Eugenia Levy Phillips in her later years
On this day in history… June 30, 1862 to September 11, 1862 Eugenia Levy Phillips, an ardent Confederate was arrested and sentenced to time on Ship Island, Mississippi because she laughed during a Union soldier’s funeral procession in New Orleans.
During the Civil War, women in the South contributed on many levels to the cause through volunteer work, as war supply collectors, sewing circles, and nursing, but the far more committed chose to rebel against the Union officials. Many Southern women took advantage of the new politicizing position the war granted women by demonstrating their loyalty to the South through fiercer methods, often through illegal means including, smuggling, espionage, and belligerency. Phoebe Pember summed up Southern women’s devotion best when she wrote, “women of the South had been openly and violently rebellious from the moment they thought their states’ rights touched. They incited the men to struggle in support of their views, and whether right or wrong, sustained them nobly to the end. They were the first to rebel – and the last to succumb.” (Rosen, 44)
The South’s small Jewish population adamantly sided with their Southern neighbors and so did their women. The majority of these Jewish women were not recent immigrants, but American born and shared the lifestyle and values of their Christian counterparts. As Hasia Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly write “Rosana [Osterman], the Levy sisters, and the Natchez M[a]yer daughters were not, of course, recent immigrants but rather the American-born descendants of earlier migrant generations. But they, like Jews throughout the country, both newly arrived and long established, saw themselves as wholehearted Americans and fashioned their lives and identities in response to an American reality quite unlike anything Jews had ever experienced elsewhere.” (Diner and Benderly, 106) These women were Jewish southern belles and lived their lives accordingly.
These Southern Jewish women were integrated in Southern society, and were attached to lifestyle they had become accustomed to, and as the war demonstrated Southerners and the Confederacy were more tolerant of Jews than the Union army that ravaged the South, Southern Jewish recognized this and devotedly aligned themselves with their beloved South at all costs. As the doyen of American Jewish history Jacob Rader Marcus writes, “The Southern Jewesses were fanatically, almost hysterically, passionate in their sympathies for their new regime. Were they trying to prove that they were more ardent than their neighbors? Why?” (Marcus, 31)
The Levys were a prominent Southern Jewish family and once the Civil War broke-out; they were loyal to the Confederate cause. Two of the sisters, Eugenia Levy Phillips and her younger sister Phoebe Yates Levy Pember would be remembered in history as ardent Confederates, expressing their devotion at opposite extremes. Phoebe Pember took up nursing the wounded confederates; one of the more common and respectable ways Southern women showed their devotion. She was one of the South’s most remembered female hospital matrons and nurse in the largest military hospital in Confederacy during the Civil War. Pember was the chief matron at Hospital Number Two at Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from 1862 to 1865. Pember’s older sister Eugenia however, was such an ardent Confederate that her devotion to the cause showed no boundaries, and she is remembered for supposedly being a Confederate spy and for rebelling against the one of the Union’s fiercest generals, Benjamin Butler, who was as known for his hatred of Confederacy as much as his anti-Semitic attitudes.
Eugenia Levy Phillips was born in Charleston in 1819, and was the daughter of Jacob Clavius Levy, a merchant, and Fanny Yates Levy, an actress. She married U.S. Congressman Philip Phillips of Mobile, Alabama when she was 16, and went on to have nine children. Phillips was a leading figure in Alabama politics from the 1830s to the 1850s when he was elected to the United States Congress in 1852. After one term in Congress, he established a law practice in Washington, D.C. where the Phillips remained in Washington throughout the Southern states secession from the Union. Eugenia and her husband differed greatly in their political beliefs; Phillips was a Unionist, while Eugenia was probably one of the fiercest secessionists in the District of Columbia. Eugenia also socialized with other secessionists and women suspected of spying on the Union for the Confederacy, particularly Rose O’Neal Greenhow, well-known Confederate spy. Eugenia Phillips writing in journal claimed, “American women knew nothing of war, believed less in the cruelties and fearful vindictiveness of the Federal governm[en]t. Thus the Southern women gave free expression to the feelings which habit had made but second nature, and spoke of their hatred and determination to sustain their rights by encouraging in their husbands, sons, and fathers every resistance to tyranny exhibited by the Republicans.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
Eugenia’s associations and excessive antagonism toward the Union made her a target for government surveillance. On August 24, 1861, Federal officers came into Eugenia and Phillip Phillips home arresting the both of them. Phillip remained under house arrest for a week, but Eugenia and two of their daughters, Fanny and Caroline as well as Eugenia’s sister Martha Levy where taken to Rose Greenhow’s house to be imprisoned. The Union arrested Greenhow the previous day for relaying to Confederate General McDowell plans for the first Manassas Campaign. There all five women remained imprisoned in two rooms in Greenhow’s attic with hardly any amenities. Eugenia Phillips described it in her journal, “The stove (broken) served us for table and washstand, while a punch bowl grew into a washbasin. Two filthy straw mattresses kept us warm, and Yankee soldiers were placed at our bedroom door to prevent our escape.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
