James Chesnut arrived on Wednesday. He has been giving Buck his opinion

of one of her performances last night. She was here, and the General’s

carriage drove up, bringing some of our girls. They told her he could

not come up and he begged she would go down there for a moment. She flew

down, and stood ten minutes in that snow, Cy holding the carriage-door

open. “But, Colonel Chesnut, there was no harm. I was not there ten

minutes. I could not get in the carriage because I did not mean to stay

one minute. He did not hold my hands—that is, not half the time—Oh, you

saw!—well, he did kiss my hands. Where is the harm of that?” All men

worship Buck. How can they help it, she is so lovely.

Lawrence has gone back ignominiously to South Carolina. At breakfast

already in some inscrutable way he had become intoxicated; he was told to

move a chair, and he raised it high over his head, smashing Mrs. Grundy’s

chandelier. My husband said: “Mary, do tell Lawrence to go home; I am too

angry to speak to him.” So Lawrence went without another word. He will

soon be back, and when he comes will say, “Shoo! I knew Mars Jeems could

not do without me.” And indeed he can not.

Buck, reading my journal, opened her beautiful eyes in amazement and

said: “So little do people know themselves! See what you say of me!” I

replied: “The girls heard him say to you, ‘Oh, you are so childish and so

sweet!’ Now, Buck, you know you are not childish. You have an abundance

of strong common sense. Don’t let men adore you so—if you can help it.

You are so unhappy about men who care for you, when they are killed.”

Isabella says that war leads to love-making. She says these soldiers do

more courting here in a day than they would do at home, without a war, in

ten years.

In the pauses of conversation, we hear, “She is the noblest woman God

ever made!” “Goodness!” exclaims Isabella. “Which one?” The amount of

courting we hear in these small rooms. Men have to go to the front, and

they say their say desperately. I am beginning to know all about it.

The girls tell me. And I overhear—I can not help it. But this style is

unique, is it not? “Since I saw you—last year—standing by the turnpike

gate, you know—my battle-cry has been: ‘God, my country, and you!’” So

many are lame. Major Venable says: “It is not ‘the devil on two sticks,’

now; the farce is ‘Cupid on Crutches.’”

General Breckinridge’s voice broke in: “They are my cousins. So I

determined to kiss them good-by. Good-by nowadays is the very devil;

it means forever, in all probability, you know; all the odds against

us. So I advanced to the charge soberly, discreetly, and in the fear of

the Lord. The girls stood in a row—four of the very prettiest I ever

saw.” Sam, with his eyes glued to the floor, cried: “You were afraid—you

backed out.” “But I did nothing of the kind. I kissed every one of them

honestly, heartily.”

_February 13th._—My husband is writing out some resolutions for the

Congress. He is very busy, too, trying to get some poor fellows

reprieved. He says they are good soldiers but got into a scrape. Buck

came in. She had on her last winter’s English hat, with the pheasant’s

wing. Just then Hood entered most unexpectedly. Said the blunt soldier

to the girl: “You look mighty pretty in that hat; you wore it at the

turnpike gate, where I surrendered at first sight.” She nodded and

smiled, and flew down the steps after Mr. Chesnut, looking back to say

that she meant to walk with him as far as the Executive Office.

The General walked to the window and watched until the last flutter of

her garment was gone. He said: “The President was finding fault with some

of his officers in command, and I said: ‘Mr. President, why don’t you

come and lead us yourself; I would follow you to the death.’” “Actually,

if you stay here in Richmond much longer you will grow to be a courtier.

And you came a rough Texan.”

Mrs. Davis and General McQueen came. He tells me Muscoe Garnett is

dead. Then the best and the cleverest Virginian I know is gone. He was

the most scholarly man they had, and his character was higher than his

requirements.

To-day a terrible onslaught was made upon the President for nepotism.

Burton Harrison’s and John Taylor Wood’s letters denying the charge that

the President’s cotton was unburned, or that he left it to be bought by

the Yankees, have enraged the opposition. How much these people in the

President’s family have to bear! I have never felt so indignant.

_February 16th._—Saw in Mrs. Howell’s room the little negro Mrs. Davis

rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian. The child is an orphan.

He was dressed up in little Joe’s clothes and happy as a lord. He was

very anxious to show me his wounds and bruises, but I fled. There are

some things in life too sickening, and cruelty is one of them.

Somebody said: “People who knew General Hood before the war said there

was nothing in him. As for losing his property by the war, some say he

never had any, and that West Point is a pauper’s school, after all. He

has only military glory, and that he has gained since the war began.”

“Now,” said Burton Harrison, “only military glory! I like that! The glory

and the fame he has gained during the war—that is Hood. What was Napoleon

before Toulon? Hood has the impassive dignity of an Indian chief. He has

always a little court around him of devoted friends. Wigfall, himself,

has said he could not get within Hood’s lines.”

_February 17th._—Found everything in Main Street twenty per cent dearer.

They say it is due to the new currency bill.

I asked my husband: “Is General Johnston ordered to reenforce Polk? They

said he did not understand the order.” “After five days’ delay,” he

replied. “They say Sherman is marching to Mobile.[113] When they once

get inside of our armies what is to molest them, unless it be women with

broomsticks?” General Johnston writes that “the Governor of Georgia

refuses him provisions and the use of his roads.” The Governor of Georgia

writes: “The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have

furnished him abundantly with provisions from time to time, as he desired

them.” I suppose both of these letters are placed away side by side in

our archives.

_February 20th._—Mrs. Preston was offended by the story of Buck’s

performance at the Ive’s. General Breckinridge told her “it was the

most beautifully unconscious act he ever saw.” The General was leaning

against the wall, Buck standing guard by him “on her two feet.” The crowd

surged that way, and she held out her arm to protect him from the rush.

After they had all passed she handed him his crutches, and they, too,

moved slowly away. Mrs. Davis said: “Any woman in Richmond would have

done the same joyfully, but few could do it so gracefully. Buck is made

so conspicuous by her beauty, whatever she does can not fail to attract

attention.”

Johnny stayed at home only one day; then went to his plantation, got

several thousand Confederate dollars, and in the afternoon drove out with

Mrs. K——. At the Bee Store he spent a thousand of his money; bought us

gloves and linen. Well, one can do without gloves, but linen is next to

life itself.

Yesterday the President walked home from church with me. He said he was

so glad to see my husband at church; had never seen him there before;

remarked on how well he looked, etc. I replied that he looked so well

“because you have never before seen him in the part of ‘the right man in

the right place.’” My husband has no fancy for being planted in pews, but

he is utterly Christian in his creed.

_February 23d._—At the President’s, where General Lee breakfasted, a man

named Phelan told General Lee all he ought to do; planned a campaign for

him. General Lee smiled blandly the while, though he did permit himself

a mild sneer at the wise civilians in Congress who refrained from trying

the battle-field in person, but from afar dictated the movements of

armies. My husband said that, to his amazement, General Lee came into his

room at the Executive Office to “pay his respects and have a talk.” “Dear

me! Goodness gracious!” said I. “That was a compliment from the head of

the army, the very first man in the world, we Confederates think.”

_February 24th._—Friends came to make taffy and stayed the livelong day.

They played cards. One man, a soldier, had only two teeth left in front

and they lapped across each other. On account of the condition of his

mouth, he had maintained a dignified sobriety of aspect, though he told

some funny stories. Finally a story was too much for him, and he grinned

from ear to ear. Maggie gazed, and then called out as the negro fiddlers

call out dancing figures, “Forward two and cross over!” Fancy our faces.

The hero of the two teeth, relapsing into a decorous arrangement of

mouth, said: “Cavalry are the eyes of an army; they bring the news; the

artillery are the boys to make a noise; but the infantry do the fighting,

and a general or so gets all the glory.”

_February 26th._—We went to see Mrs. Breckinridge, who is here with her

husband. Then we paid our respects to Mrs. Lee. Her room was like an

industrial school: everybody so busy. Her daughters were all there plying

their needles, with several other ladies. Mrs. Lee showed us a beautiful

sword, recently sent to the General by some Marylanders, now in Paris.

On the blade was engraved, “_Aide toi et Dieu t’aidera_.” When we came

out someone said, “Did you see how the Lees spend their time? What a

rebuke to the taffy parties!”

Another maimed hero is engaged to be married. Sally Hampton has accepted

John Haskell. There is a story that he reported for duty after his arm

was shot off; suppose in the fury of the battle he did not feel the pain.

General Breckinridge once asked, “What’s the name of the fellow who has

gone to Europe for Hood’s leg?” “Dr. Darby.” “Suppose it is shipwrecked?”

“No matter; half a dozen are ordered.” Mrs. Preston raised her hands: “No

wonder the General says they talk of him as if he were a centipede; his

leg is in everybody’s mouth.”

_March 3d._—Hetty, the handsome, and Constance, the witty, came; the

former too prudish to read Lost and Saved, by Mrs. Norton, after she had

heard the plot. Conny was making a bonnet for me. Just as she was leaving

the house, her friendly labors over, my husband entered, and quickly

ordered his horse. “It is so near dinner,” I began. “But I am going with

the President. I am on duty. He goes to inspect the fortifications. The

enemy, once more, are within a few miles of Richmond.” Then we prepared a

luncheon for him. Constance Cary remained with me.

After she left I sat down to Romola, and I was absorbed in it. How

hardened we grow to war and war’s alarms! The enemy’s cannon or our own

are thundering in my ears, and I was dreadfully afraid some infatuated

and frightened friend would come in to cheer, to comfort, and interrupt

me. Am I the same poor soul who fell on her knees and prayed, and wept,

and fainted, as the first gun boomed from Fort Sumter? Once more we have

repulsed the enemy. But it is humiliating, indeed, that he can come and

threaten us at our very gates whenever he so pleases. If a forlorn negro

had not led them astray (and they hanged him for it) on Tuesday night,

unmolested, they would have walked into Richmond. Surely there is horrid

neglect or mismanagement somewhere.

_March 4th._—The enemy has been reenforced and is on us again. Met Wade

Hampton, who told me my husband was to join him with some volunteer

troops; so I hurried home. Such a cavalcade rode up to luncheon! Captain

Smith Lee and Preston Hampton, the handsomest, the oldest and the

youngest of the party. This was at the Prestons’. Smith Lee walked home

with me; alarm-bells ringing; horsemen galloping; wagons rattling. Dr.

H. stopped us to say “Beast” Butler was on us with sixteen thousand men.

How scared the Doctor looked! And, after all, it was only a notice to the

militia to turn out and drill.

_March 5th._—Tom Fergurson walked home with me. He told me of Colonel

Dahlgren’s[114] death and the horrid memoranda found in his pocket. He

came with secret orders to destroy this devoted city, hang the President

and his Cabinet, and burn the town! Fitzhugh Lee was proud that the Ninth

Virginia captured him.

Found Mrs. Semmes covering her lettuces and radishes as calmly as if

Yankee raiders were a myth. While “Beast” Butler holds Fortress Monroe he

will make things lively for us. On the alert must we be now.

_March 7th._—Shopping, and paid $30 for a pair of gloves; $50 for a

pair of slippers; $24 for six spools of thread; $32 for five miserable,

shabby little pocket handkerchiefs. When I came home found Mrs. Webb. At

her hospital there was a man who had been taken prisoner by Dahlgren’s

party. He saw the negro hanged who had misled them, unintentionally, in

all probability. He saw Dahlgren give a part of his bridle to hang him.

Details are melancholy, as Emerson says. This Dahlgren had also lost a

leg.

Constance Cary, in words too fine for the occasion, described the homely

scene at my house; how I prepared sandwiches for my husband; and broke,

with trembling hand, the last bottle of anything to drink in the house, a

bottle I destined to go with the sandwiches. She called it a Hector and

Andromache performance.

_March 8th._—Mrs. Preston’s story. As we walked home, she told me she

had just been to see a lady she had known more than twenty years before.

She had met her in this wise: One of the chambermaids of the St. Charles

Hotel (New Orleans) told Mrs. Preston’s nurse—it was when Mary Preston

was a baby—that up among the servants in the garret there was a sick

lady and her children. The maid was sure she was a lady, and thought she

was hiding from somebody. Mrs. Preston went up, knew the lady, had her

brought down into comfortable rooms, and nursed her until she recovered

from her delirium and fever. She had run away, indeed, and was hiding

herself and her children from a worthless husband. Now, she has one son

in a Yankee prison, one mortally wounded, and the last of them dying

there under her eyes of consumption. This last had married here in

Richmond, not wisely, and too soon, for he was a mere boy; his pay as a

private was eleven dollars a month, and his wife’s family charged him

three hundred dollars a month for her board; so he had to work double

tides, do odd jobs by night and by day, and it killed him by exposure to

cold in this bitter climate to which his constitution was unadapted.

They had been in Vicksburg during the siege, and during the bombardment

sought refuge in a cave. The roar of the cannon ceasing, they came out

gladly for a breath of fresh air. At the moment when they emerged, a bomb

burst there, among them, so to speak, struck the son already wounded,

and smashed off the arm of a beautiful little grandchild not three years

old. There was this poor little girl with her touchingly lovely face, and

her arm gone. This mutilated little martyr, Mrs. Preston said, was really

to her the crowning touch of the woman’s affliction. Mrs. Preston put up

her hand, “Her baby face haunts me.”

_March 11th._—Letters from home, including one from my husband’s father,

now over ninety, written with his own hand, and certainly his own mind

still. I quote: “Bad times; worse coming. Starvation stares me in the

face. Neither John’s nor James’s overseer will sell me any corn.” Now,

what has the government to do with the fact that on all his plantations

he made corn enough to last for the whole year, and by the end of January

his negroes had stolen it all? Poor old man, he has fallen on evil days,

after a long life of ease and prosperity.

To-day, I read The Blithedale Romance. Blithedale leaves such an

unpleasant impression. I like pleasant, kindly stories, now that we are

so harrowed by real life. Tragedy is for our hours of ease.

_March 12th._—An active campaign has begun everywhere. Kilpatrick still

threatens us. Bragg has organized his fifteen hundred of cavalry to

protect Richmond. Why can’t my husband be made colonel of that? It is a

new regiment. No; he must be made a general!

“Now,” says Mary Preston, “Doctor Darby is at the mercy of both Yankees

and the rolling sea, and I am anxious enough; but, instead of taking my

bed and worrying mamma, I am taking stock of our worldly goods and trying

to arrange the wedding paraphernalia for two girls.”

