Civil War: Black Sharecropper Finds Buried Treasure

Many a Southerner family buried their jewels, silver, and gold coins in the ground. Some Confederate soldiers died in battle, never to return to unearth it. 

Martha Richardson was a slave girl in Columbia, South Carolina. Martha and her brothers were working in the fields. As they chopped, her older brother’s shovel hit something hard. He dug more and saw it was the lid of a pot.

They removed the lid and saw it was filled with silver and gold coins. 

They quickly return to their family cabin to show the pot to their Mother, who begins to empty it.  She first tells the children to watch the door and see that no one enters.  She counts the coins and tells them the money amounts to $5,700.  ($5,700 is equivalent to $95,000 in today’s money).

She asks them to swear to tell no one about their find.

With the newly found wealth, Martha’s Mother bought 2 lots of land.  They continued to present a humble appearance and work as sharecroppers.  They built a house for the family and a cottage they  rented out.  Martha was eternally grateful for this money which allowed her family  to escape from debt and to find some relief from their hard toil.  Their lives were completely changed.  

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Returning Defeated Soldiers

Mary Ann Harris Gay describes the family reunion with her returning Confederate soldier brother:

"As we stood upon the platform of the Decatur depot, and saw him step from the train ... our hearts were filled with consternation and pity, and tears unbidden coursed down our cheeks, as we looked upon the brave and gallant brother, who had now given three years of his early manhood to a cause rendered dear by inheritance and the highest principles of patriotism, and, in doing so, had himself become a physical wreck. 

He was lean to emaciation, and in his pale face was not a suggestion of the ruddy color he had carried away. A constant cough, which he tried in vain to repress, betrayed the deep inroads which prison life had made upon his system."

These young, handsome boys that had gone to war came back changed.9

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Epidemics, Pandemics, Infectious Diseases of the American Civil War

The deadliest thing that faced the Civil War were infectious diseases. For every soldier who died in battle, two died of disease.   During the 1860's, doctors had yet to develop bacteriology and were generally ignorant of the causes of disease. Generally, Civil War doctors underwent two years of medical school, though some pursued more education.  Some 10,000 surgeons served in the Union army and about 4,000 served in the Confederate.

Surgeons of the Civil War

In the years before the war, training for physicians in the United States was mostly unregulated, and medical schools' access to cadavers for teaching purposes was highly restricted. In spite of these limitations, many army physicians rose to the challenges of the war, undertaking new methods of study and experimentation.


"Government inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country, including the American Civil War.  

There were smallpox epidemics among civilians, although a vaccine existed.  Smallpox exploded at this time not because of a lack of protocols or knowledge—a vaccine even existed—but because political leaders simply didn’t care about the group that was getting sick. Government inaction or delay—due to racial discrimination, homophobia, stigma, and apathy—have shaped the course of many epidemics in our country. (Jim Downs, The Epidemics America Got Wrong,  The Atlantic Magazine, Mar 22, 2020)

When the first cases of smallpox broke out among troops during the Civil War, military officials—on the Union and Confederate sides alike—immediately quarantined the infected in a tent or a makeshift hospital to prevent the transmission of the virus. But when smallpox began spreading among formerly enslaved people, officials either ignored it or argued that the virus spread viciously among black people because of racial inferiority and unsanitary habits.

In the months after President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863, no infrastructure was in place to provide new freed people with basic necessities, let alone to combat a deadly virus. Mortality rates increased. In the face of a widespread epidemic, the people had to help themselves in order to survive. Harriet Jacobs, a formerly enslaved woman who had escaped to the North but returned to the South to help, wrote to charitable groups and asked them to immediately send clothing, blankets, and other resources. With the money Northern benevolent associations sent, Jacobs, with the eventual assistance of the military, constructed a makeshift hospital for freedpeople.

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Slaves Find a Pot of Gold - Civil War Stories

The following is an Excerpt from the book "Unvanquished: How Confederate Women Survived the Civil War" by Pippa Pralen

A Pot of Gold

Many a Southerner family buried their jewels, silver and gold coins in the ground.  Martha Richardson was a slave girl in Columbia, South Carolina.   

Martha and her brothers were working in the fields.  As they chopped, her older brother’s shovel hit something hard.  He dug more and saw it was the lid of a pot.  Martha describes what happened:

“It was no sooner out than we takes off de lid and we is sho’ surprised at what we see* 

Big silver dollars lay all over de top. 

We takes two of them and drops them together and they ring just lak we hear them ring on de counters. Then we grabble in de pot for more.

De silver went down about two inches deep. Twenty dollar gold pieces run down for about four inches or so and de whole bottom was full of big bundles of twenty dollar greenbacks.”

They quickly return to their family cabin to show the pot to their Mother, who begins to empty it.  She first tells the children to watch the door and see that no one enters. 

She counts the coins and tells them the money amounts to $5,700.  She asks them to swear to tell no one about their find.

Many Southerners buried family wealth and died in battle, never to return to unearth it.

Martha’s family continued to work and later became sharecroppers.  With the newly found wealth, Martha’s Mother bought 2 lots of land and built a house for the family and a cottage she rented out.  Martha was eternally grateful for this money which allowed her family  to escape from debt and to find some relief from their hard toil.

