My mind is drawn to the remarkable Susan Bricelin Fletcher as I think about March being Women's History Month. Thousands of Arkansas women were left alone during the Civil War, including Susan Fletcher, but she was one of the few to record her experiences. In 1908, when Fletcher was past 70 years of age, she began writing "for the edification of my children" of the trials and tribulations of a young wife and mother trying to survive the bloody conflict.
Susan and her husband, Henry Lewis Fletcher, came from prosperous families, and they lived on a farm about 20 miles southwest of Little Rock. The Fletchers were opposed to secession, but the family joined the Confederate effort once the war began.
Susan was much better off than many Arkansas women during the war. Her son was too young to be of much help around the farm, but the family owned several "faithful negro slaves" and they, along with a niece, "carried on much as usual." All that changed in late 1863 after Little Rock was occupied by Union forces and scouting parties began visiting the Fletcher farm.
In her memoir, Fletcher recalled that "the first Yankee scout who visited us was a revelation." And it got worse. "After we were visited by the first half dozen squads of bluecoats, we knew what civil war was when it was brought to your door."
One of the interesting aspects of Fletcher's memoir was her description of the means Confederate women used to carry on under adverse circumstances. Interestingly, "one neighbor came to Little Rock and took the Rebecca degree in Masonry. When her next unwelcome guest arrived, she began making the Masonic sign of distress. The [Federal] officer wanted to know what brand of flirtation that was."
Depredations against the family were minor at first, but as time passed the scouting parties were replaced with foraging teams and things worsened dramatically. "They killed the cattle on one occasion," Fletcher recalled. "I saw my hillside pasture red with the blood of slain cattle. They tore photographs from the wall, burnt the cotton bales, [and] took our combs and every vestige of food." The grandfather clock was not stolen, but "the soldiers had removed the works, bars, wheels and old wooden pulley, and took them off with them."
Fletcher saved her sharpest words for "a party of Iowa men ... let me say here that the men from [that] state will live in memory as the most vicious of all the soldiers ..."
Eventually, the situation worsened to the point that "moving seemed a good thought ..." Retrieving several thousand dollars in gold coins from a hiding place, Fletcher loaded her remaining belongings and moved to Little Rock, where she bought a home. However, this did not work out as the Federals knew she was married to a Confederate soldier, and "I became afraid that the Federals would confiscate, burn, or take my house." Taking an oath of loyalty to the Union did not help, for as one Federal soldier explained, "Yes Madam, you have the oath in your pocket and a lie in your mouth." She decided to flee to Confederate-held southwest Arkansas.
Fletcher knew that Federal sentries would search her wagon, but propriety did not allow them to bodily search women. So, she made a corset with pockets for herself and her niece, and they secreted $7,000 in gold coins in their "faithful bird-cage shaped hoop skirts."
Despite some setbacks, the Fletcher party finally made their way to Washington, Ark., where the Confederate state government was relocated after Little Rock was captured. A Confederate army band was playing Dixie when the Fletcher wagon arrived: "It seemed to me that it must be Heaven, such beautiful music and to be among friends again."
Following the war, the Fletcher family moved back to central Arkansas. They found their home burned, so they relocated to Little Rock, eventually building a residence at Third and Ringo streets. "It was called town, but we lived on a block of ground, divided into orchard, kitchen garden, barnyard, buggy house, etc."
Almost 50 years had passed by the time Susan Fletcher wrote her Civil War memoir, but time had not dampened her disdain for the Union army. She recalled how Union soldiers not only killed her livestock, but they demanded she provide the salt to cure the meat.
Although she found Federal commanding general Frederick Steele "a quiet, kind man," Fletcher probably sympathized with the former Confederate soldier who told her, "Mrs. Fletcher, I hate blue so hard I never expect to allow anything blue on my farm, not even a blue hog."
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
NAN Profiles on 03/12/2017