"Who has done this?" bawled Max. "You felt with the South at first; who
has changed you?"
"Of course I feel _for_ the South now, and nobody has changed me but the
logic of events, though the twenty-negro law has intensified my opinions.
I can't see why I, who have no slaves, must go to fight for them, while
every man who has twenty may stay at home."
I, also, tried to reason with Max and pour oil on his wound. "Max, what
interest has a man like you, without slaves, in a war for slavery? Even if
you had them, they would not be your best property. That lies in your
country and its resources. Nearly all the world has given up slavery; why
can't the South do the same and end the struggle? It has shown you what
the South needs, and if all went to work with united hands the South would
soon be the greatest country on earth. You have no right to call H. a
traitor; it is we who are the true patriots and lovers of the South."
This had to come, but it has upset us both. H. is deeply attached to Max,
and I can't bear to see a cloud between them. Max, with Annie and Reeney,
drove off an hour ago, Annie so glad at the prospect of again seeing her
mother that nothing could cloud her day. And so the close companionship of
six months, and of dangers, trials, and pleasures shared together, is
over.
_Oak Ridge, July 26, 1862, Saturday._--It was not till Wednesday that H.
could get into Vicksburg, ten miles distant, for a passport, without which
we could not go on the cars. We started Thursday morning. I had to ride
seven miles on a hard-trotting horse to the nearest station. The day was
burning at white heat. When the station was reached my hair was down, my
hat on my neck, and my feelings were indescribable.
On the train one seemed to be right in the stream of war, among officers,
soldiers, sick men and cripples, adieus, tears, laughter, constant
chatter, and, strangest of all, sentinels posted at the locked car-doors
demanding passports. There was no train south from Jackson that day, so we
put up at the Bowman House. The excitement was indescribable. All the
world appeared to be traveling through Jackson. People were besieging the
two hotels, offering enormous prices for the privilege of sleeping
anywhere under a roof. There were many refugees from New Orleans, among
them some acquaintances of mine. The peculiar style of [women's] dress
necessitated by the exigencies of war gave the crowd a very striking
appearance. In single suits I saw sleeves of one color, the waist of
another, the skirt of another; scarlet jackets and gray skirts; black
waists and blue skirts; black skirts and gray waists; the trimming chiefly
gold braid and buttons, to give a military air. The gray and gold uniforms
of the officers, glittering between, made up a carnival of color. Every
moment we saw strange meetings and partings of people from all over the
South. Conditions of time, space, locality, and estate were all loosened;
everybody seemed floating he knew not whither, but determined to be jolly,
and keep up an excitement. At supper we had tough steak, heavy,
dirty-looking bread, Confederate coffee. The coffee was made of either
parched rye or cornmeal, or of sweet potatoes cut in small cubes and
roasted. This was the favorite. When flavored with "coffee essence,"
sweetened with sorghum, and tinctured with chalky milk, it made a curious
beverage, which, after tasting, I preferred not to drink. Every one else
was drinking it, and an acquaintance said, "Oh, you'll get bravely over
that. I used to be a Jewess about pork, but now we just kill a hog and eat
it, and kill another and do the same. It's all we have."
Friday morning we took the down train for the station near my friend's
house. At every station we had to go through the examination of passes, as
if in a foreign country.
The conscript camp was at Brookhaven, and every man had been ordered to
report there or to be treated as a deserter. At every station I shivered
mentally, expecting H. to be dragged off. Brookhaven was also the station
for dinner. I choked mine down, feeling the sword hanging over me by a
single hair. At sunset we reached our station. The landlady was pouring
tea when we took our seats and I expected a treat, but when I tasted it it
was sassafras tea, the very odor of which sickens me. There was a general
surprise when I asked to exchange it for a glass of water; every one was
drinking it as if it were nectar. This morning we drove out here.
My friend's little nest is calm in contrast to the tumult not far off.
Yet the trials of war are here too. Having no matches, they keep fire,
carefully covering it at night, for Mr. G. has no powder, and cannot flash
the gun into combustibles as some do. One day they had to go with the
children to the village, and the servant let the fire go out. When they
returned at nightfall, wet and hungry, there was neither fire nor food.
Mr. G. had to saddle the tired mule and ride three miles for a pan of
coals, and blow them, all the way back, to keep them alight. Crockery has
gradually been broken and tin-cups rusted out, and a visitor told me they
had made tumblers out of clear glass bottles by cutting them smooth with a
heated wire, and that they had nothing else to drink from.
_Aug. 11, 1862_.--We cannot get to New Orleans. A special passport must be
shown, and we are told that to apply for it would render H. very likely to
be conscripted. I begged him not to try; and as we hear that active
hostilities have ceased at Vicksburg, he left me this morning to return to
his uncle's and see what the prospects are there. I shall be in misery
about conscription till he returns.
