THEY COME!
As everything would be seized by the enemy when they came, we lived very
high, and the things which had been preciously hoarded until the men of
the family should come home were now eaten. Every day we had a real
Christmas dinner; all the turkeys and hams were used. One day mamma had
just helped us all to a delicious piece of turkey when Phibby rushed in,
crying: “Miss, dey cumin!” Bruno, Jane’s little water-spaniel, began to
bark, and she rushed out to the wide roofless porch where he was, threw
her arms round his neck and held his throat so tight he couldn’t bark,
just as a soldier was about to strike him with a sword. I was terrified
for her as she knelt there in the middle of the porch, holding him; but
they only looked down at her, as they rushed by on each side into the
house, calling out:
“Whiskey! We want liquor! Don’t lie; we know you have it! We want
whiskey! We want firearms!” Each one said the same thing.
Mamma was very calm. As they clamored she said: “You may search the
house. You will find none. I had some whiskey, but it is here no
longer.”
They seemed delighted at the sight of the dinner-table, and for a time
were occupied eating and pocketing all that could be pocketed. When the
renewed cry for wine, whiskey, and firearms came, mamma took from the
nail where it hung the huge storeroom key, and went down the steps to
the storeroom, just in time to prevent its being smashed in with an axe.
She opened the door and they rushed in with many insulting words. Poor
Phibby was wild with terror, and followed mamma, closely holding on to
her skirt and entreating her not to go.
“Miss, dem’ll kill yu, fu Gawd sake don’ go wid dem.” But mamma showed
no sign of excitement or alarm and never seemed to hear the dreadful
things they said. They opened box after box in vain, but at last in the
box under all the rest they came on a bottle and the men shouted: “We
knew you were lying!” The finder struck the head off with one blow, and,
putting the bottle to his mouth, took a long draft. Then there was a
splutter and choking, and he got rid of it as quickly as possible, to
the amusement and joy of the others, who had envied his find. It was
our one treasured bottle of olive-oil, which had been put out of reach,
to be kept for some great occasion.
Upstairs in her bedroom my sister was having a trying time. She unlocked
her trunk to prevent its being ripped open with a sword, and looked on
while they ran through it, taking all her jewels and everything of
value, holding up each garment for examination and asking its uses, each
one being greeted by shouts of laughter. She, having recently come, had
not concealed or buried any of her things. After disposing of her big
trunk, they turned to a closet, where a man’s leather trunk was. They
asked for the key, and when she said she did not have it, they cut it
open, and there on top lay a sword. Then there were howls of: “We knew
you were lying. You said you had no arms.” Della only answered: “I did
not know what was in this trunk.” It was her brother-in-law Lewis Van
der Horst’s trunk. He had been killed fighting gallantly in Virginia,
and his trunk had been sent home by his friends to his brother without
the key.
All this time I was with another party, who were searching for liquor,
and I followed them into the garret. It was odd how impossible it was
not to follow them and see what they did. I was told afterward that in
most places the women shut themselves up in a room while they searched
the house; but, with us, we were irresistibly borne to keep up with them
and watch them. When I heard them tramping over the garret, the loose
boards rattling, I flew up myself and stood there while they opened
every box and trunk, taking anything of any value, every now and then
quarrelling over who should have a thing. I was in misery, for the
boards seemed to be crying aloud: “Take us up and you’ll find something.
Take us up.” Whenever they asked me anything I answered with some quick,
sharp speech which would intensely amuse any one but the questioner, who
generally relapsed into sulky silence. They seemed to be in great dread
of being surprised by Hampton’s cavalry, whom they spoke of as “the
devil, for you never knew where he was,” so they did everything very
rapidly.
All this time there were parties going all over the yard, running
ramrods into the ground to find buried things. My terror about that big
box of wine was intense as I saw them. They even went under the big
piazza at the back of the house and rammed every foot of the earth. It
was a marvel that they never thought of coming to the front, having come
up at the back of the house from the public road. They never even opened
the gate which separated the front yard from the back, and so the great
piano box was never found. Little Andrew we never had felt very sure of,
and so everything about the burying of things was kept from him. As they
left, Margaret and Nellie came in crying bitterly. They had taken every
trinket and treasure they had, and all their warm clothes. Margaret was
specially loud in her denunciation:
“I always bin hear dat de Yankees was gwine help de nigger! W’a’ kynd a
help yu call dis! Tek ebery ting I got in de wurld, my t’ree gold
broach,” etc., etc. Poor Margaret had sometimes been supposed to be
light-fingered, and she had returned from Wilmington with a good deal of
jewelry, which we wondered about; but now, poor soul, it was all gone.
