“Are his critics as violent as ever against the President?” asked I when

recovered from pity and horror. “Sometimes I think I am the only friend

he has in the world. At these dinners, which they give us everywhere, I

spoil the sport, for I will not sit still and hear Jeff Davis abused for

things he is no more responsible for than any man at that table. Once I

lost my temper and told them it sounded like arrant nonsense to me, and

that Jeff Davis was a gentleman and a patriot, with more brains than the

assembled company.” “You lost your temper truly,” said I. “And I did

not know it. I thought I was as cool as I am now. In Washington when we

left, Jeff Davis ranked second to none, in intellect, and may be first,

from the South, and Mrs. Davis was the friend of Mrs. Emory, Mrs. Joe

Johnston, and Mrs. Montgomery Blair, and others of that circle. Now they

rave that he is nobody, and never was.” “And she?” I asked. “Oh, you

would think to hear them that he found her yesterday in a Mississippi

swamp!” “Well, in the French Revolution it was worse. When a man failed

he was guillotined. Mirabeau did not die a day too soon, even Mirabeau.”

He is gone. With despair in my heart I left that railroad station. Allan

Green walked home with me. I met his wife and his four ragged little boys

a day or so ago. She is the neatest, the primmest, the softest of women.

Her voice is like the gentle cooing of a dove. That lowering black future

hangs there all the same. The end of the war brings no hope of peace or

of security to us. Ellen said I had a little piece of bread and a little

molasses in store for my dinner to-day.

_March 6th._—To-day came a godsend. Even a small piece of bread and the

molasses had become things of the past. My larder was empty, when a tall

mulatto woman brought a tray covered by a huge white serviette. Ellen

ushered her in with a flourish, saying, “Mrs. McDaniel’s maid.” The maid

set down the tray upon my bare table, and uncovered it with conscious

pride. There were fowls ready for roasting, sausages, butter, bread,

eggs, and preserves. I was dumb with delight. After silent thanks to

heaven my powers of speech returned, and I exhausted myself in messages

of gratitude to Mrs. McDaniel.

“Missis, you oughtn’t to let her see how glad you was,” said Ellen. “It

was a lettin’ of yo’sef down.”

Mrs. Glover gave me some yarn, and I bought five dozen eggs with it from

a wagon—eggs for Lent. To show that I have faith yet in humanity, I paid

in advance in yarn for something to eat, which they promised to bring

to-morrow. Had they rated their eggs at $100 a dozen in “Confederick”

money, I would have paid it as readily as $10. But I haggle in yarn for

the millionth part of a thread.

Two weeks have passed and the rumors from Columbia are still of the

vaguest. No letter has come from there, no direct message, or messenger.

“My God!” cried Dr. Frank Miles, “but it is strange. Can it be anything

so dreadful they dare not tell us?” Dr. St. Julien Ravenel has grown pale

and haggard with care. His wife and children were left there.

Dr. Brumby has at last been coaxed into selling me enough leather for the

making of a pair of shoes, else I should have had to give up walking.

He knew my father well. He intimated that in some way my father helped

him through college. His own money had not sufficed, and so William C.

Preston and my father advanced funds sufficient to let him be graduated.

Then my uncle, Charles Miller, married his aunt. I listened in rapture,

for all this tended to leniency in the leather business, and I bore off

the leather gladly. When asked for Confederate money in trade I never

stop to bargain. I give them $20 or $50 cheerfully for anything—either

sum.

_March 8th._—Colonel Childs came with a letter from my husband and a

newspaper containing a full account of Sherman’s cold-blooded brutality

in Columbia. Then we walked three miles to return the call of my

benefactress, Mrs. McDaniel. They were kind and hospitable at her house,

but my heart was like lead; my head ached, and my legs were worse than

my head, and then I had a nervous chill. So I came home, went to bed

and stayed there until the Fants brought me a letter saying my husband

would be here to-day. Then I got up and made ready to give him a cheerful

reception. Soon a man called, Troy by name, the same who kept the little

corner shop so near my house in Columbia, and of whom we bought things

so often. We had fraternized. He now shook hands with me and looked in

my face pitifully. We seemed to have been friends all our lives. He says

they stopped the fire at the Methodist College, perhaps to save old Mr.

McCartha’s house. Mr. Sheriff Dent, being burned out, took refuge in our

house. He contrived to find favor in Yankee eyes. Troy relates that a

Yankee officer snatched a watch from Mrs. McCord’s bosom. The soldiers

tore the bundles of clothes that the poor wretches tried to save from

their burning homes, and dashed them back into the flames. They meant

to make a clean sweep. They were howling round the fires like demons,

these Yankees in their joy and triumph at our destruction. Well, we have

given them a big scare and kept them miserable for four years—the little

handful of us.

A woman we met on the street stopped to tell us a painful coincidence.

A general was married but he could not stay at home very long after

the wedding. When his baby was born they telegraphed him, and he sent

back a rejoicing answer with an inquiry, “Is it a boy or a girl?” He

was killed before he got the reply. Was it not sad? His poor young wife

says, “He did not live to hear that his son lived.” The kind woman added,

sorrowfully, “Died and did not know the sect of his child.” “Let us hope

it will be a Methodist,” said Isabella, the irrepressible.

At the venison feast Isabella heard a good word for me and one for

General Chesnut’s air of distinction, a thing people can not give

themselves, try as ever they may. Lord Byron says, Everybody knows a

gentleman when he sees one, and nobody can tell what it is that makes a

gentleman. He knows the thing, but he can’t describe it. Now there are

some French words that can not be translated, and we all know the thing

they mean—_gracieuse_ and _svelte_, for instance, as applied to a woman.

Not that anything was said of me like that—far from it. I am fair, fat,

forty, and jolly, and in my unbroken jollity, as far as they know, they

found my charm. “You see, she doesn’t howl; she doesn’t cry; she never,

never tells anybody about what she was used to at home and what she has

lost.” High praise, and I intend to try and deserve it ever after.

_March 10th._—Went to church crying to Ellen, “It is Lent, we must fast

and pray.” When I came home my good fairy, Colonel Childs, had been here

bringing rice and potatoes, and promising flour. He is a trump. He pulled

out his pocket-book and offered to be my banker. He stood there on the

street, Miss Middleton and Isabella witnessing the generous action, and

straight out offered me money. “No, put up that,” said I. “I am not a

beggar, and I never will be; to die is so much easier.”

Alas, after that flourish of trumpets, when he came with a sack of flour,

I accepted it gratefully. I receive things I can not pay for, but money

is different. There I draw a line, imaginary perhaps. Once before the

same thing happened. Our letters of credit came slowly in 1845, when we

went unexpectedly to Europe and our letters were to follow us. I was a

poor little, inoffensive bride, and a British officer, who guessed our

embarrassment, for we did not tell him (he came over with us on the

ship), asked my husband to draw on his banker until the letters of credit

should arrive. It was a nice thing for a stranger to do.

We have never lost what we never had. We have never had any money—only

unlimited credit, for my husband’s richest kind of a father insured us

all manner of credit. It was all a mirage only at last, and it has gone

just as we drew nigh to it.

Colonel Childs says eight of our Senators are for reconstruction, and

that a ray of light has penetrated inward from Lincoln, who told Judge

Campbell that Southern land would not be confiscated.

_March 12th._—Better to-day. A long, long weary day in grief has passed

away. I suppose General Chesnut is somewhere—but where? that is the

question. Only once has he visited this sad spot, which holds, he says,

all that he cares for on earth. Unless he comes or writes soon I will

cease, or try to cease, this wearisome looking, looking, looking for him.

_March 13th._—My husband at last did come for a visit of two hours.

Brought Lawrence, who had been to Camden, and was there, indeed, during

the raid. My husband has been ordered to Chester, S. C. We are surprised

to see by the papers that we behaved heroically in leaving everything we

had to be destroyed, without one thought of surrender. We had not thought

of ourselves from the heroic point of view. Isaac McLaughlin hid and

saved everything we trusted him with. A grateful negro is Isaac.

_March 15th._—Lawrence says Miss Chesnut is very proud of the presence

of mind and cool self-possession she showed in the face of the enemy.

She lost, after all, only two bottles of champagne, two of her brother’s

gold-headed canes, and her brother’s horses, including Claudia, the brood

mare, that he valued beyond price, and her own carriage, and a fly-brush

boy called Battis, whose occupation in life was to stand behind the table

with his peacock feathers and brush the flies away. He was the sole

member of his dusky race at Mulberry who deserted “Ole Marster” to follow

the Yankees.

Now for our losses at the Hermitage. Added to the gold-headed canes and

Claudia, we lost every mule and horse, and President Davis’s beautiful

Arabian was captured. John’s were there, too. My light dragoon, Johnny,

and heavy swell, is stripped light enough for the fight now. Jonathan,

whom we trusted, betrayed us; and the plantation and mills, Mulberry

house, etc., were saved by Claiborne, that black rascal, who was

suspected by all the world. Claiborne boldly affirmed that Mr. Chesnut

would not be hurt by destroying his place; the invaders would hurt only

the negroes. “Mars Jeems,” said he, “hardly ever come here and he takes

only a little sompen nur to eat when he do come.”

Fever continuing, I sent for St. Julien Ravenel. We had a wrangle over

the slavery question. Then, he fell foul of everybody who had not

conducted this war according to his ideas. Ellen had something nice to

offer him (thanks to the ever-bountiful Childs!), but he was too angry,

too anxious, too miserable to eat. He pitched into Ellen after he had

disposed of me. Ellen stood glaring at him from the fireplace, her blue

eye nearly white, her other eye blazing as a comet. Last Sunday, he gave

her some Dover’s powders for me; directions were written on the paper

in which the medicine was wrapped, and he told her to show these to me,

then to put what I should give her into a wine-glass and let me drink it.

Ellen put it all into the wine-glass and let me drink it at one dose.

“It was enough to last you your lifetime,” he said. “It was murder.”

Turning to Ellen: “What did you do with the directions?” “I nuvver see

no d’rections. You nuvver gimme none.” “I told you to show that paper

to your mistress.” “Well, I flung dat ole brown paper in de fire. What

you makin’ all dis fuss for? Soon as I give Missis de physic, she stop

frettin’ an’ flingin’ ’bout, she go to sleep sweet as a suckling baby,

an’ she slep two days an’ nights, an’ now she heap better.” And Ellen

withdrew from the controversy.

“Well, all is well that ends well, Mrs. Chesnut. You took opium enough to

kill several persons. You were worried out and needed rest. You came near

getting it—thoroughly. You were in no danger from your disease. But your

doctor and your nurse combined were deadly.” Maybe I was saved by the

adulteration, the feebleness, of Confederate medicine.

* * * * *

A letter from my husband, written at Chester Court House on March 15th,

says: “In the morning I send Lieut. Ogden with Lawrence to Lincolnton to

bring you down. I have three vacant rooms; one with bedsteads, chairs,

wash-stands, basins, and pitchers; the two others bare. You can have half

of a kitchen for your cooking. I have also at Dr. Da Vega’s, a room,

furnished, to which you are invited (board, also). You can take your

choice. If you can get your friends in Lincolnton to assume charge of

your valuables, only bring such as you may need here. Perhaps it will be

better to bring bed and bedding and the other indispensables.”

XX

CHESTER, S. C.

_March 21, 1865-May 1, 1865_

Chester, S. C., _March 21, 1865_.—Another flitting has occurred. Captain

Ogden came for me; the splendid Childs was true as steel to the last.

Surely he is the kindest of men. Captain Ogden was slightly incredulous

when I depicted the wonders of Colonel Childs’s generosity. So I

skilfully led out the good gentleman for inspection, and he walked to the

train with us. He offered me Confederate money, silver, and gold; and

finally offered to buy our cotton and pay us now in gold. Of course, I

laughed at his overflowing bounty, and accepted nothing; but I begged him

to come down to Chester or Camden and buy our cotton of General Chesnut

there.

On the train after leaving Lincolnton, as Captain Ogden is a refugee,

has had no means of communicating with his home since New Orleans fell,

and was sure to know how refugees contrive to live, I beguiled the time

acquiring information from him. “When people are without a cent, how do

they live?” I asked. “I am about to enter the noble band of homeless,

houseless refugees, and Confederate pay does not buy one’s shoe-strings.”

To which he replied, “Sponge, sponge. Why did you not let Colonel Childs

pay your bills?” “I have no bills,” said I. “We have never made bills

anywhere, not even at home, where they would trust us, and nobody would

trust me in Lincolnton.” “Why did you not borrow his money? General

Chesnut could pay him at his leisure?” “I am by no means sure General

Chesnut will ever again have any money,” said I.

