massey1964

@Book{ massey1964,
	author = {Mary Elizabeth Massey},
	title = {Refugee Life in the Confederacy},
	address = {Baton Rouge},
	publisher = {Louisiana State University Press},
	year = 1964,
}

Chapter 1

Motivations for becoming refugees:

“Fear of the enemy” and imminent invasion the most important, sparked by “rumors and half-truths … often created by refugees passing through the community” (12)
Instructions from absent men to wives and mothers to leave
Other forms of social pressure, e.g. from ministers and newspapers
Military orders of displacement
“Wartime prvations” (18)
Lure of Confederate cities
Conscription policies that led to draft-dodgers

Despite all these motivations, “many of the very same forces and agencies which made refugees of Southerners, at some time during the war discouraged their leaving home” (23).

Chapter 2

Description of the refugees:

many upper-class because they “had more to lose” (28)
most women, children, and aged or infirm men
many officeholders or families of military officers
but too heterogeneous to admit general description

Also discusses professionals (teachers, newspaper editors, etc.) who relocated and continued their professions in new places.

Cites a Texas editor in the Tri-Weekly Gazette (Austin), October 12, 1863, as he described a refugee train going by an Alleyton hotel (near Houston), but the original source doesn’t make clear these are refugees.

Chapter 3

Transportation challenges and figuring out routes were crucial to the refugees’ experience: “The type of transportation utilized by the refugees not only determined how they would travel but also the amount of baggage they could take and this, in turn, usually had a bearing on the privation they would later experience” (49). Massey discusses train crowding and poor road conditions, as well as difficulty finding lodging. One scene of a camp quoted from Galveston Tri-Weekly News, August 19, 1863.

Chapter 5

Destinations: “most people were reluctant to stray too far from home” (69). They preferred to go to family, but debated relative merits of city vs. country. Ultimately towns and cities seem to have been favored.

Mutual Aid societies formed in many cities: “among the more successful organizations were those in San Antonio, Houston, and Columbia” (74).

Cites a Texas editor saying that refugees were looking for a place where they would find “corn aplenty and Yankees scarce” (74), citing Tri-Weekly News, May 25, 1863

Atlanta a major magnet of refugees, but other migration streams ran:

from southern Missouri and northern Arkansas to Little Rock, Louisiana, and Texas
from Louisiana to Texas (90-94)

p. 91:

When New Orleans fell in the spring of 1862, it had a great many refugees who had been easily absorbed in this largest of Southern cities, but very few of these people or residents were able to get away before the appearance of the Federals. Therefore Baton Rouge and other communities in the area did not have time to be overrun with the homeless from New Orleans. As soon as word reached the capital that the port city had fallen, Baton Rouge was hastily evacuated by government officials who fled to Opelousas where the provisional capital was established. Many residents of Baton Rouge were unable to get out of town before the enemy arrived, but some left as soon as they could and others followed months later when the battles centered around the city. For a time Opelousas was crowded but when it was endangered the people and government again fled, the latter moving to Shreveport.

Massey cites one refugee who detailed his reasons for moving to North Louisiana:

Realizing that it would only be a matter of time until ‘that portion of the state becomes unsafe,’ he planned to go to Texas eventually and it would be easier to get there from northern Louisiana than to ‘start out from [Opelousas] across prairies and pine woods with nothing to eat except what you take with you.’ Many of his neighbors had already left for northern Louisiana in the hope that they would not have to go to Texas, but if they did the trip would be easier from that area. (91)

Shreveport became “a congested refugee center” after becoming the capital, for New Orleans refugees and Arkansans alike. Nearby villages of Arcola and Amite were also crowded. Ultimately many found Texas unavoidable:

Texas had at least one asset that other Confederate states could not equal in degree—space. Louisiana refugees from all walks of life migrated there during the war, but a great many were planters who transported their slaves to the state, placed them on land they rented or bought, or leased them to others. … It was primarily in the eastern third of Texas that the refugees settled, along the Brazos, Trinity, and Sabine rivers, or along the coast.

Mentions John Leigh in particular as one refugee from Louisiana who settled first in Wharton County, where “there was a colony of Louisianians ‘too numerous to mention’,” and then moved to Robinson County on the Brazos. He became “a propagandist for the state.”

Towns mentioned by Massey as places where refugees settled include: Tyler, Rusk, Marshall, Waco, Corsicana, and others. She also cites the October 9, 1863 issue of the Austin Tri-Weekly Gazette, which quotes the Marshall Republican as saying that “the roads are all lined” with “immense numbers of negroes” being brought in from Louisiana and Arkansas.

“Houston was the major refugee center along the coast,” but San Antonio also heavily populated by refugees (93), according to Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, January 23, 1862.

Chapter 6

Refugee living conditions.

Mentions a Louisiana planter family that settled in Laredo, citing Frances Fearn.

Chapter 7

Psychological challenges.

pp. 123-24 discusses difficulty adjusting to Texas customs and manners, relying on Weeks and Pugh Papers

Chapter 8

Treatment by people they encountered.

Chapter 11

Military orders.

In 1864 Kirby Smith forbids planters in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana to go to Texas, because farming was needed to provision his armies.

Chapter 12

Conflicts over property.

P. 232: disputes between Magruder and Smith over impressment of refugees’ slaves. See also OR 26, pt. 2: 268–69.