A Blockaded Family: Life in Southern Alabama During the Civil War (1888)

"Experienced the hardships of the Union naval blockade...homilies and anecdotes meant to validate the Confederacy and lament...a lost way of life." -Women in the American Civil War (2008) "Hague found medicine substitutes in the surrounding woods." -These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War (2017) "Hague tells the story of a woman who even used a surplus of watermelon to make sugar and syrup." -Daily Life in Civil War America (2009) "Giving in an easy, kindly, sympathetic style the every-day life in Southern Alabama during the dark days of Civil War." -Current Opinion Parthenio Antoinette Vardaman Hague (1838 - 1914) author, was born at Dowdels Mill, Harris County, Georgia. She finished her education in Harris County, Ga. at Hamilton female college. After graduation from Hamilton Female college, she lived in Hurtville, AL about 11 miles from Eufaula, AL in Barbour County where she was a teacher on a plantation. She lived in Alabama in the 1860s. In 1888, she published a book, A BLOCKADED FAMILY. The book was endorsed personally by Jefferson Davis and Gen. Beauregard and is a book of great interest, describing the expedients resorted to by the people of blockaded districts to procure the necessities of life. The book presents a picture of life in Southern Alabama during the civil war, the contrasting colors of which are distributed very skillfully. The patience and the heroism displayed by the women of the South during four years of conflict, especially when we take into consideration the luxury which they had formerly enjoyed, has often been acknowledged; and the book in question gives details of their daily life, of their privations, and yet of their occasional pleasures, the reading of which is sure to interest. The tone in which the story is told also commends itself. There is not a word of reproach in it, and not a note of harshness or vindictiveness sounded. So Wide and varied is the field to be yet harvested for crops of information about the home life of Southern people in the War, that we are glad to take up Miss Hague's 'A Blockaded Family.' It will be found to be a record of interest, while unpretending as a piece of literary work. Miss Hague was a governess of Southern birth and sympathy, living in the houseliold of an Alabama planter during the four years that threw women as much upon their own resources to secure the necessaries of daily life, as did the residence of the Swiss Family Robinson upon their desert isle. The author's task has been to detail the innumerable devices of herself and friends to supply cloth, shoes, hats, thread, dyes, hoop-skirts, buttons; to find substitutes for coffee, tea, raisins, starch and medicines. The castor-oil plant, growing abundantly near their house, was cultivated, and, from the beans crushed in mortars, an oil was obtained as satisfactory as any bought from the ante-bellum apothecary. Salt, in the regions remote from the seacoast and the border States, was a luxury. In some case's the salty soil under old smoke-houses was dug up and put into hoppers, from which, by a homely process of evaporation, a grey deposit was obtained, serving as salt for want of something better. Home-made pottery replaced breakages in the pantry. All of the ladies learned to card and spin and weave. So universal was the necessity for things of everyday, that while every hand and brain was lent to the task of contriving, there was less time to spend in lamentation over the increasing burden of a common care. We recommend Miss Hague's book as an interesting, and evidently unexaggerated, account of a momentous time in the history of our country.