As the train rattled and banged along, and I waved my handkerchief in

farewell to Miss Middleton, Isabella, and other devoted friends, I could

only wonder if fate would ever throw me again with such kind, clever,

agreeable, congenial companions? The McLeans refused to be paid for their

rooms. No plummet can sound the depths of the hospitality and kindness of

the North Carolina people.

Misfortune dogged us from the outset. Everything went wrong with the

train. We broke down within two miles of Charlotte, and had to walk that

distance; which was pretty rough on an invalid barely out of a fever. My

spirit was further broken by losing an invaluable lace veil, which was

worn because I was too poor to buy a cheaper one—that is, if there were

any veils at all for sale in our region.

My husband had ordered me to a house in Charlotte kept by some great

friends of his. They established me in the drawing-room, a really

handsome apartment; they made up a bed there and put in a washstand

and plenty of water, with everything refreshingly clean and nice. But

it continued to be a public drawing-room, open to all, so that I was

half dead at night and wanted to go to bed. The piano was there and the

company played it.

The landlady announced, proudly, that for supper there were nine kinds of

custard. Custard sounded nice and light, so I sent for some, but found it

heavy potato pie. I said: “Ellen, this may kill me, though Dover’s powder

did not.” “Don’t you believe dat, Missis; try.” We barricaded ourselves

in the drawing-room that night and left the next day at dawn. Arrived at

the station, we had another disappointment; the train was behind time.

There we sat on our boxes nine long hours; for the cars might come at any

moment, and we dared not move an inch from the spot.

Finally the train rolled in overloaded with paroled prisoners, but

heaven helped us: a kind mail agent invited us, with two other forlorn

women, into his comfortable and clean mail-car. Ogden, true to his

theory, did not stay at the boarding-house as we did. Some Christian

acquaintances took him in for the night. This he explained with a grin.

My husband was at the Chester station with a carriage. We drove at once

to Mrs. Da Vega’s.

_March 24th._—I have been ill, but what could you expect? My lines,

however, have again fallen in pleasant places. Mrs. Da Vega is young,

handsome, and agreeable, a kind and perfect hostess; and as to the house,

my room is all that I could ask and leaves nothing to be desired; so

very fresh, clean, warm, and comfortable is it. It is the drawing-room

suddenly made into a bedroom for me. But it is my very own. We are among

the civilized of the earth once more.

_March 27th._—I have moved again, and now I am looking from a window

high, with something more to see than the sky. We have the third story of

Dr. Da Vega’s house, which opens on the straight street that leads to the

railroad about a mile off.

Mrs. Bedon is the loveliest of young widows. Yesterday at church Isaac

Hayne nestled so close to her cap-strings that I had to touch him and

say, “Sit up!” Josiah Bedon was killed in that famous fight of the

Charleston Light Dragoons. The dragoons stood still to be shot down

in their tracks, having no orders to retire. They had been forgotten,

doubtless, and they scorned to take care of themselves.

In this high and airy retreat, as in Richmond, then in Columbia, and

then in Lincolnton, my cry is still: If they would only leave me here in

peace and if I were sure things never could be worse with me. Again am I

surrounded by old friends. People seem to vie with each other to show how

good they can be to me.

To-day Smith opened the trenches and appeared laden with a tray covered

with a snow-white napkin. Here was my first help toward housekeeping

again. Mrs. Pride has sent a boiled ham, a loaf of bread, a huge pancake;

another neighbor coffee already parched and ground; a loaf of sugar

already cracked; candles, pickles, and all the other things one must

trust to love for now. Such money as we have avails us nothing, even if

there were anything left in the shops to buy.

We had a jolly luncheon. James Lowndes called, the best of good company.

He said of Buck, “She is a queen, and ought to reign in a palace. No

Prince Charming yet; no man has yet approached her that I think half good

enough for her.”

Then Mrs. Prioleau Hamilton, _née_ Levy, came with the story of family

progress, not a royal one, from Columbia here: “Before we left home,”

said she, “Major Hamilton spread a map of the United States on the table,

and showed me with his finger where Sherman was likely to go. Womanlike,

I demurred. I But, suppose he does not choose to go that way?’ ‘Pooh,

pooh! what do you know of war?’ So we set out, my husband, myself, and

two children, all in one small buggy. The 14th of February we took up

our line of march, and straight before Sherman’s men for five weeks we

fled together. By incessant hurrying and scurrying from pillar to post,

we succeeded in acting as a sort of _avant-courier_ of the Yankee army.

Without rest and with much haste, we got here last Wednesday, and here we

mean to stay and defy Sherman and his legions. Much the worse for wear

were we.”

The first night their beauty sleep was rudely broken into at Alston with

a cry, “Move on, the Yanks are upon us!” So they hurried on, half-awake,

to Winnsboro, but with no better luck. There they had to lighten the

ship, leave trunks, etc., and put on all sail, for this time the Yankees

were only five miles behind. “Whip and spur, ride for your life!” was the

cry. “Sherman’s objective point seemed to be our buggy,” said she; “for

you know that when we got to Lancaster Sherman was expected there, and

he keeps his appointments; that is, he kept that one. Two small children

were in our chariot, and I began to think of the Red Sea expedition. But

we lost no time, and soon we were in Cheraw, clearly out of the track. We

thanked God for all his mercies and hugged to our bosoms fond hopes of a

bed and bath so much needed by all, especially for the children.

“At twelve o’clock General Hardee himself knocked us up with word to

‘March! march!’ for ‘all the blue bonnets are over the border.’ In mad

haste we made for Fayetteville, when they said: ‘God bless your soul!

This is the seat of war now; the battle-ground where Sherman and Johnston

are to try conclusions.’ So we harked back, as the hunters say, and cut

across country, aiming for this place. Clean clothes, my dear? Never a

one except as we took off garment by garment and washed it and dried it

by our camp fire, with our loins girded and in haste.” I was snug and

comfortable all that time in Lincolnton.

* * * * *

To-day Stephen D. Lee’s corps marched through—only to surrender. The camp

songs of these men were a heartbreak; so sad, yet so stirring. They would

have warmed the blood of an Icelander. The leading voice was powerful,

mellow, clear, distinct, pathetic, sweet. So, I sat down, as women have

done before, when they hung up their harps by strange streams, and I wept

the bitterness of such weeping. Music? Away, away! Thou speakest to me of

things which in all my long life I have not found, and I shall not find.

There they go, the gay and gallant few, doomed; the last gathering of

the flower of Southern pride, to be killed, or worse, to a prison. They

continue to prance by, light and jaunty. They march with as airy a tread

as if they still believed the world was all on their side, and that there

were no Yankee bullets for the unwary. What will Joe Johnston do with

them now?

The Hood melodrama is over, though the curtain has not fallen on the

last scene. Cassandra croaks and makes many mistakes, but to-day she

believes that Hood stock is going down. When that style of enthusiasm is

on the wane, the rapidity of its extinction is miraculous. It is like the

snuffing out of a candle; “one moment white, then gone forever.” No, that

is not right; it is the snow-flake on the river that is referred to. I am

getting things as much mixed as do the fine ladies of society.

Lee and Johnston have each fought a drawn battle; only a few more dead

bodies lie stiff and stark on an unknown battle-field. For we do not so

much as know where these drawn battles took place.

Teddy Barnwell, after sharing with me my first luncheon, failed me

cruelly. He was to come for me to go down to the train and see Isabella

pass by. One word with Isabella worth a thousand ordinary ones! So, she

has gone by and I’ve not seen her.

Old Colonel Chesnut refuses to say grace; but as he leaves the table

audibly declares, “I thank God for a good dinner.” When asked why he did

this odd thing he said: “My way is to be sure of a thing before I return

thanks for it.” Mayor Goodwyn thanked Sherman for promised protection to

Columbia; soon after, the burning began.

I received the wife of a post-office robber. The poor thing had done no

wrong, and I felt so sorry for her. Who would be a woman? Who that fool,

a weeping, pining, faithful woman? She hath hard measures still when she

hopes kindest. And all her beauty only makes ingrates!

_March 29th._—I was awakened with a bunch of violets from Mrs. Pride.

Violets always remind me of Kate and of the sweet South wind that blew in

the garden of paradise part of my life. Then, it all came back: the dread

unspeakable that lies behind every thought now.

_Thursday._—I find I have not spoken of the box-car which held the

Preston party that day on their way to York from Richmond. In the party

were Mr. and Mrs. Lawson Clay, General and Mrs. Preston and their three

daughters, Captain Rodgers, and Mr. Portman, whose father is an English

earl, and connected financially and happily with Portman Square. In

my American ignorance I may not state Mr. Portman’s case plainly. Mr.

Portman is, of course, a younger son. Then there was Cellie and her baby

and wet-nurse, with no end of servants, male and female. In this ark they

slept, ate, and drank, such being the fortune of war. We were there but

a short time, but Mr. Portman, during that brief visit of ours, was said

to have eaten three luncheons, and the number of his drinks, toddies, so

called, were counted, too. Mr. Portman’s contribution to the larder had

been three small pigs. They were, however, run over by the train, and

made sausage meat of unduly and before their time.

General Lee says to the men who shirk duty, “This is the people’s war;

when they tire, I stop.” Wigfall says, “It is all over; the game is up.”

He is on his way to Texas, and when the hanging begins he can step over

into Mexico.

I am plucking up heart, such troops do I see go by every day. They

must turn the tide, and surely they are going for something more than

surrender. It is very late, and the wind flaps my curtain, which seems to

moan, “Too late.” All this will end by making me a nervous lunatic.

Yesterday while I was driving with Mrs. Pride, Colonel McCaw passed

us! He called out, “I do hope you are in comfortable quarters.” “Very

comfortable,” I replied. “Oh, Mrs. Chesnut!” said Mrs. Pride, “how can

you say that?” “Perfectly comfortable, and hope it may never be worse

with me,” said I. “I have a clean little parlor, 16 by 18, with its bare

floor well scrubbed, a dinner-table, six chairs, and—well, that is all;

but I have a charming lookout from my window high. My world is now thus

divided into two parts—where Yankees are and where Yankees are not.”

As I sat disconsolate, looking out, ready for any new tramp of men and

arms, the magnificent figure of General Preston hove in sight. He was

mounted on a mighty steed, worthy of its rider, followed by his trusty

squire, William Walker, who bore before him the General’s portmanteau.

When I had time to realize the situation, I perceived at General

Preston’s right hand Mr. Christopher Hampton and Mr. Portman, who passed

by. Soon Mrs. Pride, in some occult way, divined or heard that they

were coming here, and she sent me at once no end of good things for my

tea-table. General Preston entered very soon after, and with him Clement

Clay, of Alabama, the latter in pursuit of his wife’s trunk. I left it

with the Rev. Mr. Martin, and have no doubt it is perfectly safe, but

where? We have written to Mr. Martin to inquire. Then Wilmot de Saussure

appeared. “I am here,” he said, “to consult with General Chesnut. He and

I always think alike.” He added, emphatically: “Slavery is stronger than

ever.” “If you think so,” said I, “you will find that for once you and

General Chesnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery was a thing

of the past, this many a year.”

I said to General Preston: “I pass my days and nights partly at this

window. I am sure our army is silently dispersing. Men are moving the

wrong way, all the time. They slip by with no songs and no shouts now.

They have given the thing up. See for yourself. Look there.” For a while

the streets were thronged with soldiers and then they were empty again.

But the marching now is without tap of drum.

_March 31st._—Mr. Prioleau Hamilton told us of a great adventure. Mrs.

Preston was put under his care on the train. He soon found the only other

women along were “strictly unfortunate females,” as Carlyle calls them,

beautiful and aggressive. He had to communicate the unpleasant fact to

Mrs. Preston, on account of their propinquity, and was lost in admiration

of her silent dignity, her quiet self-possession, her calmness, her

deafness and blindness, her thoroughbred ignoring of all that she did

not care to see. Some women, no matter how ladylike, would have made a

fuss or would have fidgeted, but Mrs. Preston dominated the situation and

possessed her soul in innocence and peace.

Met Robert Johnston from Camden. He has been a prisoner, having been

taken at Camden. The Yankees robbed Zack Cantey of his forks and spoons.

When Zack did not seem to like it, they laughed at him. When he said he

did not see any fun in it, they pretended to weep and wiped their eyes

with their coat-tails. All this maddening derision Zack said was as hard

to bear as it was to see them ride off with his horse, Albine. They stole

all of Mrs. Zack’s jewelry and silver. When the Yankee general heard of

it he wrote her a very polite note, saying how sorry he was that she

had been annoyed, and returned a bundle of Zack’s love-letters, written

to her before she was married. Robert Johnston said Miss Chesnut was a

brave and determined spirit. One Yankee officer came in while they were

at breakfast and sat down to warm himself at the fire. “Rebels have no

rights,” Miss Chesnut said to him politely. “I suppose you have come

to rob us. Please do so and go. Your presence agitates my blind old

father.” The man jumped up in a rage, and said, “What do you take me

for—a robber?” “No, indeed,” said she, and for very shame he marched out

empty-handed.

