Southern bread riots
The Southern bread riots were events of civil unrest in the Confederacy during the American Civil War, perpetrated mostly by women in March and April 1863. During these riots, which occurred in cities throughout the South, hungry women and men invaded and looted various shops and stores. Causes. The riots were triggered by the women's lack of money, provisions, and food. All were the result of multiple factors, mostly related to the Civil War: Citizens, mostly women, began to protest the exorbitant price of bread. The protesters believed a negligent government and speculators were to blame . To show their displeasure, many protesters turned to violence. Robberies of grocery and merchandise stores that were happening on nearly a daily basis. Riots took place over food or flour in Atlanta (March 16), Salisbury, North Carolina (March 18), Mobile and High Point (March 25), and Petersburg (April 1), but the largest and most important of these was in Richmond on April 2. Richmond bread riots. On April 2, 1863, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, about 5,500 people, mostly poor women, broke into shops and began seizing food, clothing, shoes, and even jewelry before the militia arrived to  restore order. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of items were stolen. No one died and few were injured. The riot was organized and instigated by Mary Jackson, a peddler and the mother of a soldier. President Jefferson Davis pleaded with the women and even threw them money from his pockets, asking them to disperse, saying "You say you are hungry and have no money; here, this is all I have". The mayor read the Riot Act; the governor called out the militia, and it restored order. To protect morale, the Confederate government suppressed most news reports of the riot  itself. Many newspapers, however, were keen to report on the trials of the participants themselves, and they usually portrayed those people in an unflattering light, suggesting that they were not actually starving, or that the rioters were mostly "Yankees" or lower-class people, allowing many upper-class citizens to ignore the scope of the problems. However, that only served to deepen the feelings of resentment and injustice among the lower classes, leading to the sentiment that the Civil War was "a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight".