Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Secrets of the Civil War: Survival Off the Battlefields

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Today, let’s talk about what life was like during the Civil War for people who weren’t on the battlefield. What did they get up and do every day? What did they worry about? We’ll witness the war through the eyes of five women whose stories are symbolic of the real experiences–the hopes, the sorrows, the loneliness and the joy–that countless women endured during the Civil War. Special thanks to the curators of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Museum, including Sister Lavonia “Lee” Bailey, Reverend Edward Maurice Bailey, Nelson Polite, and Minnie P. Vinson. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. I'm glad you're joining me today for Episode 6 of Secrets of the Civil War. I want to talk to you about what life was like during the Civil War for people who weren't on the battlefield. How were their daily lives impacted? What did they get up and do every day? What did they worry about? Of course, the answer to that question changes drastically depending on who a person was and where they lived. One of our team members recently took a trip to the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to speak with their historians and read dozens of diary entries, letters, and personal accounts.

So together, we'll witness the war through the eyes of five women whose stories we're sharing from their recorded histories. They are symbolic of the real experiences, the hopes, the sorrows, the loneliness, and the joy that countless women endured during the Civil War. So let's meet Sally, Minnie, Virginia, Jane, and Abigail. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Sally stood for a moment, her mind racing. She'd started her life in Virginia enslaved from birth and had been taken from her parents as a teenager and sold to the enslaver of a large plantation many miles away. She'd picked cotton, head down and back hunched for nearly 20 years before she was considered too old to work in the fields and was sold again, this time to a household

in North Carolina that assigned her domestic chores. At first, she'd hoped that she'd be enslaved to someone who would treat her kindly. She'd heard stories of plantations that didn't always use the violence of a whip or a backhand on the people they enslaved, but she knew no matter how kind a white enslaver may have been, they would still consider her nothing more than property. It was a late summer day, and Sally could smell the coming rainstorm in the air. She'd had her duties reassigned after the mistress of the house had left for a few days. She was told to make the afternoon and evening broth for the enslaved people who worked in the fields, and Sally knew that when she delivered it, she'd have the opportunity to whisper with some of her friends there.

For weeks, the enslaved sang spirituals while they worked. Music kept them all sane and kept them all connected, and it was music that would deliver them into freedom. Swing low, sweet chariot Coming forth to carry me home Swing low, sweet chariot Coming forth to carry me home The subtext to those gospel lyrics was to keep your eyes and ears peeled, because the Underground Railroad was coming soon. Coming for to carry me home. As Sally rummaged around for the discarded food scraps from dinner the night before, she'd have to use them to create the broth she was making,

her eyes stopped on a basket in the corner of the kitchen. In it sat a whip, a whip she was familiar with. Two months earlier, the woman she served had found the book Sally had risked her life to obtain, an elementary reading primer. Sally had spent the prior year teaching herself to read and then secretly taught others who were enslaved in the household as well. With the book discovered, Sally knew what would come next. The angry woman called for her husband and showed him the book. In an instant, he grabbed Sally on the whip and pulled her outside. He showed her no mercy as he lashed her body until blood ran freely. The next morning, Sally rose and performed her duties while the lacerations were still raw.

But Sally knew that while they could beat the blood out of her body, they could never take away the knowledge she would gain by learning to read. As Sally collected the food scraps and began preparing them in the pot, she heard the sound she'd been hoping for. A new song. Steal away, steal away home. I ain't got long to stay here My Lord, He calls me He calls me by the thunder The trumpet sounds within my soul. I ain't got long to stay here. The song was rising up from the fields,

and she knew that it meant the potential for escape was near. If the rains came that night, at the first crack of thunder after dark, she would steal away and meet the Underground Railroad conductor at the rendezvous point. She had dreamed of this moment for years, and not just because it was a step towards her freedom. Perhaps, she thought, it would lead to a reunion, too. Sally had given birth to three children over the years, and all three of them had been taken from her and sold. She thought of her firstborn, her son Thomas, who had been sold just as she was hitting her stride in young motherhood. She thought he was just going away for the day to assist the plantation owner, who was also his father. But Thomas never came back.

