and 16 March 1863; Southern 
Illustrated News, 21 March 1863; to Dr. Lee from Charles, 
18 March 1863, Dr. Lee Letters, DU; George Neville, 
Richmond, to Nellie Newman, 16 March 1863, George Neville-
Nellie Newman Collection, UVA; Gorgas, The Civil War Diary 
of General Josiah Gorgas, entry dated 21 March 1863, pp. 
25-26. Many personal accounts repeat information from the 
Richmond newspapers. 
21David L. Burton, "Friday 13th: Richmond's Greatest 
Homefront Disaster," Civil war Times Illustrated 21.6 
(October 1982): 41. Burton used cemetery records to arrive 
at the names and ages of the disaster victims. By his 
account, most of the female workers were very young--
fifteen between the ages of ten and fifteen. However, his 
list of names does not correspond in many cases with those 
of the Richmond press, which got its information directly 
from the Brown's Island timekeeper. Richmond Examiner, 14, 
16 March 1863. Unfortunately, the time record book lists 
no ages for any of the female operatives. 
22Time Record Book of Female Employees, Richmond 
Arsenal, Richmond, Virginia, January 1863 - April 1865, Ch. 
IV, Vol. 99, R.G. 109, NARA. Three male workers were also 
injured or killed, among them sixty-three-year-old John H. 
Woodcock, a local clergyman in charge of supervising the 
room in which the blast originated, and Samuel Chappel, who 
died of a crushed skull from being wedged between a wall 
when the building roof collapsed. 
149 
the injuries: out of fifty women at work in that division, 
only twenty-one remained unhurt by the explosion.23 By 
Sunday March 15th, funeral corteges crisscrossed the city, 
carrying the remains of the dead women and girls to their 
final resting places in coffins provided by the Richmond 
Arsenal. 24 
A report filed by the committee investigating the 
disaster sheds light both on the work of the factory and 
the events surrounding the explosion. On the morning of 
March 13th, the twenty-by-fifty-foot room in which the 
blast · occurred was alive with activity as at least sixty 
women and a few men and boys worked at a variety of tasks. 
Agnes Miller, Cornelia Mitchell, and Ann Drake were seated 
in front of a coal-burning stove at the lower end of the 
room, sewing cartridge bags while they chatted with Mary 
23Time Record Book for Female Employees, Richmond 
Arsenal, January 1863 - April 1865, Ch. IV, Vol. 99, R.G. 
109, NARA. In the record book, timekeeper Philip Davis 
wrote the word "dead" or "wounded" across the time lines of 
women injured in the incident. I have used this source to 
develop a list of dead and wounded women, which can also be 
verified in the numerous press accounts of the incident. 
24Richmond Examiner, 16 May 1863; Richmond Whig, 16 
March 1863. Arsenal employees also took up a collection to 
help defray the cost of funeral expenses for the neediest 
victims. They were aided by sympathetic members of the 
community, including the Y.M.C.A. and artist Lee Mallory 
who donated the proceeds of an evening's admission to his 
"War Illustrations," and an unidentified woman who donated 
$700 to replace the injured girls' clothing. Richmond 
Examiner, 16 March 1863; Richmond Whig, 20 March 1863; 
Religious Herald, 7 May 1863. Josiah Gorgas's wife, 
Amelia, also made daily trips to the General Hospital No. 2 
to care for the wounded.· Gorgas, The Civil War Diary of 
Josiah Gorgas, entry dated 21 March 1863, p. 25. 
150 
Cunningham and Mary Cordle who stood nearby. A short 
distance away, Susan Butler, Paulina Smoot and a number of 
other women worked at a bench that ran nearly the entire 
length of the room, pounding black powder from defective 
cartridges with wooden mallets and depositing it in small 
sabots in front of them on the benchtop. 25 Along the 
opposite wall, Alonzo Owens and Samuel Chappel filled 
Williams cartridges, while Mary Ryan worked a few feet 
away, removing friction primers from the wooden frames in 
which they had been placed for filling and varnishing. 26 
At . the far end of the room, several hands boxed caps and 
primers. From time to time, a male employee moved through 
the room, · sweeping the floor of "all rubbish, greasy 
papers, and Inflammable materia.ls" and returning the black 
25Testimony of Agnes Miller, Cornelia Mitchell, Ann 
Drake, Susan Butler, Paulina Smoot, Sarah A. Folkes, Lizzie 
Dawson, and Ella Barrett, all in report of committee 
investigating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
Entry 453, Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA. Sabots were wooden 
cradles attached to cannonballs before firing. Their name 
may have come from the fact that they resembled wooden 
shoes worn by Dutch and French peasants. The workers at 
Brown's Island found them convenient receptacles for black 
powder. For a detailed discussion of munitions 
manufacturing, see Dean Thomas, Ready ... Aim ... Fire! 
26Testimony of Alonzo Owens, report of the committee 
investigating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
Entry 453, Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA. Williams cartridges were 
manufactured for the Williams machine gun that could fire 
sixty-five rounds of black-powder cartridges per minute 
over a range of 2,000 yards. Jack Coggins, Arms and 
Equipment o,f the Civil War (Garden City, New York: 
Doubleday, 1962), 45. 
scs ££& __ 
151 
Powder from the sabots to the magazine for reprocessing. 27 
As the women worked, their laughter and singing drifted 
from the room into the outside air. 
Eighteen-year-old Mary Ryan was one of the highest 
Paid women in the factory, an experienced worker who was 
known occasionally to rap the wooden frames on the side of 
the bench to free primers that had become stuck. 28 She 
did this again on March 13th, this time with disastrous 
results. The first blast, which Agnes Miller later 
described as sounding "not louder than a pistol shot," 
lifted Ryan from the floor. 29 This was followed by a 
second, larger explosion that blew Ryan to the ceiling as 
the walls of the building collapsed around her. She lived 
for three or four days, long enough to describe her role in 
• 
2
~Testimony of Wesley w. smith, re~ort of committee 
investigating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
Entry 453, Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA. 
28Primers were placed in holes in wooden frames where 
they were filled with fulminate of mercury and then sealed 
of moisture with shellac or varnish. It was the varnishing 
process that caused some primers to become stuck in the 
frames. Time Book of Female Employees, Richmond Arsenal, 
Richmond, Virginia, January 1863 - April 1865, Ch. IV, Vol. 
99; testimony of Lizzie Dawson, Ann Drake, and Mary Cordle, 
report of committee investigating the Brown's Island 
explosion, 25 March 1863, Entry 453, Box 4, both in R.G. 
109, NARA. 
29Testimony of Agnes Miller, report of committee 
investigating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
Entry 453, Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA. 
152 
the event to members of the investigative committee who 
rushed to her bedside to interview her. 30 
The investigation was ordered by ordnance chief Josiah 
Gorgas who was outraged at the loss of life. Before the 
investigating committee, Superintendent Smith testified 
that work involving friction primers and percussion caps 
had been transferred to Cartridge Room No. 4 just three 
weeks earlier, "to allow for the[ir) increased 
manufacturing" for the Confederate Army. This move was 
necessitated by the fact that an anticipated expansion of 
the percussion room had fallen behind schedule due to a 
shortage of lumber. 
The relocation of percussion cap manufacturing into an 
area of the plant where girls also worked on defective 
cartridges created the conditions under which an explosion 
might be likely to occur. In addition, although reclaiming 
damaged cartridges was hazardous duty that required the use 
of non-metal tools and rubber-soled cloth shoes, at the 
time of the explosion, the shoes had not been supplied, 
despite repeated requests to the Quartermaster's 
Department. And although all the witnesses claimed that 
the arsenal workers assiduously removed the black powder as 
soon as possible, testimony from several of them suggests 
that somewhere between six and fifteen pounds of black 
30oddly enough, the interview with Mary Ryan is 
missing from the report. 
Powde r were likely to accumulate in the sabots and pans 
Prior t 0 removal. The air in the room, therefore, must 
been th' have ick with potentially explosive particles in 
need of a The unfortunate Mary Ryan 
153 
single spark. 31 
Provided that spark when she did what she had done hundreds 
before when she encountered a stuck primer--rap 
wooden frame on the bench to release it. 
of times 
the 
xious to assign responsibility for the blast, the An ' 
Riehm 0nd press blamed Mary Ryan, even though the 
investigative report concluded that none of the workers, 
ing Ryan, had ever acted carelessly.
32 
The Richmond includ' 
~ ' for example, claimed that Ryan had acted 
11
in 
instead of carefully removing the primers from the haste" . 
fram e one by one.33 
"The explosion was caused by the 
31 invest_Testimony of wesley w. smith, report of committee 
Entry ~gating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
the ex i3 , ,Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA· An additional factor in Potent~ osion, the coal-burning stove, was ruled out as a 
ial .cause by most of the witnesses. 
BarnettTestimony of wesley w. smith, Philip Davis, Ella 32 
Mary co{ Cornelia Mitchell, Agnes Miller, Pau~ina smoot, 
invest· dle, and Susan Butler report of committee 
Entry igating the Brown's rsl~nd explosion, 25 March 1863, 
~' ~53, Box 4, R.G. 109 , NARA; J1_outhern r11ustrat7d March 1863; Richmond WhiJI, 16 ~arch 1863; Richmond 
aichmo r, 16 March 1863 • EmorY Thomas in7or~orates the 
~Ccid nd press' implications in his description of the 
)a 
e t
1 
, · t' t" 'th 
. llllued , . c aiming that MarY Ryan "grew impa 7en wi . a, 
imposs·primer. None of Ryan's testimony survives, so it is 
M. Th ib1e to say whether she was impatient or not. Emory 
Of th~mas, .The confederate state of Richmond: A Bi
0
rah (Austin: university of Texas Press, 1971), 
_ichmond Examiner, 16 March 1863. 3JR. 
care1 
ess handling of f . ti . a r.1c on primer by ... Mary Ryan," 
Wrote 
a reporter t th . h d . o e Ric mon Whig, "who is among the 
154 
number of badly wounded.rr34 h . Wen .it announced her death a 
few days 
later, the Whig identified Ryan as "the girl whose 
hand exploded the friction primer and caused the awful 
d' lsaster.1135 A more plausible explanation for the 
explos· 
lon, however, lies in the exigencies of war and the 
combinat· 
lon of activities taking place in the crowded room 
Wher 
e Ryan and the other victims worked. In his closing 
state 
ment before the committee, Smith noted that if the 
Product· 
lon of caps and primers "had been done in a separate 
build' 
lng, damage from the explosion would have been limited 
to th 
e fatality of the person handling it. 1136 
Alth0ugh the press had blamed Ryan, workers in the 
Plant 
recognized the more likely cause to be bureaucratic 
inetf. . 
lciency and the hazards of arsenal work, now made all 
too l 
c ear by the devastating,. blast. In the aftermath of 
the exp1 . . 0s1on, more than eighty girls and women quit the 
arsenal to k 
seek safer, if less remunerative, wor 
eisewh 
ere. Wartime working-class poverty assured that 
Othe 
rs Were waiting to take their places, however. When 
34R. 
_lchmond Whig, 16 March 1863. 
3SR. 
a1s0 -!.Chmond Whig, 18 March 1863. 
eventm~de their way into "eyewitness" 1n letters and diaries. 
These accusations 
descriptions of the 
inves
3
~Testimony of Wesley w. smith, report of committee 
Sntr tigating the Brown's Island explosion, 25 March 1863, 
y 453, Box 4, R.G. 109, NARA. 
I 
l 
155 
the arsenal opened for work on March 16th--as the bodies of 
those who were killed in the explosion were being laid to 
rest--at least fifty-three women were waiting to be 
hired. 37 By May 22, 1863, the plant was fully repaired, 
and, except for brief closures during the 1863 and 1864 
strikes, it continued to operate at peak capacity until 
April 1865, when it was destroyed in the fire accompanying 
the city's surrender to Federal forces. 38 
Seams tressing 
If ordnance work was one of the most lucrative kinds 
of wartime employment for white working-class women, 
sewing, which attracted women in far greater numbers, may 
have been the least remunerative and probably the most 
exploitative. Both white and black women in Richmond had 
worked at seamstresses before the war began; but wartime 
demand for Confederate uniforms swelled their ranks 
dramatically. 39 By 1862, between two and three thousand 
white Richmond women stitched overcoats, jackets, trousers, 
drawers, and shirts for the confederate Quartermaster's 
Bureau, either at home, or in factories requisitioned for 
37Time Record Book for Female Employees; Richmond 
Arsenal, Richmond, Virginia, January 1863 - April 1865, Ch. 
IV, Vol. 99, R.G. 109, NARA. 
38Richmond Examiner, 22 May 1863; Brown, "The Richmond 
Arsenal," 458. 
39Manufacturing Schedule for the 1860 Census, 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. 
I rt t 
I I 
I II 
156 
its use. 4° Factory sewers were more likely to be skilled 
in the use treadle sewing machines, while most home sewers 
usually made garments by hand. 41 
Other women worked in related trades. Twenty-five 
women and children, for example, formed a portion of the 
labor force at Crenshaw Woolen Works which, by October 
1861, was producing 5,000 yards of regulation army cloth 
and 450 blankets weekly for the confederate army. 42 A few 
40Richmond Whig, 22 November 1862, cited in Emory 
Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: The Biography of 
the Capital (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 112. 
With the exception of Massey's Bonnet Brigades, most 
secondary sources on Civil war women's work contain little 
information--usually not more than one or two sentences--on 
government seamstresses. Massey, Bonnet Brigades, 143-48, 
The bulk of Massey's evidence concerns Union seamstresses. 
41 Invented in the 1850s, the treadle sewing machine 
was making its way into clothing manufacturing throughout 
the 1860s. The civil war, no doubt, escalated this 
transition. Alice Kessler-Harris, out to Work: A History 
of Wage-Earning Work in the United states (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1982), 77-78; Christine Stansell, City of 
Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: 
Knopf~ 1986), 113-15. By 1861, treadle sewing machines 
were in use in some sewing factories and middle-class 
homes. Unfortunately, according to Stansell, sewing 
machines in factory settings had the effect of increasing 
stress and driving piece rates down. sewing machines were 
also in use in the South during this time. In a letter to 
her mother, Abby Gwathmey, the wife of a Confederate 
surgeon, referred to "making [her] sewing machine do its 
duty" manufacturing jackets for confederate soldiers. Abby 
Manly Gwathmey to her parents, 29 April 1861, Abby Manley 
Gwathmey Letter, ESBL, A report on working women's 
employment in the Richmond Examiner in 1864 refers to 
machine-made drawers, coats, trousers, and dusters. "White 
Slavery in the North," Richmond Examiner, 19 April 1864. 
42Richmond Enquirer, 16 October, 5 November 1861. 
This woolen mill was destroyed by fire May 15, 1863. 
Richmond Examiner, 16 May 1863. 
i I •• 
l I I I 
I' 
I' 
1 , II 
I ' 
'' 
' I, 
I ~ ,l 
' 
-~ --.... ~-...::~- .. ::.-;- ::;-..- -:. ---- - --- ,...-~~---.... 
157 
women also appear to have been employed as government 
cutters, a job that traditionally had been done by men and 
which men continued to dominate in sewing factories in the 
l.a te twentieth-century. 43 
Government seamstresses frequently found their labor 
exploited by a Confederate Quartermaster's Clothing Bureau 
that some believed was a symbol of bureaucratic 
inefficiency and possibly a source of government abuse. 
Angry field commanders complained about shortages of 
supplies, while a few also accused the Bureau of awarding 
lucrative contracts to affluent Virginians who fulfilled 
them through the use of slave seamstresses. 44 Others 
complained that government contractors frequently underpaid 
the female sewers and pocketed part of the money for 
themselves. 45 
43 conversations with Milton M. Vane, various dates. 
My father was a production manager in men's clothing 
factories for most of his life. In most of these locations 
men are employed as cutters; but when Judith McGuire went 
on a search for an impoverished confederate seamstress she 
had encountered in 1863 on a Richmond street corner, she 
reported finding a number of women in the "squalid-looking" 
houses in Butcher's Flats bending over tables, cutting out 
"Government work." Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of 
a Southern Refugee, 2d ed. (New York: E.J. Hale & Son 1867; 
r 7pr . . New York: Arno Press, 1972), 253-54; all subsequent 
citations are to this edition. 
44John B. Floyd, to Isaac Howell Carrington, 29 
January 1863, Isaac Howell Carrington Papers, DU. 
45 Richmond Examiner, 26 November 1864. The Congress 
appointed a three-person committee to investigate this 
complaint, but no report of its findings has been found. 
1;1h· 1•·"' ... 
1" 
.,, 
11' 
.. 
: 
.. , 
158 
Confederate seamstresses who worked at home typically 
received stacks of precut fabric from the Quartermaster's 
office, and then returned the finished garments a few days 
later. An expose in the Richmond Examiner in June 1863, 
revealed that women arriving at the Bureau to pick up work 
were often compelled to wait for hours before any was 
provided. 46 The Bureau claimed to have "improved" the 
system after the Examiner's expose by implementing a 
ticketing system that limited the number of women who could 
wait at the depot to no more than 300 to 400 at a time. 
Rather than ameliorating the Bureau's inefficiency, 
however, this procedure only made the bureau appear more 
efficient because fewer women were there waiting for work. 
The measure also reduced the potential for disorderly 
female conduct, something that was a high priority in 
Richmond after the women's bread riot in April 1863 (See 
Chapter Six), at the same time that it masked the actual 
number of destitute women in need of employment. 47 
A payroll report for 191 seamstresses who either 
worked in Richmond or in nearby Lynchburg, Virginia, 
indicates that government seamstresses who worked at home 
were probably the poorest paid female government workers, 
46Richmond Examiner, 21 June 1863. 
47The flow of work was also interrupted at time by 
strikes by male cutters, which may also help to explain the 
female cutters, who were possibly strikebreakers, ,that 
Judith McGuire encountered on her Richmond foray in 1863. 
159 
many of whom were also the wives or widows of Confederate 
soldiers, some with young children to support. 48 During a 
two-week period ending November 22, 1862, these Confederate 
sewers produced a total of 3,956 garments, including 265 
coats, 305 uniform jackets, 110 pairs of trousers, 1,664 
shirts, and 1,612 pairs of drawers, for which they were 
paid $1,902.10, an average of $9.96 per worker, or $259 per 
year. 49 These wages were slightly higher than the $10 to 
$20 per month paid to skilled seamstresses in peacetime 
Richmond, but they represented just 19.6 percent of the 
salary earned by an unmarried cartridge maker on Brown's 
Island during the same period of time, and $41 less than 
that paid to military hospital laundresses. 50 
48Judith McGuire, Diary of a southern Refugee, 252-54. 
Thus far, no evidence has emerged that will permit a 
comparison between homeworkers and seamstresses employed in 
one of the government sewing factories in Richmond. 
49c.s.A., Quartermaster's Department, Payroll Report 
for seamstresses, Pay Period Ending 22 November 1862, LV. 
This payroll was authorized by Quartermaster General L.R. 
Smoot, who, until January 1863, divided his time between 
Richmond and Lynchburg. Together with Petersburg, these 
three cities formed a supply "triangle" for troops 
stationed in the field around Richmond or for men in 
Richmond's hospitals. Of the three, only Richmond was 
organized as a permanent depot, although quartermasters 
general were instructed to establish temporary depots 
wherever necessary. Unfortunately none of the payroll . 
reports in this file specifies whether the women lived 1n 
Richmond or Lynchburg. I am grateful to Minor Weisiger of 
the Library of Virginia for locating this payroll report 
for me. 
50According to the Manufacturing Schedule of the 1860 
Census for Richmond, seamstresses employed in tailoring 
shops made between $10 . and $15 dollars per month. Women 
who sewed for the city's single hoop skirt maker earner 
' . 
.. 
f 
. ,, 
,, 
'I 
I 
,, 
160 
Rates of pay varied with the difficulty of the garment 
being produced. Factory seamstresses who made overcoats 
and uniform jackets by machine earned $2.00 and $1.50 per 
item, respectively, while women who hand-sewed coarse 
flannel army shirts with felled seams, gussets, and three 
buttonholes were paid thirty cents for three hours of 
labor. Trouser makers earned seventy-five cents per pair; 
and tentmakers received $2.25 per tent. 51 
An article copied from the New York News and published 
in the Richmond Examiner under the title, "White Slavery in 
the North," although somewhat biased because of its intent 
to reveal the terrible working conditions faced by Northern 
seamstresses, nevertheless provides a useful comparison 
between the wages of Confederate and Union seamstresses. 
It also gives some sense of the amount of time required to 
complete each of these garments, although this would vary 
considerably depending on whether the garments were machine 
made or sewn by hand. Whereas southern seamstresses were 
paid $1.50 to $2.00 a piece for machine-made infantry coats 
and jackets, Northern women earned $1.20 to $1.25, 
respectively. Each of these garments required 
approximately ten hours to complete. Union seamstresses 
$13.34. Those who made capes or cloaks for the city's 
mantua makers were paid $15 to $20. All of these are 
monthly wages as listed by the employers. 
51c.s.A., Quartermaster's Department, Payroll Report 
for Seamstresses, Pay Period Ending 22 November 1862, LV; 
Richmond Enquirer, 10 December 1861. 
161 
were paid thirteen cents per pair for hand-sewn flannel 
drawers complete with buckles, buttonholes, and strings, 
while Confederate sewers received twenty cents for the same 
three and a half hours of work. All government 
seamstresses in both regions were expected to furnish their 
own buttons, needles, and thread. While this comparison 
was intended to suggest that Confederate seamstresses 
earned more money for the same amount of work, it must be 
kept in mind that southern seamstresses were being paid in 
inflated Confederate currency which actually provided them 
with less purchasing power than their Northern 
coworkers. 52 
Given the amount of time required to complete a single 
garment, the output of several seamstresses on the payroll 
report was nothing short of astounding. Ten single women 
and two married women each earned more than twenty dollars 
apiece, while Miss c. Farmer was paid $37.40 for producing 
five overcoats, sixteen jackets, six shirts, and eight 
pairs of trousers. These high rates of production suggest 
that some women were either working sixteen- to twenty-hour 
days or else jobbing part of their work out to children or 
other female relatives in their households in order to make 
ends meet. The output of other women was really quite 
52Richmond Examiner, 19 April 1864. Additional prices 
for work done by Union seamstresses can be found in 
Fincher's Trade Review, 28 January 1865, quoted in Kessler-
Harris, Out to Work, 337, fn. 3. 
162 
modest, by comparison, the result, perhaps, of illness, 
age, inexperience, or the press of other household duties. 
For example, six women produced only four pairs of drawers, 
each, for an income of eighty cents. 53 
In light of these meager rates of pay, it is hardly 
surprising to learn that women who were skilled at other 
sorts of work jumped at the opportunity to change 
occupations. Lancaster county refugee Lucy Cardwell 
applied for work in the Virginia State Treasury on February 
9, 1863, shortly after the passage of a state law 
permi~ting the issuance of one dollar notes. 54 A few days 
later, her application was joined by that of Mary A. Fose, 
a widow with two young children, who reported that she was 
unable to "make enough with a needle" to care for herself 
and her family. 55 Cardwell and Fose were fortunate in 
that they possessed the reading and writing skills 
neces.sary to seek a government clerkship, but for many of 
the government seamstresses, this was hardly an option. Of 
53c.S.A., Quartermaster's Department, Payroll Report 
for Seamstresses, Pay Period Ending 22 November 1862, LV. 
54Application of Lucy Cardwell, 9 February 1863, OASA 
Records. 
55Applications of Mary A. Fose, 24 March 1863, and 
Miss Vin, 13 February 1863, OASA Records. 
, .. 
ti., .... 
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... 
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,, 
... 
II , 
., 
. 
:· 
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' 
163 
the 191 women receiving pay on November 22, 1863, nearly 
half (48.7 percent) signed their names with an x. 56 
During the course of the wa r, female workers in a 
number of sewing factories in the North struck for better 
working conditions and higher wages. In July 1862, for 
example, one hundred seamstresses employed at the United 
States Arsenal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, signed a 
petition protesting the Arsenal's decision to transfer work 
done by government seamstresses to contractors promising 
cheaper rates. 57 By November 1863, New York government 
seamstresses had formed the Working Women's Protective 
Union which, for the remainder o: the war, engaged in labor 
protests aimed at improving working conditions and wages 
for female workers. 58 In January 1865, a delegation from 
this group met with President Abr aham Lincoln in 
Philadelphia, which resulted in an investigation into the 
56c.s.A., Quartermaster's Department, Payroll Report 
for Seamstresses, Pay Period Endlng 22 November 1862, 
Quartermaster General L.R. Smoot, LV. 
57Petition addressed to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of 
War, 29 July 1862, N.A.F. 6730A, NARA, reprinted in 
Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in 
Nineteenth-Century England, France. and the United States, 
Erna Olafson Hellerstein, Leslie Parker Hume, and Karen M. 
Offen, eds. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 
1981), 330. 
58Massey, Bonnet Brigades, 145-46; Richmond Examiner 
19 April 1864. 
164 
United States Quartermaster's Bureau that led to more 
equitable rates of pay. 59 
No such working women's organization emerged to 
Protect the labor of confederate seamstresses in Virginia, 
however. In part, this may been due to the fact that the 
Confederacy's decentralized putting-out system prevented 
any type of worker solidarity from taking shape. For 
Richmond women, another part o: the explanation rests in 
the fact that, by 1863, Richmond's population was triple 
its size in 1860. Since many of these new inhabitants were 
female refugees looking for work, laboring women in 
Richmond faced an increasingly competitive labor market in 
which striking seamstresses could be easily replaced by 
other women with similar skills. 
While seamstressing as a profession for working-class 
women continued, women who made their living by the needle 
in the postwar decades found their labor circumscribed not 
just by a loss of government sewing, but also by the fact 
that they competed for work in the postwar capital with a 
much larger number of women who earned their living by 
sewing. The Richmond population increased by 34.6 percent 
between 1860 and 1870; but the number of white and black 
women who identified themselves as seamstresses more than 
59Massey, Bonnet Brigades, 146-47. 
quadrupled from 103 to 470.60 
165 
Plummeted. 
In 1866, for example, one of the largest 
As a result, salaries 
Clothing f' 
irms in the city paid seamstresses a mere twenty-
five to thirty-seven cents per day for making pantaloons, a 
loss of 
forty-three cents per day over the daily rate 
Possible for Confederate seamstresses just a few years 
before.61 
Prostitution 
Of all the occupations available to poor white and 
black R' 
ichmond women during the Civil War and 
Reconstruct· ion, prostitution may have been the only one 
that 
flourished during the wartime period and continued 
relatively unaffected at its close. Accurate accounts of 
the 
number of prostitutes defy apprehension, but evidence 
from 
newspapers, eyewitnesses, and the Richmond courts 
sug 
gests that wartime Richmond attracted large numbers of 
Prostit Utes, ranging in age from thirteen to sixty, who 
openly Went about the business of providing sexual services 
60 
Riehm Manu~acturing Schedule for the 1~60 Cens~s, 
''Whit 0nd , Virginia NARA· Angela Catherine Bongiorno, (M.A e Women and w~rk in 1 Richmond, Virginia, 1870-1884" 
Of th theses, University of Virginia, 1987), 22. The race 
the e seamstresses is not listed on the 1860 schedule. Of 
Whit 470 seamstresses listed in the 1870 schedule, 378 were 
e. 
aeco 
61
Lesiie Winston smith, "Ri~hmon~ during.Pr~s~dential 
l9 74 n)struction" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 
I 208. 
166 
to c so iers quartered in the city.62 In May onfederate ld' 
1862 ' for example, the Richmond Dispatch complained that 
"sh ame-faced , 
them selves 
prostitutes of both sexes" were "disporting 
extensively on the sidewalks and in hacks, open 
carriages , etc . . 
c· itizens. 1163 
. to the amazement of sober-sided 
than six months later, the Richmond 
that prostitutes were using public 
called R~chmond Examiner, 22 August 1864. Bell Wiley has 62 . 
the in ichmond "a mecca for prostitutes" blaming them for 
Army 
0
~reased incidence of syphilis and gonorrhea in the 
and ar Northern Virginia and other troops garrisoned in 
Life 
0
~u
nd the Confederate capitol. Bell r. Wiley, The (19
43
. Johnn Reb: The common soldier of the confederac 
199l)' ~epr. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana press, 
infor~ ~-57. Emory Thomas relies heavily on the 
£onfedation Wiley provides; see Emory Thomas, The 
study e~ate State of Richmon4, 68-69. JUdith Walkowitz's 
indic O prostitution in nineteenth-century England port ~tes that prostitutes tended to concentrate around 
the B ~w~s of Southampton and Plymouth, in order to serve 
Victor~tish sailors. Judith R. walkowitz, Prostitution and 
Cambr:~an Societ : women class and the state (1980; repr. 
lettei gei Eng.: Cambridge university Press, 1983)· A 
Virgir.wr1tten bY a Michigan soldier on duty in Alexandria, 
seven~ia, .in 1863, places the number of brothels there at 
not y-five. Richmond must have had at least as many, if 
Volumore. Charles E. Grisson, 26th Reg•t., Michigan 
Fortnteers, to E.N. Wilcox, Suffolk, Virginia, 2 June 1863, 
grat ~ar Museum and park, Alexandria, Virginia. I am 
abou~ ul_to Museum Director wanda DoWell for telling me 
dis this letter. Regarding the incidence of venereal 
est7ase among Northern soldiers, Rudolph Kampmeier 
10
9 
i;ates that there were 73,382 cases of syphilis and 
Uni' 97 cases of gonorrhea among white soldiers in the Kaman ~rmies between June 1862 and J\lJle 1866° Rudolph H. 
177~~eier, "Venereal Disease in th';' united states ~rmy, 
19
82
) ~
9
oo," sexually Transmitted D1seaseJ; 9. 2, (Apr~l - June 
Sold'. l00-08. earring recurrences or cases 1n which 
thatiers contracted both syphilis and gonorrhea, this means 
SUff o~e in every el~ union soldiers might have been 
cou ering from venereal disease, although not all of it, of 
rse, was the result of visiting prostitutes. 
ichmond Dispatch, 13 MaY 1862. 63R• 
167 
conve yances to 
engage in sexual commerce to such an extent 
that "[r] espectable ladies are actually afraid to be seen 
dread of being mistaken for 
in a public hack, from the 
e painted wretches."64 thes , 
BY 1863, prostitutes had 
invaded the 
they shared 
dress circle of the Richmond Theatre, where 
the private boxes with confederate officers.65 
!n August 1 864, the Examiner reported that "gaudy 
Unblush· ing strumpets" strolled 
11 among the decent women and 
in Capitol square, listening to martial music ch' ildren" . . 
1 e leaning on the arms of Confederate soldiers,
66 
In Wh"l 
the brothels 
lining Main and carY streets in the eastern 
city, confederate soldiers broke up furniture 
end of the 
sionally engaged in murderous brawls. William 
and occa . 
Downe 6 and Patrick Kelley, both soldiers in Read's 
64R. ichmond Enquirer, 21 October 1862. 
65R. Tradit' ichmond Examinei;:, 27 April, 2 June 1863, 
Permit~onally, tacit agreements with many theater owners 
theat ed prostitutes to claim the •third tier" of most 
custo:rs as a placed where theY could meet prospective 
Maril ers or entertain theinsel\1es on their "off hours." 
New yynn Wood Hill, Their sisters' Kee ers: Prostitution in 
~f~rk.city, 1s10-1a?Q (Berkeley: Uni\1ersity of 
173_
75
rnia Press, 1993), 199-206; stansell, city of women, 
Third', According to Marilynn Hill, attitudes about the 
the Tier as the prostitutes domain were on the decline by 
moree
nd of the 1ssos, and theater managers by this time lf th~requently ejected the women or barred their entry, 
Prost~s was the case in Richmond, the presence of for ritutes in the dress circle, which was usuallY reserved 
Rich espectable ladies must have been a real affront to 
in t~ond society. Richmond prostitutes who were arrested 
Were e theater and made to appear before the Mayor's Court 
time frequently fined as much as $200 to $300, At other 
s, the theater manager simply ejected the women. 
66R, ichmond Examine.I., 22 August 1864. 
.Artillery, 
were killed in a brothel fight on May 9
1 
1862; Louisian , 
a soldier James Kelly was stabbed to death with a 
Stilett ' 0 ln February 1864 in a "low brothel" on East Main 
between 23rd and 24th.67 
168 
Richmond Mayor Joseph Mayo was appalled at the growing 
number of 
Prostitutes thronging to the city and, in 1862, 
attempted 
to curtail their spread through a strict 
application of 
the city's vagrancy laws. In 1863, Mayo 
stepped up his campaign by ordering the city police to 
arrest 1 
a 1 prostitutes streetwalking in Capitol Square. 68 
'I'hese 
· measures led to the arrest of a number of the city's 
" 
PUblic Women," but they also flooded the city's overloaded 
court 
system. Many cases were dismissed for lack of 
ev· 
ldence, while others resulted in fines that were hastily 
Paid 
by Women eager to return to their profitable trade. 69 
By January 1864, prostitution in Richmond had become so 
great 
a Problem that a separate department was set aside in 
Castle Thunder (a prison housing confederate deserters, 
Au 
67
.Richmond Examiner, 13 June 1861; 17 February, 22 
gust 1864; Richmond Dispatch, 12 May 1862. 
68
Richmond Examiner, 27 April 1863. 
th . 69Many prostitutes used aliases or frequently changed 
Ofeir Places of residence, situations which ~dded a layer 
E~a c?nfusion to the adjudication process. Richmond 
, 27 April 1863. 
169 Uni · 
onist sympathizers, free negroes, and those convicted of 
esp· 
1.onage) for the city's "depraved and abandoned women."70 
Al though the mayor's efforts succeeded in removing a 
number of street~alkers ' 1 · 
" from c1rcu ation, brothels 
continued to flourish. Hospitals filled with convalescent 
soldiers 
, miles from home and desperate for a little 
femin' 
ine comfort, often provided an important source of 
business. In May 
Y . .M CA 
1862, for example, the managers of the 
· • • hospital for sick and wounded soldiers complained 
to the city's provost marshal about a group of "lewd 
f e:rnales'' 
operating a brothel directly across the street. 
Pro:rn the brothel's windows and doors, the women gestured 
a
nd displayed themselves "in a half-nude state," 
divert [. 
1.ngJ the convalescent soldiers' attention "from 
the· 
ir legitimate business of sickness.~ A few of the 
Patients ventured across the street, returning a few hours 
later 1.'n 1 
a drunken stupor. 7 
Some madams who catered to Confederate officers and 
h' 19hly-placed government officials found prostitution to be 
an extremely profitable occupation in a military enclave 
like R' 1 lchmond. Josephine DeMerritt, for examp e, was a 
t,Joma 
n of considerable means and influence who was able to 
Go 70.Richmond Examiner, 19 January 1864; Alan Lawrence 
Prfden, "Castle Thunder: The confederate Provo~t Marshal's 
lg son, 1865-65" (M.A. thesis, University of Richmond, 8 O) • 
71R · . 862 Jchmond Dispatch, 6 May 1 · 
avoid a prison sentence through the use of high-priced 
lawyers and an entourage of well-placed "material 
witnesses." 72 In 1863 she ~wned three slaves valued at 
$ 3 ,600 and personal property amounting to an additional 
$3,ooo. 73 Other women, especially streetwalking 
prostitutes, were probably forced into the occupation by 
sheer economic need. Fourteen-year-old refugee Eliza 
Dickinson, for example, roamed the streets of Richmond in 
April 1862, to earn a living for herself and her two 
170 
72
commonwealth v. DeMerritt, et. al, Richmond City, 
Hustings Court suit Papers, July 1863 term, LV. DeMerritt 
appeared in court several times during 1862 and 1863, but 
her connections to influential men in the city, including 
the former treasurer of the Virginia Medical Society and 
the City's fire chief, meant that the prosecution usually 
dropped the charges, or else DeMerritt was ordered to pay a 
fine. 
73Virginia, Personal Property Tax Records, Richmond 
City, 1863, LV. Several white brothel operators 
encountered treatment similar to DeMerritt's. Frances 
Matthews, Margaret Hamilton, Belle Jones, Margaret Taffy, 
Anna Thompson, and Alice Ashley--all white women--were 
either found "not guilty" or received nolle prosegui 
judgments, suggesting that either the court was too 
preoccupied with more pressing matters, or else had decided 
in favor of leniency in cases of sexual commerce by white 
women. Commonwealth v. Belle Jones, January 1863 term; 
Commonwealth v. Margaret P. Taffey, March 1863 term; 
Commonwealth v. Alice Ashley, March 1863 term; Commonwealth 
v. Margaret Hamilton, July 1863 term, Commonwealth v. 
Frances Matthews, July 1863 term; Commonwealth v. Anna 
Thompson, n . d. 1863 term, all in Hustings Court Suit 
Papers, Richmond City, LV. Black madams were not treated 
equally, however. Lucy smith, "a -fashionable free 
negress," was stripped and given twenty-five lashes in 
August 1862 for keeping "a house of evil fame, shame, and 
reputation." Richmond EngLlirer, 15 August 1862. 
171 
younger brothers, after her widowed mother died shortly 
after the family arrived in the city. 74 
Military rule under Federal Reconstruction did little 
to stem the tide of Richmond's sexual commerce , in part 
because the city continued to be a military capital overrun 
with men. Eight weeks after the city's surrender, white 
and black prostitutes were perched in the rear windows of 
the Virginia Towing company, joking and laughing with 
prisoners across the street in Libby Prison. To the 
outrage of at least one eyewit~ess, the Libby inmates 
responded by "frequently ... eKposing their persons in the 
most indecent manner.tt 75 
Libby at this time contained southern soldiers 
incarcerated by the Federal go~ernment, so it might be 
possible to conclude that the Richmond courtezans outside 
the prison were providing a little entertainment for the 
inmates as a demonstration of southern solidarity. But 
many more prostitutes whose business sense and desire for 
economic survival were stronger than their patriotism 
simply exchanged their grey-coated wartime customers for 
74oickinson's father had died some time earlier. 
Richmond Enquirer, 29 April 1862. 
75 E.G. Westcott, Adams Express Company, Richmond, to 
the Provost Marshal, 10 June 1875, Isaac Howell Carrington 
Papers, DU. 
172 
Reconstruction clients wearing U.S. Army blue.76 "The 
Yankee officers are in the constant habit of riding out on 
horseback, and in open barouches with women of the pave," 
fumed Lucy Walton Fletcher in July 1865. 77 "There is a 
woman by the name of Phillips that keeps a house of I. fame 
and has balls most every night in the week," complained 
Mrs. Catherine Fall in a letter written a month later. 
"The neighbors and my self have informed the Provost 
Marsial (sic] of such doings and the balls they have been 
having and he said he was going to have them stoped (sic]. 
The gards (sic] and even the captains attend them and he 
has not put a stop to it yet. 1178 
Fall's observation that lnion troops did little to 
curtail prostitution in Richmond was probably accurate. 
Accusations that Union soldiers were cavorting with the 
city's "fallen women" continued throughout the period of 
76Mary Massey has observed that prostitutes travelling 
with Confederate troops on battle maneuvers seldom 
evacuated the field with retreating Confederates. Instead, 
they simply waited for Union soldiers to arrive. According 
to one eyewitness, they were "as !illing to exte~d their 
gentle favors to the National officers as to their late 
Rebel protectors." Quoted in Massey, Bonnet Brigades, 73, 
fn. 7. 
77Entry dated 3 July 1865, Diary for April 27, 1865 -
1894, Lucy Muse (Walton) Fletcher Papers, Mss. 441-01-1, 
DU. 
78Mrs. Catherine Fall Letter, Mss. 2 F1902al, VHS. 
- - · - ----
173 
Federal occupation. 79 On January 16, 1868, for example, 
nine white and mulatto prostitutes, including Emma Wilson, 
Adelaide Johnson, and Carrie Jones, were arrested in a 
bawdy house operated by a mulatto madam, With them were 
eleven White men, including eight soldiers in army blue. 80 
In January 1870, a police raid on a "dance hall" owned by 
John C. Clarke resulted in the arrest of five United States 
soldiers, four civilian males, and ten black 
prostitutes. 81 Although some prostitutes probably left 
the city with the Federal forces in the spring of 1870, the 
number of indigenous prostitutes that remained had become 
so great that, in 1874, a group of reform-minded men and 
women organized the Magdalen Society of the City of 
79Marilynn Hill's study of prostitution in New York 
City does not address prostitutes' relations with the 
military and neither Hill's study nor Anne Butler's 
examination of prostitutes in the American West deals with 
a~y.potential changes to prostitution as a resu~t of the 
Civil War. Anne M. Butler, Daughters of Joy, sisters of 
Misery: Prostitutes in the Anerican West, 1865-90 (Urbana: 
University of Chicago Press, 1985), James McPherson does 
not discuss the subject either in Ordeal by Fire or Battle 
Cry of Freedom, and George Rable's discussion of Richmond 
prostitutes in Civil Wars (pp. 194-95) adds nothing new. 
Drew Faust makes only two references to prostitution in 
Mothers of Invention: the mention of Benjamin Butler's 
General Order No. 28 (p. 212 ) , and a reference to a 
discussion between and husband and wife about him visiting 
"fancy women" while in the army (pp. 124-25). 
80Richmond Enquirer and Examiner, 16 January 1868, 
81Richmond Whig, 8 January 1870. 
Richmond, the first association for the reform and 
redemption of prostitutes in the South. 82 
Conclusion 
174 
The wartime demand for uniforms and bullets led to an 
expansion of seamstressing, and opened up a new line of 
work for laboring women as Confederate munitions workers, 
but, unfortunately, neither of these occupations fared well 
in the postwar capital. Cartridge making as a profession 
for working-class Richmond women ended with the surrender 
of Lee's Army and the burning of the Brown's Island lab,. 
and the wages paid to seamstresses in the postbellum 
capital declined. 
In contrast, Richmond's postbellum rebuilding boom 
spelled a period of economic security for some of the 
city's white working-class men, especially those at the 
Tredegar mill, or artisans skilled in the building trades. 
Although postbellum wages never equalled those commanded of 
Richmond's inflationary wartime economy, carpenters, 
plasterers, and masons were paid between $3.00 and $11.00 
daily, while white and black molders, patternmakers, and 
machinists earned between $2.50 and $3.00. Rollers at 
82Magdalen Association of the City of Richmond, Va., 
Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Magdalen Association of 
Richmond. Va. (Richmond: Dispatch Printing House, 1898), 5; 
William W. Parker, President, spring Street Home for Fallen 
Women, Richmond, to Richmond common Council, 25 February 
1878, Richmond City Papers, Minutes of the Common Council, 
Bundle dated 1875 to 1880, LV. 
175 
Tredegar made between $150.00 and $175.oo per month and 
PUddlers in 1870 were earning $6.00 daily. 83 
More important than the salaries they commanded is the 
fact that these occupations flourished in immediate 
Postbellum Richmond and, thus, offered a measure of 
financial protection for working-class women fortunate 
enough to be married to men employed in any facet of 
Richmond's postbellum rebuilding boom. But for many single 
working-class women and the many working-class widows who 
were now the sole means of support for their families, no 
comparable postbellum prosperity occurred. 
83Leslie Winston smith "Richmond during Presidential 
Reconstruction," 206-07; Richmond Whig. 15 January 1870. 
For a fascinating discussion of ironmaking in the 
nineteenth century, see David Montgomery, The Fall.of the 
House of Labor: The Workplace. the State. and American 
Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 1987), especially Chapter 1. During the war, the 
Tredegar plant produced six to eight small, and six large 
guns weekly, as well as locomotives and all the "iron work 
connected with the construction of railroads, sugar and saw 
mills, plating machines, ship spikes, iron and brass 
castings, portable and stationary steam engines, machinery 
for plantation purposes, circular saw plates, carriage 
axles, and tool and machinery of every shape and size." In 
1860, it listed eight hundred employees. Although it 
closed briefly during the 1870s, it eventually reopened on 
a smaller scale. Richmond Enquirer, 24 September 1861; 
Schedule of Manufacturing, 1860 Census for Richmond, 
Virginia, NARA; Sanford, A Century of Commerce, 40. 
CHAPTER 5 
"s ISTERS OF THE CAPITAL": WHITE WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 
IN CONFEDERATE RICHMOND 
While several thousand Richmond women engaged in paid 
vlOrk f 
or the Confederate government, many more joined 
Voluntary 
associations aimed at assisting their new nation. 
Women's . 
wartime associations delivered important services 
to the 
Confederacy at the same time that they provided 
~ich 
mo
nd 
women with a means of expressing their political 
support through 
their domestic industry. Over the past 
tv.renty 
Years, historians have assiduously documented 
Norther 
n Women's organizational development, especially 
the 
antebellum period. But they have written relatively 
1· ltt1e that describes and contextualizes the voluntary 
organ· 
lzations formed by southern women or that compares 
them t 0 associations created by their Northern 
for 
count 
erparts.l In addition, little scholarship for either 
Vo1u ~The Scholarship on Northern women's organizations is 
are minous. Among the more important works on this subject 
in u:ancy F. Cott, The Bonds of womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" 
Onivew ~n land 1780-1835 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale 
Ori .rs1ty Press 1977). Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: 
la50
1
ns of Ameri~an Feminism The Woman and the Cit 1800-
~. (New York: oxford university Press, 1978); Barbara 
Evan 1: ~Pstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, . 
lism and Tern erance in Nineteenth-Centur America 
176 
177 
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981); 
Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American 
Domesticity (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973); Mary P. Ryan, 
Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, 
New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University 
Press, 1981); Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast, 
and the Militant Woman: A Case study in Sex Roles and 
Social Stress in Jacksonian America," American Quarterly 23 
(1971), 562-84: reprinted in Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, 
Disorderly conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 90-108; Eleanor 
Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement 
in the United states, (1959; repr. Cambridge, Mass. Belknap 
Press, 1979), all subsequent citations are to this edition; 
Lori D. Ginzberg, women and the work of Benevolence: 
Morality, Politics. and Class in the Nineteenth-Century 
United States (New Haven, conn.: Yale University Press, 
1990); Jacob Rader Marcus, The American Jewish Woman, 1654-
1 9 80 (New York: KTAV Publishing, 1981), 47-51; Mary P. 
Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-
1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university Press, 1990); and 
Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison 
Reform in America. 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor: University of 
Michigan Press, 1984). For Northern black women's 
nineteenth-century groups, see Dorothy Sterling, ed., We 
Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century 
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); Gerda Lerner, "Community 
Work of Black Club Women," in The Majority Finds Its Past: 
Placing Women in History, by Gerda Lerner. (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1979), 83-93; Anne .Firer Scott, 
"Most Invisible of All: Black Women's Voluntary 
Associations," Journal of southern History 56.1 (1990): 3-
22; and Anne Firer Scott, Natural Allies: women's 
Associations in American History (Urbana: University of 
Chicago Press, 1991). In addition to Scott's Natural 
Allies, information on white southern women's organizations 
can be found in Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of 
Petersburg: status and Culture in a southern Town, 1784-
1860 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985); Sarah Hunter Graham, 
"Woman Suffrage in Virginia: The Equal suffrage League and 
Pressure-Group Politics," Virginia Magazine of History and 
Biography 101.2 (April 1993): 227-250; Marjorie Spruill 
Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the 
Woman Suffrage Movement in the southern states (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1993); Angie Parrott, "'Love Makes 
Memory Eternal': The United Daughters of the Confederacy in 
Richmond, Virginia, 1897-1920," in The Edge of the south: 
Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia, Edward L. Ayers and 
John c. Willis, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of 
Virginia, 1991), 219-38; LeeAnn Whites, "Women and the Lost 
1J 
I' 
'I 
· I 
178 
group of women traces the development of wartime groups, or 
the ways in which the civil War altered the design or 
strategies of groups formed earlier in the nineteenth 
century. 2 
Cause or 'Stand by Your Man: The Ladies Memorial 
Association and the Reconstruction of White Manhood in the 
New South" (Paper presented at the Ninth Berkshire 
Conference on the History of Women, 11-13 June 1993, Vassar 
College, Poughkeepsie, New York); Elizabeth R. Varon, "'We 
Mean to Be Counted': White Women and Politics in Antebellum 
Virginia" (Ph.D. diss, Yale University, 1993); Elizabeth 
Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and 
Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia," Journal of American 
History 82.2 (September 1993): 494-521; Sandra Gioia 
Treadway, "A Most Brilliant Woman: Anna White Bedeker and 
the First Woman Suffrage Association in Virginia," Virginia 
Cavalcade 43.4 (spring 1994): 166-77; and Amy Feely, 
"Southern Lady Meets New woman: women of the Confederate 
Memorial Literary society and the Lost Cause in Richmond, 
Virginia" (Paper presented at the Northern Virginia 
Community College conference on women of the Nineteenth-
century Chesapeake, 15 November 1996, Annandale, Virginia). 
For Southern black women's organizations, see Elsa Barkley 
Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the 
Independent Order of st. Luke," in unequal Sisters: A 
Multicultural Reader in u.s. women's History, Ellen Carol 
DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1990), 
208-23; Anne Firer Scott Natural Allies; Peter Rachleff, 
Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890 (Urbana: University of 
Chicago Press, 1989); Rosyln Terborg-Penn, "African-
American Women's Networks in the Anti-Lynching Crusade," in 
Gender, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, Noralee 
Frankel and Nancy s. Dye eds. (Lexington: University Press 
of Kentucky, 1991), 148-~l; Nancy A. Hewitt, "Politicizing 
Domesticity: Anglo, Black, and Latin Women in Tampa's 
Progressive Movements II in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform 
in the Progressive Er~, Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, 
eds. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 24-
41; and Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball, "Mapping 
the Terrain of Black Richmond," Journal of Urban History 
21.3 (March 1995): 296-346. 
2Anne Scott has called for this work to be undertaken 
in Natural Allies, 183. 
Like their 
orga . n1.zat' 1.onal 
the be . 
179 
0 
e North, Richmond women's 
sisters t th 
work did not begin with the civil war. 
From 
ginning of th · e nineteenth century, white women in 
of ref ewhere throughout Virginia formed a variety R' lchmond and els 
arm-minded of associations whose agendas mirrored those 
orga . n1.zations Period created by Northern women during the same 
of time have · Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Friedman 
sug gested th t Polit' a southern women's organizational 
lcs lagged the' behind those of Northern women and that 
ir reform rel g' activism was frequentlY limited both by 
ious and over communal expectations, as well as by an 
relat sire to avoid involvement with any cause Whelming de. 
ed to the abolitionism. 3 Neither of these seems to be 
case. thro in Richmond, although Richmond women, like women 
Ughout 
Of 
the South I 
subordinat· ion by a 
were often subjected to a high degree 
southern patriarchY intent on keeping 
3 Hi sehold· eth Fox-Genovese, within the Plantation Hou Elizab E.ll: Uni~eBl~ck and White womeil of the old south (Chapel 
th Friedma rs1ty of North carolina press, 1988); and Jean 
~ng n! The Enclosed Garden: women and communit in 
su,»orth ~!ica~ south, 1030-19@ (Chapel Hill: university 
conanne L rolina Press 1985)· ~nne piror scott and 
Var~lusioebsock disagre~ with pox-Genovese's and Friedman's 
Of lety 
0
~ 5 • arguin~ that southern.women engaged in.a , 
~etthe nin reform-minded organizations from the beginning 
~eteenth century. see Lebsock, Xlle Free women of 
~pecially chapter seven; and ~nne Firor scott, 
•h Scott• ies. The evidence for Richmond supports Lebsock 
ihtown, R' 
5 
contention. ~s Elizabeth varon and others have 
., e ichmo d · · t · · t 9ra1 n women's organizational ac ivi Y was a 
part of the antebellum community. 
180 
not only white women but also slaves in their respective 
and respectful places. 4 
In 1805, Richmond women formed the Female Humane 
Association of the City of Richmond for the care of white 
female orphans. During the 1810s and 1820s, they were 
active in female chapters of the American Anti-Slavery 
society--an African colonization group--and, between 1820 
and 1850, they created women's auxiliaries to several 
temperance associations, including the Martha 
Washingtonians and the Sisters of Temperance. 5 In 1836, a 
group of female reformers formed the Union Benevolent 
society, an organization that aided needy Richmond women by 
4Anne Firor Scott, "Women's Perspective on the 
Patriarchy in the 1850s," in Half Sisters of History: 
Southern Women and the American Past, Catherine Clinton, 
ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994}, 76-92. 
5Marie Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia, 
and Its People (Chapel Hill: university of North Carolina 
Press, 1994}, 116-118; Elizabeth R. Varon, "'We Mean to Be 
Counted,'" especially Part one; Patricia c. Click, The 
Spirit of the Times: Amusements in Nineteenth-Century 
Baltimore, Norfolk, and Richmond (Charlottesville: 
University Press of Virginia, 1989}, 78-81. Although many 
in the South worried about the drunkenness of Confederate 
soldiers, women's ecumenical temperance organizations 
disappear from the records during the war. In 1882, 
Richmond women organized a chapter of the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union in Shockoe Hill, under the leadership of 
Mrs. J.W. Pleasants. By 1883, they were joined by a Church 
Hill chapter, led by Mrs. J.W. Williams. In the later 
1880s and 1890s, Richmond women--Pleasants, Williams, 
Margaret Crenshaw and Mrs. William Maybee--filled posts in 
the Virginia state organization. Mrs. Howard M. Hoge, 
"Virginia Women's Christian Temperance Union," Mss. 7:3 
HV5297 VB:1, VHS. 
-- -~ 
181 
selling their handiwork at a local depository. 6 And in 
December 1844, Richmond women were among those who gathered 
in the city's First Presbyterian Church to form the 
Virginia Association of Ladies for Erecting a Statue to 
Henry Clay, the organization whose efforts bore fruit the 
year before the Civil War began. 7 
But although women in antebellum Richmond engaged in 
organizational activity, the American Civil War led to a 
proliferation of wartime associations whose goals, in some 
ways, transcended those of earlier groups, in that they 
were aimed at the more overtly political-military 
objectives of promoting Southern independence or defending 
the Confederate capital from enemy attack. These new 
objectives led to a temporary redefinition of gender 
expectations for Southern women from individuals in need of 
protection to coworkers with southern men in this war for 
southern nationalism. In this way, these wartime groups 
bear a striking resemblance to associations formed by 
female patriots during the American Revolution. 8 Indeed, 
many southern women and men considered themselves the 
6varon, "'We Mean to Be counted,'" 31-33. 
7Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too," 511. 
8 Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and 
Ideology in the American Revolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 
1980), 39-41; 99-113. 
-- ·-~-- - ---
182 
rightful ideological and political heirs of those American 
revolutionaries. 9 
At the same time that the Civil war led to the 
creation of new organizations and a new sense of women's 
wartime duty, it placed tremendous burdens on women to care 
for the poorer and more disadvantaged portions of the 
population, a segment of the community which grew 
exponentially as the city became the refuge for individuals 
fleeing Union armies. In the straitened economy of the 
wartime capital, both old and new groups ministered to the 
uprooted and newly impoverished, and competed for funding. 
Many wartime groups were ad hoc organizations that 
vanished well before the war drew to a close in the spring 
of 1865. Although few records of these wartime 
associations have survived, references scattered in 
diaries, letters, and Richmond newspapers reveal a lively 
network of activity--organizational and informal--
throughout the Richmond community. 
Equipping the Army 
Within the first two weeks of the war, women 
throughout the North and south organized themselves into 
9Lucy Fletcher, for example, on several occasions drew 
parallels between Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and 
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. Entry dated 16 October. 
1864, Keystone Diary; entry dated 20 May 1864, Loose Diary 
Sheets, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. Also entry 
dated 13 April 1861, Diary of an Unknown Diarist, Valentine 
Museum, Richmond, Virginia; 
183 
more than twenty thousand voluntary associations. 10 In 
both regions, many joined sewing circles to make troop 
uniforms, thereby undercutting the labor of working-class 
women who needed to be paid for such work. Less than two 
weeks after Virginia seceded from the union, twenty-two-
year-old Abby Manly Gwathmey was hard at work with a group 
of Richmond women sewing uniform shirts and jackets. "Mrs. 
Wayt and myself with the assistance of two or three ladies 
made 6 large jackets from 12 o'clock Wednesday to Saturday 
evening," Gwathmey wrote to her parents in South Carolina. 
"Don't you think that was doing right well for persons that 
did not know anything about such work? 1111 In the early 
flush of wartime mobilization, thousands of Southern women 
like Gwathmey took up their needles and thread or sat down 
at sewing machines to equip the southern armies. 12 Elite 
Southern women whose "[f]ingers ... had never plied 
anything stouter than an embroidery needle, tugg[ed] away 
10sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women 
in America (New York: Free Press, 1989), 114~ 
11Abby Manly Gwathmey, Richmond, to her parents, 29 
April 1861, Abby Manly Gwathmey Letter, ESBL; emphasis in 
the original. Abby Gwathmey was a member of a prominent 
Baptist family. Her brother, clergyman Basil Manly Jr. was 
founder and president of the Richmond Female Institute. 
Abby's husband, Dr. William Henry Gwathmey, was a surgeon 
during the war at the 4th street Baptist Hospital. Louise 
Manly, "The Manly Family," VBHS, 309-10. 
12Richmond Examiner, 10 December 1861. 
184 
laboriously on heavy cloth, occasionally putting in a 
sleeve hindpart before or a pocket upside down." 13 
By early June, Ellen Mordecai and the women in her 
sewing circle had completed seventy-five tents, while Betty 
Herndon Maury had worked with others, including her cousin 
and her aunt, to sew eighty overcoats for a Georgia 
company. 14 By the fall, Richmonder Catherine Hopley had 
bought up all the city's yarn to be knitted into socks and 
gloves. 15 As Confederate troops first fell on Virginia 
soil during the fighting at Manassas, patriotic Richmond 
women ·formed the Soldiers' Aid society of Virginia, which 
published appeals in the Richmond newspapers urging women 
to assist the hospitals by collecting medical supplies and 
by providing a cadre of volunteer workers. 16 Fifty-one-
year-old Emma Mordecai, a member of one of the city's most 
prominent Jewish families, was typical of the thousands of 
13catherine Mary Powell (Noland) Cochran Recollection, 
VHS. 
14Ellen Mordecai, Richmond, to Alfred Mordecai, 
Philadelphia, 6 June 1861, Ellen Mordecai Papers, LV; 
entries dated 4 June and 29 August 1861, Betty Herndon 
Maury Diary, LC. 
15Louly [Mrs. D. Giraud] wright, A Southern Girl in 
'61: The Wartime Memories of a confederate Senator's 
Daughter (New York: Doubleday, Page, & company,.1905), 50. 
Most knitters attached tiny slips of paper bearing the 
women's names and a few encouraging words of cheer. Fannie 
A. Beers, Memories (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1890), 
50. 
16Richmond Enquirer, 2 August 1861. This organization 
was founded by Nancy Bierne Macfarland and Ellen Ruffin. 
185 
Richmond women who heeded the call. By the spring of 1864, 
Mordecai was making regular donations of buttermilk, 
chicken soup, ice cream, rice custard, and frozen lemonade 
to soldiers in three Richmond hospitals within walking 
distance of her home. 17 
Churches were frequently the hubs of women's voluntary 
work and often served as meeting places for their wartime 
associations. Evangelical women at centenary Methodist 
Church in Shockoe Hill made cornshuck mattresses, cooked 
soup, and rolled bandages, while others at Third Street 
Presbyterian combined praying with knitting socks and 
scraping bandage lint. 18 Jewish women at Beth Ahabah met 
in the synagogue basement to scrape lint and make clothes 
for Confederate soldiers. 19 Mary Williams Taylor and her 
17Entries dated 26, 29 May; 9, 17 June 1864, Emma 
Mordecai Diary, VHS. Mordecai volunteered her time at 
Winder, Seabrook, and st. Francis de Sales hospitals. 
18Edith Denny White, The Elect Ladies of Centenary: 
The Story of the Organi zation and Development of the 
Woman's Work of Centenary Methodist Church, Richmond, 
Virginia, through One Hundred and Fifty Years, 1810-1960 
(n.p.: Women's Society of Christian service, 1964), 13. 
This is a brief history published privately by the church's 
women's society. "Third street Presbyterian Church: 150th 
Anniversary History, 1835-1985" (Paper presented in honor 
of the church's 150th anniversary in 1985), 1, LV. No 
description of scraping bandage lint can be found; but 
presumably this activity involved scraping the nap or 
fibers from worn fabrics with a sharp implement, such as a 
knife edge or a piece of broken glass. This lint was used 
to form a soft matting for bandages, especially those 
covering amputations. 
19Herbert T. Ezekiel and Gaston Lichtenstein, The 
History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 to 1917 
(Richmond: Herbert T. Ezekiel, Printer, 1917), 263. 
186 
daughter, Frances Taylor Dickinson, labored from May to 
August 1861 with a number of other women from Grace Baptist 
Church, sewing uniform shirts and trousers for soldiers 
from North and South Carolina. over the course of about 
two months, the Grace Baptist women made more than one 
thousand shirts and five hundred pairs of trousers. 20 
When the city was under threat of Federal attack in April 
1862, a massive city-wide effort by women of various 
denominations netted a total of 100,000 sandbags to be used 
for erecting an earthwork defense on the city's western 
boundary. 21 In the relatively non-industrialized South, 
20Mary Williams Taylor, Richmond, to Charles Elisha 
Taylor, 11, 14 May, 19 May, 5 June, 7 August, and 2 n.m., 
1861, Charles Elisha Taylor Papers, UVA. The Taylors were 
a prominent family in Baptist Richmond. Mary Taylor's 
father, James Barnett Taylor was a clergyman member of the 
Southern Baptist Convention and served as secretary to the 
Foreign Mission Board; he was also a trustee of Richmond 
College and a founder of the Virginia Baptist seminary. 