Despite the fact that Union officers had no evidence to charge her and her family they for a crime, they still kept them imprisoned occasionally allowing Phillip Phillips who had since been released to visit and bring food baskets, albeit under strict Union supervision. Eugenia believed her loyalty to her country should not be considered a crime to imprison her for, writing in her memoir she claimed; “Again I ask what is my crime? If an ardent attachment to the land of my birth and expression of deepest sympathy with relatives and friends in the South constitute treason -than I am indeed a traitor. If hostility towards black Republicanism, its sentiment and policy-it is a crime-and I am self-condemned…!” Rosen, 288
Southern women were outraged at the North’s treatment of women with no reason, especially the imprisonment of Eugenia’s two daughters. Phillips had to use his influence with Edward Stanton, Senator Reverdy Johnson from Maryland, and Supreme Court Justice James M. Wayne who was the former mayor of Savannah to secure his family’s release. However, the Union exiled the Phillips family from the nation’s capital and forced them to relocate to the Southern states. The whole family was also required to take an oath as a condition of their parole to “not to take illegal actions against the Union”
It would not very long for Eugenia to again to make a breech of that agreement, after leaving Washington, to they first traveled to Norfolk, Virginia and then on to Richmond through Savannah and eventually settled in New Orleans in the closing weeks of 1861. Although conditions were unfavorable for Phillip to create a law practice, the family settled there because the Phillips believed they were safe from the Union army invasion in the Deep South, and therefore Eugenia would be safe from suspicion. By April however, the Union army was closing in on the Mississippi River, and News Orleans surrendered on April 29, 1862.
By May 1, 1862, Major General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts took over command of the city. Butler tried to control the city with an iron fist, known as “beast” Butler’s barbaric behavior proceeded him and the historian Bertram Wallace Korn describes Butler as a “conniving careerist and political opportunist of major proportions, who was given the title of “Beast” by the Confederacy for his severity during the early military occupation of New Orleans.” (Korn, 164) While historian Robert Rosen writes, “‘Beast’ Butler was the worst, the Union Army had to offer. He was nicknamed spoons for thiefery of spoons and silverware imputed to him and his soldiers.” (Rosen, 290)
In addition to this reputation as a beast, Butler was also a known anti-Semite, who throughout the war openly expressed his hatred for Jews, and he let out most this aggression on Southern Jewry. Korn transcribes Butler’s sentiments towards Jews, “They were a tightly-knit and highly-organized nation who set themselves apart and defended themselves against others even when one of their group was wrong. They were all ‘traders, merchants, and bankers.’ He said that the only Jews he ever knew had ‘been principally engaged in the occupations [i.e. smuggling] which caused the capture which has occasioned this correspondence.’ They were supporting the Confederacy with whole heart – ‘two of them certainly are in the Confederate Cabinet.'” (Korn, 164)
When General Butler occupied New Orleans in May 1862, the Southern population treated the Yankees with such contempt that they refused to comply with Federal orders. Southerners formed mobs to attack Union soldiers; they refused to serve Yankees in their businesses; priests refused to pray for the President of the United States, and one man was even sentenced to be hung for burning the Union flag. Despite the harsh punishments the Yankee soldiers issued to New Orleans’ men, the women of New Orleans believed these rules did not apply to them, that they were exempt from all harsh treatments because of their gender. Many of New Orleans’ women ran amuck being extremely belligerent to Union officials.
The majority of the women who acted in this manner were upper class. As historian Drew Gilpin Faust writes, Butler “recognized that the perpetrators were generally young, often ‘pretty and interesting,’ and frequently socially prominent, the kind of individuals who would attract both attention and sympathy if harsh measures turned them into martyrs. (Faust, 209) At the same time, however, Butler knew he had to control their actions, for as Butler recalled in his memoir, “a city could hardly be said to be under good government where such things were permitted.” (Butler, 417) On May 15 in retaliation to the women’s disrespectful behavior Butler issued his infamous General Order No. 28, known as the “Women order.” Butler designed the order to force the women of New Orleans to practice restraint and avoid having hostile outbursts towards Yankee soldiers, or they would face dire consequences:
General Order No. 28. As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans . . . it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation. (Butler, 421, 418; Faust, 210).
