Richmond During the War

Sally Brock was there for the duration of the war — from Jefferson Davis' inauguration to the burning and evacuation of the Confederate capital — and provides a Southern woman's perspective of the devastation and deprivations both experienced and overcome by those who endured them on a daily basis. She wrote many articles, often using the pseudonym, Virginia Madison. This book was originally published anonymously as "A Richmond Lady" but later published under her own name. Asserting that "every woman was to some extent a politician", she offers keen analyses of military engagements, criticizes political decisions, and provides accounts of the Richmond Bread Riot of 1863.

One reviewer called the book, "touching personal accounts of one of America's greatest trials."

In 1860 Sallie A. Brock, as she was usually known, was a tutor in a household in King and Queen County. At the outbreak of the Civil War she returned to her parents in Richmond. Brock's two brothers served as doctors for the Confederate army, and she contributed to the cause herself by nursing, knitting, and rolling bandages. She was acutely aware of the war's effect on the residents of the city. Brock experienced the anxiety of the average citizen forced to learn about political and military situations through a combination of unreliable rumors and newspaper reports. After her mother died in 1864, she took charge of her father's household.

The Civil War turned the genteel world of Virginia society upside-down. Sallie Brock Putnam lived in the Confederate capital of Richmond throughout the war and saw it transformed from a quiet town of culture to a swollen refugee camp, black-market center, prison venue, and hospital complex. Putnam describes the excitement of secession giving way to sacrifice and grim determination, the women of Richmond aiding the war effort, the funerals and hasty weddings, the reduced circumstances of even the "best" families, and the despicable profiteering.

The war brought the battlefield into the house, forcing women into unaccustomed roles and forever changing the old social order.

This book, along with "A Rebel Clerk's War Diary" serves to give a good picture of what life was like in Richmond during the war. Miss Brock does not limit her descriptions of the war to Virginia. She reports on other theaters of the war as well and gives accounts of the battles of Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg, and other important battles with the alacrity of a seasoned newspaper reporter.

This excerpt regarding the death or a Georgia soldiers portrays well the relationship that existed between the races at that time: A young soldier from Georgia brought with him to the war in Virginia a young man who had been brought up with him on his father's plantation. On leaving his home with his regiment, the mother of the young soldier said to his negro slave : " Now, Tom, I commit your master Jemmy into your keeping. Don't let him suffer for anything with which you can supply him. If he is sick, nurse him well, my boy; and if he dies, bring his body home to me; if wounded, take care of him; and oh ! if he is killed in battle, don't let him be buried on the field, but secure his body for me, and bring him home to be buried!" The negro faithfully promised his mistress that all of her wishes should be attended to, and came on to the seat of war charged with the grave responsibility placed upon him.

In one of the battles around Richmond the negro saw his young master when he entered the fight, and saw him when he fell, but no more of him. The battle became fierce, the dust and smoke so dense that the company to which he was attached, wholly enveloped in the cloud, was hidden from the sight of the negro, and it was not until the battle was over that Tom could seek for his young master. He found him in a heap of the slain. Removing the mangled remains, torn frightfully by a piece of shell, he conveyed them to an empty house, where he laid them out in the most decent order he could, and securing the few valuables found on his person, he sought a conveyance to carry the body to Richmond. Ambulances were in too great requisition for those whose lives were not extinct to permit the body of a dead man to be conveyed in one of them. He pleaded most piteouslj for a place to bring in the body of his young master.

It was useless, and he was repulsed; but finding some one to guard the dead, he hastened into the city and hired a cart and driver to go out with him to bring in the body to Richmond.

When he arrived again at the place where he had left it, he was urged to let it be buried on the field, and was told that he would not be allowed to take it from Richmond, and therefore it were better to be buried there. " I can't do it,'* replied the -faithful negro; " I can't do it; I promised my mistress (his mother) to bring this body home to her if he got killed, and I'll go home with it or I'll die by it; I can't leave my master Jemmy here." The boy was allowed to have the body and brought it into Richmond, where he was furnished with a coffin, and the circumstances being made known, the faithful slave, in the care of a wounded officer who went South, was permitted to carry the remains of his master to his distant home in Georgia. The heart of the mother was comforted in the possession of the precious body of her child, and in giving it a burial in the churchyard near his own loved home.

Fee or reward for this noble act of fidelity would have been an insult to the better feelings of this poor slave; but when he delivered up the watch and other things taken from the person of his young master, the mistress returned him the watch, and said : " Take this watch, Tom, and keep it for the sake of my dear boy; 'tis but a poor reward for such services as you have rendered him and his mother." The poor woman, quite overcome, could only add : " God will bless you, boy !"

To allude to an institution which is without the prospect of or a wish for its resurrection, would be like opening the grave and exhibiting the festering remains of our former social system; but we cannot forbear extracting from an evil — and only evil morally, not necessarily involving sin — many a beautiful lesson from the relation in which it was held by us. Our slaves were most generally the repositories of our family secrets. They were our confidants in all our trials. They joyed with us and they sorrowed with us; they wept when we wept, and. they laughed when we laughed. Often our best friends, they were rarely our worst enemies. Simple and childklike in their affections they were more trustworthy in their attachments than those better versed in wisdom. For good or evil, in his present altered condition the negro has the warmest sympathies of his former master, and ever in him will find a "friend in need," who will readily extend to him the hand of kindness and generous affection.

The editors at Time-Life chose this book as one of the volumes of the Collector's Library of the Civil War. It is available in a leather-bound edition with gilded gold edges and also in paperback and digital formats. It is included as one of the volumes on the DVD of our Collector's Library set.