Texas Women in the Civil War, A Tribute to

The plaque's women are unnamed; the war's Texas women were more varied. Historian Elizabeth Turner, reviewing a 2016 essay collection, counts about 100,000 enslaved women, who worked long hours amid scarce food and strained trust with owners, and whom she says called it the Freedom War. She also notes 174 free Black women, Tejanas who ran farms while men served, and German Unionists whose anti-slavery views brought violence, including the 1862 Great Hanging of forty men. The plaque's 'loyal slaves' were people held in bondage.

What the plaque says

Texas Women in the Civil War, A Tribute to Civilian duties of 90,000 Texas men fighting for the Confederacy fell to wives back home in land of few factories and an enemy blockade that cut down on imports. Women had to run businesses and farms for their absent men who committed to the uncertain mails their letters of instruction. Yet with help of children, old men and loyal slaves, furnished Army and the Confederacy with grain, meat and cotton for home consumption and foreign exchange for guns, gunpowder, factory goods, drugs and other supplies. Ran newspapers. Loaded shells. Made gun caps. Did "man's work" of many kinds, in addition to homemaking, sewing, nursing, teaching and child care. Made medicines from herbs and plants. Grew poppies and squeezed the seed pods to supply opiates to the hospitals. Carded cotton and wool, spun and wove, then dyed the homemade cloth with bark or roots. Plaited palmetto or corn shucks to make hats. Made coffee of acorns or vegetables, tea of sage or orange leaves. On 2,000 miles of coastline and frontier, faced personal hazards from invasion or Indian raids. Elsewhere were in peril from marauders. Through the four years won admiration for their pluck, and maintained faith enough to help rebuild the defeated South. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — steps away
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — steps away
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.5 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.3 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• State Fair of Texas — 0.2 mi
• Texas Centennial Exposition — 0.3 mi
• Steel Dust — 0.3 mi
• WRR Radio — 0.3 mi