Her sister, Frances, was married to Alfred E. Dickinson, a 
co-editor of the Religious Herald and the superintendent of 
the Baptist Colporterage and Sunday School. Her sister, 
Jane, was the wife of the Rev. John L. Prichard, of 
Wilmington, North Carolina, who died No~ember 13, 1862 of 
yellow fever. Her brothers James (Jemmie) and George were 
both Baptist clergy, with George serving as chaplain of 
Stonewall Jackson's Corps. After the war, Charles Taylor, 
who served in Company F of the 1st Virginia Volunteers, 
became president of Wake Forest college. Mary later 
married Luther Dickinson, a physician, and Alfred 
Dickinson's brother. Mary W. Dickinso1;, ','T1:1e Diarr of Mary 
W. Taylor," w. Harrison Daniel, ed. V1rg1n1a Baptist 
Register 19 (1980): 916-38. 
21Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
Refugee (1867; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1972), 107-8 
(All subsequent citations are to this edition.); interview 
with Mrs. Francis Giles (Mrs. A.D. Townes), quoted in 
Elizabeth Wright Weddell, 2 vols. st. Paul's Church, 
Richmond. Virginia: Its Historic Years and Memorials 
187 
women's contributions such as these were hardly symbolic, 
but rather represented important practical contributions to 
the Confederate cause. 
St. Paul's Church, the home church of both Robert E. 
Lee and Jefferson Davis, was a veritable nerve center of 
energy. By May 1862, the women of st. Paul's sewing 
Society employed ten to twenty seamstresses, who worked 
side-by-side with the st. Paul ladies, making sandbags, 
mattresses, overcoats, haversacks, uniforms, underclothing, 
and sheets in the Church's lecture room. 22 By July, the 
st. Paul seamstresses had produced nearly two thousand bed 
sacks, pillow cases, and sheets. 23 
Through these groups, women's routine domestic acts 
became political acts, too, as they had nearly ninety years 
before during the American Revolution, when patriot women 
boycotted tea and coffee, wove homespun fabric, and sewed 
(Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1931), vol. 1, 178-79; John 
H. Worsham, One of Jackson's Foot cavalry, James I. 
Robertson, ed. (Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer Press, 
1961), 191-2; Dickinson, "The Diary of Mary W. Taylor:" 
928; Sally Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War: Four 
Years of Personal Observations (New York: G.W. Carleton, 
1867: repr. New York: Time-Life Books, 1983), 112. 
22Richmond Examiner, 29 May 1862, quoted in Weddell, 
st. Paul's Church. Richmond. Virginia, vol. 1, 182. 
23Mrs. George w. Munford, Richmond, to Thomas H. 
Ellis, 13 July 1862, quoted in Weddell, st. Paul's Church, 
Richmond. Virginia, vol. 1, 183. 
188 
uniform shirts as a show of patriotism. 24 By 1862, 
Confederate women's homespun clothing had become the basis 
for a patriotic song written by Kentuckian Carrie Bell 
Sinclair and sung to the tune of "The Bonnie Blue Flag," a 
song that enjoyed great popularity throughout the 
Confederacy, and which was frequently sung by Confederate 
soldiers preparing for battle. 25 The first verse of this 
song summed up the attitude of many confederate women who 
took great pride in the domestic ingenuity as a symbol of 
their patriotism. 
Oh, yes, I am a southern girl, 
And glory to the name; 
I boast of it with greater pride 
Than glittering wealth or fame; 
I envy not the Northern girl 
Her robes of beauty rare. 
Though diamonds deck her snowy neck 
And pearls bestud her hair. 
Hurrah, hurrah! 
For the Sunny South so dear; 
Three cheers for the homespun dress 
That Southern ladies wear. 26 
While some Richmond groups no doubt continued to 
provide Confederate soldiers with much needed clothing and 
24Kerber, Women of the Republic. souther~ newspapers 
drew on this ideological heritage in their claim to be the 
true heirs of the revolutionary patriotism of Jefferson and 
Madison. 
25carrie Bell Sinclair, "The Homespun Dress," ESBL. 
26Authorship of the lyrics is unclear. one a~count 
credits Carrie Bell Sinclair with writing them, while an 
unidentified newspaper clipping says they were the wo~k of 
a young Alabama soldier who died at Perryville, Carrie 
Bell Sinclair Papers, ESBL. 
189 
suppl' ies , during th attent' e war other organizations shifted their 
indigent task of succoring the city's growing ion t award the 
8 
population B en · Y 1864, women of the city's Union 
e.volent torn, Society had joined forces with RichJllond men to 
the 
the 
Richmond Soup 
Association which, during and after 
war d' 
h· ' istributed ~lchm soup to needy white and black 
oncters kitch for twenty-five cents per quart from the 
en in th la
83 
e basement of th• Metropolitan Hall,
27 
BY 
, sever l Ri a hundred Richmond women met to organize the 
chinonct E b Xchange for 
ased· on 
9oa1 Of 
Women's work, which operated a store 
the u. 
nion Benevolent society's original antebellum 
Selli ~ m ng the domestic products of destitute Richmond 
en, an im activity that had taken on even greater 
Porta nee , many in Richmond given the impoverished condition of 
elderl w· ia
80 
Y idows and spinsters in the 1s1os and 
S. 28 
As women. · met and sewed for th• confederate armies, 
Shared . information about th• war that helped shape 
Building Gun~ 
190 
their critique of its progress as well as the vulnerability 
• • t II 
Of their communi y. We are intensely . anxious," Judith 
~cGui·re wrote in April 1862 h . 
r~ wen Union and Confederate 
Soldiers faced each other nea y k · r or town, Virginia. "[O)ur 
conversation while busily sewing [sandbags) at St. Paul's 
Lecture-Room, is only of war. We hear of so many horrors 
committed by the enemy in the Valley--houses searched and 
robbed, horses taken, sheep, cattle, etc. killed and 
carried off, servants deserting their homes, churches 
t d I 1129 desecra e. 
~ 
A few weeks earlier, a "large assembly" 
of white Richmond women alarmed by persistent rumors about 
Federal warships on the James River had met in the basement 
of the Broad Street Methodist Church to organize the 
Ladies' Defense Association, a group whose primary purpose 
was to raise money for building ironclad gunboats to patrol 
the river. 30 
29Judith McGuire, Diary of a southern Refugee during 
~he war, 107-08. From early April 1862, Union General 
George B, McClellan had been marching his army northward 
through Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, in the direction of 
Richmond. In these assemblies, according to Sally Putnam, 
"certain of the chicken-hearted officials of the government 
received a merited share of ridicule." Putnam, Richmond 
during the War, 132. 
30Minutes, 27 March 1862, Ladies' Defense Association 
papers, ESBL, hereafter cited as LOA Papers; Richmond 
Enquirer, 28 March 1862; entry dated 6 April 1862, Betty 
Herndon Maury Diary, LC, The records of this organization 
are very sparse. I have fleshed out my account by using 
the association's annual meeting reports which were usually 
published in one or more of the Richmond new~papers. Part 
of the North's strategy for winning the war involved 
creating a blockade around the Southern coastline to 
prevent Confederates from engaging in trade with European 
191 
situated at the city's southern border, the James, 
with its swiftly flowing waters and dangerous 
undercurrents, had long served as a major artery that 
provided access through the docks at Shockoe and Rocketts 
to the numerous tobacco warehouses and flour mills that 
formed the backbone of Richmond's antebellum economy. But 
with the declaration of war and the naming of Richmond as 
the Confederate capital, the James took on more ominous 
significance as a likely conduit for Federal warships bent 
on an amphibious assault. on several occasions during the 
war, Union vessels made their way up the James well within 
view of Richmond's citizenry and, in more numerous 
instances, rumors of sightings threw local residents into a 
panic about an imminent attack. Many of these concerns 
probably stemmed from what Richmonders came to refer to as 
"Pawnee Sunday," the first Sunday after Virginia had 
seceded from the Union when Richmonders were frightened by 
rumors that the Federal sloop-of-war Pawnee was advancing 
up the James. After that, according to Sally Putnam, 
Richmonders were frequently awakened by alarm bells on 
trading partners. This meant the constant presence of 
Federal ships near southern ports. southern women formed 
gunboat societies--organizations which, like Richmond's 
Ladies' Defense Association, built iron-clad gunboats--in 
other communities, among them Charleston, south Carolina, 
and Macon, Georgia. Southern Churchman, 31 October 1862; 
constance Cary (Mrs. Burton) Harrison, Recollections Grave 
and Gay (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1911), 95; 
Matthew Page Andrews, Women of the south in war Times 
(Baltimore: Norman Remington, 1920), 296-97. 
192 
Sunday morning calling out troops for local defense. 31 
The location of a Confederate munitions laboratory and a 
camp for Federal prisoners on two islands in the James 
served to heighten the river's strategic importance and 
exacerbated concerns about its protection. 32 
Although defending one's community was a 
responsibility traditionally associated with men, an 
address delivered at the Ladies' Defense Association's 
organizational meeting by corresponding secretary 
Wilhelmina McCord Vernon redefined home front protection as 
a responsibility that women and men shared. Drawing on 
images of Manon Roland and Theresia Tallien, two heroines 
of the French Revolution, Vernon maintained that it was the 
"duty of the women of the south, who are true to the sacred 
trusts assigned them by nature, ... to render every 
assistance in their power for the protection of their homes 
31Putnam, Richmond during the War, 24-25. Other 
references to "Pawnee Sundays" can be found in Mary Boykin 
Chesnut, Mary Chesnut's civil war, c. Vann Woodward, ed. 
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), l~l, all 
other citations are to this edition of Chesnut's diary; 
entry for 12 May 1864, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS; 
reminiscence of William c. Bentley, Appendix I, in Weddell, 
St. Paul's Church, Richmond, Virginia, vol. 2, 589-90; 
Rosena Hutzler Levy, Richmond, to her children, 31 May 
1907, quoted in Saul Viener, "Rosena Hutzler Levy Recalls 
the civil War," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 62 
(1973): 308-09; Richmond Dispatch, 22 May 1862; Religious 
Herald, 11 February 1864. 
32The prisoner-of-war camp was located at Belle Isle, 
a large island in the middle of the river just below Mayo's 
Bridge. The ordnance plant was located on the smaller and 
more narrow Brown's Island a few yards from the Richmond 
shoreline. 
193 
and Ch1. ldren. 
1133 Draft d e a week later, the Association's 
constitution reinforced this idea of Confederate women as 
partners in home front defense. Claiming for themselves 
the title of "sisters of the capital," the women promised 
to "encourage the hearts and strengthen the hands of our 
husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends by all means 
within our power." 34 To particularize their contributions 
as women, the members pledged to 
g~ve of such ornaments of gold, and articles of 
silver, as are our private property. For should it be 
our sad fate to become slaves, ornaments would ill 
bec~m~ our estate of bondage; while if God, in His 
infinite mercy shall crown our efforts with success 
. , 
we will be content to wear the laurel leaves of 
victory, and point our children to our civil and 
religious liberty--so qloriously achieved and say, 
"These be thy jewels. n3'5 
BY linking the sacrifice of these outward symbols of 
feminine adornment with the "laurel leaves of victory" worn 
by conquering heroes, the women of the Ladies' Defense 
Association attempted to recast their actions in the 
33An account of this first meeting and of Vernon's 
speech can be found in the Richmond Enquirer, 2~ Marc~ 
1862; the emphasis in the quotation is mine. Wilhe~mina 
McCord Vernon was a Georgian who Mary Chesnut describes as 
"more Confederate than the Confederation." Given to bold 
patriotic rhetoric, Vernon, according to Che~nut, was also 
occasionally under suspicion as a spy; she died of a fever 
in May 1862. Chesnut, Mary Chesnut's civil War, 361-4. 
34constitution and slate of officers, LOA Papers, 
ESBL. 
35constitution and slate of officers, LOA Papers, 
ESBL. 
194 
wartime context and place them on equal footing with those 
of men. 36 
This belligerization of women's roles can also be seen 
in the changing masthead of the Magnolia, a southern 
literary newspaper published in Richmond, that focused on 
women and the home. When it began publication in 1862, the 
Magnolia's masthead featured a woman seated at a writing 
desk with a quill pen in her hand. She was surrounded by 
library books, while a woman in the background appeared to 
be operating a printing press. In the foreground, a group 
of cherubs prepared copies of the paper for delivery (fig. 
5.1) . 37 By 1863, however, this masthead was replaced by 
one that featured a helmeted bust of Minerva, the goddess 
of war and the benefactor of cities, in the foreground, 
with a fenced country home and a train on a trestle in the 
rear. The gate to the fence was open, perhaps to suggest 
the absence of a loved one whose return was imminent (fig. 
5.2) . 38 The Magnolia's new masthead contributed to the 
idea of an expanded role for women, as defined by the 
warlike Minerva, in protecting not only the family hearth 
but also the city and the region's transportation network. 
36This is comparable to the politicization of 
housewifery undertaken by colonial women during the 
American Revolution. Kerber, women of the Republic, 
especially chapters 2 and 3. 
37Magnolia, 11 October 1862. 
38Magnolia, 21 March 1863. 
-~ 
I I 
I l 
I 
• / 
1t1c1t)111:-.o, Y.\ . , llI·:c1,::-.rn1m -~11. 1:Jf\'.!. 
Figure 5.1. Masthead of the Magnolia, December 20, 1862 
(Source: Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia) 
\ 
-~-
,, 
I 
.\ 
I 
I 
\ 
\ 
I 
! . 
_ ==---..1±:: . ..... 
~ 
~-
---:~o~: ..:,:...._ 12""'~=-""i-
A l--IO~lE ,JOURNAL OF LITERATURE'-~ GENER~~L ~~~S. 1 
-- ----= ·- - --. ·· ·-·······------ -- - - --- ----------~---- ._. - -·- . --- ·- ·- ·-- ---- · .-- .. _· ,,• - ~ ----~-------· ;--~---- ; 
VOL. L RlCHMO~D, VA., ,JUNE ~o. 18113. 
- ·--- - - ----------- --- -
Figure 5.2. Masthead of the Magnolia, June 20, 1863 
(Source: Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia) 
·--~-~~ I 
197 
A few Northern and Southern women transformed this 
militaristic image into a reality by surreptitiously 
enlisting in the Union or Confederate armies. Mary Massey 
has estimated that more than four hundred women took up 
arms as Union and Confederate soldiers, a number of them 
serving two or more years before their gender was 
revealed. 39 Lauren Cook Burgess has identified at least 
135 women in uniform, four of whom were either wounded or 
killed at the Battle of Antietam and one of whom died while 
participating in Pickett's charge during the Battle of 
39Massey, Bonnet Brigades (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 
1966), 78-79. Drew Faust accepts Massey's estimate as a 
realistic one. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: 
women of the Slaveholding south in the American Civil War 
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 
202-04. Although George Rable discusses the deadly 
seriousness of female militia women, he completely neglects 
female soldiers. George w. Rable, civil Wars: Women and 
the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Chicago: University of 
Illinois Press, 1989), 151-53. The most infamous cross-
dressing Civil War soldier was probably Loreta Janeta 
Velazquez who, according to her published memoir, spent 
more than three years in the confederate Army as Colonel 
John Buford. Loreta Janeta Velazquez, The Woman in Battle, 
c.J. Worthington, ed. (Richmond: Dustin Gilman & Co., 1876; 
repr. New York: Arno Preas, 1972). For a critique of 
Velazquez's memoir and an account of the experiences of 
Lauren Cook Burgess, a contemporary Civil War re-enactor 
who interprets the experiences of the female soldier, see 
Elizabeth Young, "Confederate counterfeit: The Case of the 
Cross-Dressing Civil War Soldier," in· Passing and the 
Fictions of Identity, Elaine K. Ginsberg, ed. (Durham: Duke 
University Press, 1996), 181-217. Although Velazquez's 
exploits have been dismissed by some, it is harder to 
discount the military service of other women, a number of 
whom accompanied their husbands into battle, and a few of 
whom were wounded in combat. For an account of a Northern 
female soldier, see Lauren cook Burgess, An Uncommon 
Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, 
153rd Regiment, New York state Volunteers (Pasadena, Md.: 
Minerva Press, 1996). 
198 
Gett ysburg. 40 In Richmond h · Hodge  , ospital nurse Catherine 
, who was 1· Regi' iSt ed as a member of company K 5th 
ment , 
, Loui · clad . siana Volunteers, strode the city streets 
in a Z ouave uniform with a red cap.41 era Although a few 
ss-dre ssing ana t women in Richmond were summarily arrested 
hrown . in prison f , the or •unsexing• themselves, or under 
Hod 
that they were either prostitutes or spies, suspicion 
ges se ems t h late O ave avoided this consequence, and was 
w· in the Soldiers' section of Hollywood cemetery 
r buried 
lth full i tary honors. 42 mil' 
40 adv a variety ~ok Burgess maintains that women enlisted for Lauren c Ros:~ture, ando rea7ons, including patriotism, a sense of 
Volu ta Wakem a desire to be with husbands and lovers, 
six nteers han, a private in the 153rd New York state 
When months' an~d bee~ cross-dressing as a man for at least 
enli she decid ;orkinq as a manual laborer on a coal barge 
coulstment b e to enlist in the Union ArIDY t,ecause the 
has d earn aounty of $152 was better than any wages she 
inc been abls a woman. Other female soldiers whom Burgess 
9St~Ude Jen 7 to document through their militarY records 
Pa Illino~ie Hodqers (alias Albert D, cashier, co. G., 
Fr~ker and ~s Regiment); Mary and Mollie Bell (alias Tom 
Uncnklin Th ob Morgan); and sarah Emma Edmonds (alias 
~ , ~~ Michigan volunteers), Burgess, All 
4 ier, xii, 4-10. 
Whi er white un1~orms were colorful costume compos~d of 
. lz e1th 0 uave , Waste shirts leggings, red Turkish pantaloons, flowing 
ori ~ tassel~ and navy blue, bolero-type vests, Headgear 
the?inally w d fez or occasionallY a turban, zouaves 
th tr brav ere French Algerian solders who became know for 
fre North ery in the Crimean war, ouring the civil war, 
om Richma
nd 
South both had zouave units; one of them was 
end. 
42 
a s Mary s
1 
°Uthern H. ~itchell, Holl wood cemeter: The Histor of 
~e· Lill' Shrine (Richmond· virginia state Library, 1985), 
ar · ie s · · 
Pat ing "wh' mith of Mercer county, Tennessee, was arrested 
hetent leatite pantaloons, a black dress fr~ck coat, ~lack 
Ween L hers, and a· slouch bat" on a train travelling 
ynchburg and Richmond, she claimed she was on a 
199 
In Southern communities bereft of male defenders, 
women organized militia units to protect their homes from 
attack. In LaGrange, Georgia, women formed the Nancy 
Harts, a militia unit named for a Georgia heroine of the 
American Revolution. 43 Although no female militias appear 
to have existed in Richmond, Virginia Governor John Letcher 
received several letters from women requesting "a brace of 
pistols" or Colt revolvers for use in case of a Union 
invasion. 44 By forming their organization, the members of 
the Ladies' Defense Association indicated a similar intent 
to defend their city from invasion. 
The Association's founders were women of both 
influence and accomplishment. The president was Maria 
Gaitskell Foster Clopton, the sixty-two-year old widow of 
John Bacon Clopton, a Richmond judge from 1852 until his 
death in 1860. 45 A diminutive mother of twelve with dark 
trip to visit her lover. Richmond Examiner, 23 May, 2 June 
1863. Sixteen-year-old Fernella Green was taken into 
custody wearing a "gypsy hat and black and white checker 
duster." In court, she testified that she only wanted to 
go to the Metropolitan Hall (a Richmond theater) alone on a 
Saturday night. Richmond Examiner, 19 May 1863. Cross-
dresser Anne Jackson was imprisoned for prostitution in 
April 1864. Richmond Examiner, 12 April 1864. 
43 "Personal Recollections of the war: Girl Confederate 
Soldiers" (Paper read before a meeting of the United 
Daughters of the Confederacy, Atlanta, Georgia, 13 February 
1902), Lelia C. (Pullen) Morris Recollection, ESBL. 
44Rable, Civil Wars, 152. 
45w. Asbury Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present 
(Richmond: L.H. Jenkins, 1912), 174; Henrietta Runyon 
Winfrey Reminiscences, #M837:1 C6235, VHS. A veteran of 
200 
brown hair and blue eyes, Maria Clopton briefly operated a 
private hospital for Confederate soldiers on Franklin 
Street. 46 Other officers and members included Mrs. Robert 
Craig Stanard, the wife of a judge whose home often served 
as a meeting place for Richmond elites; Anne Augusta Myers, 
the wife of a prominent Jewish attorney and the daughter of 
the former governor; Amelia Gorgas, the wife of the 
Confederate Ordnance Bureau chief; and Mrs. Joseph R. 
Anderson, whose husband owned the Tredegar Iron Works where 
the scrap iron collected by the association was later 
melted into iron plate for the vessel's outer skin. 47 The 
the War of 1812, John B. Clopton also served, for a time, 
in the Virginia Senate, and participated in the 
organization of such Richmond enterprises as the James 
River and Kanawha Company (March 16, 1832), Richmond 
College (March 4, 1840), and the Virginia Historical and 
Philosophical Society (December 29, 1831). In 1835, he was 
a pall bearer at the funeral of 'u.s. supreme Court Chief 
Justice John Marshall. Christian, Richmond: Her Past And 
Present, 119-20, 131, and 141. 
46Th' d ' ' ' S A W is escr1pt1on of Clopton 1s from a C. · · ar 
Department pass issued July 7, 1864. Maria G. Clopton 
Papers, ESBL. 
47chesnut, Mary Chesnut's civil War, 431-2; Emory M. 
Thomas, The Confederate state of Richmond: A Biography of 
the Capital (Austin: university of Texas Press, 1971), 116. 
Gustavus Myers was a prominent Richmond lawyer who served 
for more than thirty years as a member of the Richmond 
Common Council, and its president from 1843 to ~85~ .. He 
also served on the executive committee of the V1rg1n1a 
Historical Society. Myers's wife, Anne Augusta Giles 
Myers, was an Episcopalian and the daughter of former 
governor William B. Giles. Virginius Dabney, Richmond: The 
Story of a City, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University 
Press of Virginia, 1990), 116 (All subsequent citations are 
to this edition); Malcolm H. stern, comp. First American 
Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies. 1654-1977 (Cincinnati, 
Oh.: American Jewish Archives, 1978). Myers was part of a 
201 
presence of so many prominent Richmond women might suggest 
that the Association catered to the city's elites but, at a 
modest $1 per year, the dues of the Association were well 
within the reach of numerous women in white, middle-class 
Richmond society. 
Within weeks after the Association was organized, a 
delegation of women met, first, with Jefferson Davis and, 
later, with Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory to 
arrange for commissioning the ironclad's construction along 
the lines of the c.s.s. Virginia. 48 Funding for the 
project came from a variety of sources: donations of gold 
and silver jewelry; the proceeds of one night's performance 
of Lee Mullany's War Illustrations; and a large bazaar 
featuring the sale of "sculpture, statuary, paintings, 
engravings, books, jewelry, cutlery, ... needlework, 
delegation of Richmond citizens who greeted Abraham Lincoln 
on his visit to the former Confederate capital shortly 
after the war. He later was one of a committee of twenty 
men who each posted $50,000 for the release of ex-
Confederate President Jefferson Davis from Fortress Monroe. 
Dabney, Richmond: The story of a city, 196; Christian, 
Richmond: Her Past and Present, 228; list of nominees, 
n.d., LDA Papers, ESBL. 
48Minutes, 3 April 1862, LDA Papers, ESBL. The 
Virginia was the former u.s.s. Merrimac, which was seized 
by Confederate troops in their capture of the Norfolk naval 
yard in April 1861. During the winter of 1861, it was 
rebuilt as an ironclad ram which, on March 8, 1862, dealt a 
surprise blow to the Federal blockade at Hampton Roads, 
destroying two ships completely and running three others 
aground. James McPherson~ Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War 
and Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 1982), 178-9. 
embro1· d 
ery 202 
d , fancy cloth' escr· ing, [and] furniture of all 
lptions. "49 
While th1· s ~ealth O onated items might make it seem as if list f d 
Undrais" re the mainstay of ~e organization's f y women we 
Cont. orts, some of the most important ing eff 
r1but· ions tea were domestic articles made of iron--bells 
kettles ' ~hich ' a
nd irons, tongs, stoves, and cooking pots--
Tr collected at local depots and shipped by rail to 
were 
edegar so brou ht· Despite the massive industrialization effort 
about b Conf Y southern secession, iron in the 
emPhasi· was often in short supply, a fact Maria clopton ederacy 
Zed ' 
R
, in a letter she wrote 
ic to ~e editor of the 
monct . ro in April 1862• calling on women and men th Dis atch · 
Ughout outh "to ei<ert ~emselves to collect and the s 
ll 49T 7, 
18
rations it performance of Mu11anY'" war ~ lust he benef' Assoc·
6
2, at M also called a panopticon, was held on June 
~orthiation reet~opolitan Hall· Th• Ladies' Defense 
Susan $Sao. R~eived a donation of one thousand tickets 
to~ Monta ichmond Enquirer 28 March 1862· one member, ~ ~ar· gue -' ~Pril 1a G • sold 188 tickets on her own• susan Montague 1862· ~lepton, Richmond 3 April 1862; Minutes, 2 
l' SO • DA Papers, ESBL.' 
hi1, Lette Mrs. 1
P Cate~ to the Editor of ~e Ricbmond ~· from 
~J ~ Col. Js Y Jones, Lousi'a co ~ginia, onn b eenhaa~lf of 
.f ~Pri · B St • ' ' . . ro~ 1 
186 
• range Gordonsville orange co., v1rg1n1a, 
t •uM 2· t ' ' · d o "M ary A ' . o Mrs. vernon ( secretarY of LDA], R1cbmon , 
8
Peedadamu iMFi~ch, Charlottesville [Virginia], 3 Maf 
1862
; 
Cous·' Lynch aria G. Clopton] Richmond, from cather1ne p. 
Marc~n" fro burg [Virginia] 21 oecember n.Y·; to "MY oear 
~Uss 1865·m J.W. Woolfolk 'MulberrY place, Milford, 19 ~ · E:l · ' to R ' G' 11 ' 
1
chm v111e .H. Maury, Richmond, from E.M, 1 espie, 
8
oc1.' ona f, Tennessee 24 April n.y.; to Mrs• clopton, 
P et • ram • · · d ape Y, Pr" Cornelia A. aerkeleY, president, Al
rs, Ess~~ce Edward court aause [Virginia], n.d.; LOA 
203 
send to the Tredegar Works all the metals they can," 
Clopton also sought to extend her appeal across class lines 
by offering as an example of patriotic self-denial a "poor 
widow (who]. .offered to the Association a bell and metal 
kettle which she had owned for forty years. 1151 Here was 
something all women, rich or poor, could do to aid their 
beloved nation. Rather than following the scriptural 
admonition to beat their swords into plowshares, they could 
transform their cookpots into battering rams. To buttress 
its appeal for scrap iron, the Association also appointed a 
delegation of women who met with the city's tobacconists to 
secure donations of discarded iron screws and frames used 
in tobacco processing. 52 
It is unclear from the Association's records exactly 
how much iron was raised from these two sources. Although 
the tobacconists pledged their support, no account of their 
donations remains, while the surviving record of amounts 
raised through contributions by individual women totals a 
little more than half a ton. 53 What is more apparent, 
however, is the fact that by late June 1863, the Ladies' 
Defense Association had succeeded in raising enough money 
to launch their first gunboat, the Richmond, in a public 
51Richmond Enquirer, (n.d. April 1862]. 
52Minutes, 7 April 1862, LDA Papers, ESBL. 
53Receipt from J.R. Anderson & Co. to Mrs. J.A. 
Robertson, 30 April 1862; J.W. Woolfolk, Mulberry Place, to 
"Dear Cousin" 19 March 1863, LDA Papers, ESBL. 
204 
ceremony at the Navy Yard at Rocketts. 54 A second 
gunboat, the Fredericksburg was launched later that year. 
Although the James River Squadron, as it was known, 
eventually was comprised of three ironclads--the Virginia, 
the Richmond, and the Fredericksburg--and five wooden-
hulled steamers--the Hampton, the Nansemond, the Roanoke, 
the Branfort, and the Torpedo, it is likely that only the 
Richmond and the Fredericksburg were built with the help of 
the Ladies' Defense Association. The entire fleet was 
blown up at Drewry's Bluff just north of Richmond when the 
city fell to Federal troops on April 3, 1865. 55 
Anne Firer Scott has commented that one of the ironies 
of the Civil War is that work done by southern women's 
wartime associations may have actually prolonged the war by 
54Richmond Examiner, 30 June 1863. Ernest Taylor 
Walthall later recalled standing at the Confederate Naval 
Yard as a young boy, watching as first the Richmond, and 
later the Fredericksburg were built "at the sacrifice of 
our ladies' jewelry." Ernest Taylor Walthall, Hidden 
Things Brought to Light (Richmond: Dietz Printing 
Co. ,1933), 29. By the spring of 1863, the women had raised 
$17,705. Minutes, n.d. April 1863, LOA Papers, ESBL. The 
Macon, Georgia, society launched a gunboat in 1862, 
Matthew Page Andrews, Women of the South in War-Times. 
(Baltimore: Norman Remington, 1920). 
55Raphael Semmes Papers, DU. Nicknamed the "workhorse 
of the James, the Fredericksburg was 188 feet long and 
forty feet wide. It weighed more than 700 tons, but drew 
only nine feet of water. Historians believe that the 
Fredericksburg and possibly the remains of the rest of the 
James River Squadron lie "under ten to fifteen feet of silt 
near the north shore of Drewry 1 s Bluff, southeast of 
Richmond near Hopewell," where they are currently 
endangered by a project to dredge the James River to a 
depth of twenty-five feet. Potomac News, 16 August 1993. 
205 
supplying Confederate armies with goods and services beyond 
those provided by the government departments. 56 And 
indeed, this may have been the case. confederate women in 
thousands of wartime associations channeled their domestic 
industry into making uniforms, tents, and haversacks; 
preparing and preserving foodstuffs; rolling bandages; and 
growing medicinal herbs, items which the fledgling nation 
desperately needed but was ill equipped to provide. 57 
Confederate women in Richmond participated in this process 
not only by equipping Confederate troops but also by 
playing a role in Richmond's defense by raising money for 
ironclad gunboats and by manufacturing thousands of 
sandbags for the city's fortifications. 
With the war's end, the work of many ad hoc 
associations like the soldiers' aid societies and the 
Ladies' Defense Association came to a close. In its 
aftermath, many Richmond women channeled the organizational 
energies they had developed during the war into caring for 
the remains of those who had perished in the conflict. 
(See Chapter Ten.) The war's ghastly toll of lives also 
had transformative consequences for the women of the Female 
Humane Association who, since the beginning of the 
56Anne Firer Scott, Natural Allies, 72, 
57 For a discussion of the problems of supply in the 
Southern armies, see McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 180-207, 
and Frank E. Vandiver, Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command 
System (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 79-107, 
nin t 
e eenth 206 
century, had orphaned cared for a portion of the city's 
children. 58 
The Female Was Humane Association of the city of Richmond 
one of the city' first s oldest charitable groups and the 
caring for the Children 
ecumen' Richmond ical association to be organized by white 
women. 59 
Formed in 1805, the Association 
Christian asylum for "the relief 
operated a non and sectarian 
comfort of d' 
istressed females,• as well as a daY school 
for Pdor white girls 
, both of which were located on the 
and st. John streets near the northwest corn er of Ch . arity 
-----
~an in the c· ~,ooo southern white men who lost their 1' 580 lVes . f the 25 
~arl Were probivil War, approximately 77,400 were married. 
l\Jner~ A. Vin ab~y also fathers of dependent children, 
Specican ci:rskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the 
199
9 
Ulatians 1,, War? Same preliminarY oemographic 
Pay,!: 34_
58
'. Journal of American Histor 76.1 (June 
Tow· Ameri ' and Amy E. Holmes, ••such rs the Price we 
Ex ~rd a so c~n Widows and the ciVil war pension system,• in 
Camb
0
:ator c~al Histor of the All!erican civil war: 
ridge Un'ssa s, Maris A. vinovskis, ed. (NeW York: 
59 
iversity Press, 1990), 111-96, 
the ?i The re 
for emarial cords of the Female Humane Association--later 
for the per· Foundation for children--are extremelY sketchY 
the the wariod from 1860-80. No minutes of the meetings 
orgaP7riod fyears survive, although I do have m~nutes for 
PUbl~lzationr~m 1875 to 1sso. MY histon' of this 
•nn 
1
Shed h' is therefore based on two brief antebellum 
andua1 re istories (12 and 16 pages, respectively); th• 
the 1895.ports to the board of directors for 1877, 1883, 
aqd,entir' and the Association's account books which cover 
it· e pe · · Pre lanai r1od. r have supplemented these with a few as
5
ss.ar i annual reports which appeared in the Richmond 
ociati n the minutes of Richmond'" citY council when the 
on petitioned for financial support. 
207 
city b oundary. 60 
th e Asylum 
During much of the nineteenth century, 
took in full-
and half-orphans; provided them 
With a rudimentar needl Y education in •reading, arithmetic, 
Usin , spinning, and every kind ~f domestic e work k . . 
b 
, nitting , . 
of them out for service 
of affluent white families throughout the 
ess"· int ' and then bound a number 
heh omes 
surround' ing counties.61 
g 
originally quite small, 
Although the Asylum staff and the 
numb er of 
l
't residents it served was · · 
rew to ~atr include a matron, and one or more assistant 
of d ' several teachers, a visiting doctor, and a variety 0 ns 
0 mest' resid ic workers who cooked and cleaned for the Asylum's 
ents wh' 9irl ' ich numbered from thirty to seventy-three 
s between the ages of two and seventeen.
62 
60 
1827 .E,emal 19
35
), 6, Me~ H~mane Association, (n-P·' John warrock, 
Thro' LV. H orial Foundation for children Records, 1s21-
"As Ughout t~1;eafter, these will be cited as MFC Records. 
as sociation"is portion of the chapter, I am using 
"As
th
e Femal to refer to the benevolent organization known 
Ylumu t e Humane ASylum of the citY of Richmond. I use 
61 
° refer to the orphanage this group established. 
Ass Const. (Riociation itution and B -Laws of the Female Humane p.,/hmond • of the cit of Richmond Ado ted A ril 1 1833, 
Ric~od, Af ~ohn Warrock, 1833), 14. Throughout much of this 
Pro ~Ond•sr~can American women made up ninety percent of 
CatVlded a omestic labor force. White female orphans 
Virh~rine Bpor~ion of the remaining ten percent. Angela 
1
97 
9lnia /ngiorno, •White women and work in Richmond 
Ser
8
J; a~d 
87
0-1884" (M.A• thesis, university of Virginia, 
la
5
v1ce a dTracey M. weis "Negotiating Freedom: Domestic 
0
-ia
80
~ Household Rel~tions in Richmond, Virginia, 
62 
(Ph.D. diss., Rutgers university, 1994)· 
Sev The F Citera1 R" emale Humane Association was onlY one of Ch Y's orlchmond associations devoted to caring for the 
se~rity 
0
Phans. rn 1860, eleven nuns from the sisters of 
enty-fferated the st. Joseph's orphan's Asylum for 
ve Catholic girls· 1860 Manuscript census for 
208 
The b enevolent was association that operated the Asylum 
composed of h' of Ri w ite women from the more affluent sections 
chmond. found Among the Female Humane Association's 
ers were J Supreme c ean Moncure Daniel, a sister-in-law of 
ourt Ch' f ca , ie Justice John Marshall, and Eliza J, 
list i e of a Revolutionary war hero.
63 
A rringt on, the w'f 
of members f and d or 18 60 included the names of the wives 
aughters of a number of prominent Richmonders.
64 
in the community were nominated to Wome n Of 
join the Associat' ion, pending approval bY a majority of the 
good stand1' ng 
Rich ch' mond v· lld , ir · · asso ~en orphginia, NARA· oue to the large number of the ciations aned by the war, these two Richmond 
an 
0
Male orphcompeted for municipal funds in the 18705 with 
man rphan as 1n Asylum of st. Peter's catholic church, and 
Who agers undy um and school operated bY a board of ladY 
Ric~e congreer ~he auspices st. paul'S Episcopal church, 
Leb monders gat~on was comprised 1argelY of wealthy 
fo~
0
ck has·d Ric~ond oispatcll, 1 January 1012. suzanne 
Worn ded by P escr1bed a similar asylum for female orphans 
en of Petetersburg women in 1811-12· Lebsock, f!'e!l 
63 ersbur , 199-212. MarY Nicholas, the wife of a 
Elizabeth wirt, the wife of 
varon, .,,we Mean to Be Vir . Other f a pginia Att ounders included 
Cou~~minent ~~ney ~eneral, and 
ect,,n 
12
~rg1n1a attorneY• 
64 Of th Memb . . aa~ e Tr ders included Mrs. Joseph R. Anderson, the wife husa11 Fl~uega~ chief; Mrs. eo11ing Ha~all, the wife of a 
Co band w r Mill scion and NancY aierne Macfarland, whose 
>c] as ' · Ed · Co , "Th on the Richmond collll1lon council . [Mrs· win 
ofnstitut~ Memorial r~ndation for children," 1-2; So the c·~on and B -Laws of the remale Humane Association 
tvok, De~ of Richmond Ado ted A ril 1 1833; Account 
• ember 1858 - December 1867, all in MFC Records, 

210 
maintained and of making periodic visits to the Asylum to 
monitor the girls' treatment. 67 
During the antebellum period, the work of the 
Association was financed largely through the collection of 
membership dues of $4.00 per year, an annual fair or door-
to-door fundraising campaign, and a few modest bequests, 
which the women occasionally invested in bank stocks and 
other securities. In 1843, an endowment from the estate of 
Edmund Walls allowed the Association to erect a larger 
facility near the city's northern boundary. 68 From time 
to time, older girls contributed to their room and board by 
sewing aprons, drawers, chemises, petticoats, dresses, 
flannel shirts, and cloaks worn by themselves and the 
younger inmates. 69 
As its symbol the Association chose a standing female 
figure surrounded by children. The figure held a naked 
infant in her left arm, while her right hand clutched the 
67 Female Humane Association, 2; constitution and By-
Laws of the Female Humane Association. Adopted April 1. 
1833, 8, both in MFC Records, LV. 
68walls was a poor Irish immigrant who became a flour 
inspector for the port. Cox, "The Memorial Foundation for 
Children," 6-7, MFC Records, LV; Christian, Richmond: Her 
Past and Present, 146-47; Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a 
City, 137. 
69Annual Reports of Board of Directors, 1 December 
1877; 6 December 1880, MFC Records, LV. In 1877, for 
example, when the residents of the home numbered 55, the 
girls made 225 aprons, 45 pairs of drawers, 201 chemises, 
247 dresses, 4 flannel shirts, 28 flannel skirts, and 4 
cloaks. They also knitted 180 pairs of hose. 
211 
hand of a little girl; another child to the left clung to 
her skirt. 70 This image underscored the ties between 
women's personal and social mothering, and also emphasized 
the maternal role the Association expected to play to the 
young girls who became their wards. 71 An 1827 history of 
the Association reflected this apotheosis of the 
"Association as mother" in its account of an early resident 
of the Asylum who eventually became its matron, a position 
she held until her death at the age of seventy-three. 72 
70constitution and By-Laws of the Female Humane 
Association of the City of Richmond. Adopted April 1, 1833, 
11, MFC Records, LV. 
71 For a discussion of the importance of the mother-
child bond in nineteenth-century families, see Barbara 
Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860" American 
Quarterly 18 ( 1966); 151-74; Daniel Scott Smith, "Family 
Limitation, Sexual Control, and Domestic Feminism in 
Victorian America," Feminist studies 1.3-4 (1973): 40-57. 
On motherhood in the South, see Julia Cherry Spruill, 
Women's Life and Work in the southern Colonies. (1938; 
repr; New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 43-63; and Sally G. 
McMillen, Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, 
Childbirth, and Infant Rearing (Baton Rouge: Louisiana 
state University Press, 1990). Suzanne Lebsock has argued 
that, although Virginia women took propaganda about the 
"powerful influence" of motherhood "with several grains of 
salt," they were, nevertheless, "very serious ... about 
being good mothers," and were "passionately attached to 
their children." Suzanne Lebsock, Virginia Women, 1600-
1945: "A Share of Honour", rev. ed. (Richmond: Virginia 
State Library, 1987), 65-8; all subsequent citations are to 
this edition. 
72 Female Humane Association, 8; Cox, "The Memorial 
Foundation for Children," 8, both in MFC Records, LV. 
Although neither of these accounts names this particular 
matron, she may have been Mary A. Lipscomb, who died on 
February 26, 1882, and was eulogized in the Association 
minutes. Minutes, March 6, 1882, Minute Book, December 
1875 - October 1894, MFC Records, LV. 
212 
No male figure is present in the image, suggesting not only 
the dependent and orphaned or semi-orphaned status of the 
children clinging to the female form, but also the 
Association's intention to assume the primary role in 
decisions concerning the children's welfare. In accepting 
children into the Asylum, the Association preferred full 
orphans, including female children living in the Almshouse 
who had been abandoned at birth, to children with a 
surviving parent who sought temporary placement because of 
illness or desertion but who might interfere with the 
Association's plans by reclaiming the child at some future 
date. 
The women of the Association were no doubt motivated 
by a genuine altruistic concern for relieving the 
conditions of misery and want they saw reflected in the 
lives of their female wards. But their actions were also 
informed by contemporary middle-class attitudes surrounding 
the working poor, as well as white Southern attitudes 
regarding race. The Constitution and By-Laws of the 
Association, as well as the annual reports, are replete 
with statements of the women's determination to rescue 
. . . " these girls from "the haunts of vice and. . . viciousness, 
where they would become "a tax upon the citizens," and to 
send them forth into the world, "strong in virtuous 
213 
Principles , and rich in kn~1 useful Knowledge.••• This •useful 
rend siSt ed primarily of the skills necessary to edge" con . 
er them efficient 
seamstresses or domestic servants in 
per- and middle-class women like those of the h omes of up 
members. And despite the fact that 
white 
the Associat' ion 
South ern ~ad women's benevolent activity was frequently 
e possible Work by a bevy of African-American domestic 
ers and household slaves, no female orphans of color 
"'1ere ever 1 
ted to the Asylum. 74 BY establishing an 
adm't 
orphanage for f 
b emale orphans that was administered bY a 
As irectresses • the mem•rs of the card of female "d' 
sociat' , the were also staking their claim to a portion of ion 
PUblic oft sphere and a voice in Richmond society that was 
end enied t ninet O women by the gender prescriptions of the 
eenth century. 75 
The Assoc' . 
r .1at.1on had experienced temporary financial 
ever 
h 
in the de · · th W f 1812 d ad pression following e ar o , an ses . 
once 
but 
con · 
sidered closing the AsylU]ll in the 1ate 1820s; 
nothing. 
in its history prepared it for the challenge to 
73 
F'ern Annu 1 
Ye ale Hu a Report of the eoard of oirectresses of the 
~C~r Endi~ane Association of the city of Richmond for the 
As• LV· g December 1 1865 bundle dated 29 January 1866, 
~F ciati 1 ution and B -Laws of the Fema e umane so · ' Const· t ' ' 1 H c Reco don of the cit of Richmond Ado ted A ril 1 1833, 
rs, LV. 
14v aron, '"We Mean to Be counted,"' 2
7
-
29
· 
R 7sw ~'The cult of rrue womanhood"; and serg, ~ 
ate. 
its resources posed by the Civil War. 76 
214 
A $5,000 legacy 
the Association received in 1861 no doubt eased its 
financial burdens for a time; but during the war other 
sources of income evaporated, while the number of orphans 
in the Asylum grew. Many of these new girls were the 
daughters of Confederate soldiers killed in battle, or 
girls whose mothers, according to the Association, had died 
after being "worn out by the care and toil of providing for 
the wants of a family left upon her hands by this 
relentless war. 1177 The Richmond schools were forced to 
withdraw their annual stipend in 1862, and other 
organizations such as the Richmond Literary Fund and the 
Richmond Musical and Dramatic Association simply 
disappeared from the Association's financial records. By 
the spring of 1862, the matrons were instructed to restrict 
the girls' food to "the plain necessaries of life" which 
78 
required the exclusion of tea, coffee, and molasses. In 
January 1863, the Asylum sold some of the older girl's 
76Female Humane Association 8; Constitution and By-
Laws of the Female Humane Associ~tion of the city of 
Richmond. Adopted Apr il 1 , 1833, 4, both in MFC Records, 
LV. 
77Entry dated 4 April 1861, Account Book, December 
1858 - December 1867, MFC Records, LV; Report of the Board 
of Directresses of the Female Humane Association of the 
City of Richmond, Southern Churchman, 4 January 1865. 
78Report of the Board of Directresses of the Female 
Humane Association of the city of Richmond for the Year 
Ending December 1, 1862, in the southern Churchman, 22 May 
1863. 
215 
needlework for $190. 79 By the end of 1864, the city's 
precarious financial situation made further donations by 
the Richmond Common Council impossible. 80 
The Female Humane Association attempted to recoup its 
financial losses and meet the needs of its expanding 
population through appeals to the local churches and by 
reinvigorating their door-to-door campaigning. This 
fundraising strategy may have been necessitated in part by 
a shortage of available space for holding benefit fairs, 
because many municipal buildings had been requisitioned by 
the Confederate government for use as office buildings or 
military hospitals. In 1863, six of the local churches 
contributed more than $4,500 to the Asylum's operating 
budget, and door-to-door campaigns in the city's three 
wards in 1864 and 1865 netted $7,308, an astounding figure 
given the straitened economy of the Confederate capital in 
the closing years of the war. 81 As impressive as these 
amounts may seem, they did little to offset the rising 
79Entry dated 27 January 1863, Account Book, December 
1858 - December 1867, MFC Records, LV. 
80up to this point, the Richmond common Council had 
allocated $3,000 for the Asylum each year, which was 
usually paid in two or three installments. But the 
increased demand on the city's resources, which included 
supplying fuel, food, and medicine to needy residents, 
including refugees, depleted municipal funds. 
81Entries dated 1 June through 11 December 1863; 1 
January through 18 June 1864; and 20 March through 29 March 
1865, all in Account Book, December 1858 - December 1867, 
MFC Records, LV. 
216 
inflation rates for market commodities which, by mid-1863, 
had soared to 900 percent. 82 For a short time in 1865, a 
year the Association's secretary later characterized as one 
of "anxious care and constant struggle," the girls were 
forced to subsist on a diet of bread and water, until a 
Confederate battalion stationed in the city sent a day's 
rations of bacon, flour, rice, and meal. 83 When Richmond 
fell even this source of aid vanished. 
Richmond's surrender on April 3, 1865, virtually 
bankrupted the organization, while the resulting fire that 
levelled the city's financial district reduced its 
securities to piles of ash. confederate defeat also 
rendered $3,900 in confederate bonds and the remainder of 
the $4,200 in Confederate currency collected during the 
Association's March 1865 door-to-door campaign 
worthless. 84 With no place else to go for help, the 
Asylum registered with the Federal authorities occupying 
82Thomas Senior Berry, Richmond Commodity Prices 
(Richmond: Bostwick Press of the University of Richmond, 
1985), 1. 
83Southern Churchman, 4 January 1865; Annual Report of 
the Board of Directresses of the Female Humane Asylum of 
the city of Richmond for the Year Ending December 1, 1865, 
bundle dated 29 January 1866, MCC, LV. 
84Entries for March 20-29, 1865, Account Book, 
December 1858 - December 1867, MFC Records, LV. 
217 
the city, permitting the girls to draw rations of meat and 
meal on a regular basis. 85 
At the same time, the Association reduced the number 
of residents from sixty to thirty-one, in part by binding 
out more girls into domestic service, usually to fill 
vacancies created in white households by the departure of 
former slaves. 86 Not all of these arrangements were 
mutually satisfactory, in part because the girls sent out 
were often younger, and were either poorly trained, or 
homesick, or both. "A white girl from the Orphan Asylum 
has come out on trial," Emma Mordecai wrote of the young 
girl named Annie who arrived on the morning of May 7, 1865, 
shortly after the Mordecais' servants announced their 
intention to leave. "[She] is unhappy & lonesome, and 
doesn't intend to stay. She does not seem to be very 
85Annual Report of the Board of Directresses of the 
Female Humane Association of the city of Richmond for the 
Year Ending December 1, 1865, bundle dated 29 January 1866, 
MCC, LV. 
86Annual Report of the Board of Directresses of the 
Female Humane Association of the city of Richmond for the 
Year Ending December 1, 1865, bundle dated 29 January 1866, 
MCC, LV. A few girls were also returned to relatives. By 
1868, the number of inmates has risen to forty. Annual 
Report of the Female Humane Association for the Year Ending 
December 1, 1868, Southern Churchman, 24 December 1868. By 
1872, the number of female orphans stood at forty-nine, and 
by 1873, it was fifty-five. Richmond Dispatch, 5 December 
1872; Report of the Board of Directors, 1 December 1877, 
MFC Records, LV. Conversely, Anne Scott has described an 
orphan association in Salem, Massachusetts, which reacted 
to an economic decline in the 1830s by taking the exact 
opposite action: it reduced the number of girls bound out 
to work. Anne Firer Scott, Natural Allies, 18-19. 
218 
competent." Within a week, Annie was back to the 
Asylum. 87 Other such arrangements mus t have proved more 
mutually beneficial, however, for throughout the late 1860s 
and the 1870s, the Female Humane Association continued to 
cope with the added drain on its resources by placing eve r 
younger girls in Virginia households. Although most girls 
in the antebellum period had remained a t the Asylum until 
they were fourteen or fifteen years of age, by the mid-
18805, girls of nine and ten were routinely sent out to 
work. 88 
The decision to put younger girls into domestic service 
met with disapproval, not only from some Association 
87Entries dated 6, 7, 11, and 13 May 1865, Emma 
Mordecai Diary, VHS. Fifty-two-year-old Emma Mordecai was 
living with her widowed sister-in-law, Rosina Young 
Mordecai, on a farm on Brook Road in the city's north end. 
Unfortunately, neither Mordecai's diary nor the Female 
Humane Association records specifies the last name or age 
of this particular orphan. 
88constitution and By-Laws of the Female Humane 
Association of the City of Richmond. Adopted April 1, 1833, 
10; minutes 4 December 1876 and 4 June 1877; Report of 
Board of Directresses of the Female Humane Association of 
the City of Richmond for the Year Ending December 1, 1877; 
Report of the Board of Directresses for the Female Humane 
Association of the City of Richmond for the Year Ending 
November 20, 1886. The Female Humane Association also 
permitted a few of the girls to be adopted by other 
relatives or returned to a surviving parent. Minutes, 5 
June 1876; 1 October 1877; 4 March 1878; 3 March 1879; 2 
October 1880; 20 November 1886. All of these sources are 
contained in the MFC Records, LV. An orphan asylum in 
antebellum Salem, Massachusetts, made the exact opposite 
decision regarding the binding out of female orphans in the 
1830s. They abandoned the practice during a financial 
crisis in Salem in the 1830s. Anne Firer Scott, Natural 
Allies, 18-19. 
219 
members who, in 1877, attempted unsuccessfully to fix the 
minimum age for placement at fifteen, but also from 
surviving relatives who complained that the girls were 
being released "before their moral and mental training is 
completed." In 1874, the Association moved to curtail 
family interference by adopting a resolution requiring 
absolute in loco parentis control over any child it 
accepted. 89 Despite this new policy regarding placement, 
the Association still attempted to exercise a measure of 
compassion and good judgment by reclaiming girls from homes 
where abuse was suspected, and denying adoptions of girls 
in ill health, or by relatives the Association deemed 
"unsuitable. 1190 
A second way in which the Association coped with its 
wartime reverses was by altering its financial strategy. 
Although evidence for the period from 1866 to 1871 is 
extremely sketchy, the impression it provides is that the 
Asylum led a rather hand-to-mouth existence, depending to a 
large extent on door-to-door contributions and handouts 
from several charitable groups and private donors--some 
from the North--to piece out its daily needs. During this 
89 Amendments of the constitution of the Female Humane 
Association, 11 March 1874, loose paper inside Minute Book, 
December 1876 - October 1894, MFC Records, LV. 
90southern Opinion, 14 December 1867; Minutes, 3 
December 1877; 4 March [1878]; 12 December 1878; 3 March 
[1879]; 7 June 1880; and 21 October 1895, MFC Records, LV. 
220 
period, between 83 and 93 percent of the institution's 
yearly budget was derived from these sources, while 
interest and dividends on stocks and bonds supplied less 
than a tenth. Beginning in 1872, the Association abandoned 
door-to-door campaigning almost entirely, and began 
systematically investing in the major railroad lines 
serving the metropolis. 91 In 1872, the women purchased 
stock in the Richmond & Petersburg line and, in 1874, 
acquired shares in both the orange & Alexandria and the 
Danville. By 1876, they also owned stock in the Clover 
Hill and the Virginia & Tennessee lines. 92 
The Association had maintained a small portfolio of 
state and municipal bonds from the early 1810s but, for 
much of the antebellum period, it had relied on community 
largesse to fund most of its yearly expenditures. 93 The 
investment decisions of the 1870s indicate a shift away 
from door-to-door solicitations and a more concerted effort 
to rely on financial investments in stocks and bonds as a 
91Between 1872 and 1880, the Association conducted 
only one door-to-door campaign. Account Books for December 
1859 - December 1867, and December 1866 - December 1899, 
MFC Records, LV. 
92Account Book, December 1866 - December 1899, MFC 
Records, LV. Money for these purchases came from bequests 
by two FHA members. The Association also leased property 
on Pearl Street to several Richmond merchants. 
93constitution and By-Laws of the Female Humane 
Association of the City of Richmond, Adopted April 1, 1833, 
3, MFC Records, LV. During this earlier period, the 
Association simply incorporated interest from these 
investments into the Asylum's operating budget. 
221 
more reliabl h e source of . ad only income, a strategy the Association 
Betwe 1th briefly during its antebellum years. flirted w· 
en 1872 divid a nd 1880 , the amount of yearly income from 
ends on Percent stocks and bonds rose from 21.4 to 82.7 
Whil . fro e income 
In 76.1 
from charitable contributions fell 
percent t Th' 0 as low as 8 percent. (Table s.1) 
. ls shift 
1
nvest from charitable contribution• to 
Women, as the primary source of revenue reflects the rnents 
s ne that had wer and more sophisticated financial strategy 
bee 
stru . n forged 
by the "anxious care and constant 
e 1.r wart-ime 1 t t ~ experience. No onger con en 99len of th . 
Provid - a-door for whatever the hand of charity would to b eg door t 
e, th Ass roughout 
oc· the 18805 and earlY 18905, the 
1 at· lts in inued to reinvest its dividends and expand 
bond t portfolio through the purchase of municipal 
. ion cont' 
vestmen 
sand stocks.94 
94 ·---~ few e Throu . . . ~dded~ceptioghout this entire period th• Assac1at1on--w1th 
1
°nds to itsns--continued to reinvest its earnings: ~
nd 
n thefor bot~or~folio through the purchase of municipal 
tosse Georg' Richmond and petersburg and shares of stock 
lSo ~sed a ia Pacific Rail Road compa~Y· BY 1895, theY 
~issiooo, an~ortfolio of investments valued at more.than 
,.•ntur n to or the financial stabilitY to ei<tend their . 
1~•mo Y. In phaned children until well into the twentie
th 
onst1~ia1 ~om 1923, the Asylum's name was changed to the 
~~han Ution re for Girls," and, bY the 1930•, the b en s to ,edirected its focus from destitute femal• 
~!Cam~he in~~r~s ~ith emotional and behavi~ral probt~ms• 
l nute known ution began accepting boY• in 
19
~
4
' ., i 
88
a · s for 
5 
as 
the "Memorial foundation for children. n Mr Co~ " March 1883 5 December 1887, and 29 october 
C Re~ar:emorial Fou~dation for Children," 12-16, all 
s, LV. 
Table 5.1. Female Humane Association Yearly Income, 
1860-1880, by Percent 
222 
Year Dues Donations Stocks & Bonds Bequests 
1860 4.8 45.7 49.5 
1861 2.3 78.2 19.5 
1862 1.7 63.6 34.2 
1863 1.7 64.6 12.0 
1864 1.2 83.0 15.3 
1865 2.4 72.3 25.2 
1866 1.6 88.6 3.5 
1867 3.5 86.6 3.5 
1868 6.0 83.0 10.4 
1869 3.0 86.5 10.4 
1870 2.6 93.4 4.0 
1871 3.6 85.4 10.9 
1872 2.6 76.1 21.4 
1873 1.4 32.3 25.7 
1874 1.8 17.9 80.3 
1875 1.5 23.2 75.2 
21. 6 
0.4 
0.5 
0.5 
0.6 
40.6 
1876 0.6 1.1 58.2 40.0 
1877 3.7 19.0 73.9 3.4 
1878 1.3 8.0 73.9 16.7 
1879 1.7 9.0 74.8 14.5 
1880 1.1 15.6 82.7 0.7 
Source: Account Books, December 1858 - December 1867, 
December 1866 - December 1899; Minute Book, December 1875 -
October 1894, Memorial Foundation for Children Records, 
1827-1935, Library of Virginia. 
Anne Scott has observed that, for some groups formed 
in the antebellum period, the war's special demands 
diverted the women's attention away from their work for the 
poor. For instance, leaders of the Boston Fragment 
Society, which had been formed in 1812 to minister to needs 
of widows and orphans, worried that the war's overwhelming 
carnage would harden both members and supporters to the 
daily destitution of women in their community, and would 
also drain the group's energies and resources. And for a 
time it did, causing the society to examine its custom of 
holding an annual social event for its subscribers, on the 
basis that the funds could be more suitably spent on the 
poor. 95 But a l though the Female Humane Associa tion was 
initially d e vastated by wartime changes, the civil War 
ultimately served to focus and concentra t e i t s energies. 
It emerged from Reconstruction on sound financial f ooting 
which enabled it to become a permanent force in caring for 
the city's destitute children. 
Conclusion 
Whereas middle-class white women's employment had 
disappeared at the end of the war, the demand for their 
organizational work continued. The Female Humane 
Association's mission remained little changed after the 
war. The Ladies' Defense Association and the soldiers' aid 
societies--like ad hoc organizations formed in Richmond in 
the antebellum period--disappeared at the war's end, but 
were soon replaced by other organizations devoted to 
rebuilding churches damaged by the war and expanding their 
missions both at home and abroad; and to rescuing fallen 
confederate heroes from the grave of forgetfulness through 
the creation of Confederate cemetery associations. These 
topics will be taken up, respectively, in chapters Nine a nd 
Ten. 
95Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies, 26-36. 
223 
CHAPTER 6 
ESPIONAGE AND PROTEST 
Although Partic' a number of elite Richmond ,romen had 
lpated i' n· n Wh' 
1
net ig politics in the earlY to mid-
en f 1v1 war caused greater numbers of 
eenth wom century, the c· ·1 
con. ram all l 
~let· c asses to reflect on their political 
ions 
ref For "d 
lect. mi dle- and upper-class ,romen, these 
ions lett frequently . 
ers took place in their diaries or 1n 
to f . lay riends 
alty and family and varied from undying 
q' to the C lctated onfederacy, to a ,ravering coJllll\itment 
t.. by m·1· l\in l. 1 tary t 1 
, ta reverses and ,rorries abOut absen ma e 
an f1J.no. outright 
ament 
'l'h, al 
ese 
condemnation of the war based on 
ob' 
Jections to s1aveholdi.Jlg and/or secession, 
ref1 
wart· ections 
ll!\e 
often gave shape and meaning to ,romen'S 
activit' 
ies that have been discussed in chapter 
F'iv e. 
working-class ,romen no doubt shared all of 
con. 
w~! viction 
tten s, but unfortunatelY fe" have left anY 
· rec la ord d 
dee of the role such thought• might have plaYe 
:r Penin Dstead g or weakening their confederate reoolve, 
in , evide 
their nee of their 1oyaltY or rejection can be seen 
actions f ' such as Judith McGuire'• account 
O 
one 
Pao 
th, r and 
ese 
225 
poor Richmond woman, a seamstress for the Quartermaster's 
Bureau, who kept her husband's worn and bullet-riddled hat 
on the wall opposite her bed, as she told McGuire, to 
remind herself of his patriotism, or their unquestioning 
surrender of their sons as cannon fodder for the 
Confederate war machine. 1 Other proofs can be found in 
the protests working-class women conducted in a number of 
urban and rural communities over the high cost of food and 
other commodities. 
For a tiny group of middle- and working-class Richmond 
women who intellectually opposed the war, Virginia's 
decision to secede from the Union posed insurmountable 
political and ideological problems. 2 Throughout the war, 
1Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
Refugee, 2d ed. (New York: E.J. Hale & Son, 1867; repr. New 
York: Arno Press, 1972), 254-55; all subsequent citations 
are to this edition. According to McGuire, the woman's 
husband had survived, but his hat bore two bullet holes 
from his close encounters at the Battle of 
Chancellorsville. 
