The world around war 95explained Christian, she found that 'one of
the negroes had gone in the house and
pull[ed] off her shoes and star[t]ed up[stairs],
what to do I can not say.' 'I could do
nothing but tell her to go out,' continued
the woman: 'I have no one to correct them
when they do [wrong].' She hoped her
husband could be discharged from the army
to look after things at home. 'Im just
surrounded with a gang of negroes,' she
stated, 'i'am afraid abbout to get a breath.'
A woman in Winchester expressed similar
concerns about two months later, reporting
'a very annoying affair' with a slave who
'took offense at some imagined grievance,
and took up her baby and walked off.' The
slave soon returned to work, but her mistress
pronounced herself prepared 'at any moment
to find she has gone off in earnest.'
White families fleeing from advancing
Union armies represented the second type
of southern refugee. Among the first
Confederate refugees was Mrs Robert E. Lee,
who left her ancestral home at Arlington in
May 1861 never to return. Thousands of
displaced people congregated in Richmond,
helping swell the city's population from about
40,000 in 1860 to more than 100,000 during
the war. A diarist from northern Virginia
recorded thoughts about abandoning her
home: 'I cannot get over my disappointment
Few images give a better sense of the war's displacement
of Confederate civilians than this photograph of a
family of refugees, their belongings tied down in a
wagon, preparing to leave their home. Some refugees
lacked the time even to gather belongings before
departing. (Library of Congress)- I am not to return home! ... It makes my
blood boil when I remember that our private
rooms, our chambers, our very sanctums, are
thrown open to a ruthless soldiery.'
Thousands of other Confederates lived in
areas either occupied by Federal forces or
subject to frequent incursions. A woman in
Warrenton, Virginia, described the impact of
a single Union foray in April 1862. A party of
Federals 'came down to [a friend's] house and
took every thing in the way of eating from
him, his sugar, meat, and corn. ... They went
to Mr Hunton's near Broad Run and stole all
his horses, hay, and corn - turkeys chickens,
meat, and in fact all the man had to live on.'
This woman believed that residents of towns
fared better than those in rural areas: 'The
country people suffer much more ..., for
parties go out as foraging parties and plunder
and steal all they can lay their hands on.'
Armies left indelible marks on the
southern landscape. Battles scarred the areas
around Manassas Junction, Fredericksburg
and Richmond, but armies did not have
to fight to have a devastating impact.