Professor Le Conte[73] is an able auxiliary. He has undertaken to

supervise and carry on the powder-making enterprise—the very first

attempted in the Confederacy, and Mr. Chesnut is proud of it. It is a

brilliant success, thanks to Le Conte.

Mr. Chesnut receives anonymous letters urging him to arrest the Judge

as seditious. They say he is a dangerous and disaffected person. His

abuse of Jeff Davis and the Council is rabid. Mr. Chesnut laughs and

throws the letters into the fire. “Disaffected to Jeff Davis,” says he;

“disaffected to the Council, that don’t count. He knows what he is about;

he would not injure his country for the world.”

Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. These negro women have a chance here that

women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves—the “impropers”

can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these

colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How

delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy

we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded

creatures around us—such men as Legree and his women.

The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as far away from

them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that

missionaries could do to prevent and alleviate evils. The social evil

has not been suppressed in old England or in New England, in London or

in Boston. People in those places expect more virtue from a plantation

African than they can insure in practise among themselves with all their

own high moral surroundings—light, education, training, and support.

Lady Mary Montagu says, “Only men and women at last.” “Male and female,

created he them,” says the Bible. There are cruel, graceful, beautiful

mothers of angelic Evas North as well as South, I dare say. The Northern

men and women who came here were always hardest, for they expected an

African to work and behave as a white man. We do not.

I have often thought from observation truly that perfect beauty hardens

the heart, and as to grace, what so graceful as a cat, a tigress, or

a panther. Much love, admiration, worship hardens an idol’s heart. It

becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to

give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. I

speak now of what I have watched with horror and amazement.

Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used. Evas are

mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe’s imagination. People can’t love

things dirty, ugly, and repulsive, simply because they ought to do so,

but they can be good to them at a distance; that’s easy. You see, I can

not rise very high; I can only judge by what I see.

_March 14th._—Thank God for a ship! It has run the blockade with arms and

ammunition.

There are no negro sexual relations half so shocking as Mormonism. And

yet the United States Government makes no bones of receiving Mormons

into its sacred heart. Mr. Venable said England held her hand over

“the malignant and the turbaned Turk” to save and protect him, slaves,

seraglio, and all. But she rolls up the whites of her eyes at us when

slavery, bad as it is, is stepping out into freedom every moment through

Christian civilization. They do not grudge the Turk even his bag and

Bosphorus privileges. To a recalcitrant wife it is, “Here yawns the

sack; there rolls the sea,” etc. And France, the bold, the brave, the

ever free, she has not been so tender-footed in Algiers. But then the

“you are another” argument is a shabby one. “You see,” says Mary Preston

sagaciously, “we are white Christian descendants of Huguenots and

Cavaliers, and they expect of us different conduct.”

Went in Mrs. Preston’s landau to bring my boarding-school girls here

to dine. At my door met J. F., who wanted me then and there to promise

to help him with his commission or put him in the way of one. At the

carriage steps I was handed in by Gus Smith, who wants his brother made

commissary. The beauty of it all is they think I have some influence, and

I have not a particle. The subject of Mr. Chesnut’s military affairs,

promotions, etc., is never mentioned by me.

_March 15th._—When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren

Nelson, propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome

creature. He said he meant to be heard, so I walked back with him to the

drawing-room. They are wasting their time dancing attendance on me. I

can not help them. Let them shoulder their musket and go to the wars like

men.

After tea came “Mars Kit”—he said for a talk, but that Mr. Preston would

not let him have, for Mr. Preston had arrived some time before him. Mr.

Preston said “Mars Kit” thought it “bad form” to laugh. After that you

may be sure a laugh from “Mars Kit” was secured. Again and again, he was

forced to laugh with a will. I reversed Oliver Wendell Holmes’s good

resolution—never to be as funny as he could. I did my very utmost.

Mr. Venable interrupted the fun, which was fast and furious, with

the very best of bad news! Newbern shelled and burned, cotton,

turpentine—everything. There were 5,000 North Carolinians in the fray,

12,000 Yankees. Now there stands Goldsboro. One more step and we are

cut in two. The railroad is our backbone, like the Blue Ridge and the

Alleghanies, with which it runs parallel. So many discomforts, no wonder

we are down-hearted.

Mr. Venable thinks as we do—Garnett is our most thorough scholar; Lamar

the most original, and the cleverest of our men—L. Q. C. Lamar—time

fails me to write all his name. Then, there is R. M. T. Hunter. Muscoe

Russell Garnett and his Northern wife: that match was made at my house in

Washington when Garnett was a member of the United States Congress.

_March 17th._—Back to the Congaree House to await my husband, who has

made a rapid visit to the Wateree region. As we drove up Mr. Chesnut

said: “Did you see the stare of respectful admiration E. R. bestowed upon

you, so curiously prolonged? I could hardly keep my countenance.” “Yes,

my dear child, I feel the honor of it, though my individual self goes

for nothing in it. I am the wife of the man who has the appointing power

just now, with so many commissions to be filled. I am nearly forty, and

they do my understanding the credit to suppose I can be made to believe

they admire my mature charms. They think they fool me into thinking that

they believe me charming. There is hardly any farce in the world more

laughable.”

Last night a house was set on fire; last week two houses. “The red cock

crows in the barn!” Our troubles thicken, indeed, when treachery comes

from that dark quarter.

When the President first offered Johnston Pettigrew a

brigadier-generalship, his answer was: “Not yet. Too many men are ahead

of me who have earned their promotion in the field. I will come after

them, not before. So far I have done nothing to merit reward,” etc.

He would not take rank when he could get it. I fancy he may cool his

heels now waiting for it. He was too high and mighty. There was another

conscientious man—Burnet, of Kentucky. He gave up his regiment to his

lieutenant-colonel when he found the lieutenant-colonel could command the

regiment and Burnet could not maneuver it in the field. He went into the

fight simply as an aide to Floyd. Modest merit just now is at a premium.

William Gilmore Simms is here; read us his last poetry; have forgotten

already what it was about. It was not tiresome, however, and that is a

great thing when people will persist in reading their own rhymes.

I did not hear what Mr. Preston was saying. “The last piece of Richmond

news,” Mr. Chesnut said as he went away, and he looked so fagged out I

asked no questions. I knew it was bad.

At daylight there was a loud knocking at my door. I hurried on a

dressing-gown and flew to open the door. “Mrs. Chesnut, Mrs. M. says

please don’t forget her son. Mr. Chesnut, she hears, has come back.

Please get her son a commission. He must have an office.” I shut the

door in the servant’s face. If I had the influence these foolish people

attribute to me why should I not help my own? I have a brother, two

brothers-in-law, and no end of kin, all gentlemen privates, and privates

they would stay to the end of time before they said a word to me about

commissions. After a long talk we were finally disgusted and the men went

off to the bulletin-board. Whatever else it shows, good or bad, there

is always woe for some house in the killed and wounded. We have need of

stout hearts. I feel a sinking of mine as we drive near the board.

_March 18th._—My war archon is beset for commissions, and somebody says

for every one given, you make one ingrate and a thousand enemies.

As I entered Miss Mary Stark’s I whispered: “He has promised to vote

for Louis.” What radiant faces. To my friend, Miss Mary said, “Your

son-in-law, what is he doing for his country?” “He is a tax collector.”

Then spoke up the stout old girl: “Look at my cheek; it is red with

blushing for you. A great, hale, hearty young man! Fie on him! fie

on him! for shame! Tell his wife; run him out of the house with a

broomstick; send him down to the coast at least.” Fancy my cheeks. I

could not raise my eyes to the poor lady, so mercilessly assaulted. My

face was as hot with compassion as the outspoken Miss Mary pretended hers

to be with vicarious mortification.

Went to see sweet and saintly Mrs. Bartow. She read us a letter from

Mississippi—not so bad: “More men there than the enemy suspected, and

torpedoes to blow up the wretches when they came.” Next to see Mrs.

Izard. She had with her a relative just from the North. This lady had

asked Seward for passports, and he told her to “hold on a while; the road

to South Carolina will soon be open to all, open and safe.” To-day Mrs.

Arthur Hayne heard from her daughter that Richmond is to be given up.

Mrs. Buell is her daughter.

Met Mr. Chesnut, who said: “New Madrid[74] has been given up. I do not

know any more than the dead where New Madrid is. It is bad, all the same,

this giving up. I can’t stand it. The hemming-in process is nearly

complete. The ring of fire is almost unbroken.”

Mr. Chesnut’s negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them.

He pretended to believe them. He says one man can not do it. The whole

country must agree to it. He would trust such as he would select, and

he would give so many acres of land and his freedom to each one as he

enlisted.

Mrs. Albert Rhett came for an office for her son John. I told her Mr.

Chesnut would never propose a kinsman for office, but if any one else

would bring him forward he would vote for him certainly, as he is so

eminently fit for position. Now he is a private.

_March 19th._—He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a

tight place. This war was a volunteer business. To-morrow conscription

begins—the _dernier ressort_. The President has remodeled his Cabinet,

leaving Bragg for North Carolina. His War Minister is Randolph,

of Virginia. A Union man _par excellence_, Watts, of Alabama, is

Attorney-General. And now, too late by one year, when all the mechanics

are in the army, Mallory begins to telegraph Captain Ingraham to build

ships at any expense. We are locked in and can not get “the requisites

for naval architecture,” says a magniloquent person.

Henry Frost says all hands wink at cotton going out. Why not send it

out and buy ships? “Every now and then there is a holocaust of cotton

burning,” says the magniloquent. Conscription has waked the Rip Van

Winkles. The streets of Columbia were never so crowded with men. To fight

and to be made to fight are different things.

To my small wits, whenever people were persistent, united, and rose in

their might, no general, however great, succeeded in subjugating them.

Have we not swamps, forests, rivers, mountains—every natural barrier?

The Carthaginians begged for peace because they were a luxurious people

and could not endure the hardship of war, though the enemy suffered as

sharply as they did! “Factions among themselves” is the rock on which we

split. Now for the great soul who is to rise up and lead us. Why tarry

his footsteps?

_March 20th._—The Merrimac is now called the Virginia. I think these

changes of names so confusing and so senseless. Like the French “Royal

Bengal Tiger,” “National Tiger,” etc. _Rue_ this, and next day _Rue_

that, the very days and months a symbol, and nothing signified.

I was lying on the sofa in my room, and two men slowly walking up

and down the corridor talked aloud as if necessarily all rooms were

unoccupied at this midday hour. I asked Maum Mary who they were. “Yeadon

and Barnwell Rhett, Jr.” They abused the Council roundly, and my

husband’s name arrested my attention. Afterward, when Yeadon attacked

Mr. Chesnut, Mr. Chesnut surprised him by knowing beforehand all he had

to say. Naturally I had repeated the loud interchange of views I had

overheard in the corridor.

First, Nathan Davis called. Then Gonzales, who presented a fine,

soldierly appearance in his soldier clothes, and the likeness to

Beauregard was greater than ever. Nathan, all the world knows, is by

profession a handsome man.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF CONFEDERATE WOMEN.

MISS S. B. C. PRESTON.

MISS ISABELLA D. MARTIN.

MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS.

MRS. LOUISA S. McCORD.

MRS. FRANCIS W. PICKENS.

MRS. DAVID R. WILLIAMS. (The author’s sister, Kate.)]

General Gonzales told us what in the bitterness of his soul he had

written to Jeff Davis. He regretted that he had not been his classmate;

then he might have been as well treated as Northrop. In any case he

would not have been refused a brigadiership, citing General Trapier and

Tom Drayton. He had worked for it, had earned it; they had not. To his

surprise, Mr. Davis answered him, and in a sharp note of four pages. Mr.

Davis demanded from whom he quoted, “not his classmate.” General Gonzales

responded, “from the public voice only.” Now he will fight for us all

the same, but go on demanding justice from Jeff Davis until he get his

dues—at least, until one of them gets his dues, for he means to go on

hitting Jeff Davis over the head whenever he has a chance.

“I am afraid,” said I, “you will find it a hard head to crack.” He

replied in his flowery Spanish way: “Jeff Davis will be the sun,

radiating all light, heat, and patronage; he will not be a moon

reflecting public opinion, for he has the soul of a despot; he delights

to spite public opinion. See, people abused him for making Crittenden

brigadier. Straightway he made him major-general, and just after a

blundering, besotted defeat, too.” Also, he told the President in that

letter: “Napoleon made his generals after great deeds on their part, and

not for having been educated at St. Cyr, or Brie, or the Polytechnique,”

etc., etc. Nathan Davis sat as still as a Sioux warrior, not an eyelash

moved. And yet he said afterward that he was amused while the Spaniard

railed at his great namesake.

Gonzales said: “Mrs. Slidell would proudly say that she was a Creole.

They were such fools, they thought Creole meant—” Here Nathan interrupted

pleasantly: “At the St. Charles, in New Orleans, on the bill of fare were

‘Creole eggs.’ When they were brought to a man who had ordered them, with

perfect simplicity, he held them up, ‘Why, they are only hens’ eggs,

after all.’ What in Heaven’s name he expected them to be, who can say?”

smiled Nathan the elegant.

One lady says (as I sit reading in the drawing-room window while Maum

Mary puts my room to rights): “I clothe my negroes well. I could not bear

to see them in dirt and rags; it would be unpleasant to me.” Another

lady: “Yes. Well, so do I. But not fine clothes, you know. I feel—now—it

was one of our sins as a nation, the way we indulged them in sinful

finery. We will be punished for it.”

Last night, Mrs. Pickens met General Cooper. Madam knew General Cooper

only as our adjutant-general, and Mr. Mason’s brother-in-law. In her

slow, graceful, impressive way, her beautiful eyes eloquent with

feeling, she inveighed against Mr. Davis’s wickedness in always sending

men born at the North to command at Charleston. General Cooper is on his

way to make a tour of inspection there now. The dear general settled his

head on his cravat with the aid of his forefinger; he tugged rather more

nervously with the something that is always wrong inside of his collar,

and looked straight up through his spectacles. Some one crossed the room,

stood back of Mrs. Pickens, and murmured in her ear, “General Cooper was

born in New York.” Sudden silence.

Dined with General Cooper at the Prestons. General Hampton and Blanton

Duncan were there also; the latter a thoroughly free-and-easy Western

man, handsome and clever; more audacious than either, perhaps. He pointed

to Buck—Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston. “What’s that girl laughing

at?” Poor child, how amazed she looked. He bade them “not despair; all

the nice young men would not be killed in the war; there would be a few

left. For himself, he could give them no hope; Mrs. Duncan was uncommonly

healthy.” Mrs. Duncan is also lovely. We have seen her.