2 I am defining "disaffection" here somewhat 
differently than the definition cited by Ronald Hoffman in 
his essay on the Revolutionary South. Ronald Hoffman, "The 
'Disaffected' in the Revolutionary South," in The American 
Revolution: Explorations in the History of American 
Radicalism, Alfred F. Young, ed. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois 
University Press, 1976), 285. Whereas Hoffman defines the 
disaffected population in the American Revolution as that 
portion of the populace which refused to side with either 
the patriots or the British, I am using it to mean those 
i ndividuals in the south whose support for the war waned, 
at least temporarily, for several different re~sons, and 
who then sometimes opposed the war through their words or 
actions. As the war entered its third year in the spring 
of 1863, many of the disaffected were women who had grown 
weary of the added responsibilities they had assumed in the 
men's absence, or who were increasingly fearful about the 
226 
these women gathered information on the Confederate 
government which they passed on to Union sources. In the 
spring of 1864, they helped engineer the escape of more 
than a hundred Union soldiers from Libby Prison. This 
chapter examines Richmond's women's attitudes toward the 
war, with an emphasis on the more overt forms of political 
disaffection or disloyalty directed against the Confederate 
government. 
Female Patriotism 
"From one end of the Confederacy to another, you will 
scarcely meet a man who desponds, and never a woman," 
Benetta Valentine wrote in an 1863 letter to her brother, 
safety of their menfolk in the confederate armies. Others 
of the disaffected were individuals who were incensed at 
the war's economic toll on families and communities. Some 
others were discouraged by Confederate military defeats, 
often coupled with rumors of bureaucratic bungling at the 
highest levels of government. scholars who have written on 
Civil War disaffection in the south and/or the role played 
by women include Charles w. Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in 
the Southern Confederacy, Wendell H. Stephenson, ed. (~ew 
York: Greenwood Press, 1969); Frank L. Owsley, "Defeatism 
in the Confederacy," North Carolina Historical Review 3 
(1026): 446-56; Paul D. Escott, "'The Cry of the 
Sufferers': The Problem of Welfare in the Confederacy," 
Civil War History 23 (1977): 228-40; Victoria E. Bynum, . 
Unruly Women: The Politics of social and sexual control in 
the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 
Press, 1992); George Rable, civil wars: Women and the 
Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Chicago: University of 
Illinois Press, 1989); Drew Gilpin Faust, "Altars of 
Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War," 
Journal of American History 76.4 (March 1990): 1200-28; and 
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the 
Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 
227 
Edward, who was safely sitting out the war in paris. 
relationship which the women of this confederacy have 
towards the men in its great struggles for independence 
resemble more closely those of the early German tribes 
under similar circumstances than anything else in hiS
t
OrY 
"The 
borne 
to which I can liken them. 113 And 
women who waved Confederate flags 
indeed many Richmond 
from the balcony during 
. . . who crowded the streets 
Virginia's secession convention, or 
during the torchlight parades once secession was declared, 
3Members of an affluent Richmond family, Edward 
Virginius Valentine and his brother, William, spe~t the 
wartime years in Europe, visiting museums and taking 
lessons in painting and sculpture from Europe~n maSt ers, ld 
~hile their sister, Benetta, who was twenty-eigh~ years 
0 
in 1861, cared for her ailing father and mother in 
Richmond. A third brother, Manns. valentine, Jr:, was 
d~clared unfit for military duty because of ~hronic. 
diarrhea that required him to "observe a strict regimen .. 
Exposure to soldiers' fare would doubtless quickly o~casion 
a relapse." Note dated September 2, 1864, in Valentin! 
Family Papers, VM. Willie and Edward's letters to thei1; 
sister are filled with lighthearted descriptions of their 
European adventures, while Benetta wrote in more measur7d 
prose a~out th7 family's wartime privations. A~ one point, the family's financial circumstance were so perilous that 
Benetta urged her siblings to sell pieces of their work to 
pay for some of their travel expenses, a move the two men, 
had earlier protested on grounds that it would demean their 
art. Willie's talent as a painter never bore fruit as a 
profession, but brother Edward later became a premier 
sculptor of the Lost cause, designing the famous statue of 
a :ecum~ent ~obert E. Lee for Washington and Lee 
University, i~ Lexington, Virginia, and the massive 
Jefferson Davis statue for Richmond's Monument Avenue, an 
ironic consequence for a young man who spent most of the 
war out of the country and, thus, safe from enemy bullets. 
Sarah Benetta Valentine Richmond to Edward Virginius 
Valentine, Paris, 27 January 1863, Sarah Benetta Valentine 
Papers, VM. 
228 
or who bent over their sewing machines making Confederate 
uniforms seem to fit Benetta Valentine's description. 
As military companies were hastily assembled and 
equipped in the war's early days, Richmond women played 
central roles in encouraging men to enlist by showering 
their attention on those who answered the call, and heaping 
scorn and derision on those who did not. A Confederate 
uniform was "a passport to every heart and home," wrote 
Fannie Beers. "Every man who wore it became ennobled in 
the eyes of every woman. 114 "The young women denied the 
pleasure of their companionship to the youth who 
hesitated," a former member of one of Richmond's elite 
military units later recalled, "and ... were ready to pin 
the white feather upon any man of military age who opposed 
immediately taking up arms. 115 
Many Southern women tracked the war's progress in 
their diaries, faithfully recording battlefield locations 
and troop deployments. One young diarist filled page after 
page with meticulous descriptions of wartime engagements, 
gleaned from newspaper articles, telegraphic reports, and 
conversations with her father and other male relatives, 6 
4Fannie A. Beers, Memories (Philadelphia: J.B. 
Lippincott, 1891), 26. 
5John A. Cutchins, A Famous command: The Richmond 
Light Infantry Blues (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1934), 
70. 
6Unknown female diarist, Richmond, Virginia, Ms. 
V.88,20, VM. 
229 
Fifty-one-year-old Emma Mordecai maintained an 
exceptionally detailed account of the engagements taking 
place near her deceased brother's farm on the western 
outskirts of the city, especially those involving her three 
nephews, John, George, and Willie, all of whom saw duty in 
Company 2 of the Richmond Howitzers. 7 In part, these 
precise renderings helped women like Mordecai to fix their 
place in relation to the fighting which many Richmond women 
would experience only vicariously. It also helped confirm 
their convictions about the war's "rightness. 11 "The 
welcome & long expected sound of cannon, quick & heavy, has 
at length fallen upon our ears, and we feel that our cause 
is about to be decided, 11 Lucy Fletcher wrote in her diary 
during the 1862 Peninsula campaign. 
We feel assured that we shall come off 
victorious. God will help us as He has so 
wonderfully done in the past. He will hear our 
prayers for deliverance from this barbarous foe 
and our people will soon be free from their vile 
intrusion. 8 
When noble heroes like stonewall Jackson fell in 
battle, Richmond women like Kate Mason Rowland and her 
sister, Emily Mason, formed a portion of twenty thousand 
mourners who filed by the funeral bier through the day and 
night that Jackson's body lay in state in the Confederate 
7 Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
8Entry dated 27 June 1862, Keystone Diary, Lucy Muse 
Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
230 
Capitol 9 
"The city is 
one house of mourning," Rowland 
late r wrote 
th or and wind se and crepe banging from each t e st do ores clo d fl e body was ~w. Bells tolled, mournfullY, as 
f owers cover rought into to"n .... iibite 
m rom carr i ed the coffin• I could not refrain 
emento 
0
i ~~ away a small blossom as a fleeting 
e great immortal chieftain.
10 
Man y Southern 
mostly women tended to define their patriotism 
in relat' 
e~Plo· ion to the political convictions or military 
deepi male kin; but others appear to have developed 
its of 
Per political beliefs of their o"n based on 
Y-seated 
nions about slavebolding and states' rights, 
sonal 
Lucy 
opi . 
fre er, for example, engaged in a spirited and 
Fletch 
quentl Y ac · 
a N r1monious political dei,ate about the ,..ar ,..ith 
orthern 
of sister, Eliza wa1ton c1ark, the reverberations 
could be felt for at 1east thirtY year• after 
th
e 
Which 
War Was over. 
"It · 
sist is so distressing to me to find that my t,eloved 
er is hor completely convinced .•. to t,elieve all the 
of Southern life as circulated in the Northern 
rors 
----
'i. 9S 
ears allie B . the war: rour 
1a
67 
of Pe rock Putn~ aicnmond durin lton L · rso ' G w car , 
oui~ repr. N na l Observat · on ( Ne" york: · · 
218
_
2 5
; 
War- ':' (Mrs e'f York: Time-1,ife eookS, 
19
~
3
)' . ,
61
: rne 
Yor/·lllte Me~ G7raud) wright, 1' soutnern G17l ~~u bter (Ne" 
• Doubt ories of a confederate senator• 
10 eday, Page & co., 1905), 126-27· 
II. J Kate d · n l{atharine 
lnd.?nes, edMason Rowland diarY, ESB!,, qu(~~~
1
:napolis, 
• Bobb · The 1,adies of <1: ' 
s-Merrill, 1962), 
papers, "Fletcher confided in her diary after a 
particularly bitter exchange in late 1865. 
There were some features in slavery that must be 
repugnant to every generous heart--but I am more 
than ever convinced that ... the condition of our 
slaves on the whole was far better than that of 
any laboring people in the world. Power will 
always be abused, is now, all over the world, in 
every relation in life. Husbands & parents--
Rulers and Employers have abused & will continue 
to abuse where they have the power & I contend 
that there was less abuse of that power among our 
native slave holders than in any other part of 
the country. .It is a notorious fact that the 
most severe & cruel overseers were found to be 
Northern men generally of N. England. 11 
231 
Stung by her sister's accusations of a lingering 
vindictiveness some four years later, Fletcher penned the 
following letter 
I have been reading over some of your letters, 
and while I have fully appreciated and responded 
to every expression of affection, I have been 
deeply wounded by the reproaches in which you 
have indulged towds. me personally, 
characterizing my political conviction as "wicked 
and unchristian .... All I have ever done has 
been not to make you think as we do, but to place 
ourselves in a true ¥osition, and correct 
misrepresentations. 1 
Fletcher remained an "un-Reconstructed" rebel well 
into the late-nineteenth century. Sometime between 1870 
and 1899, she reread and edited her diaries, excising 
11Entry dated 25 October 1865, "Nothing but Leaves" 
Diary, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
12Excerpt from an 1868 letter to Fletcher's sister, , 
quoted in the "Nothing but Leaves" Diary, Lucy Muse Walton 
Fletcher Papers, DU. Emphasis in the original. 
232 
offending portions and adding personal commentary to 
counter accusations of continued bitterness hurled at her 
from her Northern kin. 11 1899 still finds me lingering 'at 
the Gate, '" she wrote in a long entry shortly after the 
Spanish American War 
[I] have outlived another war which has been 
mercifully brought to a speedy termination. The 
details of suffering to our brave soldiers have 
been terrible, but God is wonderfully over-ruling 
all for good, and the Northern people have been 
forced to recognize the loyalty ... & heroism of 
the South--as I have always said history will do 
us justice. I have often wondered, when reading 
of the ... generous treatment of our Spanish 
prisoners •.. if they ever recalled, by contrast, 
their own treatment of our own noble President & 
their own dreadful ravages by fire & sword, 
laying waste to our whole country & boasting that 
a.crow in travelling over it would have to carry 
his own provisions. We can never have any love 
in our hearts for Miles, Sheridan, & Sherma~ 
Not all Richmond women were able to sustain the 
patriotic zeal of Benetta Valentine, or Lucy Fletcher, or 
Kate Rowland, however. confederate Treasury clerk Sallie 
Grattan poured out her misgivings about the war in a letter 
to her friend, Alexander Brown, after a particularly 
devastating Confederate defeat at Roanoke Island in 
February 1862 . 
wrote, 
"It has almost taken my breath away," she 
& certainly has disposed all my hope & 
P~triotism. They tell me the Federalists (sic] 
wi11 certainly occupy Norfolk, Richmond, 
Savannah, Mobile--all the seaport towns ... I 
. 
13
Entry dated 1 January 1899, "Nothing but Leaves" 
Diary, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
could almost wish ... for the wings of a dove 
that I might fly away & be at rest; but they tell 
me that is very unpatriotic that I should be 
willing to see the whole co~ntry devastated, all 
the men, women & children killed &c, rather than 
submission. What good would it do me, when.all 
th0se I love are dead. Patriotism is a curious 
thing & is beyond my comprehension, 
14 
233 
With the city's fall in April 1865, many patriotic 
Richmond women faced the moment they had feared moS
t 
from 
shortly 
the ti'me the w b i'nvasi'on by un1'on troops, ar egan: 
before dawn, a sleepless Phebe Pember watched from 
Ch 
· rob ci' ty council 
1 orazo Hill as the mayor and the 
atop 
surrendered the keys to the city. 
to the east, a 
[1!] alf an hour afterwards, over bove the hill, 
single Federal blue jacket ros7 a t at what he 
standing transfixed with astonishroen 5 if out of 
saw· Another and another sprang. up a About seven 
the earth, still all remained qui~~~ 5 teadY 
o'clock, there fell upon the ea~ ding around 
clatter of horses I hoofs, and win H · 11 came a 
Rocketts, close under ChimboraZ 0 1 ~av~lrymen, 
0
~ 
small and compact body ~f.Federrding cioselY an 
horses in splendid condition, r unted, well 
steadily along. They were welf ~~ in southe~nfor 
accoutered well fed--a rare s g d arroY tha t st ' h vaunte the ga e 
reets--the advance of t e )Ced at 
four years had so hopeless 1Y1fnoc 
of the Southern confederacy. 
Even in the face of invasion, it was 
t t. hat the 
0 s ifle her sense of pride at w ble tO 
1 had been a 
we I-equipped Confederate forces 
accomplish. 11 arown, 
14 to Ale~ander 
Februa Sallie Grattan, Richmondpapers, DU· . t,ife 
ry 18 62 Alexander arown . , 5 stor · , 
' man · on s is outhern wo (St• s1m 
. c Phoebe Yates Pember, A 5 wileY, ed· 
~~la~~federate Richmong, Bell r. 1974), 95, 
' Ga.: Mockingbird presS, 
234 
As white Richmonders watched from behind shuttered 
windows, an "endless stream" of blue uniforms filed into 
Richmond to the tune of "The Star Spangled Banner," and 
hoisted the U.S. flag over the Capitol. Prepared for the 
worst, some Richmond women recorded initial surprise and 
relief at the degree of calm and respect with which the 
city was occupied. "We had been taught to believe, that 
when the Federals came, that a set of desperadoes, thieves, 
and . .devils, were to be let loose in the city, to 
. commit every conceivable act of cruelty and wrong," 
Mary West wrote in a letter to her sister, Clara. "How 
agreeably have all been disappointed. 1116 
Others greeted the sight with rage or despair. "It is 
a galling sight to see the streets filled with Yankees," 
Lucy Fletcher fumed, "remembering that these are the people 
who for 4 years have been slaying our brethren and 
desolating our land. 1117 To Emmie Sublett, the flag's red 
stripes looked like "so many bloody gashes," reminding her 
of all the Confederate blood shed in four years of 
warfare . 18 
16Mary Andrews West, Richmond, to her sister, Clara, 
12 April 1865, Mary Andrews West Letter, VHS. 
17 Entry dated 12 April 1865, Little Red Book, Lucy 
Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
18Emmie Sublett, Richmond, to Emilie, 29 April 1865, 
Emmie Sublett Letter, ESBL. 
were especially enraged to see the occupation Many , 
forces were 
viewed 
led by black soldiers, which manY Richll1°nders 
commanders to 
as a blatant attempt bY Northern 
furth er humil' iate the conquered city,
19 
blue with negro troops," EJIIIlla 11ordecai 
"They were the blackest crowd I ever saw, 
and not a mulatto "It 
among them, " added LUCY Fletcher· was 
to see these negro troops paraded thr0 ' 
was bl ack and 
complained.20 
a hor i r ble sight 
.looking like demons with their i,ayonets & 
the t 5 reets. 
sabres glea . . . . ming in the sunlight & showing their white teeth 
as they . grinned with satisfaction, or derision-"
21 
ore disturbing to some was the reaction of ex-
Even m . 
who packed t · k 
he streets, manY falling on their nees 
slaves 
19 R · Isabel Ma . . ichmond, ESBL ury Reminiscence of the Evacuation of 
C~nfederate M · ~aury later became a member of the 
time, as r emorial Literary society and served, for a 
visitors s~~ent of the confederate !IUSeum. one of the 
a soldier . happened to meet there was a man wltO )lad t,een 
3, 186
5 
a i~ the U. s. troops that entered the citY on April 
Massach;se~t who told her that the decision to have the 5th 
commanding ;ffa black unit) lead the advance was based on 
"negroes ha~ icer Godfrey Weitzel'• observation that 
easily be c ~een accustomed to submission, and could more 
he told me ~~ ro!led than white men. I told him I was glad 
Jd day of A ';Ii• she later recalled, "for I saw them that 
blackest m pri 1865 as they marched up claY st.--the 
ignominiou!ntI ever saw. · .I felt hoW mean--hOW 
tell me it wa O try th1;1s to humiliate us • .. and now you 
misconduct ~ meant in kindness, to prevent disorder and 
every day.;, am glad to know that I am learning history 
20 Emma Morde · · April 1 865 11 
cai • _Richmond, to "IIY dear Edward," 5 
, yers Family papers, VHS, 
21 Lucy Mu!'!.t1J 1tated 5 April 1865, sabbath Notebook oiary, a on Fletcher Papers, ou. 
236 
to thank Union soldiers for their deliverance. 22 Lucy 
Fletcher was offended by the sight of their former servants 
occupying the public places previously inaccessible to 
them. "The streets are thronged with negroes of all 
shades," Lucy Fletcher complained, 
from the pretty mulatto in her jaunty hat and 
furbelow, to the dusky ragged cornfield drudge, 
who with soiled garments and streaming headgear 
is on her way to the square to enjoy the music of 
"Yankee Doodle" & "Old John Brown." Hundreds of 
ragged & dirty negro boys are rolling over the 
beautiful grass plots on the square, while the 
girls are enjoying themselves around the 
Monument, jumping rope & rolling hoops. [A)t 
intervals throughout the grounds, dirty tents are 
placed for the sale of cakes & pies, & this is 
Yankee civilization! I hope they enjoy each 
other's society. 23 
More than any other sight, this vision of black children 
and adults enjoying themselves in areas previously known 
only to whites foreshadowed the altered social relations in 
the South many white women dreaded. It signalled to white 
Richmonders that life in Richmond would never be the same--
that white women would now have to negotiate with their 
former slaves for their labor in white households, and that 
22 Edward H. Ripley, The Capture and Occupation of 
Richmond. April 3. 1865 (n.p.: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907), 
8. 
23Entry dated 25 April 1865, Little Red Book, Lucy 
Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
237 
whites would now have to compete with blacks for the city's 
public spaces.24 
While most patriotic Richmond women would have 
p r obably chosen to remain behind closed doors, the absence 
0 f many of the city's men drew large numbers of women into 
fo r ced encounters with Union soldiers for the purpose of 
s e curing the safety of their dwellings, or inquiring about 
their menfolk being held in union prisons, or regiSt ering 
for government relief. These confrontations left some 
women feeling even more committed to the Confederacy than 
they had ever been before. "(T]hough my heart beat loudly 
and my blood boiled, 11 Judith McGuire later recalled after a 
trip to Union headquarters to request a guard, "I never 
felt more high-spirited and lofty than at that moment.
1125 
Parke Bagby also accepted Union protection, and allowed the 
guard to heat his coffee in her kitchen; but she drew the 
line at any form of social interaction by refusing to 
accept a visit from a commanding officer who appeared on 
her porch three days after the occupation with a bag of 
oranges for her children. 26 "Our ladies, young and old, 
24Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball, "Mapping 
the Terrain of Black Richmond, 11 Journal of Urban History_ 
21.3 (March 1995): 296-346. 
25Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee during 
the Wgr, 347-49. McGuire had met with Union officers to 
re9uest a ~uard for her property after finding an uninvited 
Union soldier standing in her kitchen. 
26 Lucy Parke Chamberlayne Bagby, "The Chronicle of 
Lucy Parke Chamberlayne Bagby," Bagby Family Papers, VHS. 
238 
have the most utter aversion to any intercourse with these 
hated blue coats," she wrote, 
and. .have pursued a very dignified & reserved 
demeanor towards them. Some of the officers and 
clergy have ... been coolly repulsed in such a 
manner as to mortify them, as much as their want 
of sensibilitr would suffer them to be mortified 
at any thing. 7 
Spying for the Enemy 
For a handful of Richmond women, the arrival of Union 
soldiers must have represented a sort of deliverance that 
signaled the war was now drawing to an end. It is 
difficult to know precisely how many Richmond women were 
actually involved in the espionage network that radiated 
from the Confederate capital, carrying vital information to 
Washington, D.C., or to Union troops stationed in the 
field. Information on both female and male agents is 
difficult to come by, in part because of the covert nature 
of their work, and in part because of the Confederacy's 
determination at the end of the war to destroy evidence 
documenting their activity. 28 A contemporary source lists 
the names of nineteen female spies, but this list is 
problematical in that some of these names were probably 
27Entry dated 13 May 1865, Diary dated April 27, 1865 
- 1894, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher ·Papers, OU. 
28This was probably done out of fear of reprisals, or 
that, as traitors, the women might be executed. 
239 
aliases for known operatives. 29 Of the thirteen women for 
whom more than a name is known, three--Pauline Cushman, 
Jeannette Mabry, and Mary Walker--were more active in the 
war's western theatre, while at least four of the remaining 
ten spent most of their time engaged in intelligence 
gathering and other covert activity in Richmond. 30 
29 oonald E. Markle, Spies and Spymasters of the Civil 
War, (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994). This source 
completely overlooks former slave and Underground Railroad 
conductor Harriet Tubman, who spied for the Union. It 
does, however, include the names of other black female 
agents. I have added Tubman's name into the list of female 
spies being discussed here. Mary Massey's Bonnet Brigades 
also includes the names of thirty-one Confederate and Union 
female spies, some of which correspond with names provided 
by Markle. Mary Elizabeth Massey, Bonnet Brigades (New 
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 87-99. There is very little 
reliable information on covert activity by either women or 
men. Some of the sources that do exist are really highly 
sensationalized or fictional accounts that may contain a 
few kernels of truth but which are relatively 
untrustworthy. Among these are Ishbel Ross's Rebel Rose: 
Life of Rose O'Neal Greenhaw, Confederate Spy (New York: 
Harper & Brothers, 1954) and Harnett T. Kane's Spies for 
the Blue and Gray {New York: Doubleday & Company, 1954.) 
Others are highly condescending about the role played by 
female agents. See, for example, Alfred A. Roehling, Women 
Who Spied (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1967), 19. George Rable's 
civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism is 
surprisingly silent on the issue of female espionage. An 
interesting account of the spy narratives of Union agents 
Pauline Cushman, Emma Edmonds, and Harriet Tubman is Lyde 
Cullen Sizer's "Acting Her Part: Narratives of Union Women 
Spies," in Divided Houses: Gender and The civil War, 
Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds. (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1992), 114-33. 
30The thirteen female spies included here are Frances 
Abel, Mrs. E.H. Baker, Mary Bowser, Pauline Cushman, Emma 
Edmonds, Abby Green, Hattie Lawton, Jeanette Laurimer 
Mabry, Lucy Rice, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Van Lew, 
Rebecca West, and Mary Walker, a Union surgeon who spent a 
portion of the war imprisoned in Richmond's castle Thunder. 
240 
Although some scholars have argued that women made 
ideal spies because they were seldom suspected of holding 
strong political beliefs, others have claimed that it was 
precisely this lack of political acumen that compromised 
women's effectiveness--that in "their enthusiasm and 
magnificent unfamiliarity with things martial," female 
spies "deluged the Union and Confederate headquarters alike 
with a magpie's outpourings of gossip [and] trivia" which 
was far overshadowed by more accurate information provided 
by male operatives. 31 Evidence from the Richmond network 
operated by Elizabeth Van Lew, however, suggests that 
effective espionage activity was seldom a function of 
either gender or race. 
From her vantage point on Church Hill in Richmond, 
fifty-three-year-old Elizabeth van Lew operated a Union 
espionage ring that included four additional white and 
black women and as many as five men and boys. 32 A 
31Hoehling, Women Who Spied, 19. 
32 In addition to Van Lew's widowed mother, the other 
female spies in Van Lew's network were Mary Bowser--a 
former Van Lew slave who cared for Jefferson Davis's 
children and served food at the Confederate White House, 
and Abby Green and Lucy Rice, two white agents who 
collaborated with Van Lew in the Libby Prison escape in 
February 1864. The male spies included Judson Knight; 
former New Yorker Williams. Rowley and his teen-aged son, 
Merritt; Samuel Ruth, superintendent of the Richmond, 
Fredericksburg, & Potomac Railroad; and his assistant, F. 
William Lohmann. Meriwether Stuart, ."Of Spies and Borrowed 
Names: The Identity of Union Operatives in Richmond Known 
as 'The Phillipses' Discovered," Virginia Magazine of 
History and Biography 89 (1981): 308-27. Other suspected 
Union spies in Richmond include Mary Caroline Allan, Anna 
- - -- -----=; 
241 
lifetime Richmond resident and the daughter of a successful 
merch t doubt, out of her 
an , Van Lew's wartime role grew, no 
fa- 1· 1 Throughout the "' Y's longtime opposition to slavery. 
war, Van Lew maintained close contact with Union General 
Benjamin F. Butler, whom she supplied with elaborate 
information about troop sizes and location that was relayed 
to her through her male scouts. 33 The only surviving 
message that had been preserved in the official records of 
the war is the one she penned to Butler at Fortress Monroe 
in l864, as Union generals plotted their strategy for the 
spring 1864 campaign. 
No attempt should be made (to take Richmond] with 
less than 30,000 cavalry, [with] from 1?,00? to 
15,000 infantry to support them, amounting in all 
to 40,000 to 45,000 troops. Do not underrate 
their strength and desperation. Forces could 
probably be called into action in from 5 to 10 
days; 25,000 mostly artillery--Hoke and Kemper's 
Scott, Mary Lee, Sally Thaw, Nicholas Steiger, John,Min~r 
Botts, and a Confederate War Department clerk and his wife. 
Many were incarcerated in Richmond's Castle Thunder, a 
prison for wartime dissidents. Alan Golden has concluded 
that as many as a hundred women were imprisoned there 
during the war, for one reason or another. In July 1863, 
prisoner Mary Lee gave birth to a daughter whom she named 
Castellina Thunder Lee in commemoration of her 
incarceration. Richmond Examiner, 29 April 1862; 10, 20, 
25 July 1863; Putnam, Richmond during the war, 211, 248-40, 
263-64; Alan Lawrence Golden, "Castle Thunder: The 
Confederate Provost Marshal's Prison 1862-1865 11 (M.A. 
thesis, University of Richmond, 1980), 121. 
33Nancy B. Samuelson, "Employment of Female Spies in 
the American Civil War," Minerva 7.3/4 (fall/winter 1989): 
61. 
brigades gone to North Carolina; & Pickett'S, in 
or about Petersburg. 34 
To deflect attention from her activitieS, Van Lew 
242 
often assumed the pose of a mentally-unstable woman who 
carried on conversations with imaginary people, a th inly-
Veil d h r Richmond 
e disguise that was easily penetrated by e 
n · t' es 
eighbors, who showered her with curses a nd ' at im ' 
threatened bodily harm. "I have had brave men shake their 
fingers in my face and say terrible things," she wrote. 
We all had threats of being driven away, thr~a~s 
of fire, threats of death .... I have turne 0 
speak to a friend and found a detective at my 
elbow. Strange faces could sometimes be seen 
peeking around the columns and pillars of the 
back portico. 35 
In February 1864, van Lew invited additional enmity 
from the community by helping to engineer the escape of 109 
Union officers from Libby Prison. 36 Working with Abby 
34Elizabeth Van Lew, Richmond, to Benjamin F. Butler, 
Fortre~s Monroe, [Maryland,] 20 January 1864, War of the 
Reb~llion: Official Record of the Union and Confed7rate 
Arm7es, (Washington, o.c.: Government Printing Office, 
various dates), series r, vol. 33, 520-21. Hereafter, this 
source will be cited as o.R. 
35 . 
_Undated entry, Elizabeth van Lew diary, quoted in 
Katharine Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 184. 
36When coupled with Eric Dahlgren's raid in March a nd 
the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania court House, 
and Cold Harbor in May and June, the Libby Prison e7cape 
~hould be seen as part of the campaign to capture ~ichmond 
in the first half of 1864. Van Lew and her operatives 
played a role in each of these events, by keeping Union 
commanders apprised of Confederate locations and strength, 
and by enabling a number of Union officers to return to 
wartime commands by facilitating the Libby escape. It was 
also Elizabeth Van Lew. who retrieved and buried Ulric 
Dahlgren's body after his botched raid. Robert P. 
243 
Green and Lucy Rice, two of her Richmond agents, van Lew 
established a series of safe houses for the escapees, who 
crawled to freedom through a rat-infested tunnel dug 
beneath an room on the prison's ground unused hospital 
floor. 37 As she carried food and clothing to sick 
Pr1' s Abby Green also oners in the months before the escape, 
relay d , about the number 
e information to the future escapees 
and Placement of the prison's guards, the location of the 
city' . of the confederate 
s armory and arsenal, and the size 
troops deployed nearby.38 For nearly two weeks after the 
breakout, Lucy Rice sheltered Union soldiers, including 
Broadwater, Dau ers of th cause: Women in the 
Jose~h T. Campbell, ed. (Martinsburg, Pa.: Daisy 
Publishing, 1993), 30. 
ar, 
37 · n r F.F. cavada, Libby Life: Experiences of a Priso e . 
of.War in Richmond. Va .• 1863-65 (1864; repr, Lanham, Md., 
University Press of America, 1985); Frank E, Moran, . 
BaSt iles of the confederacy: A Reply to Jefferson pavis 
(Baltimore, Md.: n.p., 1890); Elizabeth Van Lew Journal, 
LV, quoted in Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 202-03; Samuel A. 
Urquart Letter, VHS; southern Opinion, 15 June, 27 July 
1867 ; Thomas E. Rose, Col. Rose's story of the Famous 
Tun~el Escape from Libby Prison (n.p.: n.p., n.d.)f A.G. 
Hamilton, Story of the Famous Tunnel Escape from Libby 
Prison (n.p.: n.p., n.d.). Rose's and Hamilton's accounts 
are ~ontained in a pamphlet in the Library of CongresS, 
Washington, o.c. 
38A • th' 
. ccord1ng to Nancy Samuelson, much of is 
information was passed through books with encoded messages 
made through a pattern of pin pricks on the pages. One 
woman also enclosed information in a packet of dress 
patt~rns. Samuelson, "Employment of Female Spies in the 
American Civil War " 57-66. This description of Green's 
' ' • I • activities is drawn largely from the report accompanying 
her claim for compensation before ·the congressional 
Committee hearing wartime claims. u.s. congress, senate 
Committee on Claims, Report on the case of Mrs. Abby Green, 
S.R. 112, 38th congress, 1st sess., 28 July 1866. 
244 
Colonel Ab . d 1· n postwar el D. Streight, often recognize 
accounts as the , 1 Ri'ce's home was subject 
escapes p anner. 
to repeated searches 
the men hidden there 
· but none of by military detectiveS, 
. ed 39 Forty-eight 
were ever discover · 
of th t d but fifty-
e 109 escapees were eventually recap ure' 
nine men successfully made their way to the Union line, 
carrying vital information about Richmond fortifications 
a nd returning Union officers to key positions of 
command. 40 
I . d G en fled to the n the wake of the escape, Rice an re 
North 1 · d 41 BY May 
, eaving their homes and property behin · 
1864 , Rice had settled in Baltimore, where she was 
supported by the charity of Union sympathizers.
42 
In 
1866 , a grateful U.S. Congress awarded Abby Green and Lucy 
Rice Sl,500, each, in compensation for the losses they had 
incurred. 43 ' Elizabeth van Lew remained in Richmond ' where 
she was on hand to greet the arrival on Union troops on 
April 3, 1865. A Union guard was immediately placed around 
39Richmond Examiner, 2 May 1864; Report on .the case of 
Mrs. Abby Green, 28 July 1866, committee on claims, 3Sth 
Congress, 1st sess., S.R. 112. 
40 k The other two escapees drowned in Grape Vine Cree 
during the escape. 
41Richmond Examiner, 2 May 1864. 
42Richmond Examiner, 2 May 1864. 
43 U.S. Congress, Senate committee on claims, Report on 
the case of Mrs. Abby Green, s.R. 112, 38th congress, 1st 
sess., 28 July 1866. 
~ ----
245 
the v . · ted reprisals 
an Lew house to protect her from anticipa 
by a s frequently 
ngry Richmonders; but although van Lew wa 
shunn d overt attacks on 
e when she appeared in public, no 
hei:- ap newly elected Pear to have been made. In 1869, 
Pres· d 1 lty by i ent Ulysses s. Grant rewarded her oya 
appoi· nt. Post Office at an ing her to head the Richmond 
annual salary of $4,000, a position she held for eight 
Years. As a feminist, postmistress Van Lew inSt ituted 
several reforms, including hiring additional female clerkS, 
who wer . . . d 1144 when she died 
e assigned to the "ladies win ow. 
in 1900 , a Massachusetts veterans' group erected a stone 
over h · · t · n· "She er grave bearing the following inscrip io · 
risked everything that is dear to man--friends, fortune, 
comfort, health, life itself ... that slavery might be 
abolished and the union preserved."45 
As B t th begi·nning of this ene ta Valentine's quote at e 
chapter suggests, some southerners believed that the 
Confederacy's women were, if anything, more loyal than its 
men, an idea that was echoed in many postwar writings. 
"Too much praise cannot be awarded the noble women of the 
44El. d 
. izabeth Van Lew Album, Ms. 5:5, V3257, VHS. Un er 
her guidance, the city also established letter boxes 
th~oughout the metropolis. Two undated newspaper clippings, 
Emily Howland Scrapbook, Section XVI, no. 2, National 
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Collection, 
Rare Books Division, LC. 
45Quoted in Katharine Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 278. 
South who bore such a prominent part in the late 
began a writer to the southern Opinion in 1868 
war:" 
mothers wives daughters and sisters buckled on 
their belts a~d sent husbands, sons, and bro~hers 
forth to meet the invaders of their soil, while 
they toiled for bread and spun the raiment of 
little ones in shanty homes in the country, or 
shops in town .... Had the spirit of the women 
animated the entire Confederacy, a cause now 
prostrate might have been still erect and in 
arms, and perhaps triumphant. 46 
246 
"The women of the south in the days of our peril made the 
Confederate soldier the ideal soldier of the world," 
another Southern chronicler remarked. "No one can deny 
that the women of the south were a potent factor in our 
d , d 1147 holding out in the unequal struggle as long as we i · 
Given the prevalence of these notions, postwar 
Richmonders must have struggled to reconcile this image of 
46Paul w. Hayne, "The women of the South--Th~i~ 
Heroism and Devotion during the War," southern Opinion, 20 
June 1868. 
47J. Ogden Murray, "The south's Peerless Women of the 
World," in Three Stories in One, by J. Ogden Murray. (n.p.: 
n.p., 1906), 59-65. Murray was a major in the Confederate 
Army. This pamphlet was intended for use in the Southern 
schools to educate children to the "true" history of the 
South during the Civil war. (See Chapter Ten.) Ironically, 
this ~otion of Confederate women as super-patriots has 
s~meti~es been accepted unquestioningly by contemporary 
historians. James McPherson, for example, repeats 
Northerners' observations about the white hot anger of 
southern female noncombatants, but makes little mention of 
Southern's women's disaffection for the Confederacy, as 
seen in the commodities riots they staged during the war in 
a number of Southern cities. James McPherson, Ordeal by 
Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. 
Knopf, 1982), 494-95. 
247 
a super-patr1· ot1· c 1 · b th van Confederate sisterhood with E iza e 
Lew a 1 . 
' J.felong Richmonder who opposed slavery, turned her 
back on the Confederacy, and spied for the enemy. In 
November 1867 , a writer to the southern opinion recaSt van 
Lew's 
role in the Libby Prison escape in a fictionalized 
account that some Richmonders might have found more 
appealing. Titled "Love in the Libby," it told the story 
of Lula Vanhorn, a Church Hill woman who had fallen in love 
with an 
. Illinois soldier, Major Edward Glover, one of the 
LJ.bby 
escapees. 49 Instead of the real Elizabeth Van Lew, 
a Plain-look' ing, fiftyish radical who abhorred slavery, 
eschewed 
marriage, and feigned insanity to avoid detection, 
the fict' J.onal Vanhorn was an attractive young woman with a 
"f Ull bust" , "delicate hands," and "beautiful tresses" who 
fainted when she heard of her lover's re-capture, but later 
donned a 
male disguise to help free him. 49 The story 
48 
this isBa~et on the published narratives of the escape, 
evidencept~ ably a fictional name. There is absolutely no 
Libby det .at suggests Van Lew was in love with any of the 
ainees. She never married. 
49 Accorcti a Confeder t ng to the story, Vanhorn disguised herself as 
duty as a;~ soldier named Michael and volunteered for 
put on the risen guard. "You must put off the woman and 
d man " c 1 · d f · · · t Uplici tous b ' aime 1ct1onal character Jim ca e, a 
J. Marshall Hlockade runner who operated as a double agent. 
Sentinel• A sasna, .,Love in the Libby, or the Disguised 
November" 1 867 ketch of the Late war," southern Opinion, 9 
actual circu • In some ways, this is an inversion of the 
President J : stances su~rounding the escape of confederate 
women, s clo~h ~erson J?av.1s ! who avoided detection by wearing 
Women and J J.ng · Nina Silber, "Intemperate Men, Spiteful 
Clint~n ed etferson Davis," in Divided Houses, Silber and 
Elizabeth v:~ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 
Lew was one of a handful of Richmond women 
248 
concluct d . Glover at the headquarters 
e with Vanhorn marrying 
of General Ulysses s. Grant. 
By re-defining van Lew's actions as being based 
primar · 1 of thi's fi'ctionalized account i Yon love, the author 
Pr · . f her behavior evicted a more justifiable explanation or 
that took d S must have felt away some of the shame Richmon er 
at h · oat of the aving the most notorious female turnc 
Conf ct BY ending the story e eracy living within their midst. 
with L 1 the author also reasserted u a Vanhorn's marriage, 
the importance of southern women's subordinate role as 
wi· ves d th real van Lew had an mothers, a role that e 
rejected. By marrying the fictional Vanhorn to a Northern 
officer, the author of "Love in the Libby," may also have 
anticipated the reconciliation literature that emerged in 
the postwar North to give literary and cultural definition 
to national reunification. 50 
The Civil War and the Family Household Economy 
who, in the 1870s endorsed women's enfranchisement by 
j~i~ing the first 1 Virginia suffrage association •. Sandra 
Gioia Treadway "A Most Brilliant Woman: Anna White Bedeker 
and the First Woman Suffrage Association in Virginia, 11 
Virginia Cavalcade 43.4 (spring 1994): 166-77. 
50Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and 
the South. 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1993), especially Chapter Two. Silber 
a:gues that a common metaphor in this reconciliation 
literature involved the subordination of a southern woman 
t~ a Northern man, usually through marriage. "Love in the 
Libby" does not follow this precise formula, however, 
because Van Lew was well-known as a Northern sympathizer. 
249 
Al though Elizabeth Van Lew's betrayal harmed the 
Conf d e eracy by revealing the vulnerability of its fighting 
strength ' a potentially more destructive blOW to 
resolve may have been the one dealt by the Confederate 
growing d' isaffection of thousands of confederate wives and 
who, especially beginning in 1863, besieged :mothers 
officials with appeals for their menfolk's govern:rnent .. 
conducted wartime riots in a number of southern return or 
This disaffection was brought about less by 
---:5~1------
North c . , Governor J arolina Governor Zebulon Vance, Georgia 
Judah P. 
5
os~ph_Brown, and confederate secretary of war 
letters f enJamin collectively received thousands of 
soldiers ~~m Confederate women demanding the release of 
1863 sold'ose labor was needed at home. Beginning in 
with'lett iers in the field were also frequently inundated 
their wivers from home detailing the hardships suffered by 
cities 51 
Confedera~s and children. When coupled with the 
help to ace Army's failed 1863 initiatives, these letters 
by the Con~ount for the spiraling desertion rate suffered 
Historian ederate army in the closing years of the war, 
working-cfahave debated the question of the commitment of 
Confederat ss Southerners and yeoman farmers to the 
Carolina de ~ause, Paul Escott's examination of North 
that many ~ring the civil war has led him to the conclude 
from the storth Carolina laborers did not support the war 
man's war bart and believed that it was really •a rich 
by the res ut a poor man's fight,• a conclusion supported 
Escott, "T~:rch of both Frank Owsley and Steven Hahn• 
Many Excell cry of the sufferers•; and paul D. Escott, 
Carolina, 
1
:nt People: power and Privilege in North 
Carolina 
19
5 0-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North 
and stev~n H 85 ); Owsley, "Defeatism in the confederacy•; 
Farmers and ~hn, The Roots ~f southern Populism: Yeoman 
1850 
1890 
he Transformation of the Geor ia u countr 
Faust has (New York: oxford University Press 1983) Drew 
disaffecticontributed to this discussion by ~sserti~g that 
important ~n among confederate women may have been an 
"Altars of ;cto7 in confederate defeat. Drew Faust elites and t~crifice. • Analyses which argue that s~uthern 
include Ja e rank and file equally supported the war 
Beringer, ~=~ McPherson's Ordeal by Fire and Richard E. 
:man Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. 
250 
the Confederacy's political objectives than opposition to 
it was by searing economic hardships faced by many 
families 
' that were the result of complex set of relations 
between the Union blockade, the activities of Confederate 
impressment agents, and wartime speculation by southern 
merchants. 
As the Union blockade tightened around the southern 
coastline to restrict the flow of raw materials and 
manufactured goods, southerners began to feel the impact of 
wartime short 52 ages on the family household economy. 
Evidenced ocumenting these shortages abounds and can be 
found not just in the personal writings of Confederate 
women and men, but also in articles in southern newspapers 
that instructed women on how to deal with the absence of 
Still Jr Unive~sit., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: 
contributYdof Georgia Press, 1986). Stephanie McCurrie has 
that · yeom: to this side of the discussion with her claim 
common caun farmers in the south Carolina Low Country made 
patriarch se ~ith the large planter on the basis of 
Stephanie y M Which made them the "masters of small worlds. 11 
South carol~Curry, "The Politics of Yeoman Households in 
eds., 22-41 ina," in Divided Houses, Clinton and Silber, Worlds: Yeo' and Stephanie Mccurry, Masters of Small 
Political cman Households. Gender Relations, and the 
Country (NeUlture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low 
w York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 
52Placi part of the ng a coastal blockade around Southern ports was 
the war in Anaconda Plan, the Union strategy for winning 
~uropea~ marpart, by 7utting,the Confederacy off from its access tkets for its agricultural products and limiting 
historians ho manufactured goods from abroad. Although 
blockade by a~e.debated the effectiveness of the Union 
runners, Jamc.1.t.1.ng the successes of Confederate blockade 
the South's es McPherson maintains that the blockade "cut 
McPherson, 0 seaborne trade to less than a third of normal." Jdeal by Fire, 119. 
251 
practical household articles. The Richmond Whig, for 
example, published information on making ink from maple, 
bay, or magnolia bark or by distilling pine branches in a 
mixture of water , s ugar, v inegar, and copperas. Sally 
Putnam's diary included instructions on how to make 
envelopes from leftover pieces of wallpaper. 53 Richmond 
women learned to substitute cornmeal in place of flour, and 
corncob ash for baking soda. Many also resumed the 
manufacture of candles and soap. 54 Some women at first 
viewed wartime sacrifices patriotic. "[W]e felt extremely 
patriotic & self-sacrificing when we resolved to dispense 
with ice creams and cakes,'' Catherine Cochran recalled 
about the early denials of 1861 and 1862. "[W]e called 
[this] putting our tables on a war footing. 1155 
Providing adequate clothing for themselves and their 
families also became a source of great concern that 
preoccupied the waking hours of many Southern women. Cut 
off from information about European fashions, affluent and 
53 Richmond Whig, 1, 2, May 1863; Putnam, Richmond 
during the War, 190. Letters written in the South during 
this period of time are often distinguishable not only by 
their paper and ink, but also by the frequent use of cross-
writing, a device used to conserve paper by writing first 
across the page from top to bottom, and then turning the 
page sideways and writing across the previous lines. 
54southern Churchman, 5 June 1863; Richmond Whig, 9 
May 1863; Richmond Enquirer, 6 September 1861; Kate Mason 
Rowland diary, ESBL, quoted in Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 
151-52; Richmond Dispatch, 3 September 1862. 
55Catherine Mary Powell Noland Cochran Recollection, 
VHS. 
252 
middle-class women connived to have European goods shipped 
to them by blockade runners, or scoured outdated editions 
of ladies' magazines for ways to "re-invent" threadbare 
dresses by redesigning bodices or adding new ruffles, 
inserts, or trims. 56 Poorer women and children with fewer 
economic reserves dressed in rags, or made do with clothing 
improvised from cast-off curtains and bed-ticking. 57 
Improvised clothing such as this often became an outward 
symbol of women's patriotism. "The most ingenious dress I 
remember during the war," one Southern woman later wrote 
was a black silk, made from the covers of worn 
parasols, the umbrella form being preserved. It 
was regarded as very stylish, and was lined with 
a mosquito netting, which had been presented the 
young lady by an officer who had been stationed 
on James Island. The buttons on the dress had 
been in battle, and were much valued by the 
owner. 58 
Women in hundreds of Southern homes became adept at 
plaiting straw not just for their own bonnets, but also for 
56Georgiana Ghoulson Walker, for example, frequently 
was able to obtain kid gloves, perfumes, silks, and other 
luxuries through the blockade-running operation headed by 
her husband, Norman. Georgiana Ghoulson Walker, Private 
Journal, Dwight F. Henderson, ed. (Alabama: Confederate 
Publishing Company, 1963); Mrs. I. V. Franklin, Augusta, 
Georgia, "Our Women in the War--No. 11, 11 newspaper clipping 
in vol. 3 of the Walter H. Lee Scrapbook, SHC. 
57 Putnam, Richmond during the War, 194, 315-16; Lauren 
Taylor, "A Common Thread: A Review of Civil War Fashions," 
Civil War Times Illustrated 24.3 (May 1985): 32-41; Clara 
Minor Lynn, "What the Confederates Wore," Clara Minor Lynn 
Papers, ESBL. 
58Mrs. I.V. Franklin, Augusta, Georgia, "Our Women in 
the War--No. 11, 11 newspaper clipping in vol. 3 of Walter H. 
Lee Scrapbook, SHC. 
253 
the headgear worn by men and boy s . 59 And after New 
Orleans fell to Union forces in 1862, Confederate women 
made up for shortages in Texas leather by manufacturing 
shoes from a variety of materials, including canvas sails, 
carpet scraps, and squirrel and rabbit skins. 60 
As market prices climbed and the war stripped away 
other sources of revenue, the barter and sale of clothing 
often become an integral part of an individual woman's 
strategy for her family's survival. Richmonder Mary 
Andrews West, for instance, kept her family fed by 
systematically selling her clothing and jewelry. "The week 
before the Federals arrived," she later wrote, "I was 
reduced to two dresses, which were barely passable to wear; 
I was trying in my mind to decide which of those two I 
would give up. 1161 In Richmond, a brisk trade in second-
59
some women also fashioned hats from ornamental 
gourds. Mrs. I.V. Franklin, Augusta, Georgia, "Our Women 
in the War--No. 11, 11 newspaper clipping in vol. 3 of Walter 
H. Lee Scrapbook, SHC. 
60
c1ara Minor Lynn, "What The Confederates Wore," 5-6, 
in Clara Minor Lynn Papers, ESBL; Kate Mason Rowland 
Papers, ESBL, quoted in Jones, Ladies of Richmond, 192; 
Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War, 
251-52; Atlanta southern confederacy, 11 November 1863; 
Emma Holmes, The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861-1866, John 
F. Marszalek, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 
Press, 1979), 181; Mrs. I.V. Franklin of Augusta, Georgia, 
"Our Women in the War--No. 11, 11 newspaper clipping in vol. 
3 of Walter H. Lee Scrapbook, SHC. After New Orleans' 
occupation, sugar was also in short supply. Putnam, 
Richmond during the War, 125. 
61Mary Andrews West, Richmond, to her sister, Clara, 
12 April 1865, Mary Andrews West Letter, VHS. 
254 
hand clothing kept society belles rigged in threadbare and 
outdated European fashions as they struggled to maintain 
the pretenses of high society in the midst of want and 
suffering. 
By 1863, impressment officers who fanned out into the 
Southern countryside in search of provisions for the 
Confederate Army added to these economic hardships by 
stripp ing loca l communities of food and other 
commodities. 62 As a result, staples of the Confederate 
Soldier's diet, including coffee, bacon, flour, cornmeal, 
and molasses, were often unavailable. In addition, shoes, 
blankets, and shirts often disappeared, at least 
temporarily, from store shelves. Richmonders variously 
made up for the absence of coffee and tea by substituting 
beverages made of rye, sweet potatoes, chicory, ground 
acorns, parched okra seeds, or leaves from blackberry 
62At first impressment activity was largely 
unregulated. In March 1862, the Confederate Congress 
Passed the first impressment act, which was designed to 
~tandardize impressment activity and put a~ end to ... 
emergency commandeering" which had been widely criticized 
by state and local politicians and ,private citizen~. One 
year later, a second act attempted to address 7ontinued 
irregularities by establishing a schedule of f~xed prices 
~nd more precise conditions and terms under which 
impressment officers could operate. Neither of t~es7 
measures was successful, in part becaus e of the difficulty 
enforcing them. Frank E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags 
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970); 178; "An Act to Regulate 
Impressments," O.R., Series IV, vol. 2, 469-72; E. Susan 
Barber, "'The Quiet Battles of the Home Front War': Civil 
War Bread Riots and the Development of a Confederate 
Welfare System" (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 
1986), 30. 
255 
willow, or sage, and by substituting breads made with 
cornmeal or rice flour for those made with wheat. 63 
Excited by the possibility for wartime profits, some 
farmers contributed further to the problem by deliberately 
withholding foodstuffs from local markets to drive market 
prices even higher by reducing the supply. 64 Southern 
63Putnam, Richmond during the War, 79-113; Mrs. I.V. 
Franklin of Augusta, Georgia, "Our Women in the War--No. 
11," newspaper clipping in vol 3 of the Walter H. Lee 
Scrapbook, SHC; Mary Williams Taylor, Richmond, to Charles 
Elisha Taylor, 1 October 1861, Charles Elisha Taylor 
Papers, UVA; Richmond Whig, 4 April, 9 May 1863; Richmond 
Enquirer, 4 October 1861; Holmes, Emma Holmes Diary, 180-
81. A Confederate receipt book published in Richmond in 
1863 contained eleven different recipes for making bread 
from rice flour, as well as instructions for keeping 
firearms polished and curing blisters incurred on long 
marches. Confederate Receipt Book: A Compilation of Over 
One Hundred Receipts. Adapted to the Times, E. Merton 
Coulter, ed. (1863; repr. Athens: University of Georgia 
Press, 1960), 24-35, 30, and 33-35. 
64Typically, the prices paid by impressment offic ers 
were less than what farmers could get by selling their 
goods in the local markets. In March 1863, -for example , a 
group of Petersburg millers and merchant compl ained to the 
Confederate congress that impressment officers paid them 
$19.50 per barrel for superfine flour that would have 
commanded $26 to $28 in the market. Petition of Petersburg 
Millers and Merchants to the confederate Congress, 3 March 
1863, ESBL. Discussions about flour speculation continued 
throughout 1863. Richmond Dispatch, 8 August, 16 October 
1863; Richmond Enquirer, 16 October 1863. Under the 
impressment act, farmers and merchants were required to 
comply with reasonable requests for goods and produce, 
although they were permitted to retain necessary supplies 
for themselves, their families, employees, slaves, or "to 
carry on .•. ordinary mechanical, manufacturing, or 
agricultural employments." Impressment officers were 
supposed to compensate private citizens according to a 
schedule of prices that was regularly revised as costs 
rose. O.R., Series IV, vol. 2, 469-72, and 559-62. 
Several governors complained that the system was riddled 
with problems, including over-zealous impressment officers 
who stripped entire communities of supplies, and scoundrels 
256 
manufacturers also conspired to increase profits. By 1863, 
two prominent Richmond firms--the Crenshaw Woolen Works and 
the Belvidere Paper Company--were both under investigation 
for wartime extortion. 65 Virginia Governor John Letcher 
was well aware of the impact of wartime profiteers on the 
state's economy. Only six months after the war began, he 
wrote the following in a letter to the Confederate Congress 
It is important that some action should be taken 
at the earliest moment to put down the growing 
evil of extortion almost universally prevalent 
throughout the state •..• All things necessary 
for the comfort and support of the volunteers, 
who are exposing their lives and health in the 
defense of our honor and independence have been 
run up to an almost incredible price .... Unless 
something shall be done by you speedily to 
strangle this evil of extortion, a vast deal of 
suffering will be entailed upon the country 
. [T]he volunteer who receives only $11 per 
month for his services cannot afford to supply 
his family with salt at from $20 to $25 per sack, 
and shoes, clothing, etc., in like proportions. 
Men who are neither contributing physical nor 
pecuniary aid to the prosecution of the war 
should not be allowed to reap exorbitant 
profits. 66 
who posed as bogus impressment officers in order to steal 
commodities from the unsuspecting producers. O.R., Series 
IV, vol. 2, 943-44. 
65 savannah Republican, 27 March 1863; Richmond 
Examiner, 3 March 1863. By "extortion," Richmonders really 
meant unregulated speculation. The Belvidere Paper 
Company, for example, had turned a $41,000 investment in 
1860 into profits of $235,000 in 1863. Seventy-five 
percent of this money had been earned in 1862 alone. The 
Crenshaw mill had doubled its investments during the same 
period. 
66John Letcher, Richmond, to the Confederate Congress, 
18 November 1861, O.R., series IV, vol. 1, 738-39, 
hereafter cited as O.R. Emory Thomas has commented that 
257 
The governor's appeal was joined by those of other Southern 
Politicians and clergy who pleaded with the Confederacy to 
do something about wartime profiteering. 67 But although 
the government passed legislation aimed at regulating 
impressment, widespread speculation continued relatively 
unabated; and many believed that the government was 
culpable. "Speculation is running wild in this city," 
Wrote a War Department clerk in April 1863, "and the 
highest civil and military officials are said to be 
engaged .... Mr. Memminger cannot be ignorant of this, and 
Yet these men are allowed to retain their places. 1168 
As Governor Letcher's observations suggest, the 
working-class wives and dependent mothers of Confederate 
soldiers were hit especially hard, by the absence of their 
loved ones from the family circle, and by the loss of the 
labor and income these men provided to the family household 
economy. Rank-and-file confederate soldiers earned about 
Richmond was a "bellwether" of future economic problems 
that the rest of the Confederacy would suffer. Emory M. 
Thomas, The confederate Nation, 1861-1865 (New York: Harper 
& Row, 1979), 137. 
67Pastoral Letter on Extortion," Southern Churchman, 5 
September 1862; Joseph E. Brown, Governor of Georgia, to 
Jefferson Davis, 18 February 1863, in O.R., series I, vol. 
2
, 404-05; Richard Hudson, Benton, Mississippi, to 
Jefferson Davis, 5 October 1863, O.R., series I, vol. 2, 
356-58; Richmond Whig, 16 February 1863, quoted in Emory 
Thomas, Confederate state of Richmond, 118. 
68John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, 
Howard Swiggett, ed. (New York: Old Hickory Book Shop, 
1935), 288. 
258 
eleven dollars a month; but many soldiers' wives complained 
to Confederate officials that the money their husbands 
earned failed to reach home. In addition, in communities 
like Richmond, escalating inflation meant that a soldier's 
Pay did little the ease the financial burdens of providing 
for a family when market prices for such dietary staples as 
butter and bacon had increased to well beyond the reach of 
Ordinary citizens. (See Table 6.1.) Even more affluent 
Richmonders felt the economic pinch. By March 1863, War 
Department clerk Garlick Kean estimated that his yearly 
salary of $3,000 would buy as much as $700 would have in 
1860. 69 By May, market prices had risen to such extremes 
that Kean's family, along with those of many other 
Richmonders, were reduced to only two meals per day. 70 
69Entry dated 7 March 1863, Robert Garlick Hill Kean, 
.Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert 
Qarlick Hill Kean, Edward Younger, ed. (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1957), 43. 
70Entry dated 8 Octob~r 1863, Kean, Inside the 
.C.onfederate Government, 108. 
259 
Table 6.1. Comparison of Food Prices for an Average Family 
Richmond. Virginia. 1860 and 1863 
Item 1860 1863 Percent Increase 
Bacon, 10 lbs. 1.25 10.00 700 
Flour, 30 lbs. 1.50 3.75 150 
Sugar, 5 lbs. .40 .75 88 
Coffee, 4 lbs. .50 20.00 3900 
Green tea, \ lb. .50 8.00 1500 
Lard, 4 lbs. .50 4.00 700 
Butter, 3 lbs. .75 5.25 600 
Meal, 1 peck .25 1.00 300 
Candles, 2 lbs. .30 2.50 733 
Coal, bushel .20 1.00 400 
Wood. cord 3.50 15.00 329 
Sources: Richmond Dispatch, 29 January 1863; Robert Garlick 
Hill Kean, Inside the confederate Government: The Diary of 
Robert Garlick Hill Kean, Edward Younger, ed. (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1957)~ 
By the spring of 1863, then, deep fissures had opened 
in the loyalty felt especially by the working-class wives 
and mothers of Confederate soldiers who were weary of 
contending with widespread shortages in food and clothing 
created by the Confederate impressment agents. Some 
Richmond women--and indeed women in urban and rural 
locations scattered throughout the Confederacy--had begun 
to experience a crisis of confidence about the 
Confederacy's ability to tend for their families' economic 
needs in their husbands' absence. At times, this crisis of 
confidence erupted into public protests in the form of 
raids on local merchants or bread riots in a number of 
Southern cities. 71 During March and April 1863, urban 
71I use the term "bread riot," here to include riots 
resulting from the unlawful seizure of a variety of 
different commodities which, during the war, were in short 
supply in the South. Many of these items were foodstuffs, 
260 
such as beef, bacon, coffee, flour, molasses, and sugar. 
Some, such as salt, bacon, molasses, beef, flour, and 
coffee--although often quite scarce--were still sometimes 
available for Southern tables, providing one had the 
ability to purchase them at the inflated prices. In 
addition to food items, I am also extending this term to 
include other scarce items, for example, leather shoes, and 
clothing. During the Richmond riot trials, attorney A.J. 
Crane defined a riot as "a tumultuous disturbance of the 
public peace by three or more persons assembling together 
of their own authority, with an intent mutually to assist 
one another against any who shall oppose them in the 
execution of some private object, and afterwards executing 
the same in a violent and turbulent manner to the terror of 
the people, whether the act intended is lawful or not." 
Quoted in the Richmond Examiner, 15 May 1863. There is an 
extensive literature on the b~ad riot as a form of 
political and social protest which informs my analysis. 
Louise Tilly divides French riots into three different 
categories: the market riot, the entrave, and the taxation 
populaire. She defines a market riot as an urban 
disturbance aimed at bakers charging too much, or making 
too few loaves, or at people suspected of hoarding, or at 
officials acting too slowly in times of food shortages. An 
entrave is defined as a localized rural disturbance in 
which wagons of grain are detained in the locality to keep 
produce for local consumption. A taxation populaire is a 
seizure and ordered sale of goods at a "just price" with 
the proceeds being returned to the proprietor. The 
Richmond r i o t conforms to Tilly 's definition of a market 
riot. Louise Tilly, "Food Riots as a Form of Political 
Conflict in France," Journal of Interdiscipl inary History 2 
(1971): 23-4. Douglas Hay defines the eighteenth-ce ntury 
English food riot as "an organized and often highly 
disciplined popular protest against the growing national 
and international market in foodstuffs •.. which alarmed 
the poor by moving grain from their parishes when it could 
compel a higher price elsewhere." Douglas Hay, "Property, 
Authority, and Criminal Law," in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime 
and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, by Douglas Hay, 
Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E.P. Thompson, and Cal 
Winslow. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 21. David 
Grimsted defines a riot as "those incidents where a number 
of people group together to enforce their will immediately, 
by threatening or perpetrating injury to people or property 
outside of legal procedures but without intending to 
challenge the general structure of society." David A. 
Grimsted, "Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting," American 
Historical Review 77 (1972): 261-97. Other works on unruly 
women or the history of food riots in Europe and the United 
261 
Confederate women rioted in Atlanta, Georgia; Salisbury, 
Greensboro, Raleigh, and Durham, North Carolina; Mobile, 
Alabama; and Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. 72 In the 
spring of 1864, similar disturbances broke the calm in 
Savannah and Valdosta, Georgia. 73 Taken together, these 
demonstrations contributed to an ongoing critique of the 
Confederacy's, and the Davis administration's concern about 
the needs of the nation's civilian population. In 
States which have contributed to this discussion include 
Natalie Zemon Davis, "Women on·Top," in Society and Culture 
in Early Modern France, by Natalie Zemon Davis (Stanford, 
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), 124-51; Herbert 
Gutman, "Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing 
America," in work. culture, and Society in Industrializing 
America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social 
History, by Herbert Gutman (New York: Vintage, 1977), 3-78, 
and especially 59-64; George Rude, The Crowd in the French 
Revolution (London: Oxford University Press, 1968); George 
Rude, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances 
in France and England, 1730-1848 (New York: Wiley, 1964); 
E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd in the 
Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (1971): 76-136. 
