Addie Haynes: A Presumptuous Rebel

   In the spring of 1863, St. Louis resident Addie Haynes was accused of sending, receiving, and delivering Rebel mail, and she was banished to the South. Born Ada "Addie" Howard in Ireland in 1834, Addie came to the United States with her family in 1847 and married Christopher Haynes of St. Louis a couple of years later. The couple had three children, but Haynes died around 1855, about the same time the youngest child was born. Addie went back to live with her mother, and she supported herself and her family teaching in the St. Louis schools. She started corresponding with her brothers and other Confederate soldiers early in the Civil War, but it was not until early 1863 that she was finally arrested for her alleged disloyal activities.
   On May 13, 1863, Addie was among the first group of women shipped south from St. Louis during the Civil War for their disloyalty. Union authorities had previously been reluctant to be seen as "making war on women," but by the middle part of the war, it had become clear that, especially in border states like Missouri, women were an integral part of the resistance to Federal authority. 

   Addie and her fellow exiles were placed aboard a steamboat bound for Memphis, and after disembarking there, Addie eventually made her way to Mississippi and Alabama. While in the South, Addie heard from a third party that her children were suffering in her absence, and she wrote letters seeking permission to return to St. Louis to attend to them. When she received no answer to her letters, she determined to make the trip anyway, even though returning without permission was considered a serious offense.

   She made her way through Federal lines without being intercepted and reached St. Louis on March 28, 1864. She reported to the provost marshal's office the next day seeking permission to stay in St. Louis, but instead she was arrested for not abiding by the conditions of her banishment. Examined on April 1, exactly a year after she'd been interrogated on suspicion of being a Rebel mail agent, she said she still felt concern for her brothers in the Confederate army but otherwise cared nothing for the South or the Southern cause. She explained why she had come back to St. Louis and said she would strictly abide by the conditions of a parole if she were released upon taking an oath.
   Instead, she remained in the St. Charles Street Female Prison in St. Louis for the next three and a half months. In mid-July she was banished again, this time to New York City. In January 1865, her mother, Catherine Howard, wrote a letter to Union authorities asking them to allow Addie to return to St. Louis, and the request was granted. Addie came back home and lived the rest of her long life in St. Louis. She died there in 1924.

This post is a condensed version of a chapter in my book Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri. https://amzn.to/3yGocBS