BLOODY THURSDAY MASSACRE IN RICHMOND! REAPING OF THE CORNFLOWERS! ANNIHILATION OF THE MOTHERS!
A cruel and awful massacre of women, girls, boys and infants has occurred in the City of Richmond, the Confederate Rebel Queen City! A troop of Reb soldiers under the personal command by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis levelled muskets and fired into a crowd of several thousands in the Capitol Square, gathered to protest the general scarcity of provisions and the indifference of the Rebel government, killing nearly fifty and filling the streets of the Rebel Capital with blood and wanton murder!
This is the story of how it occurred, as firmly as can be inscribed in granite, the happenings of last Thursday April 2 in the midmorning, and assembled from the reports of eyewitnesses.
The night before a gathering of women incensed to despair over hunger and deprivation gathered at the Belvidere Baptist Church on Oregon Hill, resolved to carry their plaint as a mass to the presence of the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia on the morrow. The leaders of the women, one Mary Jackson, a mother of four, and one Martha Fergusson decried rampant greed by speculators and merchants grasping after money for food, notions, and fuel. “Our blood needs bread” was their cry in the darkness. Additionally, other women from the east, Rocketts, and even distant New Kent and Hanover counties resolved to join and protest the lack of bread. Fearing molestation in the city by mannerless idle jackanapes and lawless soldiers , the mass of the women armed themselves with truncheons and kitchen knives.
The next morning dawned fair and clear, and the women arrived at the Capitol before the bell rang nine. S. Bassett French, executive aide to the Commonwealth governor, barred the women from audience with the Governor, and told them that Governor was too busy to be disturbed by the mewing of lawless women, and turned away back into the Capitol. The women protested loudly and made a great commotion and this brought the Governer John Letcher himself, who draw himself up to mumble some inaudible platitudes to the restless crowd of several hundreds.
The women went silent, and marched grimly up Ninth and Main Streets toward the river, and seized carts and wagons. Some opened two warehouses in Shockhoe Slip. At the Slip, a toothless old woman named May Walker axed one warehouse door until it broke, and she took from inside a packet of bacon. The crowd marched down Cary Street, beating the grasping proprietors of the businesses along the way.
The mayor of Richmond Joseph Mayo arrived and tryd to restore order, and read the Riot Act, ordering the women to disperse. Hot on their heels were the seventy brutes of the Public Guard, a Richmond Praetorian Slave Patrol assigned to guard the Confederate Capitol. The Governor Letcher commanded their lieutenant Edward Scott Gay, to restore order with the help of more militia of the Richmond City Battalion..
Gay arrayed his men behind wagons and shouted to the besieged merchants of Cary Street to clap bonds on the women then engaged in plunder, to teach them to submit to the law. This reporter met one thin women, no more than nineteen years, faint against a wall and draw up her sleeves to show the most sticklike bony arms. She perceived my expression as I looked at them, and hastily pulled down her sleeve with a short laugh. 'This is all that's left of me' she said. 'It seems real funny, don't it?. . .We are starving. As soon as enough of us get together, we are going to the bakeries and each of us will take a loaf of bread. That is little enough for the government to give us after it has taken all our men.'
The women did not disperse, and were joined by even more women, and children and some men, until the milling croud numbered in the thousands.
The President Jefferson Davis then appeared ascended a dray, and addressed them. He said that he was sorry for their misfortune, but that prudence and thrift would see them through the crisis. Then he offered to share his breakfast loaf with the crowd. He then said “You say you are hungry and have no money. Here is all I have; it is not much, but take it.” Davis then drew out his silk purse and emptied some coins from within onto the battered pavement. Then he withdrew his watch from his waistcoat and opened it and raised his right arm above his head and shouted “Now the knell has rung five to midnight! Get y'all gone 'afore I order the millishi to shoot you down aright here!”
The crowd went silent and one very tall black-haired Irishwoman walked forward, picked up the coins and counted them. She screamed out “Two English shillings and three silver dimes, ev'ryone! Ne'er warr no charity so niggardly and forced a' this! Yer vicious Pharoah! Ye water yer beeches wi' the blod o'or sons, so's you kin fatten yer niggers' gams on the mast ye hoard to yeselves! Gi' us back ar sons from yer galleys, yer Roman! Gi'us bread! Gi'us bread!”
The crowd screamed “Bread!,” “Union” and “no more hunger!”
The president gave the crowd five minutes more to leave. Davis ordered “Load!” The men levelled their muskets. Davis was struck about the shoulder with a flying cobble, turned to the serried militia and Slave Guard, and yelled for them to open fire. The muskets flashed and thundered, and Cary Street turned into a shrieking bloody ruin. The militia and Slave Patrol fired three volleys in quick succession, laying more than two hundred low and killing forty-seven in all, six children and forty one women.
The whole city of Richmond, the whole state of Virginia, the entire Confederacy is in shock.
What now?