The Richmond Bread Riot
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Description
This tour gives a description of the 1863 Richmond Bread Riot as well as highlighting some of the key locations in the event.
1. Richmond's Second Market
In the morning of April 2, 1863, customers of Richmond’s Second Market watched a woman named Mary Jackson as she waved weapons around in the air. Jackson was a huckster who regularly sold small items at the market, but that day, she brought nothing to sell. Instead, she brought stories of how she and a group of hundreds of other women were to demand the food and supplies owed to them as wives and mothers of soldiers. If the food was not handed over, they would take it by force. By that time, a series of bread riots had already begun to spread in the past month within the Confederate South, starting in Salisbury, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia and slowly moving northwards towards the capitol. Although the riots were ostensibly separate events, with no organization between different ones, they all clearly shared distinct features. All of them were led and perpetrated by soldier’s wives and mothers, and they all demanded that flour, bacon, salt, and other foodstuffs be sold to them at government prices, or else they would seize it.
2. St. Peter's Catholic Church
In 1863, this church was the residence of Bishop John McGill. During the proceedings of the Bread Riot, civil authorities in the city had him speak to the rioters, hoping that he could use his position and his influence over the community to help to calm the rioters down. Ironically, Mary Jackson and other rioters passed by his church on the way to the capitol, where they first met up.
3. Statue of George Washington
The morning of April 2, 1863, over 300 women slowly gathered at the statue of George Washington in the northwest corner of Capitol Square. At 8:30, a group of the leaders formed a delegation and marched into the Governor’s mansion on the other side of the square. When they marched up the stairs to his office, however, they found not the governor but one of his aides, Col. S. Bassett French, who told them that Governor Letcher was working in the Capitol. The women declared that they “wanted bread and bread they would have or die.” Afterwards, one of the leaders, Martha Fergusson, attempted to find the governor in the Capitol building so that she may address him directly, only to walk out and find him already addressing the rest of the women. Undeterred by Letcher’s threatening speech, the women took to the streets.
4. 13th Street and Cary Street
It was here in Shockoe Slip where the looting began. Some of the business owners, such as S.C. Tardy and James T. Williams at the intersection of 13th Street and Cary, managed to barricade their stores in time to secure their inventory. Other stores, however, were not so lucky. The first store that was looted in the riots was a wholesale house owned by Pollard and Walker. An elderly woman named Mary Johnson broke down the door of the business with an axe, after which she and others stole over $1200 ($25,000 in today’s dollars) worth of ham and bacon. Along with Pollard and Walker, the rioters looted Tyler and Son, which claimed $6500 ($135,000 today) in damages, and the shoe store of John T. Hicks, who claimed $13,530 ($280,000 today) in damages. Observers noted later that many of the rioters were in fact wearing shoes that they had stolen from Hick’s store.
5. 14th Street and Main Street
The rioters continued down Cary Street and Main Street, while some of them cut down 14th Street towards Franklin. One woman later wrote in 1867 that “Women were seen bending under loads of sole-leather, or dragging after them heavy cavalry boots, brandishing their huge knives, and swearing, though apparently well fed, that they were dying from starvation—yet it was difficult to imagine how they could masticate or digest the edibles under the weight of which they were bending.” Particularly on Main Street and Franklin Street, there was a German and Jewish quarter that was known to be home to many food speculators. One man noted that “certain people down there were credited with great wealth. It was said that they had made barrels of money out of the Confederacy, and the female Communists went at them without a qualm of conscience.”
6. 13th Street and Main Street
The rest of the women continued marching down Cary Street and Main Street all the way down to 18th Street. By then, the governor had rung the bell in Capitol Square to call the Public Guard, who traced the route the women had taken down 9th Street and then down Main Street. Many of the rioters fled as the Guard approached, and the Guard marching on, pushing the rioters back. Governor Letcher and the mayor of the city had been pleading with the women to stop looting the stores to no avail, until the governor got on top of a crate, and threatened the crowd. If the crowd did not disperse within five minutes, the Public Guard was ordered to open fire. He then ominously took out his pocket watch and stared at it as the Guard loaded their weapons. Slowly but surely, the rioters dispersed. Many of the rioters were arrested and put on trial, which is where much of the information about the riots and their organization comes from. Mary Jackson was arrested at the intersection First Street and Broad, after she had gone back home to get a knife she had left behind.
7. Conclusion
Initially, the riots were believed to have been stirred up by Northern agitators, but as more details came to light in the trials, it was soon obvious the organization done by the women like Mary Jackson. In return, the events were ultimately a political success for the women who perpetrated them. This was mainly because the public overwhelmingly agreed with the women, that as the wives and mothers of soldiers who had gone off to war, they were entitled to be cared for.
