The Quitman daughters, J. Antonia, Louisa, Eliza T., Annie Rosalie, and the youngest, Fredericka, were barely adjusting to the death of their parents when the Civil War reached Monmouth.  A neighbor noted in her diary the day a Yankee gunboat shelled the town: 

“In August, 1862, the bombardment of Natchez took place.  John was on the plantation and I was sitting quietly by my window just after dinner when the report of heavy guns and some balls went crashing through the branches in the little woods between Aunt Fanny's and Melrose.  And then another and another and so it went on.  Soon a note came from Monmouth saying a ball had just fallen in their yard and Tonie came over with Jack and Star leaving them with us as farther off and safer.  It continued until sun down…” [Moseley Papers, private collection, Mrs. JTM Jr.'s diary, August 1862. Historic Natchez Foundation] 

      In the summer of 1863, after the fall of fortress Vicksburg, Union soldiers occupied Natchez and life at Monmouth was never the same again. The Union army set up refugee camps for the formerly enslaved in the town and at its waterfront, constructed a military fort, and housed soldiers and animals in nearly every estate house and structure.  Monmouth was overrun by Union soldiers, who looted the house of furnishing and food, tore up its gardens, and carried off timber and farming utensils.  Its extensive acreage may have been used as a burial ground for those soldiers and their families who died from the ravishing diseases that swept through the town during the war, including the families of those black soldiers who had followed them to Natchez where they succumbed to dysentery and other fatal illnesses.  Within sight of Monmouth was the infamous slave-trading market, known as the Forks of the Road, which was used as a military barracks for black Union soldiers during the war.    

      The Natchez District sent 1,444 of its white men to war under the Confederate flag.  On the other hand, 3,000 formerly enslaved black men arrived in Natchez along with 2,000 white Union troopers after it fell to Union forces in July 1863.  These black Yankee soldiers, the sons of the enslaved South, were joined by thousands of formerly enslaved women, children, and the elderly that flooded into Natchez during the war.   

      Monmouth house slaves Charles Vessels, Isaac Taylor, and Richard Austin joined the Union army, as did Quitman’s personal servant, Harry Nichols, who volunteered for  the 6th Regiment, United States Colored Heavy Artillery.  The formerly enslaved soldier,  Private Samuel Anding, also in the 6th Regiment, writes of his experience as a freedman and soldier stationed in Natchez near the Monmouth estate:  

“During my time with the 6th Regiment, we would have dress parade on the marching grounds.  It would be a grand time for the colored people to come and see us in our blue uniforms.  I was particularly excited about a young woman named Caroline Williams who would watch us as we marched.” [Rudd, Linda Durr, “Private Samuel Anding,” Private Samuel Anding of the 6th Regiment, United States Colored Heavy Artillery <http://www.angelfire.com/folk/gljmr/AndingS.html>] 

      Thousands of enslaved women from throughout the district also dropped their spades, cotton sacks, cooking utensils, and washboards to break for freedom by running to Natchez.  Some of them may have hoped to find work there as laundresses to the Yankee soldiers. Some of them, separated from family in slavery, may have fled to Natchez hoping to be reunited with them.  Some simply followed their husbands and fathers, who had joined the Union army to fight the Confederates.   One formerly enslaved woman remembered how her old master had complained about his slave women running off to Natchez with the following words told to a white interviewer in the 1930s:   

      “I couldn’t make dem women put in deir hoes to suit me….Sallie’s heerd dat her husban’s mustered out ob de army, an’ she gone up to Natchez to fine him.” [“Lotos Leaves, Original stories, essays, and poems, 1875.” American Libraries.]

      Eliza Quitman’s daughter, Louisa, expresses a similar sentiment to her husband, Captain Joseph Lovell, in a letter dated February 17, 1864.  She describes her frustration at having to find a replacement nurse, who “refuses to leave yankeedom.” 