_March 24th._—I was asked to the Tognos’ tea, so refused a drive with

Mary Preston. As I sat at my solitary casemate, waiting for the time to

come for the Tognos, saw Mrs. Preston’s landau pass, and Mr. Venable

making Mary laugh at some of his army stories, as only Mr. Venable can.

Already I felt that I had paid too much for my whistle—that is, the

Togno tea. The Gibbeses, Trenholms, Edmund Rhett, there. Edmund Rhett

has very fine eyes and makes fearful play with them. He sits silent and

motionless, with his hands on his knees, his head bent forward, and his

eyes fixed upon you. I could think of nothing like it but a setter and a

covey of partridges.

As to President Davis, he sank to profounder deeps of abuse of him than

even Gonzales. I quoted Yancey: “A crew may not like their captain, but

if they are mad enough to mutiny while a storm is raging, all hands are

bound to go to the bottom.” After that I contented myself with a mild

shake of the head when I disagreed with him, and at last I began to shake

so persistently it amounted to incipient palsy. “Jeff Davis,” he said,

“is conceited, wrong-headed, wranglesome, obstinate—a traitor.” “Now I

have borne much in silence,” said I at last, “but that is pernicious

nonsense. Do not let us waste any more time listening to your quotations

from the Mercury.”

He very good-naturedly changed the subject, which was easy just then,

for a delicious supper was on the table ready for us. But Doctor Gibbes

began anew the fighting. He helped me to some _pâté_—“Not _foie gras_,”

said Madame Togno, “_pâté perdreaux_.” Doctor Gibbes, however, gave it

a flavor of his own. “Eat it,” said he, “it is good for you; rich and

wholesome; healthy as cod-liver oil.”

A queer thing happened. At the post-office a man saw a small boy open

with a key the box of the Governor and the Council, take the contents of

the box and run for his life. Of course, this man called to the urchin to

stop. The urchin did not heed, but seeing himself pursued, began tearing

up the letters and papers. He was caught and the fragments were picked

up. Finding himself a prisoner, he pointed out the negro who gave him the

key. The negro was arrested.

Governor Pickens called to see me to-day. We began with Fort Sumter. For

an hour did we hammer at that fortress. We took it, gun by gun. He was

very pleasant and friendly in his manner.

James Chesnut has been so nice this winter; so reasonable and

considerate—that is, for a man. The night I came from Madame Togno’s,

instead of making a row about the lateness of the hour, he said he was

“so wide awake and so hungry.” I put on my dressing-gown and scrambled

some eggs, etc., there on our own fire. And with our feet on the fender

and the small supper-table between us, we enjoyed the supper and glorious

gossip. Rather a pleasant state of things when one’s own husband is in

good humor and cleverer than all the men outside.

This afternoon, the _entente cordiale_ still subsisting, Maum Mary

beckoned me out mysteriously, but Mr. Chesnut said: “Speak out, old

woman; nobody here but myself.” “Mars Nathum Davis wants to speak to

her,” said she. So I hurried off to the drawing-room, Maum Mary flapping

her down-at-the-heels shoes in my wake. “He’s gwine bekase somebody

done stole his boots. How could he stay bedout boots?” So Nathan said

good-by. Then we met General Gist, Maum Mary still hovering near, and

I congratulated him on being promoted. He is now a brigadier. This he

received with modest complaisance. “I knowed he was a general,” said Maum

Mary as he passed on, “he told me as soon as he got in his room befo’ his

boy put down his trunks.”

As Nathan, the unlucky, said good-by, he informed me that a Mr. Reed from

Montgomery was in the drawing-room and wanted to see me. Mr. Reed had

traveled with our foreign envoy, Yancey. I was keen for news from abroad.

Mr. Reed settled that summarily. “Mr. Yancey says we need not have one

jot of hope. He could bowstring Mallory for not buying arms in time. The

very best citizens wanted to depose the State government and take things

into their own hands, the powers that be being inefficient. Western men

are hurrying to the front, bestirring themselves. In two more months we

shall be ready.” What could I do but laugh? I do hope the enemy will be

considerate and charitable enough to wait for us.

Mr. Reed’s calm faith in the power of Mr. Yancey’s eloquence was

beautiful to see. He asked for Mr. Chesnut. I went back to our rooms,

swelling with news like a pouter pigeon. Mr. Chesnut said: “Well! four

hours—a call from Nathan Davis of four hours!” Men are too absurd! So I

bear the honors of my forty years gallantly. I can but laugh. “Mr. Nathan

Davis went by the five-o’clock train,” I said; “it is now about six or

seven, maybe eight. I have had so many visitors. Mr. Reed, of Alabama, is

asking for you out there.” He went without a word, but I doubt if he went

to see Mr. Reed, my laughing had made him so angry.

At last Lincoln threatens us with a proclamation abolishing

slavery[75]—here in the free Southern Confederacy; and they say McClellan

is deposed. They want more fighting—I mean the government, whose skins

are safe, they want more fighting, and trust to luck for the skill of the

new generals.

_March 28th._—I did leave with regret Maum Mary. She was such a good,

well-informed old thing. My Molly, though perfection otherwise, does

not receive the confidential communications of new-made generals at the

earliest moment. She is of very limited military information. Maum Mary

was the comfort of my life. She saved me from all trouble as far as she

could. Seventy, if she is a day, she is spry and active as a cat, of a

curiosity that knows no bounds, black and clean; also, she knows a joke

at first sight, and she is honest. I fancy the negroes are ashamed to rob

people as careless as James Chesnut and myself.

One night, just before we left the Congaree House, Mr. Chesnut had

forgotten to tell some all-important thing to Governor Gist, who was

to leave on a public mission next day. So at the dawn of day he put on

his dressing-gown and went to the Governor’s room. He found the door

unlocked and the Governor fast asleep. He shook him. Half-asleep, the

Governor sprang up and threw his arms around Mr. Chesnut’s neck and

said: “Honey, is it you?” The mistake was rapidly set right, and the

bewildered plenipotentiary was given his instructions. Mr. Chesnut came

into my room, threw himself on the sofa, and nearly laughed himself to

extinction, imitating again and again the pathetic tone of the Governor’s

greeting.

Mr. Chesnut calls Lawrence “Adolphe,” but says he is simply perfect as a

servant. Mary Stevens said: “I thought Cousin James the laziest man alive

until I knew his man, Lawrence.” Lawrence will not move an inch or lift

a finger for any one but his master. Mrs. Middleton politely sent him

on an errand; Lawrence, too, was very polite; hours after, she saw him

sitting on the fence of the front yard. “Didn’t you go?” she asked. “No,

ma’am. I am waiting for Mars Jeems.” Mrs. Middleton calls him now, “Mr.

Take-it-Easy.”

My very last day’s experience at the Congaree. I was waiting for Mars

Jeems in the drawing-room when a lady there declared herself to be the

wife of an officer in Clingman’s regiment. A gentleman who seemed quite

friendly with her, told her all Mr. Chesnut said, thought, intended to

do, wrote, and _felt_. I asked: “Are you certain of all these things

you say of Colonel Chesnut?” The man hardly deigned to notice this

impertinent interruption from a stranger presuming to speak but who had

not been introduced! After he went out, the wife of Clingman’s officer

was seized with an intuitive curiosity. “Madam, will you tell me your

name?” I gave it, adding, “I dare say I showed myself an intelligent

listener when my husband’s affairs were under discussion.” At first, I

refused to give my name because it would have embarrassed her friend if

she had told him who I was. The man was Mr. Chesnut’s secretary, but I

had never seen him before.

A letter from Kate says she had been up all night preparing David’s

things. Little Serena sat up and helped her mother. They did not know

that they would ever see him again. Upon reading it, I wept and James

Chesnut cursed the Yankees.

Gave the girls a quantity of flannel for soldiers’ shirts; also a string

of pearls to be raffled for at the Gunboat Fair. Mary Witherspoon has

sent a silver tea-pot. We do not spare our precious things now. Our

silver and gold, what are they?—when we give up to war our beloved.

_April 2d._—Dr. Trezevant, attending Mr. Chesnut, who was ill, came and

found his patient gone; he could not stand the news of that last battle.

He got up and dressed, weak as he was, and went forth to hear what he

could for himself. The doctor was angry with me for permitting this, and

more angry with him for such folly. I made him listen to the distinction

between feminine folly and virulent vagaries and nonsense. He said: “He

will certainly be salivated after all that calomel out in this damp

weather.”

To-day, the ladies in their landaus were bitterly attacked by the morning

paper for lolling back in their silks and satins, with tall footmen in

livery, driving up and down the streets while the poor soldiers’ wives

were on the sidewalks. It is the old story of rich and poor! My little

barouche is not here, nor has James Chesnut any of his horses here, but

then I drive every day with Mrs. McCord and Mrs. Preston, either of whose

turnouts fills the bill. The Governor’s carriage, horses, servants, etc.,

are splendid—just what they should be. Why not?

_April 14th._—Our Fair is in full blast. We keep a restaurant. Our

waitresses are Mary and Buck Preston, Isabella Martin, and Grace Elmore.

_April 15th._—Trescott is too clever ever to be a bore; that was proved

to-day, for he stayed two hours; as usual, Mr. Chesnut said “four.”

Trescott was very surly; calls himself ex-Secretary of State of the

United States; now, nothing in particular of South Carolina or the

Confederate States. Then he yawned, “What a bore this war is. I wish it

was ended, one way or another.” He speaks of going across the border and

taking service in Mexico. “Rubbish, not much Mexico for you,” I answered.

Another patriot came then and averred, “I will take my family back to

town, that we may all surrender together. I gave it up early in the

spring.” Trescott made a face behind backs, and said: “_Lache!_”

The enemy have flanked Beauregard at Nashville. There is grief enough for

Albert Sidney Johnston now; we begin to see what we have lost. We were

pushing them into the river when General Johnston was wounded. Beauregard

was lying in his tent, at the rear, in a green sickness—melancholy—but no

matter what the name of the malady. He was too slow to move, and lost all

the advantage gained by our dead hero.[76] Without him there is no head

to our Western army. Pulaski has fallen. What more is there to fall?

_April 15th._—Mrs. Middleton: “How did you settle Molly’s little

difficulty with Mrs. McMahan, that ‘piece of her mind’ that Molly gave

our landlady?” “Oh, paid our way out of it, of course, and I apologized

for Molly!”

Gladden, the hero of the Palmettos in Mexico, is killed. Shiloh has been

a dreadful blow to us. Last winter Stephen, my brother, had it in his

power to do such a nice thing for Colonel Gladden. In the dark he heard

his name, also that he had to walk twenty-five miles in Alabama mud or go

on an ammunition wagon. So he introduced himself as a South Carolinian

to Colonel Gladden, whom he knew only by reputation as colonel of the

Palmetto regiment in the Mexican war. And they drove him in his carriage

comfortably to where he wanted to go—a night drive of fifty miles for

Stephen, for he had the return trip, too. I would rather live in Siberia,

worse still, in Sahara, than live in a country surrendered to Yankees.

The Carolinian says the conscription bill passed by Congress is fatal to

our liberties as a people. Let us be a people “certain and sure,” as poor

Tom B. said, and then talk of rebelling against our home government.

Sat up all night. Read Eothen straight through, our old Wiley and Putnam

edition that we bought in London in 1845. How could I sleep? The power

they are bringing to bear against our country is tremendous. Its weight

may be irresistible—I dare not think of that, however.

_April 21st._—Have been ill. One day I dined at Mrs. Preston’s, _pâté

de foie gras_ and partridge prepared for me as I like them. I had been

awfully depressed for days and could not sleep at night for anxiety, but

I did not know that I was bodily ill. Mrs. Preston came home with me.

She said emphatically: “Molly, if your mistress is worse in the night

send for me instantly.” I thought it very odd. I could not breathe if I

attempted to lie down, and very soon I lost my voice. Molly raced out and

sent Lawrence for Doctor Trezevant. She said I had the croup. The doctor

said, “congestion of the lungs.”

So here I am, stranded, laid by the heels. Battle after battle has

occurred, disaster after disaster. Every morning’s paper is enough to

kill a well woman and age a strong and hearty one.

To-day, the waters of this stagnant pool were wildly stirred. The

President telegraphed for my husband to come on to Richmond, and offered

him a place on his staff. I was a joyful woman. It was a way opened by

Providence from this Slough of Despond, this Council whose counsel no

one takes. I wrote to Mr. Davis, “With thanks, and begging your pardon,

how I would like to go.” Mrs. Preston agrees with me, Mr. Chesnut ought

to go. Through Mr. Chesnut the President might hear many things to the

advantage of our State, etc.

Letter from Quinton Washington. That was the best tonic yet. He writes

so cheerfully. We have fifty thousand men on the Peninsula and McClellan

eighty thousand. We expect that much disparity of numbers. We can stand

that.

_April 23d._—On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged seventeen;

consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was thirty-nine. I saw a

wedding to-day from my window, which opens on Trinity Church. Nanna Shand

married a Doctor Wilson. Then, a beautiful bevy of girls rushed into my

room. Such a flutter and a chatter. Well, thank Heaven for a wedding. It

is a charming relief from the dismal litany of our daily song.

A letter to-day from our octogenarian at Mulberry. His nephew, Jack Deas,

had two horses shot under him; the old Colonel has his growl, “That’s

enough for glory, and no hurt after all.” He ends, however, with his

never-failing refrain: We can’t fight all the world; two and two only

make four; it can’t make a thousand; numbers will not lie. He says he

has lost half a million already in railroad bonds, bank stock, Western

notes of hand, not to speak of negroes to be freed, and lands to be

confiscated, for he takes the gloomiest views of all things.

_April 26th._—Doleful dumps, alarm-bells ringing. Telegrams say the

mortar fleet has passed the forts at New Orleans. Down into the very

depths of despair are we.

_April 27th._—New Orleans gone[77] and with it the Confederacy. That

Mississippi ruins us if lost. The Confederacy has been done to death by

the politicians. What wonder we are lost.

The soldiers have done their duty. All honor to the army. Statesmen as

busy as bees about their own places, or their personal honor, too busy

to see the enemy at a distance. With a microscope they were examining

their own interests, or their own wrongs, forgetting the interests of the

people they represented. They were concocting newspaper paragraphs to

injure the government. No matter how vital it may be, nothing can be kept

from the enemy. They must publish themselves, night and day, what they

are doing, or the omniscient Buncombe will forget them.

