Mobile Bread Riot (1863)

Fri Sep 04, 1863

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Image: An illustration of the Mobile Bread Riot, 1863 [encyclopediaofalabama.org]

On this day in 1863, hundreds of rioters took to the streets in Mobile, Alabama during the American Civil War, chanting “Bread or blood!”, looting stores, and destroying property. Confederate soldiers refused to intervene.

The Mobile Bread Riot was one of several bread riots that took place in the South during the Civil War. The uprising was a culmination of rising prices and food shortages caused by the Union’s naval blockade of Mobile Bay and Confederate general John C. Pemberton’s order to not let any corn leave the state of Mississippi.

The scale of inflation was staggering - molasses, which before the war sold for less than $.30 per gallon, rose to $7.00 per gallon; the cost of a barrel of flour rose from $44.00 to more than $400.00. On this day, hundreds of rioters took to the streets, chanting “Bread or blood!”, looting stores and destroying property.

Confederate General Dabney H. Maury dispatched the Seventeenth Alabama Regiment to quell the riot, but the soldiers refused to intervene.