February 23, 1865---"Yankees . . . that word is a synonym for all that is mean, despicable and abhorrent . . ."

FEBRUARY 23, 1865:        

The Union army under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman marches out of Columbia, South Carolina. As a parting gift to the residents Sherman burns the last public buildings in Columbia to the ground, sparing only the University (perhaps because of his tenure as Dean of L.S.U. before the war; Sherman is oddly sentimental at times).

 

This Parthian Shot enrages those Columbians who still have it in them to be enraged.  Emma LeConte, a seventeen year old South Carolinian belle, watches the Yankees march out, noting in her diary:

If only our people will be steadfast. The more we suffer, the more we should be willing to undergo rather than submit. Somehow, I cannot feel we can be conquered. We have lost everything, but if all this --- negroes, property --- all could be given back a hundredfold, I would not be willing to go back to them. I would rather endure any poverty than live under Yankee rule. I would rather far have France or any other country for a mistress --- anything but live as one nation with Yankees --- that word in my mind is a synonym for all that is mean, despicable and abhorrent.

Sherman surprises the South Carolinians by turning almost immediately eastward toward the sea. Many are cheered, thinking that the flame-haired general does not have the guts to fight it out with the Confederate forces lying due north of Columbia. The direction may be a surprise, but Sherman’s behavior is not --- his forces begin scorching the earth once again in a swath nearly eighty miles wide.

While Sherman’s Yankees are burning South Carolina, Major General John M. Schofield’s Yankees are trying to douse the fires in Wilmington, North Carolina. Having marched into the city within scant minutes of the last Confederate troops to leave, they find the city’s factories afire, the riverside quays in flame, the food stocks and medical supplies burning, and the tobacco and cotton warehouses alight. (The burning of the tobacco and cotton supplies in Charleston and Wilmington and later in Richmond is an indicator of how important these commodities were to the Southern economy, but the loss of even tens of thousands of tons of warehoused cotton and tobacco did not even faze the Union brokers in the trades).

Schofield wants to save the city, and his men manage, fairly quickly, to put out the scattered fires with only moderate damage. Schofield immediately begins rebuilding the quays and wharfside buildings. Wilmington is to become the main supply point for Sherman’s assault on the Confederate troops in inland North Carolina.

Faced with a city full of starving rebel civilians, Schofield wisely orders Union supplies distributed to the populace. Sending word to Sherman of this plan, Sherman assents, and simply requisitions more of everything for his army. Within days, even as Schofield is rebuilding the port facilities, Wilmington becomes, if only briefly, the busiest port in the United States.

In another part of the world, the British Parliament begins debating the political status of British North America. The Richmond Post-Dispatch characterizes this as the British “abandonment of Canada” and speculates that the Union will likely invade and annex its neighbor to the north:

We are, therefore, disposed to question the report that England intends to give up Canada, and are inclined to believe the report that she is fortifying it; and moreover, will be easily able to hold, it in the event of a war with the United States; and not only to hold it, but to make it, besides, a base of aggressive durations against that country.  

February 22, 1865---The Fall of Wilmington, North Carolina

FEBRUARY 22, 1865:       

The Fall of Wilmington, North Carolina:

         

It is Washington’s Birthday, the official fourth Independence Day of the Confederate States of America.

The end of the Civil War appears on the horizon as the city of Wilmington falls to Union forces. 

Throughout the war, Wilmington has been an important port on the eastern seaboard of the Confederacy.  Protected by the massive guns of Fort Fisher thirty miles seaward on the Cape Fear River, the inland port has been the only Confederate port where the Union blockade was almost completely ineffective. 

As the war lengthened, and more and more ports fell to landward assaults, Wilmington’s importance as the Confederacy’s link to Europe and the Caribbean has only grown.  Millions of tons of supplies reach the South through Wilmington, even as it becomes the only port that remains open to the blockade runners.

With the fall of Fort Fisher in January, the port is shut off, ensuring that the Confederacy’s days are surely numbered. But the city itself remains a critical supply dump, collection point and rail hub, keeping supplies flowing to the Army of Northern Virginia and to Richmond and Petersburg.

Although small, the factories of Wilmington become more and more critical in late 1864, turning raw materials into blankets, boots, shoes, bullets, guns, first aid kits, and foodstuffs for the Richmond-Petersburg front. The South’s war machine, though faltering, rumbles on at Wilmington.

