Burying the Dead but Not the Past

Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause

Caroline E. Janney

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780807882702
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la guerre de Sécession

Immediately after the Civil War, white women across the South organized to retrieve the remains of Confederate soldiers. In Virginia alone, these Ladies' Memorial Associations (LMAs) relocated and reinterred the remains of more than 72, 000 soldiers. Challenging the notion that southern white women were peripheral to the Lost Cause movement until the 1890s, Caroline Janney restores these women as the earliest creators and purveyors of Confederate tradition. Long before national groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were established, Janney shows, local LMAs were earning sympathy for defeated Confederates. Her exploration introduces new ways in which gender played a vital role in shaping the politics, culture, and society of the late nineteenth-century South.

1 Patriotic Ladies of the South

Virginia Women in the Confederacy

While Virginia’s men and boys gathered their muskets and marched off to battle in the spring of 1861, the Commonwealth’s women understood that they, too, had an important role to play during this time of national crisis. Women willingly sent their husbands, brothers, and sons off to war; they helped supply the armies with clothing, food, and bandages; they endured countless hardships on the home front; they nursed the wounded and helped bury the dead; and they championed the southern cause.¹ Sixteen-year-old Lizzie Alsop not only supported the war effort by helping to send supplies to Confederate hospitals in Richmond, but she also demonstrated her loyalty to the rebel nation when she denounced the Union soldiers who had taken over Fredericksburg in the summer of 1862. “I never hear or see a Federal private or officer riding down the street that I don’t wish his neck may be broken before he crosses the bridge,” she proudly noted. She praised the local women for treating the Yankees “with silent contempt” and declared that the northern soldiers “little know the hatred in our hearts toward them.” That same summer when she and several friends passed a store where a Union flag flew, they “all went into the street preferring to get our dresses dirty to bending our heads beneath the ‘Stars & Stripes.’”²

This deep loyalty to the Confederate nation had profound implications for individual Virginia women as well as for their organizations and female networks. Building on a tradition of antebellum benevolent societies, Confederate women elaborated a more public and political role for themselves by way of their patriotism in aid societies, hospitals, and cemeteries.³ They coordinated regional supply networks, sponsored gunboats, defied orders of Union soldiers, and participated in military funerals. These wartime experiences heightened the nature of women’s associations, broadened their base, and extended their geographic reach across the state and region, thereby transforming women’s relationships with one another and with the state. This expansion of women’s organizations and activity, moreover, did not end when the armies laid down their guns. The networks and support bases these women established during the war became crucial to the establishment of the Lost Cause in the years after Appomattox, as women like Lizzie Alsop extended their wartime patriotism into Ladies’ Memorial Associations (LMAs). The battlefields of Virginia did more than alter forever the lives of thousands of her sons; it transformed the patriotic fervor, political horizons, and civic responsibilities of many of her leading daughters as well.

As had been the case prior to the outbreak of hostilities, during the war Virginia’s white women paid close heed to what was happening in the larger political world. They read newspapers and corresponded with friends and family to keep abreast of the happenings throughout the North and the South. In their diaries and letters, women detailed the maneuverings of armies and commented on the capabilities of officers and government officials. In May 1862, Betty Herndon Maury of Fredericksburg criticized General Joseph E. Johnston for not attacking McClellan during that spring’s Peninsula campaign. Adelaide Clopton voiced similar frustrations in the summer of 1862. She berated Confederate leaders for their many “useless, profitless battles.” If only the army would pursue the Union forces and not allow them to recuperate after every encounter, she argued, the war might end. But beyond merely watching and listening, Virginia’s women launched their own war effort in their homes and churches, at hospitals, and, eventually, in their cemeteries.⁴