_Sunday, Sept. 7_., (Vicksburg, Washington Hotel)--H. did not return for
three weeks. An epidemic disease broke out in his uncle's family and two
children died. He staid to assist them in their trouble. Tuesday evening
he returned for me and we reached Vicksburg yesterday. It was my first
sight of the "Gibraltar of the South." Looking at it from a slight
elevation suggests the idea that the fragments left from world-building
had tumbled into a confused mass of hills, hollows, hillocks, banks,
ditches, and ravines, and that the houses had rained down afterwards. Over
all there was dust impossible to conceive. The bombardment has done little
injury. People have returned and resumed business. A gentleman asked H. if
he knew of a nice girl for sale. I asked if he did not think it impolitic
to buy slaves now.
"Oh, not young ones. Old ones might run off when the enemy's lines
approach ours, but with young ones there is no danger."
We had not been many hours in town before a position was offered to H.
which seemed providential. The chief of a certain department was in
ill-health and wanted a deputy. It secures him from conscription, requires
no oath, and pays a good salary. A mountain seemed lifted off my heart.
_Thursday, Sept. 18, 1862. (Thanksgiving Day.)_--We staid three days at
the Washington Hotel; then a friend of H.'s called and told him to come to
his house till he could find a home. Boarding-houses have all been broken
up, and the army has occupied the few houses that were for rent. To-day H.
secured a vacant room for two weeks in the only boarding-house.
_Oak Haven, Oct. 3_.--To get a house in V. proved impossible, so we agreed
to part for a time till H. could find one. A friend recommended this quiet
farm, six miles from ---- (a station on the Jackson Railroad). On last
Saturday H. came with me as far as Jackson and put me on the other train
for the station.
On my way hither a lady, whom I judged to be a Confederate "blockade
runner," told me of the tricks resorted to to get things out of New
Orleans, including this: A very large doll was emptied of its bran, filled
with quinine, and elaborately dressed. When the owner's trunk was opened,
she declared with tears that the doll was for a poor crippled girl, and it
was passed.
This farm of Mr. W.'s[33] is kept with about forty negroes. Mr. W.,
nearly sixty, is the only white man on it. He seems to have been wiser in
the beginning than most others, and curtailed his cotton to make room for
rye, rice, and corn. There is a large vegetable garden and orchard; he has
bought plenty of stock for beef and mutton, and laid in a large supply of
sugar. He must also have plenty of ammunition, for a man is kept hunting
and supplies the table with delicious wild turkeys and other game. There
is abundance of milk and butter, hives for honey, and no end of pigs.
Chickens seem to be kept like game in parks, for I never see any, but the
hunter shoots them, and eggs are plentiful. We have chicken for breakfast,
dinner, and supper, fried, stewed, broiled, and in soup, and there is a
family of ten. Luckily I never tire of it. They make starch out of
corn-meal by washing the meal repeatedly, pouring off the water and drying
the sediment. Truly the uses of corn in the Confederacy are varied. It
makes coffee, beer, whisky, starch, cake, bread. The only privations here
are the lack of coffee, tea, salt, matches, and good candles. Mr. W. is
now having the dirt-floor of his smoke-house dug up and boiling from it
the salt that has dripped into it for years. To-day Mrs. W. made tea out
of dried blackberry leaves, but no one liked it. The beds, made out of
equal parts of cotton and corn-shucks, are the most elastic I ever slept
in. The servants are dressed in gray homespun. Hester, the chambermaid,
has a gray gown so pretty that I covet one like it. Mrs. W. is now
arranging dyes for the thread to be woven into dresses for herself and the
girls. Sometimes her hands are a curiosity.
The school at the nearest town is broken up and Mrs. W. says the children
are growing up heathens. Mr. W. has offered me a liberal price to give the
children lessons in English and French, and I have accepted transiently.
_Oct. 28, 1862_.--It is a month to-day since I came here. I only wish H.
could share these benefits--the nourishing food, the pure aromatic air,
the sound sleep away from the fevered life of Vicksburg. He sends me all
the papers he can get hold of, and we both watch carefully the movements
reported, lest an army should get between us. The days are full of useful
work, and in the lovely afternoons I take long walks with a big dog for
company. The girls do not care for walking. In the evening Mr. W. begs me
to read aloud all the war news. He is fond of the "Memphis Appeal," which
has moved from town to town so much that they call it the "Moving Appeal."
I sit in a low chair by the fire, as we have no other light to read by.
Sometimes traveling soldiers stop here, but that is rare.
_Oct. 31_.--Mr. W. said last night the farmers felt uneasy about the
"Emancipation Proclamation" to take effect in December. The slaves have
found it out, though it had been carefully kept from them.
"Do yours know it?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. Finding it to be known elsewhere, I told it to mine with fair
warning what to expect if they tried to run away. The hounds are not far
off."
The need of clothing for their armies is worrying them too. I never saw
Mrs. W. so excited as on last evening. She said the provost-marshal at the
next town had ordered the women to knit so many pairs of socks.
"Just let him try to enforce it and they'll cow-hide him. He'll get none
from me. I'll take care of my own friends without an order from him."