This fall of New Orleans means utter ruin to the private fortunes of the

Prestons. Mr. Preston came from New Orleans so satisfied with Mansfield

Lovell and the tremendous steam-rams he saw there. While in New Orleans

Burnside offered Mr. Preston five hundred thousand dollars, a debt due to

him from Burnside, and he refused to take it. He said the money was safer

in Burnside’s hands than his. And so it may prove, so ugly is the outlook

now. Burnside is wide awake; he is not a man to be caught napping.

Mary Preston was saying she had asked the Hamptons how they relished

the idea of being paupers. If the country is saved none of us will care

for that sort of thing. Philosophical and patriotic, Mr. Chesnut came

in, saying: “Conrad has been telegraphed from New Orleans that the

great iron-clad Louisiana went down at the first shot.” Mr. Chesnut and

Mary Preston walked off, first to the bulletin-board and then to the

Prestons’.

_April 29th._—A grand smash, the news from New Orleans fatal to us. Met

Mr. Weston. He wanted to know where he could find a place of safety for

two hundred negroes. I looked into his face to see if he were in earnest;

then to see if he were sane. There was a certain set of two hundred

negroes that had grown to be a nuisance. Apparently all the white men of

the family had felt bound to stay at home to take care of them. There

are people who still believe negroes property—like Noah’s neighbors, who

insisted that the Deluge would only be a little shower after all.

These negroes, however, were Plowden Weston’s, a totally different part

of speech. He gave field-rifles to one company and forty thousand dollars

to another. He is away with our army at Corinth. So I said: “You may rely

upon Mr. Chesnut, who will assist you to his uttermost in finding a home

for these people. Nothing belonging to that patriotic gentleman shall

come to grief if we have to take charge of them on our own place.” Mr.

Chesnut did get a place for them, as I said he would.

Had to go to the Governor’s or they would think we had hoisted the

black flag. Heard there we are going to be beaten as Cortez beat the

Mexicans—by superior arms. Mexican bows and arrows made a poor showing in

the face of Spanish accoutrements. Our enemies have such superior weapons

of war, we hardly any but what we capture from them in the fray. The

Saxons and the Normans were in the same plight.

War seems a game of chess, but we have an unequal number of pawns to

begin with. We have knights, kings, queens, bishops, and castles enough.

But our skilful generals, whenever they can not arrange the board to suit

them exactly, burn up everything and march away. We want them to save the

country. They seem to think their whole duty is to destroy ships and save

the army.

Mr. Robert Barnwell wrote that he had to hang his head for South

Carolina. We had not furnished our quota of the new levy, five thousand

men. To-day Colonel Chesnut published his statement to show that we have

sent thirteen thousand, instead of the mere number required of us; so Mr.

Barnwell can hold up his head again.

_April 30th._—The last day of this month of calamities. Lovell left the

women and children to be shelled, and took the army to a safe place. I

do not understand why we do not send the women and children to the safe

place and let the army stay where the fighting is to be. Armies are to

save, not to be saved. At least, to be saved is not their _raison d’être_

exactly. If this goes on the spirit of our people will be broken. One ray

of comfort comes from Henry Marshall. “Our Army of the Peninsula is fine;

so good I do not think McClellan will venture to attack it.” So mote it

be.

_May 6th._—Mine is a painful, self-imposed task: but why write when I

have nothing to chronicle but disaster?[78] So I read instead: First,

Consuelo, then Columba, two ends of the pole certainly, and then a

translated edition of Elective Affinities. Food enough for thought in

every one of this odd assortment of books.

At the Prestons’, where I am staying (because Mr. Chesnut has gone to see

his crabbed old father, whom he loves, and who is reported ill), I met

Christopher Hampton. He tells us Wigfall is out on a war-path; wants them

to strike for Maryland. The President’s opinion of the move is not given.

Also Mr. Hampton met the first lieutenant of the Kirkwoods, E. M. Boykin.

Says he is just the same man he was in the South Carolina College. In

whatever company you may meet him, he is the pleasantest man there.

A telegram reads: “We have repulsed the enemy at Williamsburg.”[79] Oh,

if we could drive them back “to their ain countree!” Richmond was hard

pressed this day. The Mercury of to-day says, “Jeff Davis now treats all

men as if they were idiotic insects.”

Mary Preston said all sisters quarreled. No, we never quarrel, I and

mine. We keep all our bitter words for our enemies. We are frank

heathens; we hate our enemies and love our friends. Some people (our

kind) can never make up after a quarrel; hard words once only and

all is over. To us forgiveness is impossible. Forgiveness means calm

indifference; philosophy, while love lasts. Forgiveness of love’s

wrongs is impossible. Those dutiful wives who piously overlook—well,

everything—do not care one fig for their husbands. I settled that in my

own mind years ago. Some people think it magnanimous to praise their

enemies and to show their impartiality and justice by acknowledging the

faults of their friends. I am for the simple rule, the good old plan. I

praise whom I love and abuse whom I hate.

Mary Preston has been translating Schiller aloud. We are provided with

Bulwer’s translation, Mrs. Austin’s, Coleridge’s, and Carlyle’s, and we

show how each renders the passage Mary is to convert into English. In

Wallenstein at one point of the Max and Thekla scene, I like Carlyle

better than Coleridge, though they say Coleridge’s Wallenstein is the

only translation in the world half so good as the original. Mrs. Barstow

repeated some beautiful scraps by Uhland, which I had never heard before.

She is to write them for us. Peace, and a literary leisure for my old

age, unbroken by care and anxiety!

General Preston accused me of degenerating into a boarding-house gossip,

and is answered triumphantly by his daughters: “But, papa, one you love

to gossip with full well.”

Hampton estate has fifteen hundred negroes on Lake Washington,

Mississippi. Hampton girls talking in the language of James’s novels:

“Neither Wade nor Preston—that splendid boy!—would lay a lance in

rest—or couch it, which is the right phrase for fighting, to preserve

slavery. They hate it as we do.” “What are they fighting for?” “Southern

rights—whatever that is. And they do not want to be understrappers

forever to the Yankees. They talk well enough about it, but I forget what

they say.” Johnny Chesnut says: “No use to give a reason—a fellow could

not stay away from the fight—not well.” It takes four negroes to wait on

Johnny satisfactorily.

* * * * *

It is this giving up that kills me. Norfolk they talk of now; why not

Charleston next? I read in a Western letter, “Not Beauregard, but the

soldiers who stopped to drink the whisky they had captured from the

enemy, lost us Shiloh.” Cock Robin is as dead as he ever will be now;

what matters it who killed him?

_May 12th._—Mr. Chesnut says he is very glad he went to town. Everything

in Charleston is so much more satisfactory than it is reported. Troops

are in good spirits. It will take a lot of ironclads to take that city.

Isaac Hayne said at dinner yesterday that both Beauregard and the

President had a great opinion of Mr. Chesnut’s natural ability for

strategy and military evolution. Hon. Mr. Barnwell concurred; that is,

Mr. Barnwell had been told so by the President. “Then why did not the

President offer me something better than an aideship?” “I heard he

offered to make you a general last year, and you said you could not go

over other men’s shoulders until you had earned promotion. You are too

hard to please.” “No, not exactly that, I was only offered a colonelcy,

and Mr. Barnwell persuaded me to stick to the Senate; then he wanted my

place, and between the two stools I fell to the ground.”

My Molly will forget Lige and her babies, too. I asked her who sent me

that beautiful bouquet I found on my center-table. “I give it to you.

’Twas give to me.” And Molly was all wriggle, giggle, blush.

_May 18th._—Norfolk has been burned and the Merrimac sunk without

striking a blow since her _coup d’état_ in Hampton Roads. Read Milton.

See the speech of Adam to Eve in a new light. Women will not stay at

home; will go out to see and be seen, even if it be by the devil himself.

Very encouraging letters from Hon. Mr. Memminger and from L. Q.

Washington. They tell the same story in very different words. It amounts

to this: “Not one foot of Virginia soil is to be given up without a

bitter fight for it. We have one hundred and five thousand men in all,

McClellan one hundred and ninety thousand. We can stand that disparity.”

What things I have been said to have said! Mr. —— heard me make scoffing

remarks about the Governor and the Council—or he thinks he heard me.

James Chesnut wrote him a note that my name was to be kept out of

it—indeed, that he was never to mention my name again under any possible

circumstances. It was all preposterous nonsense, but it annoyed my

husband amazingly. He said it was a scheme to use my chatter to his

injury. He was very kind about it. He knows my real style so well that he

can always tell my real impudence from what is fabricated for me.

There is said to be an order from Butler[80] turning over the women

of New Orleans to his soldiers. Thus is the measure of his iniquities

filled. We thought that generals always restrained, by shot or sword if

need be, the brutality of soldiers. This hideous, cross-eyed beast orders

his men to treat the ladies of New Orleans as women of the town—to punish

them, he says, for their insolence.

Footprints on the boundaries of another world once more. Willie Taylor,

before he left home for the army, fancied one day—_day_, remember—that

he saw Albert Rhett standing by his side. He recoiled from the ghostly

presence. “You need not do that, Willie. You will soon be as I am.”

Willie rushed into the next room to tell them what had happened, and

fainted. It had a very depressing effect upon him. And now the other day

he died in Virginia.

_May 24th._—The enemy are landing at Georgetown. With a little more

audacity where could they not land? But we have given them such a scare,

they are cautious. If it be true, I hope some cool-headed white men will

make the negroes save the rice for us. It is so much needed. They say

it might have been done at Port Royal with a little more energy. South

Carolinians have pluck enough, but they only work by fits and starts;

there is no continuous effort; they can’t be counted on for steady work.

They will stop to play—or enjoy life in some shape.

Without let or hindrance Halleck is being reenforced. Beauregard,

unmolested, was making some fine speeches—and issuing proclamations,

while we were fatuously looking for him to make a tiger’s spring on

Huntsville. Why not? Hope springs eternal in the Southern breast.

My Hebrew friend, Mem Cohen, has a son in the war. He is in John

Chesnut’s company. Cohen is a high name among the Jews: it means Aaron.

She has long fits of silence, and is absent-minded. If she is suddenly

roused, she is apt to say, with overflowing eyes and clasped hands, “If

it please God to spare his life.” Her daughter is the sweetest little

thing. The son is the mother’s idol. Mrs. Cohen was Miriam de Leon. I

have known her intimately all my life.

Mrs. Bartow, the widow of Colonel Bartow, who was killed at Manassas,

was Miss Berrien, daughter of Judge Berrien, of Georgia. She is now in

one of the departments here, cutting bonds—Confederate bonds—for five

hundred Confederate dollars a year, a penniless woman. Judge Carroll, her

brother-in-law, has been urgent with her to come and live in his home.

He has a large family and she will not be an added burden to him. In

spite of all he can say, she will not forego her resolution. She will be

independent. She is a resolute little woman, with the softest, silkiest

voice and ways, and clever to the last point.

Columbia is the place for good living, pleasant people, pleasant dinners,

pleasant drives. I feel that I have put the dinners in the wrong place.

They are the climax of the good things here. This is the most hospitable

place in the world, and the dinners are worthy of it.

In Washington, there was an endless succession of state dinners. I

was kindly used. I do not remember ever being condemned to two dull

neighbors: on one side or the other was a clever man; so I liked

Washington dinners.

In Montgomery, there were a few dinners—Mrs. Pollard’s, for instance,

but the society was not smoothed down or in shape. Such as it was it

was given over to balls and suppers. In Charleston, Mr. Chesnut went to

gentlemen’s dinners all the time; no ladies present. Flowers were sent to

me, and I was taken to drive and asked to tea. There could not have been

nicer suppers, more perfect of their kind than were to be found at the

winding up of those festivities.

In Richmond, there were balls, which I did not attend—very few to which

I was asked: the MacFarlands’ and Lyons’s, all I can remember. James

Chesnut dined out nearly every day. But then the breakfasts—the Virginia

breakfasts—where were always pleasant people. Indeed, I have had a good

time everywhere—always clever people, and people I liked, and everybody

so good to me.

Here in Columbia, family dinners are the specialty. You call, or they

pick you up and drive home with you. “Oh, stay to dinner!” and you stay

gladly. They send for your husband, and he comes willingly. Then comes

a perfect dinner. You do not see how it could be improved; and yet they

have not had time to alter things or add because of the unexpected

guests. They have everything of the best—silver, glass, china, table

linen, and damask, etc. And then the planters live “within themselves,”

as they call it. From the plantations come mutton, beef, poultry, cream,

butter, eggs, fruits, and vegetables.

It is easy to live here, with a cook who has been sent for training

to the best eating-house in Charleston. Old Mrs. Chesnut’s Romeo was

apprenticed at Jones’s. I do not know where Mrs. Preston’s got his

degree, but he deserves a medal.

At the Prestons’, James Chesnut induced Buck to declaim something about

Joan of Arc, which she does in a manner to touch all hearts. While she

was speaking, my husband turned to a young gentleman who was listening to

the chatter of several girls, and said: “_Écoutez!_” The youth stared at

him a moment in bewilderment; then, gravely rose and began turning down

the gas. Isabella said: “_Écoutez_, then, means put out the lights.”

I recall a scene which took place during a ball given by Mrs. Preston

while her husband was in Louisiana. Mrs. Preston was resplendent in

diamonds, point lace, and velvet. There is a gentle dignity about her

which is very attractive; her voice is low and sweet, and her will is

iron. She is exceedingly well informed, but very quiet, retiring, and

reserved. Indeed, her apparent gentleness almost amounts to timidity. She

has chiseled regularity of features, a majestic figure, perfectly molded.

Governor Manning said to me: “Look at Sister Caroline. Does she look as

if she had the pluck of a heroine?” Then he related how a little while

ago William, the butler, came to tell her that John, the footman, was

drunk in the cellar—mad with drink; that he had a carving-knife which he

was brandishing in drunken fury, and he was keeping everybody from their

business, threatening to kill any one who dared to go into the basement.

They were like a flock of frightened sheep down there. She did not speak

to one of us, but followed William down to the basement, holding up

her skirts. She found the servants scurrying everywhere, screaming and

shouting that John was crazy and going to kill them. John was bellowing

like a bull of Bashan, knife in hand, chasing them at his pleasure.

