Yanceyville Meeting to Discourage Growing Tobacco During Civil War: April 1863

Yanceyville Meeting to Discourage Growing Tobacco During Civil War: April 1863

After a few years of the Civil War, the Confederate States of America experienced difficulty feeding its military troops (and its civilian population). North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance issued a "Proclamation" requesting North Carolina farmers to divert some agricultural production from tobacco to edible crops. In response to this, a meeting was held in Yanceyville April 13, 1863, that resulted in the following:

"That it is the duty of all to devote themselves with self-denying zeal to the production of breadstuffs of every sort, and to use their best land for this purpose. And to these ends, we who are now here assembled do pledge ourselves to devote our farms to the production of food, making only such quantity of tobacco as cannot interfere materially with the fullest production of corn and other grain, and vegetables of every sort.

"We pledge ourselves not to plant and cultivate in the present year, more than twenty-five hundred plants of tobacco to the efficient hand on the farm, and in ascertaining the number of hands by which to govern ourselves in planting we will have reference to, and be controlled by the lists recently returned to the Colonel of the regiment of our county, on the occasion of the first call made for slaves to work on the fortifications in our State."

Bedford Brown, Chairman

James E. Williamson, Secretary

Anderson Willis, Secretary

Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC), 17 April 1863 [Click image below to see a larger version.]

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Civil War Starvation in the South

By 1863 the war was taking a clear toll on the civilians of both sides. The Union had the Copperheads. Labour shortages and inflation also complicated life for Northerners, though on the whole the economy boomed in the North during the war. Whatever difficulties Yankees experienced paled in comparison with those of Southerners, who were plagued with shortages of food, salt, and nearly every conceivable consumer good. The shortages had myriad causes: the Union blockade shut off the import of many finished materials from Europe; naturally, the war itself shut down official trade with the North, which had supplied the South’s agrarian economy with much of its manufactured goods; and Southern industry was neither large nor well developed enough to meet demand.

Deprivation was evident early in the war with the lack of such basic items as paper and ink. Civilians wrote letters on anything they could find, including sheets torn from old account books and wallpaper ripped from the walls. The Southern states, which boasted about 800 newspapers at the beginning of the war, had only 22 by the time it ended, according to a contemporary estimate.

The most pressing problem for many civilians in the Confederacy was the threat of starvation. Many causes were at the root of food shortages: a drought in 1862 drove down food supplies; slaves who worked on farms and plantations were fleeing to Union lines; Federal troops were gaining control of more parts of the Confederacy; and, with the Confederate military having priority in terms of transportation, food earmarked for civilians went bad before it could be shipped from warehouses.

When the government tried to rectify the situation by impressing food, farmers responded by hiding their crops and their livestock. Hyperinflation sent the price of food skyrocketing while the value of the Confederate dollar cratered. Food riots broke out in several cities, including Richmond. In that instance, in April 1863, Davis ordered the militia to open fire on several hundred women if they did not leave the area, which they grudgingly did.

Source: Britannica

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During the Civil War as feeding the civilian population became increasingly difficult, the North Carolina General Assembly adopted a statute entitled:

"An act for the relief of the wives and families of soldiers in the army."

For the fiscal year ending September 30, 1863, the following was paid to Caswell County:

Thomas D. Johnston, Commissioner:

1st Instalment: $2,605.35

2nd Instalment: $2,605.35

Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC), 8 January 1864.