The Union was in peril. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina adopted an ordinance of secession, declaring its independence from the United States of America. It was no surprise to anyone in the Deep South. Other states were preparing to follow South Carolina’s lead, among them Alabama.
The night before South Carolina’s announcement, a huge audience at the Montgomery Theatre was in a celebratory mood. When the applause subsided at the end of Maggie Mitchell’s act, theatre manager Sam Harris stepped onto the stage. Brimming with pride, he handed Maggie Alabama’s new lone star flag, a blue banner with a single star on one side and the figure of Liberty on the other. Liberty held a sword in her right hand; in her left was a flag bearing the single word, “Alabama.” Directly above it was Alabama’s new mantra: “Independent Now and Forever.”1 Caught up in the audience’s enthusiasm, Maggie paraded back and forth across the stage waving the blue silk banner and singing the “Southern Marseillaise,” the South’s earliest rallying song.2
Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, the future president and vice president of the Confederacy, were in the audience that night as were “fire eaters” William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Toombs. Never one to show emotion, Davis looked on “like a grey wolf, and with a solemn sort of manner,”3 as the audience cheered itself hoarse.4
North of the Mason-Dixon line, the Cincinnati Daily Press howled that Maggie Mitchell “has been chaunting the ‘Marseillaise’ at the Montgomery Theatre, [and] was presented on Friday night with a ‘Lone Star’ flag of Alabama.”5 Months later newspapers throughout the North began lambasting her for her disloyalty. Some added that she had also given a “secession speech.”6 A year later those accusations almost torpedoed her career.
After her Montgomery engagement ended in early January, Maggie headed to New Orleans for a two-week appearance at the St. Charles Theatre. At that time New Orleans was one of the country’s two major entertainment centers, the other being New York. No entertainer of any stature ignored New Orleans in his or her tour.7
Maggie had been a featured star in New Orleans several times before. Her fans had come out in droves. Except for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ theatre critics had been routinely bilious in their reviews. The “very susceptible young gentlemen of the dress circle” are enamored with the “pretty little gold fish,” the Daily Creole’s critic pouted; an “angler” like himself did not find her worth the bait.8 The Daily True Delta Tribune’s critic grumbled she wore too much lipstick and too little clothing. “No wonder the pit applauded her,” he went on. “Eve wore a fig leaf. Maggie wore scarcely more.”9
Maggie was planning to feature The French Spy for her upcoming appearance. It was a favorite piece among the attractive actresses of the day because the flimsy costumes they wore in the play were a surefire draw. When she arrived at the St. Charles, she agreed to look at a new play called Fanchon, the Cricket, that orchestra leader Augustus Waldauer told her he had adapted especially with her in mind.10 Her energy and childlike laughter, he said, would be perfect for the play’s impish heroine. Maggie read it over and agreed to put it on during her second week.
Fanchon is a melodrama based on a story by French writer Georges Sand, called La Petite Fadette (The Little Cricket) which celebrates the virtues of cheeriness and good-naturedness. A sprightly young girl, Fanchon Vivieux, called the “Cricket,” lives at the outskirts of a village with her grandmother and has no villagers for friends because the villagers regard her grandmother a witch. Although she has no playmates, Fanchon is not lonely. Her vivid imagination lets her create imaginary companions. The highlight of the play is the “Shadow Dance” in which Fanchon dances with and talks to her own shadow, as if it were a real person.
Maggie Mitchell as Fanchon. Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Division.
Maggie first appeared as Fanchon on January 23, 1861,11 and continued acting the part through February. New Orleans’ normally ill-disposed critics adored it. The New Orleans Daily Crescent gushed Maggie had “far exceeded in interest anything of the kind that has lately been seen on the St. Charles boards.”12
Maggie was quick to realize Fanchon’s potential and bought the rights to the play from Waldauer. She would appear in it an estimated 4000 times. It would make her one of the wealthiest and best-loved actresses in America.13
After debuting Fanchon in New Orleans, Maggie headed back to Montgomery for a repeat engagement. By then, Alabama had become the fourth state to secede from the Union.14 Delegates from the other three seceded states were arriving every day in Montgomery to draft a constitution for the new Confederate States of America. On February 9, 1861, three days after her return,15 the Constitutional Convention met in Montgomery and chose Jefferson Davis as Provisional President of the Confederate States of America. Davis arrived in Montgomery a week later on Saturday, February 16. By then the city was swarming with visitors, politicians and their wives, reporters and “lobby vultures everywhere, ears cocked for a hint of a job.”16
Diarist Mary Chesnut, wife of James Chesnut, representing South Carolina, didn’t care much for Maggie. It wasn’t her acting that annoyed her so much as all the attention Maggie was drawing from men. Alabama’s fifty-four-year old governor Andrew Moore was particularly attentive. “The old sinner,” Mary groused, was “making himself ridiculous” and creating a minor scandal, spending so much time with “the actress woman.”17
Maggie was supposed to leave Montgomery after her benefit but stayed on, basking in the affection of Montgomery’s audiences. On April 11, the day before the batteries at Charleston opened fire on Fort Sumter, she presented a prized silver goblet to the militia unit judged to have been the best at drill and rifle fire.18 The very next day she boarded a train north. Had she stayed any longer she would have been trapped behind Confederate lines.