SOUND OF BELLES IN TEXAS: WOMEN’S CIVIL WAR STRUGGLES

Life for citizens of the Confederate States of America was difficult and often

deadly during the Civil War, with hardships ranging from malnutrition and homesickness

on the front lines to hunger and vulnerability at home. These challenges were not lost on

the thousands of women living in Texas during this time as they struggled to make their

home in a young state in the far reaches of the West.

Texas women faced the unique challenges of building a civilization out of a

wilderness still largely unsettled, maintaining morale and dedication to the Confederacy

through a distant war, and battling the constant threat of Indian attacks, all while living in

a state deeply divided between those for or against secession. These pressures faced by

Texas women during the Civil War resulted in many heroic tales of bravery and courage,

but they also created unique strains both at home and in the battles their men fought. As

hunger gave way to bread riots, disease gave way to death, and apathy gave way to

opposition, women found themselves losing the war in Texas as quickly as were their

men fighting so far away from home.

While the majority of Southern women had the luxury of living in a well-

established state with well-grounded roots in government and society, the women in

Texas faced the daunting task of developing and maintaining a state that had joined the

Union only 16 years earlier. The majority of white settlers in Texas made their way west

from other states in the Deep South and brought the ideals of Southern society along with

them.1 Yet the young Texas, annexed into the U.S. in 1845, was still largely unpopulated

and lacked many of the modern amenities enjoyed by the other states of the Confederacy,

such as paved roads.2 The Texas residents came with grandiose ideas of a structured and

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predictable Southern society like their previous homes in Mississippi, Georgia, and the

Carolinas. But the reality of Texas’ infrastructure failed to match their idealistic

expectations.

Throughout the South, women were forced to take on roles they weren’t used to

as their men marched off to battle. In Mothers of Invention, Drew Gilpin Faust describes

women’s struggles to fill the holes left by their husbands and sons by performing tasks

that had previously been considered men’s work. “The departure of the breadwinners

caused immediate hardship, requiring many white women to turn for the first time to the

demanding physical labor of the fields.” 3 Women in Texas, however, faced the additional

barriers of living with limited resources and a flimsy infrastructure – problems women in

the other states of the Confederacy did not have to deal with on as large a scale as their

Texas counterparts.

In her diary from the Civil War period, East Texas resident Elizabeth Scott Neblett

fills the pages with her struggles to maintain her husband’s farm in a land that is still

primitive and in the intermediate stages of development. In her writings, Neblett talks

about the problems she encounters with wild hogs destroying her land and the battles she

faces with finding enough resources to keep their farm running. “Next year we won’t

have anything to farm with…we have 32 pigs marked…we have no corn to feed them.

Sometimes I think I don’t care, but I do care, yet I can’t help myself.” 4

Vast wilderness that was completely inaccessible stretched across much of the

state and the majority of the limited wealth was concentrated along the Eastern border.5

With so much work to be done home, many women felt the Civil War was destroying

their efforts in Texas more than the tattered battlefields of Virginia or Tennessee. In his

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letter to Governor Sam Houston in 1860, B.F. Speer describes the desolate and lonely

situation in West Texas due to few settlers, even fewer resources, and a reigning fear of

Indian attacks:

“Our county is almost entirely depopulated. What is to be come [sic] of us

heaven only knows. Shall we have to abandon our homes after our last
horse is gone and be cast forth on an unfeeling world with out money or
Shall we be protect[sic].” 6

As seen in his letter, Speer and many other Texans already had challenges just

building a state before the Civil War erupted, which only exacerbated the problem.

As they struggled to fill their new roles, some women in Texas found themselves

in over their heads and resorted to riots and raids on local storehouses in an effort to gain

enough food and supplies to sustain their families. On October 25, 1864, a letter to the

state government reported that a group of 12 women stole a total of 370 pounds of cotton,

which they most likely planned to sell in order to overcome their shortage of money. The

official affidavit states: “To investigate the illegal taking of the Tithe cotton… we find

that during the month of October 1846, the following named persons took cotton from the

depot in the absence of the depot agent….”7 Running out of money and running out of

food, these women were forced to resort to theft to feed their families.

While East Texas was beginning to build a reliable infrastructure, the western

regions of the state were anything but civilized and even remain sparsely populated today.

These struggles illustrate the battle Texas women faced of consolidating a state filled with

empty deserts and Indian-filled plains into something livable and similar to the

established societies they had left behind in Dixie. The state of Texas had been bolstered

by its defeat of Mexico several decades earlier and their annexation into the U.S. had

inspired dreams of riches and glory in a rising global empire. But in 1861, Texas

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remained far behind its neighbors in established infrastructure and modern

developments.8 When their men marched off to war, this left the women of Texas with the

daunting task of continuing to settle and develop a state that was only in the beginning

stages of modernization.

