Texas Women on the Homefront

During the Civil War, Texas troops were known for their fortitude and fighting ability.  As with any army, its soldiers were only as good as the support they received back home.  Being largely a frontier state, industry, government bureaus and hard cash were severely lacking in Texas.  To make matters worse, a Union naval blockade cut off Texas ports from the outside.  For much of their support, the 70,000 Confederate Texas troops could count on only one thing — their wives, mothers and sweethearts. 

Before the war, women were literally the property of their husbands.  Unless you ran a boarding house or became a prostitute, very few paying jobs were available.  With the men gone - many times for good - women would have to take on roles long held by their male counterparts. “Be assured,” proclaimed Miss Sallie O. Smith of Marshall, Texas, “that in our bosoms burns a patriotism as lofty-a courage, in our appropriate sphere, as daring-and a heroism as chivalric, as that which nerves the brawniest arm which wields the battle-ax, and cleaves down the foe upon the field of carnage.”  She further exhorted that although the women they left behind would wield no weapons, “some Boadices, burning with Southern fire, shall leap from her retirement, and full panoplied, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter, shall brandish her saber and call, like avenging spirits from the deep, another hundred thousand heroines to avenge the wrongs of their brothers and their country.”  With talk like that, who would doubt any woman’s resolve?

At the beginning of the war, women were prime motivators for enlistment in the Confederate Army.  Dr. William Oakes of Waco, Texas wrote,  “The young ladies have entered into an agreement to refuse associating with or countenancing any unmarried man who does not volunteer in the war.”  Some ladies took it a step further.  According to Amelia Barr, “They would not eat with them, speak to them, or listen if spoken to.  They ignored all their personal necessities, or met them with constant tears and voiceless reproaches, and what man could bear his family weeping over him, as if he was already dead to their love and respect.”  The war was certainly hot for the men on the battlefront, but frosty cold on the home front if they didn’t serve in the Confederate Army.  However, the ladies’ sole means of support would now be miles away on a distant battlefield; a distance surmounted only by handwritten letters that took weeks to be delivered, if at all.  Most Texans thought it would all end in a very short time.  After a few battles, victory would be secured and the men would come home.  The four year long Civil War proved otherwise.

Ladies Aid Societies used their needles to make flags for local companies.  In a solemn ceremony, often held at the town square, the flags were presented to the commanding officers, in front of their assembled men, before marching or riding off to war.  As the war progressed, they became a cottage war industry making everything from uniforms to tents.  Blankets and quilts, a hallmark of Texas culture, got a huge production boost from the Civil War.  Lacking textile mills, cotton and wool cards were sold or issued across the state to women.  Using cards and spinning wheels, women produced cotton and wool threads to make badly needed fabrics.  Confederate uniforms were more often issued from home instead of a government supply depot.

Hospitals were considered off limits to women because of the horrendous sights, the foul odors and seeing men in a less dignified position.  The sheer number of casualties, along with a shortage of male labor, dictated otherwise.  From assisting in amputations to washing bed linen, women eagerly filled those roles.  Ladies Aid Societies also provided clothing, bandages and entertainment for the patients. Similar to the USO today, they provided music and short plays called tableaus.  Dances, fairs and barbecues were held by local woman volunteers help fund medical care.  

In East Texas, women had to assume the role of managing slave-worked farms and plantations.  Up to two hundred thousand slaves labored in Texas during the war.  Their numbers increased as slaveholders sent their slaves east to avoid the Union Army.  Women were forced to make decisions such as purchasing, management and punishment of their slaves.  Like their husbands, wives could be as cruel and domineering, especially with the help a zealous overseer.  As the war progressed, slaves were often worked harder to keep up with Confederate war demands as well as those demands on the plantation.  In many instances, however, slaves were treated like family members and worked closely with their women owners to maintain farms and households.

The Texas frontier, especially in Northwest Texas, offered greater challenges than the more settled region of East Texas.  The Victorian inspired customs of the genteel South took a back seat to a more pressing demand - survival.  Life on a frontier farm or ranch often forced women to work alongside their husbands instead of under them.  With their men off to war, they now performed farm chores alone.  Along with child care, plowing a field, milking a cow, shoeing a horse, and harvesting crops were now assumed by women.  Their biggest threat to their frontier homestead bliss was not the Union Army, but raiding Comanches and Kiowas.  Before the war, a quarter of the U. S. Army provided protection through a chain of forts.  After Texas seceded, the forts were abandoned.  Militia units offered minimal protection at best against the fast moving Comanches.  Without nearby protection, the Comanches attacked without warning, catching frontier families off guard.  Horses and arms were lacking since they were donated to the army.   Along with other families, they gathered or “forted up” in makeshift picket forts or former U. S. Army forts to fend off attacks.   One hundred or more of these picket forts dotted the frontier. 

Others were not as fortunate.  The 1864 Elm Creek Raid in Young County led to deaths of two women, a local doctor and a black slave.  Susan Durgan tried to hold off raiding Comanches with a shotgun but failed.  She was killed with a tomahawk blow to the head.  One women, her two grandchildren, and the wife and children of a slave were kidnapped by the Comanches.  Many families abandoned their homesteads altogether and headed east for a secure environment.

Some women assumed male roles completely without the burden of a domineering husband.  Sarah Jane Newman Scull, better known as Sally Scull, trailed herds of wild horses from Mexico to New Orleans and ox carts laden with cotton from South Texas to Matamoros for the Confederacy.  A Texas version of “Calamity Jane,” she swore mightily, supported a pair of revolvers and fought off five husbands who were usually old enough to be her father.  Sally’s business acumen could be as fearsome as her sidearms.  After running into a freighter who owed her money, she grabbed an ax and threatened to “chop the god damn front wheels off every god damn wagon you got.”  One European tourist wrote, “She can handle a revolver and Bowie-knife like the most reckless and skillful man; she appears at dances (fandangos) thus armed, and has shot several men at merry-makings.  Obviously, those fandangos weren’t always that merry.

Despite the absence of their men, Texas women adjusted their lifestyles to survive their state’s most tumultuous period and protect their families.  Sometimes at the expense of their own lives. 

Check out the book, “Women in Civil War Texas” edited by Deborah M. Liles and Angela Boswell.  It’s published by the University of North Texas Press in Denton, Texas.