Hereafter, all persons, male or female, who, by word, deed, or implication, do insult or allow disrespect to the President, the Government, or flag of the United States, upon matters of a national character, shall be fined, banished, or imprisoned, according to the grossness of the offense.

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The five women left Vicksburg as ordered, and a new, darker despair settled over a people already over-burdened by the war. Their friends and relatives were dying in a war the South was losing, but not even at home, not even in their own church, could Vicksburg’s citizens find respite. Some members of Christ Church lost hope; some never forgave their minister; some refused to sit alongside the enemy in their own church. Whatever their personal reasons for avoiding church, many stayed away. It would be a long time before the pews of Christ Church were as full as they had been on Christmas day 1863.

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