A Blockaded Family: Life in Southern Alabama during the Civil War

by Parthenia Antoinette Hague

CONTENTS.

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CHAPTER I.
	Page
Beginnings of the Secession Movement—A Negro Wedding	1
CHAPTER II.
Devices rendered necessary by the Blockade—How the South met a Great Emergency	16
CHAPTER III.
War-time Scenes on an Alabama Plantation—Southern Women—Their Ingenuity and Courage	31
CHAPTER IV.
How Cloth was dyed—How Shoes, Thread, Hats, and Bonnets were manufactured	45
CHAPTER V.
Homespun Dresses—Home-made Buttons and Pasteboard—Uncle Ben	61
CHAPTER VI.
Aunt Phillis and her Domestic Trials—Knitting around the Fireside—Tramp, Tramp of the Spinners	76
CHAPTER VII.
Weaving Heavy Cloth—Expensive Prints—“Blood will tell”	89
CHAPTER VIII.
Substitutes for Coffee—Raspberry-leaf Tea—Home-made Starch, Putty, and Cement—Spinning Bees	101
CHAPTER IX.
Old-time Hoopskirts—How the Slaves lived—Their Barbecues	113
CHAPTER X.
Painful Realities of Civil Strife—Straitened Condition of the South—Treatment of Prisoners	125
CHAPTER XI.
Homespun Weddings—A Pathetic Incident—Approach of the Northern Army	137
CHAPTER XII.
Pillage and Plunder—“Papa’s Fine Stock”—The South overrun by Soldiers	154
CHAPTER XIII.
Return of the Vanquished—Poverty of the Confederates	164
CHAPTER XIV.
Repairing Damages—A Mother made Happy—Conclusion	170

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A BLOCKADED FAMILY.

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I.

On a glorious sunshiny morning in the early summer of 1861 I was on my way to the school-house on the plantation of a gentleman who lived near Eufaula, Alabama, and in whose service I remained during the period of the war.

As I was nearing the little school-room on a rising knoll, all shaded with great oaks and sentineled with tall pines, I heard skipping feet behind me, and one of my scholars exclaiming, “Here is a letter for you, Miss A——! It has just been brought from the office by ‘Ed’”—the negro boy who was sent every morning for the mail.