So, by any measure, the fall of Wilmington is an unmitigated disaster for the Confederacy. Even those most hard-bitten Confederates who’ve insisted that the loss of heroic Charleston “was in and of itself of not very great importance” are stunned into silence by the collapse of Wilmington. “Scott’s Anaconda” has tightened its last coil. The Confederacy is dying.

A hue and cry goes up when word reaches Richmond that General Braxton Bragg has given up the city virtually without a fight, especially when Hoke’s spirited defense at Forks Road becomes known.

For his part, Bragg excuses himself by saying that he only followed orders --- that Robert E. Lee ordered him to abandon Wilmington. Lee’s retort, that Bragg’s pessimistic reports about conditions at Wilmington actively influenced this decision, goes unanswered.

Enraged members of the Confederate Congress call for Bragg’s head on a pike. Accusations fly that Bragg is a Union agent provocateur.  

No evidence exists that Bragg is a Union agent. But there is plenty of evidence that Bragg is some things worse --- incompetent at command, inflexible, difficult, unimaginative, rude to his fellows, and, most of all, a man defeated psychologically if not militarily --- and his blockheaded refusal to aid in the defense of Fort Fisher stands out as a glaring example of his unfitness for command.

His ready abandonment of Wilmington has compounded the Confederacy’s woes a thousandfold. Without Wilmington, the Confederacy has no manufacturing base left save the overstressed Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond and a few small sweatshop-type factories in Petersburg.

Without the railheads at Wilmington, there is no longer any countryside from which to draw raw materials for war or survival. On a map the Confederacy still looks vast. In reality, the Trans-Mississippi is long isolated, the Florida peninsula is cut off, and Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama are in flames, being ground up in the maw of the relentlessly advancing Union armies even as Wilmington falls.

Only a few pockets of resistance --- an elongated ovoid stretching from Weldon in the south to Richmond in the north, and an ill-defined area along the Virginia-North Carolina border --- are still unquestionably in Confederate hands.

In most circumstances, Bragg likely would have been dismissed after the debacle at Fort Fisher. If not Fort Fisher, the fall of Wilmington should have ended his career. But again, his long friendship with Jefferson Davis saves him.  

Jefferson Davis, for his part, is losing touch with reality. Like Adolf Hitler during a Spring yet to be eighty years in the future, Davis has adopted a bunker mentality. While he does not scream and rave at his generals nor shoot or cashier them, his reaction to criticism is an imperious disdain. He issues orders to commands unable to respond, and plans offensives with troops no longer available. 

With the fall of Wilmington, Robert E. Lee, the newly-named General-in-Chief insists that Bragg be consequenced. Davis briefly considers sending Bragg to the Trans-Mississippi, but then relents. He does not wish to wound his old friend.

Lee himself, as General-in-Chief, could dismiss Bragg, but he defers to his President. Lee also remains courteous to Bragg, when most Confederate leaders begin to abuse him.

Lee has war plans. Lee knows that he has almost no resources with which to fight Grant and Sherman. Still, he does have some manpower and enough cannon, powder, shot, shell, cap and ball to inflict damage on the Union if he can reorganize his forces effectively.

Lee is gambling that a forceful enough blow against the Union will cause the worm to turn, that the Copperheads and Peace Democrats will be revivified, and that Lincoln will be discredited in the eyes of a shocked Union public. If this happens he may be able to midwife an independent Confederacy if not on the battlefield then through negotiations.   

For weeks Lee has been insisting that he needs a subordinate --- Joseph E. Johnston --- who is familiar with managing large bodies of troops and who understands large-scale battle strategy. Davis, who hates Johnston, has been refusing to reappoint Johnston to command.

Even Lee admits that Johnston may be overcautious, but Davis’ oft-suggested alternative --- Bragg --- has proven himself a defeatist.

Lee and Davis meet, as they do most days, but this day their meeting degenerates into a shouting match. Word of the altercation in the Confederate White House spreads quickly.

Within a few hours an angry delegation of Confederate Representatives and Senators descends on Davis, castigating him for arguing with Lee, and insisting that Johnston be reappointed to command.  Words such as resignation and impeachment and coup d’etat are uttered. The idea of a bill to replace Davis with Lee and to name Lee as Dictator is broached.  When Lee hears of this idea he quickly quashes it as unacceptable, both to him personally and under law.