While women in the Eastern theater may have given anything to have the war off

of their lands, the women in Texas would have given anything to be closer to the other

citizens of the Confederacy. Their position as one of the westernmost states in the newly-

created Confederacy kept the lands of Texas largely out of the major war zones, with the

exception of the coast. However, the long distance from the front lines left the women at

home feeling largely detached from the battles their men were fighting across state lines.

In her earlier memoirs, Lizzie Neblett writes about her fears that the Yankees may

target Texas and what she may do if they invade her land. “Do write to me often and tell

me what I must do when the Yankees come, every body [sic] even the most hopeful

believe Texas will be invaded this fall and winter….” 9 Yet as the war drags on, the battles

fail to approach the regions of Texas and both Lizzie and her husband bemoan the fact

that their state may never see combat. Lizzie’s husband, William Neblett, writes:

“I have nothing more to add in the way of news. There appears to be no

more prospect of an attack on this place than there did a month ago, and I
and everyone here ceases to think about it, although every precaution has
been taken in expectation of it.” 10

Texas women, while not desirous of war at home, nonetheless desired to at least

feel a part of what their men were doing. Unfortunately, they never received that luxury

in full and became less and less engaged in the “Lost Cause” as time went on.

As Neblett’s earlier entry depicts, the initial reaction to the war carried excitement

and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves for the secessionists. Their

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separation from the United States and admission into the Confederacy would surely put

them in the middle of the action, or so they believed. Prompted by the desire to get in on

the fighting and protect their interests, many Texans flooded Austin with letters and

petitions demanding Sam Houston secede and bring Texas into the fray. This mentality

exudes from the memoirs of Confederate private William Andrew Fletcher, who writes

about his determination to enlist and get in on the fighting. Fletcher writes:

“I was on the roof… when Captain William Rogers came by and reported
war declared. It made me very nervous thinking the delay of completing
the roof might cause me to miss the chance to enlist. I started to inquire
about the chances to enlist. I soon found there would be no chance for me,
as nearly all were going to enlist the first opportunity.”11

Initial excitement about the war soon waned, however, as the Texans realized that

the fight wasn’t actually in their backyards and the main battles would bypass their lands

altogether. While the male soldiers at least had the luxury of knowing what they were

fighting for, the women at home began wondering exactly what their men were supposed

to be protecting as their way of life disintegrated before their eyes. What could have been

viewed as a blessing actually hurt the war effort and attitudes at home. While their men

were forced to march off and follow the war, Texas women were left behind to hear only

distant tales about it, leading to apathy and discontent.

Because of their distance from the battlefields, the Texans’ service was even

snubbed by some within the Confederate forces and Texas women found their men

rejected after initially offering to send large armies to fight for the rebel cause. 12 In Texas

C.S.A., James Farber states:

“Wild joy swept across the South and into Texas… but the honeymoon was
soon over. ‘The war will be over shortly, and will be fought in the East. It is
not anticipated that the Texas offer need be accepted and it is declined with

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 thanks’, so said the arrogant members of the first Confederate States
Government.” 13

Texas men and women had anticipated entering the war and defending their lands

in patriotic fashion, but found themselves fighting just to enter the war and ultimately

fighting for lands that weren’t even their own.

Positioned in the far reaches of the West, the citizens of Texas still faced a threat

that had been practically exterminated and completely contained in other states during

this period: Indians. Their brutal reputation and feared presence had been a constant

nuisance and ever-present danger during the early years of the Republic of Texas, and

annexation into the U.S. had done little to change that by 1861. Tribes of Comanche,

Apache, Kiowa, and Kickapoo Indians still roamed the central and western regions of the

state, and the women living there felt especially vulnerable with their men so far from

home.14

Due to the threat of Indian attacks, the Federal army had a significant presence in

Texas prior to the Civil War. In 1853, W.G. Freeman gave an inspection of the area

around Fort Worth and found it to be a sparsely developed region with a large Indian

population outside the settlement of white immigrants. “This country is not settled until

coming within a few miles of Forth Worth. About 100 [tribes] live with their chief on the

Brazos [River]… the whole number of Indians living in Texas at a total of 2,250 men,

women and children.”15

Texas women felt the Indians’ presence to be a constant danger, which become

even more eminent once their men left for war. Their fears were largely founded as Indian

raids actually rose during the period between 1859-1860.16 In his letter about the

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desolation of Jack County, B.F. Speer goes on to write about a recent raid on Antelope,

Texas in which 53 Indians killed 8 people and wounded 6 others. Speer writes:

“[They] destroyed several houses and took all they could carry and set a
house on fire. [They] shot at me in broad daylight. [They] stole over 200
head of horses and last but not least scalped one poor unfortunate woman
alive. It is thought that she will recover.”17

With reports coming in prior to the war of Indians killing women in the Western

regions of the state, the women of Texas found the fires of their fear stoked once the

protection of their husbands and sons vanished to the call of the war. Not only were they

struggling against nature’s wilderness, they now also found themselves in the unique

situation of battling the threat of Indians and the fears that threat inevitably built.