Thanksgiving Food for the Civil War Soldier

From Civil War diaries we know what the troops ate on Holidays.  Food was scarce, especially for Confederate soldiers, but for holidays, various organizations solicited donations of food including poultry, mince pies, sausages and fruit. 

The Union soldiers’ rations were somewhat better.  Salt pork, ham, beans, split peas, dried fruits, hardtack, and dried  vegetables were on the list.  The unpopular desiccated or dried vegetables were often called "desecrated" vegetables by the soldiers.  These were layers of cabbage leaves, turnip tops, sliced carrots, turnips, parsnips, and a few onions; they were dehydrated in large blocks in ovens and then cut into one-ounce cubes.  Issued to prevent scurvy, they were made into soup or fried.

Some ingenious Union soldiers made apple pudding out of hardtack. In this “pudding,” hardtack was pounded into a powder, mixed with water and flour if available, kneaded into dough, rolled out like a pie crust, and filled with apples or anything available. Finally it would be wrapped up in a cloth and boiled for an hour.

Lobscouse Stew
There was also hell-fire stew (hardtack boiled in water and bacon grease), lobscouse (a stew of pieces of meat, vegetables and hardtack) and milk toast. 

Some lucky soldiers describe appetizing Thanksgiving dinners.  Asa Bean, a surgeon in the Union Army, wrote the following to describe his Thanksgiving dinner on November 27, 1862:

“There has been a surprise party here to Day for the Benefit of Soldiers and Nurses they were furnished with a Thanksgiving Dinner roast Turkey; Chicken & Pigeon & Oysters Stewed. I had a good dinner of Baked Chicken & Pudding Boiled potatoes, Turnip, Apple butter, cheese butter, Tea & Trimmings …we live well enough, but cannot Eat Much without being sick.”

Salt Pork

Some soldiers were given Idiot's Delight Cake as a dessert treat.  Food was scarce for the South, but they tried to celebrate Christmas and the Holidays.   

Idiot's Delight Cake

Ingredients

1 c. brown sugar
1 c. raisins
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
4 c. water
7 tbsp. butter
1/2 c. white sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. milk
1 c. flour

Boil together the first 5 ingredients. Make a batter of the second 5 ingredients. Drop the batter in a greased pan by spoonfuls. Pour first mixture over it and bake in a moderate oven until golden brown.  Source:  Cooks.com
  
Idiot's Delight was popular because it used only a few, inexpensive, easy to obtain ingredients and is fool-proof. Even an "idiot" can make it.  

Slaves Who Stayed - Loyalty of Slaves Civil War

Many slaves were loyal to their masters, having known no other life.  Slaves  heard descriptions of "savage Yankees" from their masters. Some slaves feared the Yankees.

Slaves could not forget their status as property, no matter how well their owners treated them.  Some suffered incredible cruelty.  Many slaves rapidly departed at the first notice of emancipation.  However, it would be too simplistic to say that all masters and slaves hated each other.

Many faithful slaves truly helped their mistresses survive through the onslaught of the war and its aftermath.  They hid valuables from the plundering Yankees, in wells and swamps. They outwitted the ransacking soldiers and  foragers when they could.

Human beings who live and work together are bound to form relationships of some kind, and some masters and slaves genuinely cared for each other. 

The following account is from the diary of Nancy Saussure,"Old Plantation Days; Being Recollections of Southern Life Before the Civil War".  It relates the story of Hugh Bailey, wounded at the battle of Cedar Mountain, Virginia.  His family thought he was dead, as they heard no news of him.  A family slave had nursed the wounded Hugh.

“An old negro, his body servant, had carried him off by stealth to a hut in the woods...to hide him from the Yankees.

He had no medicine, no doctor, no help, the master was ill for a long time from his wounds and with a slow fever, and through it all Uncle Reuben never left him except at night to forage for both. ... He was in a strange country; he could not leave his charge, alone and desperately ill”.

Note:  Some Southerners romanticized the past, claiming they had "civilized" the slaves. This included the notion of "the loyal slave".  In truth, thousands of slaves escaped whenever an opportunity presented itself and many went North to join the Union.  But nevertheless, some slaves feared change and showed loyalty to their former masters.

Painting Reflected the Last Days of the Confederacy

In the last days of the Confederacy art reflected the lives of southerners, and the changing times.  This painting is entitled The Burial of Latane.  It was painted in 1864 by William D. Washington (a descendant of George Washington).   

In the painting, white women, slaves, and children perform the burial service of a Confederate cavalry officer.  The fallen hero died among strangers, surrounded by enemy forces, unable to summon his family or a minister to perform the service.  The women have come to entomb the victim of the “supreme sacrifice”.  

It is a significant painting:  the principal figures are only slaves and women.  The only white male is dead.  A woman serves as Preacher, and is placed in a role of power, previously given to men.  Women are now political actors in their society.  The painting makes specific statements about gender and race and new roles.  Social relations were truly in a state of transformation.

Some women never recovered from the wartime taste of autonomy.  Before the war, their lives were about conforming to the strict Southern code of womanhood.  Women now realized the men were not able to protect them.   Confederate women had moved towards a new independence, whether they wanted to embrace it or not.