Mrs. Preston walked up to him. “Give me that knife,” she demanded. He

handed it to her. She laid it on the table. “Now come with me,” she

said, putting her hand on his collar. She led him away to the empty

smoke-house, and there she locked him in and put the key in her pocket.

Then she returned to her guests, without a ripple on her placid face.

“She told me of it, smiling and serene as you see her now,” the Governor

concluded.

Before the war shut him in, General Preston sent to the lakes for his

salmon, to Mississippi for his venison, to the mountains for his mutton

and grouse. It is good enough, the best dish at all these houses, what

the Spanish call “the hearty welcome.” Thackeray says at every American

table he was first served with “grilled hostess.” At the head of the

table sat a person, fiery-faced, anxious, nervous, inwardly murmuring,

like Falstaff, “Would it were night, Hal, and all were well.”

At Mulberry the house is always filled to overflowing, and one day is

curiously like another. People are coming and going, carriages driving

up or driving off. It has the air of a watering-place, where one does

not pay, and where there are no strangers. At Christmas the china closet

gives up its treasures. The glass, china, silver, fine linen reserved

for grand occasions come forth. As for the dinner itself, it is only a

matter of greater quantity—more turkey, more mutton, more partridges,

more fish, etc., and more solemn stiffness. Usually a half-dozen

persons unexpectedly dropping in make no difference. The family let the

housekeeper know; that is all.

People are beginning to come here from Richmond. One swallow does not

make a summer, but it shows how the wind blows, these straws do—Mrs.

“Constitution” Browne and Mrs. Wise. The Gibsons are at Doctor Gibbes’s.

It does look squally. We are drifting on the breakers.

_May 29th._—Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.’s, has been sold to a

telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto ever gets to be, and

clever in every kind of work. My Molly thinks her mistress “very lucky in

getting rid of her.” She was “a dangerous inmate,” but she will be a good

cook, a good chambermaid, a good dairymaid, a beautiful clear-starcher,

and the most thoroughly good-for-nothing woman I know to her new owners,

if she chooses. Molly evidently hates her, but thinks it her duty “to

stand by her color.”

Mrs. Gibson is a Philadelphia woman. She is true to her husband and

children, but she does not believe in us—the Confederacy, I mean. She is

despondent and hopeless; as wanting in faith of our ultimate success as

is Sally Baxter Hampton. I make allowances for those people. If I had

married North, they would have a heavy handful in me just now up there.

Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, has been sixty years in the South, and

she has not changed in feeling or in taste one iota. She can not like

hominy for breakfast, or rice for dinner, without a relish to give

it some flavor. She can not eat watermelons and sweet potatoes _sans

discrétion_, as we do. She will not eat hot corn bread _à discrétion_,

and hot buttered biscuit without any.

“Richmond is obliged to fall,” sighed Mrs. Gibson. “You would say so,

too, if you had seen our poor soldiers.” “Poor soldiers?” said I. “Are

you talking of Stonewall Jackson’s men? Poor soldiers, indeed!” She said

her mind was fixed on one point, and had ever been, though she married

and came South: she never would own slaves. “Who would that was not born

to it?” I cried, more excited than ever. She is very handsome, very

clever, and has very agreeable manners.

“Dear madam,” she says, with tears in her beautiful eyes, “they have

three armies.” “But Stonewall has routed one of them already. Heath

another.” She only answered by an unbelieving moan. “Nothing seemed

to suit her,” I said, as we went away. “You did not certainly,” said

some one to me; “you contradicted every word she said, with a sort of

indignant protest.”

We met Mrs. Hampton Gibbes at the door—another Virginia woman as good as

gold. They told us Mrs. Davis was delightfully situated at Raleigh; North

Carolinians so loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to eat a

meal at the hotel. “How different from Columbia,” said Doctor Gibbes,

looking at Mrs. Gibson, who has no doubt been left to take all of her

meals at his house. “Oh, no!” cried Mary, “you do Columbia injustice.

Mrs. Chesnut used to tell us that she was never once turned over to the

tender mercies of the Congaree cuisine, and at McMahan’s it is fruit,

flowers, invitations to dinner every day.”

After we came away, “Why did you not back me up?” I was asked. “Why did

you let them slander Columbia?” “It was awfully awkward,” I said, “but

you see it would have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs. Gibson see

how different it was with other people.”

Took a moonlight walk after tea at the Halcott Greens’. All the company

did honor to the beautiful night by walking home with me.

Uncle Hamilton Boykin is here, staying at the de Saussures’. He says,

“Manassas was play to Williamsburg,” and he was at both battles. He

lead a part of Stuart’s cavalry in the charge at Williamsburg, riding a

hundred yards ahead of his company.

Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses freely everything

Confederate from the President down to a horse boy. He thinks there is a

conspiracy against him in the army. Why? Heavens and earth—why?

_June 2d._—A battle[81] is said to be raging round Richmond. I am at the

Prestons’. James Chesnut has gone to Richmond suddenly on business of the

Military Department. It is always his luck to arrive in the nick of time

and be present at a great battle.

Wade Hampton shot in the foot, and Johnston Pettigrew killed. A telegram

says Lee and Davis were both on the field: the enemy being repulsed.

Telegraph operator said: “Madam, our men are fighting.” “Of course they

are. What else is there for them to do now but fight?” “But, madam, the

news is encouraging.” Each army is burying its dead: that looks like a

drawn battle. We haunt the bulletin-board.

Back to McMahan’s. Mem Cohen is ill. Her daughter, Isabel, warns me not

to mention the battle raging around Richmond. Young Cohen is in it. Mrs.

Preston, anxious and unhappy about her sons. John is with General Huger

at Richmond; Willie in the swamps on the coast with his company. Mem

tells me her cousin, Edwin de Leon, is sent by Mr. Davis on a mission to

England.

Rev. Robert Barnwell has returned to the hospital. Oh, that we had given

our thousand dollars to the hospital and not to the gunboat! “Stonewall

Jackson’s movements,” the Herald says, “do us no harm; it is bringing

out volunteers in great numbers.” And a Philadelphia paper abused us so

fervently I felt all the blood in me rush to my head with rage.

_June 3d._—Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines in Charleston

to blow the Yankees up; pretty name they have, those machines. My horses,

the overseer says, are too poor to send over. There was corn enough on

the place for two years, they said, in January; now, in June, they write

that it will not last until the new crop comes in. Somebody is having a

good time on the plantation, if it be not my poor horses.

Molly will tell me all when she comes back, and more. Mr. Venable has

been made an aide to General Robert E. Lee. He is at Vicksburg, and

writes, “When the fight is over here, I shall be glad to go to Virginia.”

He is in capital spirits. I notice army men all are when they write.

_Apropos_ of calling Major Venable “Mr.” Let it be noted that in social

intercourse we are not prone to give handles to the names of those we

know well and of our nearest and dearest. A general’s wife thinks it bad

form to call her husband anything but “Mr.” When she gives him his title,

she simply “drops” into it by accident. If I am “mixed” on titles in this

diary, let no one blame me.

Telegrams come from Richmond ordering troops from Charleston. Can not

be sent, for the Yankees are attacking Charleston, doubtless with the

purpose to prevent Lee’s receiving reenforcements from there.

Sat down at my window in the beautiful moonlight, and tried hard

for pleasant thoughts. A man began to play on the flute, with piano

accompaniment, first, “Ever of thee I am fondly dreaming,” and then, “The

long, long, weary day.” At first, I found this but a complement to the

beautiful scene, and it was soothing to my wrought-up nerves. But Von

Weber’s “Last Waltz” was too much; I broke down. Heavens, what a bitter

cry came forth, with such floods of tears! the wonder is there was any of

me left.

I learn that Richmond women go in their carriages for the wounded, carry

them home and nurse them. One saw a man too weak to hold his musket. She

took it from him, put it on her shoulder, and helped the poor fellow

along.

If ever there was a man who could control every expression of emotion,

who could play stoic, or an Indian chief, it is James Chesnut. But one

day when he came in from the Council he had to own to a break-down.

He was awfully ashamed of his weakness. There was a letter from Mrs.

Gaillard asking him to help her, and he tried to read it to the Council.

She wanted a permit to go on to her son, who lies wounded in Virginia.

Colonel Chesnut could not control his voice. There was not a dry eye

there, when suddenly one man called out, “God bless the woman.”

Johnston Pettigrew’s aide says he left his chief mortally wounded on the

battle-field. Just before Johnston Pettigrew went to Italy to take a hand

in the war there for freedom, I met him one day at Mrs. Frank Hampton’s.

A number of people were present. Some one spoke of the engagement of the

beautiful Miss —— to Hugh Rose. Some one else asked: “How do you know

they are engaged?” “Well, I never heard it, but I saw it. In London, a

month or so ago, I entered Mrs. ——’s drawing-room, and I saw these two

young people seated on a sofa opposite the door.” “Well, that amounted to

nothing.” “No, not in itself. But they looked so foolish and so happy.

I have noticed newly engaged people always look that way.” And so on.

Johnston Pettigrew was white and red in quick succession during this

turn of the conversation; he was in a rage of indignation and disgust. “I

think this kind of talk is taking a liberty with the young lady’s name,”

he exclaimed finally, “and that it is an impertinence in us.” I fancy him

left dying alone! I wonder what they feel—those who are left to die of

their wounds—alone—on the battle-field.

Free schools are not everything, as witness this spelling. Yankee

epistles found in camp show how illiterate they can be, with all their

boasted schools. Fredericksburg is spelled “Fredrexbirg,” medicine,

“metison,” and we read, “To my sweat brother,” etc. For the first time in

my life no books can interest me. Life is so real, so utterly earnest,

that fiction is flat. Nothing but what is going on in this distracted

world of ours can arrest my attention for ten minutes at a time.

_June 4th._—Battles occur near Richmond, with bombardment of Charleston.

Beauregard is said to be fighting his way out or in.

Mrs. Gibson is here, at Doctor Gibbes’s. Tears are always in her eyes.

Her eldest son is Willie Preston’s lieutenant. They are down on the

coast. She owns that she has no hope at all. She was a Miss Ayer, of

Philadelphia, and says, “We may look for Burnside now, our troops which

held him down to his iron flotilla have been withdrawn. They are three

to one against us now, and they have hardly begun to put out their

strength—in numbers, I mean. We have come to the end of our tether,

except we wait for the yearly crop of boys as they grow up to the

requisite age.” She would make despondent the most sanguine person alive.

“As a general rule,” says Mrs. Gibson, “government people are sanguine,

but the son of one high functionary whispered to Mary G., as he handed

her into the car, ‘Richmond is bound to go.’” The idea now is that we are

to be starved out. If they shut us in, prolong the agony, it can then

have but one end.

Mrs. Preston and I speak in whispers, but Mrs. McCord scorns whispers,

and speaks out. She says: “There are our soldiers. Since the world began

there never were better, but God does not deign to send us a general

worthy of them. I do not mean drill-sergeants or military old maids,

who will not fight until everything is just so. The real ammunition of

our war is faith in ourselves and enthusiasm in our cause. West Point

sits down on enthusiasm, laughs it to scorn. It wants discipline. And

now comes a new danger, these blockade-runners. They are filling their

pockets and they gibe and sneer at the fools who fight. Don’t you see

this Stonewall, how he fires the soldiers’ hearts; he will be our leader,

maybe after all. They say he does not care how many are killed. His

business is to save the country, not the army. He fights to win, God

bless him, and he wins. If they do not want to be killed, they can stay

at home. They say he leaves the sick and wounded to be cared for by those

whose business it is to do so. His business is war. They say he wants to

hoist the black flag, have a short, sharp, decisive war and end it. He is

a Christian soldier.”

_June 5th._—Beauregard retreating and his rear-guard cut off. If

Beauregard’s veterans will not stand, why should we expect our newly

levied reserves to do it? The Yankee general who is besieging Savannah

announces his orders are “to take Savannah in two weeks’ time, and then

proceed to erase Charleston from the face of the earth.”

Albert Luryea was killed in the battle of June 1st. Last summer when a

bomb fell in the very thick of his company he picked it up and threw

it into the water. Think of that, those of ye who love life! The

company sent the bomb to his father. Inscribed on it were the words,

“Albert Luryea, bravest where all are brave.” Isaac Hayne did the same

thing at Fort Moultrie. This race has brains enough, but they are not

active-minded like those old Revolutionary characters, the Middletons,

Lowndeses, Rutledges, Marions, Sumters. They have come direct from

active-minded fore-fathers, or they would not have been here; but, with

two or three generations of gentlemen planters, how changed has the

blood become! Of late, all the active-minded men who have sprung to

the front in our government were immediate descendants of Scotch, or

Scotch-Irish—Calhoun, McDuffie, Cheves, and Petigru, who Huguenotted his

name, but could not tie up his Irish. Our planters are nice fellows, but

slow to move; impulsive but hard to keep moving. They are wonderful for a

spurt, but with all their strength, they like to rest.

_June 6th._—Paul Hayne, the poet, has taken rooms here. My husband came

and offered to buy me a pair of horses. He says I need more exercise in

the open air. “Come, now, are you providing me with the means of a rapid

retreat?” said I. “I am pretty badly equipped for marching.”

Mrs. Rose Greenhow is in Richmond. One-half of the ungrateful

Confederates say Seward sent her. My husband says the Confederacy owes

her a debt it can never pay. She warned them at Manassas, and so they

got Joe Johnston and his Paladins to appear upon the stage in the very

nick of time. In Washington they said Lord Napier left her a legacy to

the British Legation, which accepted the gift, unlike the British nation,

who would not accept Emma Hamilton and her daughter, Horatia, though they

were willed to the nation by Lord Nelson.

Mem Cohen, fresh from the hospital where she went with a beautiful Jewish

friend. Rachel, as we will call her (be it her name or no), was put to

feed a very weak patient. Mem noticed what a handsome fellow he was and

how quiet and clean. She fancied by those tokens that he was a gentleman.

In performance of her duties, the lovely young nurse leaned kindly over

him and held the cup to his lips. When that ceremony was over and she

had wiped his mouth, to her horror she felt a pair of by no means weak

arms around her neck and a kiss upon her lips, which she thought strong,

indeed. She did not say a word; she made no complaint. She slipped away

from the hospital, and hereafter in her hospital work will minister at

long range, no matter how weak and weary, sick and sore, the patient may

be. “And,” said Mem, “I thought he was a gentleman.” “Well, a gentleman

is a man, after all, and she ought not to have put those red lips of hers

so near.”