The order put Eugenia Phillips in danger of yet again being imprisoned because of her fierce loyalty to the Confederacy, and her utter disregard and respect for the Union. Phillips was vulnerable to Butler’s wrath, because she was Jewish and a member of the city’s Confederate aristocracy, both of which Butler despised. In attempt to avoid Butler’s anger Eugenia and the Phillips family remained for the most part at home. However, Eugenia still managed to fall into Butler’s fury. The Phillips’ house was situated next to the city hall, and the day of Union Officer Lieutenant DeKay’s funeral procession passed by the street, Butler caught Eugenia blurting out in laughter and cheering on the terrace of her home. As Benjamin Butler biographer Hans L. Trefousse writes “High spirited and intensely loyal to the Confederacy, she had been in trouble before when she was apprehended for espionage in Washington. This time, not espionage but merriment was to prove her undoing.” (Trefousse, 118)
Although Eugenia denied she laughed because or at of the funeral procession. There have been two accounts explaining why she was laughing. First Eugenia’s daughter Caroline claims it was because Eugenia heard of a Confederate victory and was in a celebratory mood, while other accounts including Eugenia’s own excuse, claim she was laughing at the antics of her younger children at a children’s party. At first when Butler called her to the Customs House, as Rosen writes, “Eugenia, active in raising money for the widow of a man executed by Butler for having hauled down the flag from the federal mint, believed she was being prosecuted for her pro-Southern beliefs.” (Rosen, 291) At the Customs House Butler screamed at Eugenia, “You are seen laughing and mocking at the remains of a Federal officer. I do not call you a common woman of the town, but an uncommonly vulgar one, and I sentence you to Ship Island for the War.” Eugenia reply further angered Butler as she wrote “Again my insolence aroused this son of liberty, particularly as in reply to his accusation I had said: ‘I was in good spirits the day of the funeral.'” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
Eugenia’s response and her refusal to plead and beg Butler led to her harsh punishment rather than her original crime. As she explained in her journal, “I noted that he took a mighty long time to write my sentence, and I suspected that he hoped by delay I would throw myself on his mercy, or beg his pardon, or promise never to do so again. Nothing of this kind ever crossed my brain, and, full of holy indignation and determination to meet with silent contempt this outrageous insult, I quietly folded my arms and looked on him while he wrote. Not a word of appeal or explanation broke the ominous silence. My accuser had made the charge and sentenced me without judge or jury.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
Butler wrote in Special Order No. 150 delineating Eugenia Phillips’ sentence, “…having been once imprisoned for her traitorous proclivities and acts at Washington, and released by the clemency of the Government, and having been found training her children to spit on officers of the United States, for which act of one of those children both her husband and herself apologized and were again forgiven, [she] is now found on the balcony of her house during the passage of the funeral procession of Lieut. DeKay, laughing and mocking at his remains, and upon being inquired of by the Commanding General if this fact were so, contemptuously replies, “I was in good spirits that day.” Korn, 164; Special Order No. 150
Trefousse believes Eugenia’s punishment was a result of Butler’s anti-Semitism “It is possible that Butler’s severity toward the lady had something to do with the fact that she was Jewish while he was anti-Semitic.” However, Eugenia’s reactions were not only pro-Confederate but she also personally resented Butler, and his disregard and disrespect for Southern white womanhood. Thomas Cooper DeLeon a friend of the Phillips family described Eugenia’s resentment in his memoir, Belles, Beaux, and Brains of the 60’s: “But in truth it was Mrs. Phillips’s contempt of the general and her cool sarcasm that caused her imprisonment. Haled before him, she laughed equally at the charge and at his authority to war on women.” Rosen, 88
Butler ordered Eugenia to remain on Ship Island situated off the Mississippi coast and a known yellow fever quarantine station; the island was a mosquito filled placed. In the summer, the heat could be fatal while hygiene and proper food was hard to come by. Eugenia described what her sentence and life imprisoned would be like; “I listened in respectful attention to my banishment to Ship Island, to be fed on soldiers’ rations, to be denied communication with everyone, to be allowed one servant to cook my rations, and a few other humane emanations.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862) Butler allowed Eugenia to have one servant to accompany and attend to her during her imprisonment, and she took her loyal servant Phebe with her. She was also not allowed to communicate with anyone but Butler and her maid, any letters she wrote her family were reviewed by Union guards, and only after she was freed did her family truly learn about her living conditions on the island.
