Chapter One Hundred and Four
Charleston
A Tragedy in Black
From "The Confederate Economy" by Prof. Michael Pierce
Harvard 1991
"The Southern Bread Riots were events of civil unrest in the Confederacy during 1863 and 1864. The shortages had several causes:
·foraging armies, both Union and Confederate, who ravaged crops and devoured draft animals;
·the staggering inflation created by the Confederate government’s financial policies. This was exacerbated by forgers (many of them Union paid) flooding the economy with fake bills;
·the drought of 1862 had created a poor harvest that did not yield enough in a time when food was already scarce; and
·the infrastructure in the Confederacy was inadequate for a peacetime economy. After 3 years of war and a policy of constant military use it was beginning to break down.
From 1861 to 1863, the price of wheat tripled and butter and milk prices quadrupled. Salt, which at the time was the only practical meat preservative, was very expensive (if available at all) as a result of the Union blockade.
Citizens, mostly women, began to protest the exorbitant price of bread. The protesters believed a negligent government and speculators were to blame. To show their displeasure, many protesters turned to violence. During 1863, in Macon, Atlanta, Augusta and most spectacularly in Richmond, armed mobs attacked stores and warehouses. In North Carolina, mobs had destroyed grocery and dry goods stores.
It was far more profitable for plantation owners to grow cotton and tobacco instead of food. The taxes on clerks, apothecaries and teachers were a mere 2% while taxes on agricultural produce were 10%. This created obvious tensions between differing classes and robbed the farmer of his income and means of providing for his family. Because of this, food crops suffered tremendously through supply and demand.
Food riots were occurring before the arrival of Union troops because the Confederate Army was suffering the same food shortages and was taking food stocks for its own needs. This became a serious problem over the winter of 1863/64. Additionally, as the cost of war for the Confederate government exceeded the tax revenue, legislation was enacted that exacerbated the situation by devaluing the Confederate currency and inflating prices of goods..."
Southern women starved as their men fought
From "Resistance from Within" by Lincoln Baines
Buffalo 1973
"In the heartland of secession, Charleston South Carolina, on 18th March [1863] thousands of people, mostly women, broke into shops and began seizing clothing, shoes, food and even jewelry before the Militia arrived to restore order. Pierre Beauregard himself gave a speech about the imminent threat to Charleston from the recently arrived Federal fleet but the mob stayed put. Only when Beauregard threatened to have militiamen fire on the mob did they disperse.
A second night of rioting occurred on 21st March which in the mind of Charlestonians was infinitely more serious as it involved slaves as well as some of the city's poorer white women…
Robert Smalls had been sent to Charleston at the age of 12 to be hired out, with the money earned to be returned to his master, a man called McKee. He held several jobs. He started out in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on the streets of Charleston. His love of the water led him to work on the docks and wharves of Charleston in his teen years.
He became a stevedore (dockworker), a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to being a wheelman (essentially a pilot, though blacks were not called pilots). He became very knowledgeable of the Charleston harbor…
Smalls had planned to escape Charleston for some time. An attempt to flee Charleston in the fall of 1861 had failed. In late 1863 Smalls was assigned to steer the CSS Rover, an armed Confederate military transport. On March 21, 1864, the Rover's four white officers decided to spend the night ashore. Smalls had ensured a liberal supply of whisky and all four were apparently drunk as Smalls left them. Although he had not planned to escape during the riot the added confusion following it seemed likely to assist his plan. He proposed taking the CSS Rover with a dozen of the enslaved crewmen and make a run for the Union vessels that formed the newly arrived close blockade.
Robert Smalls in later life
Smalls was dressed in the captain's uniform and had a straw hat similar to that of the white captain. He arrived at the Rover at what was then known as Southern Wharf around 3 a.m. Unfortunately for Smalls one of the ship’s officers was not drunk and had followed Smalls to the wharf. After challenging Smalls a scuffle ensued. The officer, James Trevis, discharged his sidearm at least once killing one of Smalls accomplices. Trevis had been clubbed to the ground as the wharf master and some white crewmen from other vessels arrived on the scene. As a fight broke out between Small’s accomplices and the sailors, at least one man was sent to warn the militia. The garbled nature of that message would have serious consequences. By the time Beauregard was woken at 5am the message he report he received referred to servile insurrection amongst negro slaves on the docks…
Nerves were taut in Charleston that morning. The previous days’ rioting by hungry slaves had frightened its citizens. The rumors circulating that morning of overnight murders by revolting slaves electrified the city...
General Beauregard tripled the guard on the government’s slaves [Beauregard had leased many slaves to work on improving Charleston’s defenses]. We know that Smalls eventually escaped the city but one of his accomplices, believed to be Dan Black, was found hiding with relatives and friends in the government’s laborers encampment. His arrest by inexperienced city militia was botched. In the confusion a weapon was discharged. In seconds the militia was discharging volleys into the encampment…
The rioters turned on the city's slaves
For the second time that day Beauregard received a report of servile insurrection and as a result immediately ordered the army to patrol the streets of the city. It was too late. Another riot had begun but this time it was the remaining white male population of the city, with no few uniformed men among its numbers. In the minds of these rioters there was only one way to deal with servile insurrection…
By the morning of March 22 1863, when a reluctant army and militia finally restored order, it is estimated that somewhere between 500 and 800 slaves, men, women and children, had been killed – either in the militia incident at the Encampment or at the hands of enraged lynch mobs and arsonists bent on defending southern heaths from servile insurrectionists…”
