| Current Poll |
Are you for armed guards at schools?
View Results
|
|
Story Archives: Women in the Civil War: Love, loss, courage & survival
- 2013 - 290 articles
- 2012 - 856 articles
- 2011 - 635 articles
- December 2011 - 46 articles
- November 2011 - 61 articles
- October 2011 - 52 articles
- September 2011 - 49 articles
- August 2011 - 56 articles
- August 31st, 2011 (Wednesday) - 9 articles
- August 25th, 2011 (Thursday) - 3 articles
- August 24th, 2011 (Wednesday) - 10 articles
- August 19th, 2011 (Friday) - 1 articles
- August 18th, 2011 (Thursday) - 5 articles
- August 17th, 2011 (Wednesday) - 9 articles
- August 11th, 2011 (Thursday) - 4 articles
- August 10th, 2011 (Wednesday) - 5 articles
- August 4th, 2011 (Thursday) - 3 articles
- August 3rd, 2011 (Wednesday) - 7 articles
- July 2011 - 51 articles
- June 2011 - 73 articles
- May 2011 - 47 articles
- April 2011 - 45 articles
- March 2011 - 53 articles
- February 2011 - 57 articles
- January 2011 - 45 articles
- 2010 - 1276 articles
- 2009 - 1591 articles
- 2008 - 1763 articles
|
Women in the Civil War: Love, loss, courage & survival
 (20th in a series)
In the spring of 1863, a woman in Catahoula Parish at Trinity rented a small room to six men traveling eastward to Natchez. She charged each a $1 for the night.
In the group was Arthur Lyon Fremantle, an English officer touring the South to observe the Civil War. In a book about his travels, he said the woman informed the men that she didn't want any Rebel soldiers sleeping in her house with federal troops and a Yankee flotilla moving in and out of the region. Just hours earlier a Union gunboat had destroyed all the molasses and rum in town and had carried away a few slaves.
The woman knew that "the Yanks would come back and burn her house" if they learned she was housing Rebels, wrote Fremantle.
Most likely, the woman's husband, and maybe her sons, were away at war and she was alone to carve out a living in desperate times. The economy was shot, the federal blockade of the river had cut off trade and confusion reigned.
Two days later, Fremantle spent the night in Mississippi between Natchez and Brookhaven in a small farm house where all the men were away at war. "It is impossible to exaggerate," wrote Fremantle, "the unfortunate condition of the women left behind in these farm houses; they have scarcely any clothes to wear," only the "coarsest" pork to eat and "are in miserable uncertainty as to the fate of their relations, whom they can hardly ever communicate with."
At another farm house, his hostess was "reduced to great distress" but "well mannered, and exceedingly well educated, very far superior to a woman of her station in England."
All throughout the region, women -- both black and white -- struggled to survive. In Natchez, the problems were less desperate, thanks to an occupying federal army that kept the peace, provided law and order and regularly provided food and assistance to the local populace.For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
|
| Frank Morris Murder Series |
|
|
E-mail Story
Print Story