There is love-making and love-making in this world. What a time the

sweethearts of that wretch, young Shakespeare, must have had. What

experiences of life’s delights must have been his before he evolved the

Romeo and Juliet business from his own internal consciousness; also that

delicious Beatrice and Rosalind. The poor creature that he left his

second best bedstead to came in second best all the time, no doubt; and

she hardly deserved more. Fancy people wondering that Shakespeare and

his kind leave no progeny like themselves! Shakespeare’s children would

have been half his only; the other half only the second best bedstead’s.

What would you expect of that commingling of materials? Goethe used his

lady-loves as school-books are used: he studied them from cover to cover,

got all that could be got of self-culture and knowledge of human nature

from the study of them, and then threw them aside as if of no further

account in his life.

Byron never could forget Lord Byron, poet and peer, and _mauvais sujet_,

and he must have been a trying lover; like talking to a man looking in

the glass at himself. Lady Byron was just as much taken up with herself.

So, they struck each other, and bounded apart.

[Since I wrote this, Mrs. Stowe has taken Byron in hand. But I know a

story which might have annoyed my lord more than her and Lady Byron’s

imagination of wickedness—for he posed a fiend, but was tender and kind.

A clerk in a country store asked my sister to lend him a book, he “wanted

something to read; the days were so long.” “What style of book would you

prefer?” she said. “Poetry.” “Any particular poet?” “_Brown._ I hear him

much spoken of.” “Brown_ing_?” “No; Brown—short—that is what they call

him.” “Byron, you mean.” “No, I mean the poet, Brown.”]

“Oh, you wish you had lived in the time of the Shakespeare creature!”

He knew all the forms and phases of true love. Straight to one’s heart

he goes in tragedy or comedy. He never misses fire. He has been there,

in slang phrase. No doubt the man’s bare presence gave pleasure to the

female world; he saw women at their best, and he effaced himself. He told

no tales of his own life. Compare with him old, sad, solemn, sublime,

sneering, snarling, fault-finding Milton, a man whose family doubtless

found “_les absences délicieuses_.” That phrase describes a type of man

at a touch; it took a Frenchwoman to do it.

“But there is an Italian picture of Milton, taken in his youth, and

he was as beautiful as an angel.” “No doubt. But love flies before

everlasting posing and preaching—the deadly requirement of a man always

to be looked up to—a domestic tyrant, grim, formal, and awfully learned.

Milton was only a mere man, for he could not do without women. When

he tired out the first poor thing, who did not fall down, worship,

and obey him, and see God in him, and she ran away, he immediately

arranged his creed so that he could take another wife; for wife he must

have, _à la_ Mohammedan creed. The deer-stealer never once thought of

justifying theft simply because he loved venison and could not come by it

lawfully. Shakespeare was a better man, or, may I say, a purer soul, than

self-upholding, Calvinistic, Puritanic, king-killing Milton. There is no

muddling of right and wrong in Shakespeare, and no pharisaical stuff of

any sort.”

Then George Deas joined us, fresh from Mobile, where he left peace and

plenty. He went to sixteen weddings and twenty-seven tea-parties. For

breakfast he had everything nice. Lily told of what she had seen the

day before at the Spottswood. She was in the small parlor, waiting for

someone, and in the large drawing-room sat Hood, solitary, sad, with

crutches by his chair. He could not see them. Mrs. Buckner came in and

her little girl who, when she spied Hood, bounded into the next room, and

sprang into his lap. Hood smoothed her little dress down and held her

close to him. She clung around his neck for a while, and then, seizing

him by the beard, kissed him to an illimitable extent. “Prettiest picture

I ever saw,” said Lily. “The soldier and the child.”

John R. Thompson sent me a New York Herald only three days old. It is

down on Kilpatrick for his miserable failure before Richmond. Also it

acknowledges a defeat before Charleston and a victory for us in Florida.

General Grant is charmed with Sherman’s successful movements; says he has

destroyed millions upon millions of our property in Mississippi. I hope

that may not be true, and that Sherman may fail as Kilpatrick did. Now,

if we still had Stonewall or Albert Sidney Johnston where Joe Johnston

and Polk are, I would not give a fig for Sherman’s chances. The Yankees

say that at last they have scared up a man who succeeds, and they expect

him to remedy all that has gone wrong. So they have made their brutal

Suwarrow, Grant, lieutenant-general.

Doctor —— at the Prestons’ proposed to show me a man who was not an F. F.

V. Until we came here, we had never heard of our social position. We do

not know how to be rude to people who call. To talk of social position

seems vulgar. Down our way, that sort of thing was settled one way or

another beyond a peradventure, like the earth and the sky. We never

gave it a thought. We talked to whom we pleased, and if they were not

_comme il faut_, we were ever so much more polite to the poor things. No

reflection on Virginia. Everybody comes to Richmond.

Somebody counted fourteen generals in church to-day, and suggested that

less piety and more drilling of commands would suit the times better.

There were Lee, Longstreet, Morgan, Hoke, Clingman, Whiting, Pegram,

Elzey, Gordon, and Bragg. Now, since Dahlgren failed to carry out his

orders, the Yankees disown them, disavowing all. He was not sent here to

murder us all, to hang the President, and burn the town. There is the

note-book, however, at the Executive Office, with orders to hang and burn.

_March 15th._—Old Mrs. Chesnut is dead. A saint is gone and James Chesnut

is broken-hearted. He adored his mother. I gave $375 for my mourning,

which consists of a black alpaca dress and a crape veil. With bonnet,

gloves, and all it came to $500. Before the blockade such things as I

have would not have been thought fit for a chambermaid.

Everybody is in trouble. Mrs. Davis says paper money has depreciated so

much in value that they can not live within their income; so they are

going to dispense with their carriage and horses.

_March 18th._—Went out to sell some of my colored dresses. What a scene

it was—such piles of rubbish, and mixed up with it, such splendid

Parisian silks and satins. A mulatto woman kept the shop under a roof in

an out-of-the-way old house. The _ci-devant_ rich white women sell to,

and the negroes buy of, this woman.

After some whispering among us Buck said: “Sally is going to marry a man

who has lost an arm, and she is proud of it. The cause glorifies such

wounds.” Annie said meekly, “I fear it will be my fate to marry one who

has lost his head.” “Tudy has her eyes on one who has lost an eye. What a

glorious assortment of noble martyrs and heroes!” “The bitterness of this

kind of talk is appalling.”

General Lee had tears in his eyes when he spoke of his daughter-in-law

just dead—that lovely little Charlotte Wickham, Mrs. Roony Lee. Roony Lee

says “Beast” Butler was very kind to him while he was a prisoner. The

“Beast” has sent him back his war-horse. The Lees are men enough to speak

the truth of friend or enemy, fearing not the consequences.

_March 19th._—A new experience: Molly and Lawrence have both gone home,

and I am to be left for the first time in my life wholly at the mercy of

hired servants. Mr. Chesnut, being in such deep mourning for his mother,

we see no company. I have a maid of all work.

Tudy came with an account of yesterday’s trip to Petersburg. Constance

Cary raved of the golden ripples in Tudy’s hair. Tudy vanished in a halo

of glory, and Constance Cary gave me an account of a wedding, as it

was given to her by Major von Borcke. The bridesmaids were dressed in

black, the bride in Confederate gray, homespun. She had worn the dress

all winter, but it had been washed and turned for the wedding. The female

critics pronounced it “flabby-dabby.” They also said her collar was only

“net,” and she wore a cameo breastpin. Her bonnet was self-made.

_March 24th._—Yesterday, we went to the Capitol grounds to see our

returned prisoners. We walked slowly up and down until Jeff Davis was

called upon to speak. There I stood, almost touching the bayonets when he

left me. I looked straight into the prisoners’ faces, poor fellows. They

cheered with all their might, and I wept for sympathy, and enthusiasm.

I was very deeply moved. These men were so forlorn, so dried up, and

shrunken, with such a strange look in some of their eyes; others so

restless and wild-looking; others again placidly vacant, as if they had

been dead to the world for years. A poor woman was too much for me. She

was searching for her son. He had been expected back. She said he was

taken prisoner at Gettysburg. She kept going in and out among them with a

basket of provisions she had brought for him to eat. It was too pitiful.

She was utterly unconscious of the crowd. The anxious dread, expectation,

hurry, and hope which led her on showed in her face.

A sister of Mrs. Lincoln is here. She brings the freshest scandals from

Yankeeland. She says she rode with Lovejoy. A friend of hers commands a

black regiment. Two Southern horrors—a black regiment and Lovejoy.

_March 31st._—Met Preston Hampton. Constance Cary was with me. She showed

her regard for him by taking his overcoat and leaving him in a drenching

rain. What boyish nonsense he talked; said he was in love with Miss

Dabney now, that his love was so hot within him that he was waterproof,

the rain sizzed and smoked off. It did not so much as dampen his ardor or

his clothes.

_April 1st._—Mrs. Davis is utterly depressed. She said the fall of

Richmond must come; she would send her children to me and Mrs. Preston.

We begged her to come to us also. My husband is as depressed as I ever

knew him to be. He has felt the death of that angel mother of his keenly,

and now he takes his country’s woes to heart.

_April 11th._—Drove with Mrs. Davis and all her infant family;

wonderfully clever and precocious children, with unbroken wills. At one

time there was a sudden uprising of the nursery contingent. They laughed,

fought, and screamed. Bedlam broke loose. Mrs. Davis scolded, laughed,

and cried. She asked me if my husband would speak to the President about

the plan in South Carolina, which everybody said suited him. “No, Mrs.

Davis,” said I. “That is what I told Mr. Davis,” said she. “Colonel

Chesnut rides so high a horse. Now Browne is so much more practical. He

goes forth to be general of conscripts in Georgia. His wife will stay at

the Cobbs’s.”

Mrs. Ould gave me a luncheon on Saturday. I felt that this was my last

sad farewell to Richmond and the people there I love so well. Mrs. Davis

sent her carriage for me, and we went to the Oulds’ together. Such good

things were served—oranges, guava jelly, etc. The Examiner says Mr.

Ould, when he goes to Fortress Monroe, replenishes his larder; why not?

The Examiner has taken another fling at the President, as, “haughty and

austere with his friends, affable, kind, subservient to his enemies.” I

wonder if the Yankees would indorse that certificate. Both sides abuse

him. He can not please anybody, it seems. No doubt he is right.

My husband is now brigadier-general and is sent to South Carolina to

organize and take command of the reserve troops. C. C. Clay and L. Q. C.

Lamar are both spoken of to fill the vacancy made among Mr. Davis’s aides

by this promotion.

To-day, Captain Smith Lee spent the morning here and gave a review of

past Washington gossip. I am having such a busy, happy life, with so

many friends, and my friends are so clever, so charming. But the change

to that weary, dreary Camden! Mary Preston said: “I do think Mrs. Chesnut

deserves to be canonized; she agrees to go back to Camden.” The Prestons

gave me a farewell dinner; my twenty-fourth wedding day, and the very

pleasantest day I have spent in Richmond.

Maria Lewis was sitting with us on Mrs. Huger’s steps, and Smith Lee

was lauding Virginia people as usual. As Lee would say, there “hove in

sight” Frank Parker, riding one of the finest of General Bragg’s horses;

by his side Buck on Fairfax, the most beautiful horse in Richmond, his

brown coat looking like satin, his proud neck arched, moving slowly,

gracefully, calmly, no fidgets, aristocratic in his bearing to the

tips of his bridle-reins. There sat Buck tall and fair, managing her

horse with infinite ease, her English riding-habit showing plainly the

exquisite proportions of her figure. “Supremely lovely,” said Smith

Lee. “Look at them both,” said I proudly; “can you match those two in

Virginia?” “Three cheers for South Carolina!” was the answer of Lee, the

gallant Virginia sailor.

XVII

CAMDEN, S. C.

_May 8, 1864-June 1, 1864_

Camden, S. C., _May 8, 1864_.—My friends crowded around me so in those

last days in Richmond, I forgot the affairs of this nation utterly;

though I did show faith in my Confederate country by buying poor Bones’s

(my English maid’s) Confederate bonds. I gave her gold thimbles,

bracelets; whatever was gold and would sell in New York or London, I gave.

My friends in Richmond grieved that I had to leave them—not half so

much, however, as I did that I must come away. Those last weeks were so

pleasant. No battle, no murder, no sudden death, all went merry as a

marriage bell. Clever, cordial, kind, brave friends rallied around me.

Maggie Howell and I went down the river to see an exchange of prisoners.

Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan, Mrs. Ould. We picked

up Judge Ould and Buck Allan at Curl’s Neck. I had seen no genuine

Yankees before; prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or

Irish. Among our men coming ashore was an officer, who had charge of

some letters for a friend of mine whose _fiancé_ had died; I gave him

her address. One other man showed me some wonderfully ingenious things

he had made while a prisoner. One said they gave him rations for a week;

he always devoured them in three days, he could not help it; and then

he had to bear the inevitable agony of those four remaining days! Many

were wounded, some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. We had

supper—or some nondescript meal—with ice-cream on board. The band played

Home, Sweet Home.

One man tapped another on the shoulder: “Well, how do you feel, old

fellow?” “Never was so near crying in my life—for very comfort.”

Governor Cummings, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah, was among the

returned prisoners. He had been in prison two years. His wife was with

him. He was a striking-looking person, huge in size, and with snow-white

hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee barbarity or starvation

about him.

That evening, as we walked up to Mrs. Davis’s carriage, which was waiting

for us at the landing, Dr. Garnett with Maggie Howell, Major Hall with

me, suddenly I heard her scream, and some one stepped back in the dark

and said in a whisper. “Little Joe! he has killed himself!” I felt

reeling, faint, bewildered. A chattering woman clutched my arm: “Mrs.

Davis’s son? Impossible. Whom did you say? Was he an interesting child?

How old was he?” The shock was terrible, and unnerved as I was I cried,

“For God’s sake take her away!”

Then Maggie and I drove two long miles in silence except for Maggie’s

hysterical sobs. She was wild with terror. The news was broken to her in

that abrupt way at the carriage door so that at first she thought it had

all happened there, and that poor little Joe was in the carriage.

Mr. Burton Harrison met us at the door of the Executive Mansion. Mrs.

