 Detail of a propaganda cartoon showing bread riots in Richmond, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper | |
| Date | March–April 1863 |
|---|---|
| Location | Confederacy |
| Participants | Mostly women |
The Southern bread riots were events of civil unrest in the Confederacy during the American Civil War, perpetrated mostly by women in March and April 1863. During these riots, which occurred in cities throughout the Southern United States, hungry women and men invaded and looted various shops and stores.
The riots were triggered by the women's lack of money, provisions, and food. [1] All were the result of multiple factors, mostly related to the Civil War:
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. Robberies of grocery and merchandise stores were happening on nearly a daily basis. [11] Riots took place over food or flour in Atlanta (March 16), Salisbury, North Carolina (March 18), Mobile and High Point (March 25), and Petersburg (April 1), [12] but the largest and most important of these was in Richmond on April 2. [2]
 | This section needs expansionwith: Additional info from Mary Jackson (Richmond bread riot). You can help by adding to it. (March 2024) |
On April 2, 1863, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, about 5,500 people, [13] mostly poor women, broke into shops and began seizing food, clothing, shoes, and even jewelry before the militia arrived to restore order. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of items were stolen. No one died and only a few were injured. [14] The riot was organized and instigated by Mary Jackson, a peddler and the mother of a soldier. [15]
President Jefferson Davis pleaded with the women and even threw them money from his pockets, asking them to disperse, saying "You say you are hungry and have no money; here, this is all I have". The mayor read the Riot Act; the governor called out the militia, and it restored order. [16]
To protect morale, the Confederate government suppressed most news reports of the riot itself. Many newspapers, however, were keen to report on the trials of the participants themselves, and they usually portrayed those people in an unflattering light, suggesting that they were not actually starving, or that the rioters were mostly "Yankees" or lower-class people, allowing many upper-class citizens to ignore the scope of the problems. [17] However, that only served to deepen the feelings of resentment and injustice among the lower classes, leading to the sentiment that the Civil War was "a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight". [18]
In Richmond, measures were undertaken to alleviate starvation and inflation for poor people, and special committees were held to classify "worthy poor" from "unworthy poor"; the city then opened special markets for "worthy poor" citizens to purchase goods and fuel at significantly reduced prices. [19]
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
During the American Civil War, the United States (U.S.) was referred to as the Union, also known colloquially as the North, after eleven Southern slave states seceded to form the Confederate States of America (CSA), which was called the Confederacy, also known as the South. The name the "Union" arose from the declared goal of the United States, led by President Abraham Lincoln, of preserving the United States as a constitutional union.
Libby Prison was a Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. In 1862 it was designated to hold officer prisoners from the Union Army, taking in numbers from the nearby Seven Days battles and other conflicts of the Union's Peninsular campaign to take Richmond and end the war only a year after it had begun. As the conflict wore on the prison gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Prisoners suffered high mortality from disease and malnutrition. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into large open rooms on two floors, with open, barred windows leaving them exposed to weather and temperature extremes.
The Union blockade in the American Civil War was a naval strategy by the United States to prevent the Confederacy from trading.
The Confederate States of America (1861–1865) started with an agrarian-based economy that relied heavily on slave-worked plantations for the production of cotton for export to Europe and to the northern US. If classed as an independent country, the area of the Confederate States would have ranked as the fourth-richest country of the world in 1860. But, when the Union began its blockade of Confederate ports in the summer of 1861, exports of cotton fell 95% and the South had to restructure itself to emphasize the production of food and munitions for internal use. After losing control of its main rivers and ports, the Confederacy had to depend for transport on a delicate railroad system that, with few repairs being made, no new equipment, and destructive raids, crumbled away. The financial infrastructure collapsed during the war as inflation destroyed banks and forced a move toward a barter economy for civilians. The Confederate government seized needed supplies and livestock. By 1865, the Confederate economy was in ruins.
Popular opposition to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, was widespread. Although there had been many attempts at compromise prior to the outbreak of war, there were those who felt it could still be ended peacefully or did not believe it should have occurred in the first place. Opposition took the form of both those in the North who believed the South had the right to be independent and those in the South who wanted neither war nor a Union advance into the newly declared Confederate States of America.