Prior to the Civil War, northern and southern white women alike had been largely excluded from the nation’s narratives. According to one scholar, in the antebellum years, “literature on the nation, with its focus on governments, public parties, and military heroes, simply ignored the roles of women.” Women had served as spies and aided the Continental Army during the American Revolution, but this activity was not deemed equivalent to that of the male citizen-soldier. While women might contribute to the well-being of the nation by raising good republican sons, citizenship had been defined by service to the state and so remained restricted to white men. But the Civil War fundamentally blurred this line. The scale of the war necessitated the mobilization of men as well as women in both the North and the South, leading the press, pulpits, and politicians alike to call on “patriotic ladies” to support their respective political communities.⁵

Like their female counterparts in the Union and elsewhere in the Confederacy, at a rapid pace Virginia’s white women transformed their antebellum benevolent, school, and church associations into ladies’ relief and soldiers’ aid societies. Women, who had previously spent their afternoons visiting, now found themselves busy seamstresses. “The click of the sewing-machine was the music which most interested them,” recalled one Richmond woman. “The ‘stitch, stitch, stitch,’ from morning to night” filled the parlors and church halls as women plied their new trade. Women went to work carding lint, rolling bandages, and sewing jackets, trousers, and haversacks. They made heavy tents from cumbrous sailcloth, leaving many delicate fingers stiff, swollen, and bleeding. Those who had little experience in sewing also volunteered their limited skills. “Even tents were made by fingers that had scarcely ever used a needle before,” observed Winchester’s Cornelia McDonald.⁶

Nearly every town and city in the Commonwealth became the site of some ladies’ association. Lynchburg’s town leaders called on the women to aid in the “patriotic act” of furnishing supplies for the volunteer companies. The young girls of the Lynchburg Female Seminary donated the funds they had raised for their May festival to purchase knapsacks for the Rifle Greys. On April 20, nearly 500 of the city’s women organized the Ladies’ Relief Society to outfit the poorer regiments. Within weeks, they had equipped several companies and were making uniforms for a company organized in nearby Nelson County. By the following January, the women reported that they had provided 1,789 coats, 2,195 pairs of pants, 1,454 shirts, 493 pairs of drawers, 523 pairs of gaiters, 1,175 cartridge boxes, 66 beds, 10 overcoats, and many other necessary articles. As one Virginia woman aptly observed, “Our needles are now our weapons.”⁷

At least six church-based sewing societies formed in Petersburg to support the troops. In July 1861, the women of the Washington Street congregation organized a society to “aid in both clothing and contributing to the relief of the soldiers of the Confederate Army.” A separate group of Petersburg women picked up their needles to aid the cause and also to provide relief on the home front. Bessie Callender, Jane Simpson, Evelyn Walker, and several others (most of whom would later join the LMA) organized a society to provide work to the wives of those who had enlisted. Collectively, the disparate women’s groups made arrangements with the Commissary Department in Richmond to have materials delivered each week to Tabb Street Church. There the cotton cloth would be distributed to the city’s sewing societies; a tailor was employed to cut the drawers and shirts. “I cannot tell how many thousands were made,” Callender later recalled, noting that she often found it difficult to get home to dinner. But with the exhausting work, the women kept the men in uniform and reached out to their less fortunate sisters. Callender claimed that her group paid good prices; the payroll often amounted to a $1,000 a week in Confederate scrip. “In this way I became well acquainted with a class of women I had not known before.” The war, it seemed, was quickly breaking down many long-standing class barriers.⁸

Sewing societies in the capital city also multiplied. Within two weeks of the bombardment on Fort Sumter, female members of the Grace Baptist Church began to meet after Sunday services to sew for the soldiers. The women of the First and Second Baptist Churches, West Point Church, and four Methodist churches all helped sew uniforms and tents for local military companies. Lucy Bagby and her mother joined yet another association that met daily at St. Paul’s Church. Under the auspices of Miss M. E. Woodward, women in the neighborhood of Ridge Church met in August 1861 to form the Ladies’ Ridge Benevolent Society. The society’s goals included alleviating the suffering of sick and wounded soldiers and, like Callender’s association, also providing “work and other comforts for such families as have been left by the soldiers in our neighborhood without a sufficient support.” The women initially agreed to meet every Saturday, with a goal of darning at least 500 pairs of socks for the army.⁹