His father had sold him because young black boys were fetching a high price at the auction that week. That had been nearly 30 years earlier, but every day since, she had thought of him. And of her daughters. thought of him and of her daughters. With the scraps simmering on the stove, Sally picked up a quilting project she had started. Her goal was to use the partially finished quilt square as a sign that she was in the middle of sewing and she'd be returning any minute. If she were to leave that night, she hoped it would buy her a small bit of extra time. She glanced out the kitchen window. In the distance, she could make out the small neighboring farm, humble in the shadow of the plantation she worked at. Who lived there? Were they free? Sally's mind wandered as she worked and hummed along to the song being sung

in the fields. On the back porch of that little farmhouse next door stood a free black woman named Minnie. A few years earlier, she'd been emancipated through her enslaver's will, and even though she risked her life by doing so, she had joined a Union spy ring in Richmond, Virginia, and ran small missions to gather intel about Confederate movements. Minnie had crossed over the North Carolina border, and she needed a safe haven for the night. As she cautiously walked along a rural footpath looking for an out-of-the-way empty structure or a clump of trees where she could rest out of sight, she locked eyes with a white woman and froze. This could be it, she may have thought, the moment she was caught, turned over to Confederate

authorities, and sentenced to death or re-enslavement. The spies of the Richmond Ring had gained some notoriety, and there was a good chance there was a bounty on her head. Thinking quickly, Minnie emerged to the woman and shyly told her that she had gotten lost while running an errand for her plantation's mistress. She asked the woman if she could have a place to sleep for the night, and in return, she would help with the house and farm chores. The woman, Virginia, agreed. Like so many Southern women running small farms, she was exhausted, and she knew she could use some help, even if it was only for one day. Virginia's husband had left their farm to fight for the Confederacy at the start of the war. She learned a few weeks earlier that he was dead. She held

onto the hope that her two teenage sons would return safely to her, but letters from them were scarce and she had no idea where they were or if they were still alive. Recently, Virginia had heard shots in the far distance that filled her with fear. Women like Virginia knew the rumors about what happened when the fighting showed up on their doorsteps. She'd have known her home would be in danger, her garden likely to be ripped apart, and her barn set on fire. She knew soldiers could very well ransack her small root cellar and take her horses. With her husband dead and her sons gone, she'd have no way to defend herself, her young daughter, or her farm. Virginia likely welcomed the idea of having another person in the house with her.

Virginia and Minnie would have eaten a meager supper that evening to the sound of the singing coming from the nearby fields as the rain began to fall. Minnie knew what the song meant, and may have wished for a moment that she could sneak away and help, but she was on a different mission, and she would need to see it through. For Virginia, the music would serve to remind her that she had no help on her own farm. She and her husband had never had enough money to purchase enslaved people to relieve her of farm chores. Virginia was lonely, poor, and exhausted. She'd been running the farm on her own for over two years, and twice when she'd finally had a decent crop, the majority of it had been commandeered by the Confederacy to feed the troops. She and her daughter had survived

on what little was left, plus the eggs from the chickens she'd managed to keep fed. She just wanted the war to be over. Like so many white women in the South, she surely dreamed of the day she could bake a big loaf of warm bread to fill her belly. warm bread to fill her belly. But flour was 25 times the price it had been at the beginning of the war, so most Southerners made do with cornmeal biscuits. The next morning, Virginia dismissed Minnie after the barn chores, right as a mail wagon pulled up to the farm. Many likely slipped unnoticed of the fact to continue to make her way back north toward Richmond. Virginia eagerly accepted a letter from the mail carrier, hoping it would be from one of her sons. Instead, it was from her sister-in-law, Jane, who lived in Pennsylvania. Jane wrote to share that she, too, had recently been widowed.

Their husbands were brothers, both volunteers, both ready with a gun to fight, one for the Confederacy and the other for the Union. But Virginia and Jane had continued to send letters to each other, taking comfort in each other's words, the news of family, and the solidarity of keeping their households running alone. For Virginia, it was the balm of fellowship she needed to ease her loneliness. She'd read about large groups of women in some of the bigger southern cities who got together weekly to sew uniforms for the soldiers, and she had often written to Jane that she longed to have that kind of companionship nearby. But she made do with their correspondence. Jane wrote that she was distraught to have lost her husband, but that she had also somehow expected it. When they'd said their goodbyes, she knew that it might be the last time they saw each

