Making Ends Meet

Hunger, danger, and a lack of clothing affected people at home as well as soldiers in the field. The removal of a large part of North Carolina’s male population left many families stranded at home with little or no food. The low pay offered Confederate soldiers meant that women and children had to go without many things or invent substitutes for them if they hoped to survive.


Woman's hat, ca. 1865, fashioned from braided palmetto fronds,
 one of many creative substitutions women employed during supply shortages.

Most soldiers’ wives came from the nonslaveholding class of farmers. When their husbands left for war, women became the providers for their families. Hard field labor on crops was done with women’s and children’s muscles. One observer in 1861 described the planting, hoeing, and plowing rural farm women performed, “while their babes lie on blankets or old coats in the corn rows.” To obtain salt, many dug up the dirt floors in smokehouses to scavenge salt left there from years of curing meat.

Not all women could manage farming and rearing children by themselves. Many women and children died from diseases caused by a scarcity of food, clothes, and medicine. Women wrote despairing letters to their husbands, fathers, and brothers pleading for the men to return home. Other women addressed Governor Zebulon Vance and asked for help. Men and women often denounced the wealthy planters and speculators who had plenty of food but would not sell it cheaply to needy soldiers’ families. Anger against slaveholders became especially bitter because of the Confederate exemption policy. This meant that men who owned twenty or more slaves did not have to go into the army, but nonslaveholding white males were drafted virtually without exception.

Littlton, NC, Feb. 17, 1863
    Mr. gov. Vance, if you please to tell me what we poore soldiers wifes is to do that we are hear sufering for the want of something to eat.…I sent to warrenton yesterday and they said the government had not put any thing there for the Soldiers wifes I never have suferd so much as I have for the last three or four months for I have to go some times week with nothing but bread to eat and I think that is to hard to take a poor man from his wife and children to leave hear to perish to death when we go to these rich people bout hear they wont let us have not one pound of meat for less than 50 cent per pound we have corn mily in our destrict but they will not do any thing for us my Husband has ben in the army nearly two year and they dont let him come home to see me much less provide any way for me to live if you dont provide some way for us to live we will be compell to take our little children and to our Husband or they must come home to us if you plese [write] to me as soon as you get this and let me no what we are to [do]. direct your letter to littleton depot.
 yours truly Mrs. L. Reid, Mrs. M. Neal, Mrs. C. Aycock, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Elbeth, Susan Shearin, the wife of Thomas W Shearin
(Governors Papers, State Archives, Raleigh.)
Women, desperate for food and disgusted with merchants who hoarded goods or sold them for high prices, sometimes took matters into their own hands. In 1863 nearly seventy-five women seized flour and other food in Salisbury from speculators. Five women received jail sentences in 1864 for removing seven sacks of grain from the Bladenboro depot. Women from Catawba County attacked distillers who turned precious grain needed for food into whiskey. A newspaper reporter described the battle between the ax-wielding women and the male distillers: “Barrels roll—hoops fly...ladies stand ankle deep in the flowing ‘elixor,’ and ply their weapons, if somewhat awkwardly, yet with terrible slaughter,—they are in the spirit.”

RALEIGH FOOD PRICES, 1862–1865

 1862
1863
1864
1865
Bacon (lb.) $  .33 $1.00 $ 5.50 $ 7.50
Beef (lb.)     .12     .50    2.50    3.00
Pork (lb.)    __   1.60    4.00    5.50
Sugar (lb.)     .75   1.00  12.00  30.00
Corn (bu.)   1.10   5.50  20.00  30.00
Meal (bu.)   1.25   5.50  20.00  30.00
Potatoes (bu.)   1.00   4.00    7.00  30.00
Yams (bu.)   1.50   5.00    6.00  35.00
Wheat (bu.)   3.00   8.00  25.00  50.00
Flour (bbl.) 18.00 35.00 125.00 500.00
lb. = pound; bu. = bushel; bbl. = barrel
(From William K. Boyd, “Fiscal and Economic Conditions in North Carolina during the War,” North Carolina Booklet [1915].
Planters’ families faced different demands. Comfortably housed and supported economically by the work of their slaves, planter women had the resources and time to support the war effort generously. They too sent family members, food, and provisions to the Southern army, but they did not face starvation. Many upper-class women donated hours of time manufacturing clothing for Southern troops and stripped their homes of blankets and quilts.