For a more generalized discussion of rioting as a form of 
political protest, see E.J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: 
studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 
20th Centuries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1959). 
72Religious Herald, 2 April 1863; Richmond Examiner, 
18 April 1863. Of the seventeen merchant raids and 
commodities riots in the South that I have been able to 
document, at least ten took place in March and April 1863. 
This cluster of disturbances during such a short period 
might have several explanations, most notable the beginning 
of a third planting season that found many Southern men 
again absent from their farms and which also meant that 
supplies from the previous year would be in short supply; 
and the "riot contagion," caused when news of a riot spread 
to another community nearby where similar conditions 
prevailed. Barber, "Quiet Battles of the Home Front War." 
2-19. 
73Richmond Whig, 25 March 1864; Richmond Dispatch, 26 
April 1864. 
262 
addition, the women's discontent exacerbated perceptions of 
a growing schism for Confederate men between the twin goals 
of defending their new nation and protecting their 
families, a conflict that led to extremely high rates of 
military desertions in the closing years of the war. 74 
74As with other pieces of statistical evidence for the 
Confederacy, accurate desertion rates are difficult to 
ascertain. Part of the reason for this is that desertion 
as a category often included not only men who had quit 
their posts without permission, but also convalescent 
soldiers on recuperative furloughs; soldiers who were on 
leave for other reasons; and soldiers whose transfers to 
other units had not been propetly recorded. Despite these 
inconsistencies, however, the desertion rate for 
Confederate soldiers was still extremely high, and has 
variously been reported at more than 100,000 men, or at 
two-thirds of the Confederate Army's fighting force. Some 
men took what were referred to as "French furloughs," briei 
unauthorized leaves of absence to return to their nearby 
homes for a few days or weeks to attend to chores, These 
men often later returned to their units. According to Bell 
Wiley, statistical information from the Confederate War 
Department in April 1865 showed 198,400 soldiers absent 
without leave and only 160,000 in the field. Bell I. 
Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the 
Confederacy (1943; repr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana state 
University Press, 1991), 142-43. In his study of Civil War 
desertions in the 44th Virginia Infantry, Kevin Ruffner has 
concluded that desertions for Company E, the only company 
comprised entirely of Richmond men, reached 30 percent in 
the 44th Virginia Infantry in the fall of 1862, although it 
declined in 1863, due, according to Ruffner, to a series of 
religious revivals that strengthened the men's commitment 
and to provisions in the 1862 Conscription Act which 
enabled the 44th Regiment to dismiss those recruits who 
were more likely to desert. Kevin Conley Ruffner, "Civil 
War Desertion from a Black Belt Regiment: An Examination of 
the 44th Virginia Infantry," in The Edge of the South: Life 
in Nineteenth-Century Virginia, Edward L. Ayers and John c. 
Willis, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of 
Virginia, 1991), 90-95. James McPherson maintains that 
desertion rates for both the Union and Confederate armies 
remained relatively the same until late 1864, when an 
"epidemic" of Confederate desertions emerged amid growing 
beliefs that a Confederate victory was impossible. 
McPherson places overall desertion rates for Union and 
263 
The Richmond Riot 
The largest bread riot in the confederacy began in 
Richmond on the morning of April 2, 1863, when a delegation 
of women from the working-class community of Oregon Hill 
entered Capitol Square and demanded to speak with the 
governor about high prices in the market, When denied an 
audience, the delegation turned and joined a much larger 
assembly of women and girls who were marching in the 
direction of the city's business district, where they 
proceeded to break down shop dt>ors with axes concealed in 
their ·clothing, and seize large quantities of bacon, flour, 
and other commodities, sometimes at gun- or knife-point. 
Eyewitness accounts of the crowd's size vary from the "few 
hundred women and boys" described by War Department clerk, 
John Beauchamp Jones, to the mob of five thousand reported 
by H.A. Tutwiler from his perch at the Bank Street 
Confederate Signal Office. 
Upon hearing of the disturbance, Richmond Mayor Joseph 
Mayo rushed to the scene to read the women the Riot Act. 
He was joined by Governor Letcher, who ordered out the 
Confederate armies at the war's end at 9.6 and 13 percent, 
respectively, McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 468. Richard 
Beringer, et al. agree with McPherson about the escalation 
of Confederate desertions after the mid- to late-1864 
Confederate military reverses. Beringer et al., Why the 
South Lost the Civil War, 434-39. James Clark notes that, 
by February 1865, Confederate desertions "on a good day" 
averaged about 1,000 men absent without leave. James c. 
Clark, Last Train South: The Flight of the confederate 
Government from Richmond (Jefferson, N,C,: McFarland & 
Company, 1984), 2. 
264 
Public Guard to suppress the disturbance; and by Jefferson 
Davis, who tried to mollify the women by tossing fifty-cent 
gold pieces into the crowd from a nearby carriage. When 
this didn't work, Davis gave the women five minutes to 
disburse before the Guard opened fire. In a matter of 
hours., the riot was over. Sixty-eight people--including 
forty-three women and twenty-five men--were taken into 
custody; tho,se who avoided arrest made their way homeward 
with bounties of bacon, flour, and coffee to share with 
their working-class neighbors.~5 
75Second only in frequency to the evacuation and fall 
of Richmond in April 1865, the bread riot has been 
de~cribed by numerous eyewitnesses. See, for example, 
E~1as Davis, camp near Fredericksburg, to Virginia, his 
wife, 6 April 1863, Elias Davis Papers, SHC; Sallie Radford 
Munford, Richmond, to her mother, Elvira Peyton, 1 April 
1863, Sallie Radford Munford Papers, VHS (Munford began her 
letter on April 1st but grew sleepy before it was finished; 
she resumed it again on April 2d, after the riot had 
occurred); Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis. Ex-
President of the confederate States of America: A Memoir, 
(New York: Belford Publishers, 1890), vol. 2, 363-76; 
Josiah Gorgas, The Civil War Diary of General Josiah 
Gorgas, Frank Vandiver, ed. (University, Ala: University of 
Alabama Press, 1947),28; Jones, Rebel War Clerk's Diary, 
284-86; Judith McGuire, Diary o·f a southern Refugee during 
~he War, 202-03; Putnam, Richmond during the war, 208-10; 
Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New 
York: Macmillan & Co, 1904), 238-39; H.A. Tutwiler, 
Richmond, to Netta Tutwiler, 3 April 1863, T. c. Mccorvey 
Papers, SHC; Fred Fleet, Richmond, to Benjamin Fleet, his 
father, 7 April 1863; in Benjamin R. Fleet, Green Mount: A 
Virginia Plantation Family during the Civil War, Betsy 
Fleet and John D.P. Fuller, eds. (Charlottesville: 
University Press of Virginia, 1962), 216-17; John Townsend 
Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and 
Ruined Cities (Hartford, Conn.: L. Stebbins, 1867), 167; 
Mrs. E~c. Kent, Four Years in Secessia (n.p.: n.p., 1863}, 
24-25; Ernest Taylor Walthall, Hidden Things Brought to 
Light, (Richmond: Deitz Printing, 1933}, 24; Williams. 
White, "A Diary of the War, or What I Saw of It," in 
265 
The confederate government attempted to raise an 
immediate wall of silence around the disturbance; but 
several anti-administration presses--one of which 
characterized the Confederacy's efforts to impose a silence 
as "the silliest expectation that ever entered the brains 
of men outside of strait-jackets"--were only too eager to 
report the incident to a curious public. 76 So for the 
Richmond Howitzer Battalion (Richmond: Carlton McCarthy & 
Company, 1883), pamphlet no. 2, 166; Anita Dwyer Withers 
Diary, SHC; reminiscence of eyewitnesses in Richmond 
Dispatch 30 December 1888, 20 ~anuary 1889. Secondary 
histories of the Civil War and Richmond's role in it also 
include descriptions of the disturbance. See for example, 
Alfred Hoyt Bill, The Beleaguered city: Richmond, 1861-1865 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), 165-66; F.N. Boney, John 
Letcher of Virginia (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 
1966), 189-90; w. Asbury Christian, Richmond: Her Past and 
Present (Richmond: L.H. Jenkins, 1912), 220-41; Virginius 
Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a City (Garden City, N.Y.: 
Doubleday, 1976), 181-82; Francis B. Simkins and James w. 
Patton, The Women of the Confederacy (New York: Garrett & 
Massie, 1936), 127; Massey, Bonnet Brigades, 171-74; Rable, 
Civil Wars, 108-11; Emory M. Thomas, rev. ed. The 
Confederate Nation. 1861-1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 
1979), 201-05; Emory M. Thomas, The confederate state of 
Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Austin: University of 
Texas Press, 1971), 119-20; Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags, 
236-7; For a more detailed discussion, see Barber, "The 
'Quiet Battles' of the Home Front War"; Michael A. Chesson, 
"Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread 
Riot," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92 
(1984): 131-75; William Kimball, "The Bread Riot in 
Richmond," Civil war Times Illustrated 7 (1961): 149-54; 
and Douglas o. Tice, "Bread or Blood," Civil War Time§ 
Illustrated 12.10 (1974): 12-19. An unpublished manuscript 
by David Maydole Matteson titled "Riots in the United 
States, 1641-1894" contains descriptions of the event, 
largely from the Richmond Examiner. David Maydole Matteson 
Papers, LC. 
76John Withers on behalf of Secretary of War James H. 
Seddon, Richmond, to the Richmond press, 2 April 1863; John 
Withers on behalf of secretary of war James H. Seddon, to 
w.s. Morris, president of the telegraph company, 2 April 
266 
next few weeks, the Richmond papers were filled with 
descriptions of the court proceedings as the arrestees were 
brought to trial. 77 
Richmonders, by this time, had grown cynical about the 
Davis administration's competence, so it would not be 
surprising to find them blaming the riot on food shortages 
caused by the Confederate government's ineptness. But 
although some referred to extreme poverty caused by 
government incompetence, most blamed the incident on the 
rioters themselves. 78 These accounts bristle with middle-
class biases about the poor, and with gender-based 
prejudices against the female rioters who, most believed, 
1863, both in O.R., series I, vol. 18, 958; Richmond Whig, 
6 April 1863. The Whig actually correctly viewed what it 
termed as the "petticoat foray" as having political 
motivations brought about by disaffection with the Davis 
administration. Catherine Clinton is mistaken in her claim 
that "[g)overnment censorship suppressed news of such 
disturbances." In fact, the portion of the Southern press 
that was critical of the Davis administration was all too 
willing to report such outbreaks by mobs of half-starved 
women as evidence of government mismanagement. Catherine 
Cl i n ton, Tara Revisited: Women, War, and the Plantat ion 
Leg end (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995) , 153 . 
77For information on the tria l s, see the Ric hmond 
Dispatch, 7, 16 April; 4, 6, 8, 9, 26 May; 10 June 1863; 2 8 
January; 1 March 186~; Richmond Enquirer 14 May; 10, 19 
June 1863; Richmond Examiner , 4 , 6 , 7 , B, 9 , 11 , 1 5 , 16, 
24 27 30 April• 2 7, 8, 9, 14, 1 5 , 3 0 Ma y 1863. 
'' 
1
' ·1 b f d " Additional infor mation on t h ese t r ia s can e oun in the 
Hustings Court Minute Book f or Richmond Ci t y , an~ i n the 
Executive Papers of Governor John Letc h e r, both in LV. 
78Two of the most balanced eyewitness accounts are the 
ones provided by Judith Brockenbrough McGuire and John 
Beauchamp Jones. Judith McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
Refugee, 202-03; John a. Jones, Rebel War Clerk' s Diary, 
284-87. 
267 
had transgressed gender lines by engaging in public 
protest. "It cannot be denied that want of bread was at 
this time too fatally true," Sally Putnam later remembered 
but the sufferers for food were not to be found 
in this mob of vicious men and lawless viragoes 
.The real sufferers were not of the class 
who would engage in acts of violence to obtain 
bread, but (rather] the most worthy and highly 
cultivated of our citizens, who by the suspension 
of the ordinary branches of business, and the 
extreme inflation in the prices of provisions, 
were often reduced to abject suffering. 79 
Confederate First Lady Varina Davis noted that the rioters 
had bypassed several food mercfiants to empty a jewelry 
store and several clothing shops. "[I]t was not bread they 
wanted," Davis averred, "they were bent on nothing but 
plunder and wholesale robbery. 1180 "It should well be 
understood that the riot yesterday was not for bread," 
testified Mayor Joseph Mayo during the trial of rioter 
Elizabeth Foy. "Boots are not bread, brooms are not bread, 
man's hats are not bread, and I never heard of anybody's 
eating them. 1181 In a letter back home to his father, 
Confederate soldier Fred Fleet saw the riot as being 
"concocted by Yankees, aided by their assistants in 
Richmond, the Dutch and the Irish. 1182 An anonymous letter 
79Putnam, Richmond during the War, 208-10. 
80Davis, Jefferson Davis, vol. 2 , 374. 
81Richmond Examiner, 4 April 1863. 
82 Fred Fleet, Richmond, to Benjamin Fleet, 7 April 
1863, in Fleet, Green Mount, 216-17. 
268 
to the Richmond Whig described the "Holy Thursday mob," as 
"a throng of courtezans and thieves," "well-dressed, plump-
cheeked women" who were aided in their "daylight 
burglaries" by substitutes, deserters, and "Mississippi 
wharf-rats.'' For this particular writer, the Richmond mob 
represented "the vice, the profligacy, the prostitution, 
the crime of the city, the elements which wage eternal war 
against society and against which society must wage eternal 
war. 1183 The editor of the Richmond Whig called the women 
a mob of "myrmidon viragos. 1184 • 
Characterizations of the female rioters as viragoes, 
or unnatural or unfeminine women, or prostitutes continued 
as the women were arraigned. When she appeared before the 
court on the morning of April 4th, riot leader Mary Jackson 
was described as "a forty-year-old Amazon with the eye of 
the Devil" while Minerva Meredith--who was apprehended 
after she had commandeered a hospital wagon loaded with 
beef--was characterized as a "rawboned, muscular" woman a 
"full six feet high. 1185 Mary Duke was described as "a 
finely dressed woman with a quantity of rouge upon her 
face; while rioters Elizabeth Ammons, Frances Kelley, Mary 
Woodward, and Minerva Meredith were all depicted as being 
"handsomely dressed in silks, satins, furs, and lace," an 
83Richmond Whig, 6 April 1863. 
84Richmond Enquirer, 13 October 1863. 
85R' h d . ' ic mon Examiner, 4, 6 April 1863. 
269 
implication that they were prostitutes, who were frequently 
accused of dressing above their station. 86 This inference 
was spelled out even more clearly in an anonymous letter to 
the editor of the Richmond Whig on April 6th: "The 
females, a fraction of whom were respectable, were all 
comfortably clad, many of them were bedizened out in 
finery, which was not wanted to show their trade. 1187 
In fact, nothing could have been further from the 
truth. Testimony from the trials that was published in the 
Richmond papers reveals that many rioters were really women 
from the city's working-class community who had grown 
increasingly frustrated at their inability to provide for 
their families in the straitened Richmond economy. 88 At 
least twelve of the female defendants listed their 
addresses as Rocketts, Oregon Hill, or Penitentiary Bottom, 
working-class communities scattered throughout the city. 89 
On the night before the disturbance, they had attended a 
large meeting of women at Belvidere Baptist Church in 
Oregon Hill, where they plotted their strategy of demanding 
86Richmond Examiner, 3, 4, 6, 7 April, 15 May 1863. 
87Anonymous letter to the editor, Richmond Whig, 6 
April 1863. 
88only one of the Richmond arrestees, fourteen-year-
old Eliza Jane Palmeter, was later identified as a 
prostitute. She was eventually found guilty of grand 
larceny and sentenced to the penitentiary for a year. 
Richmond Examiner, 6 April, 10 October 1863. 
89Richmond Examiner 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16 April 1863. 
Two male rioters also lived in working-class communities. 
270 
goods at government prices, and then taking them by force 
if government officials refused. The women all planned to 
be armed, and to leave their children at home. 90 
Occupations for the rioters are difficult to 
ascertain, but at least seven women either worked for the 
Confederate government or had husbands who did. German-
born Barbara Idell was a government tentmaker; while Anne 
Enroughty worked as Confederate seamstress at Weisiger's 
sewing factory, one of several hundred Weisiger women who 
had apparently stayed away from work to participate in the 
raid. 91 Cartridge makers Ann Donavan and Sarah Brooks 
both worked in the ordinance laboratory on Brown's Island; 
they were later fired for participating in the riot. Sarah 
Coghill's husband worked in a government shop at Tredegar, 
and Martha Marshall's husband was a Confederate 
shoemaker. 92 
Several women also had menfolk in the Confederate 
army. Riot leader Mary Jackson and New Kent County 
90Richmond Examiner, 9, 2 April 1863 
91Martha Jamieson claimed that about 300 hundred women 
from Weisiger's Pearl Street clothing factory were present 
at the disturbance. Testimony of Martha Jamieson at the 
trial of Mary Jackson, quoted in Richmond Examiner, 24 
April 1863. 
92R· h . ic mond Examiner, 4, 6, 7, a, 9, 11, 15, 16, 24 
April 1863; Time Record Book for Female Employees, Richmond 
Arsenal, R.G. 109, Chapter IV, Vol. 99, NARA. Male rioters 
Andrew J. Hawkins, Francis Brown, and Thomas Palmer also 
worked for the Confederate government. Richmond Examiner, 
4, 8 April, 30 May 1863. 
271 
resident, Margaret Pomfrey, both had sons in the 
Confederate army. 93 Mary Duke's husband was a soldier in 
the Army of Northern Virginia; her fifteen-year-old son, 
Andrew--who was left in charge of his three younger 
siblings while Duke served a term in the Richmond jail--had 
served for ten months as a drummer in the Irish Battalion 
under Stonewall Jackson. 94 Anna Bell and Frances Kelly 
were widows whose husbands may have died in the 
military. 95 
Women had played central roles in commodities riots 
before, both in Europe and the United States. E.P. 
Thompson and George Rude found them to be the primary 
instigators of bread riots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century England and Fra nce ; and Nata lie Davis's examination 
93Richmond Examiner, 6 April, 15 May 1863. Jackson 
had recently attempted to obtain a discharge for her son. 
94A frail woman with a tendency to consumption, Duke 
was originally sentenced to a hundred-dollar fine and six 
months in jail, but was later pardoned by John Letcher 
after a heart wrenching letter from her son, Andrew, 
recounting how he sold newspapers on the street corner to 
feed himself and his three sisters, ages ten, seven, and 
two. Richmond Dispatch, 8 May 1863; Richmond Enquirer, 14 
May 1863; Richmond Examiner, 15 May 1863; undated letter to 
John Letcher from Andrew Perdue, Pardon of Mary Duke, 
Executive Pardons, July 1863, Executive Papers of Governor 
John Letcher, LV. several men in the crowd also had 
connections to the c.s.A. Thomas M. Palmer was a military 
surgeon at Davenport Hospital, and Robert W. McKinney was a 
soldier in Atkinson's Battery. Neither man appears to have 
taken any food or clothing; both were charged with inciting 
a riot. Richmond Examiner, 4, 6 April 1863. 
95Richmond Whig, 4 May 1863; Richmond Examiner, 1 
March 1864. 
272 
of eighteenth-century France has concluded that, although 
riotous behavior by women temporarily inverted the social 
order, it was frequently sanctioned in communities where 
both women and men of the lower classes lacked more 
legitimate forms of political expression. 96 During the 
American Revolution, women had formed part of the Stamp Act 
mobs, and had broken into storehouses and stolen coffee and 
tea from merchants suspected of hoarding. In the depressed 
economy of the late 1830s, they had protested the rising 
price of flour. 97 
But by characterizing the Richmond rioters as a mob of 
depraved women bent on looting stores of jewelry, silks, 
and other luxuries, the riot's critics attempted to 
discredit the women's motivations, trivialize their 
actions, and render the women undeserving of sympathy from 
decent citizens. 98 These accusations also helped deflect 
96E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the Crowd," 76-
136; George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution 
(London: Oxford University Press, 1968); Rude, The Crowd in 
History; Natalie Zemon Davis, ''Women on Top." 
97Gutman, "Work, culture, and Society in 
Industrializing America," 60-61; Linda K. Kerber, Women of 
the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in the American 
Revolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), 43-45. 
98Unfortunately, some civil War historians have 
unquestioningly accepted these critical assessments of the 
Richmond rioters. Francis Simkins and James Patton have 
noted that the poorer class of Southern women "had always 
been hard to satisfy and strident in their complaints." 
Instead of being grateful for the "liberal charities of the 
period," they used wartime privation as a pretext for 
demanding more than these agencies were able to provide. 
Simkins and Patton, Women of the Confederacy, 124. And 
273 
attention from the legitimacy of their demands for food at 
a just price and their expectation that the Confederate 
government should assume some responsibility to see that 
the prices were fair. 99 They also sought to minimize the 
impact of the women's actions on the Confederate war effort 
and limit the riot's potential to spark similar 
disturbances in nearby locations. 
More telling than these attempts to discredit the 
women and their protest were the actions of the Richmond 
Common Council. In a hastily called meeting the night of 
Apri1·2, the Council denounced the bread riot as an 
"uncalled for" affair, perpetrated on the city by "base and 
unworthy women instigated by worthless men who are a 
disgrace to the city and the community. 11100 Two days 
later, however, it moved to do what the Confederate 
although Emory Thomas admits that "no informed citizen 
would deny that scarcity existed," he repeats, as fact, the 
biased descriptions plump rioters bent on plundering 
luxuries. Emory Thomas, Confederate State of Richmond, 
120-22. 
99According to E.P. Thompson, the demand for food at a 
price which the community deemed to be fair was a 
fundamental principle of the crowd's "moral economy." 
Thompson, "Moral Economy of the Crowd," 79, 115-26. 
100Louis H. Manarin, ed. Richmond at War: Minutes of 
the City Council, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of 
North Carolina Press, 1966), 311-12. The newspapers 
claimed that the women were assisted by men who were draft 
dodgers, criminals, and immigrants who were ineligible for 
military duty. There is little in the newspaper accounts 
of the trial to substantiate these accusations. One of the 
male rioters was a physiGian at one of the military 
hospitals and several more were members of the city's 
Public Guard that had been called out to suppress the riot. 
274 
government living in its midst could not--provide for the 
relief of the city's most destitute citizens. on April 4, 
the council approved an elaborate plan to establish a 
centralized municipal relief program for the city's poor; 
and by April 15, the Richmond Free Market was opened to 
serve the needs of the city's deserving poor.101 
Modelled along the lines of the free market that had 
been established in New Orleans, Louisiana, shortly after a 
riot by starving women there in 1861, the Richmond Free 
Market collaborated with the O~erseers of the Poor and 
women's and men's voluntary associations who divided the 
city into twenty-four districts. 102 Lady visitors from 
the Female Union Benevolent Society made home visits to the 
recipients located in their districts to judge for their 
"worthiness," based on the women's character and their 
destitute condition. If deemed deserving of help, the 
women received tickets that were redeemable weekly for 
merchandise. 103 To supply the market with food and other 
101Manarin, ed. Richmond at War, 314-5; Richmond Whig, 
15 April 1863. 
102Mary Elizabeth Massey, "The Free Market of New 
Orleans," Louisiana History 3 (1962); 202-20. By the end 
of the war, free markets created in response to Confederate 
women's food riots were also in place in Savannah, Georgia, 
Mobile, Alabama, and Charleston, South Carolina. Barber, 
"Quiet Battles of the Home Front War," 97-104; Richmond 
Sentinel, 7 April 1863. 
103Emory M. Thomas, "To Feed the Citizens: Welfare in 
Wartime Richmond," Virginia Cavalcade 22 (summer 1972): 22-
29. 
275 
commodities, the Young Men's Christian Association a nd the 
Overseers of the Poor worked with local farmers a nd the 
city's attorney to purchase food and other commodities at 
reasonable rates. The council adopted two additional 
resolutions: one to set aside $20,000 "for the relief of 
such families of the soldiers in the field from the City of 
Richmond as may be in want"; and the second, to eSt ablish a 
fuel fund to provide wood to those in need. 104 Corning as 
th
ey did on the heels of the Richmond riot, these measures 
mu
st be seen as compelling evi~ence that the women's riot 
had, indeed, touched an important nerve in city politics. 
By August 1864, the Richmond Relief Committee, as it came 
to be known, was working in conjunction with both the 
Y.M.c.A. and the Union Benevolent society to provide more 
comprehensive assistance for "our soldiers' families and 
th
e Poor of the city, 11 a duty it continued to perform after 
th
e city surrendered to Federal forces in 1865. 105 
Conclusion 
Some Civil War historians have argued that the 
Confederacy's inability to address the extreme poverty that 
lay behind expression of home front disaffection played an 
important role in the south's defeat. Charles Ramsdell has 
104
Manarin, Richmond at War, 317-21; Richmond Whig, 15 April 1863. 
lOSR, h . 
ic mend Dispatch, 11 August 1864; Southern Churchman, 1 February 1865. 
276 
observed that, although the Confederacy was able to build a 
relatively effective army, it was only partly successful in 
supplying its needs and "failed completely to solve the 
problem of preserving the well-being and morale of the 
civilian population behind the lines," a failure which 
Ramsdell sees as "fatal" to the Confederate cause. 106 
For Bell I. Wiley, the "failure of the Confederacy to 
alleviate the suffering of soldiers' families may have 
contributed more to Southern defeat than any other single 
factor. " 107 Frank Owsley has 1rraintained that the South 
was ultimately gripped by a "psychology of defeatism" that 
emanated, in part, from 11 the suffering of the soldiers and 
their families." 108 
Recently, Drew Faust has revised assessments of 
Confederate women as super patriots by suggesting that they 
may have been even more disaffected than Southern men. 
According to Faust, as the war eroded southern women's 
expectations for care and protection by southern men, their 
106Ramsdell, Behind the Lines, 2-3. 
107Bell I. Wiley, Confederate Women, (Westport, Conn.: 
Greenwood Press, 1975), 177; Bell I. Wiley, Plain People of 
the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana state University 
Press, 1943), 64-69. 
108owsley, "Defeatism in the Confederacy," 446-48. 
Richard Beringer, et al. dismiss the impact of homefront 
disaffection, claiming that precisely because some southern 
states were able to mount successful relief efforts, the 
Confederacy was actually strengthened, not weakened, by 
these protests. Beringer, et al., Why the south Lost the 
Civil War, 226-36. 
277 
disaffection--as evidenced by urban food riots and 
disparaging letters from home--increased, sapping the 
Confederate soldier's will to fight and encouraging many to 
desert. 109 According to Faust, at times like these, 
published testimonials about women's loyalty which appeared 
in newspapers and wartime novels and short stories take on 
the character of propaganda aimed at socializing 
disaffected Confederate women into more appropriately loyal 
roles. 110 
The evidence from Richmorn:l adds to Faust's assessment 
by demonstrating that commodities riots gave Southern women 
a powerful voice that they were able to use not only to 
critique the Confederate government but also to effect 
change. In Richmond and other urban locations, commodities 
riots by working-class women opened up a dialog about 
109orew Faust, "Altars of sacrifice," 1227-28. George 
Rable dismisses the importance of urban riots, maintaining 
that "[d]isgruntled women did not need to rebel; all they 
has to do was tel 1 their men to come home." Rable, Civil 
Wars, 106-10. 
110orew Faust has suggested that this was indeed the 
case. Drew Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice," 1200-28. Of 
course, one of the flaws in Faust's argument is that the 
working-class women who rioted in Richmond were hardly the 
group of women who would have had either the time or 
education to read propagandistic novels like Augusta 
Evans's Maccaria. Other evidence from the correspondence 
of several Southern governors, however, most notably 
Zebulon Vance and Joseph smith, indicate that pleas by 
Confederate wives for their men to return home do increase 
dramatically beginning in 1863. Even illiterat~wornen 
sometimes found a willing amanuensis who would write these 
letters for them. Barber, "'Quiet Battles of the Horne 
Front War,'" especially Chapter Three. 
278 
economic conditions with state and local officials that led 
to the establishment free markets and other relief 
mechanisms to relieve women's and children's wartime 
hardships. Although temporary, these fledgling programs 
demonstrated the political power behind women's wartime 
protests despite their political disfranchisement . 
• 
CHAPTER 7 
TEACHERS AND WRITERS: 
MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE WOMEN'S WORK IN POSTBELLUM RICHMOND 
Although some wartime occupations for middle-class 
women came to an end in the spring of 1865, their need for 
employment did not. The war had left many Richmonders 
destitute and women's postwar work often spelled the 
difference between a family's success or failure. In the 
antebellum period, elite and middle-class women's work 
outside the home--unless disguised as charity--had been 
greeted with disapproval by critics who insisted that their 
only appropriate sphere of labor was the home. But wartime 
demands for government workers had drawn thousands of women 
into . nursing or clerking under the rationale that this work 
was patriotic. 
Many upper- and middle-class Richmond women whose 
husbands or fathers returned from the war unharmed were 
probably relieved to leave outside employment and return to 
their domestic duties. Thus, they have disappeared from 
the record of middle-class women's postwar work. But the 
civil War operated as an economic leveller for many upper-
and middle-class Southern families. Thousands of women 
279 
280 
ended the war widowed or orphaned, or found themselves in 
such precarious financial situations that they were unable 
to relinquish the economic security an extra paycheck 
provided. In addition, emancipation had deprived many 
white female slaveholders of income derived from hiring 
their slaves out as factory hands, or as domestic workers 
in Richmond homes, hotels, or restaurants. Only a few 
middle-class Richmond women were able to transfer their 
wartime work experience as matrons or clerks into similar 
postwar employment. But some found work as teachers in the 
public school system that was created in Richmond as a 
condition of Virginia's Reconstruction. One or two others 
turned to careers in writing, and contributed to the 
emerging literature of the South's "Lost Cause" culture. 
(Chapter Ten.) 
Teaching 
A few Richmond women had made inroads into education 
before the war began, either as the operators of "dame 
schools"--small home schools for young children--or as 
teachers in one of the city's six female academies that 
educated the daughters of Richmond elites. 1 Most girls' 
1These schools were the Richmond Female Institute, a 
Baptist school founded in 1859; Hubert Lefebvre's School, 
one of the most popular schools for girls in the antebellum 
city; the southern Female Institute; Miss Pegram's School; 
the Old Dominion Institute, and the Richmond Female 
seminary. 
281 
schools offered curricula that included history, English, 
mathematics, natural science, and mental and moral 
philosophy, as well as the ubiquitous music, painting and 
fancy needlework that were commonplace in most girls' 
schools in the antebellum period. 2 The faculties and 
administrations of most of these antebellum institutions 
were dominated by men (many of the founders or 
administrators were clergy), but about ten women taught in 
these institutions in 1860, usually in the areas of 
language instruction, English, or vocal music. 3 
Women from religious communities also taught in 
several antebellum schools that served the needs of 
Richmond's growing Irish and German catholic populations. 
Three sisters of the Daughters of Charity of St. Joseph, 
2Advertisement for the Richmond Female seminary, 
Richmond Enquirer, 12 January 1861; Advertisement for the 
Old Dominion Institute, Richmond Examiner, 9 July 1860; 
Circular of Miss Pegram's Boarding and Day School for 1861 
and 1862 (Richmond: Macfarland & Ferguson, 1862); 
Advertisement for the Southern Female Institute, Richmond 
Enquirer, 7 July 1860; "Mr. Lefebvre's School," Richmond 
Examiner, 27 July 1860. 
3Elva M. Jones and Margaret Brander taught primary 
and intermediate English at the Old Dominion Institute. 
Antionetta and Marietta Erba instructed students in voice 
and piano at Hubert Lefebvre's School. Mathilde Estevan, a 
teacher of vocal music, divided her time between Miss 
Pegram's School and the Richmond Female Seminary. At the 
Richmond Female Institute, male teachers shared 
responsibility for the curriculum with female teachers. 
This information was taken from advertisements for these 
schools in the Richmond papers. Richmond Enquirer, 12 
January 1861; Richmond Examiner, 9 July 1860; Richmond 
Enquirer, 7 July 1860; Richmond Examiner, 27 July 1860; and 
Religious Herald, 19 August 1858. Also the Circular of 
Miss Pegram's Boarding and Day School for 1861 and 1862. 
282 
for example, operated St. Peter's School for predominantly 
Irish girls and boys. 4 In May 1859, these women were 
joined by Sisters Mary Seraphine Pronath, Frances Borgia 
Fuhrman, and Fabiana Weber--three nuns from the School 
Sisters of Notre Dame who administered to the needs of 
sixty German Catholic children at st. Mary's School on 
Fourth Street. 5 But of all the larger schools in 
antebellum Richmond, only Mary E. Pegram's nonsectarian 
school for girls in Linden Square was operated entirely by 
women. In 1861, it enjoyed an enrollment of 115 
students. 6 
Initially, the war closed some of these antebellum 
schools and disrupted others. Under the Confederate 
conscription act, a few male teachers received exemptions 
from military service, but most were eligible for field 
duty, as were male students older than sixteen. As male 
4James Henry Bailey, II, History of st. Peter's 
Church. Richmond, Virginia: 125 Years, 1834-1959 (Richmond: 
Lewis Printing Co., 1959), 11. 
5Nine Notre Dame Sisters worked at the school from 
1859 to 1868. originally planned as a day school, St. 
Mary's became the " German Female High School" when the 
sisters added a course of high school instruction sometime 
in the early 1860s. In 1868, the work of the Notre Dame 
Sisters was taken over by Benedictine Sisters from the 
mother house in st. Mary's, Pennsylvania. In 1875, the 
name of the school was changed to st. Mary's Benedictine 
Institute. [Ignatius Remke], Historical Sketch of St. 
Mary's Church, Richmond. Virginia. 1843-1935. (Richmond: 
n.p., 1937), 8-15. 
6circular of Miss Pegram's Boarding and Day School for 
1861 and 1862. 
283 
instructors departed for the front, women filled some of 
the teaching vacancies their absence created, both in 
schools and as private tutors in Southern homes. A number 
of these women were refugees who advertised for ·teaching 
positions in the "Situations Wanted" sections of the 
Richmond papers. 7 "A YOUNG LADY, an exile from her home, 
wishes to become a Teacher," began a typical ad in 1864. 
"She is competent to teach the English and French languages 
and the rudiments of Latin, and is a thorough and elegant 
musician. 118 
Other positions remained unfilled, especially in all-
boys' schools, or other institutions where male teachers 
predominated. The boys' section of st. Peter's School--
which was taught entirely by men--was suspended from 1861 
until 1867, when it was reorganized under the direction of 
Father Thomas Becker. 9 Hubert LeFebvre's School for girls 
was also "broken up" when its largely male faculty enlisted 
in the army. 10 Some larger girls' schools--including Mary 
Pegram's School and the Southern Female Institute--managed 
1864. 
7southern Churchman, 19 June 1863; 16 March, 1 April 
8southern Churchman, 18 March 1864. 
9aailey, History of st. Peter's Church, 29. 
10sallie A. Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War: 
Four Years of Personal Observations by a Richmond Lady 
(1867; repr. New York: Time-Life Books, 1983), 189; 
Advertisement for the southern Female Institute, Richmond 
Enquirer, 7 July 1860. 
284 
to remain open, although this sometimes meant holding 
classes in other locations as school buildings were pressed 
into use as military hospitals or offices for the 
confederate government. 11 
For some independent entrepreneurs, however, wartime 
disruptions spelled a complete financial disaster. By 
1865, for example, fifty-eight-year-old Martha Rice was 
virtually penniless. A teacher for more than forty years, 
Rice had operated a private school in her home with the 
help of her son. His absence for military service cut the 
widowed Rice's income in half, while the rent for her 
school had increased rapidly in Richmond's inflationary 
economy. In November 1865, she pleaded with the city 
council for a loan of $80 to $100 to help her move to a 
less expensive location. 12 
11The Richmond Female Institute building was 
requisitioned as a military hospital in 1862. Classes for 
the ninth and tenth sessions were held in the Richmond 
homes. Sallie A. Brock Putnam, Richmond during the War, 
190; "History of the Alumnae Association od the Richmond 
Female Institute,'' paper presented at the 100th Anniversary 
Celebration, 1904, in Lily Becker Epps Papers, UVA; 
Richmond Female Institute Records, VHS; Mary Williams 
Taylor to James Taylor and Charles Elisha Taylor, 12 
October 1862, Charles Elisha Taylor Papers, UVA. Part of 
the explanation for why some school were able to continue 
while others were not lies in the fact that clergy were 
exempted from the wartime draft. So schools where clergy 
predominated--like the Richmond Female Institute and the 
Southern Female Institute--remained in session, even though 
their faculties were largely male. 
12Martha c. Rice, Richmond, to the Richmond Common 
Council, 18 November 1865, Richmond City Papers, Minutes of 
the Common Council, Bundle dated 29 November 1865, LV. 
Hereafter, these records will be cited as MCC, LV. Rice's 
285 
other women who faced the postbellum period without 
male support seized on home teaching as a discreet means of 
making a modest living. Jane Taylor Prichard, for example, 
opened a small day school for twelve students in 1866, in a 
converted bedroom of her parent's Richmond home. The 
mother of four, Prichard had returned to the city in 1862, 
shortly after her physician husband died in a yellow fever 
epidemic in Wilmington, North Carolina. By 1868, 
Prichard's student body had reached sixteen, enough to care 
for herself and her children in her parents' home. 13 
Hundreds more educated middle-class women chose to 
pursue careers in the Richmond public schools that were 
created in 1869 as part of the revised Virginia 
constitution. This constitution was drafted and adopted as 
a condition for rejoining the Union. A comprehensive 
history of education in Richmond remains to be written, but 
sketchy evidence from several histories of the city 
suggests that, in the antebellum period, many elite 
Richmonders had opposed proposals for a public education 
system, preferring to educate their daughters and sons in 
letter makes no mention of whether her son survived the 
war. 
13Mary Taylor, Richmond, to Charles Elisha Taylor, 11 
October 1866; Mary Williams Taylor~ Richmond, to Charles 
Elisha Taylor, 3 October 1866; Mary Williams Taylor to 
Charles Elisha Taylor, 18 December 1868, all in Charles 
Elisha Taylor Papers, UVA. 
286 
exclusive Richmond academies. 14 The antebellum work of 
educating poor children of both races, thus, was left to 
private charity, either through Sabbath schools operated by 
Richmond churches, or day schools maintained by the city's 
orphanages. 15 
In the aftermath of the war, Northern white women and 
men provided much of the immediate postbellum education for 
Richmond's poorer Confederate orphans and ex-slaves, 
largely under the auspices of various missionary societies. 
14Fragmentary data on the Richmond school system can 
be found in Michael B. Chesson, Richmond after the War. 
1865-1890 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1981); Marie 
Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls: Richmond Virginia and Its 
People (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 
1994); and Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond: 
1865-1890 (Urbana: university of Chicago Press, 1989). 
None offers a complete picture, however. For a discussion 
of Northern teachers in the postbellum South, see 
Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern 
Teachers and Georgia Blacks. 1865-1873 (Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Robert C. 
Morris, Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education 
of Freedmen in -the South. 1861-1870 (1975; repr. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Henry Lee Swint, 
The Northern Teacher in the south. 1862-1870 (New York: 
Octagon Books, 1967). For a discussion of Northern 
teachers in postbellum Virginia, see Richard L. Morton, 
ed., "Life in Virginia by a 'Yankee Teacher,' Margaret 
Newbold Thorpe," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 
64.2 (1956): 180-207. Thorpe was stationed at a school in 
Norfolk. 
15of course, few black children received any sort of 
education at all, although affluent free blacks had 
educated their children in private black schools with black 
teachers. Chesson, Richmond after the War, 100-01 . Some 
poor black children received rudimentary educations in 
Richmond's black churches, sometimes from white 
missionaries. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous 
Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist 
Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 
Press, 1993), 21-24. 
287 
By September 1865, for example, white teachers sponsored by 
the Soldiers' Memorial Society of Boston operated a free 
school for 400 orphans of Confederate soldiers at the 
Confederate Naval Laboratory near Hollywood Cemetery, 
furnished with desks from the former Confederate 
Congress. 16 Within one month of Emancipation Day in April 
1865, two thousand black children were attending day 
schools established by Northern missionary societies, such 
as the American Missionary Association, the New England 
Freedmen's Aid Society, and the American Freedmen's Union 
Commission. These missionary associations worked in 
conjunction with the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and 
Abandoned Lands to provide basic training in reading and 
arithmetic to black children and adults. In Richmond, a 
total of twenty women and five men--largely from 
Massachusetts and New York worked in these schools, with 
some .sharing their time with schools in neaiby Norfolk and 
Portsmouth. 17 As a result of their efforts, by 1870, more 
than a third of the city's black population could read and 
write. 18 
16Richmond Dispatch, 30 June 1866. 
17I have drawn these figures from a list of female and 
male teachers sent south by Northern missionary societies 
which appears in Swint, Northern Teacher in the South, 
Appendix III, 175-221. 
18Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890, 38. 
288 
Northern teachers posed serious problems for many 
white Southerners, however, who resented their presence and 
were concerned about the cultural transmission of 
traditional white Southern values to succeeding ·generations 
of Southern children, both black and white. Many objected 
to lessons that portrayed Abraham Lincoln as a national 
savior or excoriated the valor of Confederate soldiers. 19 
On Richmond streets, Northern teachers were pushed and 
cursed, or spat upon by angry whites. 20 In many Southern 
locales, the remedy for this unwanted invasion was to train 
and hire white Southern women as teachers thus preserving 
white cultural integrity and helping assure white racial 
dominance in the postwar South. 2 ~ 
An 1868 commencement address delivered at the Richmond 
Female Institute the year before the Virginia constitution 
was ratified anticipated the importance of this expanded 
role for white Southern women. After alluding to women's 
wartime work of knitting socks for soldiers or keeping 
vigils at hospital bedsides, commencement speaker J.A. 
Chambliss, a Baptist minister, focused his remarks on the 
19Entry dated 10 June 1865, Diary from April 27, 1865 
to 1894, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
20chesson, Richmond after the War, 101. 
21A more important means of achieving white dominance 
was through the systematic disfranchisement of black male 
voters and the terrorism of white supremacist groups such 
as the Ku Klux Klan. There was little or no Klan activity 
in Richmond in the 1860s and 1870s. 
289 
important postbellum work for Southern women in ministering 
to confederate widows and orphans and in replacing 
"imported schoolmarms and pedagogues" in the region's 
public schools. To Chambliss, "nothing (could] be more 
worthy of womanhood than to labor in this noble cause.11 22 
The Baptist newspaper, the Religious Herald, in which 
Chambliss's commencement sermon appeared, was also in the 
forefront in advocating teaching as a suitable postwar 
career for Southern women, although it continued to hold 
more reactionary views about educating women for positions 
other than teaching. 23 Between November 1865 and August 
1866, the Herald published a series of essays promoting the 
founding of normal schools to train Southern women as 
22 commencement address for the Richmond Female 
Institute, Richmond Virginia, by Rev. J.A. Chambliss, 
reprinted in the Religious Herald, 9 July 1868. 
23An 1867 essay, for example, stressed the importance 
of a home-based education in the domestic arts for Southern 
women because [d]omestic life forms the sphere in which the 
woman is to move." According to the Herald, women's 
educations should emphasize English and history, leaving 
science, Latin and algebra for men, or for wom7n p~anning 
to be teachers. Men should also have a grounding in 
ancient languages and mathematics. "Men need especially 
the cultivation of the reasoning faculties," the Herald 
writer observed, "For they are reasoning animals--women are 
much less so, and have much less need [of cultivating] this 
faculty." Religious Herald, 23 March 1867. The Religious 
Herald, by this time, was under the editorship of two 
prominent Richmond clergymen, Jeremiah Bell Jeter and 
Alfred E. Dickinson. After assuming control of the paper, 
Jeter and Dickinson introduced "The Home Circle," an entire 
page devoted almost entirely to sermons, vignettes, and 
poetry stressing women's domesticity. Virginia Baptist 
Historical Society librarian Darlene Slater believes this 
page was probably written and/or edited by Mary Catherine 
Jeter, Jeremiah Jeter's wife. 
290 
teachers in the primary grades. 24 "The abolition of 
slavery must necessitate a great change in the social and 
domestic condition of the Southern woman," began an essay 
which appeared in August 1866. 
[H]aving deprived [Southern women] of the means 
of indulgence, and, in many instances, even of 
support, [it] has imposed on them the necessity 
of seeking employments suited to their sex and 
station .... The business of education in the 
South must henceforth, to a great extent, be 
committed to females. Heretofore, educated women 
among us have, with rare exceptions, been exempt 
from the necessity of making efforts for their 
own maintenance, and have, consequently, been 
unwilling to burden themselves with the care of a 
school. When female teachers have been needed, 
they have been imported from the North .... 
Taste, inclination, interest, not to say 
prejudice, demand that, from this time, Southern 
children shall be taught by southern women. 25 
As the Herald essayist implied, one reason for this 
shift was based on worries about preserving the Southern 
social order. 26 Another reason grew out of the need to 
provide impoverished middle-class southern women with a 
24Religious Herald, 23, 30 November, 7 December 1865; 
11 January, 7 June 1866. 
25Religious Herald, 9 August 1866. 
26charles Regan Wilson maintains that by the 1880s, 
"Confederate veterans served as superintendents, 
principals, and teachers in private academies" while the 
"impoverished daughters of the prewar planter families 
•.. dominated the lower grades of Southern education. 
Because they retained their Old South--Confederate values, 
their presence . in the classroom was a potent influence for 
traditions on another generation of Southerners." By the 
late nineteenth century, this influence extended to writing 
Southern textbooks. Charle s Re agan Wilson, Baptized i n 
Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 {Athens: 
University of Georgia Press, 1980), 138-60. 
291 
suitable occupation. 27 In 1860, white women had comprised 
approximately 25 percent of the ninety-eight teachers 
listed in the 1860 Richmond census. 28 By 1870, they 
totalled 67.9 percent of the 243 teachers who provided 
educations for white students in the city's public and 
private schools. 29 Although no women at all worked in 
institutions of higher education, such as the Richmond 
Medical School and the Richmond College, they comprised 
98.3 percent of the sixty-two women and men who taught in 
the city's public primary, intermediate, and grammar 
schools for white girls and boys, and 62.l percent of the 
faculties of the city's fifty-nine private day and boarding 
schools, 30 In addition, all of the city's parochial and 
27 Richmond schools were segregated by race. Most 
middle-class blacks and whites who could afford them 
continued to support private, racially segregated schools 
for their children. Poorer white and black children 
attended the city's public schools, although enrollments 
fluctuated because these children sometimes worked in city 
factories. Chesson, Richmond after the War, 166-67. The 
majority .of Richmond's public school teachers in the 
primary grades in 1871 were white women (61). There were 
eleven black public school teachers in 1871, eight of these 
were black women. Report of the school Board, 1870-71, 
MCC, LV. School principals and members of the Board of 
Education were white men. None of the Richmond sources is 
specific about whether any white female teachers ever 
taught in black public schools. 
28schedule of Social Statistics, 1860 Census for 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. 
29schedule of social statistics, 1870 Census for 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. 
30rn the black schools, where all the faculty may also 
have been black, female teachers also outnumbered male 
teachers by a ratio of 2.7 to 1. 
292 
charity schools in 1870 were taught completely by women. 3 1 
By 1880, white female teachers in Richmond outnumbered male 
teachers by 3 to 1. 32 In part, these Richmond ratios may 
have been the result of the city's rapidly growing school 
system; in part, they may reflect the movement of white 
educated Richmond men into more lucrative lines of work. 
Richmond's ratios of female and male teachers were not 
necessarily typical of those in other Southern communities. 
A comparison of female and male teachers in the states of 
the former Confederacy in the late 1880s revealed that, 
31Schedule of Social Statistics, 1870 Census for 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. With the exception of a few 
private boarding schools whose faculties are known, it is 
impossible to provide a breakdown by gender for the 
antebellum period. The Schedule of Social Statistics in 
the 1860 Census for Richmond City, which provides 
information on the number of teachers in Richmond, makes no 
distinctions as to gender. At best, all that can be said 
for the immediate antebellum period is that, in 1860, 
ninety-eight male and female teachers worked in thirty-one 
Richmond public and private schools to provide educations 
for 2,760 students. Schedule of social Statistics, 1860 
Census for Richmond, Virginia, NARA. The information on 
black teachers comes from a School Board Report which was 
filed in the minutes of the Common Council. In these 
schools eight of the eleven black teachers were female, and 
three were male. Report of the School Board for the 
Scholastic Year 1870-71, Bundle dated September 1871, MCC, 
LV. At eleven in 1870, the number of black public school 
teachers was quite small. Under Readjuster rule in the 
early 1880s, however, the number of black schools expanded 
and the number of black school teachers tripled. In 
addition, black school enrollment expanded from 36,000 in 
1879 to 91,000 in 1882. All was this was in fulfillment of 
campaign pledges made in return for black voter support. 
Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond Virginia. 1865-1890, 103. 
32Angela Catherine Bongiorno, "White Women and Work in 
Richmond, Virginia, 1870-1884" (M.A. thesis, University of 
Virginia, 1978), 25-26. 
293 
although women had made significant strides in the field of 
education, in only two states--Virginia and Louisiana--did 
the number of women teachers exceed the number of men. In 
Virginia, female teachers outnumbered male teachers by 
4,165 to 3,258, or a ratio of 14:11; in Louisiana, this 
ratio was 27:23. In all of the other states except 
Mississippi, however, men outnumbered women, often by about 
2:1. In Mississippi, the ratio of female to male teachers 
was an even 50:5o. 33 
In most states, women entering teaching were paid less 
than their male counterparts. An 1868 article in the 
suffragist newspaper, Revolution, compared salaries for 
female and male teachers in twelve northeastern and western 
states--where teaching often became identified as a woman's 
occupation in the antebellum period. In every instance, 
the salaries paid to male teachers exceeded those paid to 
women, usually by more than 50 percent. In Wisconsin, for 
example, male teachers received $36.45 per month, while 
female teachers earned $22. In New Hampshire, male 
teachers made $24.35 per month, and female teachers, 
$14.12. In one of the worst cases of all, male teachers in 
33A.D. Mayo, Southern Women in the Recent Educational 
Movement in the South, Don T. Carter and Amy Freidlander, 
eds. (1892; repr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University 
Press, 1978). 
294 
Maine were paid $28.50 a month, nearly three times the 
$10.50 paid to the state's female instructors.34 
Several historians have argued that, as teaching 
became a "feminized" profession, teachers' salaries 
fell. 35 The evidence for Richmond suggests that the 
importance Virginians placed on having Southern women as 
teachers of white southern children (instead of Chambliss's 
"imported schoolmarms and pedagogues") may have 
controverted this trend. According to a Richmond school 
board report filed in 1871, although female teachers were 
concentrated in the elementary and primary grades, both 
female and male instructors received the same rates of pay, 
although that rate varied according to the level being 
34Revolution, 16 April 1868, 227. 
35Alice Kessler-Harris, out to work: A History of 
Wage-Earning Women in the United states(Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1982), 56-57. Kessler-Harris notes that, 
in Massachusetts, between 1840 and 1865, the proportion of 
male teachers dropped from 50 to 14 percent, while the 
number of female teachers rose during the civil War. 
According to Kessler-Harris, "[w]omen's lower pay and 
higher turnover rates would contribute to feminizing the 
profession permanently." Kessler-Harris, out to Work, 68. 
Drew Faust's and Anne Scott's research suggests that the 
feminization of teaching in the South occurred after, and 
as a result of, the Civil War. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers 
of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the 
American civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1996), 82-88; Anne Firer Scott, rev. ed., 
The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 110-
18. All subsequent citations are to this edition of 
Scott's book. 
295 
taught. 36 
By the 1880s, teaching had become a viable option for 
several hundred white Richmond women. But perhaps even 
more important than the number of women who turned to 
teaching in the postwar decades were the thousands of 
working-class girls and boys who were able to attend 
schools for the first time following the implementation of 
Richmond public school system in 1869 and the subsequent 
36with the exception of the normal schools where 
female teachers outnumbered male teachers by a ratio of 
5:2, male teachers predominated in schools for advanced 
learning. The normal school may have been established to 
train black women and men as teachers. No salary figures 
for these schools exist but they were presumably higher 
than any amounts paid to teachers working in the lower 
grades. Schedule of social statistics, 1870 census for 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. Grammar school teachers Julia 
Whiting, Mary Ann Fulton, and Jennie B. Howard, for 
example, each received $60 per month, while primary school 
teachers Lucy Hockaday and Mrs. H.A. Apperson were paid $45 
and $40, respectively, depending on the level of primary 
education each women taught. Laura c. Richards and Hattie 
E. Rogers earned $50 each for providing instruction to 
intermediate boys and girls. In each of these cases, 
according to the School Board report, the women received 
exactly the same amount as male teachers providing the same 
level of instruction. Richmond Dispatch, 4 January 1870; 
Report of the School Board for the Scholastic Year, 1870-
71, Bundle dated September 1871, MCC, LV. Black female and 
male janitors for the city's sixty-five white and black 
public schools earned between $2 and $25 per month. 
Virginia may have been in the forefront of this trend. 
George Rable has noted that, in 1870, Virginia was the only 
southern state to employ more than a thousand women as 
public school teachers. However, Rable's argument, in 
general, goes against the conclusions of both Scott and 
Faust, arguing that Southern women opened more private 
schools but "they by no means replaced men." My research 
suggests that, for Virginia at least, Rable is probably 
mistaken. George c. Rable, civil Wars: Women and the 
crisis of Southern Nationalism (Chicago: University of 
Illinois Press, 1989), 277. 
296 
training and hiring of competent female teachers. Although 
the number of children employed in factory work in Richmond 
increased dramatically between 1870 and 1880, education 
provided many of these children with at least a fundamental 
literacy. 37 
Writing 
Writing or editing was another postbellum occupation 
that attracted a tiny group of white, upper- and middle-
class women. Northern women had written domestic novels 
since the 1840s and 1850s, but, with the exception of 
Augusta Evans's 1860 novel, Beulah, most Southern women had 
not. During the war, however, some Richmond women became 
fictional propagandizers of Confederate patriotism and 
Southern women's wartime roles, often as a means of 
supplementing family income. 38 constance Cary Harrison, 
37In 1870, there were 858 child factory laborers of 
both races; in 1880, there were 2,113. In addition to 
manufacturing tobacco products, Richmond children in 1880 
worked in box factories, iron foundries and machine shops, 
and saddleries. They also manufactured furniture and 
worked in the city's publishing houses. Chesson, Richmond 
after the War, 166-67; Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 
209. 
38For a discussion of domestic novelists in the United 
States, see Ann D. Wood, "The 'Scribbling Women' and Fanny 
Fern: Why Women Wrote, 11 American Quarterly (need date/vol]: 
2-24; Henry Nash Smith, "The Scribbling Women and the 
Cosmic success Story," Critical Inquiry [need 
vol](Septernber 1974): 47-70; Ann Douglas, "Heaven Our Horne: 
Consolation Literature in the Northern United States, 1830-
1860," American Quarterly (December 1974): 495-516; and 
Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American 
Feminism, The Woman and the City. 1800-1860 (1979; repr. 
297 
for example, penned brief articles and patriotic serials 
for the Magnolia and the Southern Illustrated News under 
the pen names of "Refugitta" and "Secessia," while her 
mother and aunt nursed Confederate soldiers at Richmond's 
Winder Hospital. 39 Benetta Valentine, the unmarried 
o~ford: Oxfor~ Univ7rsity Press, 1971), especially Chapter 
six. For a discussion of Southern women writers, see Drew 
Gilpin Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and 
the Narratives of War," Journal of American History 76.4 
(1990): 1200-28; and Drew Gilpin Faust, "A War Story for 
Confederate Women: Augusta Jane Evans's Macaria," in Drew 
Gilpin Faust, Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and 
War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 160-73. 
European women also produced this genre. See Bonnie 
Smith's discussion of domestic novelists in Northern France 
in her Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of 
Northern France in the Nineteenth Century Princeton, N.J.: 
Princeton University Press, 1981), especially Chapter 
Eight. 
39constance Cary [Mrs. Burton] Harrison, Recollections 
Grave and Gay (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911), 
118. See, for example. "A Confederate Christmas," 
Magnolia, 3 October 1863, and "A Woman of the World," 
Magnolia, 14 November 1864. Born on April 25, 1843, 
Constance Cary Harrison published more than _thirty 
fictional works including novellas, short stories, 
children's fairy tales, essays, plays, and social 
commentaries during a career that spanned from the civil 
The 
editor, 
war to the second decade of the twentieth century. 
daughter of Archibald Cary, a lawyer and newspaper 
twelve-year-old Harrison was living in Alexandria, 
Virginia, with her widowed mother, Monimia Fairfax Cary, 
when the civil War began. After Alexandria was overrun by 
Federal troops, Harrison and her family moved to Richmond, 
where Monimia Cary worked as a Winder Hospital matron. In 
November 1867, Constance Cary married Norvell Burton 
Harrison, Jefferson Davis's private secretary who had been 
instrumental in securing the ex-president's release from a 
Union prison. After the war, the Harrisons moved to New 
York City, where Burton Harrison practiced law until his 
death in Washington, n.c., in 1904. It was there that 
Constance Harrison raised her three sons and developed her 
career as a writer. Her e ldest son, Fairfax, late r became 
president of both the southern Railway Company and the 
Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway Company. Her 
298 
daughter of an illustrious and multi-talented Richmond 
family, enjoyed wartime success as a writer of poems, short 
stories, and brief essays on a variety of subjects 
including the Civil War, slavery and slave treatment, 
religion, the South, and motherhood. Her most famous Civil 
war poem, ''Marse Robert Is Asleep," which offers a highly 
romanticized view of Southern slavery, was published 
repeatedly in newspapers and periodicals throughout the 
south. 
Because most women wrote in anonymity at home, writing 
provided a respectable source of income for women whose 
husbands or fathers were ill, improvident, or dead. In the 
postwar decades, pro-South writings by Southern women and 
men took on added significance as contributions to the 
literary discourse surrounding the Lost Cause (Chapter 
Ten.). Shortly after the war, for example, several women 
who had lived and worked in the Confederate capital 
published wartime diaries or recollections as a means of 
valorizing both their own wartime experiences and the 
heroism of southern men. Other women wrote historical 
sketches of Confederate heroes, such as Robert E. Lee. As 
a result, women were able to tap into a lucrative market 
for Southern memorabilia in the closing decades of the 
nineteenth century, as Southerners attempted to have what 
second son, Fr ancis, s erve d two terms as gove rnor o f the 
Philippines. A third son, Archibald, died as a young 
adult. 
299 
they considered "the real history of the war" written into 
the historical and literary canon. 40 
In 1866, Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, the middle-aged 
wife of an Episcopal clergyman and educator, rushed a 
version of her diary into print, detailing her life and 
work in the Confederate capital, including the heroism and 
suffering of dozens of male kin in the service of the 
Confederate army. By 1867, it was in its second 
edition. 41 Chimborazo matron Phebe Pember returned to 
Georgia after the war and wrote a reminiscence from her 
40Nina Silber has described another body of literature 
which developed during this same period of time, primarily 
out of middle- and upper-class Northerners' attempts to 
interpret, metaphorically, the reunion of North and South. 
Much of this "reconciliation literature" constructs a 
"gendered view of the postwar Dixie that very much fit(s) 
with [Northerners') concerns about subduing the South under 
Northern political and economic authority" usually by 
recounting tales of manly Northern men, cowardly or 
effeminate southern men, and spiteful she-rebels. As 
Reconstruction came to an end in the late 1870s, these 
literary "subduings," frequently took the form of marriages 
between Southern women and Northern men. Nina Silber, The 
Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 19 
and 63. Although she was a Southerner by birth, several of 
Constance Cary Harrison's later writings--"Cherrycote" and 
A Virginia cousin--fit into this genre. Unfortunately, 
silber's study only focuses on the contributions of 
Northern men. Constance Cary Harrison, A Virginia Cousin 
and Bar Harbor Tales (1895; repr. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for 
Libraries Press, 1969); and Constance Cary Harrison, An 
Edelweiss of the Sierras, Golden-Rod, and Other Tales 
(1892; repr. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 
1969) [Includes "Cherrycote."]. 
41Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, Diary of a Southern 
Refugee during the War, 2d ed. (New York: E.J. Hale & son, 
1867; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1972). 