      Not all of the former Quitman slaves joined “yankeedom.”  Isaac Hughes, an enslaved dining-room servant at Monmouth, joined Louisa’s husband in the Confederate army, where he assisted Captain Lovell as a “manservant.”  He also served as carriage driver and messenger, traveling through Confederate and Union lines to deliver messages back and forth between Lovell and his family at Monmouth.  This was not an entirely unique occurrence as Bill Taylor, enslaved on the nearby John McMurran plantation known as Riverside, also joined his master, John, in Pensacola, Florida to “cook and wash”:

“We learn John is doing his duty faithfully and is making a fine, hardy soldier.  He endures the privations and hardships bravely, and having Bill Taylor to cook & wash, and messing with the officers of the Company, he fares better than the other privates.” [Addison Papers, private collection.  M.L. McMurran to Mrs. [Pattie] Gilbert [Alie's sister], Melrose, Aug. 6, 1861, Historic Natchez Foundation] 

      Monmouth’s enslaved men and women fled at the first sign of Union troops, some obviously breaking for freedom, and some out of fear for their lives.  Yankee officers moved into the first floor of the main house at Monmouth, forcing the Quitman daughters and their families to move upstairs.  Within a short period, several of Monmouth’s house slaves returned, demanding wages for their labor.   

      Impoverished by the War, the Quitman women bartered, sold household possessions, and borrowed money to survive.  Furniture, clothes, carpets, glass jars and personal possessions were sold to any taker, often to soldiers and former slaves, including Monmouth house slaves.  “Rose gave me a check for $50.00 lent from her own funds.”  The family lacked even the money to purchase milk for the granddaughter of General Quitman.  House slave, Viola, for example, bought an “old dress for $5.00.”  Viola’s husband, “Marcellus paid for the Palmyra Buggy.” 

      The enterprising Quitman daughters even used Union soldiers to their advantage.  Some soldiers were paid to move furniture and purchase wood, and a Union Captain paid $5.00 for the rental of a room at Monmouth.  Henry W. Slocum, a Union general, befriended the family, warding off significant structural damage to Monmouth. In a step that might have caused John Quitman to turn over in his grave, the Quitman daughters agreed, as did many others in Natchez, to pledge their loyalty to the United States.  With a brother and husbands in the Confederate army, this was no easy decision.   

      Once the war ended, the three Quitman sisters, Louisa, aged forty, Annie Rosalie, aged twenty six, and Fredericka aged twenty two, managed to scrape together enough money to purchase from their sister J. Antonia and brother F. Henry, their share of Monmouth in 1866. Sister Eliza T. tragically dies shortly after her marriage leaving her share of Monmouth to her surviving sisters and brother.  The following year, Louisa and her husband Joseph Lovell, along with their toddlers Eva Chadbourne and Alice Quitman, as well as newly widowed Fredericka, moved into Monmouth, while Annie Rosalie moved to New Orleans with her sister, J. Antonia. Tragedy struck the Quitman family again, when Louisa lost her son and husband within a year, after which she moved to Baltimore.    

      During the South’s Reconstruction period, occupancy of Monmouth was sporadic.  Members of the Quitman family lived off and on in the war-ravished estate until 1875, when it was rented out (except for two rooms in the main house, kept by the sisters for the storage of furniture).  Someone named John J. Williams rented Monmouth, pledging  “a lien on the crop of cotton to be grown on said premises for the payment of said rent.” This began a pattern that continued for some time as much of the Monmouth was subdivided into lots for housing and growing cotton by tenant farmers and sharecroppers.  When Louisa died while still living in Baltimore, Annie Rosalie purchased her sister’s share of the property. By 1890, Annie Rosalie is the sole owner of Monmouth. 

      Although living at Monmouth and nearby Quitman plantation on Palmyra Island and surrounded by tenant farmers and sharecroppers, the Quitman daughters remained the proud daughters of an era that existed mainly in memory. Fredericka, once describe her involvement in the town’s civic and community events by saying that “we are subject to the demands of noblesse oblige.”   In May 1896, the Quitman daughters formed the Natchez chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the first chapter of the D.A.R. in Mississippi.  They were also active in the Confederate Daughters Association and the memorialzation efforts to commemorate and honor the graves of the town’s Civil War Confederate soldiers. 

      For nearly a half-century after Civil War had ended, some of the estate’s formerly enslaved workers and their descendants remained connected to Monmouth and the Quitman family.  Some continued to live and work at Monmouth as paid servants well into the twentieth century.  They worked as household and grounds staff for the children and grandchildren of John and Eliza Quitman.  Some also worked as sharecroppers on Monmouth acreage, growing cotton and paying a portion of the crop as rent.  Some even managed to purchase small portions of Monmouth land on which they or their parents had once been enslaved.