Semmes and Mrs. Barksdale were there, too. Every window and door of the

house seemed wide open, and the wind was blowing the curtains. It was

lighted, even in the third story. As I sat in the drawing-room, I could

hear the tramp of Mr. Davis’s step as he walked up and down the room

above. Not another sound. The whole house as silent as death. It was then

twelve o’clock; so I went home and waked General Chesnut, who had gone

to bed. We went immediately back to the President’s, found Mrs. Semmes

still there, but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the

family ought to be in the house.

Mrs. Semmes said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by

his brother, and he called out to her in great distress: “Mrs. Semmes, I

have said all the prayers I know how, but God will not wake Joe.”

Poor little Joe, the good child of the family, was so gentle and

affectionate. He used to run in to say his prayers at his father’s knee.

Now he was laid out somewhere above us, crushed and killed. Mrs. Semmes,

describing the accident, said he fell from the high north piazza upon a

brick pavement. Before I left the house I saw him lying there, white and

beautiful as an angel, covered with flowers; Catherine, his nurse, flat

on the floor by his side, was weeping and wailing as only an Irishwoman

can.

Immense crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic, but some

shoving and pushing rudely. There were thousands of children, and

each child had a green bough or a bunch of flowers to throw on little

Joe’s grave, which was already a mass of white flowers, crosses, and

evergreens. The morning I came away from Mrs. Davis’s, early as it was,

I met a little child with a handful of snow drops. “Put these on little

Joe,” she said; “I knew him so well,” and then she turned and fled

without another word. I did not know who she was then or now.

As I walked home I met Mr. Reagan, then Wade Hampton. But I could see

nothing but little Joe and his broken-hearted mother. And Mr. Davis’s

step still sounded in my ears as he walked that floor the livelong night.

General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond.

Great numbers of people were to go up by rail to see it. Miss Turner

McFarland writes: “They did go, but they came back faster than they went.

They found the army drawn up in battle array.” Many of the brave and gay

spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight, the only flight they

know, and their bodies are left dead upon the battle-field. Poor old

Edward Johnston is wounded again, and a prisoner. Jones’s brigade broke

first; he was wounded the day before.

At Wilmington we met General Whiting. He sent us to the station in his

carriage, and bestowed upon us a bottle of brandy, which had run the

blockade. They say Beauregard has taken his sword from Whiting. Never! I

will not believe it. At the capture of Fort Sumter they said Whiting was

the brains, Beauregard only the hand. Lucifer, son of the morning! How

art thou fallen! That they should even say such a thing!

My husband and Mr. Covey got out at Florence to procure for Mrs. Miles

a cup of coffee. They were slow about it and they got left. I did not

mind this so very much, for I remembered that we were to remain all day

at Kingsville, and that my husband could overtake me there by the next

train. My maid belonged to the Prestons. She was only traveling home with

me, and would go straight on to Columbia. So without fear I stepped off

at Kingsville. My old Confederate silk, like most Confederate dresses,

had seen better days, and I noticed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes’s

famous “one-hoss shay,” it had gone to pieces suddenly, and all over.

It was literally in strips. I became painfully aware of my forlorn

aspect when I asked the telegraph man the way to the hotel, and he was

by no means respectful to me. I was, indeed, alone—an old and not too

respectable-looking woman. It was my first appearance in the character,

and I laughed aloud.

A very haughty and highly painted dame greeted me at the hotel. “No

room,” said she. “Who are you?” I gave my name. “Try something else,”

said she. “Mrs. Chesnut don’t travel round by herself with no servants

and no nothing.” I looked down. There I was, dirty, tired, tattered, and

torn. “Where do you come from?” said she. “My home is in Camden.” “Come,

now, I know everybody in Camden.” I sat down meekly on a bench in the

piazza, that was free to all wayfarers.

“Which Mrs. Chesnut?” said she (sharply). “I know both.” “I am now the

only one. And now what is the matter with you? Do you take me for a spy?

I know you perfectly well. I went to school with you at Miss Henrietta de

Leon’s, and my name was Mary Miller.” “The Lord sakes alive! and to think

you are her! Now I see. Dear! dear me! Heaven sakes, woman, but you are

broke!” “And tore,” I added, holding up my dress. “But I had had no idea

it was so difficult to effect an entry into a railroad wayside hotel.” I

picked up a long strip of my old black dress, torn off by a man’s spur as

I passed him getting off the train.

It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chesnut, who was the good

genius of the place. It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the

forest—the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I

have not seen since I left here—with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow

jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never

sweeter.

Inside, are creature comforts of all kinds—green peas, strawberries,

asparagus, spring lamb, spring chicken, fresh eggs, rich, yellow butter,

clean white linen for one’s beds, dazzling white damask for one’s table.

It is such a contrast to Richmond, where I wish I were.

Fighting is going on. Hampton is frantic, for his laggard new regiments

fall in slowly; no fault of the soldiers; they are as disgusted as he is.

Bragg, Bragg, the head of the War Office, can not organize in time.

John Boykin has died in a Yankee prison. He had on a heavy flannel shirt

when lying in an open platform car on the way to a cold prison on the

lakes. A Federal soldier wanted John’s shirt. Prisoners have no rights;

so John had to strip off and hand his shirt to him. That caused his

death. In two days he was dead of pneumonia—may be frozen to death. One

man said: “They are taking us there to freeze.” But then their men will

find our hot sun in August and July as deadly as our men find their cold

Decembers. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they

say. Napoleon’s soldiers found out all that in the Russian campaign.

Have brought my houseless, homeless friends, refugees here, to luxuriate

in Mulberry’s plenty. I can but remember the lavish kindness of the

Virginia people when I was there and in a similar condition. The Virginia

people do the rarest acts of hospitality and never seem to know it is not

in the ordinary course of events.

The President’s man, Stephen, bringing his master’s Arabian to Mulberry

for safe-keeping, said: “Why, Missis, your niggers down here are well

off. I call this Mulberry place heaven, with plenty to eat, little to do,

warm house to sleep in, a good church.”

John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment.

The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering. The

Secretary of War authorizes General Chesnut to reorganize the men who

have been hitherto detailed for special duty, and also those who have

been exempt. He says General Chesnut originated the plan and organized

the corps of clerks which saved Richmond in the Dahlgren raid.

_May 27th._—In all this beautiful sunshine, in the stillness and shade of

these long hours on this piazza, all comes back to me about little Joe;

it haunts me—that scene in Richmond where all seemed confusion, madness,

a bad dream! Here I see that funeral procession as it wound among those

tall white monuments, up that hillside, the James River tumbling about

below over rocks and around islands; the dominant figure, that poor, old,

gray-haired man, standing bareheaded, straight as an arrow, clear against

the sky by the open grave of his son. She, the bereft mother, stood

back, in her heavy black wrappings, and her tall figure drooped. The

flowers, the children, the procession as it moved, comes and goes, but

those two dark, sorrow-stricken figures stand; they are before me now!

That night, with no sound but the heavy tramp of his feet overhead, the

curtains flapping in the wind, the gas flaring, I was numb, stupid,

half-dead with grief and terror. Then came Catherine’s Irish howl. Cheap,

was that. Where was she when it all happened? Her place was to have

been with the child. Who saw him fall? Whom will they kill next of that

devoted household?

Read to-day the list of killed and wounded.[115] One long column was not

enough for South Carolina’s dead. I see Mr. Federal Secretary Stanton

says he can reenforce Suwarrow Grant at his leisure whenever he calls

for more. He has just sent him 25,000 veterans. Old Lincoln says, in his

quaint backwoods way, “Keep a-peggin’.” Now we can only peg out. What

have we left of men, etc., to meet these “reenforcements as often as

reenforcements are called for?” Our fighting men have all gone to the

front; only old men and little boys are at home now.

It is impossible to sleep here, because it is so solemn and still.

The moonlight shines in my window sad and white, and the soft south

wind, literally comes over a bank of violets, lilacs, roses, with

orange-blossoms and magnolia flowers.

[Illustration: MRS. JAMES CHESNUT, SR.

From a Portrait in Oil by Gilbert Stuart.]

Mrs. Chesnut was only a year younger than her husband. He is ninety-two

or three. She was deaf; but he retains his senses wonderfully for his

great age. I have always been an early riser. Formerly I often saw him

sauntering slowly down the broad passage from his room to hers, in a

flowing flannel dressing-gown when it was winter. In the spring he was

apt to be in shirt-sleeves, with suspenders hanging down his back. He had

always a large hair-brush in his hand.

He would take his stand on the rug before the fire in her room, brushing

scant locks which were fleecy white. Her maid would be doing hers, which

were dead-leaf brown, not a white hair in her head. He had the voice of a

stentor, and there he stood roaring his morning compliments. The people

who occupied the room above said he fairly shook the window glasses. This

pleasant morning greeting ceremony was never omitted.

Her voice was “soft and low” (the oft-quoted). Philadelphia seems to

have lost the art of sending forth such voices now. Mrs. Binney, old

Mrs. Chesnut’s sister, came among us with the same softly modulated,

womanly, musical voice. Her clever and beautiful daughters were _criard_.

Judge Han said: “Philadelphia women scream like macaws.” This morning

as I passed Mrs. Chesnut’s room, the door stood wide open, and I heard

a pitiful sound. The old man was kneeling by her empty bedside sobbing

bitterly. I fled down the middle walk, anywhere out of reach of what was

never meant for me to hear.

_June 1st._—We have been to Bloomsbury again and hear that William

Kirkland has been wounded. A scene occurred then, Mary weeping bitterly

and Aunt B. frantic as to Tanny’s danger. I proposed to make arrangements

for Mary to go on at once. The Judge took me aside, frowning angrily.

“You are unwise to talk in that way. She can neither take her infant

nor leave it. The cars are closed by order of the government to all but

soldiers.”

I told him of the woman who, when the conductor said she could not go,

cried at the top of her voice, “Soldiers, I want to go to Richmond to

nurse my wounded husband.” In a moment twenty men made themselves her

body-guard, and she went on unmolested. The Judge said I talked nonsense.

I said I would go on in my carriage if need be. Besides, there would be

no difficulty in getting Mary a “permit.”

He answered hotly that in no case would he let her go, and that I had

better _not_ go back into the house. We were on the piazza and my

carriage at the door. I took it and crossed over to see Mary Boykin. She

was weeping, too, so washed away with tears one would hardly know her.

“So many killed. My son and my husband—I do not hear a word from them.”

Gave to-day for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, and sixty

pounds of sugar, $800.

Beauregard is a gentleman and was a genius as long as Whiting did his

engineering for him. Our Creole general is not quite so clever as he

thinks himself.

Mary Ford writes for school-books for her boys. She is in great distress

on the subject. When Longstreet’s corps passed through Greenville there

was great enthusiasm; handkerchiefs were waved, bouquets and flowers were

thrown the troops; her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw their

school-books.

XVIII

COLUMBIA, S. C.

_July 6, 1864-January 17, 1865_

Columbia, S, C., _July 6, 1864_.—At the Prestons’ Mary was laughing at

Mrs. Lyons’s complaint—the person from whom we rented rooms in Richmond.

She spoke of Molly and Lawrence’s deceitfulness. They went about the

house quiet as mice while we were at home; or Lawrence sat at the door

and sprang to his feet whenever we passed. But when we were out, they

sang, laughed, shouted, and danced. If any of the Lyons family passed

him, Lawrence kept his seat, with his hat on, too. Mrs. Chesnut had said:

“Oh!” so meekly to the whole tirade, and added, “I will see about it.”

Colonel Urquhart and Edmund Rhett dined here; charming men both—no brag,

no detraction. Talk is never pleasant where there is either. Our noble

Georgian dined here. He says Hampton was the hero of the Yankee rout at

Stony Creek.[116] He claims that citizens, militia, and lame soldiers

kept the bridge at Staunton and gallantly repulsed Wilson’s raiders.

At Mrs. S.’s last night. She came up, saying, “In New Orleans four people

never met together without dancing.” Edmund Rhett turned to me: “You

shall be pressed into service.” “No, I belong to the reserve corps—too

old to volunteer or to be drafted as a conscript.” But I had to go.

My partner in the dance showed his English descent; he took his pleasure

sadly. “Oh, Mr. Rhett, at his pleasure, can be a most agreeable

companion!” said someone. “I never happened to meet him,” said I, “when

he pleased to be otherwise.” With a hot, draggled, old alpaca dress, and

those clod-hopping shoes, to tumble slowly and gracefully through the

mazes of a July dance was too much for me. “What depresses you so?” he

anxiously inquired. “Our carnival of death.” What a blunder to bring us

all together here!—a reunion of consumptives to dance and sing until one

can almost hear the death-rattle!

[Illustration: MRS. CHESNUT’S HOME IN COLUMBIA IN THE LAST YEAR OF THE

WAR.

Here Mrs. Chesnut entertained Jefferson Davis.]

_July 25th._—Now we are in a cottage rented from Doctor Chisolm. Hood

is a full general. Johnston[117] has been removed and superseded. Early

is threatening Washington City. Semmes, of whom we have been so proud,

risked the Alabama in a sort of duel of ships. He has lowered the flag of

the famous Alabama to the Kearsarge.[118] Forgive who may! I can not. We

moved into this house on the 20th of July. My husband was telegraphed to

go to Charleston. General Jones sent for him. A part of his command is on

the coast.

The girls were at my house. Everything was in the utmost confusion. We

were lying on a pile of mattresses in one of the front rooms while the

servants were reducing things to order in the rear. All the papers are

down on the President for this change of commanders except the Georgia

papers. Indeed, Governor Brown’s constant complaints, I dare say, caused

it—these and the rage of the Georgia people as Johnston backed down on

them.

Isabella soon came. She said she saw the Preston sisters pass her house,

and as they turned the corner there was a loud and bitter cry. It seemed

to come from the Hampton house. Both girls began to run at full speed.

“What is the matter?” asked Mrs. Martin. “Mother, listen; that sounded

like the cry of a broken heart,” said Isabella; “something has gone

terribly wrong at the Prestons’.”

Mrs. Martin is deaf, however, so she heard nothing and thought Isabella

fanciful. Isabella hurried over there, and learned that they had come to

tell Mrs. Preston that Willie was killed—Willie! his mother’s darling.

No country ever had a braver soldier, a truer gentleman, to lay down his

life in her cause.