300 
wartime diary. It was first published as A Southern 
Woman's Story in 1879. 42 
Kate Mason Rowland, who spent the wartime years 
working at Richmond's Confederate Naval Hospital, co-edited 
the Civil War diary of Julia LeGrand, and published a 
volume of chivalric Southern poetry by a Georgia 
physician. 43 Rowland's sister, Emily Mason, wrote a 
history of Robert E. Lee, and edited a collection of 
wartime poetry accumulated from Confederate newspapers on 
Mason's travels throughout the South. The proceeds from 
this volume were intended for educating the daughters of 
42 Phoebe Yates Pember, A Southern Woman's Story (New 
York: G.W. Carleton, 1879). Of course, Mary Chesnut is the 
most ubiquitous Southern diarist, but there were dozens 
more women and men whose wartime narratives came into print 
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 
43Julia LeGrand, The Journal of Julia LeGrand: New 
Orleans, 1862-1863, Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. 
croxall, eds. (Richmond: Everett Waddy, 1911); and Francis 
Orray Ticknor, The Poems of Frank O. Ticknor, M.D., K[ate] 
M[ason] R[owland], ed. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 
1879). Later, Rowland published historical sketches of 
Robert carter and captain John smith, as well as two-volume 
biographies of both George Mason of Virginia, and Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton. Kate Mason Rowland, "Robert Carter 
of Virginia," Magazine of American History 30.3 (September 
1893): 114-136; Kate Mason Rowland, "The Tasker and Barnes 
Families,'' Dixie Magazine 2.3 (September 1899): [pp.??]; 
Kate Mason Rowland, Captain John Smith, Soldier and 
Historian (n.p.: n.p., 1893); Kate Mason Rowland, The Life 
of George Mason, 1725-1792, 2 vols- (New York: G.P. 
Putnam's Sons, 1892; Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 1737-1832, 2 vols. (New 
York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1898). 
301 
deceased Confederate soldiers as teachers in southern 
schools. 44 
Other writings by Benetta Valentine and especially by 
Constance Cary Harrison stress the theme of Southern and 
Northern reunification which enabled their work to reach a 
broader audience that transcended regional lines and, in 
the case of Harrison, helped establish her career as a 
writer of popular fiction in the late nineteenth 
century. 45 
44Emily V. Mason, Popular Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee 
(Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1872); Emily V. Mason, ed. 
The Southern Poems of the War (Baltimore: John Murphy & 
Co., 1867). 
45Although never a prodigious writer, by the mid-
1880s, Valentine's poem "North and South" had become so 
popular that it was often sung at joint gatherings of 
Confederate and union veterans to the tune of "Auld Lang 
syne." "North and south," a song sheet prepared for the 
Grand Democratic Jubilee, 18 November 1884, Sarah Benetta 
Valentine Papers, VM. Harrison's writing enjoyed such 
popularity by the end of the nineteenth century that, in 
1893, she was asked to edit the volume on periodical 
literatur~ for the Library of the Woman's Building at the 
Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Although this list is not 
exhaustive, Harrison's publications--in addition to A 
Virginia cousin and Edelweiss of the Sierras--include the 
following: The Anglornaniacs (1890; repr. New York: Arno 
Press, 1977); Tea at Four O'Clock (Chicago and New York: 
Dramatic Publishing company, 1892); The Carcellini 
Emerald, with Other Tales (1899; repr. Freeport, N.Y.: 
Books for Libraries Press, 1969); A Daughter of the South 
and Shorter Stories (1892; repr. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for 
Libraries Press, 1969); The Circle of a Century (New York: 
Century co., 1899); A Bachelor Maid (New York: Century Co., 
1894); Flower de Hundred: The story of a Virginia 
Plantation (New York: Cassell, 1890); A Princess of the 
Hills: An Italian Romance (Boston: Lothrop, 1901); Belhaven 
Tales; Crow's Nest; Una and King David (New York: Century 
co., 1892); The Count and the Congressman (New York: 
Cupples & Leon, 1908); An Errant Wooing (New York: Century 
co., 1895); Folk and Fairy Tales (London: Ward & Downey, 
302 
Conclusion 
In the postwar south, the overwhelming need for work 
continued the movement of middle-class white women into the 
workforce that had started during the war. But Confederate 
defeat meant that these women's postwar employment would 
not follow the trajectories established by their wartime 
labor as hospital matrons and government clerks. In the 
decades after the war, a few upper- and middle-class 
Richmond women channeled their wartime prose into postwar 
writing that praised the valor of Confederate soldiers and 
hallowed and sanctified their cause. (See Chapter Ten.) 
Many more found work as teachers in the city's public 
schools, an unintended consequence of the war that had been 
mandated for Virginia as a condition of Reconstruction. 
1885); Good Americans (New York: Century Co., 1898); 
Jefferson Autographs: The Last Royal Governors of Virginia 
and Their Patriot American Contemporaries (n.p.: n.p., 
n.d.) ·; Latter-Day Sweethearts (New York and London: Authors 
& Newspapers Association, 1906); The Merry Maid of Arcady; 
His Lordship; and Other Stories (Boston and London: Lamson, 
Wolffe & Co., 1897); The Mouse-Trap, A Comedietta in One 
Act (New York: Dewitt's, 1892); The Old-Fashioned Fairy 
Book (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1884); A Son of the Old 
Dominion (Boston: Lamson, Wolffe & Co., 1897); The Story of 
Helen of Troy (New York: Harper, 1899); Sweet Bells Out of 
Tune (New York: Century Co., 1893); Sylvia's Husband (New 
York: D. Appleton, 1904); A Triple Entanglement 
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1899); Two strings to Her 
Bow, A Comedy in Two Acts (New York: Dewitt's, 1892); The 
unwelcome Mrs. Hatch: A Drama of Everyday Life (New York: 
C.G. Burgoyne, 1901); and The Well-Bred Girl of Society 
(Philadelphia: Doubleday & McClure, 1898). Harrison also 
published essays in History of the City of New York: Its 
origin, Rise, and Progress, ed. by Martha J. Lamb. 2 vols. 
(New York and Chicago: A.S. Barnes & co., 1877); and A 
House Party, ed. by Paul Leicester Ford. (Boston: small, 
Maynard & Company, 1901). 
303 
For educated Richmond women, teaching provided them with 
expanding postwar employment in a profession that did not 
stigmatize them for working outside the home. By 1880, 
Southern women in Richmond and elsewhere had come to 
dominate the profession in the South, at least in the 
primary and secondary grades, as women had done in the 
North several decades earlier. 46 
46By 1880, teachers' colleges had been established for 
women in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. Anne Scott, 
southern Lady, 110-15; Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention, 
251. In 1894, the Richmond Female Institute became the 
Women's College of Richmond. "History of the Alumnae 
Association of the Richmond Female Institute--Woman's 
College of Richmond" (Paper presented at the 100th 
Anniversary Celebration, 1904), Lily Becker Epps Papers. 
UVA. When asked to reflect on the civil War's effects on 
southern women's education, one Tennessee women made the 
following observation: "Formerly the ultimatum of a 
southern's girl's existence was marriage, and an old maid 
was an object of pity. Now, thanks to the public schools, 
any girl, however humbly born, may secure an education and 
by the force of her intellect command an honorable position 
in the best society." Wilbur Fisk Tillet, "Southern 
Womanhood as Affected by the War," Century Magazine 43 
(November 1891): 11. Emphasis mine. 
CHAPTER 8 
TEXTILE WORKERS AND CIGARETTE GIRLS: 
WORKING-CLASS WOMEN AND WORK IN POSTBELLUM RICHMOND 
White working-class women in Richmond had labored 
outside the home for decades before the war, but their work 
was usually in low-paying jobs that were extensions of 
women's domesticity--especially in the needlework trades. 
During the war, however, several hundred working-class 
women had earned incomes as munitions workers that would 
have been impossibl,e for them to attain by sewing. With 
the furling of the confederate flag, however, munitions 
work came to an end. 
Evidence on the postwar employment of working-class 
Richmond women is quite scarce, but the picture that it 
provides suggests that these women faced extremely limited 
options for work that would provide them with even a modest 
income. 1 Some Richmond working-class women no doubt 
1other alternatives that were available to Northern 
women--especially various forms of domestic work--were 
performed in the south almost exclusively by black women. 
Tracey Weis has noted that the number of black men involved 
in domestic labor--butlers, porters, valets, and drivers, 
for example--declined following Emancipation, as other 
forms of work became available to them. But black women 
continued to perform most of the domestic labor in white 
middle- and upper-class households, because they had fewer 
304 
305 
"retreated" into sewing; their numbers increased 
dramatically during the five years following the war, 
although the population declined during this period and 
refugees and government workers returned to their homes. 
By the 1870 census, 470 women identified themselves as 
seamstresses, a compared with 103 in 1860. 2 This dramatic 
expansion of the profession, coupled with the absence of 
government contracts, meant that seamstresses often faced 
stiffer competition for jobs and usually earned 
comparatively less money than they had during wartime. 3 
' A few experienced seamstresses may have tried to 
establish themselves as dressmakers for wealthy women; 
between 1866 and 1882, women comprised between 85 and 100 
percent of the city's dressmakers and mantua makers listed 
in the city directories. But few individual women remained 
in the occupation for very long, proof, no doubt, of the 
impossibility women faced of making a decent living at 
alternatives. Tracey M. Weis, "Negotiating Freedom: 
Domestic Service and Household Relations in Richmond, 
Virginia, 1850-1880" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 
1994), 26-27. Angela Bongiorno says that black domestics 
constituted 90 percent of domestic workers in the postwar 
decades. The remaining 10 percent were white immigrants. 
Angela Catherine Bongiorno, "White Women and Work in 
Richmond, Virginia '' (M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 
1987), 20. 
2Manufacturing Schedule for the 1870 Richmond Census, 
NARA. 
3By 1866, seamstresses had experienced a 25 to 30 
percent drop in wages. Richmond Whig, 16 January, 2, 25 
June, 4, 11 July 1866. A portion of this loss may have 
been offset by a decline in inflation rate. 
306 
dressmaking. Of the women whose names were listed in city 
directories published between 1866 and 1882, only three 
enjoyed dressmaking careers of more than ten years' 
duration. 4 
Other laboring women worked in the city's textile 
mills during the late 1860s and 1870s, while a few more may 
have slipped into casual prostitution, an occasional resort 
for impoverished working-class women who sewed. (Chapter 
Four) Between 1874 and 1880, however, the percentage of 
white working women who made their living with a needle 
declined as increasing numbers of white female laborers 
found employment in cigarette manufacturing, a new 
occupation for working-class white women that opened in the 
mid-1870s. By 1880, white and black seamstresses 
constituted 16.3 percent (N=470) of female laborers listed 
in the manufacturing schedule of the 1880 Richmond census, 
while the percentage white and black women who processed 
chewing and smoking tobacco was 76.3 (N=2,193) . 5 
4Richmond city Directory, 1866; Richmond City 
Directory, 1870-71; Richmond city Directory, 1875-76; 
Richmond city Directory, 1881-82. (All of these are in the 
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) None of the twenty 
women who listed themselves as dressmakers in the 1866 city 
directory were engaged in this same line of work by the 
time of the 1870 directory was published. Of the twelve 
women listed in the 1870 directory, only three--Ellen 
Richardson, Ellen Thomas, and Mrs. E. Erambert--appeared in 
the 1881-82 city guide. 
5Manufacturing Schedule for the 1880 Census, Richmond, 
Virginia. The remaining workers manufactured boxes (3.3 
percent); baked bread, made candy, worked as shoemakers's 
helpers, sold patent medicines, made furniture, and did 
307 
Textile Work 
Some working-class women in postbellum Richmond 
probably looked for work in one of the city's textile 
factories that had employed approximately 170 women and 
girls on the eve the Civil War. 6 During the war, these 
companies had worked at peak capacity in day and evening 
shifts, turning out osnaburgs, sheeting, and woolens for 
the Confederate army. 7 Female operatives at the Crenshaw 
Woolen Works earned $7.50 per week, a salary that was 50 
percent higher than the average yearly wage of most 
government seamstresses (Chapter Four). 8 
But the Crenshaw mill--which manufactured blue and 
gray uniform cloth, stocking yarn, and blankets for the 
Confederate army--was completely destroyed by fire in 1863 
"hairwork." 
6There were four textile mills in Richmond and 
Manchester in 1861, but no records showing the gender 
distribution of textile workers in these factories has 
survived. Of the 700 workers who labored in Richmond's 
three textile factories on the eve of the Civil War, I am 
estimating that at least 150 were women and girls, based on 
the fact that women constituted 19.2 percent of the labor 
force at the Crenshaw Woolen Works when it opened in 
October 1861. According to a city directory for 1858-59, 
about 200 male and female operatives manufactured blankets 
and woolen cloth at the Virginia Woolen Company on 12th 
Street, while another 530 workers produced cotton 
osnaburgs, sheeting, and shirting at the Manchester Cotton 
Factory and the James River Manufacturing Company, both 
located in Manchester. Richmond City Directory, 1858-59, 
LC. 
7osnaburg is a heavy, coarse, unbleached cotton 
fabric, usually woven in a plain weave. 
8Richmond Enquirer, 16 October 1861. 
308 
and had not been rebuilt. 9 And by March 1866, work at the 
two Manchester mills--the Manchester cotton Mill and the 
James River Manufacturing Company--was so slow that night 
work was suspended. 10 One month later, the Manchester 
Cotton Mill was considering closing its doors for good, 
while workers at the James River Manufacturing Company were 
on two-thirds time. 11 By 1870, only 150 women were listed 
as textile workers on the Richmond census.12 
No cotton mill workers have left recollections of 
their life and work in Richmond like the accounts Lucy 
Larcom and Harriet Robinson wrote about the Lowell mills in 
Massachusetts in the 1830s and 1840s, But evidence from a 
series of letters written to the Richmond Dispatch by a 
self-styled cotton mill operative suggests that cotton mill 
work in the late 1860s may have been one of the least 
desirable occupations for white working-class Richmond 
women. 13 "I am nothing but a humble factory girl," began 
9Richmond Examiner, 16 May 1863. 
10Richmond Dispatch, 5 March, 1866. I am speculating 
that this was the reason for the James River Company going 
on two-thirds time. Another reason for these night 
closures, however, could have been the Struggle letters, 
especially the letter appearing in the Dispatch on February 
15, 1866. See below. 
11Richmond Dispatch, 13 April 1866. 
12Bongiorno, "White Women and Work in Richmond, 
Virginia," 31. 
13The city had two cotton mills in 1880: the Old 
Dominion Cotton Mill and the Marshall Manufacturing 
Company, each employing about 150 women. Bongiorno, "White 
309 
the author of the first letter in 1866, "but a mighty 
ambition struggles in my soul. 1114 
In reality, "Struggle," was not really a factory girl 
at all, but rather William E. Hatcher, minister to the 
Manchester Baptist Church that served many working-class 
families. 15 Through the persona of "Struggle," Hatcher 
provided readers of the Dispatch with a stringent critique 
of the difficulties of working-class life in a community 
where unpainted and haphazardly-arranged houses leaked and 
flooded with every rain. 16 on the corners, "Manchester 
Windeaters"--red-eyed men with no work or no visible means 
Women and Work in Richmond, Virginia, 1870-1884," 22. The 
women Hatcher describes probably worked at the Manchester 
Mill or one of the other mills in the city of Manchester. 
14Richmond Dispatch, 27 January 1866. 
15The letters were part of a scheme between Hatcher 
and Henry K. Ellyson, the editor of the Dispatch, to expose 
Manchester's problems at the same time that they helped to 
increase the newly-reorganized paper's circulation. 
Although the paper didn't publish all the letters Hatcher 
submitted--it refused to publish his expose of Manchester's 
prostitutes, titled "The Manchester Street Sweepers," for 
example--those they did publish created a furor in the 
Richmond and Manchester communities and also netted 
Struggle at least two proposals of marriage. Their more 
important consequence was the election of a reform ticket 
in Manchester which addressed many of the problems the 
letters described. When Hatcher received a call to a 
larger church in Baltimore, the letters ended. Charles 
Hartwell, "Struggle's Hoax," Richmond Times-Dispatch, 5 
July 1936, magazine section, p. 4. I am indebted to Gregg 
Kimball at the Valentine Museum for first providing me with 
this information. Gregg D. Kimball, "The Working People of 
Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865-1920, 11 
Labor's Heritage 3.2 (April 1991): 49, and 64, fn. 21. 
16Richmond Dispat~h, 24 February 1866. 
... 
310 
of support--taunted the cotton mill girls as they picked 
their way home along the broken pavements of Manchester's 
streets. 17 Gambling dens beckoned to the unsuspecting 
patrons who were quickly fleeced of their earnings by fast-
talking card sharps and their shills. 18 "Does the humanity 
of the stockholder experience no motions of pity for the 
fatherless, brotherless girl?", Struggle demanded. "Are 
there no dangers that hang about her in her friendless 
journey? 1119 
In the mills, young girls--whom Struggle described as 
being "driven from their happy homes by the fortunes of 
war"--labored for twelve hours in the sickening heat, 
drenched in perspiration. 20 At 8 p.m., they stepped, 
thinly clad, into the "raw, piercing air" and made their 
way home, unescorted, along the darkened Manchester 
streets. 21 "Is it remarkable," struggle wondered, "if we 
fall victims to pneumonia or consumption? 
Ah, well, if we die, few weep; no bells are 
tolled; the stockholders smile as before at 
growing dividends, and pause not to ask whose 
17Richrnond Dispatch, 3, 24 February; 5 March 1866. 
According to Hatcher, "windeaters" were men who performed 
no labor and owned no property. In another reference, 
Hatcher suggested that they are red-eyed from weeping for 
the fallen Confederacy. 
18Richrnond Dis12atch, 7 June 1866. 
19Richrnond Dis12atch, 8 February, 12 May, 2 June 1866. 
20Richrnond Disgatch, 8' 15 February 1866. 
21Richmond Dis12atch, 3 February 1866 . 
311 
life was taken to make them rich• and our places 
are soon filled. 22 ' 
For Struggle, these cotton mill workers were not bound 
together by a sense of equality and "c f · ommon r.1endship 11 (as 
the Lowell girls had been), but divided by competition 
caused by too little work and a desire to "take care of 
number one. 1123 Although some girls sought refuge in 
matrimony, to struggle this often only saddled them with 
husbands who depended on their meager earnings for whiskey 
and support. 24 
struggle's characterizations of the sexually 
vulnerable and economically exploited cotton mill workers 
were intended to tug at his readers' heartstrings and alert 
them to the corruption of Manchester city politics. But 
although Hatcher's exposes led to the election of reform-
minded politicians who worked to clean up Manchester's grog 
shops and gambling dens, the work of the cotton mill 
operativ~s apparently continued unchanged, although in the 
opinion of many white Richmonders it had probably gotten 
worse. An 1871 article on Manchester's laboring women 
reported factory conditions simila~ to the ones described 
by "Struggle" some five years earlier, except that by this 
22Richmond Dispatch, 8 February 1866. 
23Richmond Dispatch, 31 January 1866. 
24Richmond Dispatch, 30 April 1866. 
312 
time, white women and girls were reported to be laboring in 
sweltering factory rooms alongside black men.25 
Cigarette Rollers 
Although much of the above account suggests that the 
laboring options of poor and working-class white women were 
bleak through much of the latter 1860s and early 1870s, the 
horizon brightened, somewhat, in 1874, with the expansion 
of the cigarette manufacturing industry in the city--a 
direct result of the increased popularity of cigarettes 
during the American Civil War. 26 In the antebellum 
period, the tobacco products of choice for men throughout 
the United States were either chewing tobacco or cigars, 
the manufacture of which, in the South, employed large 
numbers of black men and women. In 1860, more than 3,200 
black men and women manufactured plug chewing tobacco and, 
for a short time after the war's end, plug pioduction 
2511 Laboring Women," Southern Churchman, 5 October 
1871. 
26According to Nannie Tilley, a number of reasons have 
been suggested for why cigarettes became popular during 
this period of time. Among these are the increased 
development and cultivation of Bright tobacco which was 
more suitable for cigarette production; the development of 
the friction match which made lighting cigarettes easier· 
' the shortage in the South of products used to sweeten and 
flavor chewing tobacco, such as sugar and licorice; and the 
quickened tempo brought about by the war which led to an 
desire for faster psychological and physiological effects · 
of nicotine. Nanni7 Tille¥, Th7 Bright-Tobacco IndustryL 
1860-1949 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 
1948) , 497-98. ' 
313 
continued to dominate the Richmond tobacco trade. But by 
the early to mid-1870s, the chewing tobacco market was 
increasingly overtaken by a growing national demand for 
cigarettes. 27 
The first ,Richmond company to capitalize on this trend 
was Allen & Ginter--the city's largest tobacco processor--
which manufactured 2.5 million cigarettes in 1874.28 By 
1882, it was producing 550 million cigarettes per year. 
Although plug tobacco production continued to be dominated 
by blacks, the production of cigarettes ushered large 
numbers of white women and girls into tobacco 
processing. 29 Unlike white cotton mill workers who, by 
1871, worked in rooms with black men, white cigarette 
rollers labored in groups of fifty to a hundred or more in 
racially segregated "cigarette rooms," thus immediately 
27These figures for black tobacco workers are taken 
from the Manufacturing Schedule of the 1860 Census for 
Richmond, Virginia, NARA. For a detailed discussion of 
chewing tobacco production, see Tilley, Bright-Tobacco 
Industry, especially pp . . 489-97; and [Mrs. M.P. Handy], "In 
a Tobacco Factory," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 47 
(October 1873): 713-19. 
28For a discussion of Lewis Ginter and his 
contributions to Richmond and its economy, see Virginius 
Dabney, Richmond: The Story of a City, rev. ed. 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 246-
7. 
29An 1868 newspaper account of a sexual scandal at 
Greanor & Wynne's tobacco warehouse suggests that a few 
impoverished white women may have been engaged in tobacco 
work before the 1870s as strippers and folders making $4 
per week. Traditionally, tobacco stripping was done by 
black women. Southern Illustrated News, 21 November 1868. 
314 
rendering cigarette work a more acceptable form of work for 
white women in the racially charged atmosphere of 1870s 
Richmond. 
In the cigarette rooms, women sat at grooved tables or 
desks, rolling and cutting cigarettes, or packing them in 
boxes bearing labels with names such as "Little Beauties 11 , 
"Opera Puffs," or "Richmond Gems." By 1883, white 
cigarette rollers comprised 500 of Allen & Ginter's 650 
employees (76.9 percent of the workforce) and earned 
between $4.50 and $9.00 per week, based on a piece rate of 
$.50 per 1,000 cigarettes. The workers' production was 
monitored by a numbering system that required each roller 
to wear a number which corresponded to a number on a 3-
pound can of shredded tobacco located at her side. The 
tobacco was charged to the roller, who was expected to 
produce 1,000 cigarettes from each can. An 1883 visitor to 
the Allen & Ginter plant noted that "practiced hands" were 
able to roll "from fifteen to eighteen thousand cigarettes 
per week," and that skilled packers learned how to grasp, 
"without counting," the proper amount of cigarettes for a 
twenty-smoke pack. 30 
Two Allen & Ginter advertising lithographs (figs. 8.1 
and 8.2) produced during this period shed additional light 
not only on women's role in cigarette production but also 
3011 The Cigarette Manufacture," Frank Leslie's 
Illustrated Newspaper 10 February 1883 (Winter Supplement): 
419. 
315 
on the image of this work that Allen & Ginter hoped to 
convey to the public. 31 Figure 8.1 shows a cigarette 
rolling room where more than twenty white women are seated 
at small desks, facing each other in rows. several women 
appear to be involved in conversation, while a few seem to 
stare idly into space , a suggestion, perhaps, that 
cigarette work moved at a more leisurely pace that most 
other forms of factory labor. At least eighteen women are 
visible in the room which is lighted by two tall windows at 
the end, each bearing a pair of diaphanous lace curtains. 
In figure 8.2, twelve cigarette packers are seated at 
desks, filling packets with ''Virginia Brights" from a pull-
out tray. At their feet, labelled boxes bear the Allen & 
Ginter name. Most of the women whose faces are visible in 
these two lithographs are young; all are white. Each woman 
is modestly and demurely dressed, usually in a shawl-
collared dress with a long apron. Many have their hair 
secured in a bun or gathered at the nape of their necks. 
The women's delicate features and modest attire typify 
nineteenth-century images of female respectability and 
might be interpreted as Allen & Ginter's way of suggesting 
that cigarette manufacturing was an acceptable line of work 
for respectable working-class white women, or more 
impoverished middle-class women forced into labor outside 
31r am indebted to Conley Edwards of the Library of 
Virginia for sharing these lithographs from his personal 
collection with me. 
316 
the home as a result of the war. All the women in the 
lithographs labor in clean, comfortable, homelike 
surroundings, supervised by their peers, a message similar 
to one projected by textile manufacturers in the antebellum 
New England as a means of encouraging rural girls from 
farming communities to enter factory work.32 
Other evidence from the lithographs, however, suggests 
that cigarette manufacturing was not without its drawbacks. 
The women in figure 8.2, for example, are seated in 
backless chairs which would certainly be uncomfortable for 
women required to lean over a table for eight or ten hours 
a day. In addition, the workers in figure 8.1 appear to be 
crowded together into long rows with relatively little 
space to move around, or to escape in case of a fire. 
Although there are windows in both i l lustrations, it is 
hard to imagine that they would be opened to permit 
ventilation, as breezes would tend to blow loose tobacco 
and cigarette papers around. 
32Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of 
Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1820-1860 (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1979). A similar message 
was contained in some of the writings which appear in The 
Lowell Offering, a newspaper produced by the Lowell 
operatives. Benita Eisler, ed., The Lowell Offering: 
Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845) (New York: 
Harper Torchbooks, 1977); Kimball, "The Working People of 
Richmond," 49, and fn. 25; Rachleff, Black Labor in 
Richmond, 1865-1890, 120. By 1885, Allen & Ginter had also 
created a library and was holding ~n annual fancy-dress 
ball for its white female workers. Other amenities 
included dressing rooms and recreation areas. Bongiorno, 
"White Women and Work in Richmond, Virginia," 33, 
~-
b .'.: ·.· 
Figure 8.1. Cigarette Rollers in Richmond, Virginia 
(Source: Conley Edwards, Private Collection) 
317 
J, • ....__ 
-~- -· .. ~ .... 
.. ·'.~ .. · __ ;. . 
... ~· ~:.,_. . . ·. 
- ·~- . r:·· -:' . 
. r. ~ ·J,,44 
~ 
Figure 8.2. Allen & Ginter Cigarette Rollers 
(Source: Conley Edwards, Private Collection) 
318 
319 
In 1880, there were forty-four cigarette manufacturing 
firms in Richmond. 33 The growth of the cigarette industry 
in the 1870s and 1880s also stimulated the development of 
other forms of manufacturing including the productions of 
paper labels and cigarette boxes. By 1880, the Randolph 
Paper Box Company had hired about 500 white women to 
manufacture boxes for cigarettes and cigars.34 
Conclusion 
By 1880, more than a thousand white Richmond women 
labored in industrial manufacturing, including cigarette 
rolling, paper box manufacturing, and textile work, while 
an additional four hundred continued to eke out a living by 
sewing. Government demands for uniforms and ammunition had 
provided working-c lass white women with steady wartime 
employment, some of which was exceedingly well-paid. But 
work in the late 1860s and early 1870s had been curtailed 
as manufacturers scaled back production and lowered their 
33By 1890, the number of white female workers had 
risen to more than 1,300. James K. Sanford, A Century of 
Commerce. 1867-1967 (Richmond: Chamb7r o~ Commerce, 1967), 
22. Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond: 1865-1890 
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 211. 
34Bongiorno, "White Women and Wor~ i~ Richmond," 31. 
Additional white women, mostly German immigrants, also 
worked at home during this time for the Millhiser Bag 
Company, stringing bags for ch7wing . tobacco and cigars. 
Joseph G. Robert, Gottwald Family History: The First 
Century of the Gottwalds and the Freyfogles in Richmond, 
Virginia. 1822-1 922 (Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1984), 
58. 
320 
rates. Eventually, however, the growing popularity of 
cigarettes--one of the war's unanticipated consequences--
provided working-class women with a new source of income 
that provided laboring women in Richmond with a steady 
source of employment until sometime in the mid-to-late 
1890s. 35 
35Eventually, of course, hand-rolled cigarettes were 
replaced by machine-rolled ones. In 1890, Allen & Ginter 
installed the first Bonsack cigarette machine in their 
Richmond factory. Bongiorno, "White Women and Work in 
Richmond, Virginia," 35. 
CHAPTER 9 
CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: RICHMOND WOMEN AND 
THE CIVIL WAR CHURCHES 1 
Many Southern men who shouldered arms in 1861 believed 
that they were involved in a "holy war" in which God was on 
their side, a view that was shared by many Southern women. 
"God is our Creator, our Ruler, the Inspirer of our 
statesmen, the Leader of our Generals, the Courage of 
soldiers, the comforter of our bereaved ones, and our 
everlasting Hope," declared Sarah Benetta Valentine to her 
brother, Edward, in January 1863, shortly after Confederate 
losses at Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation 
completely dashed Southern hopes of diplomatic recognition 
by England and France. "We care not for the nations of 
Europe--when God's appointed hour has come, He will give us 
that name which we now, through His might, give 
ourselves. 112 "The windows rattled in the casements and 
1Although this chapter focuses primarily on women in 
Richmond's Protestant churches, it also includes 
information on Jewish women. Richmond Jews typically 
referred to their synagogues as "churches" during this 
time. 
2sarah Benetta Valentine, Richmond, to Edward 
Virginius Valentine, Paris, France, 27 January 1863, Sarah · 
Benetta Valentine Papers, Ms. C57, VM. 
321 
322 
the house seemed to shake from its foundations," Lucy 
Fletcher wrote during the fighting near Richmond in 
September 186 4, "but God has not permitted our enemies to 
triumph, nor will He give our beautiful city into their 
hands--of this I feel assured."3 
From the early 1830s, southern clergymen had been 
among those who responded to abolitionist attacks by 
mounting elaborate theological justifications of 
slaveholding which they continued to repeat through the 
1840s and 1850s and into the war itself. 4 When the 
cannons roared over Fort Sumter in April 1861, many of 
these ministers became "warrior priests" who blended piety 
to God with patriotism for the confederacy and waged war 
from the pulpit in fiery sermons that celebrated 
confederate victories, mourned their defeats, and promised 
death and destruction to the Northern foe. 5 One Richmond 
3Entry dated 2 September 1864, Keystone Diary, Lucy 
Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
4 In January 1861, for example, the Baptist newspaper 
the Religious Herald published four lengthy essays in 
defense of slavery written by Thornton Stringfellow, a 
Culpeper, Virginia, preacher who rationalized Southern 
slaveholding through the examples of such "princely 
slaveholders" as Joseph, Jacob, and Isaac. Reli~ious . 
Herald, 3, 10, 24, and 31 January 1861. For a discussion 
of Stringfellow, see Drew Gilpin Faust, "Evangelicalism and 
the Proslavery Argument: The Reverend Thornton Stringfellow 
of Virginia," in Drew Gilpin Faust, Southern Stories: 
Slaveholders in Peace and War (Columbia: University of 
Missouri Press, 1992), 15-28. 
5 Elaine Forman crane has discussed the importance of 
the pulpit in helping to shape parishoners' loyalties 
during the American Revolution. Although the majority of 
323 
pastor mustered young men into the confederate army 
following a Communion service conducted at an altar draped 
in a Confederate flag. 6 A few Southern clergymen like 
General Leonidas K. Polk and Basil Manly joined the 
Confederate army themselves and were held up as exemplars 
of "Christian soldiers" worthy of emulation. 7 still more 
the ~outhe~n.clergy sol~dly supported the South during the 
American Civil War, their voice was crucial in maintaining 
Southern lora~ty, especially after 1863. Elaine Forman 
crane, "Religion and Rebellion: Women of Faith in the 
America1; War for Independence," in Religion in a 
Revolutionary Age, Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds. 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the 
United state~ Capi~o~ Historical society, 1994), 52-86. 
For the American Civil War, see w. Harrison Daniel, "A 
Brief Account of the Methodist Episcopal church, South in 
the Confederacy," Methodist History 6.2 (January 1968): 26-
40. 
6Entry dated 30 [September 1865], Diary dated 
September 1865 to February 1867, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher 
Papers, DU. 
7A bishop in the Episcopal Church, Polk commanded the 
right wing of the Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg 
from 1862 till his death on June 14, 1864, in the campaign 
to defend Atlanta. A notorious troublemaker, Polk 
frequently disobeyed orders and quarreled continuously with 
his commanding officers, claiming that he only took orders 
from "Jefferson Davis and God." James M. McPherson, Ordeal 
by Fire: The civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Alfred 
A. Knopf, 1982), 290; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A 
Narrative, vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: 
Random House, 1958), 774, and vol. 3: Red River to 
Appomattox (New York: Random House, 1974) 345-57; E. Susan 
Barber, "Braxton Bragg and the Politics of Command" (Paper 
presented at the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference, U.S. 
Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, April, 1983), 3-10; and 
A. James Fuller, "Chaplain of the Confederacy: A Biography 
of Basil Manly, 1798-1868" (Ph.D. diss., Miami University, 
1995). Basil Manly was the father. of Abby Manly Gwa~hmey; 
his son, Basil Manly, Jr., was a co-founder of ~he Richmond 
Female Institute, where Abby Manly met and married her 
husband, Henry Gwathmey. 
324 
volunteered their time conducting prayer vigils and 
religious revivals in the camps to help soldiers resist the 
temptations of gambling, heavy drinking, profanity, and 
pornography that many feared were rampant in the camps and 
threatened to sap the Confederate army of its fighting 
strength. 8 Between 1862 and 1864, the Virginia Conference 
8 For a discussion of camp revivals, see Drew Gilpin 
Faust, "Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in 
the confederate Army," in Drew Gilpin Faust, Southern 
Stories, 89-109. Faust relies heavily on the Baptist 
Religious Herald to make her case for a revival of religion 
in the camps and a concomitant declension in church 
attendance and support on the home front; but evidence for 
her description can also be found in other religious 
presses, such as the Episcopal southern Churchman. For 
reports of religious revivalism, see southern Churchman 8, 
29 August, 31 October, 7 November, 26 December 1862; 1, 8, · 
29 May, 5, 12, 19 June, 4, 25 September, 2, 16 October, 11 
December 1863; 8 January, 19 February, 1, 15 April, 6 May, 
12 August, 21 October, 23 November 1864. According to W. 
Harrison Daniel, 141 ordained Methodist clergy and more 
than thirty-five male missionaries served as chaplains and 
soldiers in the Confederate armies. civilian ministers 
also devoted either all or part of their time to conducting 
revivals and visiting the sick, for which they were paid 
$250 per month. Daniel, "Brief Account of the Methodist 
Episcopa~ Church, South,'' 27-36. A general discussion of 
Baptist missionaries and revivals in the army can also be 
found in Fannie E.S. Heck's, In Royal Service: The Mission 
Work of Southern Baptist Women (Richmond: L.H. Jenkins for 
the Education Department, Foreign Mission Board, southern 
Baptist Convention, 1913), 90. For a discussion of 
religion and the war in the North, see Phillip Shaw 
Paludan, "A People's Contest": The Union and the Civil War, 
1861-1865 (1988; repr. New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 
especially Chapter Fourteen. For expressions of concern 
about profanity and drunkenness, see, for example, 
Religious Herald, 23 May, 15 August, 3 October 1861; 13, 20 
February, 24 April, 3 July 1862; southern Churchman, 13 
December 1861; 10, 31 January, 7 February, 7 March, 18 
April, 6, 20 June, 19 September 1862; 23 October, 25 
December 1863, 15 March 1865. The churches also worried 
about the effects of gambling. Religious Herald, 12 June; 
Southern Churchman, 21 October 1862; 29 April 1864. 
Discussions of colportage activity and reports by 
325 
of the Soldier's Tract Association for the Methodist 
Church, South collected over $175,000 to print and 
distribute more than 17 million pages of tracts, 70,000 
hymnals, and 20,000 Bibles to soldiers in the Army of 
Northern Virginia. In addition, it published two free 
semi-monthly newspapers, the Soldier's Paper and the Army 
and Navy Herald. 9 
By defining Confederate troops as "Christian soldiers" 
white Southerners also erased the wartime contributions of 
thousands of Jewish men who served in the Confederate army 
or held government posts. Southern Jews often contributed 
to their own erasure by adopting an assimilationist profile 
as a way to avoid Southern wartime anti-Semitism that 
blamed Jewish merchants for the rise in market prices. 10 
colporteurs abound in the pages of the Religious Herald. 
For some examples, see Religious Herald, 4, 12 June, 11 
July 1861; 13 February, 10 April 1862; 21 April, 5 May 
1864 •. 
9Daniel, "Brief Account of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South," 37. 
10catherine Anne Wilkinson, "To Live and Die in Dixie: 
German Reform Jews in the Southern United States" (B.A. 
thesis, Princeton University, 1990); James L. Apple, 
"Jewish-Christian Relations from 1861 to 1881" (Term paper, 
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 
Cincinnati, Ohio, 1965), in the AJA; Martin Sklar, "'And 
the Walls Carne Tumbling Down': Jews in the Old South, 
1840-1861" (B.A. thesis, Princeton, 1981). In 1905, the 
Richmond Times-Dispatch claimed that between 10,000 and 
12,000 Southern Jewish men had fought for the Confederacy, 
including twenty-four staff officers, eleven naval 
officers, and David DeLeon, the first Confederate Surgeon 
General. Of course, this group also includes Confederate 
Secretary of War Judah P. · Benjamin. Richmond Times-
Dispatch, 4 August 1905. some examples of wartime anti-
326 
If Southern men were asked to become "Christian 
soldiers," then Southern women were called upon to become a 
Christian "home guard" to fight the war at home through 
volunteer work for the Confederate armies and by 
maintaining churches in the men's absence. An article in 
the Religious Herald in March 1862 characterized the 
Southern woman as the soldier's "intercessor," "nurse," 
"exemplar," and "benefactress," whose prayers and repeated 
acts of service and kindness "alleviate[d] his privations" 
and "serve[d] to hold him steadfast in the way of 
honor. 1111 A letter from "True Witness," published at 
about the same time in the Southern Churchman, called upon 
Southern women to keep their "Christian armour" burnished 
and the "family altar alive. 1112 
Everywhere women were urged to combine their religious 
devotion with patriotic zeal and to join men in the battle 
not only for freedom, but also for the preservation of the 
Christian social fabric of the white South by conducting 
women's prayer vigils for troops marching into battle; 
contributing money to colporteurs; sending religious tracts 
Semitism can be found in Southern Punch, 17 October, 7 
November 1863, and southern Churchman, 6 February 1863. 
ll"What woman Has Done and Should Do," Religious 
Herald, 6 March 1862. 
12southern churchman, 7 March 18 62. 
327 
to soldiers, and insisting on sobriety in the camps. 13 An 
1862 article in the Southern Churchman urged Southern women 
to "use their influence to prevent the distillation of 
fruit" into liquor by recommending that it be dried, 
instead, for consumption by the army. 14 Religious 
newspapers frequently carried emotional accounts, usually 
by Army chaplains, of wayward soldiers brought to the altar 
of the Lord through the prayerful intercession of their 
mothers, wives, sisters, or sweethearts. Typical of these 
was the conversion account of "Charlie," a Confederate 
soldier rescued from the paths of wickedness by the prayer 
his mother included with a box of camp-bound clothes and 
delicacies . 15 
Bringing their menfolk to a closer relationship with 
God was hardly a new role for women in the wartime South. 
Throughout the antebellum period, gendered notions about 
both Southern and Northern women defined a similar role 
based on beliefs about women's greater piety and 
' 't l't 16 sp1r1 ua 1 y. But with the coming of war, these 
13Religious Herald, 6, 20 March 1862; 2 April, 10 
September 1863; Southern Churchman, 24 January, 22 August 
1862; 12 June, 20 November 1863. 
14southern Churchman, 22 August 1862. 
15southern Churchman, 8 January 1864. 
16Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of 
American Feminism, The Woman and the City, 1800-1860 (New 
York: oxford University Press, 1978), 77-79; Barbara Leslie 
Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, 
and Temperance in Nineteenth-century America (Middletown, 
328 
antebellum beliefs were overlaid with a patina of 
patriotism--for either the Confederacy or th e Union--and 
given a greater urgency. As the war drew more and more men 
into military duty, women were pressed tor d en er additional 
Christian service. In Richmond and other southern locales 
part of this additional service involved keeping Sunday 
Schools in session in the men's absence by becoming Sunday 
School instructors, a duty that, in the southern churches 
in the antebellum period, was performed by men.17 
, 
Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981); Barbara Welter 
"The Cult of True womanhood, 1830-1860," American ouart~rly 
18 (1966): 151-74. 
17Anne Boylan's study of Sunday Schools in the 
nineteenth-century United states concludes that the 
majority of Sunday School teachers were women and most 
Sunday School superintendents were men. Boylan's study is 
based primarily on evidence from Sunday School unions in 
New York and Philadelphia and, with the exception of a 
brief discussion of Sunday Schools for slaves, devotes 
little attention to the ways in which the South may have 
differed from this Northern model. In addition, although 
Boylan documents the expansion of the Sunday School 
movement throughout the United states in the 1870s and 
1880s, she does not cite the Civil war as contributing to 
this expansion. Anne M. Boylan, Sunday Schools: The 
Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven 
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988). Jean Friedman does ' 
not specifically address the Sunday School movement in her 
analysis of southern evangelical Protestantism, but she 
makes a strong claim that women in the southern evangelical 
churches endured a more patriarchal church structure which 
not only forbade them to speak or pray in public, and 
denied them a voice in church affairs by excluding them 
from voting at, and sometimes even from attending, 
congregational meetings, but also exposed them to a "sexual 
double standard in church discipline," which held women 
accountable to a higher level of behavior than that 
required of men and punished women more severely for their 
transgressions.' According to Friedman, southern men were 
frequently charged with lesser offe~ses such as drinking, 
dancing, and disorderly conduct, while women were more 
329 
Richmond women who believed that God had sided with 
the South responded to Confederate defeat in a variety of 
ways. Presbyterian minister's wife Lucy Fletcher displayed 
a mixture of emotions that ranged from fury to measured 
contrition. "May God keep me now & ever from a spirit of 
rebellion against Hirn," she confided to her diary in July 
1865, following a passage expressing her outrage over the 
"lazy & discontented freedmen & women, Yankee soldiers, & 
adventurers, male & female," she described as "swarming" 
the city streets. 18 In a contentious letter written to 
her unsympathetic Northern sister a month later, she 
displayed a sense of humility that was nevertheless 
leavened by assertions about the "rightness" of the 
Confederate cause. "I wrote my sister. , .a letter," she 
later observed 
kindly but firmly telling that while we felt 
humbled on account of our sins as a nation 
towards God, we were more than ever convinced of 
the . justice of our cause and had n~ repentance, 
politically, for the course of action we had 
pursued. 19 
likely to be charged with sexual t~ansgressions, such as 
abortion, adultery, fornication, and bastardy, behaviors 
which involved both men and women but for which women were 
held solely responsible. Je~n B, Friedman! The Enclosed 
Garden: Women and community in the Evangelic~l South, 1830-
1900 (Chapel Hill: university of North Carolina Press, 
1985), 3-14, and 113, 
lSEntry for July 1865, Keystone Diary, Lucy Muse 
Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
19Entry for August 1865, Keystone Diary, Lucy Muse 
Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
,, 
fl 
I' ,, 
,, 
t 
,, 
330 
For Fletcher, the South's "sins towards God" were less the 
result of slaveholding than of excesses of immorality--
drinking, swearing, and gambling, and the south's movement 
away from devotion to the churches which she believed had 
emerged during the war. 
Emma Mordecai reacted to news of Lee's surrender with 
a vague sense that God was somehow chastising or testing 
the south, coupled with a resignation to God's judgment. 
"I felt utterly miserable," she wrote. 
That the earth might open & swallow us all up was 
the only wish I could form. Gradually we felt 
that all was in the hands of God and that He had 
I • t f 
willed this in His unerring wisdom, and that we 
must submit ourselves to him--that in thus doing, 
we were not humbled before our foes but before 
God. 20 
From a refugee camp on Belle Isle, Mississippian Ann 
Webster Christian was unwavering in her conviction of God's 
benevolent protection. "Great & manifold have been our 
trials & afflictions," she wrote in December · 1865, "but 
they have been exceeded by our mercies & we may still say 
'Bless the Lord, O my soul & forget not all his 
fi·ts ,1121 bene · 
20Entry for "Friday morning (17 April 1865], Emma 
Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
21Entry dated 31 December 1865, Ann Webs~er ,Gordon 
Christian Diary, Mss. 5:1 C4626:1, v~s .. c~ri~ti~n had 
refugeed to Richmond from Coventry, Mississippi, in 1862. 
Her Richmond home was destroyed by fire on April 3, 1865. 
She continued to live at the Belle Isle encampment at least 
until March 1866. 
331 
If the war's close caused some women to question their 
religious/political convictions, it did not lead to a 
contraction but rather to an expansion of Richmond women's 
church-related duties, as female parishoners focused their 
efforts on three crucial postbellum enterprises: the 
repair and reconstruction of church buildings damaged by 
four years of warfare; the creation of homes for aged 
female congregants, some of whom were the widows of 
confederate soldiers; and the extension of women's foreign 
and domestic missionary work, which eventually involved the 
creation of autonomous women's missionary associations in 
most southern denominations. Although Sunday School 
teaching and rebuilding churches were usually endorsed by 
male clergy and laity, the creation of separate foreign 
missionary associations raised concerns that missionary 
women had somehow slipped the reins of male authority. 
This ultimately led to a re-examination of the appropriate 
role for women in the church that continued throughout the 
l870s and 1880s. 
Sunday School Teaching 
In most of Richmond's thirty-two churches, with the 
exception of infant classes or an occasional class 
specifically directed at women, Sunday School teaching 
332 
during the antebellum period was dominated by men. 22 
Appeals for Sunday School teachers and descriptions of 
their duties which appeared in the Baptist newspaper, 
Religious Herald, during this period of time, were 
consistently addressed to the church "brethren" and seldom 
referred to any sort of Sunday School work by women. 23 
Concerns about a wartime decline in male teachers in 
Baptist congregations in Washington, o.c., surfaced as 
early as July 1861; but many Richmond congregations appear 
to have weathered the initial loss of male teachers caused 
by voluntary enlistment. The passage of the Confederate 
conscription Act of April 1862, however, and its gradual 
extension to include all white men between the ages of 
eighteen and forty-five drained the city's churches of male 
workers and forced a curtailment of many church-related 
, 't, 24 act1v1 1es. Worries about shortages of Richmond 
22Richmond Enquirer, 2 January 1860. Among Richmond's 
houses of worship there were seven Methodist churches, five 
Baptist churches, five Episcopal churches, five 
Presbyterian churches, two Lutheran churches, three 
catholic churches, and one Disciples of Christ. There were 
also three Jewish synagogues. 
23southern Churchman, 26 September 1862. 
24The Confederate States of America passed the first 
military conscription act in the history of the United 
states in April 1862, one year before the Union passed a 
similar measure. This act first made all able-bodied white 
men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five liable for 
three years of military service, although it exempted 
government workers, teachers, the clergy, and others in 
war-related industries. In October 1862, the Confederate 
legislature passed what later became known as the "twenty 
nigger law," because it provided exemptions for one white 
333 
teachers began to appear in June 1863 and became acute by 
early March 1864 , when a report on Sunday school activity 
r evealed that only six Sabbath h i.'n Sc cols were in session 
all the Baptist churches in the Richmond/Henrico area, 
because of a sharp decline in the number of men available 
for Christian service. 2 5 
concern about this decline in Sunday School activity 
was exacerbated both by the closure of many of Richmond's 
private schools due to the military enlistments of male 
instructors, and the influx of thousands of confederate 
government workers and civilian refugees, newcomers who, 
according to a letter in the Religious Herald by Basil 
Manly, Jr., were "chiefly of the worldly, self-seeking, 
money-loving sort," hardly destined to fill the city's 
churches on Sunday mornings. 26 By the spring of 1863, the 
man on a plantation having twenty or more slaves. Later 
legislation (February 1864) extended the age of eligibility 
to between seventeen and fifty and closed loopholes which 
permitted w7althy men to hire substitutes. McPherson, 
ordeal by Fi.re, 180-82. 
25Religious Herald, 4 July 1861; 2, 16 April, 25 June, 
2 July, 5 October, 19 November 1863; 2 March 1864. 
Religious Herald, 23 July 1863. At the time of the March 
1864 report, there were thirty-one Baptist churches in the 
Richmond/Henrico district. A Richmond exception to this 
mid-war crisis over Sunday school teachers was Centenary 
Methodist which, reported a decline in scholars rather than 
a shortage of teachers. Report to the Fourth Quarterly 
conference by Centenary Methodist Church, Richmond, 1 
October 1861, Steward's Book, Centenary Methodist Church, 
Richmond, LV. For a general discussion of wartime decline 
in the Methodist Church, see Daniel, "Brief Account of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South," 39-40. 
26Religious Herald, 9 July 1863. 
334 
Southern Churchman complained of "a new phase of b 
oy-life," 
in which scores of Richmond boys could b " · e seen fishing, or 
Playing, or engaging in something they ought not to be 11 
, 
which, for the Churchman, included "sell;ng n 
_ ... ewspapers, 
idling round corners," and helping "to make all as wicked 
as they are. 1127 Although these activities sound rather 
tame, articles appearing in the secular presses during the 
same period of time related accounts of roving gangs of 
older boys who battled each other with rocks along the 
city's streets, sometimes injuring innocent passersby, and 
of grown men and boys who skinny dipped in the James River 
, 
to the dismay of the city's more respectable citizens.28 
For many Richmonders, these manifestations of unruliness 
combined with an increase in the cases of petty larceny, 
public drunkenness, and assault and battery that filled the 
Richmond courts revealed a community increasingly out of 
contro1. 29 
Baptist leaders responded to these real and perceived 
threats to social order by initiating a "missionary 
27southern churchman, 15 May 1863. 
28Richmond Examiner, 4 April 1863; Mi~hael B. Chesson, 
"Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread 
Riot,'' Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92.2 
(April 1984 ): 13 s. Chesson cites accounts largely from the 
Sentinel. 
29By December 1863, the Southern Churchman was 
reporting that the "criminal business of our courts is at 
least seventy-five per cent larger than before the war." 
Southern Churchman, 11 December 1863· 
335 
campaign" to minister to the newcomers' needs "by enlisting 
them and their children in the Sunday schools.1130 To 
compensate for the labor demands additional Sunday Schools 
would entail, they directed their appeals for Sunday School 
teachers at Baptist women. "Of all the varied and 
multiplied calamities which this relentless war has 
entailed upon [us)," began the author of an article in the 
Religious Herald in October 1863, 
as Sunday School teachers we have had our share 
to bear. Two ~ong weary years ago we saw many of 
our best superintendents, preachers, and 
scholars, buckle on their armour and leave vacant 
eherished positions of usefulness, ... [O)ne of 
the great obstacles to be met by many of our 
[Sunday) schools is a lack of fresh teachers 
.... Now, cannot the older brethren in our 
churches, who have never taught, be induced to 
come in now, just for the time, and supply the 
places of young men in the army? ... The ladies, 
too, even for boys, make the best teachers in the 
world. They are ever ready to any good word and 
work. Many a male class, now without a teacher, 
might be supplied by our Christian sisters and 
mothers. 31 
Another article by an author known only as "C" 
encouraged Baptist women to become Sunday school recruiters 
as well and to "prepare essays [on the importance of Sunday 
school work] which will be read Sabbath after Sabbath." 
"[S]peak of the school [to parents and children)," the 
writer urged, "and give them no rest, until every one, both 
30Religious Herald, 9 July 1863, 
31Religious Herald, 15 October 1863, A similarly 
worded appeal had appeared in the Religious Herald on April 
2, 1863. 
336 
young and old, are members of the school, either as 
teachers or scholars. 1132 Although "C" praised Baptist 
women for the important role they were about to undertake, 
the writer also chided them for neglecting their churchly 
duties in favor of war work by recounting the story of a 
"noble-spirited lady" who rode on horseback from door-to-
door throughout her mountain community, collecting blankets 
for needy soldiers. "Now suppose," its author mused, 
the same energy and zeal were put forth this 
spring, that our Sunday schools might be large 
and flourishing, what happy results would 
follow!. · .[W]hile you have proven yourselves so 
useful and efficient in our present struggle for 
independence, so that your praise is on every 
tongue, be [not] less industrious,~ efficient 
in behalf of that cause [the Sunday schools], 
which should be dear to every Christian heart! 33 
some Baptist women probably responded to the Herald's 
1863 campaign; but as subsequent conscription legislation 
passed in late 1863 and early 1864 further narrowed the 
pool of available male teachers, Baptist minister William 
E. Hatcher stepped up the demand for female substitutes in 
a series of four articles aimed at recruiting Sunday School 
3 2Religious Herald, 2 April 1863. 
33Religious Herald, 2 April 1863. Worry about 
southern women diverting themselves from churchwork can 
also be found in the Religious Herald, 25 June 1863. This 
fear also surfaced in discussions about using churches for 
hospitals (Chapter Three). Southern Churchman, 8 May, 22 
August 1862. 
337 
teachers for the 1864 season.34 In his opening message 
titled "Organize Your Schools,•• Hatcher urged his co-
religionists in Richmond and throughout the state to begin 
planning for a "Sunday school in every neighborhood" by 
mounting a three-pronged campaign aimed at canvassing the 
community churches for Bibles and religious primers; 
providing clothing for needy children unable to attend 
school without it; and recruiting female teachers for 
classes of children of both sexes.35 
No wartime or immediate postwar minutes for Richmond's 
Baptist Sunday schools have survived, so it is impossible 
to know exactly how many Baptist women may have become 
involved in Sunday School education as a result of 
Hatcher's appeal. 36 But a statistical report appearing in 
the Religious Herald in May 1866 attests to the Sunday 
schools' postwar vigor and suggests that instead of 
prompting a contraction in women's Sunday School duties, 
34Much of the evidence from the Herald suggests that 
Sunday School teaching and attendance may have been 
seasonal, attracting greater participation and support from 
ministers, parents, teachers, and students during the 
spring and summer months, and then either reducing or 
suspending activity during the more inclement months of the 
fall and winter, especially in rural congregations. For 
example, see the Religious Herald, 2 April 1863. The dates 
for Hatcher's articles in the Religious Herald are 24 
March, 21 April (two articles], and 5 May 1864. 
35Religious Herald, 24 March 1864, 
36Telephone conversation with Fred Anderson, Director 
of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, 
Virginia, 29 September 1995. 
338 
the war's close in 1865 may have led to a redoubling of 
efforts on the part of Richmond Baptists to engage women in 
ministering to the needs of the city's unchurched 
1 ti·on By May 1866 the c · . popu a · ' ommunity's seven white 
Baptist churches could boast of an enrollment of 1,962 
pupils and 250 teachers. 37 (Table 9 . 1 ) 
Table 9.l ~hite Baptist Sunday School Attendance 
Richmond, Virginia, April 1867 ' 
Church 
First Baptist 
second Baptist 
Grace street 
Belvidere 
Leigh Street 
Manchester 
Sidney Chapel 
Teachers 
63 
35 
31 
16 
58 
36 
11 
Total 250 
source: "Report of Baptist Sunday 
March 1866," Religious Herald, 17 
of these teachers is unknown. 
Pupils 
517 
289 
256 
105 
458 
282 
44 
1 962 
School Meeting, 16 
May 1866. The sex 
The Baptists were not the only denomination in which 
women assumed expanded Sunday School duties during this 
3711Richmond Sunday School Statistics," Religious 
Herald, 17 May 1866. By February 1867, figures for 
teachers and pupils at the five Baptist churches in the 
city proper had declined by 4 percent and 15 percent, 
respectively, probably a reflection of the departure of 
some of the refugees. Religious Herald, 14 February 1867, 
The five city churches were First Baptist, Second Baptist, 
Leigh street Baptist, Grace Baptist, and Belvidere Baptist. 
The churches not reporting in February 1867 were Manchester 
Baptist Church and Sidney Chapel. Moderate decline in 
rural communities during winter months was typical when 
inclement weather prevented church. attendance. rt is 
difficult to say whether this amount of decline was typical 
for Richmond, however. "Shall It Be Done?" Religious 
Herald, 12 February 1867. 
339 
period of time. Presbyterian minister's wife, Lucy 
Fletcher, embarked on a Sunday School career in 1864, 
teaching an unruly class of young boys who worked at the 
government shops a nd frequently tried her patience with 
what Fletcher described as their "precious wickedness."38 
Fletcher continued her Sunday School work in the postwar 
period, starting a Sunday School program for children in 
staunton, Virginia, when her family relocated to a parish 
· 39 l' 
there in 1869 · A ist of Sunday School teachers for st. 
paul's Episcopal Church in December 1862 shows that female 
teachers outnumbered male teachers there by more than three 
40 to one. 
other denominations reported flourishing Sunday School 
movements in the mid-to-late 1860s, which may or may not 
have been due to the increased labor of female parishoners . 
. 
38Entry dated 2 October 1864, Sabbath Notebook Diary, 
Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
39Entries dated n.d. March, 4 April, and n.d. July 
l869, Diary 1869-1870, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, 
DU. Fletcher was ill and troubled about her marriage 
during much of this period and, thus, paid less attention 
to precise dates in her diary. 
40vestry Book No. 2, pp. 467-8. st. Paul's Church 
Records, VHS. The list shows the names of twenty-eight 
female teachers (mostly single women) and eight male 
teachers. Five additional male teachers were listed as 
being in the Confederate army, with one, Colonel Richard H. 
Cunningham, having been killed in battle. st. Paul's 
vestry Minutes were burned in the Richmond fire, and were 
"reconstructed" in the postwar period by Rector Thomas s. 
Ellis. Although lists of Sunday School teachers may be 
contained in the postwar records, I have unfortunately been 
unable to locate any thus far. 
340 
BY MaY 1866 , the city's white Methodist churches reported 
an average weekly attendance of 1,266 pupils.41 And 
between 1867 and 1868, the city's seven white Episcopal 
churches showed an increase in both teachers and scholars 
of more than thirteen percent. 42 But since none of these 
statistics ever break down the number of Sunday School 
teachers by gender, it is difficult to say for sure how 
roanY women may have participated in the Sunday School 
renaissance. What is more easily apprehended is the fact 
that, in the absence of regular schooling, religious school 
education such as this frequently provided the only formal 
education many poor white children received until the start 
of the Richmond public school system in 1869. 
Domestic Reconstruction 
While some women concentrated their energies on 
tending to the spiritual education of the Richmond's 
children, many others focused their postbellum attention on 
physically rebuilding churches ravaged by the war, a 
process Jean Friedman has referred to as "domestic 
41Religious Herald, 17 May 1866. 
42southern Churchman, 14 November 1867, 20 February 
1868. In November 1867, there were 167 teache rs and 980 
pupils. By February 1868, these figures had increa sed to 
189 and 1,113, respectively. 
341 
reconstruction." 43 For decades before the war began white 
Richmond women, like their sisters throughout the Northern 
and southern United States, had engaged in a variety of 
fundraising activities to maintain and beautify their 
churches through intensely female activities like sewing 
circles, church fairs, or mite societies. 44 Between 1848 
and 1860, the Sewing Society of Monumental Church raised 
more than $3,000 to pay for new gas lighting, paint, and 
building repairs. In 1857, a portion of the money was also 
contributed to the church's operating expenses. 45 At St. 
James's Episcopal, the Sewing Circle raised $850 in 1839 
for a church organ, while the Juvenile Sewing Society for 
43Jean Friedman uses this term to describe the 
rebuilding of Southern churches after the war largely 
through women's fundraising activities. Friedman, Enclosed 
Garden, xiii. 
44Mite societies were women's charitable organizations 
in which women were each given "mite boxes" to keep at home 
and contribute small sums of money to whenever possible, 
preferably daily. For a general discussion of women's 
church-related organizations, see Nancy F. Cott, Bonds of 
Womanhood: ''Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1789-1835 (New 
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), especially 
Chapter Four; Epstein, Politics of Domesticity; Lori D. 
Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, 
Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United states 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Anne Firer Scott, 
Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History 
(Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and Friedman, 
Enclosed Garden. 
45George D. Fisher, History and Reminiscences of the 
Monumental Church, Richmond, Virginia, from 1814 to 1878 
(Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1880), 248-66. 
• 
' 
342 
young girls gave the new congregation Bibles, and communion 
cups and patens. 46 
In the immediate postbellum period, Richmond women put 
their fundraising skill to work to repair church edifices 
damaged by the war. 47 Between January and May 1866, women 
from at least eight of the city's white churches--Centenary 
Methodist, Leigh Street Baptist, Grace Baptist, united 
Presbyterian, Broad Street Methodist, st. James's 
Episcopal, Monumental Episcopal, and First Baptist--held a 
series of bazaars aimed at either repairing or rebuilding 
48 , 
churches. Typical of these was the Grace Baptist bazaar 
begun on April 2, 1866, and held on successive evenings for 
about a week. Part of the fund raiser involved a "feast" 
during which women sold various foods and desserts from 
\ ' / 
elaborately decorated tables placed in the 'sfiops of 
sympathetic merchants. Mary Williams Taylor--a twenty-six-
46Murray M. McGuire, "A Centennial Address Delivered 
at st. James's Church, Richmond, Virginia, November 3, 
1857," in Murray M. McGuire and John B. Mordecai, St. 
James's Church, 1835-1957 (Richmond: n.p., 1958), 7-8. A 
paten is a metal plate upon which the eucharist is placed 
for Communion. 
47Jean Friedman argues that this postbellum work 
allowed Southern women to create--for the first time--
autonomous permanent organizations. She argues th~t t~e 
activities of these organization fed into memberships in 
both the W.C.T.U. and autonomous foreign and domestic 
southern missionary societies for women. Friedman, 
Enclosed Garden, 111. The Richmond evidence supports her 
conclusions. 