Alabama was central to the Civil War, with the secession convention at Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy, inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic, during January–March 1861, and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents, but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods, limited a standing military, and as a final issue, opposed emancipation by any nation, but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury, and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede, but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama, while the majority of slave states were in the Union. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4, 1861, but it was never ratified.
Georgia was one of the original seven slave states that formed the Confederate States of America in February 1861, triggering the U.S. Civil War. The state governor, Democrat Joseph E. Brown, wanted locally raised troops to be used only for the defence of Georgia, in defiance of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who wanted to deploy them on other battlefronts. When the Union blockade prevented Georgia from exporting its plentiful cotton in exchange for key imports, Brown ordered farmers to grow food instead, but the breakdown of transport systems led to desperate shortages.
The American state of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederacy when it joined during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion. For all practical purposes, Virginia joined the Confederacy on April 17, though secession was not officially ratified until May 23. A Unionist government was established in Wheeling and the new state of West Virginia was created by an act of Congress from 50 counties of western Virginia, making it the only state to lose territory as a consequence of the war. Unionism was indeed strong also in other parts of the State, and during the war the Restored Government of Virginia was created as rival to the Confederate Government of Virginia, making it one of the states to have 2 governments during the Civil War.
Richmond, Virginia served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War from May 8, 1861, hitherto the capital had been Montgomery, Alabama. Notwithstanding its political status, it was a vital source of weapons and supplies for the war effort, as well as the terminus of five railroads, and as such would have been defended by the Confederate States Army at all costs.
Mobile, Alabama during the American Civil War was an important port city on the Gulf of Mexico for the Confederate States of America. Mobile fell to the Union Army late in the war following successful attacks on the defenses of Mobile Bay by the Union Navy.
Foods of the American Civil War were the provisions during the American Civil War with which both the Union and Confederate armies struggled to keep their soldiers provisioned adequately.
Salt was a crucial resource during the American Civil War. It not only preserved food in the days before refrigeration, but was also vital in the curing of leather. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman once said that "salt is eminently contraband", as an army that has salt can adequately feed its men.
During the American Civil War, sexual behavior, gender roles, and attitudes were affected by the conflict, especially by the absence of menfolk at home and the emergence of new roles for women such as nursing. The advent of photography and easier media distribution, for example, allowed for greater access to sexual material for the common soldier.
The Flour War refers to a wave of riots from April to May 1775, in the northern, eastern, and western parts of the Kingdom of France. It followed an increase in grain prices, and subsequently bread prices; bread was an important source of food among the populace. Contributing factors to the riots include poor weather and harvests, and the withholding by police of public grain supplies from the royal stores in 1773–1774. This large-scale revolt subsided following wheat price controls imposed by Turgot, Louis XVI's Controller-General of Finances, and the deploying of military troops.
Between 1861 and 1865, American Civil War prison camps were operated by the Union and the Confederacy to detain over 400,000 captured soldiers. From the start of the Civil War through to 1863 a parole exchange system saw most prisoners of war swapped relatively quickly. However, from 1863 this broke down following the Confederacy's refusal to treat black and white Union prisoners equally, leading to soaring numbers held on both sides.
The New York City Food Riot of 1917 were a series of demonstrations and riots which began on February 19, 1917, after a mob composed mostly of women confronted store and pushcart owners over the raising of prices following the shortages of World War I.
The Tunisian bread riots were a series of violent demonstrations in Tunisia that occurred from December 1983 to January 1984, triggered by a rise in the price of bread due to an IMF-imposed austerity program. President Habib Bourguiba declared a state of emergency and the riots were put down by force. Over 100 rioters died. The regime was weakened by the upheavals and the aftermath of food riots. Three years later General Zine El Abidine Ben Ali seized power in a coup.
Mary Jackson was a Virginian peddler known for her role in organizing the 1863 riots in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, now known as the Richmond Bread Riots. Jackson instigated and led a group of around 300 armed women through the streets of Richmond, demanding food and supplies that were in shortage during wartime. Although for the most part the violence was only threatened and not actually perpetrated, the armed mob did succeed in stealing thousands of dollars in goods as an expression of their frustration and desperation as the government failed to care for them while most of the men were fighting in the war.