_June 7th._—Cheves McCord’s battery on the coast has three guns and one

hundred men. If this battery should be captured John’s Island and James

Island would be open to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly.

Wade Hampton writes to his wife that Chickahominy was not as decided a

victory as he could have wished. Fort Pillow and Memphis[82] have been

given up. Next! and next!

_June 9th._—When we read of the battles in India, in Italy, in the

Crimea, what did we care? Only an interesting topic, like any other,

to look for in the paper. Now you hear of a battle with a thrill and a

shudder. It has come home to us; half the people that we know in the

world are under the enemy’s guns. A telegram reaches you, and you leave

it on your lap. You are pale with fright. You handle it, or you dread to

touch it, as you would a rattlesnake; worse, worse, a snake could only

strike you. How many, many will this scrap of paper tell you have gone to

their death?

When you meet people, sad and sorrowful is the greeting; they press your

hand; tears stand in their eyes or roll down their cheeks, as they happen

to possess more or less self-control. They have brother, father, or sons

as the case may be, in battle. And now this thing seems never to stop. We

have no breathing time given us. It can not be so at the North, for the

papers say gentlemen do not go into the ranks there, but are officers, or

clerks of departments. Then we see so many members of foreign regiments

among our prisoners—Germans, Irish, Scotch. The proportion of trouble is

awfully against us. Every company on the field, rank and file, is filled

with our nearest and dearest, who are common soldiers.

Mem Cohen’s story to-day. A woman she knew heard her son was killed, and

had hardly taken in the horror of it when they came to say it was all a

mistake in the name. She fell on her knees with a shout of joy. “Praise

the Lord, O my soul!” she cried, in her wild delight. The household was

totally upset, the swing-back of the pendulum from the scene of weeping

and wailing of a few moments before was very exciting. In the midst of

this hubbub the hearse drove up with the poor boy in his metallic coffin.

Does anybody wonder so many women die? Grief and constant anxiety kill

nearly as many women at home as men are killed on the battle-field. Mem’s

friend is at the point of death with brain fever; the sudden changes from

grief to joy and joy to grief were more than she could bear.

A story from New Orleans. As some Yankees passed two boys playing in the

street, one of the boys threw a handful of burned cotton at them, saying,

“I keep this for you.” The other, not to be outdone, spit at the Yankees,

and said, “I keep this for you.” The Yankees marked the house. Afterward,

a corporal’s guard came. Madam was affably conversing with a friend, and

in vain, the friend, who was a mere morning caller, protested he was not

the master of the house; he was marched off to prison.

Mr. Moise got his money out of New Orleans. He went to a station with his

two sons, who were quite small boys. When he got there, the carriage that

he expected was not to be seen. He had brought no money with him, knowing

he might be searched. Some friend called out, “I will lend you my horse,

but then you will be obliged to leave the children.” This offer was

accepted, and, as he rode off, one of the boys called out, “Papa, here is

your tobacco, which you have forgotten.” Mr. Moise turned back and the

boy handed up a roll of tobacco, which he had held openly in his hand all

the time. Mr. Moise took it, and galloped off, waving his hat to them. In

that roll of tobacco was encased twenty-five thousand dollars.

Now, the Mississippi is virtually open to the Yankees. Beauregard has

evacuated Corinth.[83]

Henry Nott was killed at Shiloh; Mrs. Auzé wrote to tell us. She had no

hope. To be conquered and ruined had always been her fate, strive as she

might, and now she knew it would be through her country that she would be

made to feel. She had had more than most women to endure, and the battle

of life she had tried to fight with courage, patience, faith. Long years

ago, when she was young, her lover died. Afterward, she married another.

Then her husband died, and next her only son. When New Orleans fell, her

only daughter was there and Mrs. Auzé went to her. Well may she say that

she has bravely borne her burden till now.[84]

Stonewall said, in his quaint way: “I like strong drink, so I never touch

it.” May heaven, who sent him to help us, save him from all harm!

My husband traced Stonewall’s triumphal career on the map. He has

defeated Frémont and taken all his cannon; now he is after Shields.

The language of the telegram is vague: “Stonewall has taken plenty of

prisoners”—plenty, no doubt, and enough and to spare. We can’t feed our

own soldiers, and how are we to feed prisoners?

They denounce Toombs in some Georgia paper, which I saw to-day, for

planting a full crop of cotton. They say he ought to plant provisions for

soldiers.

And now every man in Virginia, and the eastern part of South Carolina is

in revolt, because old men and boys are ordered out as a reserve corps,

and worst of all, sacred property, that is, negroes, have been seized and

sent out to work on the fortifications along the coast line. We are in a

fine condition to fortify Columbia!

_June 10th._—General Gregg writes that Chickahominy[85] was a victory

_manqué_, because Joe Johnston received a disabling wound and G. W. Smith

was ill. The subordinates in command had not been made acquainted with

the plan of battle.

A letter from John Chesnut, who says it must be all a mistake about Wade

Hampton’s wound, for he saw him in the field to the very last; that is,

until late that night. Hampton writes to Mary McDuffie that the ball

was extracted from his foot on the field, and that he was in the saddle

all day, but that, when he tried to take his boot off at night his foot

was so inflamed and swollen, the boot had to be cut away, and the wound

became more troublesome than he had expected.

Mrs. Preston sent her carriage to take us to see Mrs. Herbemont, whom

Mary Gibson calls her “Mrs. Burgamot.” Miss Bay came down, ever-blooming,

in a cap so formidable, I could but laugh. It was covered with a

bristling row of white satin spikes. She coyly refused to enter Mrs.

Preston’s carriage—“to put foot into it,” to use her own words; but she

allowed herself to be overpersuaded.

I am so ill. Mrs. Ben Taylor said to Doctor Trezevant, “Surely, she is

too ill to be going about; she ought to be in bed.” “She is very feeble,

very nervous, as you say, but then she is living on nervous excitement.

If you shut her up she would die at once.” A queer weakness of the

heart, I have. Sometimes it beats so feebly I am sure it has stopped

altogether. Then they say I have fainted, but I never lose consciousness.

Mrs. Preston and I were talking of negroes and cows. A negro, no matter

how sensible he is on any other subject, can never be convinced that

there is any necessity to feed a cow. “Turn ’em out, and let ’em grass.

Grass good nuff for cow.”

Famous news comes from Richmond, but not so good from the coast. Mrs.

Izard said, quoting I forget whom: “If West Point could give brains

as well as training!” Smith is under arrest for disobedience of

orders—Pemberton’s orders. This is the third general whom Pemberton has

displaced within a few weeks—Ripley, Mercer, and now Smith.

When I told my husband that Molly was full of airs since her late trip

home, he made answer: “Tell her to go to the devil—she or anybody else

on the plantation who is dissatisfied; let them go. It is bother enough

to feed and clothe them now.” When he went over to the plantation he

returned charmed with their loyalty to him, their affection and their

faithfulness.

Sixteen more Yankee regiments have landed on James Island. Eason writes,

“They have twice the energy and enterprise of our people.” I answered,

“Wait a while. Let them alone until climate and mosquitoes and sand-flies

and dealing with negroes takes it all out of them.” Stonewall is a

regular brick, going all the time, winning his way wherever he goes.

Governor Pickens called to see me. His wife is in great trouble, anxiety,

uncertainty. Her brother and her brother-in-law are either killed or

taken prisoners.

Tom Taylor says Wade Hampton did not leave the field on account of his

wound. “What heroism!” said some one. No, what luck! He is the luckiest

man alive. He’ll never be killed. He was shot in the temple, but that

did not kill him. His soldiers believe in his luck.

General Scott, on Southern soldiers, says, we have _élan_, courage,

woodcraft, consummate horsemanship, endurance of pain equal to the

Indians, but that we will not submit to discipline. We will not take

care of things, or husband our resources. Where we are there is waste

and destruction. If it could all be done by one wild, desperate dash, we

would do it. But he does not think we can stand the long, blank months

between the acts—the waiting! We can bear pain without a murmur, but we

will not submit to be bored, etc.

Now, for the other side. Men of the North can wait; they can bear

discipline; they can endure forever. Losses in battle are nothing to

them. Their resources in men and materials of war are inexhaustible,

and if they see fit they will fight to the bitter end. Here is a nice

prospect for us—as comfortable as the old man’s croak at Mulberry, “Bad

times, worse coming.”

Mrs. McCord says, “In the hospital the better born, that is, those born

in the purple, the gentry, those who are accustomed to a life of luxury,

are the better patients. They endure in silence. They are hardier,

stronger, tougher, less liable to break down than the sons of the soil.”

“Why is that?” I asked, and she answered, “Something in man that is more

than the body.”

I know how it feels to die. I have felt it again and again. For instance,

some one calls out, “Albert Sidney Johnston is killed.” My heart stands

still. I feel no more. I am, for so many seconds, so many minutes, I know

not how long, utterly without sensation of any kind—dead; and then, there

is that great throb, that keen agony of physical pain, and the works are

wound up again. The ticking of the clock begins, and I take up the burden

of life once more. Some day it will stop too long, or my feeble heart

will be too worn out to make that awakening jar, and all will be over.

I do not think when the end comes that there will be any difference,

except the miracle of the new wind-up throb. And now good news is just as

exciting as bad. “Hurrah, Stonewall has saved us!” The pleasure is almost

pain because of my way of feeling it.

Miriam’s Luryea and the coincidences of his life. He was born Moses, and

is the hero of the bombshell. His mother was at a hotel in Charleston

when kind-hearted Anna De Leon Moses went for her sister-in-law, and

gave up her own chamber, that the child might be born in the comfort

and privacy of a home. Only our people are given to such excessive

hospitality. So little Luryea was born in Anna De Leon’s chamber. After

Chickahominy when he, now a man, lay mortally wounded, Anna Moses, who

was living in Richmond, found him, and she brought him home, though her

house was crowded to the door-steps. She gave up her chamber to him, and

so, as he had been born in her room, in her room he died.

_June 12th._—New England’s Butler, best known to us as “Beast” Butler, is

famous or infamous now. His amazing order to his soldiers at New Orleans

and comments on it are in everybody’s mouth. We hardly expected from

Massachusetts behavior to shame a Comanche.

One happy moment has come into Mrs. Preston’s life. I watched her face

to-day as she read the morning papers. Willie’s battery is lauded to the

skies. Every paper gave him a paragraph of praise.

South Carolina was at Beauregard’s feet after Fort Sumter. Since Shiloh,

she has gotten up, and looks askance rather when his name is mentioned.

And without Price or Beauregard who takes charge of the Western forces?

“Can we hold out if England and France hold off?” cries Mem. “No, our

time has come.”

“For shame, faint heart! Our people are brave, our cause is just; our

spirit and our patient endurance beyond reproach.” Here came in Mary

Cantey’s voice: “I may not have any logic, any sense. I give it up. My

woman’s instinct tells me, all the same, that slavery’s time has come.

If we don’t end it, they will.”

After all this, tried to read Uncle Tom, but could not; too sickening;

think of a man sending his little son to beat a human being tied to a

tree. It is as bad as Squeers beating Smike. Flesh and blood revolt; you

must skip that; it is too bad.

Mr. Preston told a story of Joe Johnston as a boy. A party of boys at

Abingdon were out on a spree, more boys than horses; so Joe Johnston rode

behind John Preston, who is his cousin. While going over the mountains

they tried to change horses and got behind a servant who was in charge of

them all. The servant’s horse kicked up, threw Joe Johnston, and broke

his leg; a bone showed itself. “Hello, boys! come here and look: the

confounded bone has come clear through,” called out Joe, coolly.

They had to carry him on their shoulders, relieving guard. As one party

grew tired, another took him up. They knew he must suffer fearfully, but

he never said so. He was as cool and quiet after his hurt as before.

He was pretty roughly handled, but they could not help it. His father

was in a towering rage because his son’s leg was to be set by a country

doctor, and it might be crooked in the process. At Chickahominy, brave

but unlucky Joe had already eleven wounds.

_June 13th._—Decca’s wedding. It took place last year. We were all lying

on the bed or sofas taking it coolly as to undress. Mrs. Singleton had

the floor. They were engaged before they went up to Charlottesville;

Alexander was on Gregg’s staff, and Gregg was not hard on him; Decca was

the worst in love girl she ever saw. “Letters came while we were at the

hospital, from Alex, urging her to let him marry her at once. In war

times human events, life especially, are very uncertain.

“For several days consecutively she cried without ceasing, and then she

consented. The rooms at the hospital were all crowded. Decca and I slept

together in the same room. It was arranged by letter that the marriage

should take place; a luncheon at her grandfather Minor’s, and then she

was to depart with Alex for a few days at Richmond. That was to be their

brief slice of honeymoon.

“The day came. The wedding-breakfast was ready, so was the bride in

all her bridal array; but no Alex, no bridegroom. Alas! such is the

uncertainty of a soldier’s life. The bride said nothing, but she wept

like a water-nymph. At dinner she plucked up heart, and at my earnest

request was about to join us. And then the cry, ‘The bridegroom cometh.’

He brought his best man and other friends. We had a jolly dinner.

‘Circumstances over which he had no control’ had kept him away.

“His father sat next to Decca and talked to her all the time as if she

had been already married. It was a piece of absent-mindedness on his

part, pure and simple, but it was very trying, and the girl had had much

to stand that morning, you can well understand. Immediately after dinner

the belated bridegroom proposed a walk; so they went for a brief stroll

up the mountain. Decca, upon her return, said to me: ‘Send for Robert

Barnwell. I mean to be married to-day.’

“‘Impossible. No spare room in the house. No getting away from here; the

trains all gone. Don’t you know this hospital place is crammed to the

ceiling?’ ‘Alex says I promised to marry him to-day. It is not his fault;

he could not come before.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t care,’ said the

positive little thing, ‘I promised Alex to marry him to-day and I will.

Send for the Rev. Robert Barnwell.’ We found Robert after a world of

trouble, and the bride, lovely in Swiss muslin, was married.

“Then I proposed they should take another walk, and I went to one of my

sister nurses and begged her to take me in for the night, as I wished to

resign my room to the young couple. At daylight next day they took the

train for Richmond.” Such is the small allowance of honeymoon permitted

in war time.

Beauregard’s telegram: he can not leave the army of the West. His health

is bad. No doubt the sea breezes would restore him, but—he can not come

now. Such a lovely name—Gustave Tautant Beauregard. But Jackson and

Johnston and Smith and Jones will do—and Lee, how short and sweet.