Mary Adams Randolph, wife of Secretary of War George Wythe Randolph, served as president of the city’s most prestigious organization, the Richmond Ladies’ Association. It included wives of government officials, such as Mary Boykin Chesnut, but the association consisted primarily of “old [women] who wanted their way.” Chesnut mused that the women, excluding Randolph, were often “crossgrained” with “sharp tempers.” At one meeting, the group became rankled when Randolph proposed dividing all the goods sent to the organization equally with the northern wounded and sick prisoners. Some women believed it was indeed the Christian thing to do, but others were less generous. “Some shrieked in wrath at the bare idea of putting our noble soldiers on par with Yankees—living, dying, or dead,” recalled Chesnut. She believed that these “august, severe matrons” had not been accustomed to hearing the other side of an argument from anyone. They were, rather, “just old enough to find the last pleasure in life in power—and the power to make their claws felt.” Despite the bitter infighting that these meetings endured, the association proved remarkably efficient at collecting and distributing goods to needy and wounded Confederate soldiers.¹⁰

The Ladies’ Soldiers’ Relief Society of Fredericksburg included a similar makeup of women from the town’s most prominent families—many of whom would play a leading role in the postwar memorial associations. Mary Gordon Wallace, wife of medical director, bank president, and former mayor John H. Wallace, served as president. Bella Little, a journalist and sister to the town’s local newspaper editor, acted as secretary. Other members included Sallie Braxton Slaughter, wife of a banker, Lucy A. Broaddus, wife of the Fredericksburg Baptist Church’s minister, Elizabeth Gordon, wife of a bank cashier, and Mrs. F. A. Knox, wife of a merchant and wheat speculator.¹¹

Perhaps it was this elitism within the groups that led some women to complain that members were merely using aid societies to gain notoriety. An unnamed “lady” from Lynchburg went so far as to write a letter to the editor disparaging the local women’s organizations. She believed that “certain cliques” monopolized these groups. It was her observation that the “few” consult, form the basis for the societies, agree on officers, and then place a notice in the papers calling for a mass meeting. “When we go,” she wrote, “we find the project all cut and dried—a fixed matter—between these few leaving the masses . . . with nothing to do, but to expend their money for the credit of a few women.”¹²

Many women, nevertheless, devoted substantial amounts of time and energy to such work. Sallie Munford of Richmond apologized to her brother Charles for not writing more frequently in June 1861. “My opportunities for writing are very small now, for I really feel as if I was neglecting a positive duty every moment taken from work on the soldiers’ clothes,” she confessed. Twenty-one-year-old Abby Gwathmey told her parents she had spent the better part of a week making six large jackets, each with sixteen buttonholes. In Fredericksburg, Betty Herndon Maury, daughter of the world-famous oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, recorded her hard work in her diary. In three days, she managed to complete six pairs of pantaloons, six jackets, eight shirts, and haversacks. Overwhelmed at first, she quickly found women willing to assist in the work. “Every one that I asked took a part,” she noted; “the work is now comparatively easy.” Even Mary Custis Lee, wife of the Confederacy’s acclaimed general, spent her time knitting gloves and socks for the soldiers.¹³

Confederate men lauded and encouraged women’s nationalistic and philanthropic efforts. In Lynchburg, the local paper heralded the “moral heroism and fortitude evinced by the women of this city” engaged in preparing their men for the upcoming struggle. According to the paper, the women had made themselves “useful in the present emergency, and deserve great praise for their patriotic spirit.” Men in Richmond urged women to help provide clothing for the soldiers. “Let the spinning wheel and the handloom and the knitting needle supply the deficiencies of our factories, and provide our soldiers for the rigors of the coming winter,” one newspaper requested. The Richmond Whig published and warmly endorsed an appeal from Sally Mosby of Powhatan calling on all Virginia women to contribute their gold and silver for the cause. “There is not a true-born Virginia woman, young or old, who would not gladly strip herself of every ornament, of every vase, goblet, urn or spoon, to uphold the freedom and independence of this State,” wrote the editor. Likewise, he seconded Mosby’s proposition that every county or town should organize a ladies’ aid society.¹⁴

