A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia: The Civil War Album of Laura Ratcliffe
224
A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia: The Civil War Album of Laura Ratcliffe
224eBook
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Overview
As the Civil War raged, Confederate brigadier general J. E. B. Stuart entrusted a secret album to Laura Ratcliffe, a young girl in Fairfax County, “as a token of his high appreciation of her patriotism, admiration of her virtues, and pledge of his lasting esteem.”
A devoted Southerner, Laura provided a safe haven for Rebel forces, along with intelligence gathered from passing Union soldiers. Ratcliffe’s book contains four poems and forty undated signatures: twenty-six of Confederate officers and soldiers and fourteen of loyal Confederate civilians. In A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia, Charles V. Mauro uncovers the mystery behind this album, identifying who the soldiers were and when they could have signed its pages. The result is a fascinating look at the covert lives and relationships of civilians and soldiers during the war, kept hidden until now.
Includes photos and illustrations
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614231868 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 01/23/2019 |
| Series: | Civil War Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 274,880 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE RATCLIFFES AND FAIRFAX COURT HOUSE
When Fairfax County was established in colonial Virginia in 1742, the county government was the "basic unit of local government." The county was required to build a courthouse and offices for the justices, clerk and lawyers. Accordingly, a courthouse was erected at Freedom Hill, just south and west of today's Tysons Corner,conveniently located along the Alexandria–Leesburg Road, today's Leesburg Turnpike or Route 7.
However, as the population of Alexandria grew more rapidly than the population in the central and western portions of Fairfax County, the courthouse was moved to Alexandria by order of the governor in 1752. The courthouse remained in Alexandria until 1798, when, due to neglect and lack of maintenance, the Virginia General Assembly ordered a search for a new location, this time back toward the center of the county. In 1800, a new courthouse was opened for business in the town of Providence. Drawn by the new center of activity, and aided by the construction of new roads to the courthouse, a new community developed in Providence, which became known as Fairfax Court House during the Civil War until it was incorporated into the town of Fairfax in 1875.
Richard Ratcliffe masterminded the establishment of the town of Providence and Fairfax Court House. Born in 1752, Ratcliffe became a planter and a lawyer, using both skills as he developed into a successful businessman. In 1786, he began buying land up to three thousand acres in what would become the town of Providence.
In 1794, Richard was established as a justice of the Fairfax County Court. To protect his interests, he offered to sell four of his acres to the Virginia Assembly for the sum of one dollar to build the new courthouse to replace the decaying structure in Alexandria. Located for favorable transportation at the crossroads of the Little River Turnpike (Route 236) and the Ox Road (Route 123), the offer was accepted in 1798, and the red brick courthouse building that survived the Civil War and still stands today was opened in 1800.
As the town grew, Ratcliffe prospered along with it. He built a large mansion for his family west of town on a plot of two thousand acres that was noted as the Mount Vineyard Plantation in the property tax records in 1816. The house was built on a hill, on the northwest corner of today's Oak and Main Streets, facing east toward the town Ratcliffe helped create. Ratcliffe, the father of eight children, lived there until he died at the age of seventy-four on September 20, 1825. He was likely buried with other family members in the southeast corner of the two-acre family cemetery on his property, along today's Moore Street. By the time of his death, he had forty grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. One of his great-grandchildren, born just over a decade later, was Laura Ratcliffe.
Laura Francis Ratcliffe was born to Francis Fitzhugh Ratcliffe and Ann McCarty Lee on May 28, 1836. Fairfax Court House was the governmental, commercial and social center of Fairfax County, and its location just outside the city of Washington made it a highly visible and important crossroads during the war. Laura, who grew up in the town that her great-grandfather founded, attained a level of importance during the war for her covert and well-hidden activities and associations, in direct contrast to her great-grandfather's more decidedly public accomplishments.
CHAPTER 2WOMEN OF THE CIVIL WAR
Southerners held strong beliefs and opinions about the South's relationship to the North before the outbreak of the war. They felt that every Southerner's allegiance was to his state. They felt that they had a constitutional right to secede if they found the government to be oppressive and believed that it was their absolute duty to throw out that oppressive government and establish a new one. Southerners were as patriotic to their states as Northerners were to theirs. Should the majority vote to secede, their allegiance was naturally and solely to their home state, the definition of their country.
When President Lincoln called for Virginians to furnish troops to put down the rebellion, Virginians felt that the United States government had no right to do so and that this act was an outrage on the rights of the commonwealth. Once the fighting began, Southern men and women felt extremely optimistic about their chances for military success.
The war, however, sparked fundamental changes in the lives of women in the antebellum South. Before the war, women remained in the sphere of the home and family, and only the men voted and spoke in public. The excitement of secession changed all of that as women became engrossed in politics. Not only would they speak of politics in private, but they also spoke publicly as they began to espouse their views in letters to local newspapers.
In the very beginning, women were afraid that they would simply be left out of the war effort since the conflict seemed to belong to the men. This inaction drove many to seek "something to do to live to some purpose to be in the heat and turmoil of it all." This desire to participate was indeed fulfilled in ways that changed the notion of womanhood in the South.
One fundamental change was the way that women defined themselves in relation to men. Before the war, they had defined themselves
first as daughters and sisters, then as wives and mothers. But the carnage of civil war suddenly forced women across the south to contemplate spending not just the duration of the conflict but perhaps the whole of their lives outside the protections and intimacies of marriage — to be women without men. In the new world in which they found themselves, "it will be no disgrace to be an old maid."
While the men prepared for war, the women sent them off with enthusiasm, as there was little need to explain one's ambitions to join the war effort. Whether there was a victory or loss in each battle, the women were left in anxiety and suspense, waiting for the list of wounded or killed, not wanting to see the names of those they had sent to the war. Though the loss of their brothers, sons, beaus, neighbors or fathers to the war left women in poverty, with burdens to which they were certainly not accustomed, they still believed that it was the duty of every fit man to serve the Southern cause. The death of one of their relatives made women even more devoted to the cause.
This spirit of resistance burned brightest among women. The vast majority suffered strain and hardship, fear and loneliness, hardship and privation rather than experiencing glamour and excitement. A few did serve as spies, nurses or government clerks. The majority stayed at home in a house or cabin and did what they had to do to survive. Few women became known during or after the war.
Once the battles began, many women in the area did more than just sit idly by. Women provided what care they could for the sick and wounded in whatever space was available in railway stations, schools, hotels, churches and even their homes. They provided food, blankets and bandages and offered the best support they could. It was difficult to break out of the prejudice of the time to practice as nurses in military hospitals, although a few women were able to do so.
Still more women who did not live close to battlefields provided support by making clothing and knitting socks for their Southern troops. Early in the war, they provided what food they could to the Southern camps, including chicken, ham, cakes, pies and pickles. As the war wore on, some of the women who lived in towns and cities worked for the Confederate government in ordinance plants, textile mills and garment factories. Some women took to smuggling medicines, pistols and other scarcities under their hoop skirts and in their luggage.
Women in the rural areas naturally assumed the responsibility for running their homes, farms and plantations. As fewer than a quarter of Southern whites owned slaves, few women had slaves or even children to do the work of planting, plowing, harvesting, killing hogs, curing meat, cutting firewood and other farm chores. Often their hardships were increased by Union soldiers in the area taking whatever they wanted from the houses or farms, and additional suffering was compounded in some cases by hungry Confederate soldiers taking whatever they needed as well. Women of all classes suffered — the poor worse than the privileged. Deprivation, hunger, fear and danger affected all.
The behavior of Southern women toward the Yankees was based on the affront to their gender and status as white women by the invaders. Some responded to this outrage with the use of "words, gestures, chamber pots, and even on occasion pistols." One journalist noted, "By all odds, they were far worse rebels than the men." Most Northern soldiers did indeed shy away from harming white women, especially those of the upper class. Many white women, however, used discretion to their advantage by manipulating the offending soldiers to what protection and advantage they could. Some women convinced Union officers to allow them to nurse wounded Confederates while smuggling clothing, boots and supplies to the needy soldiers.
One way to smuggle goods was under one's hoop skirt, which came into fashion in the early 1850s and remained in fashion at the beginning of the war. Tied at the waist, and worn under a dress, these hoops, made of an intricate construction of steel, could have a circumference of over five feet in diameter. As inefficient as they made movement, they represented the Victorian culture that covered a women's anatomy while at the same time representing her "private space." They also provided an opportunity to hide supplies by sewing them into the fabric, as no Yankee soldier dared to invade the women's privacy by breaching the shield provided by such a skirt.
Religion offered both consolation and justification for Southerners. The Confederate legislature adopted the motto Deo Vindice, or "Defended by God," to combine nationalism and religious fervor for its country. Religion, which was considered the sphere of women, provided them entrance into the male world of politics. It also provided them the context for dealing with the ordeals of the war. One Southern woman wrote, "It matters not how weak our cause, if but God and justice is on our side, we will at last triumph." And it was clear that "the Lord is on our side."
For those who could still afford it, women traveled to visit relatives or friends in the service. Due to the lack of males to act as traditional escorts, women were beginning to travel more by themselves than before. Also, for those who had the means, reading was a popular pastime, escape and source of enjoyment. The Bible was widely read, along with fiction and whatever news was available of friends, relatives and the war itself.
As the war wore on, however, the emotional and physical sacrifices started to take a psychological toll on women. The strain could become unbearable. One woman from Winchester in western Virginia declared herself "completely broken down mentally" by the end of the war. She also noted that there were a number of new patients in Virginia's Insane Asylum in Staunton, "made insane by the War — all women." Other women wrote, "I think my trials are more than I can bear" and "I have no time to grieve. Life is not desirable for life's sake. I could almost feel the wrinkles coming on my face and my hair turn gray on my head."
As "sufferings and trials petrified," some women felt their feelings turn to stone. "I care very little for anybody or anything. I enjoy nothing, am neither sorry nor glad." One woman wanted to know, "For what am I living? Why is it I am spared, from day to day with no happiness myself? I am wearing a way."