_July 26th._—Isabella went with me to the bulletin-board. Mrs. D. (with

the white linen as usual pasted on her chin) asked me to read aloud what

was there written. As I slowly read on, I heard a suppressed giggle

from Isabella. I know her way of laughing at everything, and tried to

enunciate more distinctly—to read more slowly, and louder, with more

precision. As I finished and turned round, I found myself closely packed

in by a crowd of Confederate soldiers eager to hear the news. They took

off their caps, thanked me for reading all that was on the boards, and

made way for me, cap in hand, as I hastily returned to the carriage,

which was waiting for us. Isabella proposed, “Call out to them to give

three cheers for Jeff Davis and his generals.” “You forget, my child,

that we are on our way to a funeral.”

Found my new house already open hospitably to all comers. My husband

had arrived. He was seated at a pine table, on which someone had put

a coarse, red table-cover, and by the light of one tallow candle was

affably entertaining Edward Barnwell, Isaac Hayne, and Uncle Hamilton.

He had given them no tea, however. After I had remedied that oversight,

we adjourned to the moonlighted piazza. By tallow-candle-light and the

light of the moon, we made out that wonderful smile of Teddy’s, which

identifies him as Gerald Grey.

We have laughed so at broken hearts—the broken hearts of the foolish love

stories. But Buck, now, is breaking her heart for her brother Willie.

Hearts do break in silence, without a word or a sigh. Mrs. Means and Mary

Barnwell made no moan—simply turned their faces to the wall and died. How

many more that we know nothing of!

When I remember all the true-hearted, the light-hearted, the gay and

gallant boys who have come laughing, singing, and dancing in my way

in the three years now past; how I have looked into their brave young

eyes and helped them as I could in every way and then saw them no more

forever; how they lie stark and cold, dead upon the battle-field, or

moldering away in hospitals or prisons, which is worse—I think if I

consider the long array of those bright youths and loyal men who have

gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break,

too. Is anything worth it—this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we

pay for war?

Allen G. says Johnston was a failure. Now he will wait and see what Hood

can do before he pronounces judgment on him. He liked his address to his

army. It was grand and inspiring, but every one knows a general has not

time to write these things himself. Mr. Kelly, from New Orleans, says

Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith have quarreled. One would think we had a big

enough quarrel on hand for one while already. The Yankees are enough and

to spare. General Lovell says, “Joe Brown, with his Georgians at his

back, who importuned our government to remove Joe Johnston, they are

scared now, and wish they had not.”

In our democratic Republic, if one rises to be its head, whomever he

displeases takes a Turkish revenge and defiles the tombs of his father

and mother; hints that his father was a horse-thief and his mother no

better than she should be; his sisters barmaids and worse, his brothers

Yankee turncoats and traitors. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff

Davis indiscriminately.

_August 2d._—Sherman again. Artillery parked and a line of battle formed

before Atlanta. When we asked Brewster what Sam meant to do at Atlanta he

answered, “Oh—oh, like the man who went, he says he means to stay there!”

Hope he may, that’s all.

Spent to-day with Mrs. McCord at her hospital. She is dedicating her

grief for her son, sanctifying it, one might say, by giving up her soul

and body, her days and nights, to the wounded soldiers at her hospital.

Every moment of her time is surrendered to their needs.

To-day General Taliaferro dined with us. He served with Hood at the

second battle of Manassas and at Fredericksburg, where Hood won his

major-general’s spurs. On the battle-field, Hood, he said, “has military

inspiration.” We were thankful for that word. All now depends on that

army at Atlanta. If that fails us, the game is up.

_August 3d._—Yesterday was such a lucky day for my housekeeping in our

hired house. Oh, ye kind Columbia folk! Mrs. Alex Taylor, _née_ Hayne,

sent me a huge bowl of yellow butter and a basket to match of every

vegetable in season. Mrs. Preston’s man came with mushrooms freshly cut

and Mrs. Tom Taylor’s with fine melons.

Sent Smith and Johnson (my house servant and a carpenter from home,

respectively) to the Commissary’s with our wagon for supplies. They made

a mistake, so they said, and went to the depot instead, and stayed there

all day. I needed a servant sadly in many ways all day long, but I hope

Smith and Johnson had a good time. I did not lose patience until Harriet

came in an omnibus because I had neither servants nor horse to send to

the station for her.

Stephen Elliott is wounded, and his wife and father have gone to him.

Six hundred of his men were destroyed in a mine; and part of his brigade

taken prisoners: Stoneman and his raiders have been captured. This last

fact gives a slightly different hue to our horizon of unmitigated misery.

General L—— told us of an unpleasant scene at the President’s last

winter. He called there to see Mrs. McLean. Mrs. Davis was in the room

and he did not speak to her. He did not intend to be rude; it was merely

an oversight. And so he called again and tried to apologize, to remedy

his blunder, but the President was inexorable, and would not receive his

overtures of peace and good-will. General L—— is a New York man. Talk of

the savagery of slavery, heavens! How perfect are our men’s manners down

here, how suave, how polished are they. Fancy one of them forgetting to

speak to Mrs. Davis in her own drawing-room.

_August 6th._—Archer came, a classmate of my husband’s at Princeton;

they called him Sally Archer then, he was so girlish and pretty. No

trace of feminine beauty about this grim soldier now. He has a hard

face, black-bearded and sallow, with the saddest black eyes. His hands

are small, white, and well-shaped; his manners quiet. He is abstracted

and weary-looking, his mind and body having been deadened by long

imprisonment. He seemed glad to be here, and James Chesnut was charmed.

“Dear Sally Archer,” he calls him cheerily, and the other responds in a

far-off, faded kind of way.

Hood and Archer were given the two Texas regiments at the beginning of

the war. They were colonels and Wigfall was their general. Archer’s

comments on Hood are: “He does not compare intellectually with General

Johnston, who is decidedly a man of culture and literary attainments,

with much experience in military matters. Hood, however, has youth and

energy to help counterbalance all this. He has a simple-minded directness

of purpose always. He is awfully shy, and he has suffered terribly, but

then he has had consolations—such a rapid rise in his profession, and

then his luck to be engaged to the beautiful Miss ——.”

They tried Archer again and again on the heated controversy of the day,

but he stuck to his text. Joe Johnston is a fine military critic, a

capital writer, an accomplished soldier, as brave as Cæsar in his own

person, but cautious to a fault in manipulating an army. Hood has all the

dash and fire of a reckless young soldier, and his Texans would follow

him to the death. Too much caution might be followed easily by too much

headlong rush. That is where the swing-back of the pendulum might ruin us.

_August 10th._—To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops

are ordered to look after the mountain passes beyond Greenville on the

North Carolina and Tennessee quarter.

Misery upon misery. Mobile[119] is going as New Orleans went. Those

Western men have not held their towns as we held and hold Charleston,

or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a “frill-shirt,

silk-stocking chivalry,” or “a set of dandy Miss Nancys.” They fight

desperately in their bloody street brawls, but we bear privation and

discipline best.

_August 14th._—We have conflicting testimony. Young Wade Hampton, of

Joe Johnston’s staff, says Hood lost 12,000 men in the battles of the

22d[120] and 24th, but Brewster, of Hood’s staff, says not three thousand

at the utmost. Now here are two people strictly truthful, who tell things

so differently. In this war people see the same things so oddly one does

not know what to believe.

Brewster says when he was in Richmond Mr. Davis said Johnston would have

to be removed and Sherman blocked. He could not make Hardee full general

because, when he had command of an army he was always importuning the War

Department for a general-in-chief to be sent there over him. Polk would

not do, brave soldier and patriot as he was. He was a good soldier, and

would do his best for his country, and do his duty under whomever was put

over him by those in authority. Mr. Davis did not once intimate to him

who it was that he intended to promote to the head of the Western Army.

Brewster said to-day that this “blow at Joe Johnston, cutting off his

head, ruins the schemes of the enemies of the government. Wigfall asked

me to go at once, and get Hood to decline to take this command, for it

will destroy him if he accepts it. He will have to fight under Jeff

Davis’s orders; no one can do that now and not lose caste in the Western

Army. Joe Johnston does not exactly say that Jeff Davis betrays his plans

to the enemy, but he says he dares not let the President know his plans,

as there is a spy in the War Office who invariably warns the Yankees in

time. Consulting the government on military movements is played out.

That’s Wigfall’s way of talking. Now,” added Brewster, “I blame the

President for keeping a man at the head of his armies who treats the

government with open scorn and contumely, no matter how the people at

large rate this disrespectful general.”

_August 19th._—Began my regular attendance on the Wayside Hospital.

To-day we gave wounded men, as they stopped for an hour at the station,

their breakfast. Those who are able to come to the table do so. The badly

wounded remain in wards prepared for them, where their wounds are dressed

by nurses and surgeons, and we take bread and butter, beef, ham, and hot

coffee to them.

One man had hair as long as a woman’s, the result of a vow, he said. He

had pledged himself not to cut his hair until peace was declared and our

Southern country free. Four made this vow together. All were dead but

himself. One was killed in Missouri, one in Virginia, and he left one at

Kennesaw Mountain. This poor creature had had one arm taken off at the

socket. When I remarked that he was utterly disabled and ought not to

remain in the army, he answered quietly, “I am of the First Texas. If old

Hood can go with one foot, I can go with one arm, eh?”

How they quarreled and wrangled among themselves—Alabama and Mississippi,

all were loud for Joe Johnston, save and except the long-haired,

one-armed hero, who cried at the top of his voice: “Oh! you all want to

be kept in trenches and to go on retreating, eh?” “Oh, if we had had a

leader, such as Stonewall, this war would have been over long ago! What

we want is a leader!” shouted a cripple.

They were awfully smashed-up, objects of misery, wounded, maimed,

diseased. I was really upset, and came home ill. This kind of thing

unnerves me quite.

Letters from the army. Grant’s dogged stay about Richmond is very

disgusting and depressing to the spirits. Wade Hampton has been put in

command of the Southern cavalry.

A Wayside incident. A pine box, covered with flowers, was carefully put

upon the train by some gentlemen. Isabella asked whose remains were in

the box. Dr. Gibbes replied: “In that box lies the body of a young man

whose family antedates the Bourbons of France. He was the last Count

de Choiseul, and he has died for the South.” Let his memory be held in

perpetual remembrance by all who love the South!

_August 22d._—Hope I may never know a raid except from hearsay. Mrs.

Huger describes the one at Athens. The proudest and most timid of women

were running madly in the streets, corsets in one hand, stockings in

the other—_déshabillé_ as far as it will go. Mobile is half taken. The

railroad between us and Richmond has been tapped.

Notes from a letter written by a young lady who is riding a high horse.

Her _fiancé_, a maimed hero, has been abused. “You say to me with a

sneer, ‘So you love that man.’ Yes, I do, and I thank God that I love

better than all the world the man who is to be my husband. ‘Proud of

him, are you?’ Yes, I am, in exact proportion to my love. You say, ‘I am

selfish.’ Yes, I am selfish. He is my second self, so utterly absorbed

am I in him. There is not a moment, day or night, that I do not think

of him. In point of fact, I do not think of anything else.” No reply

was deemed necessary by the astounded recipient of this outburst of

indignation, who showed me the letter and continued to observe: “Did you

ever? She seems so shy, so timid, so cold.”

Sunday Isabella took us to a chapel, Methodist, of course; her father had

a hand in building it. It was not clean, but it was crowded, hot, and

stuffy. An eloquent man preached with a delightful voice and wonderful

fluency; nearly eloquent, and at times nearly ridiculous. He described a

scene during one of his sermons when “beautiful young faces were turned

up to me, radiant faces though bathed in tears, moral rainbows of emotion

playing over them,” etc.

He then described his own conversion, and stripped himself naked morally.

All that is very revolting to one’s innate sense of decency. He tackled

the patriarchs. Adam, Noah, and so on down to Joseph, who was “a man

whose modesty and purity were so transcendent they enabled him to resist

the greatest temptation to which fallen man is exposed.” “Fiddlesticks!

that is played out!” my neighbor whispered. “Everybody gives up now that

old Mrs. Pharaoh was forty.” “Mrs. Potiphar, you goose, and she was

fifty!” “That solves the riddle.” “Sh-sh!” from the devout Isabella.

At home met General Preston on the piazza. He was vastly entertaining.

Gave us Darwin, Herodotus, and Livy. We understood him and were

delighted, but we did not know enough to be sure when it was his own

wisdom or when wise saws and cheering words came from the authors of whom

he spoke.

_August 23d._—All in a muddle, and yet the news, confused as it is, seems

good from all quarters. There is a row in New Orleans. Memphis[121] has

been retaken; 2,000 prisoners have been captured at Petersburg, and a

Yankee raid on Macon has come to grief.

At Mrs. Izard’s met a clever Mrs. Calhoun. Mrs. Calhoun is a violent

partizan of Dick Taylor; says Taylor does the work and Kirby Smith

gets the credit for it. Mrs. Calhoun described the behavior of some

acquaintance of theirs at Shreveport, one of that kind whose faith

removes mountains. Her love for and confidence in the Confederate army

were supreme. Why not? She knew so many of the men who composed that

dauntless band. When her husband told her New Orleans had surrendered to

a foe whom she despised, she did not believe a word of it. He told her

to “pack up his traps, as it was time for him to leave Shreveport.” She

then determined to run down to the levee and see for herself, only to

find the Yankee gunboats having it all their own way. She made a painful

exhibition of herself. First, she fell on her knees and prayed; then she

got up and danced with rage; then she raved and dashed herself on the

ground in a fit. There was patriotism run mad for you! As I did not know

the poor soul, Mrs. Calhoun’s fine acting was somewhat lost on me, but

the others enjoyed it.

Old Edward Johnston has been sent to Atlanta against his will, and Archer

has been made major-general and, contrary to his earnest request, ordered

not to his beloved Texans but to the Army of the Potomac.

Mr. C. F. Hampton deplores the untimely end of McPherson.[122] He was so

kind to Mr. Hampton at Vicksburg last winter, and drank General Hampton’s

health then and there. Mr. Hampton has asked Brewster, if the report of

his death prove a mistake, and General McPherson is a prisoner, that

every kindness and attention be shown to him. General McPherson said at

his own table at Vicksburg that General Hampton was the ablest general on

our side.