48Richmond Dispatch, 27, 31 January, 27 February, 24, 
31 March, 25 April, and 2 May 1866; Religious Herald, 5 
April 1866, 
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year-old graduate of the Richmond Female Institute and a 
member of Grace's Young Ladies' Sewing Circle--sold fancy 
cakes and ice cream with four or five of her friends at a 
lavishly decorated table in Blair's Store on the corner of 
Eighth Street and Main, 49 In addition to plying their 
patrons with both dainties and "solid viands," the lady 
managers at the Leigh Street fair, which lasted for an 
entire month, provided them with the opportunity of 
listening, for the price of admission, to "Bacon and 
Greens," a popular address delivered by southern humorist 
and newspaper editor George w. Bagby, 50 
Although Richmond women raised a considerable amount 
of money that was used to repair damaged roofs, repaint 
buildings darkened by soot, shore up weakened foundations, 
or refit Sunday School rooms, some clergyman objected to 
church fairs as questionable forms of fundraising. A 
Religious Herald writer complained in January 1867 that 
women involved in some church fairs permitted the sale of 
intoxicating beverages, or used lotteries or games of 
chance to auction off valuable articles. 51 Others 
observed that fairs fostered greed through their 
49Mary Taylor, Richmond, to Charles ~lisha Taylor, 
Charlottesville, 5 April 1866, Charles Elisha Taylor 
Papers, UVA. Charles Taylor was a student at the 
University of Virginia. 
soRichmond Dispatch, 31 March 1866. 
S1Religious Herald, 17 January 1867. 
344 
extravagant prices, and negated opportunities to practice 
true Christian charity. 52 A Presbyterian minister 
objected to the flirtatious behavior that often accompanied 
such events, complaining that "the merchants often 
attract(ed] more attention than the merchandise."53 
oespite these critiques, however, this fundraising 
technique was tolerated because it served as the linchpin 
of women's charitable work in the churches throughout the 
late nineteenth century. 
Whereas antebellum women's fundraising was more 
episodic in nature, with the women having little say in how 
the money was s pent, postbellurn fundraising often became an 
integral part of a church's operating budget. As a result, 
some women began to insist on a broader and more permanent 
role in church affairs. The history of women's fundraising 
at centenary Methodist Church helps to illustrate this 
point. 
Centenary Methodist Church began its existence in 1810 
in a small Methodist meeting house in the heart of the 
city. In 1839, the congregation moved to a new s anctuary a 
few blocks away where, by 1841, the Ladies' Sewing Society 
had raised nearly $1,200 to help liquidate the mortgage. 
52Religious Herald, 17 January 1867; Southern 
Presbyterian and Presbyterian Index, 1 June 1871. 
53 southern Presbyterian and Presbyterian Index, 1 June 
1871. 
345 
During the war, Centenary women briefly operated a hospital 
in the Sunday school room after the battle of Second 
Manassas, a nd collected clothing for needy children through 
the Dorcas Society, an activity they continued throughout 
the 1870 5 a nd early l880s. 54 Shortly after the war, the 
church undertook a massive remodeling campaign which left 
it more than $8,000 in debt. 55 In February 1866, 
centenary women held a week-long fair to help reduce some 
56 • 
of the expense. During the next few years, Centenary 
women continued to make regular contributions to defray 
church costs, which minister R.N. Sledd dutifully included 
in his reports to the Quarterly Conference. 57 
By the early 1870s, two new women's fundraising groups 
were formed. On July 23, 1872, thirteen women formed the 
y 0 ung Ladies' Circle of Industry. An organization of 
54Richmond Enquirer and Examiner, 9 January 1868; 
Floyd s. Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill: A 
History of the Centenary Methodist Church. Richmond. 
Virginia, 1819-1960 (Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1962), 
183. In 1877, the Dorcas Society also opened a school for 
362 children. I have developed this history of the church 
largely from two church histories, Edith Denny White's The 
Elect Ladies of Centenary: The Story of the organization 
and Development of the Women's Work of Centenary Meth~dist 
church, Richmond, Virginia, through One Hundred and Fifty 
Years, 1810-1960 (n.p.: Women's Society of Christian 
service, 1984), and Bennett's Methodist Church on Shockoe 
Hill. 
55Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill, 58-99, 
and 182-86. 
56Richmond Dispatch, 27 February 1866. 
57 Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill, 73. 
346 
young, single women, its purpose was to raise money for the 
church through the sale of fancy needlework and other 
fundraising events. In 1874, the Circle of Industry was 
joined by the Ladies' Church Improvement Society, an 
organization of adult women who accumulated funds to equip 
and furnish the church parsonage. During the next five 
years, these two organizations--usually working 
independently of each other--rnade curtains for the 
parsonage, created a church library, bought a baptismal 
font, and hired an alto soloist. They also carpeted the 
Infant and Male Bible School classrooms; donated $300 
toward the purchase of a new church chandelier; and had 
seventy-five pew cushions recovered at a cost of $1,000. 
In 1875, they even purchased spittoons for the church 
s a nctuary, prompting one amateur church historian to 
observe that although "[i]t was not respectful in the house 
of the Lord, even in the church basement, to hold a bazaar 
or sell dinners, .•. it was not so disrespectful for a man 
to chew tobacco [in church on sundayJ. 1158 
By 1877, Circle of Industry treasurer Jennie Jones 
reported a sum of $1,602 raised for the purchase of the 
church's first pipe organ. A year later, the Church 
Improvement Society contributed $712 toward operating 
expenses for the church and parsonage. By 1878, the 
Centenary women's fundraising efforts had become so 
58White, Elect Ladies of Centenary, 17-34. 
,., 
347 
important in meeting day-to-day expenses that the church's 
Official Board rescinded its ruling against holding 
basement "sociables," despite strict rules in most 
Methodist churches at the time that prohibited church use 
"for anything other than religious purposes. 1159 
By 1880, the work of the Circle of Industry and the 
Church Improvement Society had become so central to keeping 
the church and the parsonage in good repair that their 
members petitioned Centenary's Official Board for 
representation on the church's Board of Stewards, a 
subcommittee responsible for seeing that the parsonage and 
church were well maintainect. 60 Although Centenary's two 
historians are silent on how the women's petition was 
received, Edith Denny White's account suggests that there 
was controversy. While Floyd Bennett goes to great lengths 
to stress the harmonious relations that he claims always 
existed between Centenary's all-male governing body and the 
church's women, White's account, written at about the same 
time, bristles with hints of contention between the two. 
For White, the issue of women as members of the Board of 
59Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill, 72-75. 
The "Official Board" is the name given to the governing 
bodies of the Methodist churches. Comprised of the church 
laity, these organizations work with the ministers to 
oversee the day-to-day operations of individual 
congregations. 
60The Board of Stewards is a ~ubconunittee of the 
Official Board; its duty is to maintain the physical 
structures of the sanctuary and the parsonage. 
... 
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348 
Stewards was "[a] really burning question" that took more 
than "ten years of urging" to resolve. 61 
At times, women's attempts to use their fundraising 
expertise to flex their political muscle met with short-
term failures Which, in the long run, only served to 
underscore their importance to the institution's fiscal 
health. On May 25, 1875, a group of women from Beth 
Shalome Synagogue submitted a petition to the 
congregation's board of directors asking for three things: 
shorter Sabbath services, better harmonizing in the singing 
and responses, and replacement of the temple's gender-
segregated seating with the mixed family seating currently 
in vogue in many Reform congregations. 62 The petition was 
61White, Elect Ladies of Centenary, vi. In 1890, 
after a decade of requests, women representatives were 
finally appointed to Centenary's Board of Stewards. One 
year earlier, in 1889, women at St. James's Episcopal 
Church formed the Peterkin Guild, named in honor of the 
Reverend Joshua Peterkin, the church's pastor since 1854. 
The Peterkin Guild purchased kitchen and dining room 
equipment, arranged for cleaning the ch~rch and parsonage, 
cleaned the church vestments, and arranged for lawn care. 
McGuire, "Centennial Address Delivered at St. James's 
Church," 29. According the church's historians, the 
Peterkin Guild was "by far the most important ... and most 
indispensable of all church organizations." Minor T. 
Weisiger, Donald R. Traser, and E. Randolph Trice, Not 
Hearers Only: A History of the st. James's Episcopal 
Church. Richmond. Virginia. 1835-1985, Margaret T. Peters, 
ed. (Richmond: St. James's Church, 1986), 37. 
62 Petition to Beth Shalome Congregation, 25 May 1875, 
in Miscellaneous Records of congregations Beth Ahabah and 
Beth Shalome, Ms. #298, AJA. Begun in Charleston, South 
Carolina, in 1824, Reform Judaism stressed the religious 
equality of women in marriage, in divorce, and in child 
naming practices. By the 1840s Reform congregations 
permitted the religious confirmation of both girls and boys 
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349 
signed by thirteen women, all of whom were either related 
to influential men in the congregation or were women of 
influence in their own right. 63 At the bottom of the 
petition, the women included a subtly veiled threat 
calculated to remind the board of the women's role as the 
(bat and bar mitzvahs) at puberty. In 1840, New York Rabbi 
Isaac Mayer Wise introduced the first "family pews" into 
the Albany Congregation to replace seating arrangements in 
which women were confined to a partitioned area to the side 
of the main seating, or else restricted to a balcony. He 
also advocated voting rights for Jewish women and their 
right to hold elective office in congregations. Another 
Reform rabbi, New York's Max Lilienthal also allowed women 
to sing in the choir. Despite his record, historian Jacob 
Marcus maintains that it would be an overstatement to 
declare Wise a feminist. Instead, according to Marcus, 
Wise simply "wanted Jewish women to enjoy that same status 
as women in Protestant congregations." Jacob Rader Marcus, 
The American Jewish Woman, 1654-1890 (New York: KTAV 
Publishing, 1981), 7-8, and 56-58. Historian Karla Goldman 
tells me that Beth Shalome's petition is "extremely rare." 
She knows of no other petition such as this being written 
by women in any other Jewish congregation in the United 
states during this period of time. Conversation with Karla 
Goldman, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 7 June 1996. 
,
63The signers included Rebecca Myers, the seventy-two-
year-old sister of Richmond attorney Gustavus A. Myers and 
a former president of the Hebrew Ladies' Memorial 
Association, her younger sister, Ella, and their first 
cousins, Julia and Harriet Myers, who were also in their 
seventies. Other signers were Kate (Mrs. Alfred) Moses, 
Mrs. Edward Cohen, and Mrs. Ezekiel J. Levy, the wife of a 
commanding officer of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, a 
local military unit which had served Richmond with 
distinction from the first battle of Manassas to the 
surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ezekiel J. Levy was a 
former congregation president. In January 1874, Alfred 
Moses and Edward Cohen had been chosen to serve on a 
committee overseeing the sale of the old synagogue building 
on Mayo Street and the selection of a site for a new 
temple. Herbert T. Ezekiel and Gaston Lichtenstein, The 
History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 to 1917 
(Richmond: Herbert T. Ezekiel, printer, 1927), 252-3; 
Caroline Cohen, Records of the Myers, Hays. and Mordecai 
Families from 1701 to 1913 (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), 5-7. 
I 
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350 
temple's most skilled fund raisers. "We have been informed 
your Board contemplates attempting a new synagogue in a 
more suitable location," the women wrote. "We wish you 
success and promise our ernest [sic) co-operation when ever 
it is desired. 1164 
The petition was reviewed by the congregational board 
which approved each article and appointed a committee of 
three to meet with Rabbi Isaac P. Mendes to discuss their 
implementation. A Sephardic Jew and a strong opponent of 
what he considered to be "radical" Judaic reforms, Mendes 
rejected the women's proposal a few weeks later. The 
petitioners' short-term defeat was perhaps a long-run 
victory. Although the congregation's women continued to 
worship in gender-restricted seating, Beth Shalome also 
never built a new synagogue. In 1891, it sold its Mayo 
Street location to Moses Montefiore, a Russian-Jewish 
congregation organized in 1886, and began holding worship 
services in the meeting hall of Lee camp of the United 
Confederate Veterans. 65 
64Petition to Beth Shalome congregation, 25 May 1875, 
in Miscellaneous Records of congregations Beth Ahabah and 
Beth Shalome, Ms. #298, AJA. 
65A concise account of this event can be found in 
Ezekiel and Lichtenstein, History of the Jews of Richmond, 
253-54. Rebekah Kohut, My Portion: An Autobiography (New 
York: Thomas Seltzer, 1925), 14; Miscellaneous Records of 
Congregations Beth Ahabah and Beth Shalome, Ms. #298, AJA. 
Unfortunately, the Beth Shalome minutes are maddeningly 
silent about the dynamics of this particular event, so it 
is impossible to know the precise bearing the rejection of 
this petition may have had on Beth Shalome's closure. 
.. 
351 
Although the Beth Shalome petition failed to produce 
the desired reforms, its existence is evidence of the 
women's growing desire for a stronger voice in their 
congregation's religious life. Evidence from other 
religious denominations throughout the city suggests that 
this was not an isolated event. In the decades following 
the Civil War and Reconstruction, women in other Richmond 
churches joined their Jewish sisters in an effort to extend 
their influence within the city's houses of worship, partly 
as a result of the growth of women's roles within the 
churches during the Civil War and Reconstruction. 
Homes for Aged Women 
Disturbed by the plight of elderly female parishoners 
left penniless by the war, Baptist and Episcopal women in 
Richmond devoted a portion of their postwar organizational 
and fundraising activities to creating homes for aged women 
within their denominations. In February 1875, women 
representing the city's white Episcopal churches met and 
formed an association "to provide a home for female members 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church ... who are in reduced 
circumstances, and unable to procure for themselves an 
adequate support. 1166 A month later, they opened the 
66constitution and By-Laws of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church Home, Richmond, Virginia, Protestant Episcopal 
Church Home for Ladies Records, VHS. Hereafter, these 
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352 
Protestant Episcopal Church Horne for Ladies in a house on 
Fourth Street provided by Frederick W. Hanewinckel, a 
wealthy benefactor and a st. James's vestryman. 
The Baptist Home for Aged was opened a few years later 
on January 1, 1883, the culmination of two years of 
energetic fundraising begun after a mass meeting of Baptist 
women in 1881 at Richmond's First Baptist Church. By late 
September 1882, women from four of the city's white Baptist 
churches had accumulated more than $6,100 toward the 
purchase of a suitable building "with ample grounds, 
situated in the western section of the city" and had 
engaged the services of matron Sarah Ellett, at a salary of 
$10 per month. In January 1883, the Horne was consecrated 
in a ceremony conducted by six of the city's Baptist 
clergy. 67 The Baptist Home was sustained by a three-
tiered system of membership dues, occasional bequests, 
special Thanksgiving offerings, annual bazaars, and 
systematic investments in municipal bonds and stocks, a 
fundraising strategy mirroring the one adopted by 
Richmond's Female Humane Association (Chapter Five). 68 
records will be cited as PECHL Records. 
67William R.L. Smith, History of the Baptist Home for 
Aged Women, Richmond, Va. (Richmond: L.H. Jenkins, 1922), 
5-16. 
68Membership in the association operating the Baptist 
Home for Aged Women was divided i~to three classes: Annual 
members who paid $5 per year; Life Members who paid $50; 
and Patrons who paid $1,000 to endow a room in the Home 
bearing their name. By 1891, the Baptist Home for Aged 
1,1 
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Like many antebellum benevolent associations formed by 
Northern and Southern women, the day-to-day operations of 
both homes were supervised by boards of lady managers, 
usually influential women in the church who voted on the 
admission of new residents; made staffing decisions; 
arbitrated disputes between inmates and employees; 
inspected the kitchen and dining room; visited inmates' 
rooms; and raised money. 69 
Membership in both institutions at the beginning was 
quite limited. During the first four years of its 
existence, only twelve women were admitted to the 
Protestant Episcopal Home, although more than twenty-five 
Women possessed a modest endowment composed of city and 
state bonds, and railroad and bank stocks. Smith, Baptist 
Home for Aged Women, 16-32. 
69Wherever possible, each woman entering the Home was 
required to pay a one-time admission fee of $200 that was 
invested to help cover operating expenses. Article V, 
Constitution and By-Laws of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
Home. Richmond. Virginia (Richmond: William Ellis Jones, 
printer, 1885), 6, in PECHL Records, VHS. In addition, the 
Board of Managers occasionally held "pound parties" which 
were charitable donations of one-pound packages of food or 
other needed items. A pound party in December 1876, for 
example, netted 600 items, several of which were more than 
one pound in weight, including a barrel of apples, a barrel 
of potatoes, a barrel of flour, eight hams, one tongue, one 
round of beef, and several pieces of china. Minutes for 1 
December 1876, Minute Book Volume 2, 1875-1881, PECHL 
Records, VHS. In 1878, an anonymous benefactor donated a 
pound of silver coins, a donation which was repeated in 
1879. These cash donations formed the basis of an 
endowment which was invested to pay operating expenses. 
Richmond Dispatch, 1 January 1879. 
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women applied. 70 Decisions for admission were often based 
as much on a tough-minded acknowledgement of economic 
realities as they were on a mixture of patriotism, elitism, 
and altruism. Louisa Cosnahan and Charlotte Carter were 
both Confederate widows in feeble health when they became 
residents of the home, but other women were probably 
accepted because they were the relatives of clergymen or 
influential parishoners who could afford the $200 admission 
fee. 71 Martha and Anne Archer, for example, were elderly 
70Richmond Dispatch, 1 January 1878. Early in their 
deliberations, the Board of Managers decided to "regard 
with strict secrecy every thing that transpires at its 
meetings." Minutes for 1 April 1876, Minute Book Volume 2, 
1875-1881. As a result, their decisions surrounding 
applications for admission are fragmentary and incomplete 
for some women and completely nonexistent for many others. 
Twenty-three of these applicants were admitted. General 
Correspondence, 1875-1882; Minutes, 1875-1891. By the time 
the Home moved to a new location in 1908, it had received a 
total of forty-one white women. Register of Ladies at the 
4th Street Home, 1875-1909. All in PECHL Records, VHS. By 
1891, ten women were residents of the Baptist women's home, 
although only seven appear to have been destitute. Smith, 
Baptist Home for Aged Women, 26. 
71Forty-eight-year-old Louisa Cosnahan was the widow 
of Captain James B. cosnahan, a Williamsburg lawyer who 
died during the war. By the time of her admission in 1881, 
Cosnahan was in frail health, living with her daughter, and 
contributing to her support by taking in sewing. Mrs. E.J. 
Cosnahan, Smithfield, Virginia, to Mrs. James [Mary) Werth, 
Richmond, 27 September 1881. Charlotte Carter, a widow 
whose home in Loudon county, Virginia, had been "ravaged by 
the two armies and completely broken up," had conducted a 
boarding school, until 1877, when cataract surgery on both 
eyes in 1877 forced her into poverty. Mrs. C[harlotte] C. 
Carter, to Mrs. James [Mary] Werth, 21 March [1881]; Letter 
from George Rheuling, M.D., Baltimore, Md., 22 March 1881; 
Letter from Julian J. Chisolm, M.D., Baltimore Eye and Ear · 
Institute, Baltimore, Md., 28 March 1881. All of these 
letters are in the General correspondence Files, PECHL 
Records, VHS. 
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355 
sisters whose brother was a former Virginia senator. 
Before the war, they had owned more than 250 slaves on 
plantations in Virginia and Mississippi. The sisters were 
admitted to the Home together in April 1880. 72 Fifty-
year-old Sallie McGuire was the childless widow of the 
Reverend Edward McGuire, a well-loved Episcopal clergyman 
from King George County. 73 Some of the more desperate 
cases were denied, suggesting that part of the Board's 
strategy was to reject truly destitute applicants who would 
only drain the association's coffers without attracting any 
additional revenue to keep the Home solvent. 74 
72R. H. Meade, to the Board of Managers, 10 February 
1880; John B. Harvie, to the Board of Managers, 5 March 
1880; Mary E. Harvie, to the Board of Managers, 5 March 
1880, all in General correspondence Files, PECHL Records, 
VHS. 
73 Emmy C[rump] Lightfoot, to "Mollie" [Mary] Werth, 28 
May 1881; General Correspondence Files, PECHL Records, VHS. 
74Ellen Cave, for example, was described as often 
being "without food and scarcely raiment." M.J. Fulton, to 
[Mary Werth], April 1876. Mrs. J.A. Hunter was a former 
Winder hospital matron whose application bore numerous 
testimonies to her wartime work as a Winder Hospital 
matron. She was described as being "without a single tie 
of kindred blood" and living in "an uncongenial home" in 
Florida with "a spendthrift nephew." Annie B. Fuller, to 
Mrs. [Mary] Werth, 15 October 1878; Annie B. Fuller, to 
Mrs. (Mary] Werth, 1 January 1879; the Reverend R.H. 
Weller, Rector, St. John's Church, Jacksonville, Florida, 
to [Mrs. Werth], 28 July 1879; Dr. R. Lewis, to Mrs. [Mary] 
Werth, 29 January 1879; Mrs. J,A. Hunter, Washington, D.C., 
to (Mrs. Mary Werth] 30 January 1879; Nannie Taylor 
Griffith, to [Mary] Werth, 7 February 1879; Miss Annie B. 
Fuller, to Mrs. (Mary] Werth, 11 February 1879, all in the · 
General correspondence Files, PECHL Records, VHS. Both 
women were rejected, Hunter because she was not a member of 
the Richmond Diocese. 
" 
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356 
Although the history of the Baptist Horne for Aged 
Women provides little information on admission policies, 
its modest endowment fund and the presence of a few 
affluent female residents who were former patrons of the 
association may have enabled it to avoid some of the more 
draconian measures that shaped the Protestant Episcopal 
Horne's admission policies in the late nineteenth century. 
In addition, unlike the Protestant Episcopal Horne which 
considered applications from female congregants throughout 
the Richmond diocese, the Baptist Home for Aged Women 
limited its admissions exclusively to Richmond 
residents. 75 
Female Missionary Societies 
Women's postbellum organizational activity that 
focused on domestic reconstruction or the plight of 
indigent women was welcomed by the city's white churchmen 
of all denominations because these organizations were 
consistent with commonly held beliefs about women's 
appropriate role within the church and the importance of 
their domesticity. These groups also existed under the 
protection and support of men who, at various times, 
offered financial advice, directed the organizations' work, 
conducted portions of the meetings, and appointed women to 
75of the Baptist Horne's ten residents in 1891, only 
seven appear to have been destitute. Smith, Baptist Home 
for Aged Women, 26. 
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leadership positions. Men also served the much needed role 
of incorporators, lending their names to acts of 
i ncorporation that permitted married women to conduct 
organization business despite laws of coverture. 
The creation of foreign female missionary associations 
during this same period of time, however, carried no such 
male imprimatur, in part, because these missionary groups 
eventually sought to establish their autonomy from male 
foreign mission boards and, in part, because their 
formation suggested that women's views of the appropriate 
goals and objectives of foreign missionary service differed 
from those embraced by men. As a result, the creation of 
autonomous female foreign missionary associations evoked 
harsh criticism, first directed at the associations 
themselves, but later absorbed into a more general debate 
about the appropriate role of women in the churches. 76 
76Northern women in the Congregational Church formed 
the first denomination-wide missionary board in 1868, 
followed by the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in 1869; 
the Presbyterian Church (North) in 1870; and the Northern 
Baptists in 1871. In 1872, united Brethren women organized 
themselves into a similar group, followed by the Free 
Baptists in 1873, and the Dutch Reformed churches in 1875. 
The Protestant Episcopal Church set up a women's society in 
1868, although with far less controversy than that 
experienced by women in other denominations, largely 
because of the exemplary work of the Sisters of the Good 
Shepherd, a religious order for Episcopal women that, for 
some years previous, had ministered to the church through 
the establishment and operation of hospitals, schools, · 
penitentiaries, and orphan asylums. In 1878, women in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South .joined in foreign 
missionary work with their Northern sisters, followed by 
the Lutherans in 1879. Noreen Dunn Tatum, A Crown of 
Service: A Story of Woman's Work in the Methodist Episcopal 
358 
In some denominations, Richmond women's interest in 
foreign and domestic missions actually predated the Civil 
war by at least fifty years. 77 Women at the First Baptist 
Church formed one of the earliest women's missionary groups 
in Richmond in 1813. 78 By 1834, a women's foreign mission 
group at the Third Baptist Church in Richmond supported the 
Virginia Foreign Mission Society with "their prayers, 
Church, South from 1878-1940 (Nashville, Tenn.: Parthenon 
Press, 196?), 22; R. Pierce Beaver, American Protestant 
Women in World Mission: History of the First Feminist 
Movement in North America (1968; Grand Rapids, Mich.: 
William B. Eerdmans, Publishing, 1980), 87-100; and Fannie 
E.S. Heck, In Royal Service, 99; "The Spirit of Missions," 
southern Churchman, 22 August 1867; "To the Friends of 
Sisterhood," Southern Churchman, 17 October 1867; and 
"Ministering Women," Southern Churchman, 5 November 1868. 
For a general discussion of women's foreign missionary 
associations and their relationship to a gender crisis in 
the churches, see Patricia R. Hill, The World Their 
Household: The American Woman's Foreign Missionary Moveme nt 
and Cultural Transformation. 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: 
University of Michigan Press, 1985), and Beaver, American 
Protestant Women in World Mission. An earlier version of 
Beaver's thesis was published as All Loves Excelling: 
American Protestant Women in World Mi ssion (Grand Rapids, 
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1968). 
77Both of these forms of missions activity were 
frequently undertaken by a single denominational agency in 
the early nineteenth century. As mission work grew and 
expanded, most denominations formed separate, and sometimes 
competing, boards for foreign and domestic missionary work. 
My discussion in this chapter concentrates on foreign 
missionary work among white Richmond women because it 
appears to have engendered the greatest disapproval. 
78catherine B. Allen, century to Celebrate: History of 
the Woman's Missionary Union (Birmingham, Ala.: Woman's 
Missionary Union, 1987), 17. 
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359 
By 1838, this association 
had contributed more than $170 for the printing and 
distribution of a Burmese Bible, and the education of 
Burmese girls. 80 In 1856, students at the Richmond Female 
Institute created a missionary society with a $1,000 
donation from the school's co-founder in honor of his 
mother. 81 By the time the war began in April 1861, this 
missionary group at the Institute supported a school for 
Chinese girls under the superintendence of Martha Foster 
Crawford, the wife of a Baptist missionary. 82 
Presbyterian women in antebellum Richmond and 
Manchester formed two missionary groups: the Female 
Domestic Missionary Society of Richmond and Manchester and 
the Foreign Missionary Society of Third Presbyterian 
79Religious Herald, 14 March 1834, quot~d in Annie 
Florence Weeks, Grace Baptist Church, Richmond, 1833-1958 
(Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1958), 4. 
80Religious Herald, n.d., quoted in Annie Florence 
Weeks, Grace Baptist Church, Richmond, 1833-1958, 6. 
81catherine B. Allen, Laborers Together with God: 22 
Great Women in Baptist Life (Birmingham. Ala.: Woman's 
Missionary Union, 1987), 40. 
82First Baptist Church, The First Century of the First 
Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia (Richmond: Carlton 
McCarthy, 1880), 237; Mrs. M.F. Crawford, "To the Young 
Ladies of the Missionary society of the Richmond Female 
Institute," Religious Herald, 25 April 1861. Ironically, 
with the exception of one female t~acher who was eventually 
excluded from church membership for some unidentified 
transgression, all of the ·school's teachers were Chinese 
men, three of whom had converted to Christianity. 
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Church. 83 Episcopal women at st. Paul's Church supported 
a colporteur in the Kansas territory in 1857; Episcopal 
women at St. James's Church devoted a portion of the $3,000 
they raised in 1858 to developing a Sunday School for three 
hundred black Richmond children and adults at St. Phillip's 
African Episcopal Church. 84 By 1860, the Ladies' Aid 
Society of Grace Episcopal Church also earmarked part of 
th . , . , • 85 eir contributions to overseas missions. 
During the Civil War and early postbellum period, 
contributions for foreign missionary activity in several 
denominations plummeted. Contributions to the Foreign 
Mission Board of the southern Baptist Convention, which had 
totaled more than $40,000 in 1860, fell to less than $9,000 
in 1863. In the first year of Reconstruction, they dropped 
83Lois A. Boyd and R. Douglas Brackenridge, 
Presbyterian Women in America: Two centuries of a Quest for 
status (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), 7-9. 
84A colporteur was an individual who delivered Bibles 
and religious tracts to people living in remote areas or to 
those whom a particular denomination considered part of the 
11 unchurched. 11 "Constitution and By-Laws of the Sewing 
Society of St. Paul's Church, Richmond," Appendix II in 
Elizabeth Wright Weddell, st. Paul's Church, Richmond 
Virginia: Its Historic Years and Memorials (Richmond: 
William Byrd Press, 1931), vol. 2, 595; Wiesiger, Traser, 
and Trice, Not Hearers Only, 22, St. Phillip's Church 
closed in 1868, in part, according to an article in the 
Southern Churchman, because of a decline in interest on the 
part of white Episcopalians. southern Churchman, 23 April 
1868. 
85W' 11' H . · ' i iam • Gaines, A History of Grace and Holy 
Trinity Episcopal Church, (Richmond: Grace and Holy Trinity 
Episcopal Church, 1987), 8. 
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86 
to $7,000. But as Southern congregations shaken by the 
ravages of war repaired their damaged edifices and 
reinvigorated their fragile congregations, foreign and 
domestic missionary work in the Southern churches began to 
flourish once more. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, 
denominational newspapers like the Religious Herald, the 
southern Churchman, and the Southern Presbyterian and 
presbyterian Index, routinely included reports from foreign 
missionaries in Africa, South America, and Asia, or 
domestic missionaries operating schools for the children of 
American Indians. 87 
In postbellum Richmond, women began to form new 
foreign missionary associations or resurrect groups 
suspended during the war. A group of women from Third 
presbyterian Church gathered in the home of Susan 
carrington to resume the foreign mission work they had 
abandoned during wartime. 88 At Centenary Methodist in 
1875, members of the Circle of Industry and the Ladies' 
86Heck, In Royal service, 89-90; Allen, Century to 
celebrate, 18-19. 
87 southern Presbyterian and Presbyterian Index, 23 
June, 2 November 1871; Religious Herald, 14 July 1870, 13, 
20 April, 13 July. 17 August 1871. 
88Mr. Edwin Pleasants, "Historical Sketch of the Third 
Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia,'' paper pr~sented 
at the Seventy Fifth Anniversary Celebration of Third 
Presbyterian Church, 22 May 1910, reprinted in ~hird 
Presbyterian Church, The First Hundred Years (Richmond: The 
centennial Commission of the Third Presbyterian Church, 
Richmond, Virginia, 1935), 34. 
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Church Improvement Society banded together to form the 
Women's Missionary Society, after listening to a lecture on 
Chinese footbinding by Mrs. J.W. Lambuth. During its early 
years, the Centenary group supported mission schools in 
Shanghai and Soochow. Within a short period of time, it 
was joined by two additional groups--one at Trinity 
Methodist Church and the other at Clay Street Methodist. 
By 1879, these three Richmond societies together were 
providing scholarships for four "Bible women,'' two in China 
and two in Brazil. 89 
In 1872, the women at Grace Street Baptist Church 
formed a missionary association under the leadership of 
89White, Elect Ladies of Centenary, 45-48; Tatum, 
Crown of Service, 22. A ''Bible woman" was a native-born 
Christian woman of a part i cular country taught to read and 
write so she could read the gospel and distribute Bibles to 
other native women on her visits to their homes. 
Typically, most Bible women were trained to read Bibles in 
their own language, which were provided in translation 
through the foreign mission boards of the various churches. 
The same term appears to have applied in the same way in 
the Baptist missionary associations. Religious Herald, 4 
February 1864; and Heck, In Royal Service, 94. Although 
the use of Bible women was usually connected to foreign 
missionary service, the woman's Home Missionary Society of 
the Methodist ,Episcopal Church also employed Chinese Bible 
women ~o bring the gospel to immigrant Chinese women on the 
West Coast of the United States. Ruth Esther Meeker, Six 
Decades of Service, 1880-1940: A History of the Woman's 
Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
(n.p.: Continuing Corporation of The Woman's Home 
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
1969), 285. Ellen Ross uses the term "Bible women" to 
describe the activities of women who ministered to worki ng-
class Londoners during the late nineteenth century and 
sometimes provided out-of-work laborers with infant 
layettes. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast 
London, 1870-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1993), 110. 
363 
Mary catherine Jeter. A long-time supporter of women's 
work in foreign missions, Jeter had attended a meeting of 
women during the Southern Baptist Convention in Baltimore 
in 1868, where she heard Ann Graves, the mother of 
missionary Rosewell Graves and a member of "First Female 
Baptist," discuss the importance of women in mission work 
in china, since male missionaries were not permitted to 
enter the women's homes "to Christiani ze them. 11 9 0 During 
its first year, this organization collected more than 
$1,200 to support the work of sisters Edmonia and Lottie 
Moon, two of the first single women ever to engage in 
missionary work in China under the auspices of the Southern 
Baptist convention. 91 
As women gathered in meetings to listen to mission 
field reports, they realized that they shared a concern for 
gender issues such as Chinese footbinding, African bride 
9°First Baptist Church of Baltimore was nicknamed 
"First Female Baptist" because of its liberal position on 
the role of women in the church. At "First Female 
Baptist," women were permitted to vote in congregational 
meetings and serve on church-wide committees with male 
members, functions normally prohibited throughout the 
southern Baptist Convention during this period of time. 
Allen, Century to Celebrate, 23. 
91Heck, In Royal Service, 101. Born December 12, 
1840, in Albemarle County, Virginia, Charlotte "Lottie" 
Diggs Moon was given a classical education at the Albemarle 
Female Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1873, 
she journeyed to North China to join her younger sister, 
Edmonia, who had been sent the year before. The two 
sisters operated a school until Lottie's death in 
Manchuria, December 12, 1912. Lottie and Edmonia's uncle, 
James Barclay, had been a missionary to Jerusalem. Heck , 
In Royal Service, 101, and 262. 
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prices, a nd polygamous marriages that were not necessarily 
endorsed with equal fervor by male missionaries or the 
male-dominated foreign mission boards whose focus was on 
the Christianization of native men. As a result, 
throughout the rest of the 1870s and most of the 1880s, the 
women in several Southern denominations moved to establish 
autonomous denomination-wide foreign mission groups that 
were not just interested in saving souls, but also in 
addressing problems facing women in the countries being 
served. Although they eventually succeeded in creating 
autonomous missionary organizations in the Baptist and 
Methodist churches, in the process, Southern women evoked a 
discourse of opposition that fueled a growing debate in the 
southern churches about woman's proper sphere. 
Southern Baptist and Methodist women who tried to form 
separate, denomination-wide missionary groups during the 
1870s operated in what one church historian has called a 
"climate of hostility," emanating from the male clergy and 
laity. An 1874 proposal by women from the Methodist 
church, for example, was initially met with stern 
disapproval from male church leaders, who argued that "the 
women would run into debt, [that] they could not keep 
accounts, [and that] none had ever had experience in 
This presiding over a meeting or speaking in public." 
measure was finally approved four years later at the 
General Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, despite objections 
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that the organization was too controversial and doomed to 
· 1 92 fa1 ure. 
Baptist women who attempted to form a similar 
organization in the Southern Baptist Convention during the 
same period of time faced opposition that stemmed from 
fears that "a women's missions organization [would be] a 
competitor, not a helper," in the important work of 
Christianizing "heathen" populations. Some critics also 
worried that women's movement into foreign mission work 
might encourage some women to try to leave home and enter 
the ministry . 93 
Richmond women played key roles in the founding of 
both of these missionary organizations. Centenary 
Methodist chapter president Eliza Lewis Carter Harrison, 
for example, headed the Methodist Woman's Missionary 
society's newly-created Virginia Conference. 94 Richmond 
women also hosted the meeting of Southern Baptist women 
92White, Elect Ladies of Centenary, 41, 
93Allen, Century to Celebrate, 30-31. 
94 Ibid., 43-44. The organizing pattern of the Woman's 
Missionary Society in the Methodist Church, South appears 
to have differed somewhat from the plan followed by the 
Baptists' Woman's Missionary Union. Whereas the Union was 
formed from, first, individual and, then, state missionary 
associations, the Society went straight from local groups 
to the creation of a Convention-wide body, with the interim 
state agencies created shortly thereafter. White, Elect 
Ladies of Centenary, 59; and Theodore L. Agnew, 
"Reflections on the Woman's Missionary Movement in Late 
19th-Century Methodism," Methodist History 6.2 (January 
1968) : 15. 
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366 
that 
1ate 
led to the creation of Woman's M' · , issionary Union in the 
1880s.95 During this group's formative years, 
Richmonders Mary Catherine Jeter, Jennie Hatcher, and Abby 
ManlY Gwathmey all served as Virginia Committee presidents. 
Gwathmey also later served at the third Woman's Missionary 
union president. 96 
Although most laymen and clergy had long approved of 
women's local missionary societies that collected monies 
for distribution by the Foreign Mission Board, male 
reaction to independent denominational groups was swift and 
furious. "You can't overthrow Peter and Paul," one 
Kentucky layman warned. "If you vote for this 
organization, God only knows what the women will do. 
Nobody on the face of this earth will be able to manage 
them, and they will be in danger of wrecking the whole 
. 119 7 business. 
95on May 11, 1888, at an Southern Baptist Convention 
meeting in Richmond, thirty-two female delegates from 
twelve Southern states formed the Woman's Missionary Union, 
after a long and frequently contentious struggle with the 
Foreign Mission Board. Two hundred women were present at 
its formation, a hundred of them from Richmond. Sensing 
history in the making, Abby Manly Gwathmey brought her twin 
daughters, Maria and Alberta, to witness the event. The 
history of this organization has been aptly told by 
Catherine B. Allen in Century to Celebrate. 
96Jeter and Hatcher were both wives of Richmond 
clergy. Gwathmey was Union president from 1894 to 1895; 
she also served as the Union's Recording Secretary, 
Virginia Committee Vice-president, and a delegate ~o the 
Foreign Mission Board. Allen, Laborers Together with God, 
38-44. 
97Quoted in Allen, Century to Celebrate, 45. 
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Rea t· 
c ions like these followed the formation of similar 
9"roups · in other denominations. An editorial in the 
§Qy_thern p 
resbyterian and Presbyterian Index, following the 
creation . 
of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the 
Presbyterian Church in 1871, accused that organization of 
"d . 
riving a separating wedge into the family compact" by its 
decision to promote and financially support the work of 
ltlissi 
onary wives, "[thus] making two, if not three parties, 
Where the Lord Jesus expressly declared that there should 
be but one.1198 By more specifically defining the role of 
the · 
missionary wife through their promise of a fixed salary 
and a Plan of work, the writer charged that the Society's 
act· ions struck at the heart of the marriage contract, 
Upsetting traditional expectations that the missionary 
Wife, 
5 husband would serve as "her chief advisor, not only 
in 
relation to her domestic duties, but equally in relation 
to 
any active duties she must assume." 99 
Buried in portions of the article praising women's 
earli . . 
er missionary 
the Writer 
, and the 
work, however, was another reason why 
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, 
Was Upset. Although local missionary groups had "acted in 
accordance with the advice of their pastor" by sending the 
J"u1 98.§_outhern Presbyterian and Presbyterian Index, 2~ 
in Y 1872. The Old and New Presbyterian churches reunited 
1869, 
J" 99.§.outhern Presbyterian and Presbyterian Index, 22 
Uly 1872. 
368 
II fr ' uits of th . eir efforts to the Board to be used for 
missionary purposes," this new organization general · 
prop d ose establi's.hi'ng an autonomous central committee 
charged with the ability to make decisions about which 
missionar.1' es it would support and in what manner. since 
the Women's Foreign Missionary society had already 
accumulated $18' ooo . . h f . during the first six mont so its 
exist ence, and had 
promised to raise an additional $32,000 
by the year's end, it appears as if the more pressing 
concern to the Foreign Mission Board was the loss that this 
ormidable fund-raising talent would represent in 
agency's f 
Foreign Mission Board's ability to propose and the male 
e programs. For the writer, controlling the women's execut 
onary group was "a matter of momentous importance to missi 
cause of truth, purity, and righteousness, that the the 
(associat · · b · d d · ion's] interest and ... sympathies e gui e in 
the right channel. 11100 
Although the writer admitted to a "lurking suspicion 
that the Board had not heretofore shown fair-play to the 
female portion of the heathen world," he closed by 
in · sinuat· 1ng 
that the creation of the woman's Foreign 
Mis · SJ.onary 
Society might also bear some relation to the 
ongoi , · 1 ng discussion of woman's rights taking Pace 
roughout the whole country, but especiallY in the 
"th 
»orth 11 • t f ' a statement calculated to pique the anxie Y 0 
lOOib, d 
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369 
white male Southerners already reeling from more social 
change than they ever hoped to bear, and fearful of the 
National Woman Suffrage Association's recent excursions 
below the Mason-Dixon line.101 
criticisms such as these also drew their strength from 
a gendered discussion within many Southern denominations in 
the late 1860s and early 1870s about the appropriate role 
101F d · · o.r a iscussion of the attempts to silence 
presbyte:ian women in m~ssionary associations, see Boyd and 
arackenridge, Presbyterian Women in America. By May 1870 
Richmond women were among those who formed the Virginia 
state , Woma~ Suffra~e Association, following visits by 
paulina Wright Davis and Matilda Joslyn Gage in January and 
March 1870 as part of National Woman Suffrage Association's 
effort to create a base of support in the south. The 
virginia suffrage organization was led by forty-three-year-
old Anne Whitehead Bedeker, the daughter of Manchester 
cotton mill superintendent, Joshua Whitehead, and wife of 
German-born Richmond druggist, Augustus Bodeker. Other 
Richmond female members included Anna Bodeker's sister, 
Elizabeth Hoppe; Susan Pellet, a former member of the 
Ladies' Defense Association and a Richmond schoolteacher; 
Elisa Washburne; Georgianna Smith; Elizabeth Van Lew; and 
Eliza Langstedt. Membership in the Association was 
minuscule; meetings held in 1870 and 1871 frequently 
attracted more men than women. Richmond Dispatch 9 May 
1870; Ladies' Defense Association Records, ESBL. Male 
supporters included men from the radical wing of Richmond's 
Republican party, among them, judges John c. Underwood, 
westal Willoughby, and Lysander Hill, and Ralza Manly, a 
white Northerner and former U.S. Army chaplain who 
travelled to Richmond after the war to educate former 
slaves. Sandra Gioia Treadway, "A Most Brilliant Woman: 
Anna White Bodeker and the First Woman Suffrage 
Association," Virginia Cavalcade 43.4 (spring 1994): 166-
77• Sarah Graham Hunter, "Woman Suffrage in Virginia: The 
Eq~al Suffrage League and Pressure Group Politics," . 
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101.2 (April 
1993): 227-50; Suzanne Lebsock, "woman Suffrage and White 
supremacy: A Virginia case Study," in Vis!ble Women: New 
Essays on American Activism, Nancy A. Hewitt and Suzanne 
Lebsock eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois, Press, 1993), 
62-100. 
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of women in the church that emanated less from women's 
r i ghts agitation in the North than it did from a perceived 
sense of women's growing power within the Southern 
churches, now sharpened by their expanded roles -during the 
Ci vil War and Reconstruction. 
Between February and April 1868, and again between May 
and September 1871, for example, this discussion found its 
way into the pages of the Richmond-based Baptist newspaper, 
the Religious Herald. The timing of these two discussions 
coincided with the expansion of women into broader 
postbellum roles, as "domestic reconstructionists" and as 
foreign and domestic missionary association workers, 
sharing the "white man's burden" of bringing the light of 
Christianity to the heathen masses. 102 Comments on both 
of these occasions focused on two key issues: the right of 
women to speak, pray, and sometimes preach in public; and 
the right of women to vote in congregational meetings. 103 
Many clergy and laymen agreed with the Baptist 
minister Andrew Broaddus .who maintained that women had 
important roles to play by instructing children, or 
bringing the gospel to unchurched females, or by supporting 
the 
102The reference, here, is to Rudyard Kipling's poem of 
same name. 
103R l' , e 1g1ous Herald, 20 February, 19 March, and 2 9, 
and 23 April 1868; 25 May, 22, 29 June, 3, 27 July, 3,' 17, 
31 August, and 7 September 1871. 
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forei gn and domest' · · L' ic missionaries with mite box funds.10, 
ike Broadd . us, most also stopped short of approving either 
Political or religious suffrage, or permitting women to 
share t an image which The southern Presbyterian he pulpit, · 
and Pr 
- --=.!::e:..s511,b~yut~e;!;rtligaIJnLJ:JlSd~ n ex condemned as "a shocking 
impropriety, even if it were not manifestly 
unsc . r iptural. "10s According to Broaddus, allowing women 
to speak and pray aloud in churches would set them on a 
conti' nuum which would lead to their becoming 
public lectu . . . anyth" rers on science, politics, or 
pol't~ng else. If it is seemly for them to be 
wit~ ical ~peakers, then they should be . invested 
P
oli't~he right of suffrage, and made eligible for 
i.cal ff· · · · t san t · 0 ices •... The principle hat lea~ ions ~he public religious preaching of women 
re s, logically and pract ically, to all these 
di~~lts. We suspect that in the disregard of the 
corine ~ule in this matter commenced that 
devruption of taste and manners which bas 
wo eloped, of late years, "the strong minded 
ba~~~i" who, dissatisfied with their sex, are 
re ing to secure the rights without the 
sponsibility of men. 106 
104 11 Februa Should w=en speak in public?" Religious urald, 20 
R.eligi~Y 1868; "The Sphere of woman's usefulness," 
us Herald, 14 May 1868. 
10511 J!!l!l p Woman's work in the Church," ~outbern Presbyterian 
resbyterian Index, 20 June 1872· 
106nsh . . . Febru ould women speak in public?" filll1g1ous Herald, 20 
in a :ry_1868. Broaddus reiterated his position in 1871 , 
James eries a letters to the tteral.li between himself, and 
the s. Purefoy of Forestville, North Carolina, who took 
PUbl~pposite vie~. In these later essays, Broa~dus linked 
Victic .speaking women to the 1eaders of the Paris commune, 
"theoria Woodhull Charles Darwin, and Julia Ward Howe, 
lune . nfidel lead~r of the •women's rights' party in 
"Re~~ca," which be termed as a bunch of "crowing hens." 
18 7 l. Y of Rev. James s .. puref 0 y, " B_e 1igious Her ald, 2 2 June 
372 
On the issue of church voting, Broaddus and others insisted 
that allowing women a congregational franchise would 
subvert "the relation of subordination which God originally 
established between the sexes," an argument he also used to 
explain why women should not speak in public. 107 
Although some women and men challenged Broaddus's 
assertions, women's rights was an extremely sensitive issue 
in the postbellum south, in part because of continued 
Southern animosity toward Northern mores but more 
importantly because southerners, more than people living in 
any other region of the united States at the time, feared 
the chaos that they believed would result from further 
inverting what they perceived as the "natural order." As a 
result, Southern women's foreign missionary associations 
attempted to assuage male anxieties during much of this 
time by terming themselves as auxiliaries and by distancing 
themselves from the controversial and potentially divisive 
issue of women's enfranchisement. 108 
1071100 the Scriptures Forbid Females from Voting in 
Church Meetings?" Religious Herald, 13 July 1871, emphasis 
in the original. 
108Both the Baptist Woman's Missionary Union and the 
Methodist Woman's Missionary society included carefully 
worded clauses in their constitutions and by-laws--which 
were patently false--disavowing any intention to seek 
organizational autonomy, although it is clear that, from 
the beginning, the women had determined to create 
independent agencies. The Woman'~ Missionary Union also 
avoided using its formal name until the early 1890s, even 
though it had been in informal usage among Union members 
since the early to mid-1880s. At the Union's 
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Some branch agencies also avoided the controversy 
surrounding women speaking in public by continuing the 
practice adopted by other women's organizations in the 
antebellum period: they invited prominent, sympathetic men 
to conduct their meetings. The first meeting of the 
Virginia Conference of the Methodist Woman's Missionary 
Society, for example, was conducted in tandem by Julianna 
Hayes and the Reverend A.W. Wilson, with Wilson standing 
behind the podium and relaying.the seated Hayes's comments 
and instructions to the assembly. 109 
Others deflected the force of such criticism by 
shifting the debate to discussions of women's maternalism 
and the role women had played in organizing schools, 
building orphanages, operating soup kitchens, collecting 
clothes for the needy, erecting homes to care for the sick 
and elderly, and accumulating Sunday school libraries. At 
times, however, this maternalist agenda brought the new 
female mission societies into collision with male-dominated 
foreign mission boards. on the issue of temperance, for 
example, the Woman's Missionary Union risked challenging 
the Southern Baptist Convention by passing a resolution 
opposing the sale and consumption of liquor and forming an 
organizational meeting in Richmond in 1888, Texas delegate 
Fannie Davis proclaimed that the organization was "not for 
'woman's rights,' .•. we have our rights, the highest of 
which is service." Allen, Century to Celebrate, 44-47. 
109wh · t 1 · i e, E ect Ladies of Centenary, 43-44. 
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informal alliance with the Women's Christian Temperance 
Union (WCTU), even though the Convention had rejected a 
temperance proposal at its 1888 meeting. 110 Despite its 
WCTU connections, however, the Union also stopped short of 
following the WCTU into the campaign for woman 
suffrage. 111 According to Union historian, Catherine B. 
Allen 
The crossroads between women and missions created 
a wide but well-fenced arena in which the WMU 
grappled with social issues. Issues strictly of 
concern to women, but not to missions, fell on 
the fence and received only casual nods ••.. 
Woman suffrage, for example, was not identified as 
either friend or foe of missions1 and accordingly received no official attention. 1 2 
Conclusion 
By the time Beth Shalome Congregation closed the doors 
of its Mayo Street synagogue for good, white Richmond women 
had made significant strides in expanding their influence 
in the city's churches. As an auxiliary army, they had 
labored through the civil War to care for the sick and 
110The Southern Baptist Convention did not endorse the 
activities of the WCTU until 1912. A number of Union 
members belonged to the WCTU, distributed WCTU pamphlets, 
and accompanied Frances Willard and other WCTU members on 
their trips to the South, but only one or two worked for 
women's enfranchisement. 
111The two organizations even shared similar slogans: 
The WCTU slogan was "For God and Home and Native Land"; the 
WMU's was "For God and Home and Every Land." Allen, 
century to Celebrate, 238-39. 
112Allen, Century to Celebrate, 234. 
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wounded, and bring spiritual consolation to those in 
despair. In the men's absence, they had helped to keep 
wartime Sunday School classes in session and, in the 
aftermath of defeat, they had raised money to repair and 
rebuild ruined churches. 
In the process, they gained a greater sense of their 
own organizational abilities and a vision of an enhanced 
role for themselves within the religious c ommunity. For 
the women at Richmond's st. James's Episcopal Church or 
Centenary Methodist, this vision was expressed by their 
appointment as church stewards. For the women who headed 
Richmond's Protestant Episcopal Church Home for Ladies, or 
the Baptist Home for Aged Women, this vision was defined as 
a new mission to elderly women impoverished by the war. 
For still others, the vision set them on the path of 
creating foreign missionary associations at both the local 
and denominational levels. 
From the early nineteenth century, American women had 
achieved their greatest organizational successes in areas 
of social reform where their activities coincided with and 
reinforced gendered beliefs about their greater piety and 
morality in relation to men, so it is not surprising that 
Richmond women made some of their most significant postwar 
gains in the Southern churches. But as the history of 
women's foreign missionary work reveals, the expansion of 
these roles was not without its limitations. In the 
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376 
postwar South, these limitations included the need to 
reassert the subordination of Southern women in a society 
already suffering from the social dislocation incident to 
Emancipation. As a result, Southern women's missionary 
work often became the site of intense postwar debates over 
their appropriate sphere not only in the southern churches 
but in Southern society as well. 
CHAPTER 10 
LADIES' POSTBELLUM ASSOCIATIONS AND 
THE DISCOURSE OF THE LOST CAUSE 
In the decades following the war, Southern white women 
and men went about the task of claiming and cherishing 
their distinctive Southern past. Central to this 
reclamation was the creation of a plethora of 
organizations--veterans associations, historical societies, 
cemetery groups--that re-fought the war in hundreds of 
personal narratives that were delivered as speeches at 
public assemblies or published in newspapers or literary 
magazines. By the end of the century, Richmond women and 
men had formed at least five cemetery associations, several 
chapters of the United confederate Veterans and the United 
Daughters of the Confederacy, and homes for elderly 
veterans or their female dependents. In 1876, the Southern 
Historical Society, dedicated to producing a ''true history" 
of the War between the states, moved to Richmond from New 
Orleans, and began publishing yearly volumes containing 
377 
378 
personal narratives, official documents, poetry, and 
military rosters. 1 
While these organizations helped Southerners come to 
terms with their past, other activities enabled them to lay 
claim to a dominant role for themselves in the new southern 
society that was rising from the war's ruins. In part, 
this involved claiming large portions of public space for 
statues of Confederate heroes and restoring historic sites 
whose connections could be traced to the war. In Richmond, 
this activity was expressed through the development of 
Monument Avenue and the move to save the Confederate White 
House from destruction. women played significant roles in 
this "Lost cause" culture in Richmond, both through their 
roles as chief mourners of dead Confederate soldiers and 
through their efforts to preserve and protect the 
architectural icons of the Cause for future generations. 
The Lost cause 
1The Southern Historical Society was founded in 1869. 
Original founders included ex-confederate generals Robert 
E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, Jubal Early, Wade Hampton, Richard 
Taylor (a son of ex-President Zachary Taylor), Dabney H. 
Maury, P.G.T. Beauregard, simon Buckner, and D.H. Hill, as 
well as Dr. Joseph Jones (a son of Georgia minister Charles 
Colcocke Jones), and New Orleans clergyman Benjamin Palmer. 
"Sixth Annual Report of the Executive committee of the 
Southern Historical Society for the year ending October 
19th, 1878," Southern Historical Society Papers 6 (July-
December 1878): 244-45; Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the 
Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause. and the Emergence of 
the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1987), 50-51. 
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1 .II 
379 
The term "lost cause" probably originated with Edward 
A. Pollard, the wartime editor of the Richmond Examiner, 
whose 750-page history of the war bearing that title was 
published just a year after the Confederate armies laid 
down their arms. 2 While not every Southerner approved of 
Pollard's interpretation, his assertion that "[d]efeat has 
not made 'all our sacred things profane'" no doubt 
resonated in the hearts and minds of many Southern women 
and men struggling to regain their intellectual and moral 
compass in the face of humiliating defeat. 3 "The war has 
left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own 
tears, its own dead," Pollard continued, 
Under these traditions, sons will grow to 
manhood, and lessons sink deep that are learned 
from the lips of widowed mothers. It would be 
immeasurably the worst consequences of defeat in 
this war that the South should lose its moral and 
intellectual distinctiveness as a people, and 
cease to assert its well-known superiourity [sic] 
in civilization, in political scholarship, and in 
-all the standards of individual character over 
the people of the North .... That superiourity 
the war has not conquered or lowered; and the 
South will do right to claim and cherish it. 4 
2Edward A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern 
History of the War of the confederates (New York: E.B. 
Treat & Co., 1866). 
3Pollard, Lost Cause, 751. Gaines Foster has observed 
that many ex-Confederate soldiers believed Pollard lacked 
the military expertise to render an accurate history of the 
war and that his interpretation was too biased in favor of 
his native Virginia. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 
49. 
4Pollard, Lost cause, 751-52. 
380 
Charles Regan Wilson has described the Lost cause as a 
regionally specific "civil religion" complete with rituals, 
iconography, and theology that provided Southerners with 
solace in the face of wrenching loss and helped shape their 
postwar identity as a distinctive regional culture. 5 
Gaines Foster rejects the notion of the Lost Cause as a 
civil religion, maintaining, instead, that it was simply a 
cultural "tradition" which helped ease Southerners' 
adjustment to the New South and provided ''social unity 
during the crucial period of transition," but one which 
they readily discarded in the early twentieth century, once 
it had outlived its usefulness. 6 A major distinction 
between Wilson's and Foster's interpretations is that 
Wilson sees the Lost Cause as more romanticized, backward-
looking, and reactionary, whereas Foster maintains that it 
"did not signal the South's retreat from the future," but 
rather "supported the emergence of a New South. 117 In 
fact, both interpretations contain nuggets of truth. 
5For Wilson, the Lost cause religion was also a form 
of Judeo-Christian existentialism that attempted to 
reconcile profound feelings of "[d]efeat, poverty, guilt, 
disillusionment, isolation, [and] dread for the future." 
Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of 
the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia 
Press, 1980), 9-17. 
6Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 7-8. 
7Ibid., 6. 
381 
Burying Latane 
Since the colonial period, women had traditionally 
participated in the process of preparing bodies for burial. 
In the absence of professional undertaking, many 
eighteenth-century communities relied on women and men who 
functioned as "layers out of the dead," assisting family 
members in the process and washing, dressing, and arranging 
the deceased for interment. 8 Nineteenth-century 
expectations concerning appropriate gender roles for women 
entrusted them with, among other things, the spiritual 
well-being of their families, a duty which extended to 
assuring their loved ones a safe passage to the afterlife 
through proper devotion to prayer and worship. Preparing 
bodies for burial continued to play a part in this 
obligation. 
The cult of mourning that emerged in the early 
nineteenth century, encouraged women, especially those of 
the middle class, to assume central roles in the observance 
of highly ritualized mourning customs touching every facet 
of public and private life. 9 By the mid-nineteenth 
8Martha Pike and Janice Armstrong, A Time to Mourn: 
Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth Century America, (Stony 
Brook N.Y.: The Museums at Stony Brook, 1981), 15. 
9The main factors in this cult of mourning were the 
creation of new rural garden cemeteries in the 1830s, the 
development of undertaking as a profession, the publication 
of a new genre of "consolation literature," and a highly · 
encoded set of bereavement practices, especially affecting 
dress and comportment . . For a detailed discussion of this 
cult of mourning see Karen Haltunnen, confidence Men and 
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382 
century, this mourning cult had spawned a growth industry 
of immense proportions that provided every possible article 
Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 
1830-1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 
especially Chapter 5; Ann Douglas, The Feminization of 
American Culture, 1977 ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 
especially Chapter 6; Ann Douglas, "Heaven Our Horne: 
consolation Literature in the Northern United states, 1830-
1880," American Quarterly 26 (1974): 496-515; Martha v. 
Pike, "In Memory Of: Artifacts Relating to Mourning in 
Nineteenth Century America,'' in Rituals and Ceremonies in 
Popular Culture, ed. by Ray B. Browne, pp. 297-315, 
(Bowling Green, Oh.: Bowling Green university Popular 
Press, 1980); David E. Stannard, "Where All Our Steps Are 
Tending: Death in the American context," in A Time to 
Mourn: Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth century America, 
ed. by Martha v. Pike and Janice Gray Armstrong, pp. 19-30, 
(Stony Brook, N.Y.: The Museums of stony Brook, 1981); Lou 
Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History 
(London: Allen & unwin, 1983). Nearly all of these sources 
rely almost exclusively on Northern evidence to make their 
case, and few credit the Civil War with influencing 
mourning practices. In fact, the two most important 
sources, Douglas's Feminization of American Culture and 
Haltunnen's Confidence Men and Painted Women make little or 
no mention of the war at all, while Pike and Armstrong, in 
their preface to A Time to Mourn, go so far as to reject 
the war as an influence, stating that mourning customs in 
America were already well established before the war began 
and must be seen in the greater context of mourning ritual 
in Europe and America throughout the nineteenth century. 
Although it is true that the first garden-type cemetery, 
Mount Auburn, opened near Boston, Massachusetts, in 1831, 
this does little to negate the impact of more than 600,ooo 
deaths in a short four-year period on the practices 
surrounding bereavement in the United States. Although the 
cult was already underway by 1861, these deaths must be 
seen as an important factor in its persistence in the 
United states well into the late nineteenth century. The 
North moved more rapidly in the direction of the 
professionalizing undertaking in the mid-nineteenth 
century, but the development of undertaking as ·a profession 
in the South was more gradual. Charles Reagan Wilson, 
"Funerals," in Encyclopedia of southern Culture, Charles 
Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, eds. (Chapel Hill: 
university of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 478-79. For 
information on Southern mourning customs, see Patricia R. 
Loughridge and Edward D.C. Campbell, Jr., Women in Mourning 
(Richmond: Museum of the confederacy, [1984]). 
r 
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383 
needed to signify that a death had occurred. 10 In their 
black bombazine dresses, heavy veils, and jewelry fashioned 
from the hair of the deceased, middle-class women 
frequently became the primary purveyors of this message to 
the outside world. 11 
With its unprecedented loss of life, the American 
Civil War deepened the importance of this role for American 
women, and extended it to include caring for deceased men 
who were neither close kin nor members of the immediate 
community. 12 During the war, hospital matrons like Phebe 
Pember routinely washed and dressed corpses and carried 
them to local cemeteries in hospital ambulances, while 
10Taylor, Mourning Dress, 154. 
11According to Martha Pike, during the last three 
decades of the nineteenth century, etiquette books 
typically devoted at least one chapter to a discussion of 
the appropriate accoutrements of mourning which extended 
from clothing to such things as black-bordered 
handkerchiefs, stationery, and cartes des visites, fans, 
parasols, and blued steel straight pins topped with jet 
beads for securing mourning veils. Bombazine was a 
favorite fabric of mourning attire for women because it was 
not shiny. By comparison, most books devote little 
attention to mourning attire for men, who often simply 
complemented their grey or black clothing with armbands or 
hatbands of black crepe. Of course, highly elaborate 
mourning costumes were expensive and thus could only be 
worn by affluent women. Poorer women either ignored the 
custom completely, or made do by dyeing existing clothing. 