_April 3d._—Saw General Preston ride off. He came to tell me good-by.

I told him he looked like a Crusader on his great white horse, with

William, his squire, at his heels. Our men are all consummate riders,

and have their servants well mounted behind them, carrying cloaks and

traps—how different from the same men packed like sardines in dirty

railroad cars, usually floating inch deep in liquid tobacco juice.

For the kitchen and Ellen’s comfort I wanted a pine table and a kitchen

chair. A woman sold me one to-day for three thousand Confederate dollars.

Mrs. Hamilton has been disappointed again. Prioleau Hamilton says

the person into whose house they expected to move to-day came to say

she could not take boarders for three reasons: First, “that they had

small-pox in the house.” “And the two others?” “Oh, I did not ask for the

two others!”

_April 5th._—Miss Middleton’s letter came in answer to mine, telling her

how generous my friends here were to me. “We long,” she says, “for our

own small sufficiency of wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle

unto death, although the neighbors continue to feed us, as you would say,

‘with a spoon.’ We have fallen upon a new device. We keep a cookery book

on the mantelpiece, and when the dinner is deficient we just read off a

pudding or a _crême_. It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this

dessert in imagination, but perhaps it is as good for the digestion.”

As I was ready to go, though still up-stairs, some one came to say

General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton cried out, “Send word you are not

at home.” “Never!” said I. “Why make him climb all these stairs when you

must go in five minutes?” “If he had come here dragging Sherman as a

captive at his chariot wheels I might say ‘not at home,’ but not now.”

And I ran down and greeted him on the sidewalk in the face of all, and

walked slowly beside him as he toiled up the weary three stories, limping

gallantly. He was so well dressed and so cordial; not depressed in the

slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report self-defense;

says Joe Johnston attacked him and he was obliged to state things from

his point of view. And now follow statements, where one may read between

the lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in Western

Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned because he and Joe Johnston

were not on cordial terms, and as the fatigue of the mountain campaign

would be too great for him, he would like the chance of going across the

Mississippi. Texas was true to him, and would be his home, as it had

voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General Lee is utterly

despondent, and has no plan if Richmond goes, as go it must.

_April 7th._—Richmond has fallen and I have no heart to write about it.

Grant broke through our lines and Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is

this side of Danville. They are too many for us. Everything is lost in

Richmond, even our archives. Blue black is our horizon. Hood says we

shall all be obliged to go West—to Texas, I mean, for our own part of the

country will be overrun.

Yes, a solitude and a wild waste it may become, but, as to that, we can

rough it in the bush at home.

De Fontaine, in his newspaper, continues the old cry. “Now Richmond

is given up,” he says, “it was too heavy a load to carry, and we are

stronger than ever.” “Stronger than ever?” Nine-tenths of our army are

under ground and where is another army to come from? Will they wait until

we grow one?

_April 15th._—What a week it has been—madness, sadness, anxiety, turmoil,

ceaseless excitement. The Wigfalls passed through on their way to Texas.

We did not see them. Louly told Hood they were bound for the Rio Grande,

and intended to shake hands with Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. Yankees

were expected here every minute. Mrs. Davis came. We went down to the

cars at daylight to receive her. She dined with me. Lovely Winnie, the

baby, came, too. Buck and Hood were here, and that queen of women, Mary

Darby. Clay behaved like a trump. He was as devoted to Mrs. Davis in her

adversity as if they had never quarreled in her prosperity. People sent

me things for Mrs. Davis, as they did in Columbia for Mr. Davis. It was

a luncheon or breakfast only she stayed for here. Mrs. Brown prepared a

dinner for her at the station. I went down with her. She left here at

five o’clock. My heart was like lead, but we did not give way. She was

as calm and smiling as ever. It was but a brief glimpse of my dear Mrs.

Davis, and under altered skies.

_April 17th._—A letter from Mrs. Davis, who writes: “Do come to me, and

see how we get on. I shall have a spare room by the time you arrive,

indifferently furnished, but, oh, so affectionately placed at your

service. You will receive such a loving welcome. One perfect bliss have

I. The baby, who grows fat and is smiling always, is christened, and not

old enough to develop the world’s vices or to be snubbed by it. The name

so long delayed is Varina Anne. My name is a heritage of woe.

“Are you delighted with your husband? I am delighted with him as well

as with my own. It is well to lose an Arabian horse if one elicits such

a tender and at the same time knightly letter as General Chesnut wrote

to my poor old Prometheus. I do not think that for a time he felt the

vultures after the reception of the General’s letter.

“I hear horrid reports about Richmond. It is said that all below Ninth

Street to the Rocketts has been burned by the rabble, who mobbed the

town. The Yankee performances have not been chronicled. May God take our

cause into His own hands.”

_April 19th._—Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed up-stairs, pale as a sheet,

saying, “General Lee has capitulated,” I saw it reflected in Mary Darby’s

face before I heard him speak. She staggered to the table, sat down,

and wept aloud. Mr. Clay’s eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself Mary

shrieked, “Now we belong to negroes and Yankees!” Buck said, “I do not

believe it.”

How different from ours of them is their estimate of us. How

contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the despised and

iniquitous South within their borders, as part of their country, they

are willing to enlist millions of men at home and abroad, and to spend

billions, and we know they do not love fighting _per se_, nor spending

money. They are perfectly willing to have three killed for our one.

We hear they have all grown rich, through “shoddy,” whatever that is.

Genuine Yankees can make a fortune trading jack-knives.

“Somehow it is borne in on me that we will have to pay the piper,” was

remarked to-day. “No; blood can not be squeezed from a turnip. You can

not pour anything out of an empty cup. We have no money even for taxes or

to be confiscated.”

While the Preston girls are here, my dining-room is given up to them, and

we camp on the landing, with our one table and six chairs. Beds are made

on the dining-room floor. Otherwise there is no furniture, except buckets

of water and bath-tubs in their improvised chamber. Night and day this

landing and these steps are crowded with the _élite_ of the Confederacy,

going and coming, and when night comes, or rather, bedtime, more beds are

made on the floor of the landing-place for the war-worn soldiers to rest

upon. The whole house is a bivouac. As Pickens said of South Carolina in

1861, we are “an armed camp.”

My husband is rarely at home. I sleep with the girls, and my room is

given up to soldiers. General Lee’s few, but undismayed, his remnant of

an army, or the part from the South and West, sad and crestfallen, pass

through Chester. Many discomfited heroes find their way up these stairs.

They say Johnston will not be caught as Lee was. He can retreat; that is

his trade. If he would not fight Sherman in the hill country of Georgia,

what will he do but retreat in the plains of North Carolina with Grant,

Sherman, and Thomas all to the fore?

We are to stay here. Running is useless now; so we mean to bide a Yankee

raid, which they say is imminent. Why fly? They are everywhere, these

Yankees, like red ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues

of Egypt.

The plucky way in which our men keep up is beyond praise. There is no

howling, and our poverty is made a matter of laughing. We deride our own

penury. Of the country we try not to speak at all.

_April 22d._—This yellow Confederate quire of paper, my journal, blotted

by entries, has been buried three days with the silver sugar-dish,

tea-pot, milk-jug, and a few spoons and forks that follow my fortunes as

I wander. With these valuables was Hood’s silver cup, which was partly

crushed when he was wounded at Chickamauga.

It has been a wild three days, with aides galloping around with messages,

Yankees hanging over us like a sword of Damocles. We have been in queer

straits. We sat up at Mrs. Bedon’s dressed, without once going to bed for

forty-eight hours, and we were aweary.

Colonel Cadwallader Jones came with a despatch, a sealed secret despatch.

It was for General Chesnut. I opened it. Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, has

been killed, murdered, and Seward wounded! Why? By whom? It is simply

maddening, all this.

I sent off messenger after messenger for General Chesnut. I have not the

faintest idea where he is, but I know this foul murder will bring upon

us worse miseries. Mary Darby says, “But they murdered him themselves.

No Confederates are in Washington.” “But if they see fit to accuse us

of instigating it?” “Who murdered him? Who knows?” “See if they don’t

take vengeance on us, now that we are ruined and can not repel them any

longer.”

The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last

President put to death in the capital, though he is the first.

Buck never submits to be bored. The bores came to tea at Mrs. Bedon’s,

and then sat and talked, so prosy, so wearisome was the discourse, so

endless it seemed, that we envied Buck, who was mooning on the piazza.

She rarely speaks now.

[Illustration: A NEWSPAPER EXTRA.]

HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS!

AN ARMISTICE AGREED UPON!!!

* * * * *

Lincoln Assassinated and Seward Mortally Wounded in Washington!!

* * * * *

GREENSBORO, April 19, 1865.

GENERAL ORDER NO. 14.

It is announced to the Army that a suspension of arms has been

agreed upon pending negotiations between the two Governments.

During its continuance the two armies are to occupy their

present position.

By command of General Johnston:

[SIGNED,] ARCHER ANDERSON,

Lieut. Col. and A. A. G.

Official Copy: ISAAC HAYNE.

* * * * *

WASHINGTON, April 12, 1865.

To MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN:

_President Lincoln was murdered, about ten o’clock last night,

in his private box at Ford’s Theatre, in this city, by an

assassin, who shot him in the head with a pistol ball._ At the

same hour Mr. Seward’s house was entered by another assassin,

who _stabbed the Secretary in several places_. It is thought he

may possibly recover, but his son Fred may possibly die of the

wounds he received.

The assassin of the President leaped from the private

box, brandishing his dagger and exclaiming: “_Sic Semper

Tyrannis_—VIRGINIA IS REVENGED!” Mr. Lincoln fell senseless

from his seat, and continued in that condition until 22 minutes

past 10 o’clock this morning, at which time he breathed his

last.

Vice President Johnson now becomes President, and will take the

oath of office and assume the duties to-day.

[SIGNED,] E. M. STANTON

* * * * *

TO THE CITIZENS OF CHESTER.

CHESTER, S. C., April 22, 1865.

FLOUR and MEAL given out to the citizens by order of Major

Mitchell, Chief Commissary of South Carolina, to be returned

when called for, is _badly wanted to ration General Johnston’s

army_. Please return the same at once.

E. M. GRAHAM, Agent Subsistence Dep’t.

* * * * *

HEADQUARTERS RESERVE FORCES S. C.

CHESTERVILLE, APRIL 20, 1865.

The Brigadier-General Commanding has been informed that, in

view of the approach of the enemy, a large quantity of supplies

of various kinds were given out by the various Government

officers at this post to the citizens of the place. He now

calls upon, and earnestly requests all citizens, who may have

such stores in their possession, to return them to the several

Departments to which they belong. The stores are much needed at

this time for the use of soldiers, passing through the place,

and for the sick at the Hospital.

By command of Brig. Gen. Chesnut:

M. R. CLARK, Major and A. A. General.

_April 23d._—My silver wedding-day, and I am sure the unhappiest day of

my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher Hampton. Portman told of Miss

Kate Hampton, who is perhaps the most thoroughly ladylike person in the

world. When he told her that Lee had surrendered she started up from her

seat and said, “That is a lie.” “Well, Miss Hampton, I tell the tale as

it was told me. I can do no more.”

No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry has been destroyed

by a corps commanded by General Logan. Some one asked coolly, “Will

General Chesnut be shot as a soldier, or hung as a senator?” “I am

not of sufficient consequence,” answered he. “They will stop short of

brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States Senate weeks before

there was any secession. So I can not be hung as a senator. But after all

it is only a choice between drumhead court martial, short shrift, and a

lingering death at home from starvation.”

These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask they wear does not

show a ripple of change; they are sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to

keep for a week or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to

me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they had been

garden peas.

Mrs. Huger was in church in Richmond when the news of the surrender came.

Worshipers were in the midst of the communion service. Mr. McFarland was

called out to send away the gold from his bank. Mr. Minnegerode’s English

grew confused. Then the President was summoned, and distress of mind

showed itself in every face. The night before one of General Lee’s aides,

Walter Taylor, was married, and was off to the wars immediately after the

ceremony.

