Civil War
During the American Civil War, in all the trouble and sickness and fear of that time, Margaret drove her cart of bread; she somehow always had enough to give the starving soldiers, and for her babies, besides what she sold.
The war had a profound effect on New Orleans and greatly increased the number of orphans and people in need. The commander, Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler, subjected New Orleans to a rigorous martial law so tactlessly administered as greatly to intensify the hostility of South and North.
During the Civil War Margaret made efforts to lessen the hardships brought on by the war by helping to feed those who suffered from the wartime food shortage. To the hungry citizens of occupied New Orleans, Haughery gave wagonloads of bread and flour, fresh from her bakery.
When General Butler occupied New Orleans and set up martial law in 1862, he set up barriers and curfews. No one was to pass these barriers or be outside past the curfew. Margaret distributed food and milk to the needy outside those lines, and continued to do so. The Confederate prisoners were the special objects of her solicitude. General P.G.T. Beauregard nicknamed General Butler as "Beast Butler," due to his threats against the Southern ladies of New Orleans.
General Butler ordered her to appear before him. Margaret negotiated with the general for permission to cross the lines with aid and to get flour to her bakery. He admonished her to stay behind the lines and that she would be shot or hung if she crossed them again. She asked the general if it was President Abraham Lincoln's will to starve the poor? General Butler replied, "You are not to go through the picket lines without my permission, is that clear?" "Quite clear," answered Margaret. To which Butler responded, "You have my permission."
During and after the Civil War her bakery flourished, as did her charitable work.
During Reconstruction, she supported the Union efforts to keep peace in Louisiana as evidenced from the ceremonial sword she donated to U.S. General C. Colon Augur, and which is part of the Louisiana State Museum’s collection.
Read more about this topic: Margaret Haughery
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“To the cry of ‘follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,’ Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.”
—Derek Mahon (b. 1941)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)