other. Of course, Jane had hoped he would return and his death had left her grieving. But she also found ways to stay busy and distract herself. Jane's sister, Abigail, and distract herself. Jane's sister, Abigail, had left the community to work in a field hospital near where the Battle of Antietam had taken place in Maryland. When the war began, the Union Army quickly realized they would need extra medical staff and began accepting women as nurses under the leadership of Dorothea Dix. Abigail and 3,000 women like her volunteered. Dorothea's nurses had to adhere to strict guidelines. To be accepted, they had to be 18 to 35 years old, able-bodied, free of disease, honest, and upright of good intelligence, having knowledge of English, able to spell and write correctly, and industrious, patient, and good-tempered. Abigail left her young daughters in Jane's care for almost a year before she returned to them

from her volunteer work on the front lines. But before Abigail even left, she needed permission from her husband, who was the manager of a large railroad parts factory. Abigail's husband had been able to avoid the draft, and the factory itself ran on a skeleton crew as men enlisted. When they grew desperate for workers, his sister-in-law Jane took a few shifts during the week while the children were in school. Jane enjoyed the work she did at the railroad factory, but it was a means to an end. It helped her complete work for another type of railroad that she secretly worked for. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends.

And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Each weekend, Jane made her way to a nearby church where she cooked meals and sewed clothes for the people who entered its haven. The small Pennsylvania congregation had turned the building into a safe house destination on the Underground Railroad. Even though the escaped had made it to the north, it was still often unsafe and they needed to stay as low-key as possible. The Fugitive Slave Act required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners, and Jane had to keep

her involvement a huge secret. Her neighbors were polite enough, but she knew some of them were frustrated with the idea that free Blacks would start stealing their jobs or resources. There were also slave hunters, violent men lurking wherever they could and laying traps to recapture the escaped and claim the bounty paid by their enslavers. Jane was the minority among the volunteers at the church's safe house. Most of the people who worked there were free Blacks who had built a strong community and provided resources and protection for newcomers. Most white women in the North kept their distance from the Black population. But Jane's involvement

in the Underground Railroad was vital because she had connections with the actual railroad. Her job at the factory helped her find contacts within the Pennsylvania railroad industry who would assist with transportation into Maine or even Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Act could not be enforced. Maine had a reputation. It wasn't completely safe, but it had a high concentration of abolitionists who created a network of over 75 safe houses and aid organizations. Make it to Maine, and a formerly enslaved person knew they would have a shot. Before it became a state in 1820, the territory of Maine allowed and relied on enslavement, but it entered the Union as a free state. And by the time of the Civil War, it was a regular stop on the abolition

lecture circuit. Members of the American Anti-Slavery Society regularly spoke at meetings and fundraised to support new chapters. But still, many Maine residents and residents of northern states in general didn't have a true understanding of the atrocities of enslavement until they joined the war effort. Around 73,000 men from Maine served with Union forces, and their travel and exposure to the southern states opened their eyes to the larger picture of what they fought for. Here is an excerpt from the letters of Bangor, Maine resident John Martin. He writes, This war has given thousands of our northern men a view of slavery as it actually exists. From a slave I had a conversation with who, when the war broke out, left his plantation,

left without anyone's knowledge, and traveled from the center of the state, from Virginia to Vicksburg, and subsisted on raw vegetables for days, traveling nights and sleeping in the woods. On conversing with him, I found he knew more political matters than one in five of our northern copperheads. He knew the distance to any given point in his state and gave the number of troops in each brigade and division and where they were stationed. He knew all about the president and cabinet and the cause of the rebellion and what the North and South were working out for his race. In regard to how he had been brought up and how many times he had been flogged, he didn't remember how many times he'd been whipped.