One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked down

hill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood

by little Joe Davis’s grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted

plantations, sacked villages. “You seem resolute to look the worst in

the face,” said General Chesnut, wearily. “Yes, poverty, with no future

and no hope.” “But no slaves, thank God!” cried Buck. “We would be the

scorn of the world if the world thought of us at all. You see, we are

exiles and paupers.” “Pile on the agony.” “How does our famous captain,

the great Lee, bear the Yankees’ galling chain?” I asked. “He knows how

to possess his soul in patience,” answered my husband. “If there were no

such word as subjugation, no debts, no poverty, no negro mobs backed by

Yankees; if all things were well, you would shiver and feel benumbed,”

he went on, pointing at me in an oratorical attitude. “Your sentence is

pronounced—Camden for life.”

_May 1st._—In Chester still. I climb these steep steps alone. They have

all gone, all passed by. Buck went with Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary,

Mrs. Huger, and Pinckney took flight together. One day just before they

began to dissolve in air, Captain Gay was seated at the table, half-way

between me on the top step and John in the window, with his legs outside.

Said some one to-day, “She showed me her engagement ring, and I put it

back on her hand. She is engaged, but not to me.” “By the heaven that is

above us all, I saw you kiss her hand.” “That I deny.” Captain Gay glared

in angry surprise, and insisted that he had seen it. “Sit down, Gay,”

said the cool captain in his most mournful way. “You see, my father died

when I was a baby, and my grandfather took me in hand. To him I owe this

moral maxim. He is ninety years old, a wise old man. Now, remember my

grandfather’s teaching forever-more—‘A gentleman must not kiss and tell.’”

General Preston came to say good-by. He will take his family abroad at

once. Burnside, in New Orleans, owes him some money and will pay it.

“There will be no more confiscation, my dear madam,” said he; “they must

see that we have been punished enough.” “They do not think so, my dear

general. This very day a party of Federals passed in hot pursuit of our

President.”

A terrible fire-eater, one of the few men left in the world who believe

we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans, who are black, in

bonds forever; he is six feet two; an athlete; a splendid specimen of the

animal man; but he has never been under fire; his place in the service

was a bomb-proof office, so-called. With a face red-hot with rage he

denounced Jeff Davis and Hood. “Come, now,” said Edward, the handsome,

“men who could fight and did not, they are the men who ruined us. We

wanted soldiers. If the men who are cursing Jeff Davis now had fought

with Hood, and fought as Hood fought, we’d be all right now.”

And then he told of my trouble one day while Hood was here. “Just such a

fellow as you came up on this little platform, and before Mrs. Chesnut

could warn him, began to heap insults on Jeff Davis and his satrap, Hood.

Mrs. Chesnut held up her hands. ‘Stop, not another word. You shall not

abuse my friends here! Not Jeff Davis behind his back, not Hood to his

face, for he is in that room and hears you.’” Fancy how dumfounded this

creature was.

Mrs. Huger told a story of Joe Johnston in his callow days before he

was famous. After an illness Johnston’s hair all fell out; not a hair

was left on his head, which shone like a fiery cannon-ball. One of the

gentlemen from Africa who waited at table sniggered so at dinner that

he was ordered out by the grave and decorous black butler. General

Huger, feeling for the agonies of young Africa, as he strove to stifle

his mirth, suggested that Joe Johnston should cover his head with his

handkerchief. A red silk one was produced, and turban-shaped, placed on

his head. That completely finished the gravity of the butler, who fled

in helplessness. His guffaw on the outside of the door became plainly

audible. General Huger then suggested, as they must have the waiter back,

or the dinner could not go on, that Joe should eat with his hat on, which

he did.

XXI

CAMDEN, S. C.

_May 2, 1865-August 2, 1865_

Camden, S. C., _May 2, 1865_.—Since we left Chester nothing but solitude,

nothing but tall blackened chimneys, to show that any man has ever trod

this road before. This is Sherman’s track. It is hard not to curse him.

I wept incessantly at first. The roses of the gardens are already hiding

the ruins. My husband said Nature is a wonderful renovator. He tried to

say something else and then I shut my eyes and made a vow that if we

were a crushed people, crushed by weight, I would never be a whimpering,

pining slave.

We heard loud explosions of gunpowder in the direction of Camden.

Destroyers were at it there. Met William Walker, whom Mr. Preston left

in charge of a car-load of his valuables. General Preston was hardly out

of sight before poor helpless William had to stand by and see the car

plundered. “My dear Missis! they have cleaned me out, nothing left,”

moaned William the faithful. We have nine armed couriers with us. Can

they protect us?

Bade adieu to the staff at Chester. No general ever had so remarkable a

staff, so accomplished, so agreeable, so well bred, and, I must say, so

handsome, and can add so brave and efficient.

_May 4th._—Home again at Bloomsbury. From Chester to Winnsboro we did not

see one living thing, man, woman, or animal, except poor William trudging

home after his sad disaster. The blooming of the gardens had a funereal

effect. Nature is so luxuriant here, she soon covers the ravages of

savages. No frost has occurred since the seventh of March, which accounts

for the wonderful advance in vegetation. This seems providential to these

starving people. In this climate so much that is edible can be grown in

two months.

At Winnsboro we stayed at Mr. Robertson’s. There we left the wagon train.

Only Mr. Brisbane, one of the general’s couriers, came with us on escort

duty. The Robertsons were very kind and hospitable, brimful of Yankee

anecdotes. To my amazement the young people of Winnsboro had a May-day

celebration amid the smoking ruins. Irrepressible is youth.

The fidelity of the negroes is the principal topic. There seems to be not

a single case of a negro who betrayed his master, and yet they showed a

natural and exultant joy at being free. After we left Winnsboro negroes

were seen in the fields plowing and hoeing corn, just as in antebellum

times. The fields in that respect looked quite cheerful. We did not pass

in the line of Sherman’s savages, and so saw some houses standing.

Mary Kirkland has had experience with the Yankees. She has been

pronounced the most beautiful woman on this side of the Atlantic, and

has been spoiled accordingly in all society. When the Yankees came,

Monroe, their negro manservant, told her to stand up and hold two of her

children in her arms, with the other two pressed as close against her

knees as they could get. Mammy Selina and Lizzie then stood grimly on

each side of their young missis and her children. For four mortal hours

the soldiers surged through the rooms of the house. Sometimes Mary and

her children were roughly jostled against the wall, but Mammy and Lizzie

were stanch supporters. The Yankee soldiers taunted the negro women for

their foolishness in standing by their cruel slave-owners, and taunted

Mary with being glad of the protection of her poor ill-used slaves.

Monroe meanwhile had one leg bandaged and pretended to be lame, so that

he might not be enlisted as a soldier, and kept making pathetic appeals

to Mary.

“Don’t answer them back, Miss Mary,” said he. “Let ’em say what dey want

to; don’t answer ’em back. Don’t give ’em any chance to say you are

impudent to ’em.”

One man said to her: “Why do you shrink from us and avoid us so? We did

not come here to fight for negroes; we hate them. At Port Royal I saw a

beautiful white woman driving in a wagon with a coal-black negro man. If

she had been anything to me I would have shot her through the heart.”

“Oh, oh!” said Lizzie, “that’s the way you talk in here. I’ll remember

that when you begin outside to beg me to run away with you.”

Finally poor Aunt Betsy, Mary’s mother, fainted from pure fright and

exhaustion. Mary put down her baby and sprang to her mother, who was

lying limp in a chair, and fiercely called out, “Leave this room, you

wretches! Do you mean to kill my mother? She is ill; I must put her to

bed.” Without a word they all slunk out ashamed. “If I had only tried

that hours ago,” she now said. Outside they remarked that she was “an

insolent rebel huzzy, who thinks herself too good to speak to a soldier

of the United States,” and one of them said: “Let us go in and break her

mouth.” But the better ones held the more outrageous back. Monroe slipped

in again and said: “Missy, for God’s sake, when dey come in be sociable

with ’em. Dey will kill you.”

“Then let me die.”

The negro soldiers were far worse than the white ones.

Mrs. Bartow drove with me to Mulberry. On one side of the house we

found every window had been broken, every bell torn down, every piece

of furniture destroyed, and every door smashed in. But the other side

was intact. Maria Whitaker and her mother, who had been left in charge,

explained this odd state of things. The Yankees were busy as beavers,

working like regular carpenters, destroying everything when their general

came in and stopped them. He told them it was a sin to destroy a fine

old house like that, whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not

have had it done for the world. It was wanton mischief. He explained to

Maria that soldiers at such times were excited, wild, and unruly. They

carried off sacks full of our books, since unfortunately they found a

pile of empty sacks in the garret. Our books, our letters, our papers

were afterward strewn along the Charleston road. Somebody found things of

ours as far away as Vance’s Ferry.

This was Potter’s raid.[130] Sherman took only our horses. Potter’s raid

came after Johnston’s surrender, and ruined us finally, burning our mills

and gins and a hundred bales of cotton. Indeed, nothing is left to us now

but the bare land, and the debts contracted for the support of hundreds

of negroes during the war.

J. H. Boykin was at home at the time to look after his own interests, and

he, with John de Saussure, has saved the cotton on their estates, with

the mules and farming utensils and plenty of cotton as capital to begin

on again. The negroes would be a good riddance. A hired man would be a

good deal cheaper than a man whose father and mother, wife and twelve

children have to be fed, clothed, housed, and nursed, their taxes paid,

and their doctor’s bills, all for his half-done, slovenly, lazy work. For

years we have thought negroes a nuisance that did not pay. They pretend

exuberant loyalty to us now. Only one man of Mr. Chesnut’s left the

plantation with the Yankees.

When the Yankees found the Western troops were not at Camden, but down

below Swift Creek, like sensible folk they came up the other way, and

while we waited at Chester for marching orders we were quickly ruined

after the surrender. With our cotton saved, and cotton at a dollar a

pound, we might be in comparatively easy circumstances. But now it is the

devil to pay, and no pitch hot. Well, all this was to be.

Godard Bailey, editor, whose prejudices are all against us, described

the raids to me in this wise: They were regularly organized. First came

squads who demanded arms and whisky. Then came the rascals who hunted for

silver, ransacked the ladies’ wardrobes and scared women and children

into fits—at least those who could be scared. Some of these women could

not be scared. Then came some smiling, suave, well-dressed officers, who

“regretted it all so much.” Outside the gate officers, men, and bummers

divided even, share and share alike, the piles of plunder.

When we crossed the river coming home, the ferry man at Chesnut’s Ferry

asked for his fee. Among us all we could not muster the small silver coin

he demanded. There was poverty for you. Nor did a stiver appear among us

until Molly was hauled home from Columbia, where she was waging war with

Sheriff Dent’s family. As soon as her foot touched her native heath, she

sent to hunt up the cattle. Many of our cows were found in the swamp;

like Marion’s men they had escaped the enemy. Molly sells butter for us

now on shares.

Old Cuffey, head gardener at Mulberry, and Yellow Abram, his assistant,

have gone on in the even tenor of their way. Men may come and men may go,

but they dig on forever. And they say they mean to “as long as old master

is alive.” We have green peas, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, new potatoes,

and strawberries in abundance—enough for ourselves and plenty to give

away to refugees. It is early in May and yet two months since frost.

Surely the wind was tempered to the shorn lamb in our case.

Johnny went over to see Hampton. His cavalry are ordered to reassemble

on the 20th—a little farce to let themselves down easily; they know it is

all over. Johnny, smiling serenely, said, “The thing is up and forever.”

Godard Bailey has presence of mind. Anne Sabb left a gold card-case,

which was a terrible oversight, among the cards on the drawing-room

table. When the Yankee raiders saw it their eyes glistened. Godard

whispered to her: “Let them have that gilt thing and slip away and hide

the silver.” “No!” shouted a Yank, “you don’t fool me that way; here’s

your old brass thing; don’t you stir; fork over that silver.” And so they

deposited the gold card-case in Godard’s hands, and stole plated spoons

and forks, which had been left out because they were plated. Mrs. Beach

says two officers slept at her house. Each had a pillow-case crammed with

silver and jewelry—“spoils of war,” they called it.

Floride Cantey heard an old negro say to his master: “When you all had

de power you was good to me, and I’ll protect you now. No niggers nor

Yankees shall tech you. If you want anything call for Sambo. I mean, call

for Mr. Samuel; dat my name now.”

_May 10th._—A letter from a Pharisee who thanks the Lord she is not as

other women are; she need not pray, as the Scotch parson did, for a good

conceit of herself. She writes, “I feel that I will not be ruined. Come

what may, God will provide for me.” But her husband had strengthened

the Lord’s hands, and for the glory of God, doubtless, invested some

thousands of dollars in New York, where Confederate moth did not corrupt

nor Yankee bummers break through and steal. She went on to tell us: “I

have had the good things of this world, and I have enjoyed them in their

season. But I only held them as steward for God. My bread has been cast

upon the waters and will return to me.”