“Every day,” says Mem, “they come here in shoals—men to say we can not

hold Richmond, and we can not hold Charleston much longer. Wretches,

beasts! Why do you come here? Why don’t you stay there and fight? Don’t

you see that you own yourselves cowards by coming away in the very face

of a battle? If you are not liars as to the danger, you are cowards to

run away from it.” Thus roars the practical Mem, growing more furious at

each word. These Jeremiahs laugh. They think she means others, not the

present company.

Tom Huger resigned his place in the United States Navy and came to us.

The Iroquois was his ship in the old navy. They say, as he stood in the

rigging, after he was shot in the leg, when his ship was leading the

attack upon the Iroquois, his old crew in the Iroquois cheered him, and

when his body was borne in, the Federals took off their caps in respect

for his gallant conduct. When he was dying, Meta Huger said to him: “An

officer wants to see you: he is one of the enemy.” “Let him come in; I

have no enemies now.” But when he heard the man’s name:

“No, no. I do not want to see a Southern man who is now in Lincoln’s

navy.” The officers of the United States Navy attended his funeral.

_June 14th._—All things are against us. Memphis gone. Mississippi fleet

annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly apathetic as if it were a

story of the English war against China which happened a year or so ago.

The sons of Mrs. John Julius Pringle have come. They were left at

school in the North. A young Huger is with them. They seem to have had

adventures enough. Walked, waded, rowed in boats, if boats they could

find; swam rivers when boats there were none; brave lads are they. One

can but admire their pluck and energy. Mrs. Fisher, of Philadelphia,

_née_ Middleton, gave them money to make the attempt to get home.

Stuart’s cavalry have rushed through McClellan’s lines and burned five of

his transports. Jackson has been reenforced by 16,000 men, and they hope

the enemy will be drawn from around Richmond, and the valley be the seat

of war.

John Chesnut is in Whiting’s brigade, which has been sent to Stonewall.

Mem’s son is with the Boykin Rangers; Company A, No. 1, we call it.

And she has persistently wept ever since she heard the news. It is no

child’s play, she says, when you are with Stonewall. He doesn’t play at

soldiering. He doesn’t take care of his men at all. He only goes to kill

the Yankees.

Wade Hampton is here, shot in the foot, but he knows no more about France

than he does of the man in the moon. Wet blanket he is just now. Johnston

badly wounded. Lee is King of Spades. They are all once more digging for

dear life. Unless we can reenforce Stonewall, the game is up. Our chiefs

contrive to dampen and destroy the enthusiasm of all who go near them. So

much entrenching and falling back destroys the _morale_ of any army. This

everlasting retreating, it kills the hearts of the men. Then we are scant

of powder.

James Chesnut is awfully proud of Le Conte’s powder manufactory here. Le

Conte knows how to do it. James Chesnut provides him the means to carry

out his plans.

Colonel Venable doesn’t mince matters: “If we do not deal a blow, a blow

that will be felt, it will be soon all up with us. The Southwest will be

lost to us. We can not afford to shilly-shally much longer.”

Thousands are enlisting on the other side in New Orleans. Butler holds

out inducements. To be sure, they are principally foreigners who want to

escape starvation. Tennessee we may count on as gone, since we abandoned

her at Corinth, Fort Pillow, and Memphis. A man must be sent there, or it

is all gone now.

“You call a spade by that name, it seems, and not an agricultural

implement?” “They call Mars Robert ‘Old Spade Lee.’ He keeps them digging

so.” “General Lee is a noble Virginian. Respect something in this world.

Cæsar—call him Old Spade Cæsar? As a soldier, he was as much above

suspicion, as he required his wife to be, as Cæsar’s wife, you know. If

I remember Cæsar’s Commentaries, he owns up to a lot of entrenching. You

let Mars Robert alone. He knows what he is about.”

“Tell us of the women folk at New Orleans; how did they take the fall of

the city?” “They are an excitable race,” the man from that city said. As

my informant was standing on the levee a daintily dressed lady picked her

way, parasol in hand, toward him. She accosted him with great politeness,

and her face was as placid and unmoved as in antebellum days. Her first

question was: “Will you be so kind as to tell me what is the last general

order?” “No order that I know of, madam; General Disorder prevails now.”

“Ah! I see; and why are those persons flying and yelling so noisily

and racing in the streets in that unseemly way?” “They are looking for

a shell to burst over their heads at any moment.” “Ah!” Then, with a

courtesy of dignity and grace, she waved her parasol and departed, but

stopped to arrange that parasol at a proper angle to protect her face

from the sun. There was no vulgar haste in her movements. She tripped

away as gracefully as she came. My informant had failed to discompose her

by his fearful revelations. That was the one self-possessed soul then in

New Orleans.

Another woman drew near, so overheated and out of breath, she had

barely time to say she had run miles of squares in her crazy terror and

bewilderment, when a sudden shower came up. In a second she was cool and

calm. She forgot all the questions she came to ask. “My bonnet, I must

save it at any sacrifice,” she said, and so turned her dress over her

head, and went off, forgetting her country’s trouble and screaming for a

cab.

Went to see Mrs. Burroughs at the old de Saussure house. She has such a

sweet face, such soft, kind, beautiful, dark-gray eyes. Such eyes are

a poem. No wonder she had a long love-story. We sat in the piazza at

twelve o’clock of a June day, the glorious Southern sun shining its very

hottest. But we were in a dense shade—magnolias in full bloom, ivy, vines

of I know not what, and roses in profusion closed us in. It was a living

wall of everything beautiful and sweet. In all this flower-garden of a

Columbia, that is the most delicious corner I have been in yet.

Got from the Prestons’ French library, Fanny, with a brilliant preface by

Jules Janier. Now, then, I have come to the worst. There can be no worse

book than Fanny. The lover is jealous of the husband. The woman is for

the polyandry rule of life. She cheats both and refuses to break with

either. But to criticize it one must be as shameless as the book itself.

Of course, it is clever to the last degree, or it would be kicked into

the gutter. It is not nastier or coarser than Mrs. Stowe, but then it is

not written in the interests of philanthropy.

We had an unexpected dinner-party to-day. First, Wade Hampton came and

his wife. Then Mr. and Mrs. Rose. I remember that the late Colonel

Hampton once said to me, a thing I thought odd at the time, “Mrs. James

Rose” (and I forget now who was the other) “are the only two people on

this side of the water who know how to give a state dinner.” Mr. and Mrs.

James Rose: if anybody wishes to describe old Carolina at its best, let

them try their hands at painting these two people.

Wade Hampton still limps a little, but he is rapidly recovering. Here

is what he said, and he has fought so well that he is listened to: “If

we mean to play at war, as we play a game of chess, West Point tactics

prevailing, we are sure to lose the game. They have every advantage.

They can lose pawns _ad infinitum_, to the end of time and never feel

it. We will be throwing away all that we had hoped so much from—Southern

hot-headed dash, reckless gallantry, spirit of adventure, readiness to

lead forlorn hopes.”

Mrs. Rose is Miss Sarah Parker’s aunt. Somehow it came out when I was

not in the room, but those girls tell me everything. It seems Miss Sarah

said: “The reason I can not bear Mrs. Chesnut is that she laughs at

everything and at everybody.” If she saw me now she would give me credit

for some pretty hearty crying as well as laughing. It was a mortifying

thing to hear about one’s self, all the same.

General Preston came in and announced that Mr. Chesnut was in town. He

had just seen Mr. Alfred Huger, who came up on the Charleston train with

him. Then Mrs. McCord came and offered to take me back to Mrs. McMahan’s

to look him up. I found my room locked up. Lawrence said his master had

gone to look for me at the Prestons’.

Mrs. McCord proposed we should further seek for my errant husband. At the

door, we met Governor Pickens, who showed us telegrams from the President

of the most important nature. The Governor added, “And I have one from

Jeems Chesnut, but I hear he has followed it so closely, coming on its

heels, as it were, that I need not show you that one.”

“You don’t look interested at the sound of your husband’s name?” said he.

“Is that his name?” asked I. “I supposed it was James.” “My advice to you

is to find him, for Mrs. Pickens says he was last seen in the company of

two very handsome women, and now you may call him any name you please.”

We soon met. The two beautiful dames Governor Pickens threw in my teeth

were some ladies from Rafton Creek, almost neighbors, who live near

Camden.

By way of pleasant remark to Wade Hampton: “Oh, General! The next battle

will give you a chance to be major-general.” “I was very foolish to give

up my Legion,” he answered gloomily. “Promotion don’t really annoy many

people.” Mary Gibson says her father writes to them, that they may go

back. He thinks now that the Confederates can hold Richmond. _Gloria in

excelsis!_

Another personal defeat. Little Kate said: “Oh, Cousin Mary, why don’t

you cultivate heart? They say at Kirkwood that you had better let your

brains alone a while and cultivate heart.” She had evidently caught up a

phrase and repeated it again and again for my benefit. So that is the way

they talk of me! The only good of loving any one with your whole heart is

to give that person the power to hurt you.

_June 24th._—Mr. Chesnut, having missed the Secessionville[86] fight by

half a day, was determined to see the one around Richmond. He went off

with General Cooper and Wade Hampton. Blanton Duncan sent them for a

luncheon on board the cars,—ice, wine, and every manner of good thing.

In all this death and destruction, the women are the same—chatter,

patter, clatter. “Oh, the Charleston refugees are so full of airs; there

is no sympathy for them here!” “Oh, indeed! That is queer. They are not

half as exclusive as these Hamptons and Prestons. The airs these people

do give themselves.” “Airs, airs,” laughed Mrs. Bartow, parodying

Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. “Airs to the right of them, Airs

to the left of them, some one had blundered.” “Volleyed and thundered

rhymes but is out of place.”

The worst of all airs came from a democratic landlady, who was asked by

Mrs. President Davis to have a carpet shaken, and shook herself with rage

as she answered, “You know, madam, you need not stay here if my carpet or

anything else does not suit you.”

John Chesnut gives us a spirited account of their ride around McClellan.

I sent the letter to his grandfather. The women ran out screaming

with joyful welcome as soon as they caught sight of our soldiers’

gray uniforms; ran to them bringing handfuls and armfuls of food. One

gray-headed man, after preparing a hasty meal for them, knelt and prayed

as they snatched it, as you may say. They were in the saddle from Friday

until Sunday. They were used up; so were their horses. Johnny writes for

clothes and more horses. Miss S. C. says: “No need to send any more of

his fine horses to be killed or captured by the Yankees; wait and see how

the siege of Richmond ends.” The horses will go all the same, as Johnny

wants them.

_June 25th._—I forgot to tell of Mrs. Pickens’s reception for General

Hampton. My Mem dear, described it all. “The Governess” (“Tut, Mem! that

is not the right name for her—she is not a teacher.” “Never mind, it is

the easier to say than the Governor’s wife.” “_Madame la Gouvernante_”

was suggested. “Why? That is worse than the other!”) met him at the door,

took his crutch away, putting his hand upon her shoulder instead. “That

is the way to greet heroes,” she said. Her blue eyes were aflame, and

in response poor Wade smiled, and smiled until his face hardened into a

fixed grin of embarrassment and annoyance. He is a simple-mannered man,

you know, and does not want to be made much of by women.

The butler was not in plain clothes, but wore, as the other servants

did, magnificent livery brought from the Court of St. Petersburg, one

mass of gold embroidery, etc. They had champagne and Russian tea, the

latter from a samovar made in Russia. Little Moses was there. Now for

us they have never put their servants into Russian livery, nor paraded

Little Moses under our noses, but I must confess the Russian tea and

champagne set before us left nothing to be desired. “How did General

Hampton bear his honors?” “Well, to the last he looked as if he wished

they would let him alone.”

Met Mr. Ashmore fresh from Richmond. He says Stonewall is coming up

behind McClellan. And here comes the tug of war. He thinks we have so

many spies in Richmond, they may have found out our strategic movements

and so may circumvent them.

Mrs. Bartow’s story of a clever Miss Toombs. So many men were in love

with her, and the courtship, while it lasted, of each one was as exciting

and bewildering as a fox-chase. She liked the fun of the run, but she

wanted something more than to know a man was in mad pursuit of her; that

he should love her, she agreed, but she must love him, too. How was she

to tell? Yet she must be certain of it before she said “Yes.” So, as they

sat by the lamp she would look at him and inwardly ask herself, “Would I

be willing to spend the long winter evenings forever after sitting here

darning your old stockings?” Never, echo answered. No, no, a thousand

times no. So, each had to make way for another.

_June 27th._—We went in a body (half a dozen ladies, with no man on

escort duty, for they are all in the army) to a concert. Mrs. Pickens

came in. She was joined soon by Secretary Moses and Mr. Follen. Doctor

Berrien came to our relief. Nothing could be more execrable than the

singing. Financially the thing was a great success, for though the

audience was altogether feminine, it was a very large one.

Telegram from Mr. Chesnut, “Safe in Richmond”; that is, if Richmond be

safe, with all the power of the United States of America battering at

her gates. Strange not a word from Stonewall Jackson, after all! Doctor

Gibson telegraphs his wife, “Stay where you are; terrible battle[87]

looked for here.”

Decca is dead. That poor little darling! Immediately after her baby was

born, she took it into her head that Alex was killed. He was wounded,

but those around had not told her of it. She surprised them by asking,

“Does any one know how the battle has gone since Alex was killed?” She

could not read for a day or so before she died. Her head was bewildered,

but she would not let any one else touch her letters; so she died with

several unopened ones in her bosom. Mrs. Singleton, Decca’s mother,

fainted dead away, but she shed no tears. We went to the house and saw

Alex’s mother, a daughter of Langdon Cheves. Annie was with us. She said:

“This is the saddest thing for Alex.” “No,” said his mother, “death is

never the saddest thing. If he were not a good man, that would be a far

worse thing.” Annie, in utter amazement, whimpered, “But Alex is so good

already.” “Yes, seven years ago the death of one of his sisters that he

dearly loved made him a Christian. That death in our family was worth a

thousand lives.”

One needs a hard heart now. Even old Mr. Shand shed tears. Mary Barnwell

sat as still as a statue, as white and stony. “Grief which can relieve

itself by tears is a thing to pray for,” said the Rev. Mr. Shand. Then

came a telegram from Hampton, “All well; so far we are successful.”