Grant can hold his own as well as Sherman. Lee has a heavy handful in the

new Suwarrow. He has worse odds than any one else, for when Grant has

ten thousand slain, he has only to order another ten thousand, and they

are there, ready to step out to the front. They are like the leaves of

Vallambrosa.

_August 29th._—I take my hospital duty in the morning. Most persons

prefer afternoon, but I dislike to give up my pleasant evenings. So I get

up at five o’clock and go down in my carriage all laden with provisions.

Mrs. Fisher and old Mr. Bryan generally go with me. Provisions are

commonly sent by people to Mrs. Fisher’s. I am so glad to be a hospital

nurse once more. I had excuses enough, but at heart I felt a coward and

a skulker. I think I know how men feel who hire a substitute and shirk

the fight. There must be no dodging of duty. It will not do now to send

provisions and pay for nurses. Something inside of me kept calling out,

“Go, you shabby creature; you can’t bear to see what those fine fellows

have to bear.”

Mrs. Izard was staying with me last night, and as I slipped away I begged

Molly to keep everything dead still and not let Mrs. Izard be disturbed

until I got home. About ten I drove up and there was a row to wake the

dead. Molly’s eldest daughter, who nurses her baby sister, let the baby

fall, and, regardless of Mrs. Izard, as I was away, Molly was giving the

nurse a switching in the yard, accompanied by howls and yells worthy of

a Comanche! The small nurse welcomed my advent, no doubt, for in two

seconds peace was restored. Mrs. Izard said she sympathized with the

baby’s mother; so I forgave the uproar.

I have excellent servants; no matter for their shortcomings behind my

back. They save me all thought as to household matters, and they are so

kind, attentive, and quiet. They must know what is at hand if Sherman is

not hindered from coming here—“Freedom! my masters!” But these sphinxes

give no sign, unless it be increased diligence and absolute silence, as

certain in their action and as noiseless as a law of nature, at any rate

when we are in the house.

That fearful hospital haunts me all day long, and is worse at night.

So much suffering, such loathsome wounds, such distortion, with stumps

of limbs not half cured, exhibited to all. Then, when I was so tired

yesterday, Molly was looking more like an enraged lioness than anything

else, roaring that her baby’s neck was broken, and howling cries of

vengeance. The poor little careless nurse’s dark face had an ashen tinge

of gray terror. She was crouching near the ground like an animal trying

to hide, and her mother striking at her as she rolled away. All this was

my welcome as I entered the gate. It takes these half-Africans but a

moment to go back to their naked savage animal nature. Mrs. Izard is a

charming person. She tried so to make me forget it all and rest.

_September 2d._—The battle has been raging at Atlanta,[123] and our fate

hanging in the balance. Atlanta, indeed, is gone. Well, that agony is

over. Like David, when the child was dead, I will get up from my knees,

will wash my face and comb my hair. No hope; we will try to have no fear.

At the Prestons’ I found them drawn up in line of battle every moment

looking for the Doctor on his way to Richmond. Now, to drown thought,

for our day is done, read Dumas’s _Maîtres d’Armes_. Russia ought to

sympathize with us. We are not as barbarous as this, even if Mrs. Stowe’s

word be taken. Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the

world. See Russell’s India—Bull Run Russell’s. They say General Morgan

has been killed. We are hard as stones; we sit unmoved and hear any bad

news chance may bring. Are we stupefied?

_September 19th._—My pink silk dress I have sold for $600, to be paid for

in instalments, two hundred a month for three months. And I sell my eggs

and butter from home for two hundred dollars a month. Does it not sound

well—four hundred dollars a month regularly. But in what? In Confederate

money. _Hélas!_

_September 21st._—Went with Mrs. Rhett to hear Dr. Palmer. I did not

know before how utterly hopeless was our situation. This man is so

eloquent, it was hard to listen and not give way. Despair was his word,

and martyrdom. He offered us nothing more in this world than the martyr’s

crown. He is not for slavery, he says; he is for freedom, and the

freedom to govern our own country as we see fit. He is against foreign

interference in our State matters. That is what Mr. Palmer went to war

for, it appears. Every day shows that slavery is doomed the world over;

for that he thanked God. He spoke of our agony, and then came the cry,

“Help us, O God! Vain is the help of man.” And so we came away shaken to

the depths.

The end has come. No doubt of the fact. Our army has so moved as to

uncover Macon and Augusta. We are going to be wiped off the face of the

earth. What is there to prevent Sherman taking General Lee in the rear?

We have but two armies, and Sherman is between them now.[124]

_September 24th._—These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like

blows upon a dead body. Since Atlanta fell I have felt as if all were

dead within me forever. Captain Ogden, of General Chesnut’s staff,

dined here to-day. Had ever brigadier, with little or no brigade, so

magnificent a staff? The reserves, as somebody said, have been secured

only by robbing the cradle and the grave—the men too old, the boys too

young. Isaac Hayne, Edward Barnwell, Bacon, Ogden, Richardson, Miles are

the picked men of the agreeable world.

_October 1st._—Mary Cantey Preston’s wedding day has come and gone and

Mary is Mrs. John Darby now. Maggie Howell dressed the bride’s hair

beautifully, they said, but it was all covered by her veil, which was of

blond-lace, and the dress tulle and blond-lace, with diamonds and pearls.

The bride walked up the aisle on her father’s arm, Mrs. Preston on Dr.

Darby’s. I think it was the handsomest wedding party I ever saw. John

Darby[125] had brought his wedding uniform home with him from England,

and it did all honor to his perfect figure. I forget the name of his

London tailor—the best, of course! “Well,” said Isabella, “it would be

hard for any man to live up to those clothes.”

And now, to the amazement of us all, Captain Chesnut (Johnny) who knows

everything, has rushed into a flirtation with Buck such as never was. He

drives her every day, and those wild, runaway, sorrel colts terrify my

soul as they go tearing, pitching, and darting from side to side of the

street. And my lady enjoys it. When he leaves her, he kisses her hand,

bowing so low to do it unseen that we see it all.

_Saturday._—The President will be with us here in Columbia next Tuesday,

so Colonel McLean brings us word. I have begun at once to prepare to

receive him in my small house. His apartments have been decorated as well

as Confederate stringency would permit. The possibilities were not great,

but I did what I could for our honored chief; besides I like the man—he

has been so kind to me, and his wife is one of the few to whom I can

never be grateful enough for her generous appreciation and attention.

I went out to the gate to greet the President, who met me most cordially;

kissed me, in fact. Custis Lee and Governor Lubbock were at his back.

Immediately after breakfast (the Presidential party arrived a little

before daylight) General Chesnut drove off with the President’s aides,

and Mr. Davis sat out on our piazza. There was nobody with him but

myself. Some little boys strolling by called out, “Come here and look;

there is a man on Mrs. Chesnut’s porch who looks just like Jeff Davis on

postage-stamps.” People began to gather at once on the street. Mr. Davis

then went in.

Mrs. McCord sent a magnificent bouquet—I thought, of course, for the

President; but she gave me such a scolding afterward. She did not know he

was there; I, in my mistake about the bouquet, thought she knew, and so

did not send her word.

The President was watching me prepare a mint julep for Custis Lee when

Colonel McLean came to inform us that a great crowd had gathered and that

they were coming to ask the President to speak to them at one o’clock. An

immense crowd it was—men, women, and children. The crowd overflowed the

house, the President’s hand was nearly shaken off. I went to the rear, my

head intent on the dinner to be prepared for him, with only a Confederate

commissariat. But the patriotic public had come to the rescue. I had been

gathering what I could of eatables for a month, and now I found that

nearly everybody in Columbia was sending me whatever they had that they

thought nice enough for the President’s dinner. We had the sixty-year-old

Madeira from Mulberry, and the beautiful old china, etc. Mrs. Preston

sent a boned turkey stuffed with truffles, stuffed tomatoes, and stuffed

peppers. Each made a dish as pretty as it was appetizing.

A mob of small boys only came to pay their respects to the President. He

seemed to know how to meet that odd delegation.

Then the President’s party had to go, and we bade them an affectionate

farewell. Custis Lee and I had spent much time gossiping on the back

porch. While I was concocting dainties for the dessert, he sat on the

banister with a cigar in his mouth. He spoke very candidly, telling me

many a hard truth for the Confederacy, and about the bad time which was

at hand.

_October 18th._—Ten pleasant days I owe to my sister. Kate has descended

upon me unexpectedly from the mountains of Flat Rock. We are true

sisters; she understands me without words, and she is the cleverest,

sweetest woman I know, so graceful and gracious in manner, so good and

unselfish in character, but, best of all, she is so agreeable. Any time

or place would be charming with Kate for a companion. General Chesnut was

in Camden; but I could not wait. I gave the beautiful bride, Mrs. Darby,

a dinner, which was simply perfection. I was satisfied for once in my

life with my own table, and I know pleasanter guests were never seated

around any table whatsoever.

My house is always crowded. After all, what a number of pleasant people

we have been thrown in with by war’s catastrophes. I call such society

glorious. It is the wind-up, but the old life as it begins to die will

die royally. General Chesnut came back disheartened. He complains that

such a life as I lead gives him no time to think.

_October 28th._—Burton Harrison writes to General Preston that supreme

anxiety reigns in Richmond.

Oh, for one single port! If the Alabama had had in the whole wide world a

port to take her prizes to and where she could be refitted, I believe she

would have borne us through. Oh, for one single port by which we could

get at the outside world and refit our whole Confederacy! If we could

have hired regiments from Europe, or even have imported ammunition and

food for our soldiers!

“Some days must be dark and dreary.” At the mantua-maker’s, however, I

saw an instance of faith in our future: a bride’s paraphernalia, and the

radiant bride herself, the bridegroom expectant and elect now within

twenty miles of Chattanooga and outward bound to face the foe.

Saw at the Laurens’s not only Lizzie Hamilton, a perfect little beauty,

but the very table the first Declaration of Independence was written

upon. These Laurenses are grandchildren of Henry Laurens, of the first

Revolution. Alas! we have yet to make good our second declaration of

independence—Southern independence—from Yankee meddling and Yankee rule.

Hood has written to ask them to send General Chesnut out to command one

of his brigades. In whose place?

If Albert Sidney Johnston had lived! Poor old General Lee has no backing.

Stonewall would have saved us from Antietam. Sherman will now catch

General Lee by the rear, while Grant holds him by the head, and while

Hood and Thomas are performing an Indian war-dance on the frontier. Hood

means to cut his way to Lee; see if he doesn’t. The “Yanks” have had a

struggle for it. More than once we seemed to have been too much for them.

We have been so near to success it aches one to think of it. So runs the

table-talk.

Next to our house, which Isabella calls “Tillytudlem,” since Mr. Davis’s

visit, is a common of green grass and very level, beyond which comes

a belt of pine-trees. On this open space, within forty paces of us, a

regiment of foreign deserters has camped. They have taken the oath of

allegiance to our government, and are now being drilled and disciplined

into form before being sent to our army. They are mostly Germans, with

some Irish, however. Their close proximity keeps me miserable. Traitors

once, traitors forever.

Jordan has always been held responsible for all the foolish

proclamations, and, indeed, for whatever Beauregard reported or

proclaimed. Now he has left that mighty chief, and, lo, here comes from

Beauregard the silliest and most boastful of his military bulletins. He

brags of Shiloh; that was not the way the story was told to us.

A letter from Mrs. Davis, who says: “Thank you, a thousand times, my dear

friend, for your more than maternal kindness to my dear child.” That is

what she calls her sister, Maggie Howell. “As to Mr. Davis, he thinks

the best ham, the best Madeira, the best coffee, the best hostess in the

world, rendered Columbia delightful to him when he passed through. We

are in a sad and anxious state here just now. The dead come in; but the

living do not go out so fast. However, we hope all things and trust in

God as the only one able to resolve the opposite state of feeling into

a triumphant, happy whole. I had a surprise of an unusually gratifying

nature a few days since. I found I could not keep my horses, so I sold

them. The next day they were returned to me with a handsome anonymous

note to the effect that they had been bought by a few friends for me. But

I fear I can not feed them. Strictly between us, things look very anxious

here.”

_November 6th._—Sally Hampton went to Richmond with the Rev. Mr. Martin.

She arrived there on Wednesday. On Thursday her father, Wade Hampton,

fought a great battle, but just did not win it—a victory narrowly missed.

Darkness supervened and impenetrable woods prevented that longed-for

consummation. Preston Hampton rode recklessly into the hottest fire. His

father sent his brother, Wade, to bring him back. Wade saw him reel in

the saddle and galloped up to him, General Hampton following. As young

Wade reached him, Preston fell from his horse, and the one brother,

stooping to raise the other, was himself shot down. Preston recognized

his father, but died without speaking a word. Young Wade, though wounded,

held his brother’s head up. Tom Taylor and others hurried up. The General

took his dead son in his arms, kissed him, and handed his body to Tom

Taylor and his friends, bade them take care of Wade, and then rode back

to his post. At the head of his troops in the thickest of the fray he

directed the fight for the rest of the day. Until night he did not know

young Wade’s fate; that boy might be dead, too! Now, he says, no son of

his must be in his command. When Wade recovers, he must join some other

division. The agony of such a day, and the anxiety and the duties of the

battle-field—it is all more than a mere man can bear.

Another letter from Mrs. Davis. She says: “I was dreadfully shocked at

Preston Hampton’s fate—his untimely fate. I know nothing more touching in

history than General Hampton’s situation at the supremest moment of his

misery, when he sent one son to save the other and saw both fall; and

could not know for some moments whether both were not killed.”

A thousand dollars have slipped through my fingers already this week. At

the Commissary’s I spent five hundred to-day for candles, sugar, and a

lamp, etc. Tallow candles are bad enough, but of them there seems to be

an end, too. Now we are restricted to smoky, terrabine lamps—terrabine

is a preparation of turpentine. When the chimney of the lamp cracks,

as crack it will, we plaster up the place with paper, thick old

letter-paper, preferring the highly glazed kind. In the hunt for paper

queer old letters come to light.

Sherman, in Atlanta, has left Thomas to take care of Hood. Hood has

thirty thousand men, Thomas forty thousand, and as many more to be had as

he wants; he has only to ring the bell and call for them. Grant can get

all that he wants, both for himself and for Thomas. All the world is open

to them, while we are shut up in a bastile. We are at sea, and our boat

has sprung a leak.