E. M. Boykin said to-day: “We had a right to strike for our independence,

and we did strike a bitter blow. They must be proud to have overcome

such a foe. I dare look any man in the face. There is no humiliation

in our position after such a struggle as we made for freedom from the

Yankees.” He is sanguine. His main idea is joy that he has no negroes to

support, and need hire only those he really wants.

Stephen Elliott told us that Sherman said to Joe Johnston, “Look out

for yourself. This agreement only binds the military, not the civil,

authorities.” Is our destruction to begin anew? For a few weeks we have

had peace.

Sally Reynolds told a short story of a negro pet of Mrs. Kershaw’s. The

little negro clung to Mrs. Kershaw and begged her to save him. The negro

mother, stronger than Mrs. Kershaw, tore him away from her. Mrs. Kershaw

wept bitterly. Sally said she saw the mother chasing the child before

her as she ran after the Yankees, whipping him at every step. The child

yelled like mad, a small rebel blackamoor.

_May 16th._—We are scattered and stunned, the remnant of heart left alive

within us filled with brotherly hate. We sit and wait until the drunken

tailor who rules the United States of America issues a proclamation, and

defines our anomalous position.

Such a hue and cry, but whose fault? Everybody is blamed by somebody

else. The dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battle-field escape,

blame every man who stayed at home and did not fight. I will not stop to

hear excuses. There is not one word against those who stood out until the

bitter end, and stacked muskets at Appomattox.

[Illustration: COL. JAMES CHESNUT, SR.

From a Portrait in Oil by Gilbert Stuart.]

_May 18th._—A feeling of sadness hovers over me now, day and night, which

no words of mine can express. There is a chance for plenty of character

study in this Mulberry house, if one only had the heart for it. Colonel

Chesnut, now ninety-three, blind and deaf, is apparently as strong as

ever, and certainly as resolute of will. Partly patriarch, partly grand

seigneur, this old man is of a species that we shall see no more—the

last of a race of lordly planters who ruled this Southern world, but

now a splendid wreck. His manners are unequaled still, but underneath

this smooth exterior lies the grip of a tyrant whose will has never been

crossed. I will not attempt what Lord Byron says he could not do, but

must quote again: “Everybody knows a gentleman when he sees him. I have

never met a man who could describe one.” We have had three very distinct

specimens of the genus in this house—three generations of gentlemen, each

utterly different from the other—father, son, and grandson.

African Scipio walks at Colonel Chesnut’s side. He is six feet two, a

black Hercules, and as gentle as a dove in all his dealings with the

blind old master, who boldly strides forward, striking with his stick to

feel where he is going. The Yankees left Scipio unmolested. He told them

he was absolutely essential to his old master, and they said, “If you

want to stay so bad, he must have been good to you always.” Scip says he

was silent, for it “made them mad if you praised your master.”

Sometimes this old man will stop himself, just as he is going off in a

fury, because they try to prevent his attempting some feat impossible

in his condition of lost faculties. He will ask gently, “I hope that I

never say or do anything unseemly! Sometimes I think I am subject to

mental aberrations.” At every footfall he calls out, “Who goes there?” If

a lady’s name is given he uncovers and stands, with hat off, until she

passes. He still has the old-world art of bowing low and gracefully.

Colonel Chesnut came of a race that would brook no interference with

their own sweet will by man, woman, or devil. But then such manners has

he, they would clear any man’s character, if it needed it. Mrs. Chesnut,

his wife, used to tell us that when she met him at Princeton, in the

nineties of the eighteenth century, they called him “the Young Prince.”

He and Mr. John Taylor,[131] of Columbia, were the first up-country

youths whose parents were wealthy enough to send them off to college.

When a college was established in South Carolina, Colonel John Chesnut,

the father of the aforesaid Young Prince, was on the first board of

trustees. Indeed, I may say that, since the Revolution of 1776, there has

been no convocation of the notables of South Carolina, in times of peace

and prosperity, or of war and adversity, in which a representative man

of this family has not appeared. The estate has been kept together until

now. Mrs. Chesnut said she drove down from Philadelphia on her bridal

trip, in a chariot and four—a cream-colored chariot with outriders.

They have a saying here—on account of the large families with which

people are usually blessed, and the subdivision of property consequent

upon that fact, besides the tendency of one generation to make and to

save, and the next to idle and to squander, that there are rarely more

than three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. But these

Chesnuts have secured four, from the John Chesnut who was driven out from

his father’s farm in Virginia by the French and Indians, when that father

had been killed at Fort Duquesne,[132] to the John Chesnut who saunters

along here now, the very perfection of a lazy gentleman, who cares not to

move unless it be for a fight, a dance, or a fox-hunt.

The first comer of that name to this State was a lad when he arrived

after leaving his land in Virginia; and being without fortune otherwise,

he went into Joseph Kershaw’s grocery shop as a clerk, and the Kershaws,

I think, so remember that fact that they have it on their coat-of-arms.

Our Johnny, as he was driving me down to Mulberry yesterday, declared

himself delighted with the fact that the present Joseph Kershaw had

so distinguished himself in our war, that they might let the shop

of a hundred years ago rest for a while. “Upon my soul,” cried the

cool captain, “I have a desire to go in there and look at the Kershaw

tombstones. I am sure they have put it on their marble tablets that we

had an ancestor one day a hundred years ago who was a clerk in their

shop.” This clerk became a captain in the Revolution.

In the second generation the shop had so far sunk that the John Chesnut

of that day refused to let his daughter marry a handsome, dissipated

Kershaw, and she, a spoiled beauty, who could not endure to obey orders

when they were disagreeable to her, went up to her room and therein

remained, never once coming out of it for forty years. Her father let her

have her own way in that; he provided servants to wait upon her and every

conceivable luxury that she desired, but neither party would give in.

I am, too, thankful that I am an old woman, forty-two my last birthday.

There is so little life left in me now to be embittered by this agony.

“Nonsense! I am a pauper,” says my husband, “and I am as smiling and as

comfortable as ever you saw me.” “When you have to give up your horses?

How then?”

_May 21st._—They say Governor Magrath has absconded, and that the Yankees

have said, “If you have no visible governor, we will send you one.” If we

had one and they found him, they would clap him in prison instanter.

The negroes have flocked to the Yankee squad which has recently come, but

they were snubbed, the rampant freedmen. “Stay where you are,” say the

Yanks. “We have nothing for you.” And they sadly “peruse” their way. Now

that they have picked up that word “peruse,” they use it in season and

out. When we met Mrs. Preston’s William we asked, “Where are you going?”

“Perusing my way to Columbia,” he answered.

When the Yanks said they had no rations for idle negroes, John Walker

answered mildly, “This is not at all what we expected.” The colored

women, dressed in their gaudiest array, carried bouquets to the Yankees,

making the day a jubilee. But in this house there is not the slightest

change. Every negro has known for months that he or she was free, but I

do not see one particle of change in their manner. They are, perhaps,

more circumspect, polite, and quiet, but that is all. Otherwise all goes

on in antebellum _statu quo_. Every day I expect to miss some familiar

face, but so far have been disappointed.

Mrs. Huger we found at the hotel here, and we brought her to Bloomsbury.

She told us that Jeff Davis was traveling leisurely with his wife twelve

miles a day, utterly careless whether he were taken prisoner or not, and

that General Hampton had been paroled.

Fighting Dick Anderson and Stephen Elliott, of Fort Sumter memory, are

quite ready to pray for Andy Johnson, and to submit to the powers that

be. Not so our belligerent clergy. “Pray for people when I wish they were

dead?” cries Rev. Mr. Trapier. “No, never! I will pray for President

Davis till I die. I will do it to my last gasp. My chief is a prisoner,

but I am proud of him still. He is a spectacle to gods and men. He

will bear himself as a soldier, a patriot, a statesman, a Christian

gentleman. He is the martyr of our cause.” And I replied with my tears.

“Look here: taken in woman’s clothes?” asked Mr. Trapier. “Rubbish,

stuff, and nonsense. If Jeff Davis has not the pluck of a true man, then

there is no courage left on this earth. If he does not die game, I give

it up. Something, you see, was due to Lincoln and the Scotch cap that

he hid his ugly face with, in that express car, when he rushed through

Baltimore in the night. It is that escapade of their man Lincoln that set

them on making up the woman’s clothes story about Jeff Davis.”

Mrs. W. drove up. She, too, is off for New York, to sell four hundred

bales of cotton and a square, or something, which pays tremendously in

the Central Park region, and to capture and bring home her _belle fille_,

who remained North during the war. She knocked at my door. The day was

barely dawning. I was in bed, and as I sprang up, discovered that my old

Confederate night-gown had to be managed, it was so full of rents. I am

afraid I gave undue attention to the sad condition of my gown, but could

nowhere see a shawl to drape my figure.

She was very kind. In case my husband was arrested and needed funds, she

offered me some “British securities” and bonds. We were very grateful,

but we did not accept the loan of money, which would have been almost

the same as a gift, so slim was our chance of repaying it. But it was a

generous thought on her part; I own that.

Went to our plantation, the Hermitage, yesterday. Saw no change; not a

soul was absent from his or her post. I said, “Good colored folks, when

are you going to kick off the traces and be free?” In their furious,

emotional way, they swore devotion to us all to their dying day. Just the

same, the minute they see an opening to better themselves they will move

on. William, my husband’s foster-brother, came up. “Well, William, what

do you want?” asked my husband. “Only to look at you, marster; it does

me good.”

_June 1st._—The New York Herald quotes General Sherman as saying,

“Columbia was burned by Hampton’s sheer stupidity.” But then who burned

everything on the way in Sherman’s march to Columbia, and in the line

of march Sherman took after leaving Columbia? We came, for three days

of travel, over a road that had been laid bare by Sherman’s torches.

Nothing but smoking ruins was left in Sherman’s track. That I saw with

my own eyes. No living thing was left, no house for man or beast. They

who burned the countryside for a belt of forty miles, did they not

also burn the town? To charge that to “Hampton’s stupidity” is merely

an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hanged

at once, not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln.

“Stanton,” the Herald says, “has all the papers in his hands to convict

him.”

The Yankees here say, “The black man must go as the red man has gone;

this is a white man’s country.” The negroes want to run with the hare,

but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their professions to us,

but declare that they are to be paid by these blessed Yankees in lands

and mules for having been slaves. They were so faithful to us during the

war, why should the Yankees reward them, to which the only reply is that

it would be by way of punishing rebels.

Mrs. Adger[133] saw a Yankee soldier strike a woman, and she prayed God

to take him in hand according to his deed. The soldier laughed in her

face, swaggered off, stumbled down the steps, and then his revolver went

off by the concussion and shot him dead.

The black ball is in motion. Mrs. de Saussure’s cook shook the dust

off her feet and departed from her kitchen to-day—free, she said. The

washerwoman is packing to go.

Scipio Africanus, the Colonel’s body-servant, is a soldierly looking

black creature, fit to have delighted the eyes of old Frederick William

of Prussia, who liked giants. We asked him how the Yankees came to leave

him. “Oh, I told them marster couldn’t do without me nohow; and then I

carried them some nice hams that they never could have found, they were

hid so good.”

Eben dressed himself in his best and went at a run to meet his Yankee

deliverers—so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had

adorned himself with his watch and chain, like the cordage of a ship,

with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white

people, but he thought they came to save niggers. “Hand over that

watch!” they said. Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a

sadder and a wiser man. He was soon in his shirt-sleeves, whistling at

his knife-board. “Why? You here? Why did you come back so soon?” he was

asked. “Well, I thought may be I better stay with ole marster that give

me the watch, and not go with them that stole it.” The watch was the

pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul.

Went up to my old house, “Kamschatka.” The Trapiers live there now. In

those drawing-rooms where the children played Puss in Boots, where we

have so often danced and sung, but never prayed before, Mr. Trapier

held his prayer-meeting. I do not think I ever did as much weeping or

as bitter in the same space of time. I let myself go; it did me good.

I cried with a will. He prayed that we might have strength to stand up

and bear our bitter disappointment, to look on our ruined homes and our

desolated country and be strong. And he prayed for the man “we elected

to be our ruler and guide.” We knew that they had put him in a dungeon

and in chains.[134] Men watch him day and night. By orders of Andy,

the bloody-minded tailor, nobody above the rank of colonel can take

the benefit of the amnesty oath, nobody who owns over twenty thousand

dollars, or who has assisted the Confederates. And now, ye rich men,

howl, for your misery has come upon you. You are beyond the outlaw,

camping outside. Howell Cobb and R. M. T. Hunter have been arrested. Our

turn will come next, maybe. A Damocles sword hanging over a house does

not conduce to a pleasant life.

