By Gregory Lambeth II

This Women’s History Month, with all of the different recognitions underway for contributions and achievements made here in North Carolina and throughout the United States, allow me to pay homage to a local event that helped change the tide of women’s suffrage and their families here in Rowan County in the middle of a war.

On March 18th, 1863, a band of an estimated 50 women, lead a protest in Salisbury to address and demand changes be done to combat inflation pricing of necessary goods such as flour, sugar, and other household essential items while their husbands, sons, and nephews, were all off to war on the front line during the War Between the States.

Their reasons for protesting local merchants? A US Naval Blockade of all Confederate Seaports which were preventing international trade with other countries from aiding the South with its isolated gold-backed economy.

According to The Carolina Watchman, the women demanded the clarification of government pricing be presented while accusing store owners of price gouging by speculation despite Salisbury being a deliverable railroad town.

One store owner, Michael Brown, recalled in an interview that when he refused to hear the pleas of the protesting women, that they attempted to break down his door with hatchets where they eventually left with “twenty three barrels of flour, two sacks of salt, about half a barrel of molasses and twenty dollars in money.”

These women later wrote to North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance explaining their rash, but justifiable actions, in demanding fair supply of necessary goods for their families during the wartime efforts abroad. Their actions later led to the Confederate Government providing better rations for the families of Confederate Soldiers under military pensioning.

This event was later used by some of the same women to argue the production of a Confederate Memorial to be constructed somewhere here in Salisbury following the end of Reconstruction to recognize the Confederate Veterans and their families of Rowan County for the contributions made at home and abroad that eventually led to the purchasing of the statue grouping Gloria Victis from Frederick Wellington Ruckstull for $9,000, in addition to a pink granite pedestal from Balfour Quarry for $1,500, to produce the Fame Confederate Monument and dedicate it on May 10th, 1909 by the Robert F. Hoke chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy with 162 Veterans present, including the Widow of the Confederacy, Anna Jackson.

This bit of heritage like all other aspects of the Confederacy that still have lasting contributions here in Rowan County define our society by how even through war, changes can be made for the betterment of the people hereof. Happy Women’s History Month from Fame Preservation Group, Inc.

Greg Lambeth II is the president of FAME Preservation Group, Inc.