Home Economics In The Confederacy: Meeting Routine Needs In A Most Un-routine Time

By Gould Hagler · Originally published February 2017 · p. 22

“Soap is a great institution, without it the world would soon relapse into the unwashed barbarism of earlier times” (Galveston Weekly News, Jan. 11, 1865). Look around your house. Do you have soap for bathing and detergent for washing clothes? Are there socks in your sock drawer? If you lose a shirt button or get a hole in your pants can you find materials for the repair? Is your pantry stocked with coffee and tea? Want to do some reading before turning in? I am sure you have matches to ignite your home’s gas lights. Okay, regarding the gas lights, we live in the 21st century, not the mid-19th, but you get the idea. These everyday items you use - almost without a thought in this age of peace and prosperity are cheap and plentiful. When a nation is at war, these things are neither. This article will discuss one common commodity—soap— and by reviewing various items in Confederate newspapers we can view one aspect of everyday life in a country at war. Future articles will discuss how the people of the South coped with shortages of other household goods. Soap: a mundane topic, to be sure. Unless you don’t have any. Prior to the war the Southern states’ economy was linked to the North, Europe and much of the world in an intricate trade network. The South sold its agricultural goods in a global market and imported a vast array of products for domestic consumption, agriculture and other industries. As mentioned above, we hardly think about soap because we have plenty of it. Before hostilities erupted, people in the South did not think much about soap either, I am sure, because there was plenty to be had via trade. This situation would change. In the spring of 1860, well before any state seceded, an ad in the Columbus Enquirer offered “soaps for cleaning silver” and “fancy soaps.” These were surely imported products, either from the North or from Europe. That summer a drugstore announced in the Charleston Mercury that, “Fresh Stocks of Lubin’s

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Perfumeries Are Available!” Also available was a wide choice of toilet articles, including some “Highly Scented Soaps.” The prices were reasonable; the store assured its customers. Parfums Lubin—still in business—is a venerable French concern established in 1798. In March 1861, after seven states seceded, a Natchez retailer routinely advertised soap produced by a Cincinnati concern. We still buy soap made by this company—Procter and Gamble. A few months later, an ad in the Savannah Republican offered “Fancy Toilet Soaps” with eight varieties mentioned by name. The blockade had been declared but was not yet effective. Importers obtained these goods with relative ease. Their availability was not especially newsworthy, but as the blockade tightened the arrival of a shipment created more of a buzz. November 1861, ads in Augusta and Charleston informed consumers that the blockade runner Theodora had landed in Charleston with a shipment from Cuba. Available for sale were Castile Soap and “a good assortment of soaps, brushes and fine perfumery.” The blockade was beginning to have an effect but essentials like fine perfumery were brought in regardless risk. A drugstore in Athens, Ga., ballyhooed “Good News!” in February 1862. “Soaps in great varieties” had arrived. Savannahans were told in June 1862, that a cargo sale in Charleston would include “Crown Mottled Soap,” Crown Soap,” and “Old Brown Windsor Soap.” This event also made the news in Atlanta, 300 miles from the port. Newspaper ads in 1862 and 1863 contained similar stories; “Blockade Goods! Just received” merited a loud announcement. There was yet a supply of - and demand for—“Fancy Soaps” from Paris and “Spanish Castile Soaps,” evidenced by Savannah and Atlanta ads in May and August 1863. Even earlier, however, people had begun to feel the pinch of high prices and were calling for action. “How Are You Off for Soap?”

asked the Augusta Chronicle & Sentinel in October1861. We learn from this report that soap’s “scarcity has carried the price up beyond all precedent.” Bar soap was going for twenty cents a pound. “This is altogether too high—and the remedy should be applied at once.” In June 1862, the proprietor of a Savannah bath house announced with regret that the price of a bath was going up to fifty cents because of his rising costs. “Gentlemen finding their own soap can get three tickets for $1.00,” said the ad. People were expressing anger at those they blamed for high prices. A September 1862, editorial in the Columbia Guardian lamented the effects of “auction sales of cargoes which run the blockade.” The prices were “almost fabulous.” “These cargo sales benefit nobody but the petty jobbers and speculators at a distance and have become a serious injury to the legitimate merchant and consumer,” wrote the outraged editor. One obvious solution to shortages and high prices was developing local manufactories. The Augusta column mentioned above reported that a soap factory was soon to open in that city. A few days later a letter written to the Chronicle & Sentinel lamented that, “We have been so long dependent on our Yankee enemies for supplies…that we have forgotten that we can make them ourselves.” A few months later a soap and candle factory was up and running. In 1862, 1863 and 1864 soap manufactories were established in New Orleans, Richmond, Charleston, Athens, Mobile and Jackson. According to the Charleston Mercury, a lady in Fayetteville, N.C., was producing 100 pounds per week of “a very creditable specimen of turpentine bar soap.” The Southern Watchman in Athens wrote that, “There is but one thing to prevent the people of the South from making everything they need, and that is the long-continued habit of depending upon someone else to do it.” The startup manufactories were challenged early in the war by the shortage of raw materials. A Mobile manufacturer in September 1861 announced that he was buying hardwood ashes from local households. “Save Your Ashes,” blared the headline. “As soda ashes cannot be had any more, we will have to make a substitute. If you are willing to save your hard wood Ashes we will buy it to be able to sell you good soap at fair prices. Look out for the Black Boy’s halooing ASHES, ASHES, ASHES.”

There are also many examples of people forgoing store-bought soap, from manufacturers foreign or domestic, and making it at home. Numerous newspaper articles provided recipes for homemade soap and gave helpful hints on how to stretch supplies of scarce soap. Papers throughout the war printed these varied and creative recipes—soap from lye, rosin and pine gum; from lime, soda and clarifying grease; from corn shucks, lye and pine gum or rosin; from lye, clean fat, lime and salt; and from lye, potash, lard and rosin; and from oak or hickory ashes, lard, salt and brine. This last recipe included optional ingredients to add appealing fragrance and color. Other articles advised on methods of finding substitutes for scarce grease. Cotton seed oil, myrtle wax, and bones boiled in lye were all suggested. “How much this war will teach us,” said the Charleston Mercury in May 1862. In 1862 and 1863 no fewer than eight newspapers repeated a recipe for making tallow candles, a formula which produced soap as a byproduct. We also learn from several sources that adding borax to soap when washing clothes would not only reduce the need for scarce soap but would also make the clothes whiter. According to the Mobile Register and Advertiser this was the practice of “washer women of Holland and Belgium, so proverbially clean.” Most newspaper items regarding this everyday product related to household use, but soldiers needed it too, especially those in hospitals. In April 1862, the Washington Telegraph (Arkansas) issued an appeal for hospital stores of all kinds. Soap was prominent on the list. “Soldiers are brought into the hospital in heavy woolen clothes, generally much soiled. They have mostly no change of garments, and are utterly unfit to be comfortably nursed. The hospital requires large stores to be kept constantly clean for frequent change.” The appeal concluded with this poignant reminder about the need for soap: “Life often depends on it, to say nothing of the comfort of the poor fellow, who lies many a weary day, thinking of home.” Sources: The newspaper accounts used for this article were compiled by Vicki Betts, a librarian at the University of Texas at Tyler. Betts, Vicki, “Soap” (2016). Special Topics. Paper 22. They can be found online at http://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/ cw_newstopics