Real Crisis Responses

Food

In North Carolina, the economic suffering of citizens by 1862 reached such proportions that county officials implemented elaborate new mechanisms to meet their basic dietary needs.
The crisis overwhelmed traditional public and private aid efforts, leading to a sharp break with past notions about government involvement in the economy.
In Virginia, the shortage of food in towns and cities became so serious by 1864 that Governor William Smith asked the state legislature to appropriate funds to buy and transport food to the needy communities.
When the legislature refused, Smith dipped into his contingency funds, took out a personal loan, and managed to come up with $110,000 to hire a fleet of blockade runners and begin trading for supplies.
Blockade running became too dangerous, but the resourceful governor confiscated a railroad train in the name of the state to facilitate his purchase of food supplies inland.
His operation became so successful that he was able, in his words, "to make occasional loans to the Confederate Government."
As food became increasingly scarce, riots erupted throughout the urban South, disclosing conflicts and resentments that had remained below the surface before the firing on Fort Sumter.
Women, who experienced the hunger of their children and families most directly, led many of these food riots, the best known of which was the uprising in the Confederate capital of Richmond on April 2, 1863.
Similar protests occurred in small towns such as Salisbury, North Carolina where a highly disciplined group of between forty and fifty soldiers' wives demanded that local merchants lower the prices of flour, as well as other essential commodities such as molasses and salt.
When merchants filed to cooperate, the women seized the food supplies and divided them amongst themselves.

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