April 21, 1863, Weekly Columbus Enquirer (Georgia)
From the Augusta Constitutionalist of 11th.
It is an old saying that “one might as well be dead as to be out of the fashion,” and so a small portion of Richmond county women must have thought yesterday, as they followed the fashion of female mobocracy, which was set them by some of our sister cities recently.–Some time during the morning, a number of Amazonian warriors–well, not a very large number–assembled in the upper part of the city, and proceeded to the store of Mr. Reinhardt, where one of them queried:
“Got any shoes at a dollar a pair?”
“No,” responded the store keeper.
“Any calicer, at 50 cents a yard?”
“No,” said Mr. R.
“Well, that’s all we’re goin’ to pay for ’em,” responded one of the female women.
By this time, Reinhardt began in the language of the Irish lawyer, to “smell a mice, to see it brewing in the storm,” and, therefore, determined to “crush it in the bud.” Consequently he informed his warlike patrons that he had some important out-door business to attend to, and could not wait upon them; with which explanation, he locked up his store, and left.
The Amazonians then visited the grocery store of Mr. E. Gallaher, near the Upper Market, but were received there with some show of resistance. In the meantime, information having been conveyed to Mayor May, he started for the field of operations, with two of the Police Officers, at the sight of whom the crowd “skedaddled” in every direction.
A gentleman asked one of them if they wanted bread, to which she replied in the negative, and said that she had bread enough, but wanted meat. Upon being asked why they made this demonstration, she replied: “We heard that they had raised the red flag all over the country, and people only had to go and take what they wanted.”
What the red flag is we do not know. Perhaps it is something of the balmoral kind.
The whole affair was a very insipid thing, and perhaps hardly worth a local item, but as exaggerated reports may get abroad, and possibly “cross the line” to “the aid and comfort” of our enemies, we have though proper to give a correct statement of it, to show that it did not amount to much after all, and was soon quieted. Several of the parties implicated were not citizens of Augusta, and were of the real Amazonian style of female architecture.