by Kelly Ann Butterbaugh

       The American Civil War (1861–1865) had a profound effect upon the country in every realm, and quilting was no exception. Many women, left at home with their prayers and their needles, conveyed their feelings and fears about the politics of the time in their quilts; some sold the quilts they had made to raise money for their cause; some sent their quilts to provide comfort to soldiers.

      As early as the 1830s, antislavery statements such as these were appearing on quilts: “I’d sooner spend my days within / Some dark and dismal cave / Than to be guilty of the sin / Of holding one poor slave,” “Trample not on the oppressed,” and “While our fingers guide the needle our thoughts are intense [in tents].” The abolitionist Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) is said to have penned, “May the point of our needles prick the slave owner’s conscience,” on a quilt. Regardless of the sentiment, many understood the irony in the use by quilters of fabrics woven in the North’s textile mills from the South’s cotton, and that the demand for that cotton fueled the demand for a slave force to grow and harvest it.

       Some quilt patterns received new names to reflect political events occurring in the prewar and war years. Job’s Tears, for example, was renamed Slave Chain as early as 1825. The widely held belief that quilts bearing certain patterns were displayed outside homes to aid slaves in finding a safe path to freedom has been discredited; historians now maintain that the only role that quilt patterns played during the Civil War era was as representation of the quilters’ concerns and beliefs.

       Women on both sides of the conflict sought to help the war effort however they could. In the North, the Soldiers’ Aide Relief, an auxiliary of the federal government’s Sanitary Commission, held bazaars to raise money to purchase the materials necessary to make quilts and other needed items for distribution to Union soldiers. An estimated 250,000 quilts were donated to Union soldiers during the war years.

       Women in the South established the Ladies’ Defense Association—later the Women’s Gunboat Fund—to raise the $80,000 needed to purchase a gunboat for the Confederate army. In creating and selling quilts, the organization never raised enough money to purchase a gunboat, but enough was raised to buy three smaller “petticoat gunboats”: the Charleston, the Fredericksburg, and the Georgia. Enthusiasm for the gunboat project, high at the beginning, waned when supplies became severely limited and the South’s naval success seemed bleak. The organization then shifted to raising money for medical supplies and hospitals.

       Some elaborate prewar quilts were sent off with departing soldiers in the early days of the war; soon, however, the demand for soldiers’ quilts became so great that women turned to making whole-cloth and tied quilts as these required the least time to complete. While northern women had access to cotton fabrics throughout the war, many southern women had to resort to using linsey-woolsey (a homespun fabric with a linen warp and a cotton or wool weft) when their stock of prewar imported fabrics were exhausted. Resourceful women on both sides fashioned quilts by recycling fabrics taken from mattresses, curtains, dresses, and even carpets.

       Few Civil War–era quilts survive. Many were used until they disintegrated; others were buried with the dead. Those that do survive, however, tell the story of North and South, wealthy and impoverished, through their fabrics, styles, and intended purposes. They are as much a part of the Civil War as muskets—few soldiers would have wanted to go to war without them.

Further Reading

Atkins, Jacqueline M. Shared Threads: Quilting Together–Past and Present. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Brackman, Barbara. Quilts from the Civil War. Concord, California: C&T, 1997.

Breneman, Judy Anne Johnson. “Civil War Quilts for Fundraising and Soldiers.”

America’s Quilting History, March 2006.

———. “Patriotic, Political, and Commemorative Quilts.” History of Quilts, March 2006.

Cummings, Patricia L. “Gunboat Quilts: Fundraisers for the Confederacy.” Quilter’s Muse, March 2006.

Ferrero, Pat, Elaine Hedges, and Julie Silber. Hearts and Hands: Women, Quilts, and American Society. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2000.

Fox, Sandi. For Purpose and Pleasure: Quilting Together in Nineteenth Century America. Nashville, Tennessee, 1995.

Jenkins, Susan, and Linda Seward.  The American Quilt Story: The How-to and Heritage of a Craft Tradition. New York: Random House Value, 1995.

Johnson, Mary Elizabeth and Roderick Kiracofe. The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750–1950. New York: Crown, 2004.

Wulfert, Kimberly. “The Underground Railroad and the Use of Quilts as Messengers for Fleeing Slaves.” New Pathways into Quilt History.  March 2006.

 

CAPTIONS

1. In War Time by Jane A. Blakely Stickle. Pieced, quilted. Cotton. Shaftsbury, Vermont. 1863. 80 1/4 x 80 1/4 inches (203.8 x 203.8 cm). Collection of the Bennington Museum.

Photograph courtesy of the Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont.

2. Union quilt by Elizabeth Moffitt Lyle and John Moffett. Appliquéd, quilted; cross-stitched letters. Kewanee, Illinois. 1860–1864. 80 x 74 inches (203.2 x 188.0 cm). Collection of Smoky Hill Museum; donated by Martha Moffett. (1935.19.1).

Photograph courtesy of the Smoky Hill Museum, Salina, Kansas.

3. Crossed Laurel Leaves quilt by Julia Anne Frederick Faulkner. Appliquéd, quilted. Cotton. Frederick County, Virginia. Before 1840. 97 x 80 inches (246.4 x 203.2 cm). Collection of the Virginia Quilt Museum. It is believed that Julie Anne made this quilt for her marriage to a Winchester, Virginia, merchant. Their four sons served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Winchester changed hands more times than any other location during the war.

Photograph courtesy of the Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

4. Rose Wreath quilt by Sarah Wooster. Appliquéd, quilted. Cotton. Litchfield, Connecticut. 1856. 84 x 80 1/2 inches (213.4 x 204.5 cm). Collection of the Virginia Quilt Museum. Sarah made the quilt for her husband, David, possibly as an anniversary gift. David enlisted in the Union Army in August 1862 and was killed in September 1864 at Fisher’s Hill near Winchester, Virginia. Photograph courtesy of the Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

5. Whig’s Defeat quilt by Susan Loyd. (This pattern is also known as Turkey Tracks.) Pieced and appliquéd. Rome, Georgia. 1856. Collection of the Atlanta History Center. (1979.462.M68).

Photograph courtesy of Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

7. Fragment of a tied comforter. Maker(s) unknown. Boston. Circa 1855. Collection of the Kansas State Historical Society. (1941.1).

Photograph courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.

8. Chintz album quilt. Makers unknown. Location unknown. 1840–1860. Collection of the Kansas State Historical Society. (1924.22).

Photograph courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.

 

© Kelly Ann Butterbaugh