Fascinating Civil War diaries of black woman discovered

Posted 2/22/19

by Constance Garcia-Barrio A deluge of diaries, memoirs and movies have portrayed life for white people during the Civil War (April, 1861, to April, 1865). However, aside from Harriet Tubman — a …

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Fascinating Civil War diaries of black woman discovered

Posted

by Constance Garcia-Barrio

A deluge of diaries, memoirs and movies have portrayed life for white people during the Civil War (April, 1861, to April, 1865). However, aside from Harriet Tubman — a cook, nurse, spy and scout for the Union army — and the mammy in “Gone with the Wind,” one hears little about black women in those heart-rending times.

However, Emilie Davis’ “Civil War, the Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863 to 1865,” not only adds a much-needed voice to the story of the Civil War but also surprises readers with comments about Germantown.

Davis (1839-1889) a lively young woman when the Civil War broke out, wrote a few sentences each day in three pocket-sized diaries, each no bigger than a cell phone. Judith Giesberg, 52, a professor of history at Villanova University, has transcribed, edited and annotated the diaries. Giesberg’s edition, a single book — Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 2014 — preserves Davis' original spelling and lack of punctuation.

A seamstress so skilled that she made wedding gowns, Davis felt the war’s effect on cloth prices: “… went out shoping …” she wrote on Feb. 19, 1863. “… muslins [a kind of cotton] are frightfully Dear …” With the South’s disrupted cotton production and the use of that cloth in soldiers’ uniforms, prices soared. The cost of food also shot up.

With rising prices, Davis may have scrambled to find steady work. “I heard of a situation to go to Germantown for the summer,” she wrote on April 28, 1864. She lost no time following up. “… I went out to Germantown to Mrs. Wister and engaged to go to her the first of June …” says the entry for June 30. She may have been referring to Sarah Butler Wister (1835-1908), wife of Dr. Owen Wister, a physician whose traveling practice kept him busy visiting patients in the northwest, Dr. Giesberg noted. Mrs. Wister, a daughter of famed English actress Fanny Kemble Butler, also kept a diary during the Civil War.

The northwest made a good first impression on Davis. “… it is very pleasant in Germantown,” she wrote on June 7, 1864.

It seems that Mrs. Wister liked to get around. “… I went to town with mrs. wister to the Great fair,” says the entry for June 25. “… i was delighted with the fair it was beautiful …”

“From June 7 to June 25, the U.S. Sanitary Commission held the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, which raised over $1.5 million to support wounded soldiers and their families,” Dr. Giesberg said.

The following month, Mrs. Wister introduced Davis to a novelty. “… I had my first lesson on the sewing machine succeeded admireably I worked all the afternoon …,” she wrote on July 12. “… i have bin running the machine nearly all day to day …” she wrote one week later.

Davis' eyewitness accounts help to convey the mood of key local events. Philadelphians rode a wave of joy when Richmond fell on April 2, 1865. “… the city is wild with excitement,” she wrote on April 4, 1865, “… flags are flying everywhere.” Just 11 days later, news of Lincoln’s murder crushed many Philadelphians. “… the city is in deep mourning,” she wrote.

People mobbed Broad Street and stood on rooftops April 23, 1865, to watch Lincoln’s funeral cortege inch down Broad Street, then turn east to Independence Hall, where the body would lie in state. Davis tried to glimpse Lincoln that day but was crowded out. She succeeded the next day. “… i got to see him after waiting tow hours and a half it was certainly a sight worth seeing …”

The Civil War had ended, yet struggles remained. Not one to miss good entertainment, Davis and a friend went to see Blind Tom (1848-1908), pianist and composer extraordinaire, sometimes described as an “autistic savant.” Born into slavery, at age 10 he was said to be able to play two different tunes on two different pianos while singing a third song. “… i was much Pleased with the preformance excepting we had to sit upstairs which made me furious,” she wrote on Sept. 14, 1865.

Davis and other black women in Philadelphia continued the fight to ride horse-drawn streetcars, begun during the Civil War. Some wartime camps for U.S. Colored Troops lay far from black neighborhoods. Determined to deliver supplies and tend to wounded African American soldiers, members of black women’s aid societies like the Ladies’ Union Association, to which she belonged, at times rode horse-drawn streetcars to reach the troops.

When white passengers objected, black women usually held their ground. That stance could mean fights. “Harriet Tubman … a former Union spy … suffered injuries to her arm and shoulders in 1866 when a conductor and his friends threw her off a Philadelphia streetcar,” Giesberg said. Black women, who often faced these fights alone, sometimes sued streetcar companies. They helped gain ground for the whole community. An 1867 law ended streetcar segregation.

Constance Garcia-Barrio, a longtime Mt. Airy resident, is a retired professor of Romance languages at West Chester University and a freelance writer for area publications.

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