Robert Barnwell had been telegraphed for. His answer came, “Can’t leave

here; Gregg is fighting across the Chickahominy.” Said Alex’s mother:

“My son, Alex, may never hear this sad news,” and her lip settled

rigidly. “Go on; what else does Hampton say?” asked she. “Lee has one

wing of the army, Stonewall the other.”

Annie Hampton came to tell us the latest news—that we have abandoned

James Island and are fortifying Morris Island. “And now,” she says, “if

the enemy will be so kind as to wait, we will be ready for them in two

months.”

Rev. Mr. Shand and that pious Christian woman, Alex’s mother (who looks

into your very soul with those large and lustrous blue eyes of hers)

agreed that the Yankees, even if they took Charleston, would not destroy

it. I think they will, sinner that I am. Mr. Shand remarked to her,

“Madam, you have two sons in the army.” Alex’s mother replied, “I have

had six sons in the army; I now have five.”

There are people here too small to conceive of any larger business than

quarreling in the newspapers. One laughs at squibs in the papers now,

in such times as these, with the wolf at our doors. Men safe in their

closets writing fiery articles, denouncing those who are at work, are

beneath contempt. Only critics with muskets on their shoulders have the

right to speak now, as Trenholm said the other night.

In a pouring rain we went to that poor child’s funeral—to Decca’s. They

buried her in the little white frock she wore when she engaged herself

to Alex, and which she again put on for her bridal about a year ago. She

lies now in the churchyard, in sight of my window. Is she to be pitied?

She said she had had “months of perfect happiness.” How many people can

say that? So many of us live their long, dreary lives and then happiness

never comes to meet them at all. It seems so near, and yet it eludes them

forever.

_June 28th._—Victory! Victory heads every telegram now;[88] one reads

it on the bulletin-board. It is the anniversary of the battle of Fort

Moultrie. The enemy went off so quickly, I wonder if it was not a trap

laid for us, to lead us away from Richmond, to some place where they can

manage to do us more harm. And now comes the list of killed and wounded.

Victory does not seem to soothe sore hearts. Mrs. Haskell has five sons

before the enemy’s illimitable cannon. Mrs. Preston two. McClellan is

routed and we have twelve thousand prisoners. Prisoners! My God! and what

are we to do with them? We can’t feed our own people.

For the first time since Joe Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines, we

may breathe freely; we were so afraid of another general, or a new one.

Stonewall can not be everywhere, though he comes near it.

Magruder did splendidly at Big Bethel. It was a wonderful thing how he

played his ten thousand before McClellan like fireflies and utterly

deluded him. It was partly due to the Manassas scare that we gave them;

they will never be foolhardy again. Now we are throwing up our caps for

R. E. Lee. We hope from the Lees what the first sprightly running (at

Manassas) could not give. We do hope there will be no “ifs.” “Ifs” have

ruined us. Shiloh was a victory if Albert Sidney Johnston had not been

killed; Seven Pines if Joe Johnston had not been wounded. The “ifs”

bristle like porcupines. That victory at Manassas did nothing but send

us off in a fool’s paradise of conceit, and it roused the manhood of the

Northern people. For very shame they had to move up.

A French man-of-war lies at the wharf at Charleston to take off French

subjects when the bombardment begins. William Mazyck writes that the

enemy’s gunboats are shelling and burning property up and down the

Santee River. They raise the white flag and the negroes rush down on

them. Planters might as well have let these negroes be taken by the

Council to work on the fortifications. A letter from my husband:

RICHMOND, _June 29, 1862_.

MY DEAR MARY:

For the last three days I have been a witness of the most

stirring events of modern times. On my arrival here, I found

the government so absorbed in the great battle pending, that I

found it useless to talk of the special business that brought

me to this place. As soon as it is over, which will probably be

to-morrow, I think that I can easily accomplish all that I was

sent for. I have no doubt that we can procure another general

and more forces, etc.

The President and General Lee are inclined to listen to me,

and to do all they can for us. General Lee is vindicating the

high opinion I have ever expressed of him, and his plans and

executions of the last great fight will place him high in the

roll of really great commanders.

The fight on Friday was the largest and fiercest of the whole

war. Some 60,000 or 70,000, with great preponderance on the

side of the enemy. Ground, numbers, armament, etc., were all in

favor of the enemy. But our men and generals were superior. The

higher officers and men behaved with a resolution and dashing

heroism that have never been surpassed in any country or in any

age.

Our line was three times repulsed by superior numbers and

superior artillery impregnably posted. Then Lee, assembling

all his generals to the front, told them that victory depended

on carrying the batteries and defeating the army before them,

ere night should fall. Should night come without victory all

was lost, and the work must be done by the bayonet. Our men

then made a rapid and irresistible charge, without powder, and

carried everything. The enemy melted before them, and ran

with the utmost speed, though of the regulars of the Federal

army. The fight between the artillery of the opposing forces

was terrific and sublime. The field became one dense cloud

of smoke, so that nothing could be seen, but the incessant

flash of fire. They were within sixteen hundred yards of each

other and it rained storms of grape and canister. We took

twenty-three pieces of their artillery, many small arms, and

small ammunition. They burned most of their stores, wagons, etc.

The victory of the second day was full and complete. Yesterday

there was little or no fighting, but some splendid maneuvering,

which has placed us completely around them. I think the end

must be decisive in our favor. We have lost many men and many

officers; I hear Alex Haskell and young McMahan are among them,

as well as a son of Dr. Trezevant. Very sad, indeed. We are

fighting again to-day; will let you know the result as soon as

possible. Will be at home some time next week. No letter from

you yet.

With devotion, yours,

JAMES CHESNUT.

A telegram from my husband of June 29th from Richmond: “Was on the field,

saw it all. Things satisfying so far. Can hear nothing of John Chesnut.

He is in Stuart’s command. Saw Jack Preston; safe so far. No reason why

we should not bag McClellan’s army or cut it to pieces. From four to six

thousand prisoners already.” Doctor Gibbes rushed in like a whirlwind to

say we were driving McClellan into the river.

_June 30th._—First came Dr. Trezevant, who announced Burnet Rhett’s

death. “No, no; I have just seen the bulletin-board. It was Grimké

Rhett’s.” When the doctor went out it was added: “Howell Trezevant’s

death is there, too. The doctor will see it as soon as he goes down to

the board.” The girls went to see Lucy Trezevant. The doctor was lying

still as death on a sofa with his face covered.

_July 1st._—No more news. It has settled down into this. The general

battle, the decisive battle, has to be fought yet. Edward Cheves, only

son of John Cheves, killed. His sister kept crying, “Oh, mother, what

shall we do; Edward is killed,” but the mother sat dead still, white as a

sheet, never uttering a word or shedding a tear. Are our women losing the

capacity to weep? The father came to-day, Mr. John Cheves. He has been

making infernal machines in Charleston to blow up Yankee ships.

While Mrs. McCord was telling me of this terrible trouble in her

brother’s family, some one said: “Decca’s husband died of grief.” Stuff

and nonsense; silly sentiment, folly! If he is not wounded, he is alive.

His brother, John, may die of that shattered arm in this hot weather.

Alex will never die of a broken heart. Take my word for it.

_July 3d._—Mem says she feels like sitting down, as an Irishwoman does

at a wake, and howling night and day. Why did Huger let McClellan slip

through his fingers? Arrived at Mrs. McMahan’s at the wrong moment. Mrs.

Bartow was reading to the stricken mother an account of the death of her

son. The letter was written by a man who was standing by him when he was

shot through the head. “My God!” he said; that was all, and he fell dead.

James Taylor was color-bearer. He was shot three times before he gave in.

Then he said, as he handed the colors to the man next him, “You see I

can’t stand it any longer,” and dropped stone dead. He was only seventeen

years old.

If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure after

all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees, it is Lincoln’s

proclamation freeing the negroes. Especially yours, Messieurs, who write

insults to your Governor and Council, dated from Clarendon. Three hundred

of Mr. Walter Blake’s negroes have gone to the Yankees. Remember, that

recalcitrant patriot’s property on two legs may walk off without an

order from the Council to work on fortifications.

Have been reading The Potiphar Papers by Curtis. Can this be a picture of

New York socially? If it were not for this horrid war, how nice it would

be here. We might lead such a pleasant life. This is the most perfectly

appointed establishment—such beautiful grounds, flowers, and fruits;

indeed, all that heart could wish; such delightful dinners, such pleasant

drives, such jolly talks, such charming people; but this horrid war

poisons everything.

_July 5th._—Drove out with Mrs. “Constitution” Browne, who told

us the story of Ben McCulloch’s devotion to Lucy Gwynn. Poor Ben

McCulloch—another dead hero. Called at the Tognos’ and saw no one; no

wonder. They say Ascelie Togno was to have been married to Grimké Rhett

in August, and he is dead on the battle-field. I had not heard of the

engagement before I went there.

_July 8th._—Gunboat captured on the Santee. So much the worse for us. We

do not want any more prisoners, and next time they will send a fleet of

boats, if one will not do. The Governor sent me Mr. Chesnut’s telegram

with a note saying, “I regret the telegram does not come up to what we

had hoped might be as to the entire destruction of McClellan’s army. I

think, however, the strength of the war with its ferocity may now be

considered as broken.”

Table-talk to-day: This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke

of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous. The Yankees,

since the war has begun, have discovered it is to free the slaves that

they are fighting. So their cause is noble. They also expect to make the

war pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay. They think

we belong to them. We have been good milk cows—milked by the tariff, or

skimmed. We let them have all of our hard earnings. We bear the ban of

slavery; they get the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles it, sells

it, manufactures it, but rarely pays the man who grows it. Second hand

the Yankees received the wages of slavery. They grew rich. We grew poor.

The receiver is as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too, for we

received the savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in their

slave-ships. As with the Egyptians, so it shall be with us: if they let

us go, it must be across a Red Sea—but one made red by blood.

_July 10th._—My husband has come. He believes from what he heard in

Richmond that we are to be recognized as a nation by the crowned heads

across the water, at last. Mr. Davis was very kind; he asked him to stay

at his house, which he did, and went every day with General Lee and Mr.

Davis to the battle-field as a sort of amateur aide to the President.

Likewise they admitted him to the informal Cabinet meetings at the

President’s house. He is so hopeful now that it is pleasant to hear him,

and I had not the heart to stick the small pins of Yeadon and Pickens in

him yet a while.

Public opinion is hot against Huger and Magruder for McClellan’s escape.

Doctor Gibbes gave me some letters picked up on the battle-field. One

signed “Laura,” tells her lover to fight in such a manner that no

Southerner can ever taunt Yankees again with cowardice. She speaks of a

man at home whom she knows, “who is still talking of his intention to

seek the bubble reputation at the cannon’s mouth.” “Miserable coward!”

she writes, “I will never speak to him again.” It was a relief to find

one silly young person filling three pages with a description of her new

bonnet and the bonnet still worn by her rival. Those fiery Joan of Arc

damsels who goad on their sweethearts bode us no good.

Rachel Lyons was in Richmond, hand in glove with Mrs. Greenhow. Why

not? “So handsome, so clever, so angelically kind,” says Rachel of the

Greenhow, “and she offers to matronize me.”

Mrs. Philips, another beautiful and clever Jewess, has been put into

prison again by “Beast” Butler because she happened to be laughing as a

Yankee funeral procession went by.

Captain B. told of John Chesnut’s pranks. Johnny was riding a powerful

horse, captured from the Yankees. The horse dashed with him right into

the Yankee ranks. A dozen Confederates galloped after him, shouting,

“Stuart! Stuart!” The Yankees, mistaking this mad charge for Stuart’s

cavalry, broke ranks and fled. Daredevil Camden boys ride like Arabs!

Mr. Chesnut says he was riding with the President when Colonel Browne,

his aide, was along. The General commanding rode up and, bowing politely,

said: “Mr. President, am I in command here?” “Yes.” “Then I forbid you

to stand here under the enemy’s guns. Any exposure of a life like yours

is wrong, and this is useless exposure. You must go back.” Mr. Davis

answered: “Certainly, I will set an example of obedience to orders.

Discipline must be maintained.” But he did not go back.

Mr. Chesnut met the Haynes, who had gone on to nurse their wounded son

and found him dead. They were standing in the corridor of the Spotswood.

Although Mr. Chesnut was staying at the President’s, he retained his room

at the hotel. So he gave his room to them. Next day, when he went back

to his room he found that Mrs. Hayne had thrown herself across the foot

of the bed and never moved. No other part of the bed had been touched.

She got up and went back to the cars, or was led back. He says these

heart-broken mothers are hard to face.

_July 12th._—At McMahan’s our small colonel, Paul Hayne’s son, came into

my room. To amuse the child I gave him a photograph album to look over.

“You have Lincoln in your book!” said he. “I am astonished at you. I hate

him!” And he placed the book on the floor and struck Old Abe in the face

with his fist.

An Englishman told me Lincoln has said that had he known such a war

would follow his election he never would have set foot in Washington, nor

have been inaugurated. He had never dreamed of this awful fratricidal

bloodshed. That does not seem like the true John Brown spirit. I was very

glad to hear it—to hear something from the President of the United States

which was not merely a vulgar joke, and usually a joke so vulgar that you

were ashamed to laugh, funny though it was. They say Seward has gone to

England and his wily tongue will turn all hearts against us.

Browne told us there was a son of the Duke of Somerset in Richmond.

He laughed his fill at our ragged, dirty soldiers, but he stopped his

laughing when he saw them under fire. Our men strip the Yankee dead of

their shoes, but will not touch the shoes of a comrade. Poor fellows,

they are nearly barefoot.

Alex has come. I saw him ride up about dusk and go into the graveyard. I

shut up my windows on that side. Poor fellow!

_July 13th._—Halcott Green came to see us. Bragg is a stern

disciplinarian, according to Halcott. He did not in the least understand

citizen soldiers. In the retreat from Shiloh he ordered that not a gun

should be fired. A soldier shot a chicken, and then the soldier was shot.

“For a chicken!” said Halcott. “A Confederate soldier for a chicken!”