He showed me the kinds of whips that had been used on him, and some are fast becoming a common horsewhip in the northern states, which is a piece of barbarity which laws should be enacted against in every state in the Union. And while we tend to think of the Union as made up of northeastern states like Maine and Massachusetts, New York and Ohio, the westernmost states in the country, Nevada, California, and Oregon, played a vital role in the Union's success. In fact, California sent the highest number of fighting troops per capita than any other state in the Union, effectively keeping the

Confederate Army out of New Mexico and Arizona. And their gold reserves helped raise huge amounts of money for medical assistance in the military. But California, Nevada, and Oregon were essentially isolated from the rest of the Union. In the 1860s, a six-month stagecoach trip across the country cost around $1,000, which is about $20,000 today. As the Civil War got underway, work like Jane's in railway factories was incredibly important. President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, which began a massive push to get the Pacific Railroad built, connecting the East and the West. The invention of the steamboat in 1807 revolutionized waterway travel throughout the U.S. and gave both armies access to a quick, inexpensive way to transport troops and supplies from north to south and back again. But no form of

transportation could compare to the railroads. And the federal government invested in private railway companies heavily, hoping to increase their efficiency and reliability. As more tracks were laid and the speed of the trains increased, it improved war intelligence communication, even when telegraph lines were cut by the enemy. Trains transported the wounded from battlefield stations to fully staffed hospitals, increasing soldiers' chances for recovery. The Transcontinental Railroad wouldn't be completed until 1869, four years after the war's end, but its impact was immediate. The price of a coast-to-coast trip cost 85% less than it did to travel by stagecoach, and it shaped three weeks off of the journey. It gave Americans access to new places and new lifestyles and ideas, interstate trade exploded and industry and technology flourished.

The naturalist John Muir wrote in 1872 that the transcontinental railroad annihilated time and space. Suddenly, anything seemed possible. If the railroad could challenge our preconceived ideas about speed, then what's to say that transcending other planes, like death, was off-limits? Before the war, the idea of a good death meant that all aspects of dying were undertaken in the homes surrounded by family and friends. Wakes and funerals were held in homes, which allowed families the chance to grieve together. The Civil War changed that practice for thousands of families. An estimated 750,000 men died on the battlefield far from home. Hundreds of thousands

of families were robbed of their chance to be by their loved one's side at the time of their death. robbed of their chance to be by their loved one's side at the time of their death. They never saw the body. They had no closure. There was no chance to say a proper goodbye. This great loss and immense sorrow of so many families contributed to the rise and appeal of spiritualism in middle and upper class communities. Grieving mothers, fathers, sisters, and wives turned to spiritualists and participated in seances and spirit communication, hoping to receive one last message from their dearly departed. They believed that spiritualism gave them a chance to speak to their loved one one last time,

or to hear through a medium that their loved one was at peace. Believe me, we could actually do a whole series just on the growth of spiritualism in America that flourished in the second half of the 19th century, and it would be riveting. The country itself was discovering new advancements in technology, transportation, science, medicine, but a good number of people clung more closely to the spiritual. They found comfort in the supernatural, the mystic, the paranormal. The number of spiritualists and mediums who held seances or made money by claiming to speak to the dead rose to over 35,000 people by the end of the Civil War. Even Mary Todd Lincoln,

who had lost two of her young sons, Willie and Eddie, leaned into spiritualism, and regularly attended seances, hoping to receive a message from beyond. She even hosted some of the seances in the White House. Spiritualism provided comfort for those grieving their losses, while African spirituals provided comfort for those who were still suffering through enslavement. Perhaps as Minnie heard the songs sung in the plantation fields in North Carolina, she remembered the importance of the Richmond Ring, how the intel she gathered as a spy would contribute to the freedom and safety of her people. Whether she made it safely back to Richmond, we don't know. Her history after she left Virginia's has not resurfaced. Maybe as Sally made her way through contact points in the Underground Railroad and out of enslavement, she hummed silently,

praying that she would find her children again, well and free. And she did. Sally resettled in New Jersey and reunited with one of her daughters until she died, a free woman in her 80s. And as Widow Jane joined the free Black community in their Pennsylvania church, she may have heard them lift their voices as they worked, determined to help those who came through their doors take their next steps toward freedom. Jane never remarried, and she spent the rest of her life in Pennsylvania helping to provide resources to newly emancipated Black Americans. And Abigail returned safely and resumed her duties as wife and mother. Join me next time to hear about two men, a boat thief and a battalion leader, both trailblazers who changed the course of American history in unexpected ways.

I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice.

We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon. Old Pharaoh, understand. Let my people go. Yes, the Lord said, go down. Go down. Moses. Moses. Way down.

Way down. In Egypt land. Tell old Pharaohs to let my people go. Let my people go.