_June 12th._—Andy, made lord of all by the madman, Booth, says,

“Destruction only to the wealthy classes.” Better teach the negroes to

stand alone before you break up all they leaned on, O Yankees! After all,

the number who possess over $20,000 are very few.

Andy has shattered some fond hopes. He denounces Northern men who came

South to espouse our cause. They may not take the life-giving oath. My

husband will remain quietly at home. He has done nothing that he had not

a right to do, nor anything that he is ashamed of. He will not fly from

his country, nor hide anywhere in it. These are his words. He has a huge

volume of Macaulay, which seems to absorb him. Slily I slipped Silvio

Pellico in his way. He looked at the title and moved it aside. “Oh,” said

I, “I only wanted you to refresh your memory as to a prisoner’s life and

what a despotism can do to make its captives happy!”

Two weddings—in Camden, Ellen Douglas Ancrum to Mr. Lee, engineer and

architect, a clever man, which is the best investment now. In Columbia,

Sally Hampton and John Cheves Haskell, the bridegroom, a brave, one-armed

soldier.

A wedding to be. Lou McCord’s. And Mrs. McCord is going about

frantically, looking for eggs “to mix and make into wedding-cake,” and

finding none. She now drives the funniest little one-mule vehicle.

* * * * *

I have been ill since I last wrote in this journal. Serena’s letter came.

She says they have been visited by bush-whackers, the roughs that always

follow in the wake of an army. My sister Kate they forced back against

the wall. She had Katie, the baby, in her arms, and Miller, the brave

boy, clung to his mother, though he could do no more. They tried to pour

brandy down her throat. They knocked Mary down with the butt end of a

pistol, and Serena they struck with an open hand, leaving the mark on her

cheek for weeks.

Mr. Christopher Hampton says in New York people have been simply

intoxicated with the fumes of their own glory. Military prowess is a

new wrinkle of delight to them. They are mad with pride that, ten to

one, they could, after five years’ hard fighting, prevail over us,

handicapped, as we were, with a majority of aliens, _quasi_ foes, and

negro slaves whom they tried to seduce, shut up with us. They pay us the

kind of respectful fear the British meted out to Napoleon when they sent

him off with Sir Hudson Lowe to St. Helena, the lone rock by the sea, to

eat his heart out where he could not alarm them more.

Of course, the Yankees know and say they were too many for us, and yet

they would all the same prefer not to try us again. Would Wellington be

willing to take the chances of Waterloo once more with Grouchy, Blücher,

and all that left to haphazard? Wigfall said to old Cameron[135] in

1861, “Then you will a sutler be, and profit shall accrue.” Christopher

Hampton says that in some inscrutable way in the world North, everybody

“has contrived to amass fabulous wealth by this war.”

There are two classes of vociferous sufferers in this community: 1. Those

who say, “If people would only pay me what they owe me!” 2. Those who

say, “If people would only let me alone. I can not pay them. I could

stand it if I had anything with which to pay debts.”

Now we belong to both classes. Heavens! the sums people owe us and will

not, or can not, pay, would settle all our debts ten times over and leave

us in easy circumstances for life. But they will not pay. How can they?

We are shut in here, turned with our faces to a dead wall. No mails. A

letter is sometimes brought by a man on horseback, traveling through the

wilderness made by Sherman. All railroads have been destroyed and the

bridges are gone. We are cut off from the world, here to eat out our

hearts. Yet from my window I look out on many a gallant youth and maiden

fair. The street is crowded and it is a gay sight. Camden is thronged

with refugees from the low country, and here they disport themselves.

They call the walk in front of Bloomsbury “the Boulevard.”

H. Lang tells us that poor Sandhill Milly Trimlin is dead, and that as a

witch she had been denied Christian burial. Three times she was buried in

consecrated ground in different churchyards, and three times she was dug

up by a superstitious horde, who put her out of their holy ground. Where

her poor, old, ill-used bones are lying now I do not know. I hope her

soul is faring better than her body. She was a good, kind creature. Why

supposed to be a witch? That H. Lang could not elucidate.

Everybody in our walk of life gave Milly a helping hand. She was a

perfect specimen of the Sandhill “tackey” race, sometimes called

“country crackers.” Her skin was yellow and leathery, even the whites

of her eyes were bilious in color. She was stumpy, strong, and lean,

hard-featured, horny-fisted. Never were people so aided in every way as

these Sandhillers. Why do they remain Sandhillers from generation to

generation? Why should Milly never have bettered her condition?

My grandmother lent a helping hand to her grandmother. My mother did

her best for her mother, and I am sure the so-called witch could never

complain of me. As long as I can remember, gangs of these Sandhill women

traipsed in with baskets to be filled by charity, ready to carry away

anything they could get. All are made on the same pattern, more or less

alike. They were treated as friends and neighbors, not as beggars. They

were asked in to take seats by the fire, and there they sat for hours,

stony-eyed, silent, wearing out human endurance and politeness. But their

husbands and sons, whom we never saw, were citizens and voters! When

patience was at its last ebb, they would open their mouths and loudly

demand whatever they had come to seek.

One called Judy Bradly, a one-eyed virago, who played the fiddle at

all the Sandhill dances and fandangoes, made a deep impression on my

youthful mind. Her list of requests was always rather long, and once my

grandmother grew restive and actually hesitated. “Woman, do you mean to

let me starve?” she cried furiously. My grandmother then attempted a meek

lecture as to the duty of earning one’s bread. Judy squared her arms

akimbo and answered, “And pray, who made you a judge of the world? Lord,

Lord, if I had ’er knowed I had ter stand all this jaw, I wouldn’t a took

your ole things,” but she did take them and came afterward again and

again.

_June 27th._—An awful story from Sumter. An old gentleman, who thought

his son dead or in a Yankee prison, heard some one try the front door. It

was about midnight, and these are squally times. He called out, “What is

that?” There came no answer. After a while he heard some one trying to

open a window and he fired. The house was shaken by a fall. Then, after

a long time of dead silence, he went round the house to see if his shot

had done any harm, and found his only son bathed in his own blood on his

father’s door-step. The son was just back from a Yankee prison—one of his

companions said—and had been made deaf by cold and exposure. He did not

hear his father hail him. He had tried to get into the house in the same

old way he used to employ when a boy.

My sister-in-law in tears of rage and despair, her servants all gone to

“a big meeting at Mulberry,” though she had made every appeal against

their going. “Send them adrift,” some one said, “they do not obey you, or

serve you; they only live on you.” It would break her heart to part with

one of them. But that sort of thing will soon right itself. They will go

off _to better themselves_—we have only to cease paying wages—and that is

easy, for we have no money.

_July 4th._—Saturday I was in bed with one of my worst headaches.

Occasionally there would come a sob and I thought of my sister insulted

and my little sweet Williams. Another of my beautiful Columbia quartette

had rough experiences. A raider asked the plucky little girl, Lizzie

Hamilton, for a ring which she wore. “You shall not have it,” she said.

The man put a pistol to her head, saying, “Take it off, hand it to me,

or I will blow your brains out.” “Blow away,” said she. The man laughed

and put down his pistol, remarking, “You knew I would not hurt you.”

“Of course, I knew you dared not shoot me. Even Sherman would not stand

that.”

[Illustration: SARSFIELD, NEAR CAMDEN, S. C.

Built by General Chesnut after the War, and the Home of himself and Mrs.

Chesnut until they Died.

From a Recent Photograph.]

There was talk of the negroes where the Yankees had been—negroes who

flocked to them and showed them where silver and valuables had been

hid by the white people. Ladies’-maids dressed themselves in their

mistresses’ gowns before the owners’ faces and walked off. Now, before

this every one had told me how kind, faithful, and considerate the

negroes had proven. I am sure, after hearing these tales, the fidelity

of my own servants shines out brilliantly. I had taken their conduct too

much as a matter of course. In the afternoon I had some business on our

place, the Hermitage. John drove me down. Our people were all at home,

quiet, orderly, respectful, and at their usual work. In point of fact

things looked unchanged. There was nothing to show that any one of them

had even seen the Yankees, or knew that there was one in existence.

_July 26th._—I do not write often now, not for want of something to say,

but from a loathing of all I see and hear, and why dwell upon those

things?

Colonel Chesnut, poor old man, is worse—grows more restless. He seems

to be wild with “homesickness.” He wants to be at Mulberry. When

there he can not see the mighty giants of the forest, the huge, old,

wide-spreading oaks, but he says he feels that he is there so soon as he

hears the carriage rattling across the bridge at the Beaver Dam.

I am reading French with Johnny—anything to keep him quiet. We gave a

dinner to his company, the small remnant of them, at Mulberry house.

About twenty idle negroes, trained servants, came without leave or

license and assisted. So there was no expense. They gave their time and

labor for a good day’s feeding. I think they love to be at the old place.

Then I went up to nurse Kate Withers. That lovely girl, barely eighteen,

died of typhoid fever. Tanny wanted his sweet little sister to have

a dress for Mary Boykin’s wedding, where she was to be one of the

bridesmaids. So Tanny took his horses, rode one, and led the other thirty

miles in the broiling sun to Columbia, where he sold the led horse and

came back with a roll of Swiss muslin. As he entered the door, he saw

Kate lying there dying. She died praying that she might die. She was

weary of earth and wanted to be at peace. I saw her die and saw her put

in her coffin. No words of mine can tell how unhappy I am. Six young

soldiers, her friends, were her pall-bearers. As they marched out with

that burden sad were their faces.

Princess Bright Eyes writes: “Our soldier boys returned, want us to

continue our weekly dances.” Another maiden fair indites: “Here we have

a Yankee garrison. We are told the officers find this the dullest place

they were ever in. They want the ladies to get up some amusement for

them. They also want to get into society.”

From Isabella in Columbia: “General Hampton is home again. He looks

crushed. How can he be otherwise? His beautiful home is in ruins, and

ever present with him must be the memory of the death tragedy which

closed forever the eyes of his glorious boy, Preston! Now! there strikes

up a serenade to General Ames, the Yankee commander, by a military band,

of course.... Your last letters have been of the meagerest. What is the

matter?”

* * * * *

_August 2d._—Dr. Boykin and John Witherspoon were talking of a nation in

mourning, of blood poured out like rain on the battle-fields—for what?

“Never let me hear that the blood of the brave has been shed in vain! No;

it sends a cry down through all time.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] A reference to John Brown of Harper’s Ferry.

[2] This and other French names to be met with in this Diary are of

Huguenot origin.

[3] A reference to what was known as “the Bluffton movement” of 1844, in

South Carolina. It aimed at secession, but was voted down.

[4] Francis W. Pickens, Governor of South Carolina, 1860-62. He had been

elected to Congress in 1834 as a Nullifier, but had voted against the

“Bluffton movement.” From 1858 to 1860, he was Minister to Russia. He was

a wealthy planter and had fame as an orator.

[5] The Convention, which on December 20, 1860, passed the famous

Ordinance of Secession, and had first met in Columbia, the State capital.

[6] Robert Anderson, Major of the First Artillery, United States Army,

who, on November 20, 1860, was placed in command of the troops in

Charleston harbor. On the night of December 26th, fearing an attack, he

had moved his command to Fort Sumter. Anderson was a graduate of West

Point and a veteran of the Black Hawk, Florida, and Mexican Wars.

[7] A native of Georgia, Howell Cobb had long served in Congress, and in

1849 was elected Speaker. In 1851 he was elected Governor of Georgia, and

in 1857 became Secretary of the Treasury in Buchanan’s Administration.

In 1861 he was a delegate from Georgia to the Provisional Congress which

adopted the Constitution of the Confederacy, and presided over each of

its four sessions.

[8] Andrew Bary Moore, elected Governor of Alabama in 1859. In 1861,

before Alabama seceded, he directed the seizure of United States forts

and arsenals and was active afterward in the equipment of State troops.

[9] Robert Toombs, a native of Georgia, who early acquired fame as a

lawyer, served in the Creek War under General Scott, became known in 1842

as a “State Rights Whig,” being elected to Congress, where he was active

in the Compromise measures of 1850. He served in the United States Senate

from 1853 to 1861, where he was a pronounced advocate of the sovereignty

of States, the extension of slavery, and secession. He was a member of

the Confederate Congress at its first session and, by a single vote,

failed of election as President of the Confederacy. After the war, he was

conspicuous for his hostility to the Union.

[10] Robert Woodward Barnwell, of South Carolina, a graduate of Harvard,

twice a member of Congress and afterward United States Senator. In

1860, after the passage of the Ordinance of Secession, he was one of

the Commissioners who went to Washington to treat with the National

Government for its property within the State. He was a member of the

Convention at Montgomery and gave the casting vote which made Jefferson

Davis President of the Confederacy.