Catherine Edmondston, the wife of a prominent Halifax County planter, kept a detailed diary of her Civil War experiences. Her diary, published by the Division of Archives and History, is titled “Journal of a Secesh Lady”: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston, 1860–1866. The diary shows the interests of the planter class. Catherine Edmondston strongly supported the war effort and detested the North Carolinians who remained loyal to the Union. She and her husband Patrick willingly contributed to “the cause,” but neither faced real hardship until 1865. Then, when Confederate troops seized their livestock and food, the Edmondstons discovered they disliked forced impressments just as much as the nonslaveholders who had endured similar demands since 1863.
 

February 18, 1861    Today was inaugurated at Montgomery Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, consisting of the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana & Texas. O that North Carolina would join with her Southern sisters—sisters in blood, in soil, in climate & in institution. Would that these vile party politicians had no part or lot in her....
    It gets almost painful to go to Father’s we differ so widely. He it is true says nothing personal or unhandsome, but he censures so sweepingly every thing that SC does. Mama & Susan do go on so about the “Flag.” Who cares for the old striped rag now that the principle it represented is gone? It is but an emblem of a past glory. How can it be upheld when the spirit—nay even the body—that gave it value is lost?...

January 31, 1862

    Dined with Sister Frances. All well & as usual, she busy making Haversacks and Flags for the Regiments to take the field in the Spring. Went visiting in the morning. Susan Rayner carried me into the Ladies Soldiers Aid Society, the same one to whom I gave my wool Mattrass in the Fall to be knit into socks. Ellen Mordecai is the President and Susan the Treasurer. We found abut a dozen ladies all hard at work on Hospital shirts & drawers. Ellen & Susan had their Sewing Machines & all were as busy as possible. The work they have done is wonderful, indeed the Ladies all through the country have been heart & soul in the cause. Never was there such universal enthusiasm, enthusiasm too which does not evaporate in words but shows itself in work, real hard work, steady and constant. These Ladies have spent three days of the week at this Society room since Sept & show no signs of flagging....

March 15, 1865

     ...This morning came an Agent from a Committee of citizens organized according to Gov Vance’s suggestion to collect voluntary subscriptions of meat, meal, & flour for the army. These supplies are to be over and above every man’s surplus that the Government already has. It must be from his own stock of provisions, what he denies himself for the sake of the army....There will be many days this summer when we cannot taste meat, but what of that if our army is fed.

April 11, 1865

    Yesterday came the Impressing officers with orders from Gen Johnston to take all the best of our team, to leave us only the worthless & the inferior. The order runs, “take all that will be of service to the enemy.” The feeling against it is intense throughout the country. We think that as the Government confessedly is too weak to protect us, that at least it ought not thus to deprive us of the means of making a support....
   Upon the heels of the horse impressers is to come another gang with direction to take all our meat save three months supply!...We have given & freely given all we could spare & were we asked to give more and live on vegetables, would do it cheerfully & willingly for the sake of the Cause, but this forced patriotism is not the thing, is not the way to treat a free & generous people, & ere long hearts will be alienated from the Government & system that thus tramples on our rights, our feelings, & our sacred honour....

May 7, 1865

    What use is there in my writing this record? What profit, what pleasure, do I find in it? None! none! yet altho it is an actual pain to me I continue it from mere force of habit. We are crushed! subjugated! and I fear, O how I fear, conquered, & what is to me the saddest part, our people do not feel it as they ought....The cup has not to them the full bitterness which a once free people ought to find in the draught held to them by a Victor’s hand....Their once high spirit, their stern resolve, seems dead within them!...Oh my Country, my Country, I look forward to the future with bitter forebodings when I see your children thus forgetful of your and their own honour, of their own blood!...

(From Beth G. Crabtree and James W. Patton, eds., “Journal of a Secesh Lady”: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston, 1860–1866 [Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, 1979].)