Union Armies and the Rape of Confederate Women

This item comes from the New York Times Blog, August 21, 2009:

Were rape and the threat of sexual violence used as weapons in the Civil War? A historian explores evidence from the Union occupation of New Orleans.

When the topic is sexual violence in wartime, the horrors of the Balkans and Rwanda typically come to mind — not the American Civil War. But in the academic journal Daedalus, Crystal N. Feimster begs to differ with historians who “have accepted without question the idea that Union soldiers rarely raped southern women, black or white, and have argued that sexual violence was rare during the Civil War.”

In fact, the University of North Carolina historian writes, “hundreds, perhaps thousands of women suffered rape” during the war, with many assaults likely unreported. But her focus is less rape itself than the threat of sexual predation by northern troops. Did reality match the fear of assault felt by Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”? Feimster explores an 1862 order by the Union Gen. Benjamin Butler, decreeing that any New Orleans woman showing contempt for his occupying troops “shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation” — i.e., the city’s outspokenly Confederate belles were to be treated as prostitutes. Feimster sifts evidence that the order was a green light for Union soldiers to threaten sexual violence if not commit rape itself.

After President Abraham Lincoln ignored calls to rescind the order and it was applied beyond the city, she concludes, its geographical reach “ensured that the threat of sexual violence and the fear of rape were common to southern women and central to how they experienced the Civil War.”

Read the New York Times blog here: http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/rape-and-the-civil-war/

Cotton Raid is an example of how the Union plundered the South during Lincoln's War

Avoyelles Parish Courthouse, Marksville, Louisiana

Photo by J. Stephen Conn

thetowntalk.com
By Warren Hayes

The City of Marksville held one of its 200th birthday celebration events that featured dead Union and Confederate soldiers and stolen cotton, Saturday afternoon.

The event was a Civil War re-enactment of the 1864 Marksville Cotton Raid.

In 1864, sailors from the United States Navy passed through Cocoville and Marksville, taking all the cotton bales they could find, bringing it back to their gunboats at Fort DeRussy.

Four hundred bales were taken from the basement of the old Voinché Store in Marksville, which still stands behind the city's courthouse square.

Union troops threatened to burn Marksville to the ground, if the cotton wasn't given to them.
The Union troops consisted of the 32nd Iowa Infantry and Confederate troops: the 19th Texas Infantry.

In front of Piazza Law Office Friday night, troops slept in tents, to get a feel of how former troops lived.

Marksville Judge Angelo Piazza portrayed a private soldier in the Union Army, and said the re-enactment consisted of 45 soldiers.

The cotton was given to northern textile mills, Piazza said.

"I believe this event will help residents learn more about the cotton raid, because they can see it, rather than reading about it," Piazza said. "People need to learn and be proud of their history and not repeat the same mistakes. I believe the war should've been settled in a court system."

Eugene Goddard, a Mesquite, Texas, resident, played the role of first lieutenant in the Confederate Army, and said the 19th Infantry fought in many battles in Louisiana.

"The 19th Infantry was in the Battle of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill," Goddard said. "A lot of Louisiana troops were in the east at that time. You get a better feeling and understanding for things when you see them first-hand."

Smoke from a .58-caliber muskets filled the air, as troops held a gun salute out side of where the old Confederate Hospital use to be, located on Monroe Street. The salute honored the dead and wounded soldiers.

The re-enactment of the cotton taking didn't occur at Voinché Store, but the courthouse square.
Piazza said the location was changed for safety reasons. Confederate troops waited in front of the court house, waiving a Confederate flag.

A loud boom rang through the streets with a Confederate boy running and yelling: "the Yankees are coming."

Several yards away, drum patterns could be heard, as Union troops began their march for the cotton.

There's more. For the full story go here: http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20090208/NEWS01/902080325/1001/NEWS