[11] Alexander H. Stephens, the eminent statesman of Georgia, who before

the war had been conspicuous in all the political movements of his time

and in 1861 became Vice-President of the Confederacy. After the war he

again became conspicuous in Congress and wrote a history entitled “The

War between the States.”

[12] Benjamin H. Hill, who had already been active in State and National

affairs when the Secession movement was carried through. He had been an

earnest advocate of the Union until in Georgia the resolution was passed

declaring that the State ought to secede. He then became a prominent

supporter of secession. He was a member of the Confederate Congress,

which met in Montgomery in 1861, and served in the Confederate Senate

until the end of the war. After the war, he was elected to Congress and

opposed the Reconstruction policy of that body. In 1877 he was elected

United States Senator from Georgia.

[13] Governor Herschel V. Johnson also declined, and doubtless for

similar reasons, to accept a challenge from Alexander H. Stephens, who,

though endowed with the courage of a gladiator, was very small and frail.

[14] It was at this Congress that Jefferson Davis, on February 9, 1861,

was elected President, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President of the

Confederacy. The Congress continued to meet in Montgomery until its

removal to Richmond, in July, 1861.

[15] Stephen R. Mallory was the son of a shipmaster of Connecticut, who

had settled in Key West in 1820. From 1851 to 1861 Mr. Mallory was United

States Senator from Florida, and after the formation of the Confederacy,

became its Secretary of the Navy.

[16] John Archibald Campbell, who had settled in Montgomery and was

appointed Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court by

President Pierce in 1853. Before he resigned, he exerted all his

influence to prevent Civil War and opposed secession, although he

believed that States had a right to secede.

[17] Mrs. Chesnut’s father was Stephen Decatur Miller, who was born in

South Carolina in 1787, and died in Mississippi in 1838. He was elected

to Congress in 1816, as an Anti-Calhoun Democrat, and from 1828 to 1830

was Governor of South Carolina. He favored Nullification, and in 1830 was

elected United States Senator from South Carolina, but resigned three

years afterward in consequence of ill health. In 1835 he removed to

Mississippi and engaged in cotton growing.

[18] John C. Calhoun had died in March, 1850.

[19] Joseph B. Kershaw, a native of Camden, S. C., who became famous in

connection with “The Kershaw Brigade” and its brilliant record at Bull

Run, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, Spottsylvania, and elsewhere throughout

the war.

[20] Colonel Chesnut, the author’s father-in-law, was born about 1760.

He was a prominent South Carolina planter and a public-spirited man.

The family had originally settled in Virginia, where the farm had been

overrun by the French and Indians at the time of Braddock’s campaign, the

head of the family being killed at Fort Duquesne. Colonel Chesnut, of

Mulberry, had been educated at Princeton, and his wife was a Philadelphia

woman. In the final chapter of this Diary, the author gives a charming

sketch of Colonel Chesnut.

[21] John Lawrence Manning was a son of Richard I. Manning, a former

Governor of South Carolina. He was himself elected Governor of that State

in 1852, was a delegate to the convention that nominated Buchanan, and

during the War of Secession served on the staff of General Beauregard. In

1865 he was chosen United States Senator from South Carolina, but was not

allowed to take his seat.

[22] Son of Langdon Cheves, an eminent lawyer of South Carolina, who

served in Congress from 1810 to 1814; he was elected Speaker of the House

of Representatives, and from 1819 to 1823 was President of the United

States Bank; he favored Secession, but died before it was accomplished—in

1857.

[23] William Henry Trescott, a native of Charleston, was Assistant

Secretary of State of the United States in 1860, but resigned after South

Carolina seceded. After the war he had a successful career as a lawyer

and diplomatist.

[24] James Louis Petigru before the war had reached great distinction

as a lawyer and stood almost alone in his State as an opponent of

the Nullification movement of 1830-1832. In 1860 he strongly opposed

disunion, although he was then an old man of 71. His reputation has

survived among lawyers because of the fine work he did in codifying the

laws of South Carolina.

[25] John Hugh Means was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1850,

and had long been an advocate of secession. He was a delegate to the

Convention of 1860 and affixed his name to the Ordinance of Secession. He

was killed at the second battle of Bull Run in August, 1862.

[26] James H. Adams was a graduate of Yale, who in 1832 strongly opposed

Nullification, and in 1855 was elected Governor of South Carolina.

[27] Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was born in New Orleans in 1818,

and graduated from West Point in the class of 1838. He served in the

war with Mexico; had been superintendent of the Military Academy at

West Point a few days only, when in February, 1861, he resigned his

commission in the Army of the United States and offered his services to

the Confederacy.

[28] Louis Trezevant Wigfall was a native of South Carolina, but removed

to Texas after being admitted to the bar, and from that State was elected

United States Senator, becoming an uncompromising defender of the South

on the slave question. After the war he lived in England, but in 1873

settled in Baltimore. He had a wide Southern reputation as a forcible and

impassioned speaker.

[29] The annual balls of the St. Cecilia Society in Charleston are still

the social events of the season. To become a member of the St. Cecilia

Society is a sort of presentation at court in the sense of giving social

recognition to one who was without the pale.

[30] Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was a brigadier-general in the

Revolution and a member of the Convention that framed the Constitution

of the United States. He was an ardent Federalist and twice declined

to enter a National Cabinet, but in 1796 accepted the office of

United States Minister to France. He was the Federalist candidate

for Vice-President in 1800 and for President in 1804 and 1808. Other

distinguished men in this family were Thomas, Charles, Henry Laurens, and

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the second.

[31] Caroline Hampton, a daughter of General Wade Hampton, of the

Revolution, was the wife of John S. Preston, an ardent advocate of

secession, who served on the staff of Beauregard at Bull Run and

subsequently reached the rank of brigadier-general.

[32] William Howard Russell, a native of Dublin, who served as a

correspondent of the London Times during the Crimean War, the Indian

Mutiny, the War of Secession and the Franco-German War. He has been

familiarly known as “Bull Run Russell.” In 1875 he was honorary Secretary

to the Prince of Wales during the Prince’s visit to India.

[33] The “Sally Baxter” of the recently published “Thackeray Letters to

an American Family.”

[34] William Gilmore Simms, the Southern novelist, was born in Charleston

in 1806. He was the author of a great many volumes dealing with Southern

life, and at one time they were widely read.

[35] Wade Hampton was a son of another Wade Hampton, who was an aide to

General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, and a grandson of still

another Wade Hampton, who was a general in the Revolution. He was not

in favor of secession, but when the war began he enlisted as a private

and then raised a command of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which as

“Hampton’s Legion” won distinction in the war. After the war, he was

elected Governor of South Carolina and was then elected to the United

States Senate.

[36] John Hemphill was a native of South Carolina, who had removed to

Texas, where he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State,

and in 1858 was elected United States Senator.

[37] Matthias Ward was a native of Georgia, but had removed to Texas in

1836. He was twice a delegate to National Democratic Conventions, and

in 1858 was appointed to fill a vacancy from Texas in the United States

Senate, holding that office until 1860.

[38] Mrs. Johnston was Lydia McLane, a daughter of Louis McLane, United

States Senator from Delaware from 1827 to 1829, and afterward Minister

to England. In 1831 he became Secretary of the Treasury and in 1833

Secretary of State. General Joseph E. Johnston was graduated from West

Point in 1829 and had served in the Black Hawk, Seminole, and Mexican

Wars. He resigned his commission in the United States Army on April 22,

1861.

[39] Mr. Hunter was a Virginian. He had long served in Congress, was

twice speaker of the House, and in 1844 was elected a United States

Senator, serving until 1861. He supported slavery and became active in

the secession movement. At the Charleston Convention in 1860, he received

the next highest vote to Stephen A. Douglas for President.

[40] Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth was a native of Saratoga County, New York.

In 1860 he organized a regiment of Zouaves and became its Colonel. He

accompanied Lincoln to Washington in 1861 and was soon sent with his

regiment to Alexandria, where, on seeing a Confederate flag floating from

a hotel, he personally rushed to the roof and tore it down. The owner of

the hotel, a man named Jackson, met him as he was descending and shot him

dead. Frank E. Brownell, one of Ellsworth’s men, then killed Jackson.

[41] William H. Emory had served in Charleston harbor during the

Nullification troubles of 1831-1836. In 1846 he went to California,

afterward served in the Mexican War, and later assisted in running the

boundary line between Mexico and the United States under the Gadsden

Treaty of 1853. In 1854 he was in Kansas and in 1858 in Utah. After

resigning his commission, as related by the author, he was reappointed a

Lieutenant-Colonel in the United States Army and took an active part in

the war on the side of the North.

[42] John Bankhead Magruder was a graduate of West Point, who had served

in the Mexican War, and afterward while stationed at Newport, R. I., had

become famous for his entertainments. When Virginia seceded, he resigned

his commission in the United States Army. After the war he settled in

Houston, Texas.

The battle of Big Bethel was fought on June 10, 1861. The Federals lost

in killed and wounded about 100, among them Theodore Winthrop, of New

York, author of Cecil Dreeme. The Confederate losses were very slight.

[43] The battle of the Cowpens in South Carolina was fought on January

17, 1781; the British, under Colonel Tarleton, being defeated by General

Morgan, with a loss to the British of 300 killed and wounded and 500

prisoners.

[44] Horace Binney, one of the foremost lawyers of Philadelphia, who

was closely associated with the literary, scientific, and philanthropic

interests of his time. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Chesnut, the

author’s mother-in-law.

[45] Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, a native of Georgia and of

Huguenot descent, who got his classical names from his father: his father

got them from an uncle who claimed the privilege of bestowing upon his

nephew the full name of his favorite hero. When the war began, Mr. Lamar

had lived for some years in Mississippi, where he had become successful

as a lawyer and had been elected to Congress. He entered the Confederate

Army as the Colonel of a Mississippi regiment. He served in Congress

after the war and was elected to the United States Senate in 1877. In

1885 he became Secretary of the Interior, and in 1888, a justice of the

United States Supreme Court.

[46] Bradley Tyler Johnson, a native of Maryland, and graduate of

Princeton, who had studied law at Harvard. At the beginning of the war he

organized a company at his own expense in defense of the South. He was

the author of a Life of General Joseph E. Johnston.

[47] Faustin Elie Soulouque, a negro slave of Hayti, who, having been

freed, took part in the insurrection against the French in 1803, and rose

by successive steps until in August, 1849, by the unanimous action of the

parliament, he was proclaimed emperor.

[48] At Camden in August, 1780, was fought a battle between General

Gates and Lord Cornwallis, in which Gates was defeated. In April of the

following year near Camden, Lord Rawdon defeated General Greene.

[49] Augustus Baldwin Longstreet had great distinction in the South as a

lawyer, clergyman, teacher, journalist, and author, and was successively

president of five different colleges. His Georgia Scenes, a series of

humorous papers, enjoyed great popularity for many years.

[50] Rev. Robert Barnwell, nephew of Hon. Robert Barnwell, established in

Richmond a hospital for South Carolinians.

[51] The first battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, fought on July 21, 1861,

the Confederates being commanded by General Beauregard, and the Federals

by General McDowell. Bull Run is a small stream tributary to the Potomac.

[52] Edmund Kirby Smith, a native of Florida, who had graduated from West

Point, served in the Mexican War, and been Professor of Mathematics at

West Point. He resigned his commission in the United States Army after

the secession of Florida.

[53] Henry Wilson, son of a farm laborer and self-educated, who rose

to much prominence in the Anti-Slavery contests before the war. He was

elected United States Senator from Massachusetts in 1855, holding the

office until 1873, when he resigned, having been elected Vice-President

of the United States on the ticket with Ulysses S. Grant.

[54] James Harlan, United States Senator from Iowa from 1855 to 1865. In

1865 he was appointed Secretary of the Interior.

[55] Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, a grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte’s

brother Jerome and of Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. He was a graduate

of West Point, but had entered the French Army, where he saw service in

the Crimea, Algiers, and Italy, taking part in the battle of Balaklava,

the siege of Sebastopol, and the battle of Solferino. He died in

Massachusetts in 1893.

[56] Mrs. Davis was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and educated in

Philadelphia. She was married to Mr. Davis in 1845. In recent years her

home has been in New York City, where she still resides (Dec. 1904).

[57] Samuel Barron was a native of Virginia, who had risen to be a

captain in the United States Navy. At the time of Secession he received a

commission as Commodore in the Confederate Navy.

[58] The reference is to John Bright, whose advocacy of the cause of the

Union in the British Parliament attracted a great deal of attention at

the time.

