Hattie Snodgrass: Proud Spirit of a Southern Lady

   I’ve recently written on this blog about Addie Haynes and Lucie Nicholson, who were both banished from Missouri in May 1863. Another woman banished at the same time was twenty-eight-year-old Harriet “Hattie” Snodgrass of St. Louis. Hattie was a schoolteacher like the other women, and like Lucie, she had no close relatives in the Southern army, her closest kin being a brother-in-law. Yet, Miss Snodgrass, again like Lucie, was even more outspoken in her support of the Confederacy than most of the women of rural Missouri who were arrested primarily for feeding and harboring their loved ones in the bush.
   A native of Pennsylvania, Hattie moved to St. Louis with her family when she was a child. During the late 1850s and early 1860s she taught school in St. Louis.
   Hattie was living with her sister's family when her disloyal activities attracted the scrutiny of her neighbors in early 1863. One or more of her neighbors reported her to Federal authorities about the first of May, and officials began taking depositions against her. Lewis Vandewater testified, for instance, that he’d known Hattie for about eleven years and that, ever since the outbreak of the war, she had been “an open and avowed secessionist.” Vandewater said he’d heard Hattie hurrah for Jeff Davis and that he’d been told she kept a Secesh flag in her school room. 

   On Saturday, May 9, Hattie was ordered to report to the provost marshal’s office in St. Louis, where she was interrogated about the activities her neighbors had accused her of. Hattie admitted her sister’s husband, Joseph Clayton, was in the Southern army, but she started getting testy after that, refusing to answer certain questions or giving deceptive answers. When asked whether she ever kept a Rebel flag in her home, for instance, she replied no, because she “did not think it worthwhile" to correct her examiner and tell him it was a Confederate flag. She ended the interview by refusing to sign the examiner's deposition.
   A day or two after the interview, a letter Hattie had written to a Confederate soldier fell into Union hands, adding to the evidence against her. Accused of being a “rebel mail agent,” she was arrested and imprisoned at the former home of Margaret McClure to await banishment. McClure and Hattie had taught school together, and both were Southern sympathizers. McClure’s home on Chestnut Street had been confiscated by the Union and turned into a female prison because of Mrs. McClure’s disloyal activities. On May 13, Hattie was sent south with Lucie Nicholson, Addie Haynes, and company. Hattie’s sister Teresa Clayton accompanied Hattie at her own request. Others making the trip included Hattie’s former colleague Margaret McLure.
   Despite her banishment, Union authorities had not quite heard the last of Hattie Snodgrass. On June 23, 1863, Hattie wrote a letter from Mobile, Alabama, to Colonel John Q. Burbridge, who was somewhere in Arkansas. The letter, in which Hattie expressed some decidedly disloyal sentiments, fell into the hands of Union authorities when Burbridge was taken prisoner later in the year.
   As for Hattie, she slipped back into St. Louis in the summer of 1864, in defiance of the banishment order against her, bringing news and letters from Confederate soldiers to their loved ones in Missouri. Another reason for her visit was to see her aged mother, Jane Snodgrass. However, she intended to return south, and she recruited two other Southern ladies who wished to accompany her.
   Hattie adopted an alias, calling herself Miss Miller, but she was so well known in St. Louis that she still had to delegate certain errands to the other women for fear of being recognized on the streets. Prior to the trip, the women packed letters, gold, and other contraband into trunks. 
   During the trip south, Hattie acted as “captain” for the party of three women, as they made their way down the Mississippi. On more than one occasion, the three barely escaped detection, but they managed to get beyond the Federal lines mostly through Hattie’s duplicitous aplomb.
   Near the end of the war, Hattie traveled to Washington, DC, where she got her banishment order revoked and was allowed to return to St. Louis. After her mother died post-1880, Hattie moved to Texas and lived with her brother for a number of years, but she eventually returned to St. Louis. In 1911, her wartime adventures were briefly recounted in the History of St. Louis County. Hattie apparently died shortly afterward, having never married and having never forsaken her proud Southern spirit.
   This is a greatly condensed version of a chapter from my latest book, Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.