Rather than seeking women’s support, the governor’s proclamation of July 1861 called men to arms by touting the eager volunteer efforts of the state’s female population. “Our gallant sisters of the South are hurrying to our assistance,” noted the governor. “Be ready to lock arms with them, to rush unitedly upon and crush the foul invaders,” he advised. What seems especially notable is that this appeal to arms placed women on an equal footing of importance to the war effort. Even the Confederacy’s beloved General Stonewall Jackson expressed his “deep and abiding interest in our female soldiers.” In a letter to a Winchester woman, Jackson noted that the South’s women were “patriots in the truest sense of the word, and I more than admire them.”¹⁵ Both government officials and army officers recognized the early mobilization of sewing and aid societies, and they encouraged men to join the defense of the Confederacy already under way by women. Although women were obviously not members of the electorate or (usually) army volunteers, Confederate officials considered them a vital component of the nation.¹⁶

Men and women alike employed the rhetoric of the Revolutionary spirit of 1776 to motivate the state’s female population.¹⁷ One reporter pointed out that the women of the Confederacy might not realize how their activities mimicked those of the founding mothers. Quoting Washington Irving, the reporter recounted how Martha Washington had spent her time in the wintry encampments at Valley Forge. There she “set an example to her lady visitors by diligently plying her needle, knitting stockings for the poor, destitute soldiers.” Confederate women were, no doubt, “worthy descendants of the matrons of the revolution.” In Sally Mosby’s plea, she also invoked the Revolution. “Let us emulate our revolutionary matrons,” she wrote, to show the entire world “that Virginia’s present daughters are not unworthy or degenerate descendants of their noble and patriotic grandmothers.”¹⁸

* * *

Women who joined soldiers’ aid societies believed that they were fulfilling a necessary patriotic role. Less than a week after Virginia’s vote to secede, several Fredericksburg women organized a Soldiers’ Relief Society. In resolutions printed in the local newspaper, Mary Gordon Wallace, president of the group, elaborated on the relationship between women and their new nation. The group deeply deplored the sad necessity of war, as women often do, but they would “cheerfully” submit to any privations their husbands or government might direct. They agreed to deny themselves “all the luxuries of dress and table that our men may expend more for the defense of our homes and liberties.” Following in the tradition of women during the American Revolution, these women submitted to a self-imposed ban on any article not grown, produced, or manufactured by the Confederacy—although it is unclear whether or not they followed through on their declaration. Confederate women insisted that throughout the secession crisis they had been “silent observers” but “not uninterested spectators of the condition of our State and nation.” “We firmly believe the course pursued by Virginia has been ever true and just,” they proclaimed.¹⁹

A month after the first major battle of the war at Manassas, another group of Fredericksburg’s women organized the city’s second patriotic society. Acting on the suggestion of Captain Matthew Fontaine Maury, the women held a meeting on August 21 to discuss whether a new flag should be adopted by the Confederate states. Calling themselves simply the Ladies of Fredericksburg, they elected Betty Maury president and Mrs. William T. Hart secretary. Maury’s cousin, Ellen Mercer Herndon, wrote the petition to Congress citing their objections to the “Bars and Stars,” as they called it, on the grounds that it was an ugly, “servile imitation” of the U.S. flag that conveyed “no idea of principle to the eye of the stranger or the citizen of our nation.” Instead, the women suggested that the national flag be a “Southern Cross” upon “an azure field.” Mrs. S. B. French, Sallie Slaughter, Lizzie Braxton, and Nannie Taylor then drafted a circular addressed to the women of the Confederacy, asking them to hold similar meetings and petition Congress for the f...