Pike, ''In Memory Of," 306-11; Taylor, Mourning Dress, 290; 
Loughridge and Campbell, Women in Mourning, 8-17. 
12Drew Gilpin Faust, "Race, Gender, and Confederate 
Nationalism: William D. Washington's Burial of Latane," in 
Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War, by Drew 
Gilpin Faust (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 
1992), 156. 
384 
other women were called upon to officiate at funerals when 
no male clergy were available. Women grew so accustomed to 
the gruesome realties of death that they reacted to them as 
matter-of-factly as Adelaide Clopton did in this letter to 
her mother, Nannie: 
Mr. Currie died of an illness of two hours and a 
half. His health has been indifferent for a long 
time. Mrs. Currie was in Buckingham and he was 
on a visit to her when his death occurred .. 
. [When] Mrs. Currie brought the body down, it was 
in a very advanced stage of decay; it was in a 
coffin within a coffin yet the corruption came 
thro' and fell on the floor, we had to put sand 
around the coffin, and next morning early when 
the coffin was moved, it just ran as if poured 
from an open vessel. The house was like a 
charnel-house, and kept me sick all the time. 13 
After this graphic description, Adelaide Clopton launched 
into a discussion of her canning and preserving activities, 
an indication that she, at least, viewed preserving dead 
bodies for burial in the context of women's other domestic 
duties. 
Richmond artist William D. Washington captured the 
greater significance this act had assumed for Southern 
women during the Civil War in The Burial of Latane, a 
painting based on a real-life incident in which Catherine 
Brockenbrough and several of her female relatives buried 
Lieutenant William Latane, a twenty-nine-year-old doctor 
who was the only Confederate soldier killed in J.E.B. 
13Adelaide Clopton to Nannie Clopton, 10 July 1862, 
Clopton Family Correspondence, ESBL. 
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385 
Stuart's famous ride around McClellan's troops shortly 
before the opening of the seven Days' campaign in the 
summer of 1862. 14 When Latane's body was brought to 
Brockenbrough's Summer Hill farm, the women washed it and 
committed it to the soil without benefit of male clergy, 
assisted only by a lone male slave who dug the grave and 
stood on the edge of Washington's painting, witnessing the 
scene. When Washington began to cast his painting in 1864, 
prominent Richmond women, including Jennie Pegram, Mattie 
Paul, Lizzie Giles, and Mattie Waller, served as the 
model.s. 15 After the war, Thompson's painting become a 
primary icon of the Lost Cause through the sale of 
engravings which were, ironically, largely the work of 
northern print makers. Mrs. William Lyne later remarked 
that the painting symbolized "the sacredness of those days 
14The painting was based on a poem by John Thompson 
that was published in the southern Literary Messenger and 
reprinted in Richmond papers shortly after the burial took 
place. 
15John R. Thompson, "The Burial of Latane, 11 Southern 
Churchman, 10 October 1862; William D. Washington, The 
Burial of Latane, oil on canvas, Museum of the Confederacy, 
Richmond, Virginia; Mary Newton Stanard, Richmond: Its 
People and Its Story (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1923), 
193-93; Drew Faust, "Race, Gender, and confederate 
Nationalism," 148-59; Mark E. Neeley, Jr., Harold Holzer, 
and Gabor s. Boritt, The confederate Image: Prints of the 
Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 
Press, 1987), xii. Imogen Warwick and Annie Gibson were 
models for the two young girls. 
I' 
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386 
when the women of the south had to take the place of men 
and even read the burial service for the dead." 16 
White Richmond women extended this wartime duty into 
the postbellum period by forming at least five · 
organizations whose primary purpose was to care for the 
bodies of dead Confederate soldiers who had streamed into 
Richmond and its hospitals from battlefields throughout 
Virginia. 17 Southern women who joined these groups and 
participated in the yearly ceremonies did so not just out 
of their obedience to notions of women's domestic duty, but 
also out of their greater loyalty to their fallen nation. 
16Mrs. William Lyne, "Restoration of Arlington 
Mansion," quoted in Neely, Holzer, and Boritt, The 
Confederate Image, xiii. 
17The Hollywood Memorial Association, the Ladies' 
Memorial Association for the confederate Dead at Oakwood, 
and the Hebrew Ladies' Memorial Association were all formed 
during this period of time. See the Ladies' Hollywood 
Memorial Association, Register of the Confederate Dead 
Interred in Hollywood cemetery, Richmond, Va. (Richmond: 
Gary, Clemmitt & Jones, 1869), preface; minutes, 19 April 
1866, Minute Book, Records of the Ladies' Memorial 
Association for the Confederate Dead at Oakwood, ESBL, 
hereafter cited as LMACDQ; George Jacobs to Mrs. R. c. 
Levy, Richmond, Virginia, 17 May 1866, George Jacobs 
Correspondence, Correspondence File, AJA. Evidence for the 
Manchester and Shockoe Hill Cemetery associations is 
extremely sketchy, so I have not included them in this 
discussion of Richmond cemetery associations. Ten women 
from the Shockoe Hill group signed an undated letter to the 
Richmond Common Council asking for funds. Letter to the 
Richmond Common Council from the Ladies of Shockoe Hill 
Cemetery, n.d., Richmond city, Minutes of the common 
Council, LV. In June 1866, the Manchester association had 
at least twenty-four members. By this time, however, the 
group was encountering criticism from those who believed 
the association should concentrate its efforts on 
supporting the widows and orphans of deceased soldiers. 
Richmond Dispatch, 29 June 1866. 
387 
Thus a formerly private domestic activity was transformed, 
through the crucible of war, into a public act of patriotic 
duty that became part of the culture of the Lost Cause. 
Formed between 1866 and 1867, the Hollywood Memorial 
Association and the Ladies' Memorial Association for the 
Confederate Dead at Oakwood shared the major portion of 
this responsibility, with Hollywood Cemetery receiving the 
bodies of those men who died in hospitals in the western 
portion of the city, and Oakwood receiving the bodies of 
those who died in the eastern sector. 18 The Hebrew 
Ladies' Memorial Association tended the graves of Jewish 
soldiers, and smaller cemetery associations, about which 
very little is known, cared for Confederate dead in 
Manchester Cemetery and in the cemetery on Shockoe Hill. 19 
Although the three larger associations relied on 
religious affiliation as an important cr,iterion for 
18Mary Mitchell, Hollywood cemetery: The History of a 
Southern Shrine, (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1985), 
51. 
19w. Asbury Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present 
(Richmond: L.H. Jenkins, 1912), 517; Michael B. Chesson, 
Richmond after the War, 1865-1890 (Richmond: Virginia State 
Library, 1981), 17. The number of Confederate Jewish 
veterans buried in this cemetery was extremely small, only 
five members of the Light Infantry Blues, three other men 
from units in South Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana, and 
Miss Belle T. Lyons, a clerk in the Confederate Treasury 
Department. Hebrew cemetery Records, BAMAT. The 
Confederate Section at Hollywood Cemetery also contains the 
remains of a woman, Catherine Hodges, who worked as a nurse 
in Richmond hospitals. Mitchell, Hollywood Cemetery, 51. 
Despite its size, the ceremonies conducted by the Hebrew 
Ladies' Memorial Assocjation in the late 1860s drew large 
crowds. Southern Opinion, 23 May 1868. 
,,.,,, 
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388 
membership, with the exception of the Hebrew Ladies' 
Association which drew its members solely from women of the 
Jewish faith, membership in the remainder of these groups 
was ecumenical in scope. The executive committee of the 
Oakwood association included women who identified 
themselves as Episcopalians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, 
catholics, and Disciples of Christ, while the vice-
presidents chosen at the first meeting of the Hollywood 
association represented six of the city's major 
denominations. 20 Both the Hollywood and Oakwood 
associations adopted a two-tiered system of membership that 
admitted "properly vouched for" women and young girls drawn 
from the professional and semi-professional classes. All 
were expected to pay annual dues of $1 per year or $10 for 
a life membership.21 
Both organizations also raised additional funds 
through annual bazaars, lectures, tableaux, and other 
20Minutes, 19 April 1866, Minute Book, LMACDO, ESBL; 
Mitchell, Hollywood cemetery, 64-68. 
21Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, Register of 
the Confederate Dead Interred in Hollywood Cemetery. 
Richmond, Va., n.p.; Minutes, 10 April 1866, LMACDO 
Records, ESBL. As late as 1915, the Hollywood 
Association's dues remained unchanged. See Ladies' 
Hollywood Memorial Association, our Confederate Dead, 
(Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1915), 20. A handful of 
men and boys also became affiliated with the groups, 
usually as life members. Of the thirty-nine men and boys 
who joined the Oakwood cemetery association in 1866, for 
example, thirty-two, or 82 percent, purchased lifetime 
memberships. Most male lifetime members listed their 
residence as someplace other than Richmond. Membership 
Roster, LMACDO Records, ESBL. 
,. 
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389 
dramatic presentations. They also appealed periodically to 
the R' ichmond common council for cash donations; the free 
use of gas 
Ord' 1.nances 
for fundraising benefits; the passage of city 
protecting cemetery property from defacement; or 
for a new fe nee to protect the soldiers' section from 
tres Passers. 22 A bazaar held in the spring of 1867 was 
ty ' Pl.cal of the kind of fund raisers in which the women 
engaged. occupying three floors of Robert F. Morrison's 
Warehouse on the corner of 15th and Main, the bazaar lasted 
two week 5 , and included the sale of war mementoes, fancy 
, inkstands made from the bones of horses killed needlework . 
in battle , porcelains of Robert E. Lee, refreshments, and 
of letters signed by well-known confederate 
an auction 
general s. This bazaar netted the Association $18,000 on an 
initi 1 . a investment of $154. 
1.ttle concrete evidence survives concerning the L' 
relat· 1.ve size 
and membership of either of the two larger 
asso . . Cl.at' ions; but it seems that oaJ<wood, which claimed 328 
in 1866, was probablY the smaller of the two, and members . 
drew it s membership from a 1ess affluent portion of the 
An 1868 article in the ~outhern opinion Populat1.' on. 23 
22M, Februar itchell, Hollywood cemetery, 71-2; bundles dated 11 
Octabe Y 1867, November 1871, 15 June,1870, and June to 
Coun .r 1877, Richmond citY papers, Minutes of the common 
Cl.l, LV. 
23 ConfedeAppeal to the Ladies' Memorial Association for the 
n,d rate Dead at oakwood cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, 
Conf~dRecords of the Ladies' Memorial Assodation for the 
erate Dead at oakwood, ESBL, According to Michael 
390 
criticizing the Hollywood association's financial 
operations referred to the Oakwood association's 
"comparatively obscure membership" and its "limited 
means. 1124 By comparison, the sixteen women who functioned 
as Hollywood's first governing body included the wives of 
four doctors, a druggist, a land agent, a judge, the owner 
of one of the city's largest flour mills, and a lawyer and 
bank president, as well as an unmarried daughter of one of 
Richmond's most prominent Jewish families. 25 
The centerpiece of each association was an elaborate 
spring ceremony to commemorate fallen confederate soldiers 
by decorating their graves with bouquets and floral 
wreaths. The Oakwood Association chose May 10, the 
anniversary of Stonewall Jackson's death, as the date of 
their first graveside observance in 1866, while the 
Chesson, 11 Shockoe Hill Cemetery, opened in 1826 on the 
extreme northern edge of the city, was the cemetery for 
most antebellum middle- and upper-class whites ... 
. Beginning shortly before the war, whites who could not 
afford lots elsewhere were buried at Oakwood Cemetery, 
northeast of Church Hill 
.Hollywood. .became both socially and symbolically 
the most important of Richmond's postwar cemeteries ... 
. It was established in the 1840s by a group of prominent 
Richmonders who desired a rural cemetery like Mount Auburn, 
which they had seen on a visit to Cambridge 
(Massachusetts]." Chesson, Richmond after the War, 18. 
24southern Opinion, 30 May 1868. 
25Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, Register of 
the Confederate Dead Interred in Hollywood Cemetery. 
Richmond, Va.; Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present, 
318, 363, 369-70, and 462; Myers/Mordecai/Hays Family 
Papers, VHS. 
... 
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391 
Hollywood Association selected May 31st for its 
celebration. 26 All the stores and businesses in Richmond 
usually closed for the Hollywood celebration; and school 
children were given a holiday so they could participate in 
the city-wide parade which attracted thousands of 
spectators. In May 1868, for instance, a procession of 
20,000 made its way to Hollywood carrying "floral chaplets, 
crosses, wreaths, festoon, and bouquets" which had been 
fashioned into floral arrangements in the days preceding 
the event from flowers donated to the various Richmond 
26southern Opinion, 16 May 1868; Southern Opinion, 6 
June 1868; Mitchell, Hollywood cemetery, 68-71. In 1885, 
at the urging of General Anderson, the Oakwood association 
shifted its graveside service to May 30, "to join with 
other Associations in the endeavor to make the Confederate 
Memorial Day a National Holiday by celebrating it on the 
day for the Federal Memorial." This move proved 
unsuccessful, however, because attendance by clergy, 
military associations, and the general public at the 
oakwood service dwindled, no doubt due to competition with 
the celebration conducted by the larger and apparently more 
popular (or powerful) Hollywood association. By 1886, 
Oakwood returned to its traditional May 10th date, which it 
c ontinued to observe until well into the twentieth century. 
Minutes, LMACDO Records, ESBL. As late as 1922, the 
Oakwood association was still holding its celebration on or 
around the May 10th anniversary of Jackson's death. In 
Richmond, today, ceremonies remembering the Lost Cause are 
still held along Monument Avenue, a major boulevard in the 
west end of the city containing statuary to fallen 
Confederate heroes. Called the Massing of the Flags, this 
ceremony, conducted by the Richmond chapter of the United 
Daughters of the Confederacy, is held on or around June 
3rd. Angie Parrott, "'Love Makes Memory Eternal': The 
United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, 
1897-1920," in The Edge of the south: Life in Nineteenth-
Century Virginia, Edward L. Ayers and John c. Willis, eds. 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 219-
238. 
.. 
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392 
churches. 27 Twenty-three military companies from 
Richmond, Manchester, Norfolk, and Hampton, and a 
contingent of cadets from the Virginia Military Institute 
accompanied the marchers, while the Brook Avenue and 
Rocketts omnibuses provided free transportation for 
residents living in the city's east and west ends. At the 
grave of J.E.B. Stuart, a dense crowd formed to view the 
newly unveiled bust by local sculptor, Edward Virginius 
Valentine, inscribed at the base with the words of his 
sister, Benetta: "Dead, yet Alive--Mortal, yet 
Immortal. 1128 
This use of omnibuses to transport participants to the 
cemetery site suggests the determination of the female 
organizers to include all members of the white community in 
the celebration. Located on the flats extending to the 
east, where Shockoe Creek meets the James River, Rocketts 
was the location of Richmond's tobacco warehouses, flour 
mills, and iron foundries, as well as home to the Irish and 
German immigrant working-class section of the city. During 
the war, it had been an important industrial and 
manufacturing center for the Confederacy. Twice in 1866, 
it had been the scene of racial tension between whites 
living in Rocketts and blacks living nearby on the grounds 
27 southern Opinion, 6 June 1868. 
28Mitchell, Hollvwood Cemetery, 68-71. Cavalry 
officer J.E.B. Stuart .was k i lled in May 1864 during a 
skirmish with Union troops near Yellow Tavern. 
393 
surrounding the former Chimborazo Hospita1. 29 Although 
more affluent and less turbulent than Rocketts, Brook Road 
to the north of Richmond was more remote from the capital 
and was formerly used primarily as a route for transporting 
goods into and out of the city. 30 
In the years to follow, events such as this one became 
annual celebrations in Richmond and elsewhere throughout 
the South, as women in other southern communities formed 
memorial societies of their own. 31 With the Confederacy 
in ruins, it was left to Southerners to reclaim the honor 
and glory of their "Lost cause" from the scrap heap of 
defeat. Beginning during the war, southern women and men 
had taken up their pens to chronicle the brave deeds of the 
southern armies and the patriotism of its valiant women who 
stoically endured privation as part of their patriotic 
29Chesson, Richmond after the War, 103. 
30Ernory M. Thomas, The confederate State of Richmond: 
A Biography of the Capital (Austin: University of Texas 
Press, 1971), 16-17; Chesson, Richmond after the War, 7 and 
123; Stanard, Richmond: Its People and Its Story, 220; and 
Samuel J.T. Moore, Jr., Moore's complete Civil war Guide to 
Richmond, rev. ed. (n.p.: n.d., 1987). 
31LeeAnn Whites is currently at work on the cemetery 
associations in Georgia. LeeAnn Whites, "Women and the 
Lost cause or 'Stand by Your Man: The Ladies' Memorial 
Association and the Reconstruction of White Manhood in the 
New South" (Paper presented at the Ninth Berkshire 
Conference on the History of Women, 11-13 June 1993, Vassar 
College, Poughkeepsie, New York). 
I 
I· 
394 
duty. 32 Now, with the South defeated, they shifted their 
attention to honoring the memory of "the most defeated of 
Southern men," whose acts of heroism were likely never to 
appear in accounts of the War written in the North. 33 By 
setting into motion ceremonies designed to remind all 
Southerners of their sacrifice, the women of the cemetery 
associations participated in the process of preserving the 
memory of those who had given their lives to protect 
Southern women and the Southern home, thus assuring that 
these men would remain "Dead, yet Alive--Mor~al, yet 
Immortal," in the minds of their country. 34 By focusing 
these ceremonies on the sacrifices of Southern men, the 
32 Drew Gilpin Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate 
Women and the Narratives of war," Journal of American 
History 76.4 (1990); 1200-28. For a more pessimistic 
evaluation of civil War literature, see Daniel Aaron, The 
Unwritten Civil war: American Writers and the civil War, 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). 
33This phrase comes from LeeAnn Whites, "'Stand by 
Your Man~'" In her paper, Whites also suggests that . 
Confederate women's attachment to the confederacy carried 
over into their participation in white supremacy movements 
such as the Ku Klux Klan. Although white Richmond women 
participated in a "genteel" form of white supremacy 
embodied in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and 
the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, I have found no 
evidence of their involvement in terrorist organizations 
like the Klan in Richmond. 
34By 1900, these ladies' cemetery societies were 
organized into a regional organization: the Confederated 
southern Memorial Association. Mrs. R.H. Lawrence, 
"Confederate Organizations: Their Purposes and 
Achievements," ESBL. 
•-' I 
,,, 
395 
women also deflected attention from their own heroic 
contributions. 35 
In addition to the yearly graveside observances, the 
women of Hollywood undertook two additional long-term goals 
aimed at reclaiming the Confederacy's honor. In 1866, they 
began work on a project "to erect a chapel or suitable 
monument" to commemorate all who died, and, in 1870, the y 
turned their attention to the job of returning to Southern 
soil the remains of all Confederate soldiers who were 
buried near the Gettysburg battlefield site in 
Pennsylvania. 3 6 
The association's original plan called for a separate 
monument for each state that had contributed men to the 
southern armies. When this scheme proved too costly, it 
was abandoned in favor of installing a single monument 
35Gaines Foster has commented that, by the turn of the 
century, reunion celebrations organized by Confederate 
veterans' groups more frequently invited Southern women to 
participate in historical tableaux. Usually, these women 
were young, unmarried women who were chosen on the basis of 
their familial connections to Confederate patriots. 
Confederate President Jefferson Davis's daughter, Winnie, 
became a favorite at these ceremonies, which often became 
occasions to reinforce Southern women's subordinate role. 
Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 136-37. 
36Additional short-term goals included accurately 
identifying all existing Confederate graves in the cemetery 
and publishing a guide showing their location; erecting 
granite blocks at the corners and along the sides of the 
individual sections; levelling, grading, and rolling the 
sections, carriage ways, and footpaths; installing granite 
drainage gutters; and planting ornamental trees and shrubs. 
Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, Register of the 
Confederate Dear Interred in Hollywood Cemetery. Richmond. 
Va., preface, 71-2, 83-92. 
396 
built from granite blocks hewn from the James River quarry. 
Designed by Charles Dimmock, the Memorial Granite Pile, in 
the shape of a huge Egyptian-style pyramid, measured forty-
five feet square at the base and ninety feet high. 
Erecting it did not come cheaply: it cost the association 
$26,000 and necessitated the extension of their fund 
raising efforts throughout the South. 37 Members of the 
Richmond-based group worked with women in other Southern 
states who operated as local agents to solicit 
contributions on the Association's behalf. In North 
Carolina, for example, Bessie Drury and Nannie Davis sought 
donations for the Association in Charlotte and New Berne, 
while other female agents collected money in Raleigh and 
Wilmington. 38 Interstate fund raising efforts such as 
these elevated Hollywood Cemetery's importance as a 
national Confederate shrine at the same time that it 
provided the Hollywood women with experience in conducting 
a project of regional and quasi-national scope. This 
expertise would prove useful in Hollywood's campaign to 
37Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, Our 
Confederate Dead, frontispiece; Mitchell, Hollywood 
Cemetery, 73-4. Later, this monument was sometimes referred 
to as the "Pyramid Monument." Ladies' Hollywood Memorial 
Association Our Confederate Dead, 10. 
38E.H. (Mrs. William) Brown, Richmond, to Mrs. Bessie 
Drury, Charlotte, North Carolina, 12 October 1866; Nannie 
Davis, New Berne, North Carolina, to Bessie Drury, 
Charlotte, North Carolina, 13 December 1866, Drury Lacy 
Papers, SHC. 
397 
return the Confederate dead at Gettysburg battlefield to 
Southern soi1. 39 
Between October 1863 and March 1864, the bodies of 
3,564 Union soldiers who died in the battle were 
disinterred and relocated in the new national battlefield 
cemetery at Gettysburg which Abraham Lincoln dedicated on 
November 19, 1863, while the bodies of slain Confederate 
soldiers lay in mass graves or sometimes shallow trenches, 
with as many as 150 bodies to a trench. Skeletal remains 
were scattered throughout the Pennsylvania farmland, often 
exposed to full view and occasionally treated with 
disrespect by Pennsylvania farmers who considered their 
presence a nuisance and an interruption to the rhythm of 
the growing season. 40 
The recovery of these bodies was a huge undertaking, 
and one for which the Association, despite its former 
successful fund raising, was ill-prepared to accomplish. 
Nearly three thousand confederate soldiers lay in the 
fields of Gettysburg, and the cost of removing them was 
estimated to be nearly $10,000. 41 Still the women 
remained undaunted. Rejecting a suggestion that they 
39The Memorial Granite Pile was installed in a lavish 
ceremony in 1870, after two years of vigorous fund raising. 
Mitchell, Hollywood cemetery, 73-4; Richmond Whig, 1 June 
1870. 
40Mitchell, Hollywood Cemetery, 83-86. 
41 Ibid., 85-86. 
398 
Petition the Pennsylvania legislature to help defray the 
cost, the women chose, instead, to rely on southern 
resources to underwrite the project. At the 1871 Memorial 
Day c elebration, they raised approximately $4,000 through 
donation boxes placed strategically throughout the 
cemetery, and, by September 1872, the first bodies began to 
By October 1873, the powhatan steamship company arrive. 
elivered a total of 2,935 bodies to Rocketts' Wharf had d . 
for re· interment in Hollywood. 
women negotiated with the pennsylvania father and The 
son team of Samuel and Rufus weaver who identified the 
efore they were shipped south. This was a remains b . 
and time-consuming project which involved gruesome 
search' ing the bodies for marks of identification a
nd
, 
sionall d Y, reassembling bodies dismembere by occa . 
CUltivat· ion or neglect. 
ies with w w re diligence and great care, the eavers e 
aut, although they performed their 
dut· 
never f Ully compensated for the work, When the project was 
in 1873, the Hollywood association still owed the 
completed . 
men more than $6,000, 
the 
and, although Rufus weaver pursued 
the beginning of the twentieth 
Association until 
century, th the debt was never paid, in part because e 
ciation•s financial resources were being diverted to asso . 
,, 
;,,• 
••• ,.., 
' • I 
399 
the campaign to erect a statue to ex-confederate General 
Robert E. Lee (See below.) . 42 
By the early 1870s, the Ladies' Hollywood Memorial 
Association and the cemetery it represented had become a 
powerful force in the iconography of the Lost Cause. In 
Hollywood, nestled among the boxwood and elders were 
the bloody fruits of Williamsburg, Seven Pines, 
Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mill, Cold Harbor, 
Savage's Station, Frazier's Farm, Malvern Hill, 
Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, Fort Harrison, Yellow 
Tavern, Drewry's Bluff and many other fields, 
where Confederate valor illuminated the pages of 
history. 43 
By restoring these Confederate dead to their native soil 
the Hollywood women gained the respect and admiration of a 
grateful South; by becoming the custodians of the South's 
"martyred heroes," the women extended their role as 
protectors of children to that of being guardians of the 
Confederacy's "fallen sons. 1144 
42Mitchell, Hollywood Cemetery, 87-92, and 112-13, 
Other projects in the late nineteenth century prevented the 
Association from resolving the debt: a campaign to restore 
the Confederate White House in the early 1890s; the 
installation of the Soldiers' and sailors' Monument in 
Libby Hill in 1894. 
43Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association, Our 
confederate Dead, 9. These words are inscribed on the base 
of the Memorial Granite Pile. 
44LeeAnn Whites, "The civil War as a Crisis of Gender" 
(Paper presented at LeMoyne College, Syracuse, New York, 
spring 1989, 8-11); I am indebted to Robyn Muncy for 
suggesting this paper to me; Donna K. Krug, "The Enemy at 
the Door in the Confederacy: A Crisis of Honor" (Paper 
presented at the Southern Historical Association 
Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, 10 November 1989); and 
Drew Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice," 1200-28. 
... 
· ... "' 
. .,,,, 
, . ff!'" 
I 
1 
JI 
•• 
;,JJ 
400 
Stone Heroes 
Decorating graves in annual memorial day celebrations 
serves to illustrate Charles Reagan Wilson's point that the 
Lost Cause was a romanticized backward-looking movement. 
Yet, other activities by Richmond women validate Gaines M. 
Foster's contention that the Lost cause culture provided 
white Southerners with a usable past that helped them 
bridge the chasm between the Old south and the New South, 
while reasserting their social and cultural dominance in 
the region by claiming increasingly large portions of 
public urban space for monuments and museums commemorating 
the South's role in the Civil War. In her analysis of 
confederate monument building in Wilmington and Raleigh, 
North Carolina, Catherine Bishir has identified two 
distinct phases: the installation of funereal markers and 
cemetery statuary during the first phase which lasted from 
the late 1860s to the 1880s; and a second phase, beginning 
in the 1890s, which involved the movement of Confederate 
monuments out of cemeteries to occupy open public spaces 
along urban thoroughfares or in courthouse greens or town 
squares. 45 
The second phase of monument building began early in 
Richmond, stimulated in part by Robert E. Lee's death from 
a stroke in 1870. By the mid-1870s Richmond women from the 
45catherine w. Bishir, "Landmarks of Power: Building a 
southern Past, 1885-1915,n southern Cultures Inaugural 
Issue (1993): 5-10. 
I 
~ 
•• 
" ,, 
401 
Hollywood Cemetery Association had organized as the Ladies' 
Lee Monument Association and were hard at work alongside 
the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, a group 
of Confederate veterans headed by ex-Confederate General 
Jubal T. Early, raising money throughout the South to 
commission a massive statue in Lee's honor. Before long, 
these two groups were embroiled in a heated dispute over 
the control of funds, the design of the sculpture, its 
eventual location, and even the material from which it was 
made. 46 In the early 1880s, these disagreements were 
resolved by Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee and the Richmond 
Common Council through the creation of an independent 
organization, the Lee Monument Association whose board of 
directors was composed of government leaders and women from 
the Ladies' Lee Monument Association, who had raised the 
bulk of the money to bankroll the project. 47 Although the 
46Marie Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls: Richmond, 
Virginia, and Its Peopl~ (Chapel Hill: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1994), 188-89, 207-210; Virginius Dabney, 
Richmond: The Story of a city, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: 
University Press of Virginia, 1990), 241-43 (All subsequent 
citations are to this edition); Foster, Ghosts of the 
confederacy, 98-100; and Christian, Richmond: Her Past and 
Present, 323. Jubal Early seems to have opposed decisions 
concerning nearly facet of the project, including the 
choice of a French sculptor (Jean Antoine Mercie) over 
Richmond's own Edward Virginius Valentine, and also the use 
of Maine marble, which he considered a mark of regional 
disloyalty. 
47According to both Tyler-McGraw and Foster, the Lee 
Monument Association eventually resolved most of the 
objections raised by Early and the Association of the Army 
of Northern Virginia in favor of the women. Tyler-McGraw, 
At the Falls, 189; Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy, 100. 
A 
402 
Lee statue was not unveiled until May 1890, its beginnings 
in the early 1870s places Richmonders, and especially 
Richmond women, well in the forefront of this second phase 
of monument building. 
While Confederates in Raleigh and Wilmington chose to 
install their monuments in "prime civic spaces" such as 
Raleigh's Union square, the ladies of the Lee Monument 
Association placed the massive Lee statue on eleven acres 
of undeveloped land outside the city's western boundary. 
The land was donated to the project by Richmonder Otway 
Allen, a former Confederate veteran. 48 over the next 
thirty-five years, as Lee's statue was joined by towering 
likenesses of Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Matthew 
Fontaine Maury, and Jefferson Davis, Monument Avenue grew 
in importance both as a residential community for white 
urban elites on the city's West End and as a locus for 
public celebrations perpetuating the culture and ideology 
of the Lost Cause. 49 
48Bishir, "Landmarks of Power," 5; Dabney, Richmond: 
The Story of a City, 242. By 1892, Allen's donation was 
annexed to the city. Tyler-McGraw, At the Falls, 207-09. 
49The Stuart and Davis monuments were installed in 
1907; Stonewall Jackson's, in 1919, and Matthew Fontaine 
Maury's, in 1929. Maury was a native Richmonder and a 
Confederate naval officer crediting with developing the 
technology that was used to mine the James River to protect 
it from amphibious attack. By 1921, the confederate heroes 
immortalized in stone along Monument Avenue were joined by 
the Battle Abbey, a museum formed by confederate veterans 
that became the repository for paintings and manuscripts 
depicting the history of the South during the Civil War. 
In 1946, the Battle Abbey became the home of the Virginia 
I I~ U·' 
I J ,, 
I I} 
' ii 
11 
•·,·~ 
403 
Conclusion 
One of the most important and enduring social roles 
for white women in the South after the Civil War was their 
creation of ladies' memorial associations whose primary 
purpose was to set in motion a series of ritualized 
observances aimed at preserving the memory of dead 
Confederate soldiers as the fallen heroes of a noble, 
albeit lost, cause. 50 Relying on organizational skills 
formed in the benevolent groups of the antebellum period 
and refined in the soldiers' aid societies and gunboat 
associations of the wartime years, urban women in Richmond 
and all over the South organized cemetery associations to 
redeem the honor of Confederate soldiers and retell the 
history of the Civil War from the southern perspective. 
Over time, many of these cemetery associations evolved 
into chapters of the united Daughters of the Confederacy, a 
regional organization dedicated, in part, to assuring that 
white Southern children of succeeding generations learned 
the "real" history of the war for Southern independence 
through the publication and dissemination of classroom 
Historical Society. In 1996, after considerable 
discussion, Richmonders finally broke with Confederate 
tradition regarding Monument Avenue by installing a statue 
of African-American tennis champion, Arthur Ashe. Dabney, 
Richmond: The Story of a city, 304-05, 349. 
50charles Wilson, Baptized in Blood; Foster, Ghosts of 
the Confederacy, 36-46; Whites, "'-Stand by Your Man"'; 
Bishir, "Landmarks of Power," 1-45. 
404 
texts that lauded Confederate victories and portrayed 
Northerners as depraved and godless marauders bent on 
destroying a near-idyllic Southern society. In Richmond, 
the Ladies' Hollywood Memorial Association would also later 
provide the nucleus of the Confederate Memorial Literary 
Society, an organization whose goal was the accumulation of 
an archive of Confederate memorabilia that became the basis 
for the extensive holdings of the Museum of the 
Confederacy, the premier research facility for contemporary 
historians examining the American Civil War from the 
Confederate perspective. 51 
As they reclaimed historic buildings and erected 
statuary in honor of those who died, white women in 
Richmond and elsewhere throughout the former Confederacy 
put their mark on the physical and cultural landscape of 
New South cities that emerged from Reconstruction. At the 
same time, the women's efforts helped reassert and extend 
the influence of a conservative Southern culture that 
demanded their continued subordination to white southern 
51Amy Feely, "Southern Lady Meets New Woman: Women of 
the Confederate Memorial Literary Society and the Lost 
Cause in Richmond" (Paper presented at the Northern 
Virginia Community College Conference on the History of 
Women in the Chesapeake, 15 November 1996, Annandale, 
Virginia). The Confederate Memorial Literary Society was 
formed by a group of women from the Hollywood Association 
in 1890 to save the confederate White House from 
destruction. Although much of the Museum of the 
Confederacy's collections document the Civil War from the 
military perspective, its holdings also contain useful 
information describing the role of Southern women. 
"' 
Jl 
I :;,ti' 
., 
' ,, 
men. In the process, the Confederate "sisterhood" that 
emerged briefly in the gunboat societies and female 
militias was subverted. While earlier groups made some 
claims to equality, the latter clearly placed Southern 
women in a subordinate role in southern society. 
405 
At the same time that Richmonders erected monuments to 
Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and 
stonewall Jackson, they also unveiled a single statue to 
Virginia's Confederate women. But instead of depicting 
real women like Sally Tompkins or Maria Clopton, they chose 
to represent Confederate women, symbolically, through the 
mythical goddess Minerva, mourning the loss of her dead 
sons. By this image, Richmonders not only erased the 
identities of real Confederate heroines, they also focused 
attention on women's traditional role as mothers whose 
primary wartime contribution was to sacrifice sons to the 
war. ~2 
52The statue, Virginia Mourning Her Dead, depicts a 
seated Minerva, clad in armor. In her left hand, a 
Confederate flag is lowered to the ground in defeat. At 
her feet is a large, ivy-covered scroll. The original 
bronze sculpture was installed at the Virginia Military 
Institute in Lexington, Virginia, on June 23, 1903, to 
commemorate ten V.M.I cadets killed in the battle of New 
Market on May 15, 1862. In October 1914, Richmond sculptor 
Moses Ezekiel presented a bronze model of his statue to the 
women of the confederate Memorial Literary Society. In his 
remarks at its unveiling, confederate veteran John Lamb 
called attention to the many Virginia mothers who "sent 
their sons into battle in the spirit of the Spartan and 
Roman matrons" and whose "patient waiting at home" 
furnished "the most striking example of devotion to duty 
this world has ever known." Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Memoirs 
from the Baths of Diocletian, Joseph Gutman and Stanl ey F. 
,. .. 
111, "' 
I 
' ., ,, 
I 
,, 
,, 
11 
·" I• 
406 
Chyet, eds. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), 
103-111, 402; John Lamb Papers, MC3 L-544, ESBL; Moses 
Ezekiel, Virginia Mourning Her Dead, three-quarter size 
bronze replica, 1900, Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, 
Virginia. Sally Tompkins was later memorialized in a 
stained glass window at st. James's Episcopal Church in 
Richmond in 1960. Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 March 1960. 
CHAPTER 11 
"THE WHITE WINGS OF EROS": 
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONS IN 
CONFEDERATE AND POSTBELLUM RICHMOND1 
Maris v· 
lnovskis's analysis of the civil War's delll 
ographic 
impact on Newburyport, Massachusetts, as well as it 
s cost · 
S .1n "human capital II for the entire United tates 
'raises · 
qu important but as yet relatively unexamined 
estions 
concerning the effects the loss of such large 
nulllbers of 
p marriageable men had on marriage patterns in the Osttv'ar 
decades. In raw numbers, the deaths of 618,222 Cont 
ederate 
and Union soldiers make the Civil War more Cost1\r . 
.r in h 
)\.in uman terms than the aggregate of all other 
erican tv' 
r ars combined until the war in Vietnam. In el.:.t . 
4 lon to . 
tv' figures for the population- at-large, these 
artillle 
casualties represent a stunning 181.7 men per 
.1.0,000 i 
ndividuals in the population, a figure only 
apProachect 
in its numerical impact by the casualty rate of 
.1..1. 7 9 
• Per 1 2 O,ooo suffered during the American Revolution. 
l South 
2~, 12 September 1863. 
C.i.v· 1-faris v· · · t · L t th J'ou l.l War? lnovskis, "Have social H.1~ or.1ans
1 
~~ ;, 
rna1 · Some Preliminary Demographic Specu a .1ons, 
of American Histor 76.1 (June 1989): 34-58, 
407 
---- - a ••• - _.,,,_-_,_ •• 9'"'" IC".,_ 
- - - -- -- --· 
408 
There is a sadder regional corollary to this general 
reality. The imbalance of the nation's white population in 
the 1860s meant that these battlefield losses had a 
proportionally greater impact on the south, where 18 
percent of all the white men between the ages of eighteen 
and forty-three lost their lives, as compared to 6 percent 
of Northern white men from this age group. These 
statistics imply that the Civil war did not just cut deeply 
into the personal relationships of all white Southerners 
living at the time, but also influenced marriage patterns 
in the postwar decades. 
Historians still know little about the civil War's 
toll on individual marriages or on family relations 
strained by separation and loss, though two recent articles 
have begun to explore this important topic through their 
discussions of the war's impact on the marriages of elite 
white Southerners or its effect on Reconstruction-era 
divorces in three counties in upcountry North Carolina. 3 
especially tables 1 and 2. This essay has been reprinted 
in Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: 
Exploratory Essays, Maris A. Vinovskis, ed. (Cambridge, 
Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1-30. All 
citations are to this reprinted version. Vinovskis's 
figures are for white and black soldiers and sailors 
between the ages of thirteen and forty-three. 
3stephanie Mccurry, "The Politics of Yeoman Households 
in south Carolina"; Joan Cashin, "'Since the War Broke 
out': The Marriage of Kate and William McLure"; and 
Victoria Bynum, "Reshaping the Bonds of Womanhood: Divorce 
in Reconstruction North Carolina," all in Divided Houses: 
Gender and the Civil war, Catherine Clinton and Nina 
Silber, eds. (New York: oxford University Press, 1992), 22-
.,• 
409 
This chapter makes a contribution to this discussion by 
analyzing the demographic impact of the war on the age and 
availability of marriage partners for white Richmonders 
between 1860 and 1880 and postwar changes in marriage and 
family relations for a few white families. 
The Richmond Marriage Register 
In the early 1850s, Virginia passed an ordinance 
creating a bureau of vital statistics whose purpose was to 
compile data on the state's births, marriages, and deaths. 
According to this law, ministers solemnizing marriages were 
required to provide the bureau with pertinent information 
regarding the date the ceremony was performed, the names of 
the bride and groom and their parents, the respective age 
and marital status of the bride and groom, their race, and 
the groom's occupation and city or county of residence. 4 
A sampling of the Richmond Marriage Register from 1860 to 
1880 provides some revealing glimpses into white patterns 
of marriage in the capital city that help answer questions 
about the war's demographic impact. I compiled this sample 
42; 200-12 and 320-224; Carol Bleser and Frederick Heath, 
"The Clays of Alabama: The Impact of the Civil War on a 
Southern Marriage," and Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, "A 
Victorian Father: Josiah Gorgas and His Family," both in In 
Joy and in Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the 
Victorian South, 1830-1900, Carol Bleser, ed. (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1991), 135-53 and 233-52. 
4Marriages were registered in the city or county of 
the bride's residence. 
410 
by recording the age, race, and marital status for each 
bride and groom listed in the Richmond marriage register 
for the months of March, June, September, and December, for 
each year between 1860 and 1880, with the exceptions of the 
years 1864, 1866, and 1868, for which no information has 
survived. 5 June and December were popular months for 
Southern weddings, so data retrieved from these two months 
were chosen because they were likely to yield the most 
marriages of any months in a given year. March and 
September were selected as a means of balancing the 
weddings throughout the calendar year. I also kept a list 
of clergy performing these ceremonies as a means of 
verifying that all denominations were represented in the 
marriage register record. 6 In addition, I collected 
information on the groom's occupation as a way to see if 
the sample couples were from all economic sectors in the 
population. 
The 2,600 marriages contained in this group embrace a 
broad cross-section of the city's racial, economic, and 
5 I also did not collect any information on the pre-
1860 period, as that information was only haphazardly 
recorded at the end of each year, is fragmentary, and in 
poor condition. Although my intent was to examine white 
marriage patterns, I collected data on black marriages with 
the thought that this data might prove useful in 
determining whether any perceived trends during this time 
were race-specific. 
6of the 234 clergymen whose names appear on the 
registers, I have been able to correctly identify a little 
more than thirty percent, both by race and denomination. 
' 
' .. 
,, " 
11 
" 
,, 
I i1' 
' .. 
' ' ~' 
411 
religious divisions. (See Table 11.1.) With the exception 
of Quaker unions, the Richmond sample includes marriages 
performed by both white and black clergy from the city's 
major denominations--Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, 
Presbyterians, Unitarian-Universalists, Disciples of 
Christ, Catholics, German Lutherans, and Jews. A survey of 
85 percent of the grooms' occupations demonstrates that the 
marriage register sample also represents a significant 
proportion of the occupations available to white and black 
Richmond men during this period of time, and appears to 
include individuals from almost every sector of the 
economy. Therefore, in addition to the lone architect and 
the single groom identified in the records as a "wharf 
rat," the sample includes hundreds of white and black men 
who labored as factory hands, brickmakers, construction 
workers, tobacco hands, policemen, printers, and 
machinists, as well as independent entrepreneurs--bakers, 
confectioners, butchers, barbers, hostlers, and barkeeps. 
Richmond's white elites are represented in the marriages of 
the city's manufacturers, "gentlemen," and lawyers. 
Percentages of white and black marriages in this sample 
also roughly correspond to the percentage of whites and 
blacks in the Richmond population in 1870 and 1880. 
l 
• 
I 
Table 11.1. Grooms' Occupations, Marriage Sample for 
Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880 
Occupation 
Agenta 
Architect 
Baker 
Banker/Stock Broker 
Barber 
Bar/Restaurant Keeper 
Blacksmith 
Bookkeeper 
Boxrnaker 
Brickmaker 
Butcher 
cigarmaker 
Clergy 
Clerk 
coachmaker 
confectioner 
Construction Workerb 
cooper 
Doctor/Druggist 
Driver 
Engineer 
Entertainerc 
Factorr Hand 
Farmer 
Furrier 
Gardener 
Gentleman 
Hotel Keeper/Hostler 
Huckster 
Iron Workers 
Laborers 
Lawyer 
Liveryman/Stableman 
Locksmith 
White 
13 
1 
18 
6 
4 
10 
24 
13 
5 
6 
21 
9 
4 
75 
9 
7 
151 
6 
30 
9 
18 
5 
8 
98 
2 
3 
4 
5 
4 
58 
87 
18 
4 
3 
Black 
0 
0 
5 
0 
18 
10 
26 
0 
0 
4 
4 
0 
0 
4 
0 
3 
37 
20 
1 
92 
1 
2 
216 
17 
0 
10 
1 
8 
11 
13 
251 
1 
0 
0 
Total 
13 
1 
23 
6 
22 
20 
50 
13 
5 
10 
25 
9 
4 
79 
9 
10 
188 
26 
31 
101 
19 
76 
224 
115 
2 
13 
5 
13 
15 
71 
338 
19 
4 
3 
aReal estate, insurance, or railroad agents have all 
been included, here. 
bThis category includes bricklayers, carpenters, 
plumbers, plasterers, painters, glaziers, and roofers. 
cActors, musicians, theater performers. 
( 
412 
donly twenty-six of these were Richmond residents, a 
fact which underscores the nature of the city's industrial 
economy. 
. ,, 
Table 11.1. Grooms' Occupations, Marriage Sample for 
Richmond. Virginia, 1860-1880(cont'd.) 
Occupation 
Machinist 
Manufacturers 
Mechanic 
Merchant/Storekeeper 
Miller 
Millwright 
Munitions 
Nailmaker 
oysterer 
Paperrnaker 
Police/Fireman 
Porter 
Printer 
Railroad Worker 
Saddler 
sash and Blind Maker 
servant 
Servant to Doctor 
Shoemaker 
soldier/Sailor 
stone Mason 
Tailor 
Tanner 
Teacher9 
Teamster 
Telegrapher 
Tinworker 
Tobacco Hand 
Tobacco Manufacturer 
Tobacconist 
Waggoner 
waiter 
watchman 
Wharf Rat 
Wheelwright 
White 
50 
14 
15 
146 
4 
1 
5 
3 
3 
4 
22 
7 
24 
19 
7 
3 
4 
1 
21 
42 
30 
14 
3 
11 
7 
6 
12 
3 
4 
36 
3 
2 
11 
0 
2 
Black 
3 
0 
7 
8 
5 
0 
0 
1 
1 
0 
3 
29 
0 
9 
0 
0 
14 
9 
28 
3 
3 
0 
0 
1 
10 
0 
2 
25 
0 
8 
0 
43 
1 
1 
1 
Total 
53 
14 
22 
154 
9 
1 
5 
4 
4 
4 
25 
36 
24 
28 
7 
3 
18 
10 
49 
45 
33 
14 
3 
12 
17 
6 
14 
28 
4 
44 
3 
45 
12 
1 
3 
TOTAL 1277 970 2247 
source: Richmond, Virginia, Marriage Register, 1860-1880, 
Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. 
9 Includes one college president. 
413 
,* 
" 
·' a,, 
~ 
.. 
,,11 
414 
Of the 2,600 marriages retrieved in this sample, more 
than 1,500 were unions between white brides and grooms. 
(See Table 11.2.) Only three black marriages were 
registered for the period between 1860 and 1865, but as 
these registrations contained no information as to the ages 
or marital status of the partners, they have not been 
included in the Richmond sample. After the war, however, 
black marriages were recorded in far greater numbers and 
sometimes eclipsed the yearly number of marriages 
registered for whites, despite the fact that blacks were 
proportionally fewer than whites in the Richmond 
population. Peter Rachleff has commented that, in the 
years immediately following Richmond's surrender, Richmond 
blacks solemnized their relationships in mass wedding 
ceremonies conducted either in the city's black churches or 
at the Freedmen's Bureau. The marriage register sample 
shows that proportionally more black marriages were 
actually registered in 1871-74, however, after 
Reconstruction in Richmond had ended. 8 
8Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond: 1865-1890 
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 15. One 
explanation for this discrepancy might be a reluctance by 
black Richmonders to comply with the law requiring 
registration. In 1870, the percentage of black marriages 
in the Richmond marriage sample were a few percentage 
points less than the percentage of blacks in the Richmond 
population. Blacks comprised 45.3 percent of the 
population, but only 42.8 percent of the marriages 
registered that year. 
~ 
•" 
415 
the p 
The Richmond sample al h th 1 t' · t sos ows ere a ive impac of 
anic of 1873 
on the ability of white and black 
Richmo d 
n ers to marry. The decline in white marriages in 
the sam 1 
Pe from 104 in 1873 to 89 in 1874 and 91 in 1875 
anct th 
e subsequent rebound to 111 in 1876 suggests that 
White R' 
lchmonders might have chosen to delay marriages 
du:ring 
187 3 and 1874 due to unemployment or a drop in 
wages 
· White marriages declined again in 1876 and 1877 
When 
' according to Peter Rachleff, the recession in 
Richmo 
nd entered a second trough. 9 Black marriages were 
also af 
fected, although the timing varied somewhat. The 
P:recipitate drop in black marriages from 106 in 1874 to 65 
in 1 876
--a decline of 39 percent, supports Marie Tyler-
McG:ra\>/, 
s claim that the recession affected black workers 
ltlo:re 
severely than it did whites. By comparison, the 
dec1· 
lne in white marriages was only 15 percent between 1873 
and 1874.10 
c 9Rachl . Richmond 80; Michael B. hesso .eff, Black Labor in 65-1890 (Richmond: 
V!:rg· ~' .Richmond after the War, 18 
lnia State Library, 1981), 161 - 62 • 
loMarie Tyler McGraw, At the Falls, 183. 
I 
I 
I I 
,. 
,. 
I 
I 
I I 
',. 1· 
11 
Table 11.2. White and Black Marriages 
Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880 
Year 
1860 
1861 
1862 
1864 
1865 
1867 
1869 
1870 
1871 
1872 
1873 
1874 
1875 
1876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
White 
29 
35 
83 
73 
69 
73 
121 
83 
98 
102 
104 
89 
91 
111 
81 
76 
90 
101 
Black 
58 
59 
62 
92 
95 
80 
106 
65 
76 
97 
120 
97 
87 
Combined 
29 
35 
83 
73 
69 
131 
180 
145 
190 
197 
184 
195 
156 
187 
178 
196 
187 
188 
TOTAL 1,509 1,094 2.603 
416 
Source: Marriage Register, Richmond, Virginia, 
1860-1880, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. 
Age at Marriage 
One measure of the effects of the Civil War on white 
Richmond marriages is the age at first marriage. During 
the war, Richmonders frequently spoke of a "marriage 
frenzy" that gripped the wartime city, propelling large 
numbers of Confederate brides and grooms on the road to 
wedded bliss. 8 "There is something in the atmosphere on 
8southern Punch, 12 September 1863. Alice Wise, 
Richmond, to her sister-in-law Jean Whitewell, 11 November 
1864, Peter and Frank wise Papers, DU. "Jane," Richmond, to 
Mrs. Guthrie, 7 January 1865, Thomas H. Gee Account Book, 
UVA. These accounts were seconded by Ordnance Department · 
chief, Josiah Gorgas, who reported "much marriage and 
giving in marriage" in the city during that period of time, 
despite the fact that everyone was "depressed and somber" 
417 
even sulphurous battle days," murmured a writer in Southern 
Punch in 1863, "that makes the white wings of Eros--the 
pleasantest and the sweetest of the minor gods of Olympus--
swift to reach the fair votaries of hymen. 119 In a letter 
to her sister-in-law, Jean Whitewell in November 1864, 
Richmonder Alice Wise reported fifty-two marriages in the 
fall and winter of 1864. 10 Wise's observation was echoed 
in a letter written two months later by a woman identified 
only as "Jane," who related an amazing ninety-six weddings 
in twenty days' time. 11 
On the basis of such anecdotal evidence, George Rable 
has argued that, as the Civil War depleted the home front 
of eligible bachelors, white southern women "swarmed around 
about the war's progress. Josiah Gorgas Journal, Ms. 279-
z, SHC. Although not nearly as dramatic, the Richmond Whig 
reported a 15.8 percent increase in the number of marriage 
license applications by between 1861 and 1864, as compared 
with the number of applications during the four-year period 
before the war began. Richmond Whig, 2 January 1871. Of 
course, the population of Richmond had grown considerably 
during this period, although no wartime censuses of the 
city were ever taken. 
9southern Punch, 12 September 1863. The writer of 
this article continued by urging confederate women "to 
patriotically marry" early in order to provide a crop of 
new recruits to help whip the Yankees. 
10Alice Wise, Richmond, to Jean Whitewall, her sister-
in-law, 11 November 1864, Peter and Frank Wise Papers, DU. 
1111Jane, 11 Richmond, to Mrs. Guthrie, 7 January 1865, 
Thomas H. Gee Account Book, UVA. 
JI 
I 
" 
" 
" 
418 
any potential beaux left at home. 1112 Based on similar 
information provided by women in Chester, South Carolina, 
and Lexington and Winchester, Virginia, Drew Faust has 
observed that so many men departed from Southern 
communities that "the Confederate homefront became a world 
of white women and slaves." According to Faust, sometimes 
this departure was so excessive--especially in Alabama and 
North Carolina--that citizens wrote to state governors 
demanding an explanation. 13 
Given these conclusions, it might be possible to 
assume that white single women in wartime Richmond rushed 
into marriages at early ages, for fear their potential 
partners would be killed in battle. Conversely, in the 
postbellum period, given the war's alarming death rate for 
white, marriage-age men, it is plausible that some Richmond 
women might have been forced to delay first marriages until 
a later age, due to a dearth of suitable partners. But as 
information from in Table 11.3 demonstrates, however, 
neither of these changes occurred. Throughout the entire 
wartime and postbellum periods, most white Richmond brides 
in the Richmond marriage sample continued to make their 
12Rable, Civil Wars, 51 and 271. Rable claims that 
hasty marriages escalated at the outbreak of the war and 
then continued throughout the late 1860s. 
13Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of 
the Slaveholding South in the American civil War (Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), especially 
Chapter Two: "A World of Femininity: Changed Households and 
Changed Lives." 
419 
first trip down the aisle between the ages of twenty-one 
and twenty-two, a figure slightly higher than the one noted 
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese for white slaveholding women in 
the antebellum South, but an age that is duplicated by the 
median age at first marriage for black Richmond brides. 14 
Only twice during the entire eighteen-year period, did 
the median age for the city's white brides rise to the age 
of twenty-three, once in 1867--during a period when white 
women and men in Reconstruction Richmond had to sign an 
oath of allegiance to the United States government before a 
marriage license could be issued--and for a second time in 
1873, when a reduction in wages for many workers caused by 
the Panic of 1873 may have induced some to postpone their 
nuptials. 15 
14Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Family and Female Identity 
in the Antebellum South," in In Joy and in Sorrow, 270, fn. 
35. For a discussion of Southern black marriages as 
revealed in the marriage registers, see Herbert G. Gutman, 
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New 
York: Vintage Books, 1976), especially chapters One and 
Nine. Unfortunately, none of Gutman's tables analyze the 
median age of brides at first marriage. 
15Leslie Winston Smith, "Richmond during Presidential 
Reconstruction, 1865-1867" (Ph.D. diss., University of 
Virginia, 1974), 53; Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 80-
81; Chesson, Richmond after the War, 161-62. I have chosen 
to use the median age rather than the mean (or average) age 
because the median reflects the central tendencies of a 
particular group and is not distorted by aberrations from 
the norm. The average age of marriage for white brides 
during the period ranged from 21.5 to 22.8 for most years 
in the sample with later ages of marriage for the years 
1862, 1879, and 1880. In those years, the average age of 
marriage for white brides was 23.8, 23.3, and 23.5, 
respectively. At this time, no other statistical studies 
of marriage have been done for other Southern or Northern 
· · _Median Age at First Marriage Table 11 3 . 
R' White and Black women ' 
Year 
ichmond • Virginia, 1860-1880 
White Black 
21.0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
23,0 
22.0 
22.0 
22,5 
22.0 
1860 
1861 
1862 
1863 
1865 
1867 
1869 
1870 
1871 
1872 
1873 
1874 
1875 
1876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
21. 0 
22.0 
22.0 
22.0 
21. 0 
23.0 
21.0 
22.0 
21. 0 
21.0 
23,0 
22.0 
22.0 
21.0 
21. 0 
21,5 
22.0 
21. 0 
Source: Marr1· R . t . h d v· .. 186o-
188 
. age egis er, Ric man, irginia, O, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, 
One reason for this persistence of age at first 
420 
marriage ex · may be that wartime Richmond maY not have 
Perien Ced 
a severe wartime shortage in marriage-age men, 
the large number . th . d . em· of men who ei er remaine 1n, or due to 
igrated g 
to, the city on business for the confederate 
ove rnment. 
etween April 1061 and April 1065, nearly 40 
Of the 222 marriages in the sample that were 
Perfo rmed b 
Percent . s involved grooms who were either identified as 
Oldiers 
or sailors, or else men who worked in some war-
relat ed 0 
..____ ccupation usuallY exempt from field duty--contract 
v1art· ime 0 th comm · · · 'th er lo ,unities, so comparisons wi cations is currentlY impossible, 
white women in 
421 
surgeons, civilian hospital workers, government gunsmiths 
and munitions workers, machinists, blacksmiths, clerks, 
telegraphers, or ironworkers. 
The letters and diaries of some of the city's single 
white women also suggest a surplus rather than a shortage 
of marriageable men. Troops marching through the capital 
blew kisses to Richmond women who waved handkerchiefs or 
tossed them pincushions, bookmarks, pocket Bibles, and 
other mementoes. Soldiers stationed in the city paid 
sometimes nightly visits to girls in the community. During 
a three-week period in March 1862, for example, one young 
sixteen-year-old received six visits from at least four 
different gentlemen callers--Confederate officers who often 
visited in pairs--and made three trips to the campgrounds 
where she was entertained with band concerts, dress 
parades, or company drills. on one of these excursions she 
also toured a young officer's private quarters. 16 Mollie 
Lyne and Lucy Bowles each received valentines from soldiers 
16Entries dated March 7 through March 28, 1862, Diary 
of an Unknown Diarist, VM. For additional evidence on 
wartime courtship, see Louse Wigfall (Mrs. D. Giraud) 
Wright, A Southern Girl in '61: The Wartime Reminiscences 
of a Confederate Senator's Daughter (New York: Doubleday, 
Page & Company, 1905), excerpted in Katharine M. Jones, ed. 
Ladies of Richmond. Confederate Capital (Indianapolis, 
Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 117-119. 
422 
from Co. G of the 1st Virginia volunteers, professing love 
and inviting them to attend a Valentine-day party. 17 
Young women who worked in the government departments 
also encountered admirers--and potential husbands--among 
their coworkers. A clerk in the Confederate Ordnance 
Bureau, Mattie Pierce enjoyed the attention of two 
workplace beaux during early June 1864. Eugene Oesdunes, a 
suitor who worked in the office of the Second Auditor, sent 
Pierce a basket of cherries. "Please receive these few 
cherries," he wrote in an attached note, "they cannot be 
eaten up by a most (sic] lovely mouth than yours. 1118 
Pierce's second admirer, a Post Office clerk who signed 
himself only as "E.C.B.," wrote to her on June 10, 1864, 
proposing an assignation. "(T]ake the Capital square on 
your way home at 3 o'clock," he suggested. "I will be 
around. 1119 
Constance Cary embarked on a wartime courtship with 
her future husband, Burton Norvell Harrison, during the 
time that both were employed by the Confederate government, 
Cary in one of the city's military hospitals, and Harrison, 
1711To Miss Mollie Lyne" from an unknown admirer, 14 
February 1863; E.T. Snead to Lucy J. Bowles, 1 February 
1862, Valentines File, ESBL. 
18Eugene Desdunes to Mattie Pierce, Richmond, 4 June 
1864, Dorsey and Coupland Papers, Ms. 39.1 073, WM. 
19E.C.B., Post Office, Richmond, to Mattie Pierce, 10 
June 1864, Dorsey and Coupland Papers, Ms. 39.1 073, WM. 
Emphasis in the original. 
423 
as an aide to Jefferson Davis. 20 War Department clerk 
Parke Chamberlayne fell in love with, and married, former 
Confederate soldier, George w. Bagby, who worked for the 
Confederate government. 21 Stephen Habersham, the surgeon-
in-charge of Phebe Pember's Chimborazo ward, divided his 
time between three Richmond women--Jinny Pollard, Alice 
Magill, and Carrie Stuart. 22 Rosa Young fell in love with 
her future husband, a doctor, while the two cared for her 
wounded brother at Seabrook Hospita1. 23 Cartridge maker 
Delia Daily married David Gaines on August 26, 1866. A 
Richmond soldier assigned to Company B, of the 38th Light 
Artillery, during the fall and winter of 1864, Gaines 
repeatedly went a.w.o.l. from his Petersburg location to 
return to Richmond and court his future bride. on one 
20cary and Harrison began taking horseback rides to 
local battlefield sites and walks to Hollywood cemetery. 
constance Cary Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay (New 
York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1911), 126. 
21Lucy Park Chamberlayne Bagby, "The Chronicle of Lucy 
Parke Chamberlayne Bagby," Bagby Family Papers, VHS; 
hereafter this will be cited as Bagby Chronicle. 
22Phebe Yates Pember, Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond, 
to Mrs. J.F. [Lou] Gilmer, 30 December 1863, Phebe Levy 
Pember Papers, SHC, reprinted in A Southern Woman's Story, 
Bell I. Wiley, ed. (St. Simons, Ga.: Mockingbird Press, 
1959), 132. 
23Young's brother, Lawrence, had been wounded in the 
leg, requiring an amputation above the knee. Rosa Young's 
future husband was her brother's attending surgeon. Entry 
dated 17 May 1864, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
424 
occasion, he was forced to sit astride a cold cannon barrel 
all night long as punishment. 24 
Widows 
Although some couples came through the war with their 
marriages intact, at least one Southern woman in three 
ended the war in mourning, as compared with one woman in 
six in the North. 25 No reliable single source exists that 
provides Civil War casualty rates for Richmond or even the 
state of Virginia, so it is difficult to tell how many 
widows there were in the city at the end of the civil War. 
Although regimental histories number into the hundreds, few 
24 In 1916, the Dailys celebrated their fiftieth 
wedding anniversary by passing out one-dollar gold pieces 
to their three oldest grandchildren. Author's interview 
with Mrs. Doris Rose Pearson, 3806 Seminary Avenue, 
Richmond, Virginia, Thursday, March 16, 1995. In all, the 
Gaineses were parents to ten children, at least seven of 
whom lived to adulthood. 
