
Brave southern women tell how they survived the desperate last days of the Confederacy in eyewitness accounts. They outwitted the plundering Yankees and fed starving children. Includes accounts of slave women.
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Starvation loomed as a stark possibility for many Southern women. Desperate women, trying to feed hungry children resorted to robbery.
"To be hungry is there an everyday occurrence. For ten days, ...lived off just hominy enough to keep their bodies and souls from parting, without being able to procure another article; not even a potato... I am satisfied that two months more of danger, difficulties, perplexities, and starvation will lay her (Mother) in her grave. "~ Sarah Morgan, Louisiana
Richmond, Virginia - Bread Riot
In April 1863, a “mob of women” desperate with hunger, marched up Main Street, entered the stores of the suspected speculators and emptied them of their contents.
Eventually Jefferson Davis appeared, spoke to the crowd, and calmed the women who left, reluctantly, with their stolen baked goods.
Yankee marauders made the situation worse. Luckily, two factors saved the Confederate families: 1) the local southerners knew the land well and hid food and livestock, 2) Yankees thought sweet potatoes were weeds and overlooked them, when they plundered.
The soldiers gathered in small groups each evening to prepare their food. The food was low quality for both armies, but the Confederate soldier suffered more from lack of food. For soldiers of the North, some food was obtained by plunder. When food deliveries were interrupted by weather delays or other challenges, soldiers were forced to forage the countryside to supplement their meager diets.