For four days the army kept passing along that road, and we heard shouts
and shots and drums beating, and every moment expected another visit,
but, as I said, they moved in haste, always fearing to leave the main
road and be ambushed by Hampton’s ubiquitous scouts. We never went to
bed or took off our clothes during that time. We sat fully dressed in
the parlor, all night through, Phibby always sitting with us on the
floor near the door, leaning straight up against the wall, her legs
stretched out in front of her, nodding and praying. She was a great
comfort. Mamma tried to induce her to go to bed and sleep, saying:
“Phœbe, you have nothing to fear. They won’t hurt you.”
All her answer was: “Miss, yu tink I gwine lef’ yu fu dem weeked men fu
kill, no ma’am, not Phibby. I’ll stay right here en pertect yu.”
Mamma read calmly. Della slept on the sofa. I scribbled in my journal. I
will make a little extract here from the little paper book I carried in
my pocket. It seems very trivial and foolish; but here it is:
“March 8th, 1865.--Twelve o’clock! and we still sit whispering around
the fire, Phœbe on the floor nodding, Della with her feet extended
trying to rest on the sofa, and I on a stool scribbling, scribbling to
while away the time till dawn. Thank God, one more quiet day, and we so
hoped for a quiet night, but a little after nine Phœbe ran in saying she
heard them coming. Oh, the chill and terror that ran through me when I
heard that; but it proved a false alarm.... I never fully understood
terror until now, and yet every one says our experience of them is
mild.... They delight in making terrible threats of vengeance and seem
to gloat over our misery. Yesterday a captain was here who pretended to
be all kindness and sympathy over the treatment we had received from the
foragers.... He did not enter the house. We placed a chair on the piazza
and gave him what we had to eat. But when he began to talk, he seemed
almost worse than any other. He vowed never to take a prisoner, said he
would delight in shooting down a rebel prisoner and often did it! My
disgust was intense, but I struggled hard to keep cool and succeeded
somewhat. He asked, ‘Do you know what you are fighting for?’ I replied,
‘Existence.’ He said, ‘We won’t let you have it,’ with such a grin....
He said, ‘At the beginning of this war, I didn’t care a cent about a
nigger, but I’d rather fight for ten years longer than let the South
have her independence.’ Then, with a chuckle, he said, ‘But we’ll starve
you out, not in one place that we have visited have we left _three
meals_.’ At something Della said he exclaimed, ‘Oh, I know what you
mean, you mean the Almighty, but the Almighty has got nothing to do with
this war.’ Such blasphemy silenced us completely.”
The tales the negroes heard from one another were terrific, as to what
the Yankees had done, and what the negroes had done. We never saw any
one during this time but those in the yard. Little Andrew, whom we never
had felt sure of, behaved very well. We had thought he would probably go
off with the Yankees, but whether his experience of them had not been
such as to make him desire a closer knowledge I don’t know, but
certainly no one could have behaved better than he did, laying the table
with the few forks and spoons mamma had managed to hide, and bringing in
our scanty meals with as much dignity as if things were unchanged; and
he was a help, though he never expressed devotion or the contrary, only
brought in specially hair-raising stories of the outrages committed on
every side, many of which stories proved to have no foundation in fact.
At last the noises on the highway ceased, and we knew Sherman’s great
army had passed on toward the North.
We began to breathe freely and feel that we could go to bed at night and
sleep. At first we went to bed with all our clothes on, but gradually
we realized that the army had passed entirely, leaving no troops in the
country behind them. News began to come in, and we knew that Sherman had
burned Columbia and left a trail of desolation where he had passed. The
fear of the Confederate troops had kept them to a narrow strip of
country. It was like the path stripped by a tornado, narrow but complete
destruction in it. Mrs. Evans ventured over to make us a visit. She had
not yet assumed her natural proportions, but had lightened her burden so
that she could walk the half-mile between our houses. We were eager to
hear her experiences, but, to her intense disappointment, she had had
none! She had not seen a Yankee! It shows how careful they were not to
leave the main road for fear of ambush. She had prepared many brilliant,
severe speeches to make to them, for she had a very witty, sharp tongue
and was as bold as a lion, so that she felt very sore and aggrieved, and
when she heard of our experiences her blood boiled that we had not
lashed them with bitter words.
About four days after they passed Daddy Aleck reappeared with the
horses, safe and sound, but greatly distressed that he had waked hearing
shots near one morning, packed up his things quickly on his horses, and
taken them deeper in the swamp and left one of the side-saddles hanging
on a limb. Nelson also arrived, looking weary and blanched by his
experiences. Daddy Aleck was a naturally brave, combative nature and
very tough, but Nelson was a lover of peace and comfort, and camping out
in the swamp was no joy to him. He and Daddy Aleck were never friends
and distrusted each other, so they had not cared to go together.