"Making Do" - Coping with Shortages in the Blockaded South

"Hurrah! Hurrah! For the sunny South so dear; Three cheers for the homespun dress The Southern ladies wear." (Detail of original homespun dress exhibited at the 2002 Artifact Forum.)

The blockade had a significant impact on the daily life of people in the seceding states as the War progressed and shops and individuals ran out of stock they had in store. By the mid 19th century, America had developed a sophisticated manufacturing economy in which items which had in the previous generation been locally or home-made made such as shoes and textiles were generally mass-manufactured in the industrial North. The South was primarily an agrarian economy, producing the raw materials used by manufacturing but with comparatively little manufacturing base of its own. The blockade forced Southerners to draw upon their own resources, re-learning the skills of an earlier generation such as spinning and weaving, and learning to do without imported luxury items.

Common items that were in particularly short supply or prohibitively expensive many people because of the markups that blockade runners could charge included refined sugar, imported coffee and tea, manufactured fabrics such as calicos and silks, shoes and shoe leather, manufactured dyestuffs, and even, ultimately, paper. The paper shortage eventually caused some publications to cease printing, and caused others to try innovative ways of getting the news out, including the famous wallpaper newspapers of Vickburg.

The list of links below is by no means exhaustive on the topic of coping with shortages, but will provide a good basis for initial research. In particularly, we recommend that you read Ersatz in the Confederacy, visit the Museum of the Confederacy's new exhibit and Vicki Betts' website (see below)

See also the page on spinning, weaving and homespun in our crafts section.

Current Museum Exhibits:

The Confederate Nation, an exhibit examining the Government and People of the Confederacy: New exhibit at the Museum of the Confederacy, opened May 2003. Civilian-focused exhibit, contains lots of items relative to life on the homefront and coping with shortages.

General Articles:

• The Anaconda Plan: Gen. Scott's original plan for the blockade, from CivilWarHome.com
• Lincoln's proclamation on blockading Southern ports, April 1861
• Struggles on the Homefront, from the website for the North Carolina in the Civil War exhibit, North Carolina Museum of History.

Primary Sources on Shortages:

• Paper Manufacturing and Paper Shortages in the South, 1861-1865: articles and quotations from Southern CW era newspapers from Vicki Betts' website
• Confederate Coffee Substitutes: articles and quotations from Southern CW era newspapers from Vicki Betts' website
• A Confederate Cookbook (online at the Documenting the American South website). Recipes include "preserving meat without salt", "curing bacon with little salt", substitute for cream in tea or coffee, substitute for coffee, making bread from rice flour, apple pie without apples and "Confederate candles"
• Dress Under Difficulties; or, Passages from the Blockade Experience of Rebel Women, by Elzey Hay, of Georgia, reprinted from Godey's Lady's Book, July 1866

Photographs of Original Make-Do Items Online:

Homespun dress and cloth sample woven by Lena Dancy Ledbetter, 1864, from the Lena Dancy Ledbetter Papers, at the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin (note: photo shows the dress being modeled in the early 20th century. This photograph is also featured in Calico Chronicle Texas Women and Their Fashions, by Betty J. Mills (Texas Tech University Press)

"Make Do' silk dress, from Kathryn Coombs' collection. While provenance is not known, the sleeves are from a different silk plaid from the rest of the dress, with a black blonde lace overlay to disguise the difference and the buttons are recycled from the 1820s-30's, very much fitting the descriptions of the type of items worn in the blockaded south in Elzey Hay's article, above. (photos to be scanned soon)

Memoirs online dealing with shortages:

• Mrs. Ida Baker, Union, SC (interviewed 1937)
• War Diary of a Union Woman in the South: Edited by G. W. Cable
  Series of articles appearing in the The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, May 1889, to October 1889. The instalment, "Wild Times in Mississippi: refers to "Confederate coffee" and strange make-do clothing of New Orleans refugees. See also "The Fight for Food and Clothing", and "Homeless and Shelterless"
• "War Incidents, Ingenuity and Makeshifts of our Southern Women", from Fifty Years on the Rail, by J. J. Thomas (1912).
• Memories of a Long Life, by Betty Churchill Lacy (April 1903). Mrs. Lacy grew up at Chatham in Fredericksburg, but refugeed to Pulaski County for much of the War. The memoir mentions making "Confederate candles"

Coping With Shortages: Crafts, Skills & Recipes:

• "How to Make Confederate Candles" -- Recipe from The Confederate Cookbook, Richmond, 1863
• See also the page on spinning, weaving and homespun in our crafts section.

Bibliography:

• Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront, by Mary Elizabeth Massey. This 1952 classic, reprinted by its original publisher, the University of South Carolina Press, remains an authoritative source on how people coped with shortages resulting from the blockade.
• A Blockaded Family: Life in Southern Alabama During the Civil War, by Parthenia Antoinette Hague
• Diary of a Southern Refugee During the War: By a Lady of Virginia, by Judith W. McGuire
• Life in Dixie During the War (Civil War Georgia) by Mary Ann Harris Gay
• Calico Chronicle Texas Women and Their Fashions, by Betty J. Mills (Texas Tech University Press)
• "Making Do" Or Substitutions of Scarce Items during the Civil War, by Virginia Mescher. Available online from RaggedSoldier.com. (Click on "modern books)