The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Using a simple substitution cipher created by Colonel Thomas Jordan (whom espionage novelists would call her “spymaster”), Greenhow encrypted messages and concealed them in the clothing and other objects that her female friends wore or carried as they traveled from Washington to Manassas and Richmond. According to Blackman, Rose’s encrypted reports were “generally accurate and contained useful notes about the numbers and movements of Union forces around Washington.” Coded replies and requests for further information were carried back to Rose by Confederate couriers, usually Southern sympathizers, civilians who made their homes in Washington and were allowed to travel freely. This back-and-forth went on for months throughout 1861. Finally, the assistant secretary of war assigned Allan Pinkerton to establish a twenty-four-hour watch over her home, and, in early 1862, to place her under house arrest. When that did not stop her activities, she was imprisoned in the Old Capitol building, where she was held until her release and deportation to the South.

Rose bore eight children, including Little Rose, who had only one daughter, and it appears that there are no living Greenhow descendants. Miss Rogers’ relationship to Rose and Little Rose is entirely fictional, as is the embroidered pillow and the documents hidden within it. But such a thing is possible, don’t you think? And it makes a good story.

Rose Greenhow could not change the outcome of the War Between the States. But she did what she could to serve the Confederacy. And in the end, she died for it.

ROSE GREENHOW’S CIPHER



Credit: This cipher was redrawn by Peggy Turchette from the version reprinted on p. 176 in Fred Wrixon’s book, Codes, Ciphers, Secrets, and Cryptic Communication, Black Dog & Leventhal, 1998. The original is held by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.





Recipes

If there were no other reason to live in the South, Southern cookin’ would be enough.

—MICHAEL ANDREW GRISSOM, SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD

I have chosen recipes for this book that not only illustrate the wide range of foods that appeared on Southern tables during the early 1930s, but also have some historical interest, in terms of ingredients and preparation.

Dr. Carver’s Peanut Cookies #3

George Washington Carver was the most famous African American scientist and teacher of his era. He spent most of his professional life as a faculty member at Tuskegee Institute and was widely respected for his assistance to small farmers in improving their farming methods and his research into new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and other Southern crops. He included recipes in his agricultural bulletins in order to demonstrate a variety of uses for the crops. This popular recipe is from How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, Tuskegee Institute Press, Bulletin Number 31, June 1925.

1?3 cup butter

2 eggs, well beaten

1?2 cup sugar

1?2 cup flour

1?2 teaspoon baking powder

1?2 cup finely chopped peanuts





1 teaspoon lemon juice


3?4 cup milk

Cream butter and add sugar and eggs. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Combine the butter and flour mixtures. Then add the milk, nuts, and lemon juice. Mix well and then drop mixture from a spoon to an unbuttered baking sheet. Sprinkle with additional chopped nuts and bake in a slow oven (about 300 degrees). Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Lizzy Lacy’s Buttermilk Pie

This old-fashioned, easy-to-put-together pie is a longtime favorite in Southern families, for many had their own milk cow. But before refrigeration was developed, milk soured quickly in the warm climate of the South, so the cream was churned into butter, which could be preserved almost indefinitely in brine. Buttermilk, the liquid that remained in the churn after the butter formed, was mildly tart and very refreshing. Cultured buttermilk, the product that you see in the dairy case at your local supermarket, is lightly fermented, pasteurized skim milk. It is not nearly as rich as the buttermilk our great-grandmothers used, but it is still an effective ingredient. If you don’t have buttermilk, you can create an acceptable substitute by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar to 1 cup of fat-free, skim, or whole milk.

1?2 cup butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 rounded tablespoons flour





1 cup buttermilk


Dash of nutmeg


1 teaspoon vanilla


Zest (grated rind) of two lemons

Unbaked 9-inch pie shell

Cream butter and sugar. Mix eggs and flour and beat into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in buttermilk, nutmeg, vanilla, and lemon zest (if you have it). Pour into the pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. The top should be lightly browned and the center should jiggle. Don’t overbake—the pie will set as it cools.

The Darling Diner Grits

In the South, breakfast without grits isn’t breakfast. Grits (or hominy grits) were adapted from a cooked mush of softened maize eaten by Native Americans. It was likely introduced to the colonists at Jamestown around 1607 by the Algonquin Indians, who called it rockahominy, meaning hulled corn. The word grits comes from the Old English grytt (bran) or greot (ground) and is usually treated as a singular noun. The colonists made grits by soaking corn in lye made from wood ash until the hulls floated off. It was then pounded and dried. Modern grits (also called hominy, derived from rockahominy) is made without lye. Most Southerners prefer stone-ground grits to instant or quick-cook grits because the germ is still intact and it simply tastes better. Grits may be served with sausage or ham, with bacon and eggs, baked with cheese, or sliced cold and fried in bacon grease (my mother’s favorite way of serving it).





1 cup stone-ground grits


Water for rinsing


4 cups water


1?2 teaspoon salt