As hard as the war was, the aftermath proved just as difficult. The South had to adapt to the free labor system. With their husbands' incomes not enough or incompetent to support their family, women turned to work outside the house, such as teaching, to bring in an income. Some found household work difficult. "Sometimes I cook and sometimes I don't and everything I do is done by guesswork. My ignorance and inexperience is a great trial."
This fundamental change in Southern womanhood caused women to develop a new interest in themselves. New associations arose throughout the South, dedicated
not just to support suffrage or the Lost Cause, but temperance societies, educational and civic reform groups, church and missionary organizations, literary leagues, and women's clubs involved ladies in a variety of efforts aimed at personal and social uplift.
In his writings after the war, Georgian Confederate colonel James C. Nisbet expressed his recognition of the suffering that Southern women had endured and the need to pay homage to the support that these women had provided:
It was upon the women that the greatest burden of this horrid war fell. While the men were carried away with the drunkenness of the war, she dwelt in the stillness of her desolate home. May the movement to erect monuments in every Southern State to our heroic Southern women carve in marble a memorial to her cross and passion.
CHAPTER 3GROWING UP
Laura's parents were Ann McCarty Lee (b. circa 1805, d. 1878) and Francis Fitzhugh Ratcliffe (b.1800,d.1842). Laura Frances Ratcliffe was born on May 28,1836, in Fair fax Court House. She had one brother and two sisters. John R. Ratcliffe was born about 1830, Ann Marie Ratcliffe was born about 1833 and Cora L. Ratcliffe was born about 1835. Laura and her siblings were the great-grandchildren of Richard Ratcliffe, the founder of the town of Providence, commonly referred to as Fairfax Court House in the mid-1800s.
When her great-grandfather died in 1825, he willed his property to his children, who mismanaged their money so badly that their heirs had to sell their properties to pay off their debts. Laura's father, Francis F. Ratcliffe, sold his interest in his two lots to his brother Robert in 1829.
In the 1840 census, Francis Fitzhugh Ratcliffe was recorded as living in the town of Providence, just southwest of the courthouse itself. The last official record of Laura's father, Francis, is from April 20, 1842, when he was listed on the personal property tax roll. There are no records available to show whether he paid the taxes or not. Presumably, he died around this time, as he is not listed in the 1850 census. His wife, Ann, is listed as a widow in the 1860 census.
There are other records that shed a little light on Laura's life. Private schools for boys and girls had been established in Virginia around the 1840s. Dr. Frederick Baker, a surgeon from England who became an American citizen in 1844, built a private school in 1845 in the town of Providence near where Laura lived. Located on a fifteen-acre tract next to the Zion Episcopal Church on the north side of the Little River Turnpike, Baker's school was a private finishing school for girls in Fairfax County, consisting of a small number of buildings for classrooms and his residence. He named the school Coombe Cottage and taught about eighty girls, both from within and from outside the estate.
Tuition was an expensive $100 per year for girls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen for room and board, indicating that it was only affordable to wealthy families. The girls typically attended for two years. Classes included instruction in English grammar, mathematics, history, geography, natural sciences, music, art, writing and the Bible. Kate Carper of Dranesville, who signed Laura's album, attended, as did her sister Frances Ellen. Their friend Antonia Ford also attended. The school was closed at the beginning of the Civil War and was never reopened. The six buildings, including the Bakers' residence and four dormitories, were torn down after 1955. The location is now occupied by the Mosby Apartments at 10560 Main Street.
In July 1852, the year after Kate Carper graduated, one of her cousins wrote her a letter and mentioned that "the girls at Mrs. Baker's were disappointed as you did not go down. Laura Ratcliffe was there, more lovely than ever." Laura was sixteen years old at this time, and although there is no record of her attending Coombe Cottage, this letter at least places her at the school on one occasion. Laura, being Episcopalian, would have attended Zion Episcopal Church, located next to Coombe Cottage, while living in Providence, as did a number of girls at Coombe Cottage. Coombe Cottage was within walking distance of Laura's 1850 and 1860 residences.
Later, a schoolmate of Kate Carper, Kate Keech, sent a letter to Kate on January 28, 1858, that mentions Laura. It reads:
I got a long letter from Jenny Baker a few days since. She was begging me to come up about the middle of February and I only wish I could see you while there — cannot you come? Laura Ratcliffe asked me to come and I will spend part of my time with her.
The Ratcliffes kept Mount Vineyard, the home of Laura's great-grandfather Richard Ratcliffe, located west of the town of Providence, in the family until 1842, when it was sold to the family of W.T. Rumsey from New York.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Charles V. Mauro.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
The Ratcliffes and Fairfax Court House,
Women of the Civil War,
Growing Up,
Letters and Poems,
The J.E.B Stuart Page,
The William Thomas Carter Page,
The John Singleton Mosby Page,
The Fitzhugh Lee Page,
The Local Women Page,
The Dranesville, Virginia and Cambridge, Maryland Page,
After the War,
Notes,
Index,
About the Author,