25The precise number of confederate and Union widows 
is impossible to obtain (See Vinovskis, "Have Social 
Historians Lost the civil War?" and Holmes, "'Such Is the 
Price We Pay,'" for a discussion of the difficulties in 
calculating Civil War casualties, especially for the South, 
where many records were destroyed by fire at the war's 
end.), but estimates based on research by Maris Vinovskis 
and Amy Holmes have placed the number at slightly more than 
185,000. Of these, 77,400 were widows of Confederate 
soldiers. Given the smaller white population base in the 
South from which the soldiering population was drawn, this 
meant that one in every three soldiers' wives in the South 
ended the war as a widow, as compared to one in every six 
in the North. Maris A. Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians 
Lost the Civil War?" and Amy E. Holmes, "'Such Is the Price 
We Pay': American Widows and the civil War Pension System," 
both in Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: 
Exploratory Essays, Maris A. Vinovskis, ed. (Cambridge, 
Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1-30 and 171-196. 
425 
concerning Virginia or Richmond units contain any 
information on the number of battlefield losses, including 
the handful of recently-published volumes that are part of 
the proposed 125-volume regimental history series published 
by H.E. Howard. 
A preliminary examination of the casualty rates for 
eight companies of the 1st Virginia Infantry, which were 
c omposed of nearly a thousand men residing in Richmond, and 
in Henrico and Chesterfield counties, indicates that 
casualty rates varied widely from unit to unit depending on 
the part each one played in various military engagements. 
A part of the 25th Regiment, the 1st Virginia Infantry saw 
action at First Manassas, seven Pines, the Seven Days 
Battles, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg--where they 
were part of Pickett's Division, cold Harbor, and the Siege 
of Petersburg. The 126 men who served in Company I 
suffered a casualty rate of 20.6 percent, which is higher 
than that suggested by Vinovskis. Other units, such as 
company K, known as "The Richmond Rifles," lost relatively 
fewer men in battle, largely because this company, which 
was composed of German, Prussian, Bavarian, Italian, and 
Irish immigrants, contained men whose skills as puddlers, 
rollers, locksmiths, carpenters, tinsmiths, and gunsmiths 
were in such great demand that nearly one-seventh of the 
company privates were discharged and detailed to Richmond 
on government work. An additional seven privates were 
426 
independent shopkeepers and tradesmen who were unwilling or 
unable to be absent from their livelihoods for extended 
periods of time; they hired substitutes to take their 
places. 26 
Women living in Richmond learned of their husbands' 
deaths in a variety of different ways which often depended 
upon their class or their husbands' position in the 
Confederate military hierarchy. During First Manassas, for 
example, Jefferson Davis sent a series of telegrams to 
officers' wives living at the Spotswood Hotel, informing 
them of the battle's progress and that one woman's husband 
had been killed. 27 Hetty Cary Pegram, a bride of only 
three weeks, was carding wool in a military ambulance a 
26This analysis is based on comparing the names of men 
listed as serving in Richmond military units in Asbury 
Christian's Richmond: Her Past and Present with information 
from the military service records of these same soldiers 
which are compiled in regimental histories. Asbury 
Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present (Richmond: L.H. 
Jenkins, 1912), 547-76; Lee A. Wallace, Jr., 1st Virginia 
Infantry, 3d ed. (Lynchburg, va.: H.E. Howard, Inc., 1985); 
Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of Confederate Armies: Virginia 
(New York: Facts on File, 1972); Kevin c. Ruffner, 44th 
Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, va.: H.E. Howard, Inc., 
1987). For a related discussion of desertion in the 44th 
Virginia, see Kevin Conley Ruffner, "Civil War Desertion 
from a Black Belt Regiment: An Examination of the 44th 
Virginia Infantry," in The Edge of the South: Life in 
Nineteenth-Century Virginia, Edward L. Ayers and John C. 
Willis, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of 
Virginia, 1991), 56-78. 
27Margaret Sumner McLean, "A Northern Woman in the 
Confederacy," Harper's Monthly Magazine 128 (February 
1914): 443-44. This article has been excerpted in 
Katharine M. Jones, ed. Ladies of Richmond, Confederate 
capital (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 74-75. 
427 
short distance from the battlefield when her husband, John 
Pegram, was shot through the heart. 28 Far more women 
learned of the tragic loss by scanning the lists of wounded 
and dead that were published in Richmond papers or appeared 
on the city street corners whenever a battle raged. Some 
were informed weeks later in letters written by company 
commanders or their husbands' comrades in arms, long after 
their husbands' remains had been dumped into rude graves in 
distant soil, often without a ceremony to mark their 
passing. 29 Winchester, Virginia, refugee Cornelia Peake 
McDonald discovered her husband's death when she walked 
into a room in a Richmond home to find his body lying on a 
makeshift bier. 30 The body of constance Harrison's 
cousin, Randolph Fairfax, was brought to his family's 
28constance Cary [Mrs. Burton] Harrisoni Recollections 
Grave and Gay (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911), 
201-05. Hetty Cary's husband, General John Pegram, was 
killed in February 1865 near Hatcher's Run during the 
Petersburg campaign. Accounts of Hetty Cary's brief 
marriage are repeated in many personal narratives of the 
war. 
29see my discussion of the burials of Confederate 
soldiers at Gettysburg, for example, in Chapter Ten. 
30cornelia Peake McDonald, A. Diary with Reminiscences 
of the War and Refugee Life in the Shenandoah Valley. 1860-
1865, Hunter McDonald, ed. (Nashville, Tenn.: Cullom & 
Ghertner, 1934), quoted in Ladies of Richmond. Confederate 
Capital, Katherine M. Jones, ed. (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 
1962), 237-40. 
428 
Richmond home, wrapped in an army blanket and still wearing 
the clothes in which he died. 31 
Suzanne Lebsock's study of southern women in 
antebellum Petersburg has shown that poverty, young 
children, and a more advanced age often influenced widows' 
decisions to re-wed. Less affluent women remarried sooner 
and with greater frequency than women of means, who tended 
to remain unmarried if finances would allow. 32 For widows 
with young children, often the only way out of dire poverty 
was a hasty second marriage, sometimes wearing black as an 
indication that the period of bereavement for their first 
husbands was not yet over. 33 
31Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gray, 96. Fairfax 
was shot through the head at Antietam; he was laid, 
uncoffined and still wearing the same clothing, on the 
altar in St. James's Church for his funeral. 
32 suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Pete.rsburg: 
status and Culture in a southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York: 
W.W • . Norton, 1985), 26-2:7. Other who have written on the 
effects of widowhood and remarriage include Linda K. 
Kerber, Women of The Republic: Intellect and Ideology in 
the Revolutionary America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), 
92-93 and 141-47; Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The 
Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary 
America {New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); Drew Faust, Mothers 
of Invention; Christine Stansell, City of Women: sex and 
Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 
1986); Julia Cherry Spruill, Women's Life and Work in the 
southern Colonies {1938; repr. New York: W.W. Norton, 
1972); and Mary P. Ryan, cradle of the Middle Class: The 
Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge, 
Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 
33 In one Petersburg marriage that took place late in 
the war, the bride--who was probably in half-mourning wore 
gray; all the bridesmaids wore black. Alfred Hoyt Bill, 
The Beleaguered City: Richmond, 1861-1865 (New York: Alfred 
A. Knopf, 1946), 308, fn. 4. 
429 
Remarriage was Widows not always an option for white Richmond 
'however. 
Evidence from the Richmond marriage 
at, between 1865 and 1869, white widows 
sample . indicates th 
1880 
a higher rate than white widowers. From 1874-
married at 
, however 
, this trend was reversed, and white widowers 
remarr· that ied with much greater frequency, sometimes at rates 
Were d 
ouble or triple those for widowed females (See 
In addition, white widowers were more likely Tabl e 11. 4) . 
to h c oose s' 
ingle brides, some of whom were twenty or more 
Between 1867 and 1aao, 12.4 percent 
Years th . eir junior. 
w ite widowers wedded brides who were at least (»==26) 
· of h · 
twe t n y-one th years younger, as compared with slightly less 
an 1 
percent (N~6) of white grooms during the period from 
In part, this was because, bY 1sso, there 
1860 to 1865. 
wer e 4,600 
more white women than white men in the Richmond 
By comparison, only one white widow for the 
Population. 34 
ent· J.re 
period from 1860 to 10so married a similarly younger 
impossible to tell from the marriage register 
groom 
. It 1' s 
dat a exactly how many of .these second unions were dictated 
the circumstances Lebsock describes, or how many 
by a11 of 
34 ;~item~~ ~880, there were 34,111 white women and 3f90 ,r483 
>chmo in the Richmond population. 1ssO census 
White nd ' Virginia, NARA· In 1s60, there were 1,000 more the 
10
:en than white women in Richmond, In Mr sample of 
that . 0 Richmond census Angela songiorno has estimated W WldO . ' ' ' h' t k' omen ws represented 14.4% of the c1tY s w le wor 1ng 
0
~ 3?.a Three-fourths of this group were between.the ages 
R1chm nd 65. Bongiorno "White women and work in 
ond v· , , irginia," 13-15. 
430 
Inight h ave b een predicated on affect' sincere feelings of love and 
lon. But death . easier s of marr1age-age men clearly made it 
for w'd i owers to marry than it had been before. 
Tabl e 11.4. Wh' , of All Mar .,te W•d~ws and Widowers as a Percent riages. Richmond. Virginia, 1860-l880 
Year Widows 
Widowers 
10.3 
1860 11.2 
1861 
1862 
2.9 
11.4 
1863 
9.6 
1a.o 
1865 
11.0 
26,0 
1867 
25.0 
17.4 
1869 
24.7 
11.8 
1870 
16.5 
11.5 
1871 
9.6 
9.6 
1872 
7.1 
13,2 
1873 
12.7 
10.8 
1874 
11.3 
16.3 
1875 
10.0 
21.3 
1876 
6.6 
26.3 
1877 
6.3 
14.4 
1878 
s.6 
11.3 
1879 
10.5 
7.9 
1880 
s.o 
16.9 
11.2 
g.9 
Source· . 1860-i8aoMar~1age Register, Richmond, Virginia, , L1brarY of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, 
For 
young, affluent, childless widows like Hetty 
Pegram 
, the 1 
t 
ass of a spouse, however keenly felt, was not 
burden it represented for the countless wives 
he f' inancial 
ry foot soldiers, men who earned a private•s pay Of orctina 
s a month, and whose deaths set their surviving Of $11 
Pause 8 and h' · 1 f i c 1ldren on a downward sp1ra o 
Confederate widows, and especiallY those 
lltpove , r1shment 
Ylith . Young . , ch1ldren constituted one of the most 
J.11t , 
Pover· 
ished groups in. postwar Richmond- some needy women 
431 
and children accepted help from the U.S. sanitary 
Commission and the Union army, both of which provided 
government rations to all who applied. Others sought aid 
from various Richmond charities, including the Soup 
Association, the Y.M.C.A., or the Dorcas Society. 
As demand outstripped the ability of these agencies to 
succor the city's indigent population, many poor white 
women and children entered the city's Alms House. During 
the late 1860s and early 1870s, the number of destitute 
white women and children in the Richmond Alms House was 
double or triple that of poor white men. In early 1869, 
for example, 106 white women and children resided in the 
city's white Alms House, as compared with 46 white men. In 
1870, these figures were 109 and 52, respectively. 35 
35Report of a committee appointed to examine the Alms 
House, 27 February 1869; Bundle dated 15 March 1869, Report 
on the Alms House for 1860 and 1870, No bundle date; Annual 
Report for the City Alms House, 1 March 1869, Bundle dated 
2/28/1869; all in Richmond City Papers, Minutes of the 
Common Council, LV. Hereafter these will be cited as MCC, 
LV. Alms House reports are very scarce in the Richmond 
City Papers after this time. This last Alms House report 
reveals that despite the amounts of assistance provided to 
the city's indigent whites, the largest category of 
recipients of aid in the late 1860s were impoverished 
Richmond blacks, and especially black women and children. 
By comparison, Priscilla Ferguson Clement's analysis of 
nineteenth-century Philadelphia concludes that, although 
women impoverished by the civil War received a sympathetic 
hearing, other indigent Philadelphia women faced a 
reduction in relief in the final decades of the nineteenth 
century. Priscilla Ferguson Clement, "Nineteenth-Century 
Welfare Policy, Programs, and Poor Women: Philadelphia as a 
case study," Feminist studies 18.1 (spring 1992): 35-58. 
432 
In February 1862, the Republican Congress passed 
legislation providing pensions both for disabled Union 
v eterans and the widows and children of Union soldiers and 
sailors. 36 No such federal pension benefits, however, 
were ever paid to Confederate veterans or their families 
who were blamed for starting the rebellion in the first 
place. Like all the Southern states that seceded from the 
Union, Virginia eventually created a pension program in the 
late 1880s to assist the families of those who fought and 
died for what was now being referred to as "The Lost 
cause. 1137 This pension relief came too late for hundreds 
36Throughout much of the late nineteenth century, 
additional legislation extended these benefits eventually 
to include pensions paid to all Union soldiers who served 
honorably for ninety days or more, or their surviving 
dependents, thus making the pensions paid to Union veterans 
and their survivors the first old-age pension program for 
u.s. citizens, and the precursor of the social security Act 
legislation passed during the New Deal which ushered in the 
welfare state. By 1893, more than 41 percent of the 
federal budget was devoted to civil war pensions for Union 
veterans .and their families, funded in part by tariffs paid 
to the U.S. government by white Southerners. The last 
union veteran survived until 1956; the last Confederate 
veteran, until 1957. As of the late 1970s, two hundred 
civil War widows and children were still on the Federal 
pension rolls. Robert Bremner, The Public Good: 
Philanthropy and Welfare in the Civil War Era (New York: 
Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 145; and Theda Skocpol, Protecting 
Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social 
Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap 
Press, 1992); and Megan Mcclintock, "Civil War Pensions and 
the Reconstruction of Union Families," Journal of America n 
History 83.2: (September 1996): 456-80. 
37virginia's confederate pension program took the form 
of three major pieces of legislation enacted in 1888, 1900, 
and 1902, that established and subsequently extended the 
criteria for claiming and awarding relief. Smaller 
provisions throughout the period made minor adjustments and 
433 
of white Richmond women in need of help in the years 
immediately following the war. 38 
Alarmed at the plight of the city's aging and 
destitute Confederate widows, civic-minded elite Richmond 
women formed two associations in the 1870s and 1880s to 
attempted to streamline its efficiency as state and federal 
bureaucracies expanded with sometimes lightning speed in 
the late nineteenth century. Typically, most programs--
including those in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South 
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas--compensated 
wounded veterans and rates significantly higher than those 
paid to families of those who had died, a suggestion that 
white Southerners placed a greater value on live 
Confederate heroes than they did on the families of men who 
had made the ultimate sacrifice. In most states, it was 
possible for veterans to receive amounts that were double 
the one paid to widows with dependent children. In 
Virginia, widows under the 1888 Act received $30 per month, 
while those awarded benefits under the 1900 Act had to make 
do on monthly allotments of $25. Although some Virginia 
widows receiving benefits under the 1902 Act were awarded 
between $20 and $30 a month, amounts consistent with those 
paid .under the earlier legislation, many we~e paid between 
$7 and $10, the most penurious amount paid to Confederate 
widows by any state in the former Confederacy. I have 
developed this discussion of pension legislation from the 
introductions to Virginia's confederate Pension Rolls in 
the Library of Virginia and Bulletin No. 8, General 
Headquarters, Sons of Confederate Veterans, 12 November 
1940, Civil War Collection, Mss. 39.1 C76, WM. For a 
discussion of pension legislation, see Megan J. Mcclintock, 
"Civil War Pensions and the Reconstruction of Union 
Families," Journal of American History 83.2 (September 
1996): 456-80; and Amy Holmes, "Such Is the Price We Pay": 
American Widows and the civil War Pension System," in 
Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: 
Exploratory Essays, Maris A. Vinovskis, eds. (Cambridge, 
Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 171-95. 
38According to Kerber, Revolutionary War widows were 
not awarded pensions until 1832. Linda K. Kerber, Women of 
the Republic, 92. 
434 
provide them with help. 39 In January 1875, for example, 
women from the city's Episcopal churches organized the 
Protestant Episcopal Church Horne for Ladies an institution 
which has been discussed in Chapter Nine. In 1883, 
Presbyterian women established the Exchange for Woman's 
Work, a charitable association that operated a store 
through which "needy gentlewomen" sold their domestic 
handiwork, which included cakes, pickles, preserved fruit, 
various forms of needlework, and "ornamental and artistic" 
articles "of the best grade. 1140 Although they claimed to 
have "no limitations which would ... exclude any class of 
needy female," both were designed to aid genteel women who 
had lost their incomes as a result of the war, leaving the 
poorest women to fend for themselves. 
39Richmond men also formed organizations designed to 
benefit Confederate soldiers and their dependents, 
including a project sponsored by Richmond Baptists to 
educate orphaned confederate children, and an association 
to supply artificial limbs to amputees. 
4°First Annual Report of the Exchange for Woman's Work 
of Richmond. Va .• for the Year Ending March 1st. 1884 
(Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1884), 5, in Richmond 
Exchange for Women's Work Papers, 1883-1957, Ms. #C37, VM. 
In the late nineteenth century, women's exchanges such as 
these were founded in a number of southern and Northern 
cities, including New Orleans, Baltimore, New York City, 
and Brooklyn. Founded in 1878, the Women's Exchange in 
Baltimore is still in operation, with a sales room in the 
front that features fancy needlework, and a lunchroom in 
the back that caters to businesses along the city's Charles 
Street corridor. All of these exchanges were predicated on 
the notion that the discreet and anonymous sale of women's 
domestic handiwork was the most appropriate form of 
employment for genteel women in the late nineteenth 
century. 
435 
Two Confederate Marriages 
Recent examinations of the war's impact on Southern 
marriage have suggested that the social and economic crises 
accompanying defeat and Reconstruction left Southern 
husbands demoralized and their masculinity undermined, 
whereas Southern wives emerged from the war stronger and 
more optimistic about the future. carol Bleser and 
Frederick Heath's analysis of the Alabama Clays, for 
example, has shown that Virginia Tunstall Clay emerged from 
the war as the dominant marriage partner, while Clement 
clay's eleven-month incarceration as a prisoner-of-war at 
Fortress Monroe and his postwar financial failures left him 
depressed and dependent on his wife. Joan Cashin's 
analysis of the marriage of Kate and William McClure 
suggests that William McClure's wartime absence from the 
couple's South Carolina plantation for duty in the 
confederate army left his wife enmeshed in a struggle over 
running the plantation. By the war's close, Kate McClure 
had succeeded in wresting control from the Mcclure's white 
overseer and was managing the plantation according to her 
own vision, often in ways that contradicted the advice sent 
by William McClure in his frequent letters home. 41 An 
41Bleser and Heath, "The Clays of Alabama," in In Joy 
and in Sorrow, 135-53, and Joan Cashin, "'Since the War 
Broke out,"' in Divided Houses, 200-12. Anne Scott in The 
southern Lady is relatively silent on the impact of the war 
on Southern marriage, devoting only a handful of pages to 
descriptions of antebellum marriages and nothing to the 
question of postbellum change. 
436 
analysis of the experiences of two Richmond couples--Lucy 
and Patterson Fletcher and Parke and George Bagby--suggests 
that the strains of postwar defeat and financial ruin could 
even be felt in marriages where husbands were not 
Confederate soldiers. 
Thirty-nine-year-old Lucy Fletcher and her forty-six-
year-old husband, Patterson, had been married for fifteen 
years and were the parents of five children, aged twelve to 
one, when the civil war began. Their counterparts, 
nineteen-year-old Parke chamberlayne and thirty-three-year-
old George Bagby were both single. By the time the war was 
over, the Bagbys had been married for two years and were 
the parents of an infant daughter, Virginia. By 1882, 
young Virginia Bagby was joined by nine other siblings, 
seven of whom survived childhood, despite a potentially 
deadly attack of scarlet fever in the late 1870s which 
afflicted five of the Bagby offspring. 
Neither Patterson Fletcher nor George Bagby served in 
the Confederate army, although both were committed 
secessionists who remained fiercely loyal to the 
Confederate cause. A Presbyterian minister, Patterson 
Fletcher was exempt from miliary duty, but made repeated 
trips to visit the Richmond encampments, preaching sermons, 
delivering bibles and religious tracts, and conducting 
revivals for troops stationed in the area. Deemed unfit 
437 
f or duty because of a severe case of d . yspeps1a and a weak 
constitution, George Bagby made his Confederate loyalties 
known through his columns in a number of southern 
newspapers. Although sometimes openly critical of 
Jefferson Davis, Bagby also appears to have worked for the 
confederate government in some official capacity. When the 
citY fell on April 3, 1865, he was on hand to help pack up 
government papers and flee the city with the remnants of 
the confederacy. Like their husbands, Parke Bagby and Lucy 
Fletcher were spirited rebels who contributed their labor 
to the war. Parke Bagby worked as a Confederate Treasury 
clerk; Lucy Fletcher volunteered her time in the city's 
hospitals or cared for sick and wounded soldiers in her 
home. 
Although neither man saw military service, both 
families suffered wartime anxiety and grief over kinfolk 
slain in combat or captured by the enemy. Parke Bagby's 
twenty-two-year-old brother, Ham, enlisted in Company F of 
the 21st Virginia Infantry in April 1861. In July 1862, he 
was apprehended during a cavalry raid at Gettysburg and 
spent the next two-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war at 
Johnson's Island near Sandusky, Ohio, and later at Fort 
Delaware. He was released in a prisoner exchange in March 
1865. 
Two of Lucy Fletcher's brothers--Abner and John 
Walton--and a younger brother of Patterson Fletcher's were 
438 
all Confederate soldiers. John Walton was killed during 
the fighting in the Wilderness in the spring of 1864; his 
brother Abner was wounded in the leg and captured less than 
a month earlier, during skirmishing along the Rapidan 
River, where Patterson Fletcher's brother also died in 
battle. 42 Three additional siblings of Lucy Fletcher--
Edward, Richard, and Robert Walton--lived in areas that 
were invaded by Union troops. Richard Walton's home in 
nearby Harrisonburg was taken over as a field hospital in 
June 1862; Robert's and Edward's communities were overrun 
by federal forces in the closing months of the war. 43 
In addition to the grief occasioned by battlefield 
losses, Lucy Fletcher endured the added strain of a family 
split by its loyalties. Although Lucy, her parents, and 
most of her brothers were staunch Confederates, two 
additional Walton siblings who lived in the North--Lucy's 
brother, Evarts, and her sister, Eliza Walton Clarke--
opposed slavery and retained their Union loyalties. 
Despite his convictions, Evarts Walton managed to maintain 
close ties to his southern family, occasionally penning his 
sister, Lucy, a note inquiring about her safety or offering 
to send supplies. Eliza Clarke, however, remained 
42Entries dated 22 June 1862, 23 October 1863, 
Keystone Diary; 14 April 1864, Loose Diary Sheets, Lucy 
Muse Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. 
43 Entries dated 22 June 1862, 28 March and 27 
September 1865, Keystone Diary, Lucy Muse Walton Fletcher 
Papers, DU. 
439 
unyield' ingly critical of h after th er confederate relatives long 
e war h her sist r ad ended. Clarke's harsh contJllents wounded 
her deeply.44 
They also deprived Lucy Fletcher of 
beloved sister's 
cru111bled w. comfort as 
the Fletcher marriage 
1th Southern defeat. 
The c· ivil w ti1ne ar destroyed family fortunes at the same 
that it h deprived 
Confederate men, whose manhood and 
onor were 
anoth er 1 ayer f ~1th O their identities as familY providers.
45 
ough neith Well- er Patterson Fletcher nor George Bagby had 
fr
0111 
ore the war t,egan, both men emerged 
already shattered 
by Northern victory, of 
. Paying jobs bef 
Child provide for their wives and the war unable to 
The closing of the Duval street church left 
ren. 
Patt erson Flet h 
othe c er without a job, and the impoverishlllent of 
fa . yterian congregations which he served placed his 
r Presb 
ltllly in extr 186S emely reduced circumstances. In the fall of 
rice e Fletchers were forced to relY on beans, 
, When th 
Patte a rdtack provided bY the federal government, , and h 
rson ca11 Fletcher suffered a total mental and physical 
apse that left him unable even to operate the boys' 
w
0111 
ented eyewitnesses and civil war scholars have 44 
coltlltl Both anden. Se~n ~he postwar rage and hostility of southern 
si.
1
/effe Nina Silber "Intemperate Men, spiteful women, 
er, e~:on Davis, u i~ Divided~' clinton and 
• ' 2 8 3-3 0 5 ~ 
4S " 
South For a . Of G ern Jne discussion of the effects of defeat on .. . rlotne ender "n' see LeeAnn Whites' "The civil war a: a eris is 
Cli n, an~ a~ Nina Silber "Inte~erate Men, spiteful 
nton an Je~ferson Davis,:' both in~' 
. d Silber, eds., 3-21, and 2sJ-J05 · 
440 
school which had become the family's only reliable source 
of income in the wake of Duval Street's financial decline. 
Fletcher quickly recovered his health after a visit to his 
parents' Rockingham County farm, but, throughout much of 
the 1870s, his difficulties in providing a reliable source 
of income frequently forced his family to the threshold of 
need. 
George Bagby's wage-earning capacities were also 
seriously impaired by Confederate defeat. Until he 
received a political appointment as state librarian in 
1870, Bagby eked out what Parke Bagby later referred to as 
a "precarious existence" through his work as a newspaper 
editor and travelling lecturer. The income derived from 
these two occupations often fell short of the Bagbys' 
growing family's demands. 
Both Parke Bagby and Lucy Fletcher engaged in a series 
of household economies designed to help their husbands and 
alleviate family suffering. Lucy Fletcher sold her 
clothing, rented out rooms in her home to a series of white 
and black boarders, foreswore the purchase of meat, and put 
her seventeen-year-old son, Wattie, to work rolling and 
selling cigarettes, 46 Later, when Patterson Fletcher's 
acceptance of a call to a congregation near Staunton failed 
to yield the expected compensation, Lucy Fletcher and her 
46Young Walton Fletcher did not work in a cigarette 
factory, but rather rolled the cigarettes at home. 
441 
children made do by accepting donations of food, cash, and 
cast-off clothing sent to them by family members and some 
of their parishoners. In addition, Patterson Fletcher and 
his daughter, Nannie, operated a school for girls and boys 
on the grounds of the manse. 
In 1866, while George Bagby traveled throughout the 
country delivering lectures, a pregnant Parke Bagby moved 
with her two children to Middleburg, Virginia, where she 
operated the boarding department of a school for boys 
opened by her cousin, Virginius Dabney. When Dabney took a 
second wife in 1867, Bagby moved to orange court House, 
Virginia, where she lived for a time with her mother in a 
home rented by her brother, Harn. Throughout much of the 
late 1860s, Bagby and her family lived off the largess of 
family and friends whom she visited for sometimes lengthy 
stays. 
Although George's appointment as state librarian in 
1870 probably brought the Bagbys a modicum of financial 
security, the birth of a fourth child and Parke Bagby's 
subsequent two-year illness caused by puerperal fever she 
contracted during the delivery drained the couple's 
resources. A series of account books kept by Parke Bagby 
during the 1870s demonstrate the way the demands of her 
rapidly expanding family often continued to outstrip 
George's abilities to provide. Mgny of the invoices for a 
variety of expenditures made between 1865 and 1880 include 
notat· 
ions t 442 
o creditors Paid.47 explaining why the bill could not be 
Other ~istress ook evidence implies that the Bagbys' 
~· account b 
have Y George's financial shortcomings might caused b 
Decemb source of marital friction. An entry for een a 
er 12, "Let 1874 • for example, carries the following plea: 
me end debt eavor with all my power and strength to k••P the 
wing larger . God knows how Jlllcl I try to do f r om 
niy duty. 
gro · 
a m eorge would onlY think so. "48 Another entry 
If G 
ceca . cautioned to "Keep oown Debt. ,. 49 An onth 1 ater 
sional ~at heavily underlined entry for ua1cohol" suggests 
. George Ba ineff gby may have coped with his financial 
ectivene ss by drinking. 
Other drop . account book evidence documents the precipitate 
in Ge ear orge Bagby's income, from $132 a month during the 
fr 5 ' to $70 a month or 1ess following his ouster ly 1870 
om the Library in 1878, a event which prompted Park• 
~rev~' hats expenditures incl~ded ice, coal, food, ~ent, 47 
drug Typical Jew ided b' wood, and babY carriages, as well as services 
covel~rs. Y laundresses, dressmakers, physicians, and 
1a
7
ering th Lucy Parke chamberlayne aagbY Account aooks 
Ba:; 1a
79
.e periods 1a51-1a79i 1a10-1a75i 1a14; two for 
g Y Famii and 1879-1882, all in sections 135 and 136, 
Y Papers VHS 
48 ' . 
Bag~ber1ayn~ dated 12 oecember 1074, LUCY parke , Y Fam·i Bagby Account Book, 1a10-1a75, section 135, Cha Entr 
4 
1 Y Papers, VHS. Emphasis in the original• 
Park 9 Entr · 
Pa e Ch Y dated January 1a75 Account aook, 1874, LUCY 
n/ers :berlayne eagbY Account aooks, in aagbY FamilY 
inar1y' s· s. Parke aagbY 1ater remarked that it took her 
curredixte~n years to paY of th• indebtedness th• couple 
during this time. 
443 
Bagby to embark on a career as a boarding house operator. 
In 1879, she rented a house at 813 E. Grace Street where 
she lived and worked throughout much of the early 1880s, 
Following George's death from cancer in 1883, Parke Bagby 
returned to the clerical work she had learned during the 
civil War, accepting a post in the office of Virginia's 
Second Auditor which she held for more than twenty-one 
years. 
Parke and George Bagby may have dealt with the marital 
discord attendant on George's ineffectiveness as the family 
provider by deciding to live apart. Despite their 
financial burdens, the Bagbys maintained separate 
residences throughout much of the late 1870s and early 
1880s, even during times when both were living in Richmond, 
and were only reunited under one roof for a brief period of 
time preceding George's death.so 
Marital discord seems to have attended the Fletchers' 
financial probiems as well. By the late 1870s, Patterson 
Fletcher had become a bitter, spiteful man whose angry 
outbursts marred the family peace and left his wife and 
children longing for the times when his work kept him away. 
50 rn a society where divorce was a less available 
option, other nineteenth-century couples adopted this 
strategy for dealing with marital stress. Elizabeth Cady 
Stanton and Henry B. Stanton, for example, spent a large 
portion of their married life living in separate 
residences. Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life 
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, (New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1984), 79-80, 86-88, 120, 188-90, 213-14. 
444 
"Their father is away tonight," Lucy Fletcher wrote at the 
end of an evening with her children in September 1870 
and we all had a pleasant time in my chamber 
. .My heart beats painfully & my nerves are a 
quiver from head to foot as soon as my husband 
begins to elevate his voice .... It is so 
inexpressibly mournful to see the unhappy effect 
of their father's harshness & want of self 
control upon the children, & I have had in past 
years to do and say so much to maintain his 
authority & prevent them from doing things that 
would excite him, that I have feared they would 
become utterly discouraged & hardened. I no 
longer have the heart to keep up such constant 
restraint, & altho' I try to make all possible 
allowances for him, & do not suffer them to speak 
unkindly or disrespectfully of him, I can see 
that he is alienating their respect & 
affection. 51 
Patterson Fletcher's attacks on his children and 
perhaps also on his wife continued to escalate in the 
1870s, as the financially straitened Staunton congregation 
repeatedly reneged on its payment of his salary. A number 
of these outbursts culminated in harsh, public tongue-
lashings .filled with litanies of the children's personal 
shortcomings. Never a woman of robust health, Fletcher 
endured a series of stress-related ailments during this 
51Entry dated September 1870, Brown Diary, Lucy Muse 
Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. Fletcher's diary entries 
during this period are filled with oblique references to 
family turmoil, which may have included physical as well as 
verbal reprisals. some portions of the record were 
completely excised or else obliterated by heavy pencil 
markings when Fletcher edited her diaries in the late 
1890s. Diaries documenting domestic violence in the 
nineteenth century are rare. For another example, see 
Madge Preston, A Private War: Letters and Diaries of Madge 
Preston. 1862-1867, Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, ed. (New 
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 
445 
Period . ln her 1· ife, including h d physical ea aches, neuralgia, and 
and m 
d
, ental fatigue. nr l.se am satisfied that my 
ase · ls mo iary . re mental than physical," she confided in her 
in March 1869 str ' " & it mortifies me that I have not 
ength to bear 
0 
up under the cares & trouble which 
PPresses me.n52 r Thirty years later, the painful 
ecollect· ion of th' exc· is troubled time may have prompted her to 
lse portions of Verbal her diary that may have documented other 
assaults. 
Whereas Parke tens· and George Bagby coped with marital 
ions b enc y living apart, her husband's angry tirades 
ouraged L am ucy Fletcher to turn inward upon her faith. 
learn· e ing to think more of our saviour as a lli'tterJ1, an 
>ca:mple for t:ry· ciur imitation," she wrote during an e,ctremelY 
1ng P Pe eriod in the summer of 1869, "to dwell more on the 
rfect· ions f 
w· 
0 
his character, his misery & lo~ suffering 
1th.his t loving, but erring disciples . .,S3 she also began 
0 :re1 Y more h , . c eavily on her son wattie as a source of 
Oltlfort "He is so gentle & thoughtful of mY wishes & 
fl I 
COtnfort II ' she b fl t sYln ° served about her eldest son, seems o 
Pathize 
so tenderly with the trials which beset my daily 
-----t'l s2E alton F~try dated March 1869, oiarY 1869-1870, Lucy Muse 
etcher Papers, ou. 
53 ~Use wa~~try dated 28 septemb8r 1869, arown oiary, Lucy 
on Fletcher Papers, ou. 
path & does all in his power to relieve me of every 
care. 1154 
Emancipation and Household Labor 
The emancipation of slaves which accompanied the 
city's surrender in 1865 forced a re-negotiation of labor 
relations as white and black Richmonders, in particular, 
struggled to articulate the parameters, and limit the 
effects, of emancipation. When they took place within 
white households, these labor negotiations carried the 
potential to disrupt the tranquility of family life. As 
white Richmond men tried to cope with confederate defeat, 
black men moved to assert their dominance over their own 
families by controlling the labor of their female kin. As 
white Richmond women struggled to maintain their privileged 
positions in Southern society, positions that rested 
largely on the labor of slave domestics, black women sought 
to redirect their productive energies to their own 
families. 55 
With the exception of manufacturing enterprises like 
Tregedar Iron Works and the tobacco factories, which 
employed large numbers of slaves during the antebellum 
54Entry dated 7 August 1869, Brown Diary, Lucy Muse 
Walton Fletcher Papers, DU. Emphasis in the original. 
55LeeAnn Whites, "The civil War as a crisis in 
Gender," and Nina Silber, "Intemperate Men, Spiteful Women, 
and Jefferson Davis, both in Divided Houses, Clinton and 
Silber, eds., 3-21, and 283-305. 
446 
447 
period, few white slaveholding families in Richmond and its 
environs supervised slave populations approaching the size 
of those found on large plantations in the Deep South. 
Nearly half of all white Richmonders in the early 1860s, 
however, including "[i]ndustrialists, artisans, factory 
workers, and even laborers," were relieved of routine 
household duties by at least one or two domestic "servants" 
who were either family slaves or were hired from Richmond 
slaveholders or their agents. 56 
Before the war, slave labor was central to the 
domestic tranquility of Rosina Mordecai's Rosewood farm 
located on the city's western edge. Rosina Mordecai was 
the widow of Emma Mordecai's brother, Augustus, who had 
died in 1947. By 1864, Rosina Mordecai's white household 
included her seventeen-year-old daughter, Augusta, and her 
sister-in-law, Emma Mordecai. Rosina's three sons, 
William, George, and John, were on military duty with the 
Richmond Howitzers. 
The Mordecai household was tended by a family of 
slaves which included Cyrus or "Cy" and his wife, Sarah; 
their sons, Alick and Little Cyrus; their twelve-year-old 
daughter, Georgiana; and their married, pregnant daughter, 
Lizzie, whose husband, Phil, worked nearby. Another 
twelve-year-old-girl, Mary, was probably Lizzie's older 
child. Two older daughters of Cy and Sarah--Caroline and 
56weis, "Negotiating Freedom," 16-26. 
448 
Marth a--worked on "Westbrook," an adjoining farm owned by 
al s brother, John Young. Other Rosewood Rosina Mordec ·, 
slaves . included Alfred, . . 
Massie, Fleming, Moses, and George, 
Who , among h' 15 other duties, drove the family carriage. 
yrus, Little cy, and Massie labored in the While C 
' yrus's wife, Sarah, worked in the Mordecai kitchen fields c 
ing the family's meals with the assistance of her Prepar · 
ers Mary and Georgina. As the union siege settled daught 
over Petersburg, Virginia, in the 1ate summer and early 
fall of 1864, the Mordecai women, both black and white, 
ogether in the familY household: preserving labored t 
s, collecting elderberries for making ink and Peache . 
ack; and fashioning a new rag carpet for the dining 
shoebl 
room fl oor. 
Emma's slave, Moses, a bricklayer by trade, 
the family's fireplace, while Fleming, a hired rep · aired 
oy," accompanied his seventeen-year-old mistress, 
"c ow b 
Augusta 57 ' on horseback rides to a neighbor's far11l• 
In the wake of Richmond's surrender, cyrus moved to 
consolidate db his family with . himself at the hea Y 
dec1ar · d d ing his intentions to quit the Mordecai househol an 
take h' is wife and children with him• He also sent word to 
Rosina• f s brother, John young, demanding the return o 
Marth a and 
West ~ook · d farm since they were chll ren. 
Caroline, who bad worked on the youngs' 
on April 14th, 
»avem~7Entries dated 4, 22 August, 12, 16 September; 1, 2 
er 1864, Emma Mordecai oiarY, VHS· 
449 
Cyrus placed Caroline at work in the household of a "negro 
woman in the neighborhood" under a hiring agreement he had 
negotiated. Cyrus's announcement threw the Mordecai women 
into "great grief" and "loss," which stemmed, in part, from 
the fact that Rosina and Gusta were "very much attached" to 
the two young girls, but also because Mary and Georgina 
provided a great deal of "useful" labor that freed the 
household's white women from a portion of the domestic 
drudgery. 58 
The return of Rosina Mordecai's three sons--William, 
George, and John--from the Confederate army on April 15th 
ushered in a new round of deliberations between the 
Mordecais and their former slaves. Whereas Emma had 
described Cyrus's tone in his earlier meetings with Rosina 
Mordecai as angry and insolent, ~he characterized his 
interviews with the Mordecai men as being conducted in 
tones that were more measured and respectful. For a few 
days, a tentative peace settled over the household as Cyrus 
and the Mordecai men discussed the nature and length of the 
work Cyrus's family would perform and the compensation they 
would receive. Before long, however, this momentary calm 
was broken by "high words" between Cyrus and William 
Mordecai, as each man struggled to assert his control of 
the household labor. When Cyrus finally claimed that the 
Mordecai's "kitchen belonged to him because he had helped 
58 Entry dated 13 April 1865, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
450 
cut the timber to build it" and that he was "entitled to 
the farm (too] after all the work he had done," William 
Mordecai responded by ordering Cyrus and his family to 
leave. 59 
As Cyrus prepared to move his family to a rented house 
on the turnpike road, the Mordecais scoured the community 
to find suitable replacements. By May 6th, they had 
contracted with Susan, a former slave from a nearby farm. 
who agreed to attend to the milking and prepare the 
family's breakfast. A day later, they hired Annie, a white 
orphan from the city's Female Humane Asylum which, 
anticipating a shortage of black domestic workers, had 
passed a resolution permitting a larger number of white 
female orphans to be placed in Richmond households. 60 
When Annie proved to be unsatisfactory, the Mordecai women 
were left to rely on the services of an untrained former 
field. hand who arrived at Rosewood farm a few days later 
with her two young so,ns. 61 
As Cyrus's family took their leave of the Mordecais on 
the evening of May 5th, Cyrus and Rosina Mordecai tried to 
bridge the gap that lay between them. According to the 
r ecord in Emma Mordecai's diary, what followed was a 
59Entry dated 4 May 1865, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
60Entries dated 6, 7, 11 May 1865, Emma Mordecai 
Dairy, VHS. 
61Entry for 16 May 1865, Emma Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
451 
touching but tense scene in which Cyrus expressed "regret 
for his improper conduct and was very much affected at 
parting with her." overcome with emotion, Rosina gave them 
all presents of old clothing, meat, meal, and pdtatoes. 
The absence of reliable domestic service for herself 
and her daughter Augusta was more than Rosina Mordecai 
could bear. A woman often plagued by a host of 
infirmities, she took to her bed for more than three days, 
prostrated with "nervous suffering and mental torture," 
which Emma Mordecai was able to relieve only by her own 
prodigious domestic labor and three-and-a-half quarts of 
whisky supplied on the authority of the Union Provost 
Marshal. 62 
The conclusion of Emma Mordecai's Rosewood diary a few 
days later draws to a close this portrait of the effects of 
emancipation on one white Richmond household. As Tracey 
Weis's study of domestic service in postbellum Richmond has 
shown, however, economic changes would make it possible for 
men 1 ike Cyrus and Phil increasingly to find work away from 
the household setting. But for women like Sarah and her 
daughters, domestic service in white women's households 
62 Entries dated 7, 11, 13, 15, and 21 May 1865, Emma 
Mordecai Diary, VHS. 
452 
would form the mainstay of their employment for the rest of 
the nineteenth century. 63 
Conclusion 
Examinations of the Civil War's impact on Northern and 
Southern marriages have only just begun, and a great deal 
more research will have to be undertaken before historians 
will have a clear picture of how wartime casualties 
affected marriage patterns for white women and men in both 
regions. The difficulty of penetrating the veil of privacy 
that most nineteenth-century Americans raised around their 
most intimate relationships also complicates the process of 
discovering the war's long-term effects on marriage and 
family relations. 
Evidence from the Richmond marriage register suggests 
that reports of a marriage frenzy sweeping the wartime city 
were probably overblown. The reason more marriage licenses 
were issued and more marriages were celebrated during the 
wartime years may simply be that more people were living in 
the city at the time. Richmond may have been an exception 
in this case, however, because of its role as the 
63Tracey Weis has argued that black men were able to 
escape postemancipation domestic labor as other kinds of 
work became available to them, but that black women were 
not because no other options for work emerged for them 
during this time. Weis, "Negotiating Freedom," 26-28. 
Weis's research agrees with and supports the earlier 
findings of Angela Marie Bongiorno, "White Women and Work 
in Richmond, Virginia, 1870-1884 11 (M.A. thesis, University 
of Virginia, 1978), 20. 
453 
Confederate capital and as the focal point for much of the 
fighting in the war's eastern theater meant that it did not 
suffer in wartime imbalance in the sex ratio other 
communities claimed. The story of these other communities 
deepens and complicates the eventual synthesis. 
The war erased family fortunes and rendered most 
Richmonders at least temporarily poor. In addition, the 
emancipation of Richmond slaves at the war's end forced a 
restructuring of domestic relationships between ex-slaves 
and their former mistresses that not only severed lines of 
authority and control but also ended white and black 
relationships extending back for generations. As 
Richmonders coped with poverty and defeat, some did so in 
the context of intimate relationships that were rubbed raw 
from four years of warfare. But of all these Richmonders, 
the women who ended the Civil War clad in mourning--like 
their counterparts at the end of the American Revolution--
were likely among the most impoverished women in the 
postwar city. And like those earlier widows, these women 
suffered the disadvantages of living in a society that 
placed a greater emphasis on enshrining the memory of dead 
heroes than it did on caring for the wives and children of 
those who had died. 
CHAPTER 12 
CONCLUSION 
Margaret Higonnet has observed that civil wars have 
the greatest potential to substantially alter the condition 
of a country's women. "Once a change in government can be 
conceived," she writes, ''sexual politics can also become an 
overt political issue .... [C)ivil war serves as emblem 
and catalyst of change in the social prescription of sexual 
roles." 1 But Southern white women, like southern white 
men, had not gone to war to change their way of life; they 
had taken up arms to prevent change from happening. They 
did not succeed. Change came to Southern society and its 
women nonetheless, not only through emancipation that was 
the result of Confederate defeat, but also from the very 
act of fighting the war itself. 
Regardless of the place they occupied in antebellum 
society, all white women in Richmond were touched by the 
fire of four years of fighting that seared its images into 
their individual and collective consciousness. From the 
1Margaret R. Higonnet, "Civil Wars and Sexual 
Territories," in Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and 
Literary Representation, Helen M. Cooper, Adrienne 
Auslander Munich, and Susan Merrill Squier, eds. (Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 80. 
454 
455 
firing on Fort Sumter to the early 1880s most--if not all--
of the women in this study continued to number their days 
according to the contours of the civil War and 
Reconstruction. The war propelled thousands of middle-
class Richmond women into work for the Confederate 
government and made patriotic martyrs out of young working-
class girls who sacrificed their lives to manufacture 
bullets. The war bit deeply into their private roles as 
wives, sisters, and mothers, depriving them of their 
menfolk and leaving scars, for many, that time could not 
erase, 
One of the most immediately transformative effects of 
the war was the erasure of family fortunes that levelled 
the economic playing field in Richmond, at least 
temporarily. Even some of the city's more affluent women 
ended the war mired in debt. confederate matron Sally 
Tompkins depleted most of her family's fortune caring for 
injured Confederate troops. When she died in 1915 at the 
age of eighty-three, she was living in the Sheppard Street 
Home for Needy Confederate women, an institution 
established in Richmond in the late nineteenth century to 
care for the indigent female relations of Confederate 
veterans. 2 
Middle-class women who had expected to work just for 
the war's duration found themselves in need of permanent 
2sally Louisa Tompkins Papers, ESBL. 
456 
peacetime employment, despite the disappearance of their 
warwork. While the war created permanent jobs in clerking 
and nursing in the North, in Richmond it did not. The same 
was true for working-class Confederate women who also saw 
their postwar labor circumscribed by the Confederacy's 
collapse. In The Southern Lady, Anne Firor Scott has 
remarked that "[s]ignificant social changes have a way of 
taking place while people are looking the other way. 113 
And, indeed, it might be argued that some of the more 
positive wartime changes for Richmond women came through 
channels they least expected and in ways that were fraught 
with irony because they came as a result of Confederate 
defeat. Such was the case with Richmond women's postwar 
work. 
By the early to mid-1870s, two new occupations opened 
for middle- and working-class women, neither of which had 
been foreseen before the war began and both of which had 
important wartime connections. During the early 1870s 
increasing numbers of women in Richmond and elsewhere 
throughout Virginia took up teaching positions in the 
public schools that had been mandated during Reconstruction 
as a condition for Virginia's readmission to the Union. 
Because Richmonders were anxious to have their children 
3Anne Firor Scott, The southern Lady: From Pedestal to 
Politics, 1830-1930, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University 
Press of Virginia, 1995), 110; all subsequent citations are 
to this edition. 
457 
know the true story of the "war for southern independence," 
teaching became worthwhile and highly compensated work for 
white Richmond women. As a result, women's colleges and 
normal schools for educating female teachers were 
established bringing Southern women's education on a par 
with that of Northern women a few decades earlier. 
By the mid-1870s, white laboring women also found 
unexpected work manufacturing cigarettes, a new form of 
tobacco product whose fast-growing popularity derived 
precisely from physical and psychological effects 
attributable to the war itself. 4 cigarette work was 
portrayed as a cleaner, more respectable, and better 
compensated form of employment than textile work and 
sewing. Promises of a homelike atmosphere and amenities 
such as libraries, exercise rooms, and Sunday picnics 
attracted hundreds of young women who flooded the factories 
in the 1880s and 1890s. Hundreds more entered factories to 
manufacture paper boxes, an ancillary industry whose growth 
was tied to cigarette production. 
One area where Richmond women had enjoyed a 
significant measure of antebellum power was in the city's 
churches. Although Baptist and Methodist women were 
prohibited from voting or even attending congregational 
meetings and Jewish women in the Beth Shalome congregation 
4Nannie Tilley, The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860-1949 
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 
497-98. 
458 
were still required to worship in gender-specific seating, 
women in the city's antebellum churches had managed to 
carve out a crucial niche for themselves as church fund 
raisers. In the postwar period, female parishoners widened 
this niche considerably as they brought their fundraising 
talent to bear on repairing and refurbishing sanctuaries 
damaged by battle and caring for elderly women left 
destitute by the war. During the men's absence, they had 
also stepped into the breech to keep Sunday schools in 
session, a nontraditional role for Richmond women but a 
vital wartime contribution--at least in some Richmonders' 
eyes--given the influx of rowdy, drunken, swearing, 
confederate soldiers and government sycophants who enabled 
the Richmond and Manchester grog shops, gaming tables, and 
brothels to do a brisk business. 
During the 1870s and 1880s, women in several 
denominations attempted to extend their influence even 
further by creating independent foreign missionary groups 
focused on bringing the message of the gospel to native 
women in Africa and China and alleviating some of the 
gender-specific hardships Chinese and African women faced. 
The creation of autonomous foreign missionary societies 
provoked a firestorm of controversy from male clergy and 
parishoners who accused the women of overreaching their 
appropriate place in Southern society. As Suzanne Lebsock 
and George Rable have cautioned us to remember, the 
459 
undertow of southern patriarchy was both strong and deep--
even in this most industrialized of Southern cities. 5 The 
emancipation of slaves that followed confederate defeat 
stripped away an important aspect of white Southern men's 
dominance and control; another measure of that control was 
the subordination of southern women. Therefore Baptist and 
Methodist Richmond women who attempted to create autonomous 
missionary groups in the 1870s and 1880s did so in the 
context of a society anxious to keep any more change from 
happening. 6 
Richmond's role as the capital of the Confederacy was 
not forgotten when the war was over. In the decades 
following Confederate defeat, this southern metropolis was 
transformed into an urban shrine to the South's "Lost 
Cause." Hundreds of white women organized Confederate 
memorial societies in Richmond to honor the bravery of 
slain Confederate soldiers and assure that their names 
5Suzanne Lebsock, The Free women of Petersburg: status 
and Culture in a Southern Town. 1784-1860 (New York: W.W. 
Norton, 1983), 247-48. 
6And more ambitious attempts to broaden the parameters 
of women's sphere met with defeat. A fledgling suffrage 
organization that took shape in Richmond in the 1870s soon 
withered and died due to a lack of female support. Sandra 
Gioia Treadway, "A Most Brilliant Woman: Anna White Bedeker 
and the First Woman Suffrage Association in Virginia," 
Virginia Cavalcade 43.4 (spring 1994): 166-77. These seeds 
of suffrage in Virginia would lie on fallow ground until 
brought to life by other Richmond women who were a 
generation removed from the fighting. Marjorie Spruill 
Wheeler, New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the 
Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1993). 
460 
would not be forgotten. During the 1870s and 1880s, these 
cemetery associations moved beyond their yearly grave-
decorating observances to engage in other kinds of 
activities--erecting confederate statuary, restoring 
historic civil War houses, sponsoring essay contests, 
writing text books--all of which were designed to reassert 
white Richmonders' dominance on the urban and cultural 
landscape and impose their romanticized vision of Southern 
society on succeeding generations. 
Women played an important role in this transformation 
process. By the end of the nineteenth century, a portion 
of the Hollywood Cemetery Association had evolved into the 
confederate Memorial Literary society that labored to amass 
a vast collection of Civil War cultural icons--uniforms, 
guns, swords, battle flags, personal diaries and 
reminiscences. By the turn of the century, the confederate 
Memorial Literary Society would be joined by several 
Richmond chapters of the United Daughters of the 
Confederacy, an organization devoted at getting the "true 
history" of the South and its peculiar institution into the 
historical canon. But the social vision these groups 
struggled to preserve was one that relegated Richmond women 
to the same type of subordinate roles they had experienced 
before the war began. 7 
7Angie Parrot, "'Love Makes Memory Eternal': The 
United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, 
1897-1920," in The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-
461 
Drew Faust, George Rable, and others have pointed to 
the impact made by the absence of white men on the Southern 
homefront. As men went off to war, they write, Southern 
women faced communities bereft of men. 8 The anticipated 
drain of eligible bachelors forced many women into hasty 
marriages after either brief or nonexistent courtships. My 
study of marriage patterns in Richmond, Virginia, provides 
an exception to this rule. In Richmond, no such wartime 
shortage of marriageable men occurred, largely because of 
Richmond's unique position as the capital of the 
Confederacy. As a result, throughout the war, women 
continued to marry at precisely the same age as their 
antebellum sisters. As the Richmond population contracted 
with the postwar departure of government workers and 
refugees, however, the war's long-term devastating losses, 
as described by Maris Vinovskis, can be seen in the 
differing rates of remarriage for white widows and 
widowers. 9 
Century Virginia, Edward L. Ayers and John C. Willis, eds. 
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 219-
238. 
8 Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the 
Slaveholding South in the American civil War (Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1996), especially 
Chapter Six; George c. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the 
crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of 
Chicago Press, 1989), especially Chapter Three. 
9Maris A. Vinovskis, "Have Social Historians Lost the 
Civil War? Some Preliminary Demography Speculations," in 
Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: 
462 
Most studies of white women during the American Civil 
War focus on elite plantation women of the slaveholding 
class. My study of Richmond, Virginia, focuses on the 
experiences of women in a highly industrialized urban 
setting and, thus, partially restores the voices of white 
working- class women to the historical narrative through its 
examination of the Richmond bread riot and the Brown's 
Island explosion. It also sheds light on the patriotic 
c ontributions of women from Richmond's Jewish population, 
despite widespread anti-Semitism in the South during the 
civil War and Reconstruction. 
Anne Scott's examination of the effects of the civil 
War and Reconstruction posited a tidal wave of change that 
transformed Southern women into the "New Women" of the 
twentieth century south . 10 My study of white women in 
Richmond, Virginia, however, reveals a far more complex 
pattern in which the advances Richmond women made were 
often unsought, unintended, or else served to reinforce 
more traditional expectations about Southern women's roles 
as defined by the patriarchal structure of Southern 
society. 
Exploratory Essays (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University 
Press, 1990), 1-30. 
10Anne Scott, Southern Lady, 81-133. 
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Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990. 
498 
Conference Papers 
Ash, Steven B. "War and Society: New Directions in Virginia 
History." Paper presented at the Virginia Historical 
Society Conference on New Directions in Virginia 
History, Richmond, Virginia, October 1990. 
Barber, E. Susan. "Braxton Bragg and the Politics of 
Command," Paper presented at the Phi Alpha Theta 
Regional Conference, Annapolis, Maryland, April 1983. 
Chesson, Michael B. "Richmond Jews and the Bread Riot of 
April 2, 1863: Myth and Reality." 6th Annual 
Conference on the Jewish Experience in the South of 
the Southern Jewish Historical Society. Mobile, 
Alabama, 1981. 
Feely, Amy. "Southern Lady Meets New Woman: Women of the 
Confederate Memorial Society and the Lost Cause in 
Richmond, Virginia." Paper presented at the Northern 
Virginia Community College Conference on the History 
of Women in the Chesapeake in the Nineteenth Century, 
Annandale, Virginia, November 1996, 
Hess, Earl J., Jr. "The 'Face of Battle' and the 
Experiences of Combat in the civil War." Paper 
presented at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Southern 
Historical Association, Lexington, Kentucky, November, 
1989. 
Krug, Donna. "The Enemy at the Door in the Confederacy: A 
Crisis of Honor." Paper presented at the 55th Annual 
Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, 
Lexington, Kentucky, 1989. 
Mitchell, Reid. "The Union Soldier and the Local 
Community." Paper presented at the 55th Annual Meeting 
of the Southern Historical Association, Lexington, 
Kentucky, 1989. 
Program Committee of the Ninth Berkshire Conference on the 
History of Women. Transformations: Women, Gender, 
Power. Program Guide for the Ninth Berkshire 
Conference on the History of Women, Vassar College, 
Poughkeepsie, New York, 11-13 June 1993, 
"Third Street Presbyterian Church: 150th Anniversary 
History, 1835-1985," Paper presented in honor of the 
church's 150th anniversary, Richmond, Virginia, 1985. 
Treadway, Sandra G. "Women in Virginia." Paper presented at 
the Virginia Historical Society Conference on New 
499 
Directions in Virginia History, Richmond, Virginia, 
October 1990. 
Varon, Elizabeth. "From Partisanship to Sectionalism: White 
Women's Political Consciousness in Virginia, 
1840-1861." Paper presented at the Ninth Berkshire 
Conference on the History of Women, Vassar College, 
Poughkeepsie, New York, 11-13 June 1993. 
Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. ""Southern Suffragists and the 
Rejections of 'Indirect Influence.'" Paper presented 
at the Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of 
Women, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 11-13 
June 1993. 
Whites, LeeAnn. "The civil War as a Crisis in Gender." 
Paper presented at LeMoyne College, Syracuse, New 
York, n.d. 
Whites, LeeAnn. "Women and the Lost cause or 'Stand by Your 
Man': The Ladies' Memorial Association and the 
Reconstruction of White Manhood in the New South." 
Paper presented at the Ninth Berkshire Conference of 
the History of Women, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 
New York, 11-13 June 1993. 
Miscellaneous 
Ezekiel, Moses. Virginia Mourning Her Dead, 3/4-size bronze 
replica, 1900, Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, 
Virginia. 
Field, Connie (producer/director). The Life and Times of 
Rosie the Riveter. Clarity Productions, 1980. 
Pearson, Doris. Interview with E. Susan Barber, 16 March 
1995, Richmond, Virginia. 
Washington, William D. The Burial of Latane, oil on canvas, 
Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia. 
CURRICULUM VITAE 
E. Susan Barber 
3504 Millvale Road 
Baltimore, MD 21244 
( 410) 655-0049 
e-mail: barber@charm.net 
EDUCATION 
Ph.D. in History, University of Maryland, College Park, 
August 1997 
Major Field: 19th-Century U.S. History 
Minor Field: Women's History 
Dissertation Title: "'Sisters of the Capital': 
White Women in Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880" 
Dissertation Co-Directors: Gay L. Gullickson 
David A. Grirnsted 
M.A. in History, University of Maryland College Park, 
December 1986 
Thesis: "'The Quiet Battles of the Horne Front 
War': civil War Bread Riots and the Development 
of a Confederate Welfare System" 
Thesis Advisor: David A. Grirnsted 
B.A., College of Notre Dame of Maryland 
May 1984, sumrna cum laude 
Double Major: History and English 
TEACHING EXPERIENCE 
Fall 1997: Assistant Professor of History, College of Notre 
Dame of Maryland . 
Fall · 1996 to Summer 1997: Lecturer, College of Notre Dame 
of Maryland 
Spring 1988 - Summer 1996: Associate Faculty (Adjunct) 
College of Notre Dame of Maryland 
Subjects taught: U.S. history, European women's 
history, political science, and women's studies 
September 1985 - June 1992: Teaching Assistant 
University of Maryland, College Park 
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 
September 1993 - May 1995: Editorial Associate, 
Feminist Studies 
January 1993 - September 1994: Editorial Associate, 
AHA Guide to Historical Literature, 
University of Maryland, College Park 
December 1992 - April 1993: Editor, National American Woman 
Suffrage Association· (NAWSA) Collection, American 
Memory Project, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 
February 1987 - February, 1988: Managing Editor 
The Maryland Historian, Vols. 17.2 and 18.1 
SERVICE TO THE COLLEGE OF NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND 
September 1996 - present: Faculty Advisor to Lesbians and 
Friends (LAF) 
January 1996 - present: coordinator, Women's Information 
Network 
October 1996 - April 1997: coordinator, Notre Dame 
Clothesline Project 
SERVICE TO HISTORY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 
September 1986 - September 1987: Graduate Student 
Representative, Graduate Committee 
Fall 1991: Graduate Student Representative, Review 
Committee for American Women's Historian 
PAPERS 
"'Cartridge Makers and Myrmidon Viragos': White Working-
Class Women in Confederate Richmond," presented at the 
SAWH Fourth Southern Conference on Women's History, 
Charleston, South Carolina, June 12-14, 1997 . 
"Percussion Caps and Flannel Shirts: Working-Class Women in 
Confederate Virginia," presented at the Northern 
Virginia Community College conference on Women of the 
Chesapeake, NVCC, Annandale, Virginia, November 15, 
1996 
"White Women's organizations in Civil War and 
Reconstruction Richmond," presented at the Graduate 
student/Faculty Colloquium, University of Maryland, 
May 3, 1995 
"Cartridge Making in confederate Richmond," presented at 
the Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia, March 10, 
1995 
"Braxton Bragg and the Politics of command, 11 presented at 
the Phi Alpha Theta Regional conference, U.S. Naval 
Academy, April 1983 Received honorable mention 
PUBLICATIONS 
"' Anxious Care and Constant Struggle': The Female Humane 
Association and Richmond's Female orphans," 
(forthcoming, University of Georgia Press) 
AWARDS 
Walter J. Rundell, Jr. Graduate Award in American History, 
Department of History, University of Maryland, College 
Park, 1992 (shared) 
Mellon Research Fellowships, Virginia Historical Society, 
July 1991 and July 1993 
Hearst Travel Grants for Historical Research, Department of 
History, University of Maryland, College Park, 1990, 
1991, and 1992 
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS 
American Historical Association - 1989 to present 
Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians - 1991 to 
present 
organization of American Historians - 1989 to present 
Phi Alpha Theta - 1982 to present 
southern Association for Women Historians - 1997 
southern History Association - 1989 to 1995