Mary Susan F. Cleveland: A Veritable “She-Adder”

   What was it with the lady schoolteachers of Missouri and their Southern sympathies? Three of my recent posts have been about Confederate sympathizing women who were schoolteachers, and Mary S. F. Cleveland was yet another young schoolteacher banished from the state because of her disloyalty. Like the other three, Mary was more stubborn in her opposition to the Union than the simple country girls of rural Missouri who were arrested primarily for feeding and harboring guerrillas.
   Born in November 1832 in Virginia, Mary came to Missouri with her parents and siblings about 1840 and settled in Randolph County. When the Civil War broke out, two of her younger brothers, Charles and Benjamin, joined the Southern forces. Older brother John stayed in Randolph County but was required to take an oath of allegiance in March 1862. Later the same year, Ben died of disease in Mississippi while serving in the Confederate Army.
   In early January 1863, Mary moved to Auburn in Lincoln County to teach school. Alone and away from family, she soon started exchanging letters with loved ones and friends. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t always discreet in what she said or with whom she corresponded.
   Sometime about the middle of May 1863, one of Mary’s letters was confiscated by Union soldiers at the home of her mother, Jane, in Randolph County, and it sparked an investigation that turned up several more questionable letters in Mary’s and Jane’s possession. Mary, still living in Lincoln County, was promptly arrested and taken to Troy. On May 19, General Bartholow had her and at least two of the suspicious letters transported to the provost marshal general’s office in St. Louis. Over the next couple of days, additional evidence against Mary was forwarded from north Missouri, and she was interrogated on May 22.
   During the interview, Mary was confronted with the evidence against her. In one letter, for instance, the writer had disparaged some Union men, saying that the initials N. S. in one of their names stood for nasty and stinking. Although the handwriting matched perfectly the handwriting of another letter that was taken from Jane’s home which Mary had signed, she denied writing the letter in question or any of the other letters she was accused of writing. One of the suspect letters was signed “Mary,” but she even denied writing it. Mary did, however, admit that one of the confiscated letters was a letter she had received from her brother Charles, who was then in the Confederate Army in Mississippi. She also admitted that she had, on occasion, written letters to Confederate soldiers, but she said she’d never done so clandestinely but only under a flag of truce.
   Mary refused to swear an oath, but near the end of her examination, she reaffirmed that everythign she’d told her examiner was true and signed a statement to that effect. Her examiner didn’t believe her, though, and thought that “a more willful and malicious deception of her handwriting could not be had.” He thought she was guilty of all the charges against her and called her “a veritable she-adder.” (This was a reference to a statement General James G. Blunt, stationed at Leavenworth, Kansas, had made a few days earlier. Recognizing the central role that women played in the Rebel uprising in Missouri, Blunt declared that “the bite of the she adder is as poisonous and productive of mischief as the bite of any other venomous reptile.”) Mary’s examiner recommended her banishment “to the place where her affections yearn for.”
   Exiled to the South, Mary left St. Louis on June 1, 1863, aboard the steamboat City of Alton along with Marion Vail. Later the same year, a prominent Lincoln County citizen wrote letter to high-ranking Union officials trying to get Mary’s punishment mitigated, but whether his intervention had any effect in getting Mary’s banishment order lifted is not altogether clear. At some point, though, Mary did come back to Missouri, and she lived there the rest of her life. She moved to St. Louis, and, in keeping with a prediction expressed in a letter she had written to her mother in January 1863, she spent the rest of her days teaching school. She died of cancer on July 15, 1898, and was buried in St. Louis’s Bellefontaine Cemetery
   Like my other recent posts, this one is condensed from my latest book Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri, and speaking of Lady Rebels, here's a link to a recent review of the book, although you might have to copy and paste it. https://cwba.blogspot.com/2023/01/review-lady-rebels-of-civil-war.html