Davis, isolated, with no political allies, and with no options, at last promises the Congressional Delegation that he will “consider” their demand to name Johnston to a new command.  And then, for a few days, he does nothing.     

February 21, 1865---The Battle of Forks Road

FEBRUARY 21, 1865:      

The Battle of Forks Road:      

With the fall of Fort Anderson, the retreating Confederate troops, numbering about 3,000, dig in at Forks Road just outside Wilmington, and defend the city against 8,500 Union troops led by Jacob Horne, “a local man who betrayed his State, family and his brother  --- the latter was among [the] defenders.” 

The Union assault is led by the vaunted 54^th Massachusetts (U.S.C.T.) of Battery Wagner fame. 

The defense of Wilmington is tenacious, and the Confederate commander Major General Robert Frederick Hoke, advises his superior General Hardee that the city can be saved. Hardee passes this gladsome news on to General Braxton Bragg, in overall Southern command of the theatre, who orders that Hoke hold only long enough to allow the city to be evacuated. Bragg also orders that Hoke is to “set fire to all tobacco, cotton and naval stores that could be used by the enemy. Hoke is further ordered to scuttle the completed but unlaunched ironclad C.S.S. WILMINGTON. 

Hoke, later, and perhaps hyperbolically, called “Lee’s best General” dutifully follows orders, although it galls him to do so. He withdraws his men, setting fire to the city’s stores as he goes, and sets up a defensive position further north at Weldon --- the southmost terminus of the Weldon Railroad, Robert E. Lee’s last supply line into the enclave of Petersburg and Richmond. For his defense of Wilmington, Hoke is later lionized by proponents of The Lost Cause as “The Stonewall of Forks Road” though he refuses such approbations.

February 20, 1865---"And ain't I a woman?"

FEBRUARY 20, 1865:       

Well-known violinist Camilla Urso (1840-1902), Prima Donna Madame Varian, Pianists Teresa Carreno and Edward Hoffman, and Signor Fellini, Baritone, all appear for the first of three Grand Concerts at Niblo’s Saloon in New York City. Tickets are $1.00. Reserved seats are 50 cents extra.  Urso was a child prodigy who played with both the New York and Boston Philharmonics during her career. Although she had been a resident of Nashville before the war she never returned to the South for any extended period of time after the war. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. 

Mollie Bean, who had fought at Gettysburg and been wounded (twice) as a member of the 47^th North Carolina (C.S.) Regiment while dressed as a male, is interrogated by Union officers after having been captured on February 17^th.  Declaring her “manifestly crazy,” they incarcerate Bean, who is charged with espionage for lack of evidence of any other wrongdoing. 

Of all segments of the American population during the Civil War conditions changed more for women than for any other group (possibly excepting slaves). As late as the 1850s, most women could not be property owners in most States --- property was held “in trust” for even adult and elderly women by their “nearest male relatives” no matter how distant or strained the relationship. 

This Old World legal approach changed as America expanded westward. On the frontier, the death of a male spouse by mischance or disease or Indian attack, or alternately, abandonment of wives and children, put tremendous pressure on the old system. Often, the “nearest male relative” of a widowed or abandoned woman with offspring was a thousand miles distant. Communications were poor, and male relations “back East” had no idea how to manage, and little interest in managing, unseen frontier properties with which they were completely unfamiliar. Thus, Western States began granting limited property rights, first to widows and then to abandoned females with children, although male authorities such as Judges and town councilmen (and they were all men) effectively dominated womens’ decisionmaking capabilities on a local level. 

The spouses of a fashionable "Boston Marriage" on their wedding day

As conditions changed out West they also changed back East. More progressive States such as Massachusetts began to recognize the female right to manage and dispose of property. Massachusetts in fact became so liberal that lesbian couples began householding together, able to dispose of and share property together. These “Boston marriages” had some limited recognition under State, though not Federal, law.  

At the outset of the Civil War women’s rights were still restricted, but were poised to expand greatly. Among the earliest area of growth was in the Nursing Service. Although Dorothea Dix had had to agree to hire only female medical caregivers who were “old and ugly” at the outset of the war, and although she enforced this rule as late as 1863, the demand for nurses, and more importantly, skilled nurses, began to override such absurd restrictions. 

Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton (1821-1912), the Union's "Angel of the Battlefield" at Fredericksburg

Until the 1840s Nursing had been the unique province of (ironically enough) religious sisters and prostitutes in equal measure. Florence Nightingale’s great work during the Crimean War of the mid-1850s had legitimized Nursing, and Clara Barton, a Massachusetts Unionist, had imported Miss Nightingale’s techniques to America during the dawning days of the war. Barton would eventually found the American Red Cross. 

As an unchaperoned woman in the Union's army camps, Clara Barton was initially derided as a prostitute. On his deathbed, her father charged her to put her loyalty to the Union above her personal concerns about reputation. She was later decorated by U.S. Grant for her patriotic work.

Teaching was also a predominantly female profession, and it became more so during the war as men went to fight. The tradition of the “Old Maid” or the “spinster schoolmarm” took a body blow during the war as young, vital women stepped into the roles of mentors for the young people of their communities. 

As men went to the front, it became necessary to hire women to do work traditionally done by men. Women began working in Northern factories, weaving textiles, loading powder into shells, and doing other such “unladylike” tasks. 

The idea of women in the labor force took only a little longer to take hold in the South. Working women and girls were far more indispensable in the Confederacy given its smaller overall population. Women worked in high-risk jobs, such as at the Tredegar Iron Works, where they were at risk for injury or death dealing with munitions. Many did die in industrial accidents, both North and South. 

Women at work in a munitions factory during the war. Note the hats hanging on the wall

Women fought as soldiers on both sides, over 400 of them, in uniform, secretly, dressed as men, and there were a small number of female officers (like Union Major Pauline Cushman) who worked at Headquarters and / or behind the lines as spies, like Rose Greenhow, Belle Boyd, and Elizabeth Van Lew. Both the North and the South had a handful of female physicians and technicians in the ranks.

A Union nurse (perhaps Clara Barton herself) caring for hospitalized soldiers

Without men around, women became far more financially independent perforce, managing their own homes, bank accounts, farms and plantations. Women also found themselves at the forefront of critical social changes --- should they sell slaves South, manumit them, or allow them to be liberated (seized?) by Union troops?  Should they sell acreage or breed the mares? Should they butcher the cattle and the swine? Often, it was a woman’s decision that determined the fate of the old family farm or the postwar conditions to which the menfolk returned (if and when they returned at all).  

The South as a whole suffered an almost total economic dislocation due to the war, and there are areas of the South today that are arguably still experiencing post-Civil War aftereffects.

A young Confederate widow and her fatherless son

It is known, through pension records, that most Union widows (90%) remarried within ten years after the war (1875), a statistically significant portion of them to older veterans (as reflected in a bump in Survivor benefits in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries). 

However, little is known about Confederate widows or indeed Southern marriage patterns after the war other than a general belief that the majority of these women did eventually marry or remarry, many to disabled Confederate veterans.. This is one of the most understudied areas of the Civil War.  

There were, of course, no pension records for the population of the Old South, and the Eighth Decennial Census of 1870 is uniformly considered the most incomplete and hence inaccurate census of the United States. What is known is that there was a vast imbalance between the number of available women and available men in the South following the Civil War. 

In 1880, 33% of Southern women were widowed and 20% of Southern women identified as having been Confederate widows, although it is uncertain how many of them had remarried in the interim.  The only sure thing is that the postbellum Southern birth rate was significantly lower than the antebellum birth rate, and remained depressed for generations thereafter.  

After the war, women both North and South guarded their newly-won independence, forming the core of the Progressive Era’s Women’s Rights Movement, and the Suffragette Movement, which gave the vote to women in 1920.

All these situations, of course, concerned white women exclusively. Black women (free and slave) always worked to support themselves and their children, or because, as slaves, they had no choice.  

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), a New York-born Dutch-speaking ex-slave, criticized white males who consigned women to the category of the “weaker sex” in her fiery speech entitled Ain’t I A Woman?, the 1863 version of which is reproduced (without the usual transcription in dialect) below:

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that betwixt the niggers of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what is all this talking about?

That man over there says that “Woman” needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! 

And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! 

And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man --- when I could get it --- and bear the lash as well! 

And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! 

And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what this they call it? ("Intellect," whispered someone near.) That's it, honey. What's that got to do with Women's Rights or Nigger's Rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full? 

Then that little man in back there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn't a woman! 

Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! 

And now they are asking to do it . . . the men better let them . . . 

I’m obliged to you for hearing me out, and now old Sojourner hasn't got nothing more to say.

 This post is dedicated to Sandi