Here's the curious story of Richmond women rioting in the streets - for bread!
Richmond Bread Riot
In the Civil War, a curious civil disturbance rattled the Confederate capital in 1863. We asked Virginia Humanities for insight into the Richmond Bread Riot. Here are excerpts from the organization's Encyclopedia Virginia.
Richmond Bread Riot
A Confederate loan certificate from February 1863. By this point of the Civil War, the Southern economy was badly strained.
TOUGH TIMES
* By 1863, the South's economy was showing signs of serious strain. The Confederate government's passage of an Impressment Act (for the seizure of commodities) as well as a tax-in-kind law that critics deemed confiscatory led to hoarding and speculation.
* Spiraling inflation took its toll, especially on people living in the Confederacy's urban areas. Richmond's population had swelled to more than 100,000 by the midpoint of the Civil War.
* Overcrowding, high rents and exorbitant costs for basic necessities increasingly affected all classes in the capital. But the burden fell especially hard on the working class, whose wages could not keep pace with the inflationary spiral.
* The winter of 1863 was quite harsh in Richmond. Locals reported more than 20 measurable snowfalls, with some storms dropping more than a foot of snow on the capital.
* Warmer temperatures had turned the roads into quagmires, making the transport of food and fuel into the city virtually impossible.
Richmond Bread Riot
A Civil War-era photograph of Tredegar Iron Works.
WOMEN TAKE CHARGE
* In desperation, a group of women – workers in Confederate ordnance establishments and the wives of Tredegar Iron Works laborers – met on April 1, 1863, at Belvidere Hill Baptist Church in the Oregon Hill neighborhood.
Richmond Bread Riot
An 1865 image of the George Washington equestrian statue at Capitol Square. Soon-to-riot women gathered there on April 2, 1863.
WOMEN TAKE CHARGE (continued)
* Led by Mary Jackson and Minerva Meredith, the women resolved to gather at Capitol Square the next day to seek a meeting with Virginia Gov. John L. Letcher to discuss their plight.
* The women gathered at the equestrian statue of George Washington and made their way to the governor's mansion.
Richmond Bread Riot
Virginia Gov. John L. Letcher.
WOMEN TAKE CHARGE (continued)
* Denied a meeting with Letcher, some of the women returned to the statue. Accounts of what happened next vary. (Some say Letcher did, in fact, meet with the women at the Washington monument.)
* Dissatisfied with his response, the women marched out of Capitol Square and headed toward Ninth Street and in the direction of the city's business district. As the women walked, they attracted hundreds – some accounts say thousands – of followers.
* Curious onlookers, such as Confederate War Department clerk J.B. Jones, asked some in the group what they were doing. Several eyewitnesses reported seeing a gaunt woman raise a skeleton of an arm and scream, "We celebrate our right to live! We are starving!" Others heard a chant of "Bread or blood!"
Richmond Bread Riot
Gaunt and hungry women – several wielding clubs, another a smoking pistol – are depicted rioting in the streets of Richmond in this May 1863 engraving that appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
CHAOS IN THE STREETS
* The mob then began attacking government warehouses, grocery stores and various mercantile establishments. They seized food, clothing and wagons, as well as jewelry and other luxury goods.
* Some merchants resisted the rioters, while others watched helplessly as the looters seized bacon, ham, flour and shoes.
* Mayor Joseph Mayo quickly arrived at Mayo Street (the street was not named for the mayor). He literally read the Riot Act to the mob, but he was ignored.
Richmond Bread Riot
Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
CHAOS IN THE STREETS (continued)
* Letcher appeared shortly thereafter, as did Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Again, accounts differ as to who summoned the City Battalion and who threatened the mob with violence.
* Varina Davis wrote in her memoir of her husband that he pleaded with the rioters to disperse and then threatened to have an artillery unit open fire on the mob. Others asserted it was Letcher who ordered city forces to fire on the group if it did not disperse in five minutes.
Richmond Bread Riot
An engraving, "Richmond, Va. and its Vicinity," from around 1863.
CITY ON EDGE
* Tense moments passed, but the crowd did scatter. Local officials carried through with their threat to post cannon on key thoroughfares (which served to discourage another group that gathered the next day, April 3).
* Fears of further disturbances led the commander of the Department of Richmond to order troops to augment forces under the provost marshal.
* The atmosphere in the capital remained jittery as the City Council met that afternoon. Although the riot was over in two hours, it had shocked locals. Many believed that the rioters did not "suffer real want," while others accused outside agitators of causing the fracas.
Richmond Bread Riot
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper published this two-paneled engraving in its May 23, 1863, edition. Titled "Sowing and Reaping," the illustration says Southern women, in pushing their men into war, brought suffering upon themselves, "creating bread riots."
AFTERMATH
* More than 60 men and women were arrested and tried in connection with the riot. Fines and prison terms were meted out, apparently in a rather capricious way.
* Those who appeared at their trials better dressed and perhaps more contrite received lesser punishments than others who were obviously members of the working class or the ringleaders of the mob.
* The city fathers of Richmond also moved to ensure there was no further breakdown of public order. The city had a long tradition of relief for the poor, and the City Council resolved to expand its efforts.
* Richmond's lawmakers were quick to distinguish between the "worthy poor" (those who did not participate in the riot) and the "unworthy poor" (those who did). Soon the city would operate special markets where the worthy poor could obtain provisions and fuel at significantly reduced prices.
Richmond Bread Riot
This political cartoon published in the June 7, 1862, edition of Harper's Weekly depicts suffering in South. Confederate President Jefferson Davis stands on a street corner in Richmond, next to a poster declaring "A Day of Fasting [and] Prayer." He fingers his prayer beads, though he has Satan-like horns on his head. Gaunt citizens in threadbare clothing and a half-starved dog look on.
BEYOND RICHMOND
* The bread riot in Richmond was not an isolated affair. Before and after, people in the Confederate capital would read about similar revolts in Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus and Macon in Georgia, as well as in Salisbury and High Point in North Carolina and in Mobile, Ala.
* Local officials in those cities tackled the problem of poor relief in much the same way. But the stark reality was that Southerners could not afford to buy food because prices in 1863 were almost 10 times higher than they were in 1861. As one scholar has noted, a nation of farmers was, indeed, going hungry.
* The situation would only intensify as the Confederate transportation network broke down and as Union armies occupied more of the South's arable land.
* The bread riots of 1863 underscored how desperate the situation had become on the Confederate homefront. They also highlighted the slow but steady demoralization that profoundly affected the Southern cause.
Encyclopedia Virginia is a publication of Virginia Humanities (virginiahumanities.org). The entry on the Richmond Bread Riot was contributed by Mary DeCredico, a history professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. (encyclopediavirginia.org)