_November 17th._—Although Sherman[126] took Atlanta, he does not mean to

stay there, be it heaven or hell. Fire and the sword are for us here;

that is the word. And now I must begin my Columbia life anew and alone.

It will be a short shrift.

Captain Ogden came to dinner on Sunday and in the afternoon asked me to

go with him to the Presbyterian Church and hear Mr. Palmer. We went,

and I felt very youthful, as the country people say; like a girl and

her beau. Ogden took me into a pew and my husband sat afar off. What a

sermon! The preacher stirred my blood. My very flesh crept and tingled.

A red-hot glow of patriotism passed through me. Such a sermon must

strengthen the hearts and the hands of many people. There was more

exhortation to fight and die, _à la_ Joshua, than meek Christianity.

_November 25th._—Sherman is thundering at Augusta’s very doors. My

General was on the wing, somber, and full of care. The girls are merry

enough; the staff, who fairly live here, no better. Cassandra, with a

black shawl over her head, is chased by the gay crew from sofa to sofa,

for she avoids them, being full of miserable anxiety. There is nothing

but distraction and confusion. All things tend to the preparation for the

departure of the troops. It rains all the time, such rains as I never saw

before; incessant torrents. These men come in and out in the red mud and

slush of Columbia streets. Things seem dismal and wretched to me to the

last degree, but the staff, the girls, and the youngsters do not see it.

Mrs. S. (born in Connecticut) came, and she was radiant. She did not come

to see me, but my nieces. She says exultingly that “Sherman will open

a way out at last, and I will go at once to Europe or go North to my

relatives there.” How she derided our misery and “mocked when our fear

cometh.” I dare say she takes me for a fool. I sat there dumb, although

she was in my own house. I have heard of a woman so enraged that she

struck some one over the head with a shovel. To-day, for the first time

in my life, I know how that mad woman felt. I could have given Mrs. S.

the benefit of shovel and tongs both.

That splendid fellow, Preston Hampton; “home they brought their warrior,

dead,” and wrapped in that very Legion flag he had borne so often in

battle with his own hands.

A letter from Mrs. Davis to-day, under date of Richmond, Va., November

20, 1864. She says: “Affairs West are looking so critical now that,

before you receive this, you and I will be in the depths or else

triumphant. I confess I do not sniff success in every passing breeze,

but I am so tired, hoping, fearing, and being disappointed, that I have

made up my mind not to be disconsolate, even though thieves break through

and steal. Some people expect another attack upon Richmond shortly, but

I think the avalanche will not slide until the spring breaks up its

winter quarters. I have a blind kind of prognostics of victory for us,

but somehow I am not cheered. The temper of Congress is less vicious,

but more concerted in its hostile action.” Mrs. Davis is a woman that my

heart aches for in the troubles ahead.

My journal, a quire of Confederate paper, lies wide open on my desk in

the corner of my drawing-room. Everybody reads it who chooses. Buck comes

regularly to see what I have written last, and makes faces when it does

not suit her. Isabella still calls me Cassandra, and puts her hands to

her ears when I begin to wail. Well, Cassandra only records what she

hears; she does not vouch for it. For really, one nowadays never feels

certain of anything.

_November 28th._—We dined at Mrs. McCord’s. She is as strong a cordial

for broken spirits and failing heart as one could wish. How her strength

contrasts with our weakness. Like Doctor Palmer, she strings one up

to bear bravely the worst. She has the intellect of a man and the

perseverance and endurance of a woman.

We have lost nearly all of our men, and we have no money, and it looks as

if we had taught the Yankees how to fight since Manassas. Our best and

bravest are under the sod; we shall have to wait till another generation

grows up. Here we stand, despair in our hearts (“Oh, Cassandra, don’t!”

shouts Isabella), with our houses burning or about to be, over our heads.

The North have just got things ship-shape; a splendid army, perfectly

disciplined, with new levies coming in day and night. Their gentry do not

go into the ranks. They hardly know there is a war up there.

_December 1st._—At Coosawhatchie Yankees are landing in great force. Our

troops down there are raw militia, old men and boys never under fire

before; some college cadets, in all a mere handful. The cradle and the

grave have been robbed by us, they say. Sherman goes to Savannah and not

to Augusta.

_December 2d._—Isabella and I put on bonnets and shawls and went

deliberately out for news. We determined to seek until we found. Met a

man who was so ugly, I could not forget him or his sobriquet; he was

awfully in love with me once. He did not know me, but blushed hotly when

Isabella told him who I was. He had forgotten me, I hope, or else I am

changed by age and care past all recognition. He gave us the encouraging

information that Grahamville had been burned to the ground.

When the call for horses was made, Mrs. McCord sent in her fine bays. She

comes now with a pair of mules, and looks too long and significantly at

my ponies. If I were not so much afraid of her, I would hint that those

mules would be of far more use in camp than my ponies. But they will

seize the ponies, no doubt.

In all my life before, the stables were far off from the house and I had

nothing to do with them. Now my ponies are kept under an open shed next

to the back piazza. Here I sit with my work, or my desk, or my book,

basking in our Southern sun, and I watch Nat feed, curry, and rub down

the horses, and then he cleans their stables as thoroughly as Smith does

my drawing-room. I see their beds of straw comfortably laid. Nat says,

“Ow, Missis, ain’t lady’s business to look so much in de stables.” I

care nothing for his grumbling, and I have never had horses in better

condition. Poor ponies, you deserve every attention, and enough to eat.

Grass does not grow under your feet. By night and day you are on the trot.

To-day General Chesnut was in Charleston on his way from Augusta to

Savannah by rail. The telegraph is still working between Charleston and

Savannah. Grahamville certainly is burned. There was fighting down there

to-day. I came home with enough to think about, Heaven knows! And then

all day long we compounded a pound cake in honor of Mrs. Cuthbert, who

has things so nice at home. The cake was a success, but was it worth all

that trouble?

As my party were driving off to the concert, an omnibus rattled up. Enter

Captain Leland, of General Chesnut’s staff, of as imposing a presence as

a field-marshal, handsome and gray-haired. He was here on some military

errand and brought me a letter. He said the Yankees had been repulsed,

and that down in those swamps we could give a good account of ourselves

if our government would send men enough. With a sufficient army to meet

them down there, they could be annihilated. “Where are the men to come

from?” asked Mamie, wildly. “General Hood has gone off to Tennessee. Even

if he does defeat Thomas there, what difference would that make here?”

_December 3d._—We drank tea at Mrs. McCord’s; she had her troubles, too.

The night before a country cousin claimed her hospitality, one who fain

would take the train at five this morning. A little after midnight Mrs.

McCord was startled out of her first sleep by loud ringing of bells; an

alarm at night may mean so much just now. In an instant she was on her

feet. She found her guest, who thought it was daylight, and wanted to go.

Mrs. McCord forcibly demonstrated how foolish it was to get up five hours

too soon. Mrs. McCord, once more in her own warm bed, had fallen happily

to sleep. She was waked by feeling two ice-cold hands pass cautiously

over her face and person. It was pitch dark. Even Mrs. McCord gave a

scream in her fright. She found it was only the irrepressible guest up

and at her again. So, though it was only three o’clock, in order to quiet

this perturbed spirit she rose and at five drove her to the station,

where she had to wait some hours. But Mrs. McCord said, “anything for

peace at home.” The restless people who will not let others rest!

_December 5th._—Miss Olivia Middleton and Mr. Frederick Blake are to

be married. We Confederates have invented the sit-up-all-night for the

wedding night: Isabella calls it the wake, not the wedding, of the

parties married. The ceremony will be performed early in the evening;

the whole company will then sit up until five o’clock, at which hour the

bridal couple take the train for Combahee. Hope Sherman will not be so

inconsiderate as to cut short the honeymoon.

In tripped Brewster, with his hat on his head, both hands extended, and

his greeting, “Well, here we are!” He was travel-stained, disheveled,

grimy with dirt. The prophet would have to send him many times to bathe

in Jordan before he could be pronounced clean.

Hood will not turn and pursue Sherman. Thomas is at his heels with forty

thousand men, and can have as many more as he wants for the asking.

Between Thomas and Sherman Hood would be crushed. So he was pushing—I do

not remember where or what. I know there was no comfort in anything he

said.

Serena’s account of money spent: Paper and envelopes, $12.00; tickets to

concert, $10.00; tooth-brush, $10.00; total, $32.00.

_December 14th._—And now the young ones are in bed and I am wide awake.

It is an odd thing; in all my life how many persons have I seen in love?

Not a half-dozen. And I am a tolerably close observer, a faithful watcher

have I been from my youth upward of men and manners. Society has been for

me only an enlarged field for character study.

Flirtation is the business of society; that is, playing at love-making.

It begins in vanity, it ends in vanity. It is spurred on by idleness and

a want of any other excitement. Flattery, battledore and shuttlecock,

how in this game flattery is dashed backward and forward. It is so

soothing to self-conceit. If it begins and ends in vanity, vexation of

spirit supervenes sometimes. They do occasionally burn their fingers

awfully, playing with fire, but there are no hearts broken. Each party

in a flirtation has secured a sympathetic listener, to whom he or she

can talk of himself or herself—somebody who, for the time, admires one

exclusively, and, as the French say, _excessivement_. It is a pleasant,

but very foolish game, and so to bed.

Hood and Thomas have had a fearful fight, with carnage and loss of

generals excessive in proportion to numbers. That means they were leading

and urging their men up to the enemy. I know how Bartow and Barnard Bee

were killed bringing up their men. One of Mr. Chesnut’s sins thrown in

his teeth by the Legislature of South Carolina was that he procured the

promotion of Gist, “State Rights” Gist, by his influence in Richmond.

What have these comfortable, stay-at-home patriots to say of General Gist

now? “And how could man die better than facing fearful odds,” etc.

So Fort McAlister has fallen! Good-by, Savannah! Our Governor announces

himself a follower of Joe Brown, of Georgia. Another famous Joe.

_December 19th._—The deep waters are closing over us and we are in this

house, like the outsiders at the time of the flood. We care for none of

these things. We eat, drink, laugh, dance, in lightness of heart.

Doctor Trezevant came to tell me the dismal news. How he piled on the

agony! Desolation, mismanagement, despair. General Young, with the flower

of Hampton’s cavalry, is in Columbia. Horses can not be found to mount

them. Neither the Governor of Georgia nor the Governor of South Carolina

is moving hand or foot. They have given up. The Yankees claim another

victory for Thomas.[127] Hope it may prove like most of their victories,

brag and bluster. Can’t say why, maybe I am benumbed, but I do not feel

so intensely miserable.

_December 27th._—Oh, why did we go to Camden? The very dismalest

Christmas overtook us there. Miss Rhett went with us—a brilliant woman

and very agreeable. “The world, you know, is composed,” said she, “of

men, women, and Rhetts” (see Lady Montagu). Now, we feel that if we

are to lose our negroes, we would as soon see Sherman free them as

the Confederate Government; freeing negroes is the last Confederate

Government craze. We are a little too slow about it; that is all.

Sold fifteen bales of cotton and took a sad farewell look at Mulberry. It

is a magnificent old country-seat, with old oaks, green lawns and all. So

I took that last farewell of Mulberry, once so hated, now so beloved.

_January 7th._—Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last

of his men not gone, as Louis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied.

Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the dentist. Her teeth are of the

whitest and most regular, simply perfection. She fancied it was better to

have a dentist look in her mouth before returning to the mountains. For

that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money.

“Why, has this money any value at all?” she asked. Little enough in all

truth, sad to say.

Brewster was here and stayed till midnight. Said he must see General

Chesnut. He had business with him. His “me and General Hood” is no longer

comic. He described Sherman’s march of destruction and desolation.

“Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide, upon which there is no living

thing to be seen,” said Brewster before he departed.

_January 10th._—You do the Anabasis business when you want to get out of

the enemy’s country, and the Thermopylæ business when they want to get

into your country. But we retreated in our own country and we gave up our

mountain passes without a blow. But never mind the Greeks; if we had only

our own Game Cock, Sumter, our own Swamp Fox, Marion. Marion’s men or

Sumter’s, or the equivalent of them, now lie under the sod, in Virginia

or Tennessee.

_January 14th._—Yesterday I broke down—gave way to abject terror under

the news of Sherman’s advance with no news of my husband. To-day, while

wrapped up on the sofa, too dismal even for moaning, there was a loud

knock. Shawls on and all, just as I was, I rushed to the door to find a

telegram from my husband: “All well; be at home Tuesday.” It was dated

from Adam’s Run. I felt as light-hearted as if the war were over. Then

I looked at the date and the place—Adam’s Run. It ends as it began—in a

run—Bull’s Run, from which their first sprightly running astounded the

world, and now Adam’s Run. But if we must run, who are left to run? From

Bull Run they ran fullhanded. But we have fought until maimed soldiers,

women, and children are all that remain to run.

To-day Kershaw’s brigade, or what is left of it, passed through. What

shouts greeted it and what bold shouts of thanks it returned! It was all

a very encouraging noise, absolutely comforting. Some true men are left,

after all.

_January 16th._—My husband is at home once more—for how long, I do not

know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt

the place. The drilling and the marching go on outside. It rains a flood,

with freshet after freshet. The forces of nature are befriending us, for

our enemies have to make their way through swamps.

A month ago my husband wrote me a letter which I promptly suppressed

after showing it to Mrs. McCord. He warned us to make ready, for the end

had come. Our resources were exhausted, and the means of resistance could

not be found. We could not bring ourselves to believe it, and now, he

thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the

freshets, which have no time to subside, so constant is the rain, and the

negroes utterly apathetic (would they be so if they saw us triumphant?),

if we had but an army to seize the opportunity we might do something; but

there are no troops; that is the real trouble.

To-day Mrs. McCord exchanged $16,000 in Confederate bills for $300 in

gold—sixteen thousand for three hundred.

_January 17th._—The Bazaar for the benefit of the hospitals opens now.

Sherman marches constantly. All the railroads are smashed, and if I laugh

at any mortal thing it is that I may not weep. Generals are as plenty as

blackberries, but none are in command.

The Peace Commissioner, Blair, came. They say he gave Mr. Davis the kiss

of peace. And we send Stephens, Campbell, all who have believed in this

thing, to negotiate for peace. No hope, no good. Who dares hope?

Repressed excitement in church. A great railroad character was called

out. He soon returned and whispered something to Joe Johnston and they

went out together. Somehow the whisper moved around to us that Sherman

was at Branchville. “Grant us patience, good Lord,” was prayed aloud.

