The Confederate She-Devil Diarists.

   William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, once said after visiting Winchester, Virginia, that “The men were all off in the Rebel army. The women were she-devils.”[1] Winchester has a pretty phenomenal war-time history, one that has been explored in several books and many articles over the years. The old town was settled in 1732 and was once home to George Washington. There were six battles fought nearby, and the town changed hands over seventy times during the 1860s.

   Seward visited the area in late March 1862, following the first battle of Winchester. Someone asked Seward about Unionist sentiment in the town, and Seward made his now-famous “she-devils” remark. The question is an interesting one. Many in the North believed that the South was largely Unionist, controlled by a few rabid-fire eaters that had pushed weak-minded politicians into secessionist and war. And there were Unionist pockets and people, even in Winchester. But in early 1862, the South was firmly behind the movement for a separate country.[2]

   What led Seward to proclaim the women in Winchester “she-devils”? Seward was in Winchester to personally thank Brig. Gen. James Shields for holding off Stonewall Jackson’s forces at Kernstown on March 23. Seward, with his son and daughter, and Mrs. Ellen Stanton (wife of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton), spent about a day in the town and on the battlefield. While his time there was short, Seward undoubtedly had time to talk to the generals in the area and to base his assumption on their observations.

   Later, Seward’s “she-devils” came to be known as the “devil diarists.” Who were these “she-devils”?

(wikipedia)

   Mary Greenhow Lee (1819-1907) is considered the most combative and notorious of Winchester Confederate women. Her dairy is considered “one of the most informative records of daily life in Civil War Virginia.”[3] Lee nursed Confederate wounded at the hospital on Cameron Street and later nursed Federal soldiers as well, often giving the wounded soup and bread from her own kitchen. She later ran out of firewood. Lee and other ladies were known to veil their faces with bonnets, and when veils were outlawed, to use their parasols to shield themselves from the obtrusive views of Federal soldiers. In February 1865, Union general Phil Sheridan banished Lee from Winchester. She would settle in Baltimore, Maryland, after the war, where she ran a boarding house.

   Emma Riely (1847-1942) was just fourteen when the war began. She left a memorable quotation – writing that “People used to have a basket to carry their money to market in but it bought so little they could carry their provisions home in their pocketbooks.” When forced to board Federal soldier officers in 1864, Riely slipped into their rooms while they were out and stole brandy, lemons, and sugar which were smuggled to Confederates in a local hospitals.[4]

   Kate Sperry (1843-1886) was eighteen when the war commenced. Her father was a Winchester merchant who joined the Confederate army. In her diary, she kept accounts of the work she did in local hospitals and of the depredations committed by Federal soldiers when they occupied the town. On March 17, 1862, she noted that the Federals “steal everything they lay their hands on…” and in April wrote “How I detest these dreadful invaders, they are without exception the meanest set of poor white trash I have ever beheld!” Kate eventually married a soldier, moved to Goldsboro in 1864, and then to Mississippi after the war.[5]

   Cornelia Peake McDonald (1822-1909) wrote the earliest published diary of the “Devil Diarists of Winchester” (1875), having a profound impact on Civil War histography. McDonald noted that Federal soldiers stole the meal she was fixing her children on Christmas Eve 1862, then in May 1862, took her fence and firewood. While she refused to take the oath that would allow her to purchase foodstuffs for her family from the Federals or sutlers, she did work out deals to trade flour for coffee, sugar, and bacon.  The McDonald family would flee Winchester in 1863, settling in Lexington. She eventually made her way to Louisville, Kentucky.[6]

   There were others – Laura Lee, Portia Baldwin Baker, Ann Cary Randolph Jones, Margaretta Miller, and Mary Tucker Magill. There are even two who supported the Union, Julia Chase and Harriet Hollingsworth Griffin, who wrote from Winchester during the war. While there are other dairies and reminiscences from other Southern cities written or concerning the war, the “she-devils” undoubtedly have contributed more per capita than any other group, making the war-time experience of Winchester unrivaled in the annals of Confederate history.  What began as a nasty misogynist slur is now a title for informal historians who left behind critical records for the future study of the civilian experience in our nation’s great struggle.

   If you were like to learn more about civilians in Winchester during the war, check out Laura Jane Ping’s 2007 master’s thesis, “Life in an Occupied City: Women in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War,” here.

 

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[1] The Pittsburg Gazette, April 7, 1862.

 
[2] The New York Times, March 30, 1862.

[3] The Winchester Star, November 4, 2014.

[4] Riely, Reminiscences of the Civil War, 107.

[5] https://witnessinghistory.org/kate-sperry-wartime-reports-from-winchester-virginia/

[6] McDonald, A Woman’s Civil War.