"Well," said Mr. W., "if the South is defeated and the slaves set free,
the Southern people will all become atheists, for the Bible justifies
slavery and says it shall be perpetual."
"You mean, if the Lord does not agree with you, you'll repudiate him."
"Well, we'll feel it's no use to believe in anything."
At night the large sitting-room makes a striking picture. Mr. W., spare,
erect, gray-headed, patriarchal, sits in his big chair by the odorous fire
of pine logs and knots roaring up the vast fireplace. His driver brings to
him the report of the day's picking and a basket of snowy cotton for the
spinning. The hunter brings in the game. I sit on the other side to read.
The great spinning wheels stand at the other end of the room, and Mrs. W.
and her black satellites, the heads of the elderly women in bright
bandanas, are hard at work. Slender and auburn-haired, she steps back and
forth out of shadow into shine following the thread with graceful
movements. Some card the cotton, some reel it into hanks. Over all the
firelight glances, now touching the golden curls of little John toddling
about, now the brown heads of the girls stooping over their books, now the
shadowy figure of little Jule, the girl whose duty it is to supply the
fire with rich pine to keep up the vivid light. If they would only let the
child sit down! But that is not allowed, and she gets sleepy and stumbles
and knocks her head against the wall and then straightens up again. When
that happens often it drives me off. Sometimes while I read the bright
room fades and a vision rises of figures clad in gray and blue lying pale
and stiff on the blood-sprinkled ground.
_Nov. 15, 1862_.--Yesterday a letter was handed me from H. Grant's army
was moving, he wrote, steadily down the Mississippi Central and might cut
the road at Jackson. He has a house and will meet me in Jackson to-morrow.
When Bessie J. and I went in to dinner to-day, a stranger was sitting by
Mr. W.; a dark, heavy-looking man who said but little. I excused myself to
finish packing. Presently Bessie rushed upstairs flushed and angry.
"I shall give Mr. W. a piece of my mind. He must have taken leave of his
senses!"
"What is the matter, Bessie?"
"Why, G., don't you know whom you've been sitting at table with?"
"That stranger, you mean; I suppose Mr. W. forgot to introduce him."
"Forgot! He knew better than to introduce him! That man is a
nigger-chaser. He's got his bloodhounds here now."
"Did you see the dogs?"
"No, I asked Hester if he had them, and she said, 'Yes.' Think of Mr. W.
bringing him to table with us. If my brothers knew it there would be a
row."
"Where are your brothers? At college still?"
"No, in the army; Pa told them they'd have to come and fight to save their
property. His men cost him twelve to fifteen hundred dollars apiece and
are too valuable to lose."
"Well, I wouldn't worry about this man, he may be useful some day to save
that kind of property."
"Of course, you can take it easily, you're going away; but if Mr. W.
thinks I'm going to sit at table with that wretch he's vastly mistaken."
_Nov. 20, 1862_. (_Vicksburg_.)--A fair morning for my journey back to
Vicksburg. The autumn woods were shining through a veil of silvery mist
and the spicy breezes blew cool and keen from the heart of the pines, a
friend sat beside me, a husband's welcome awaited me. General Pemberton,
recently appointed to the command at Vicksburg, was on the train; also the
gentleman who in New Orleans had told us we should have all the butter we
wanted from Texas. On the cars, as elsewhere, the question of food
alternated with news of the war.
When we ran into the Jackson station H. was on the platform, and I gladly
learned that we could go right on. A runaway negro, an old man, ashy
colored from fright and exhaustion, with his hands chained, was being
dragged along by a common-looking man. Just as we started out of Jackson
the conductor led in a young woman sobbing in a heart-broken manner. Her
grief seemed so overpowering, and she was so young and helpless, that
every one was interested. Her husband went into the army in the opening of
the war, just after their marriage, and she had never heard from him
since. After months of weary searching she learned he had been heard of at
Jackson, and came full of hope, but found no clue. The sudden breaking
down of her hope was terrible. The conductor placed her in care of a
gentleman going her way and left her sobbing. At the next station the
conductor came to ask her about her baggage. She raised her head to try
and answer. "Don't cry so, you'll find him yet." She gave a start, jumped
from her seat with arms flung out and eyes staring. "There he is now!" she
cried. Her husband stood before her.
The gentleman beside her yielded his seat, and as hand grasped hand a
hysterical gurgle gave place to a look like Heaven's peace. The low murmur
of their talk began, and when I looked round at the next station they had
bought pies and were eating them together like happy children.
Midway between Jackson and Vicksburg we reached the station near where
Annie's parents were staying. I looked out, and there stood Annie with a
little sister on each side of her, brightly smiling at us. Max had written
to H., but we had not seen them since our parting. There was only time for
a word and the train flashed away.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] On this plantation, and in this domestic circle, I myself afterward
sojourned, and from them enlisted in the Confederate army. The initials
are fictitious, but the description is perfect.--G.W.C.