4.     Food Shortages – A young girl in Georgia was heard to say “The Yankees have come, now we will get something to eat.” The South’s biggest food trading partner, the North, made food supplies highly limited. From 1861-1863 wheat prices tripled, milk and butter costs quadrupled. Salt prices increased by 2000 percent. In the North, supplies of beef and sugar were diminished due to the war effort. Farmers compensated by raising buffer crops of wheat and corn, their biggest trade commodity with England.

              By mid 1864 a pound of butter cost twenty Confederate dollars or a month’s wages   for a private in the army.

 

5.     Guerrilla Warfare – Thugs North and South used the war as an excuse to destroy for gain, revenge, and sport. August 1863 William Quantrill led 450 raiders into Lawrence Kansas in retaliation for raids on farms in western Missouri by Kansas militia known as Jayhawkers. The raid left nearly 150 men and boys lying dead. In 1864 Union officers justified slash and burn tactics against civilian property in the Shenandoah Valley and across Georgia as proper retaliation for Confederate guerrilla activities. These tactics left women and young girls raped, homes and stores burned, and farm animals roasting on camp fires.

              During the war, as many as twenty-five thousand guerrilla fighters participated in “unconventional warfare.”

 

6.     Combat – Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri. These three states saw the most conflict of the War Between the States. Children in the basement of a farmhouse in Malvern Hill remembered watching blood seep through the floor boards of their parlor for weeks after the Seven Days Battle. John McGavock’s home near Franklin TN was entirely taken over after the battle of Franklin. The bodies of  four Confederate Generals (Cleburne, Granbury, Adams, and Strahl) laid on Carnton’s back porch side by side. 2 years after the battle, the McGavock family set aside 2 acres adjoining their family cemetery for the burial of nearly 1500 Confederate soldiers. The family cared for the cemetery until their deaths. (www.carnton.org)

                   One of the first civilians to die in combat was eighty-four-year-old Judith Henry, killed when Union artillery fire crashed intoher home during the battle of First Manassas.

 

7.     Refugee Life – Before the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, Ambrose E. Burnside ordered the evacuation of the town. Residents young and old walked out of their homes carrying what little possessions they could into a cold December morning with no where to go. Refugees fled for safety, freedom, or were forced out by opposing armies. Many turned to the army for support and protection. Men were often forced into combat, women and children forced to take on jobs around the camp, cooking, cleaning, sewing, caring for the soldiers. Many refugee civilians lived right along side the army from 1861-1864.

              One of the first refugees of the war was Mary Curtis Lee, wife of the famous Confederate general. Her ancestral home, confiscated by Federals early in the war, eventually became  Arlington National Cemetery.

 

8.     Having a family member in service -  In the North more than a third of all men of military age served in the war. This number exceeded two thirds in the South. Major battles meant causalities around fifteen percent. Disease killed twice as many men as bullets and shells. Some homefronters could not hide their worry when writing their loved ones as this letter from a North Carolina woman shows, “If you all stae theaire you all will bee kild I want you all to come home.”

              Catherine Cooper of Tennessee had ten sons serve in the war. Five did not survive and four of the remaining five were wounded.

 

9.     Inflation – In the North, inflation rose 100 percent over four years. In the South 100 percent every year. In both regions, wages rose just 60 percent during the war. By 1864 cloth that sold for pennies a yard in 1860, cost around $500 a yard. Food prices were up 1000 percent from the time of secession.

              Immediately after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, it took twelve hundred Confederate dollars to buy one U.S. dollar.

 

10.                        Unskilled or Semiskilled labor – Runaway slaves provided cheap labor in the North. Immigrants replaced experienced tradesman. Wages remained low as orders for war supplies poured in. It is reported that in New York in 1864, a man would work fourteen hours a day for six days for three dollars pay. Its no wonder that town saw more than forty trade strikes that year. Of course these strikes failed due to lack of support, inability of workers to survive with no pay, or submission to the bayonet.

              Before the war the United States was not a picture of financial  parity. North and South, 30 percent of the citizenry owned 95 percent of the wealth.

 

 

The author of this section would appreciate any feedback you can offer. To contact him, email sgtslaten@kingsbattery.com