In addition to being one of the most isolated states in the Confederacy, the women

in Texas also faced the challenge of being in one of the most divided states in the South.

Beginning with the struggle for secession in the state legislature, the battle to stay or

leave the Union affected all levels of society, from the governor of the state to everyday

citizens.

Prior to its secession, Texas was the only Southern state with a Unionist

governor.18 When secessionist clamor first began to stir, Texas’ Governor Sam Houston

wrote a letter urging citizens to remain loyal to the Union. Houston states:

“Having seen the throes of one Revolution…I trust that you will ask some
more weighty reason for overthrowing the government than rash
enthusiasm. Here I take my stand. So long as the Constitution is
maintained by the ‘Federal Authority’ and Texas is not made the victim of
‘Federal Wrong’, I am for the Union as it is.”19

Yet the division between some Texans and their governor is evident in a petition

by the citizens of Houston County, written to Governor Sam Houston on November 24,

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1860, asking him to call a special session of the Legislature to vote on secession. The

petitioners write:

“That the election of Abraham Lincoln… has filled their minds with the
most gloomy apprehensions… They therefore hope that Your Excellency
will consider the alarming exigency of the times, and convene the
Legislature forthwith, to the end, that such measures may be adopted as
the right of self-preservation now demands.” 20

Yet those who supported Houston were not lacking and their efforts to avoid war

clashed sharply with the enthusiasm of the secessionists. As his son marches off to war,

William Fletcher’s father illustrates opposition at the citizen level and the division that

existed even in families as he laments the duty his son has undertaken. “William, I have

long years since seen this had to come and it is a foolish undertaking… While I have

opposed it, I will say that you are doing the only honorable thing and that is defending

your country.” 21

Eventually, Texas’ division from the United States came about only as a result of

the division within the state itself. As Governor Sam Houston pledged his allegiance to

the United States, Texas voted to secede from the Union and he was removed from

office.22 In a letter he wrote to the citizens of Texas, Houston denounces the actions of the

Secession Committee and shows the vivacity of secession opposition alive in Texas

during this time. “I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her. I am

ready to be ostracized sooner than submit to usurpation.”23

As the battle raged in Austin, so it also raged at home as some Texas women

opposed the war for emotional and financial reasons. While their husbands skipped off to

enlist, the ladies left behind soon felt the fear of separation from their husbands and the

possibility of their death creeping in. 24 Lizzie Neblett writes about the agony the war is

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bringing her in a letter to her husband who is stationed out of state. “You are sorry to see

or know me to be so desponding about the war – it is not only about the war, but

everything. I feel like a wrecked mariner clinging to a narrow plank.” 25 While she longs

to be a part of the war if Texas must be involved, Neblett shows at least some Texas

women would much rather their state and their men have had nothing to do with it at all.

Because of these struggles on the home front, Texas women often passed along

their burdens to their husbands, which caused a drag on the men’s consciences and only

exacerbated their longing to be home. In her writings, Lizzie unfurls her struggles to her

husband and his attentions must be turned from his military duties and focused on his

wife’s issues at home. Mr. Neblett writes: “Camp life is very disagreeable to most men of

family… but we should recollect who we are contending for – our families and their

safety and liberty.” 26 The desire to protect their wives and families ran strong in the

minds of the men of Texas who fought in the Confederacy and caused many to petition

for supplies or exemptions for themselves on the women’s behalf. Knowing they would

be leaving the women to battle disease, hunger and loneliness on their own, a group of

citizens from Fayette County wrote a petition for exemption from the draft for the only

mill owner in their town. They feared if he were sent off to war along with the rest of the

men in town, no one would be left behind to help feed their families. “If [Alexander

Schecke] should be drafted, [the] mill would be stopped and closed up and thereby put

your petitioners at great inconveniences to get bread for their families.”27 These problems

at home served as a constant worry for the men in war and led many to think more of the

women in Texas than the Yankees on the other side of the battle lines.