“Not Ulysses Grant, good Lord,” murmured Teddy, profanely. Hood came

yesterday. He is staying at the Prestons’ with Jack. They sent for us.

What a heartfelt greeting he gave us. He can stand well enough without

his crutch, but he does very slow walking. How plainly he spoke out

dreadful words about “nay defeat and discomfiture; my army destroyed,

my losses,” etc., etc. He said he had nobody to blame but himself. A

telegram from Beauregard to-day to my husband. He does not know whether

Sherman intends to advance on Branchville, Charleston, or Columbia.

Isabella said: “Maybe you attempted the impossible,” and began one of

her merriest stories. Jack Preston touched me on the arm and we slipped

out. “He did not hear a word she was saying. He has forgotten us all. Did

you notice how he stared in the fire? And the lurid spots which came out

in his face and the drops of perspiration that stood on his forehead?”

“Yes. He is going over some bitter scene; he sees Willie Preston with

his heart shot away. He sees the panic at Nashville and the dead on

the battle-field at Franklin.” “That agony on his face comes again and

again,” said tender-hearted Jack. “I can’t keep him out of those absent

fits.”

Governor McGrath and General Winder talk of preparations for a defense of

Columbia. If Beauregard can’t stop Sherman down there, what have we got

here to do it with? Can we check or impede his march? Can any one?

Last night General Hampton came in. I am sure he would do something to

save us if he were put in supreme command here. Hampton says Joe Johnston

is equal, if not superior, to Lee as a commanding officer.

My silver is in a box and has been delivered for safe keeping to Isaac

McLaughlin, who is really my beau-ideal of a grateful negro. I mean to

trust him. My husband cares for none of these things now, and lets me do

as I please.

Tom Archer died almost as soon as he got to Richmond. Prison takes the

life out of men. He was only half-alive when here. He had a strange,

pallid look and such a vacant stare until you roused him. Poor pretty

Sally Archer: that is the end of you.[128]

XIX

LINCOLNTON, N. C.

_February 16, 1865-March 15, 1865_

Lincolnton, N. C., _February 16, 1865_.—A change has come o’er the spirit

of my dream. Dear old quire of yellow, coarse, Confederate home-made

paper, here you are again. An age of anxiety and suffering has passed

over my head since last I wrote and wept over your forlorn pages.

My ideas of those last days are confused. The Martins left Columbia the

Friday before I did, and Mammy, the negro woman, who had nursed them,

refused to go with them. That daunted me. Then Mrs. McCord, who was to

send her girls with me, changed her mind. She sent them up-stairs in her

house and actually took away the staircase; that was her plan.

Then I met Mr. Christopher Hampton, arranging to take off his sisters.

They were flitting, but were to go only as far as Yorkville. He said it

was time to move on. Sherman was at Orangeburg, barely a day’s journey

from Columbia, and had left a track as bare and blackened as a fire

leaves on the prairies.

So my time had come, too. My husband urged me to go home. He said Camden

would be safe enough. They had no spite against that old town, as they

have against Charleston and Columbia. Molly, weeping and wailing, came

in while we were at table. Wiping her red-hot face with the cook’s

grimy apron, she said I ought to go among our own black people on the

plantation; they would take care of me better than any one else. So I

agreed to go to Mulberry or the Hermitage plantation, and sent Lawrence

down with a wagon-load of my valuables.

Then a Miss Patterson called—a refugee from Tennessee. She had been in a

country overrun by Yankee invaders, and she described so graphically all

the horrors to be endured by those subjected to fire and sword, rapine

and plunder, that I was fairly scared, and determined to come here. This

is a thoroughly out-of-all-routes place. And yet I can go to Charlotte,

am half-way to Kate at Flat Rock, and there is no Federal army between me

and Richmond.

As soon as my mind was finally made up, we telegraphed to Lawrence, who

had barely got to Camden in the wagon when the telegram was handed to

him; so he took the train and came back. Mr. Chesnut sent him with us to

take care of the party.

We thought that if the negroes were ever so loyal to us, they could

not protect me from an army bent upon sweeping us from the face of the

earth, and if they tried to do so so much the worse would it be for the

poor things with their Yankee friends. I then left them to shift for

themselves, as they are accustomed to do, and I took the same liberty.

My husband does not care a fig for the property question, and never did.

Perhaps, if he had ever known poverty, it would be different. He talked

beautifully about it, as he always does about everything. I have told him

often that, if at heaven’s gate St. Peter would listen to him a while,

and let him tell his own story, he would get in, and the angels might

give him a crown extra.

Now he says he has only one care—that I should be safe, and not so

harassed with dread; and then there is his blind old father. “A man,”

said he, “can always die like a patriot and a gentleman, with no fuss,

and take it coolly. It is hard not to envy those who are out of all this,

their difficulties ended—those who have met death gloriously on the

battle-field, their doubts all solved. One can but do his best and leave

the result to a higher power.”

After New Orleans, those vain, passionate, impatient little Creoles were

forever committing suicide, driven to it by despair and “Beast” Butler.

As we read these things, Mrs. Davis said: “If they want to die, why not

first kill ‘Beast’ Butler, rid the world of their foe and be saved the

trouble of murdering themselves?” That practical way of removing their

intolerable burden did not occur to them. I repeated this suggestive

anecdote to our corps of generals without troops, here in this house, as

they spread out their maps on my table where lay this quire of paper from

which I write. Every man Jack of them had a safe plan to stop Sherman,

if——

Even Beauregard and Lee were expected, but Grant had double-teamed

on Lee. Lee could not save his own—how could he come to save us?

Read the list of the dead in those last battles around Richmond and

Petersburg[129] if you want to break your heart.

I took French leave of Columbia—slipped away without a word to anybody.

Isaac Hayne and Mr. Chesnut came down to the Charlotte depot with me.

Ellen, my maid, left her husband and only child, but she was willing to

come, and, indeed, was very cheerful in her way of looking at it.

“I wan’ travel ’roun’ wid Missis some time—stid uh Molly goin’ all de

time.”

A woman, fifty years old at least, and uglier than she was old, sharply

rebuked my husband for standing at the car window for a last few words

with me. She said rudely: “Stand aside, sir! I want air!” With his hat

off, and his grand air, my husband bowed politely, and said: “In one

moment, madam; I have something important to say to my wife.”

She talked aloud and introduced herself to every man, claiming his

protection. She had never traveled alone before in all her life. Old age

and ugliness are protective in some cases. She was ardently patriotic for

a while. Then she was joined by her friend, a man as crazy as herself to

get out of this. From their talk I gleaned she had been for years in the

Treasury Department. They were about to cross the lines. The whole idea

was to get away from the trouble to come down here. They were Yankees,

but were they not spies?

Here I am broken-hearted and an exile. And in such a place! We have bare

floors, and for a feather-bed, pine table, and two chairs I pay $30 a

day. Such sheets! But fortunately I have some of my own. At the door,

before I was well out of the hack, the woman of the house packed Lawrence

back, neck and heels: she would not have him at any price. She treated

him as Mr. F.’s aunt did Clenman in Little Dorrit. She said his clothes

were too fine for a nigger. “His airs, indeed.” Poor Lawrence was humble

and silent. He said at last, “Miss Mary, send me back to Mars Jeems.”

I began to look for a pencil to write a note to my husband, but in the

flurry could not find one. “Here is one,” said Lawrence, producing one

with a gold case. “Go away,” she shouted, “I want no niggers here with

gold pencils and airs.” So Lawrence fled before the storm, but not before

he had begged me to go back. He said, “if Mars Jeems knew how you was

treated he’d never be willing for you to stay here.”

The Martins had seen my, to them, well-known traveling case as the hack

trotted up Main Street, and they arrived at this juncture out of breath.

We embraced and wept. I kept my room.

The Fants are refugees here, too; they are Virginians, and have been in

exile since the second battle of Manassas. Poor things; they seem to have

been everywhere, and seen and suffered everything. They even tried to go

back to their own house, but found one chimney only standing alone; even

that had been taken possession of by a Yankee, who had written his name

upon it.

The day I left home I had packed a box of flour, sugar, rice, and coffee,

but my husband would not let me bring it. He said I was coming to a

land of plenty—unexplored North Carolina, where the foot of the Yankee

marauder was unknown, and in Columbia they would need food. Now I have

written for that box and many other things to be sent me by Lawrence, or

I shall starve.

The Middletons have come. How joyously I sprang to my feet to greet them.

Mrs. Ben Rutledge described the hubbub in Columbia. Everybody was flying

in every direction like a flock of swallows. She heard the enemy’s guns

booming in the distance. The train no longer runs from Charlotte to

Columbia. Miss Middleton possesses her soul in peace. She is as cool,

clever, rational, and entertaining as ever, and we talked for hours. Mrs.

Reed was in a state of despair. I can well understand that sinking of

mind and body during the first days as the abject misery of it all closes

in upon you. I remember my suicidal tendencies when I first came here.

_February 18th._—Here I am, thank God, settled at the McLean’s, in a

clean, comfortable room, airy and cozy. With a grateful heart I stir up

my own bright wood fire. My bill for four days at this splendid hotel

here was $240, with $25 additional for fire. But once more my lines have

fallen in pleasant places.

As we came up on the train from Charlotte a soldier took out of his

pocket a filthy rag. If it had lain in the gutter for months it could

not have looked worse. He unwrapped the thing carefully and took out two

biscuits of the species known as “hard tack.” Then he gallantly handed

me one, and with an ingratiating smile asked me “to take some.” Then

he explained, saying, “Please take these two; swap with me; give me

something softer that I can eat; I am very weak still.” Immediately, for

his benefit, my basket of luncheon was emptied, but as for his biscuit,

I would not choose any. Isabella asked, “But what did you say to him when

he poked them under your nose?” and I replied, “I held up both hands,

saying, ‘I would not take from you anything that is yours—far from it! I

would not touch them for worlds.’”

A tremendous day’s work and I helped with a will; our window glass was

all to be washed. Then the brass andirons were to be polished. After we

rubbed them bright how pretty they were.

Presently Ellen would have none of me. She was scrubbing the floor. “You

go—dat’s a good missis—an’ stay to Miss Isabella’s till de flo’ dry.” I

am very docile now, and I obeyed orders.

_February 19th._—The Fants say all the trouble at the hotel came from

our servants’ bragging. They represented us as millionaires, and the

Middleton men servants smoked cigars. Mrs. Reed’s averred that he had

never done anything in his life but stand behind his master at table

with a silver waiter in his hand. We were charged accordingly, but

perhaps the landlady did not get the best of us after all, for we paid

her in Confederate money. Now that they won’t take Confederate money in

the shops here how are we to live? Miss Middleton says quartermasters’

families are all clad in good gray cloth, but the soldiers go naked.

Well, we are like the families of whom the novels always say they are

poor but honest. Poor? Well-nigh beggars are we, for I do not know where

my next meal is to come from.

Called on Mrs. Ben Rutledge to-day. She is lovely, exquisitely refined.

Her mother, Mrs. Middleton, came in. “You are not looking well, dear?

Anything the matter?” “No—but, mamma, I have not eaten a mouthful to-day.

The children can eat mush; I can’t. I drank my tea, however.” She does

not understand taking favors, and, blushing violently, refused to let me

have Ellen make her some biscuit. I went home and sent her some biscuit

all the same.

_February 22d._—Isabella has been reading my diaries. How we laugh

because my sage divinations all come to naught. My famous “insight into

character” is utter folly. The diaries were lying on the hearth ready

to be burned, but she told me to hold on to them; think of them a while

and don’t be rash. Afterward when Isabella and I were taking a walk,

General Joseph E. Johnston joined us. He explained to us all of Lee’s

and Stonewall Jackson’s mistakes. We had nothing to say—how could we

say anything? He said he was very angry when he was ordered to take

command again. He might well have been in a genuine rage. This on and off

procedure would be enough to bewilder the coolest head. Mrs. Johnston

knows how to be a partizan of Joe Johnston and still not make his enemies

uncomfortable. She can be pleasant and agreeable, as she was to my face.

A letter from my husband who is at Charlotte. He came near being taken

a prisoner in Columbia, for he was asleep the morning of the 17th, when

the Yankees blew up the railroad depot. That woke him, of course, and he

found everybody had left Columbia, and the town was surrendered by the

mayor, Colonel Goodwyn. Hampton and his command had been gone several

hours. Isaac Hayne came away with General Chesnut. There was no fire in

the town when they left. They overtook Hampton’s command at Meek’s Mill.

That night, from the hills where they encamped, they saw the fire, and

knew the Yankees were burning the town, as we had every reason to expect

they would. Molly was left in charge of everything of mine, including

Mrs. Preston’s cow, which I was keeping, and Sally Goodwyn’s furniture.

[Illustration: RUINS OF MILLWOOD, WADE HAMPTON’S ANCESTRAL HOME.

From a Recent Photograph.]

Charleston and Wilmington have surrendered. I have no further use for

a newspaper. I never want to see another one as long as I live. Wade

Hampton has been made a lieutenant-general, too late. If he had been

made one and given command in South Carolina six months ago I believe he

would have saved us. Shame, disgrace, beggary, all have come at once,

and are hard to bear—the grand smash! Rain, rain, outside, and naught but

drowning floods of tears inside. I could not bear it; so I rushed down

in that rainstorm to the Martins’. Rev. Mr. Martin met me at the door.

“Madam,” said he, “Columbia is burned to the ground.” I bowed my head and

sobbed aloud. “Stop that!” he said, trying to speak cheerfully. “Come

here, wife,” said he to Mrs. Martin. “This woman cries with her whole

heart, just as she laughs.” But in spite of his words, his voice broke

down, and he was hardly calmer than myself.

_February 23d._—I want to get to Kate, I am so utterly heart-broken. I

hope John Chesnut and General Chesnut may at least get into the same

army. We seem scattered over the face of the earth. Isabella sits there

calmly reading. I have quieted down after the day’s rampage. May our

heavenly Father look down on us and have pity.

They say I was the last refugee from Columbia who was allowed to enter

by the door of the cars. The government took possession then and women

could only be smuggled in by the windows. Stout ones stuck and had to be

pushed, pulled, and hauled in by main force. Dear Mrs. Izard, with all

her dignity, was subjected to this rough treatment. She was found almost

too much for the size of the car windows.

