During these riots, which occurred in cities throughout the Southern United States, hungry women and men invaded and looted various shops and stores.

[1] All were the result of multiple factors, mostly related to the Civil War: Citizens, mostly women, began to protest the exorbitant price of bread.

[2] On April 2, 1863, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, about 5,500 people,[13] mostly poor women, broke into shops and began seizing food, clothing, shoes, and even jewelry before the militia arrived to restore order.

The mayor read the Riot Act; the governor called out the militia, and it restored order.

Many newspapers, however, were keen to report on the trials of the participants themselves, and they usually portrayed those people in an unflattering light, suggesting that they were not actually starving, or that the rioters were mostly "Yankees" or lower-class people, allowing many upper-class citizens to ignore the scope of the problems.