Mrs. McCord says a nurse, who is also a beauty, had better leave her

beauty with her cloak and hat at the door. One lovely lady nurse said to

a rough old soldier, whose wound could not have been dangerous, “Well,

my good soul, what can I do for you?” “Kiss me!” said he. Mrs. McCord’s

fury was “at the woman’s telling it,” for it brought her hospital into

disrepute, and very properly. She knew there were women who would boast

of an insult if it ministered to their vanity. She wanted nurses to come

dressed as nurses, as Sisters of Charity, and not as fine ladies. Then

there would be no trouble. When she saw them coming in angel sleeves,

displaying all their white arms and in their muslin, showing all their

beautiful white shoulders and throats, she felt disposed to order them

off the premises. That was no proper costume for a nurse. Mrs. Bartow

goes in her widow’s weeds, which is after Mrs. McCord’s own heart. But

Mrs. Bartow has her stories, too. A surgeon said to her, “I give you no

detailed instructions: a mother necessarily is a nurse.” She then passed

on quietly, “as smilingly acquiescent, my dear, as if I had ever been a

mother.”

Mrs. Greenhow has enlightened Rachel Lyons as to Mr. Chesnut’s character

in Washington. He was “one of the very few men of whom there was not a

word of scandal spoken. I do not believe, my dear, that he ever spoke to

a woman there.” He did know Mrs. John R. Thompson, however.

Walked up and down the college campus with Mrs. McCord. The buildings all

lit up with gas, the soldiers seated under the elms in every direction,

and in every stage of convalescence. Through the open windows, could see

the nurses flitting about. It was a strange, weird scene. Walked home

with Mrs. Bartow. We stopped at Judge Carroll’s. Mrs. Carroll gave us a

cup of tea. When we got home, found the Prestons had called for me to

dine at their house to meet General Magruder.

Last night the Edgefield Band serenaded Governor Pickens. Mrs. Harris

stepped on the porch and sang the Marseillaise for them. It has been more

than twenty years since I first heard her voice; it was a very fine one

then, but there is nothing which the tooth of time lacerates more cruelly

than the singing voice of women. There is an incongruous metaphor for you.

The negroes on the coast received the Rutledge’s Mounted Rifles

apparently with great rejoicings. The troops were gratified to find the

negroes in such a friendly state of mind. One servant whispered to his

master, “Don’t you mind ’em, don’t trust ’em”—meaning the negroes. The

master then dressed himself as a Federal officer and went down to a negro

quarter. The very first greeting was, “Ki! massa, you come fuh ketch

rebels? We kin show you way you kin ketch thirty to-night.” They took

him to the Confederate camp, or pointed it out, and then added for his

edification, “We kin ketch officer fuh you whenever you want ’em.”

Bad news. Gunboats have passed Vicksburg. The Yankees are spreading

themselves over our fair Southern land like red ants.

_July 21st._—Jackson has gone into the enemy’s country. Joe Johnston and

Wade Hampton are to follow.

Think of Rice, Mr. Senator Rice,[89] who sent us the buffalo-robes. I see

from his place in the Senate that he speaks of us as savages, who put

powder and whisky into soldiers’ canteens to make them mad with ferocity

in the fight. No, never. We admire coolness here, because we lack it; we

do not need to be fired by drink to be brave. My classical lore is small,

indeed, but I faintly remember something of the Spartans who marched to

the music of lutes. No drum and fife were needed to revive their fainting

spirits. In that one thing we are Spartans.

The Wayside Hospital[90] is duly established at the Columbia Station,

where all the railroads meet. All honor to Mrs. Fisher and the other

women who work there so faithfully! The young girls of Columbia started

this hospital. In the first winter of the war, moneyless soldiers, sick

and wounded, suffered greatly when they had to lie over here because of

faulty connections between trains. Rev. Mr. Martin, whose habit it was

to meet trains and offer his aid to these unfortunates, suggested to the

Young Ladies’ Hospital Association their opportunity; straightway the

blessed maidens provided a room where our poor fellows might have their

wounds bound up and be refreshed. And now, the “Soldiers’ Rest” has grown

into the Wayside Hospital, and older heads and hands relieve younger ones

of the grimmer work and graver responsibilities. I am ready to help in

every way, by subscription and otherwise, but too feeble in health to go

there much.

Mrs. Browne heard a man say at the Congaree House, “We are breaking our

heads against a stone wall. We are bound to be conquered. We can not keep

it up much longer against so powerful a nation as the United States.

Crowds of Irish, Dutch, and Scotch are pouring in to swell their armies.

They are promised our lands, and they believe they will get them. Even

if we are successful we can not live without Yankees.” “Now,” says Mrs.

Browne, “I call that man a Yankee spy.” To which I reply, “If he were a

spy, he would not dare show his hand so plainly.”

“To think,” says Mrs. Browne, “that he is not taken up. Seward’s little

bell would tinkle, a guard would come, and the Grand Inquisition of

America would order that man put under arrest in the twinkling of an eye,

if he had ventured to speak against Yankees in Yankee land.”

General Preston said he had “the right to take up any one who was not

in his right place and send him where he belonged.” “Then do take up my

husband instantly. He is sadly out of his right place in this little

Governor’s Council.” The general stared at me and slowly uttered in his

most tragic tones, “If I could put him where I think he ought to be!”

This I immediately hailed as a high compliment and was duly ready with my

thanks. Upon reflection, it is borne in upon me, that he might have been

more explicit. He left too much to the imagination.

Then Mrs. Browne described the Prince of Wales, whose manners, it seems,

differ from those of Mrs. ——, who arraigned us from morn to dewy eve, and

upbraided us with our ill-bred manners and customs. The Prince, when he

was here, conformed at once to whatever he saw was the way of those who

entertained him. He closely imitated President Buchanan’s way of doing

things. He took off his gloves at once when he saw that the President

wore none. He began by bowing to the people who were presented to him,

but when he saw Mr. Buchanan shaking hands, he shook hands, too. When

smoking affably with Browne on the White House piazza, he expressed his

content with the fine cigars Browne had given him. The President said: “I

was keeping some excellent ones for you, but Browne has got ahead of me.”

Long after Mr. Buchanan had gone to bed, the Prince ran into his room in

a jolly, boyish way, and said: “Mr. Buchanan, I have come for the fine

cigars you have for me.”

As I walked up to the Prestons’, along a beautiful shaded back street, a

carriage passed with Governor Means in it. As soon as he saw me he threw

himself half out and kissed both hands to me again and again. It was a

whole-souled greeting, as the saying is, and I returned it with my whole

heart, too. “Good-by,” he cried, and I responded “Good-by.” I may never

see him again. I am not sure that I did not shed a few tears.

General Preston and Mr. Chesnut were seated on the piazza of the Hampton

house as I walked in. I opened my batteries upon them in this scornful

style: “You cold, formal, solemn, overly-polite creatures, weighed down

by your own dignity. You will never know the rapture of such a sad

farewell as John Means and I have just interchanged. He was in a hack,” I

proceeded to relate, “and I was on the sidewalk. He was on his way to the

war, poor fellow. The hackman drove steadily along in the middle of the

street; but for our gray hairs I do not know what he might have thought

of us. John Means did not suppress his feelings at an unexpected meeting

with an old friend, and a good cry did me good. It is a life of terror

and foreboding we lead. My heart is in my mouth half the time. But you

two, under no possible circumstances could you forget your manners.”

Read Russell’s India all day. Saintly folks those English when their

blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not expect anything better from, but

what an example of Christian patience and humanity the white “angels”

from the West set them.

The beautiful Jewess, Rachel Lyons, was here to-day. She flattered Paul

Hayne audaciously, and he threw back the ball.

To-day I saw the Rowena to this Rebecca, when Mrs. Edward Barnwell

called. She is the purest type of Anglo-Saxon—exquisitely beautiful,

cold, quiet, calm, ladylike, fair as a lily, with the blackest and

longest eyelashes, and her eyes so light in color some one said “they

were the hue of cologne and water.” At any rate, she has a patent right

to them; there are no more like them to be had. The effect is startling,

but lovely beyond words.

Blanton Duncan told us a story of Morgan in Kentucky. Morgan walked into

a court where they were trying some Secessionists. The Judge was about to

pronounce sentence, but Morgan rose, and begged that he might be allowed

to call some witnesses. The Judge asked who were his witnesses. “My name

is John Morgan, and my witnesses are 1,400 Confederate soldiers.”

Mrs. Izard witnessed two instances of patriotism in the caste called

“Sandhill tackeys.” One forlorn, chill, and fever-freckled creature,

yellow, dirty, and dry as a nut, was selling peaches at ten cents a

dozen. Soldiers collected around her cart. She took the cover off and

cried, “Eat away. Eat your fill. I never charge our soldiers anything.”

They tried to make her take pay, but when she steadily refused it, they

cheered her madly and said: “Sleep in peace. Now we will fight for you

and keep off the Yankees.” Another poor Sandhill man refused to sell his

cows, and gave them to the hospital.

XII

FLAT ROCK, N. C.

_August 1, 1862-August 8, 1862_

Flat Rock, N. C., _August 1, 1862_.—Being ill I left Mrs. McMahan’s for

Flat Rock[91]. It was very hot and disagreeable for an invalid in a

boarding-house in that climate. The La Bordes and the McCord girls came

part of the way with me.

The cars were crowded and a lame soldier had to stand, leaning on his

crutches in the thoroughfare that runs between the seats. One of us gave

him our seat. You may depend upon it there was no trouble in finding a

seat for our party after that. Dr. La Borde quoted a classic anecdote. In

some Greek assembly an old man was left standing. A Spartan gave him his

seat. The Athenians cheered madly, though they had kept their seats. The

comment was, “Lacedemonians practise virtue; Athenians know how to admire

it.”

Nathan Davis happened accidentally to be at the station at Greenville. He

took immediate charge of Molly and myself, for my party had dwindled to

us two. He went with us to the hotel, sent for the landlord, told him who

I was, secured good rooms for us, and saw that we were made comfortable

in every way. At dinner I entered that immense dining-room alone, but

I saw friends and acquaintances on every side. My first exploit was

to repeat to Mrs. Ives Mrs. Pickens’s blunder in taking a suspicious

attitude toward men born at the North, and calling upon General Cooper to

agree with her. Martha Levy explained the grave faces of my auditors by

saying that Colonel Ives was a New Yorker. My distress was dire.

Louisa Hamilton was there. She told me that Captain George Cuthbert, with

his arm in a sling from a wound by no means healed, was going to risk

the shaking of a stage-coach; he was on his way to his cousin, William

Cuthbert’s, at Flat Rock. Now George Cuthbert is a type of the finest

kind of Southern soldier. We can not make them any better than he is.

Before the war I knew him; he traveled in Europe with my sister, Kate,

and Mary Withers. At once I offered him a seat in the comfortable hack

Nathan Davis had engaged for me.

Molly sat opposite to me, and often when I was tired held my feet in

her lap. Captain Cuthbert’s man sat with the driver. We had ample room.

We were a dilapidated company. I was so ill I could barely sit up, and

Captain Cuthbert could not use his right hand or arm at all. I had to

draw his match, light his cigar, etc. He was very quiet, grateful,

gentle, and, I was going to say, docile. He is a fiery soldier, one of

those whose whole face becomes transfigured in battle, so one of his men

told me, describing his way with his company. He does not blow his own

trumpet, but I made him tell me the story of his duel with the Mercury’s

reporter. He seemed awfully ashamed of wasting time in such a scrape.

That night we stopped at a country house half-way toward our journey’s

end. There we met Mr. Charles Lowndes. Rawlins Lowndes, his son, is with

Wade Hampton.

First we drove, by mistake, into Judge King’s yard, our hackman

mistaking the place for the hotel. Then we made Farmer’s Hotel (as the

seafaring men say).

Burnet Rhett, with his steed, was at the door; horse and man were

caparisoned with as much red and gold artillery uniform as they

could bear. He held his horse. The stirrups were Mexican, I believe;

they looked like little side-saddles. Seeing his friend and crony,

George Cuthbert, alight and leave a veiled lady in the carriage, this

handsome and undismayed young artillerist walked round and round the

carriage, talked with the driver, looked in at the doors, and at

the front. Suddenly I bethought me to raise my veil and satisfy his

curiosity. Our eyes met, and I smiled. It was impossible to resist the

comic disappointment on his face when a woman old enough to be George

Cuthbert’s mother, with the ravages of a year of gastric fever, almost

fainting with fatigue, greeted his vision. He instantly mounted his

gallant steed and pranced away to his _fiancée_. He is to marry the

greatest heiress in the State, Miss Aiken. Then Captain Cuthbert told me

his name.

At Kate’s, I found Sally Rutledge, and then for weeks life was a blank;

I remember nothing. The illness which had been creeping on for so long

a time took me by the throat. At Greenville I had met many friends. I

witnessed the wooing of Barny Heyward, once the husband of the lovely

Lucy Izard, now a widower and a _bon parti_. He was there nursing Joe,

his brother. So was the beautiful Henrietta Magruder Heyward, now a

widow, for poor Joe died. There is something magnetic in Tatty Clinch’s

large and lustrous black eyes. No man has ever resisted their influence.

She says her virgin heart has never beat one throb the faster for any

mortal here below—until now, when it surrenders to Barny. Well, as I

said, Joseph Heyward died, and rapidly did the bereaved beauty shake

the dust of this poor Confederacy from her feet and plume her wings for

flight across the water.

[Let me insert here now, much later, all I know of that brave spirit,

George Cuthbert. While I was living in the winter of 1863 at the corner

of Clay and Twelfth Streets in Richmond, he came to see me. Never did

man enjoy life more. The Preston girls were staying at my house then,

and it was very gay for the young soldiers who ran down from the army

for a day or so. We had heard of him, as usual, gallantly facing odds at

Sharpsburg.[92] And he asked if he should chance to be wounded would I

have him brought to Clay Street.

He was shot at Chancellorsville,[93] leading his men. The surgeon did

not think him mortally wounded. He sent me a message that “he was coming

at once to our house.” He knew he would soon get well there. Also that

“I need not be alarmed; those Yankees could not kill me.” He asked one

of his friends to write a letter to his mother. Afterward he said he had

another letter to write, but that he wished to sleep first, he felt so

exhausted. At his request they then turned his face away from the light

and left him. When they came again to look at him, they found him dead.

He had been dead for a long time. It was bitter cold; wounded men lost

much blood and were weakened in that way; they lacked warm blankets and

all comforts. Many died who might have been saved by one good hot drink

or a few mouthfuls of nourishing food.

One of the generals said to me: “Fire and reckless courage like Captain

Cuthbert’s are contagious; such men in an army are invaluable; losses

like this weakened us, indeed.” But I must not linger longer around the

memory of the bravest of the brave—a true exemplar of our old _régime_,

gallant, gay, unfortunate.—M. B. C.]

* * * * *