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 Since birth, women during the nineteenth century were dependent on the men in

their lives, both physically and legally. So when nearly the entire male population left for

the war, their wives and mothers at home found the main source of their emotional and

financial stability ripped from their lives. After her husband had been away to war for

several years, Lizzie Neblett’s letters went from being peppered with doubt to being

flooded with long soliloquies of despair and hopelessness at her husband’s absence:

“I fear you are sick. I would torment myself to death about you if I did not
exert a strong will to the contrary. Oh, the future is all gloom for me, and
my heart is continually asking oh why was I created, and if created why
was I not permitted to die long ago. My unhappiness is so great when I
think of the direful calamities that might and may befall me, that I wish
only for death never thinking of what you would suffer were I to die and
leave you…” 28

While the blame for dragging down the morale of their men can’t be placed upon

the women, knowing their wives and mothers at home were struggling to survive

certainly took the soldier’s focus off the war and kept much of their thoughts at home

rather than on the battlefield.

While the women of Texas dealt with the many of the same struggles as women

across the South during the war, they also faced the additional problems of building a

civilization in a new state, battling apathy for a distant war, facing the threat of Indian

attacks, and overcoming opposition to the war from the state to the local level. All of

these battles at home carried over into the battles on the frontlines as women unloaded

their trials and tribulations on their husbands in the war. As both fronts faced their own

problems and issues, the women in Texas fought bravely to maintain what their husbands

had built. In the end, however, the troubles of civilizing, motivating, and unifying Texas

during the Civil War proved to be too tall an order for the women to fill.

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1
Randolph B. Campbell, “Antebellum Texas,” Handbook of Texas Online (2009),
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/AA/npa1.html (accessed 16 April 2009).
2
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
secession.html, (accessed 16 April 2009).
3
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 32.
4
Erika L. Murr, ed., A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 363.
5
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
secession.html, (accessed 16 April 2009).
6
B.F. Speer to Sam Houston, December 2, 1860, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, available
online at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/documents/secession/bf_speer_dec2_1860_1.html
(accessed 16 April 2009).
7
Affidavit on Women Taking Cotton to Lavaca County, October 25, 1864, Texas State Library and
Archives Commission, available online at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
documents/1864/henry_holtzclaw_oct25_1864.html (accessed 16 April 2009).
8
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
secession.html, (accessed 16 April 2009).
9
Elizabeth Neblett to William Neblett, August 11, 1863 in A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters of
Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 133.
10
William Neblett to Elizabeth Neblett, August 11, 1863 in A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters
of Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 297.
11
William A. Fletcher, Rebel Private: Front and Rear (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1954), 7.
12
James Farber, Texas, C.S.A. (New York: The Jackson Company, 1947), 30.
13
Ibid., 30.
14
Indian Relations in Texas, “Frontier Defense in the Civil War,” Texas State Library and Archives
Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/indian/statehood/page4.html, (accessed 16 April
2009).
15
W.G. Freeman’s Inspection of Fort Worth, September 7, 1853, Texas State Library and Archives
Commission, available online at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/documents/
before/freeman_report_1853_1.html (accessed 30 April 2009).
16
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
secession.html, (accessed 16 April 2009).
17
B.F. Speer to Sam Houston, December 2, 1860, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, available
online at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/documents/secession/bf_speer_dec2_1860_1.html
(accessed 16 April 2009).
18
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Before the War,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/before.html,
(accessed 16 April 2009).
19
Letter from Sam Houston to the Citizens of Texas, November 14, 1860, Daughters of the Republic of
Texas at The Alamo, available online at http://drtlibrary.wordpress.com/tag/secession/ (accessed 17
April 2009).
20
Petition of the Citizens of Houston County to Governor Sam Houston, November 24, 1860, Texas State
Library and Archives Commission, available online at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
documents/secession/houston-county-nov-1860.html (accessed 16 April 2009).
21
William A. Fletcher, Rebel Private: Front and Rear (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1954), 7.
22
Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War, “Secession! Texas Makes Its Choice,” Texas
State Library and Archives Commission (2008), http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/
secession.html, (accessed 16 April 2009).
23
Letter from Sam Houston to the Citizens of Texas, November 14, 1860, Daughters of the Republic of
Texas at The Alamo, available online at http://drtlibrary.wordpress.com/tag/secession/ (accessed 17
April 2009).
24
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 10.
25
Elizabeth Neblett to William Neblett, August 25, 1863 in A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters
of Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 147.
26
William Neblett to Elizabeth Neblett, August 25, 1863 in A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and
Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 145.
27
Draft Petition for Alexander Schecke, April 2, 1862, Texas State Library and Archives
Commission, available online athttp://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civilwar/documents/1862/
draft_petition_apr2_1862.html (accessed 16 April 2009).
28
Elizabeth Neblett to William Neblett, August 13, 1863 in A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and
Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 134.