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“Economy Rules the Day:”
The Civil War Sacrifices of Judith Walker McGuire
by Tim Sheehan

Table of Contents | Introduction | Conclusion | Endnotes | Printable HTML version | Images | Related Web Resources

A Continuing Battle Against Inflation

Despite the income Judith McGuire earned, inflation continued to hurt the family’s standard of living. A pay raise to $255 a month in March of 1864 did not benefit the family since a pair of shoes, according to McGuire, cost $125 to $150. That’s quite an increase from the February 1861 costs of $0.50 to $1.50 a pair! In order to spend less on footwear, McGuire, in January of 1864, stitched gaiter boots in her spare time. She obtained a canvas from a sail, which, she fantasized, “has been often spread to the breeze, under the ‘Stars and Bars’.” McGuire brought the canvas to a shoemaker to cut. She then took the canvas home to stitch and bind. Once that was done, McGuire returned the stitched fabric to the shoemaker to sole, completing the end product. McGuire boasted that this ingenuity only cost her $50.00 a pair, as opposed to the $125.00 minimum cost of purchasing finished shoe products. McGuire and her daughters also produced gloves out of old flannels and linens. “We make a very nice blacking, and a friend has just sent me a bottle of brilliant black ink, made of elderberries.”(69) This thriftiness greatly impressed McGuire.

Yet McGuire’s thriftiness went only so far. The McGuires needed more income. In September 1864, Judith McGuire’s 24 year-old daughter, Grace Fenton McGuire, became a clerk in the Surgeon General’s office. It was a job “she obtained with very little trouble on her part,” meaning the Brockenbrough family connections worked again. The McGuires didn’t want their daughter to work, fearful “of the effect of sedentary employment on her health,” yet economic pressures forced this decision upon them. “So it seems that the Lord intends us to work for our daily bread and to be independent, but not to abound.”(70)

Flourish they did not. Even with their daughter employed, the extra income did not provide enough leverage against inflation. In the 26 December 1864 entry of the Diary, McGuire stated the family had milk only twice in the last eighteen months. “Two meals a day has become the universal systems among refugees, and many citizens.” Occasionally, McGuire received food and goods every once in a while from relatives and “country friends.” Irish and sweet potatoes, cabbages, hams, mats, and other goods were greatly appreciated by McGuire, since these items were too expensive to purchase at the market. This dependence on people in the country was not unique. J.B. Jones, a clerk in the War Department, also depended on the charity of friends possessing farms. Jones praised his “good friend Dr. Powell,” who “almost every week, brings my family cucumbers, or corn, or butter, or something edible from his farm. He is one in ten thousand.”(71)

©2005-2012 Tim Sheehan tim@historynut.info

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This page last updated 1 January 2012