_February 25th._—The Pfeifers, who live opposite us here, are descendants

of those Pfeifers who came South with Mr. Chesnut’s ancestors after the

Fort Duquesne disaster. They have now, therefore, been driven out of

their Eden, the valley of Virginia, a second time. The present Pfeifer

is the great man, the rich man _par excellence_ of Lincolnton. They say

that with something very near to tears in his eyes he heard of our latest

defeats. “It is only a question of time with us now,” he said. “The

raiders will come, you know.”

In Washington, before I knew any of them, except by sight, Mrs. Davis,

Mrs. Emory, and Mrs. Johnston were always together, inseparable friends,

and the trio were pointed out to me as the cleverest women in the United

States. Now that I do know them all well, I think the world was right in

its estimate of them.

Met a Mr. Ancrum of serenely cheerful aspect, happy and hopeful. “All

right now,” said he. “Sherman sure to be thrashed. Joe Johnston is in

command.” Dr. Darby says, when the oft-mentioned Joseph, the malcontent,

gave up his command to Hood, he remarked with a smile, “I hope you will

be able to stop Sherman; it was more than I could do.” General Johnston

is not of Mr. Ancrum’s way of thinking as to his own powers, for he

stayed here several days after he was ordered to the front. He must have

known he could do no good, and I am of his opinion.

When the wagon, in which I was to travel to Flat Rock, drove up to the

door, covered with a tent-like white cloth, in my embarrassment for an

opening in the conversation I asked the driver’s name. He showed great

hesitation in giving it, but at last said: “My name is Sherman,” adding,

“and now I see by your face that you won’t go with me. My name is against

me these times.” Here he grinned and remarked: “But you would leave

Lincolnton.”

That name was the last drop in my cup, but I gave him Mrs. Glover’s

reason for staying here. General Johnston had told her this “might be the

safest place after all.” He thinks the Yankees are making straight for

Richmond and General Lee’s rear, and will go by Camden and Lancaster,

leaving Lincolnton on their west flank.

The McLeans are kind people. They ask no rent for their rooms—only $20 a

week for firewood. Twenty dollars! and such dollars—mere waste paper.

Mrs. Munroe took up my photograph book, in which I have a picture of all

the Yankee generals. “I want to see the men who are to be our masters,”

said she. “Not mine” I answered, “thank God, come what may. This was

a free fight. We had as much right to fight to get out as they had to

fight to keep us in. If they try to play the masters, anywhere upon the

habitable globe will I go, never to see a Yankee, and if I die on the way

so much the better.” Then I sat down and wrote to my husband in language

much worse than anything I can put in this book. As I wrote I was blinded

by tears of rage. Indeed, I nearly wept myself away.

_February 26th._—Mrs. Munroe offered me religious books, which I

declined, being already provided with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the

Psalms of David, the denunciations of Hosea, and, above all, the patient

wail of Job. Job is my comforter now. I should be so thankful to know

life never would be any worse with me. My husband is well, and has been

ordered to join the great Retreater. I am bodily comfortable, if somewhat

dingily lodged, and I daily part with my raiment for food. We find no one

who will exchange eatables for Confederate money; so we are devouring our

clothes.

Opportunities for social enjoyment are not wanting. Miss Middleton and

Isabella often drink a cup of tea with me. One might search the whole

world and not find two cleverer or more agreeable women. Miss Middleton

is brilliant and accomplished. She must have been a hard student all her

life. She knows everybody worth knowing, and she has been everywhere.

Then she is so high-bred, high-hearted, pure, and true. She is so

clean-minded; she could not harbor a wrong thought. She is utterly

unselfish, a devoted daughter and sister. She is one among the many

large-brained women a kind Providence has thrown in my way, such as

Mrs. McCord, daughter of Judge Cheves; Mary Preston Darby, Mrs. Emory,

granddaughter of old Franklin, the American wise man, and Mrs. Jefferson

Davis. How I love to praise my friends!

As a ray of artificial sunshine, Mrs. Munroe sent me an Examiner. Daniel

thinks we are at the last gasp, and now England and France are bound to

step in. England must know if the United States of America are triumphant

they will tackle her next, and France must wonder if she will not have to

give up Mexico. My faith fails me. It is all too late; no help for us now

from God or man.

Thomas, Daniel says, was now to ravage Georgia, but Sherman, from all

accounts, has done that work once for all. There will be no aftermath.

They say no living thing is found in Sherman’s track, only chimneys, like

telegraph poles, to carry the news of Sherman’s army backward.

In all that tropical down-pour, Mrs. Munroe sent me overshoes and an

umbrella, with the message, “Come over.” I went, for it would be as well

to drown in the streets as to hang myself at home to my own bedpost. At

Mrs. Munroe’s I met a Miss McDaniel. Her father, for seven years, was the

Methodist preacher at our negro church. The negro church is in a grove

just opposite Mulberry house. She says her father has so often described

that fine old establishment and its beautiful lawn, live-oaks, etc. Now,

I dare say there stand at Mulberry only Sherman’s sentinels—stacks of

chimneys. We have made up our minds for the worst. Mulberry house is no

doubt razed to the ground.

Miss McDaniel was inclined to praise us. She said: “As a general rule

the Episcopal minister went to the family mansion, and the Methodist

missionary preached to the negroes and dined with the overseer at his

house, but at Mulberry her father always stayed at the ‘House,’ and the

family were so kind and attentive to him.” It was rather pleasant to hear

one’s family so spoken of among strangers.

So, well equipped to brave the weather, armed cap-a-pie, so to speak, I

continued my prowl farther afield and brought up at the Middletons’. I

may have surprised them, for “at such an inclement season” they hardly

expected a visitor. Never, however, did lonely old woman receive such a

warm and hearty welcome. Now we know the worst. Are we growing hardened?

We avoid all allusion to Columbia; we never speak of home, and we begin

to deride the certain poverty that lies ahead.

How it pours! Could I live many days in solitary confinement? Things are

beginning to be unbearable, but I must sit down and be satisfied. My

husband is safe so far. Let me be thankful it is no worse with me. But

there is the gnawing pain all the same. What is the good of being here

at all? Our world has simply gone to destruction. And across the way

the fair Lydia languishes. She has not even my resources against ennui.

She has no Isabella, no Miss Middleton, two as brilliant women as any

in Christendom. Oh, how does she stand it! I mean to go to church if it

rains cats and dogs. My feet are wet two or three times a day. We never

take cold; our hearts are too hot within us for that.

A carriage was driven up to the door as I was writing. I began to tie on

my bonnet, and said to myself in the glass, “Oh, you lucky woman!” I was

all in a tremble, so great was my haste to be out of this. Mrs. Glover

had the carriage. She came for me to go and hear Mr. Martin preach. He

lifts our spirits from this dull earth; he takes us up to heaven. That

I will not deny. Still he can not hold my attention; my heart wanders

and my mind strays back to South Carolina. Oh, vandal Sherman! what are

you at there, hard-hearted wretch that you are! A letter from General

Chesnut, who writes from camp near Charlotte under date of February 28th:

“I thank you a thousand, thousand times for your kind letters. They are

now my only earthly comfort, except the hope that all is not yet lost.

We have been driven like a wild herd from our country. And it is not

from a want of spirit in the people or soldiers, nor from want of energy

and competency in our commanders. The restoration of Joe Johnston, it is

hoped, will redound to the advantage of our cause and the reestablishment

of our fortunes! I am still in not very agreeable circumstances. For the

last four days completely water-bound.

“I am informed that a detachment of Yankees were sent from Liberty Hill

to Camden with a view to destroying all the houses, mills, and provisions

about that place. No particulars have reached me. You know I expected the

worst that could be done, and am fully prepared for any report which may

be made.

“It would be a happiness beyond expression to see you even for an hour. I

have heard nothing from my poor old father. I fear I shall never see him

again. Such is the fate of war. I do not complain. I have deliberately

chosen my lot, and am prepared for any fate that awaits me. My care

is for you, and I trust still in the good cause of my country and the

justice and mercy of Cod.”

It was a lively, rushing, young set that South Carolina put to the fore.

They knew it was a time of imminent danger, and that the fight would be

ten to one. They expected to win by activity, energy, and enthusiasm.

Then came the wet blanket, the croakers; now, these are posing, wrapping

Cæsar’s mantle about their heads to fall with dignity. Those gallant

youths who dashed so gaily to the front lie mostly in bloody graves. Well

for them, maybe. There are worse things than honorable graves. Wearisome

thoughts. Late in life we are to begin anew and have laborious, difficult

days ahead.

We have contradictory testimony. Governor Aiken has passed through,

saying Sherman left Columbia as he found it, and was last heard from at

Cheraw. Dr. Chisolm walked home with me. He says that is the last version

of the story. Now my husband wrote that he himself saw the fires which

burned up Columbia. The first night his camp was near enough to the town

for that.

They say Sherman has burned Lancaster—that Sherman nightmare, that ghoul,

that hyena! But I do not believe it. He takes his time. There are none to

molest him. He does things leisurely and deliberately. Why stop to do so

needless a thing as burn Lancaster court-house, the jail, and the tavern?

As I remember it, that description covers Lancaster. A raiding party they

say did for Camden.

No train from Charlotte yesterday. Rumor says Sherman is in Charlotte.

_February 29th._—Trying to brave it out. They have plenty, yet let our

men freeze and starve in their prisons. Would you be willing to be as

wicked as they are? A thousand times, no! But we must feed our army

first—if we can do so much as that. Our captives need not starve if

Lincoln would consent to exchange prisoners; but men are nothing to

the United States—things to throw away. If they send our men back they

strengthen our army, and so again their policy is to keep everybody

and everything here in order to help starve us out. That, too, is what

Sherman’s destruction means—to starve us out.

Young Brevard asked me to play accompaniments for him. The guitar is my

instrument, or was; so I sang and played, to my own great delight. It was

a distraction. Then I made egg-nog for the soldier boys below and came

home. Have spent a very pleasant evening. Begone, dull care; you and I

never agree.

Ellen and I are shut up here. It is rain, rain, everlasting rain. As our

money is worthless, are we not to starve? Heavens! how grateful I was

to-day when Mrs. McLean sent me a piece of chicken. I think the emptiness

of my larder has leaked out. To-day Mrs. Munroe sent me hot cakes and

eggs for my breakfast.

_March 5th._—Is the sea drying up? Is it going up into mist and coming

down on us in a water-spout? The rain, it raineth every day. The weather

typifies our tearful despair, on a large scale. It is also Lent now—a

quite convenient custom, for we, in truth, have nothing to eat. So we

fast and pray, and go dragging to church like drowned rats to be preached

at.

My letter from my husband was so—well, what in a woman you would call

heart-broken, that I began to get ready for a run up to Charlotte. My hat

was on my head, my traveling-bag in my hand, and Ellen was saying “Which

umbrella, ma’am?” “Stop, Ellen,” said I, “someone is speaking out there.”

A tap came at the door, and Miss McLean threw the door wide open as she

said in a triumphant voice: “Permit me to announce General Chesnut.” As

she went off she sang out, “Oh, does not a meeting like this make amends?”

We went after luncheon to see Mrs. Munroe. My husband wanted to thank her

for all her kindness to me. I was awfully proud of him. I used to think

that everybody had the air and manners of a gentleman. I know now that

these accomplishments are things to thank God for. Father O’Connell came

in, fresh from Columbia, and with news at last. Sherman’s men had burned

the convent. Mrs. Munroe had pinned her faith to Sherman because he was a

Roman Catholic, but Father O’Connell was there and saw it. The nuns and

girls marched to the old Hampton house (Mrs. Preston’s now), and so saved

it. They walked between files of soldiers. Men were rolling tar barrels

and lighting torches to fling on the house when the nuns came. Columbia

is but dust and ashes, burned to the ground. Men, women, and children

have been left there homeless, houseless, and without one particle of

food—reduced to picking up corn that was left by Sherman’s horses on

picket grounds and parching it to stay their hunger.

How kind my friends were on this, my fête day! Mrs. Rutledge sent me a

plate of biscuit; Mrs. Munroe, nearly enough food supplies for an entire

dinner; Miss McLean a cake for dessert. Ellen cooked and served up the

material happily at hand very nicely, indeed. There never was a more

successful dinner. My heart was too full to eat, but I was quiet and

calm; at least I spared my husband the trial of a broken voice and tears.

As he stood at the window, with his back to the room, he said: “Where

are they now—my old blind father and my sister? Day and night I see her

leading him out from under his own rooftree. That picture pursues me

persistently. But come, let us talk of pleasanter things.” To which I

answered, “Where will you find them?”

He took off his heavy cavalry boots and Ellen carried them away to wash

the mud off and dry them. She brought them back just as Miss Middleton

walked in. In his agony, while struggling with those huge boots and

trying to get them on, he spoke to her volubly in French. She turned

away from him instantly, as she saw his shoeless plight, and said to

me, “I had not heard of your happiness. I did not know the General was

here.” Not until next day did we have time to remember and laugh at that

outbreak of French. Miss Middleton answered him in the same language. He

told her how charmed he was with my surroundings, and that he would go

away with a much lighter heart since he had seen the kind people with

whom he would leave me.

I asked my husband what that correspondence between Sherman and Hampton

meant—this while I was preparing something for our dinner. His back was

still turned as he gazed out of the window. He spoke in the low and

steady monotone that characterized our conversation the whole day, and

yet there was something in his voice that thrilled me as he said: “The

second day after our march from Columbia we passed the M.’s. He was a

bonded man and not at home. His wife said at first that she could not

find forage for our horses, but afterward she succeeded in procuring

some. I noticed a very handsome girl who stood beside her as she spoke,

and I suggested to her mother the propriety of sending her out of the

track of both armies. Things were no longer as heretofore; there was

so much straggling, so many camp followers, with no discipline, on the

outskirts of the army. The girl answered quickly, ‘I wish to stay with

my mother.’ That very night a party of Wheeler’s men came to our camp,

and such a tale they told of what had been done at the place of horror

and destruction, the mother left raving. The outrage had been committed

before her very face, she having been secured first. After this crime the

fiends moved on. There were only seven of them. They had been gone but a

short time when Wheeler’s men went in pursuit at full speed and overtook

them, cut their throats and wrote upon their breasts: ‘These were the

seven!’”

“But the girl?”

“Oh, she was dead!”