On June 30, 1862 Eugenia commenced her imprisonment, first living in a former railroad boxcar and then in an abandoned post office building. Butler allowed Mr. Phillips to send Eugenia some food mostly beans and spoiled beef, and she would not have survived with Phebe’s assistance. The harsh conditions took a heavy toll on Eugenia Phillips; the rotten conditions including the deprivation of food nearly destroyed her health, and Eugenia suffered from brain fever, which was considered nervous exhaustion. Her continued pride and loyalty to the Confederacy was the main reason Butler did not released Eugenia earlier. As she writes in her journal, “The “great” Gen. Butler sent once a week to inquire after my health. He, no doubt, hoped I would at last cringe and beg. Thank God, who gave me strength and patience to keep me from this black stain.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
September 11, 1862, after nearly three months on Ship Island, Butler finally released Eugenia. When she arrived home when her husband opened the door for her , and believed as Eugenia later wrote, Phillip “thought it was my ghost,” he was not certain she was still alive by that point. (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862) Publicly while she was imprisoned her whereabouts were vague, as Eugenia explains, “Butler gave out the idea that I had been “released after a few days’ confinement,” so that everyone, including my family in Georgia, believed that I was safe.” (Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862)
Throughout her time there, Eugenia was able to send out a few letters to her family, which described the “gruesome” and inhuman conditions she was forced to live in; these letters according to George Rable “made her imprisonment a cause célèbre.” Eugenia’s imprisonment caused uproar from Southerners, those who knew Eugenia and those who did not. The press throughout the country carried the story. Most people believed the sentence was too harsh for the crime. Korn explains, “The war which Butler waged upon this Jewess and other Southern women made him the Confederacy’s “Public Enemy Number One,” with a price upon his head.” (Korn, 164) The citizens of New Orleans visited the Phillips’ family home as a sign of support.
The Jewish community and other Southern women abhorred the treatment that Eugenia was receiving at the hands of Butler. Mary Chesnut, a Christian friend of Eugenia Phillips wrote in A Diary from Dixie, “Mrs. Phillips, another beautiful and clever Jewess, has been put in prison again by “Beast” Butler for laughing as a Yankee funeral procession went by.” (Chesnut, 266) There was even talk of Southerners planning to rescue Eugenia. According to Trefousse “It was a sentence as harsh as it was sensational. Southerners talked of rescuing the lady, but they lacked the necessary ships and found it impossible to carry out their chivalrous plan. Butler pardoned her in September, two and a half months after her arrest, but this action did not dispel the popular belief that he was a cruel tyrant.” Trefousse, 118
Butler regretted that Eugenia’s imprisonment had the opposite affect than he wanted to project. He wanted to make Eugenia’s treasonous behavior towards the Union an example of what happened to women who display such behavior just because they are women and believed they were beyond punishment. Instead, as Rable writes Butler turned “an irksome rebel into a martyr,” which was the main reason he chose to release her from Ship Island. Eugenia Phillips according to Rable “had shown considerable public relations acumen, and her prison journal reveals an ironic sense of humor, especially in her wry proposal to use a steam device to pump moisture into the rock-hard bread. Though not exactly besting Butler, she had played the wily Massachusetts politician to a draw.” (Clinton, 142) Despite the cruel punishment that awaited her, Eugenia remained loyal to the Confederacy. As William Garett noted “her proud Southern spirit never quailed and she remained firm to the last in the opinions she had expressed.” (Rosen, 293)
Eugenia Levy Phillips’ devotion to the Confederacy appeared “unquestionable,” as Lauren Winner describes, Eugenia’s actions were beyond what was required of any Southern women supporting the war. Although Eugenia was Jewish and a practicing Jew, she saw herself especially during the war as primarily a Southerner who would support her country at all costs, which she did. As a white Southern women fully integrated in Southern society, and acquainted with the Christian elite of Confederate society including Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ wife, she did not believe the imprisonments she endured was too much, because it was all done for her country. Eugenia Phillips as Winner explains, “was so unswerving in her devotion to the Confederate cause that the Union suspected her of being a spy.” (Clinton, 195) Eugenia Phillips and her sister Phoebe Pember have been the Southern Jewish women most remembered by historians, and their devotion has been elevated beyond their religion, which was the hope of most of the Southern Jewish women that volunteered in support of the cause.
Sources and Further Reading
Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler, (Thayer, 1892).
Mary Boykin Miller Chestnut, Ben Williams Ames, ed., A Diary from Dixie, (Harvard University Press, 1980).
Catherine Clinton, Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, (University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, (Jewish Publication Society, 1951).
Jacob R. Marcus, The American Jewish Woman: A Documentary History, (Ktav Pub. House; American Jewish Archives, 1981).
Eugenia Phillips, Journal of Mrs. Eugenia Levy Phillips, 1861-1862.
Samuel Proctor, et al., eds., Jews of the South: Selected Essays from the Southern Jewish Historical Society, (Mercer University Press, 1984).
Robert Rosen, The Jewish Confederates, (University of South Carolina Press, 2000.)
Special Order No. 150, Headquarters Department of the Gulf, June 30, 1862.
Hans L. Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him Beast!, (Twayne Publishers, 1957).
History Editor... Bonnie K. Goodman 