[59] James Murray Mason was a grandson of George Mason, and had been

elected United States Senator from Virginia in 1847. In 1851 he drafted

the Fugitive Slave Law. His mission to England in 1861 was shared by

John Slidell. On November 8, 1861, while on board the British steamer

Trent, in the Bahamas, they were captured by an American named Wilkes,

and imprisoned in Boston until January 2, 1862. A famous diplomatic

difficulty arose with England over this affair. John Slidell was a native

of New York, who had settled in Louisiana and became a Member of Congress

from that State in 1843. In 1853 he was elected to the United States

Senate.

[60] The battle of Rich Mountain, in Western Virginia, was fought July

11, 1861, and General Garnett, Commander of the Confederate forces,

pursued by General McClellan, was killed at Carrick’s Ford, July 13th,

while trying to rally his rear-guard.

[61] William Lowndes Yancey was a native of Virginia, who settled in

Alabama, and in 1844 was elected to Congress, where he became a leader

among the supporters of slavery and an advocate of secession. He was

famous in his day as an effective public speaker.

[62] By reason of illness, preoccupation in other affairs, and various

deterrent causes besides, Mrs. Chesnut allowed a considerable period to

elapse before making another entry in her diary.

[63] Fort Donelson stood on the Cumberland River about 60 miles northwest

of Nashville. The Confederate garrison numbered about 18,000 men. General

Grant invested the Fort on February 13, 1862, and General Buckner, who

commanded it, surrendered on February 16th. The Federal force at the time

of the surrender numbered 27,000 men; their loss in killed and wounded

being 2,660 men and the Confederate loss about 2,000.

[64] General Burnside captured the Confederate garrison at Roanoke Island

on February 8, 1862.

[65] Nashville was evacuated by the Confederates under Albert Sidney

Johnston, in February, 1862.

[66] Richard, Lord Lyons, British minister to the United States from 1858

to 1865.

[67] Lord Russell was Foreign Secretary under the Palmerston

administration of 1859 to 1865.

[68] Mary McDuffie was the second wife of Wade Hampton.

[69] The Merrimac was formerly a 40-gun screw frigate of the United

States Navy. In April, 1861, when the Norfolk Navy-yard was abandoned

by the United States she was sunk. Her hull was afterward raised by the

Confederates and she was reconstructed on new plans, and renamed the

Virginia. On March 2, 1862, she destroyed the Congress, a sailing-ship of

50 guns, and the Cumberland, a sailing-ship of 30 guns, at Newport News.

On March 7th she attacked the Minnesota, but was met by the Monitor and

defeated in a memorable engagement. Many features of modern battle-ships

have been derived from the Merrimac and Monitor.

[70] On March 7 and 8, 1862, occurred the battle of Pea Ridge in Western

Arkansas, where the Confederates were defeated, and on March 8th and 9th,

occurred the conflict in Hampton Roads between the warships Merrimac,

Cumberland, Congress, and Monitor.

[71] Louisa Susanna McCord, whose husband was David J. McCord, a lawyer

of Columbia, who died in 1855. She was educated in Philadelphia, and

was the author of several books of verse, including Caius Gracchus, a

tragedy; she was also a brilliant pamphleteer.

[72] John D. Floyd, who had been Governor of Virginia from 1850 to

1853, became Secretary of War in 1857. He was first in command at Fort

Donelson. Gideon J. Pillow had been a Major-General of volunteers in the

Mexican War and was second in command at Fort Donelson. He and Floyd

escaped from the Fort when it was invested by Grant, leaving General

Buckner to make the surrender.

[73] Joseph Le Conte, who afterward arose to much distinction as a

geologist and writer of text-books on geology. He died in 1901, while he

was connected with the University of California. His work at Columbia was

to manufacture, on a large scale, medicines for the Confederate Army,

his laboratory being the main source of supply. In Professor Le Conte’s

autobiography published in 1903, are several chapters devoted to his life

in the South.

[74] New Madrid, Missouri, had been under siege since March 3, 1862.

[75] The Emancipation Proclamation was not actually issued until

September 22, 1862, when it was a notice to the Confederates to return

to the Union, emancipation being proclaimed as a result of their failure

to do so. The real proclamation, freeing the slaves, was delayed until

January 1, 1863, when it was put forth as a war measure. Mrs. Chesnut’s

reference is doubtless to President Lincoln’s Message to Congress, March

6, 1862, in which he made recommendations regarding the abolition of

slavery.

[76] The battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in Tennessee,

eighty-eight miles east of Memphis, had been fought on April 6 and 7,

1862. The Federals were commanded by General Grant who, on the second

day, was reenforced by General Buell. The Confederates were commanded by

Albert Sidney Johnston on the first day, when Johnston was killed, and on

the second day by General Beauregard.

[77] New Orleans had been seized by the Confederates at the outbreak

of the war. Steps to capture it were soon taken by the Federals and on

April 18, 1862, the mortar flotilla, under Farragut, opened fire on

its protecting forts. Making little impression on them, Farragut ran

boldly past the forts and destroyed the Confederate fleet, comprising 13

gunboats and two ironclads. On April 27th he took formal possession of

the city.

[78] The Siege of Yorktown was begun on April 5, 1862, the place being

evacuated by the Confederates on May 4th.

[79] The battle of Williamsburg was fought on May 5, 1862, by a part of

McClellan’s army, under General Hooker and others, the Confederates being

commanded by General Johnston.

[80] General Benjamin F. Butler took command of New Orleans on May 2,

1862. The author’s reference is to his famous “Order No. 28,” which

reads: “As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been

subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies)

of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and

courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall

by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or

soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be

treated as a woman of the town plying her vocation.” This and other acts

of Butler in New Orleans led Jefferson Davis to issue a proclamation,

declaring Butler to be a felon and an outlaw, and if captured that he

should be instantly hanged. In December Butler was superseded at New

Orleans by General Banks.

[81] The Battle of Fair Oaks or Seven Pines, took place a few miles east

of Richmond, on May 31 and June 1, 1862, the Federals being commanded by

McClellan and the Confederates by General Joseph E. Johnston.

[82] Fort Pillow was on the Mississippi above Memphis. It had been

erected by the Confederates, but was occupied by the Federals on June 5,

1862, the Confederates having evacuated and partially destroyed it the

day before. On June 6, 1862, the Federal fleet defeated the Confederates

near Memphis. The city soon afterward was occupied by the Federals.

[83] Corinth was besieged by the Federals, under General Halleck, in May,

1862, and was evacuated by the Confederates under Beauregard on May 29th.

[84] She lost her life in the Windsor Hotel fire in New York.

[85] This must be a reference to the Battle of Seven Pines or to the

Campaign of the Chickahominy, up to and inclusive of that battle.

[86] The battle of Secessionville occurred on James Island, in the harbor

of Charleston, June 16, 1862.

[87] Malvern Hill, the last of the Seven Days’ Battles, was fought near

Richmond on the James River, July 1, 1862. The Federals were commanded by

McClellan and the Confederates by Lee.

[88] The first battle of the Chickahominy, fought on June 27, 1862. It

is better known as the battle of Gaines’s Mill, or Cold Harbor. It was

participated in by a part of Lee’s army and a part of McClellan’s, and

its scene was about eight miles from Richmond.

[89] Henry M. Rice, United States Senator from Minnesota, who had

emigrated to that State from Vermont in 1835.

[90] Of ameliorations in modern warfare, Dr. John T. Darby said in

addressing the South Carolina Medical Association, Charleston, in 1873:

“On the route from the army to the general hospital, wounds are dressed

and soldiers refreshed at wayside homes; and here be it said with justice

and pride that the credit of originating this system is due to the women

of South Carolina. In a small room in the capital of this State, the

first Wayside Home was founded; and during the war, some seventy-five

thousand soldiers were relieved by having their wounds dressed, their

ailments attended, and very frequently by being clothed through the

patriotic services and good offices of a few untiring ladies in Columbia.

From this little nucleus, spread that grand system of wayside hospitals

which was established during our own and the late European wars.”

[91] Flat Rock was the summer resort of many cultured families from the

low countries of the South before the war. Many attractive houses had

been built there. It lies in the region which has since become famous as

the Asheville region, and in which stands Biltmore.

[92] The battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, one of the bloodiest of the

war, was fought in western Maryland, a few miles north of Harper’s Ferry,

on September 16 and 17, 1862, the Federals being under McClellan, and the

Confederates under Lee.

[93] The battle of Chancellorsville, where the losses on each side were

more than ten thousand men, was fought about fifty miles northwest of

Richmond on May 2, 3, and 4, 1863. The Confederates were under Lee and

the Federals under Hooker. In this battle Stonewall Jackson was killed.

[94] During the summer of 1862, after the battle of Malvern Hill and

before Sharpsburg, or Antietam, the following important battles had taken

place: Harrison’s Landing, July 3d and 4th; Harrison’s Landing again,

July 31st; Cedar Mountain, August 9th; Bull Run (second battle), August

29th and 30th, and South Mountain, September 14th.

[95] Clement Baird Vallandigham was an Ohio Democrat who represented the

extreme wing of Northern sympathizers with the South. He was arrested by

United States troops in May, 1863, court-martialed and banished to the

Confederacy. Not being well received in the South, he went to Canada, but

after the war returned to Ohio.

[96] Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. Since the close of 1862, it

had again and again been assaulted by Grant and Sherman. It was commanded

by Johnston and Pemberton, Pemberton being in command at the time of the

surrender. John C. Pemberton was a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of

West Point, and had served in the Mexican War.

[97] Hood was a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point.

[98] Drury’s Bluff lies eight miles south of Richmond on the James River.

Here, on May 16, 1864, the Confederates under Beauregard repulsed the

Federals under Butler.

[99] The battle of Brandy Station, Va., occurred June 9, 1863.

[100] George S. Stoneman, a graduate of West Point, was now a

Major-General, and Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac. His

raid toward Richmond in 1863 was a memorable incident of the war. After

the war, he became Governor of California.

[101] Miss Constance Cary afterward married Burton Harrison and settled

in New York where she became prominent socially and achieved reputation

as a novelist.

[102] The battle of Chickamauga was fought on the river of the same

name, near Chattanooga, September 19 and 20, 1863. The Confederates were

commanded by Bragg and the Federals by Rosecrans. It was one of the

bloodiest battles of the war; the loss on each side, including killed,

wounded, and prisoners, was over 15,000.

[103] John C. Breckinridge had been Vice-President of the United States

under Buchanan and was the candidate of the Southern Democrats for

President in 1860. He joined the Confederate Army in 1861.

[104] Braxton Bragg was a native of North Carolina and had won

distinction in the war with Mexico.

[105] John R. Thompson was a native of Richmond and in 1847 became editor

of the Southern Literary Messenger. Under his direction, that periodical

acquired commanding influence. Mr. Thompson’s health failed afterward.

During the war he spent a part of his time in Richmond and a part in

Europe. He afterward settled in New York and became literary editor of

the Evening Post.

[106] The siege of Chattanooga, which had been begun on September

21st, closed late in November, 1863, the final engagements beginning

on November 23d, and ending on November 25th. Lookout Mountain and

Missionary Ridge were the closing incidents of the siege. Grant, Sherman,

and Hooker were conspicuous on the Federal side and Bragg and Longstreet

on the Confederate.

[107] Following the battle of Gettysburg on July 1st, 2d, and 3d, of this

year, there had occurred in Virginia between Lee and Meade engagements

at Bristoe’s Station, Kelly’s Ford, and Rappahannock Station, the latter

engagement taking place on November 7th. The author doubtless refers here

to the positions of Lee and Meade at Mine Run, December 1st. December 2d

Meade abandoned his, because (as he is reported to have said) it would

have cost him 30,000 men to carry Lee’s breastworks, and he shrank from

ordering such slaughter.

[108] Burton Harrison, then secretary to Jefferson Davis, who married

Miss Constance Cary and became well known as a New York lawyer. He died

in Washington in 1904.

[109] Simon B. Buckner was a graduate of West Point and had served in

the Mexican War. In 1887 he was elected Governor of Kentucky and, at the

funeral of General Grant, acted as one of the pall-bearers.

[110] John H. Morgan, a native of Alabama, entered the Confederate

army in 1861 as a Captain and in 1862 was made a Major-General. He was

captured by the Federals in 1863 and confined in an Ohio penitentiary,

but he escaped and once more joined the Confederate army. In September,

1864, he was killed in battle near Greenville, Tenn.

[111] Judah P. Benjamin, was born, of Jewish parentage, at St. Croix

in the West Indies, and was elected in 1852 to represent Louisiana

in the United States Senate, where he served until 1861. In the

Confederate administration he served successively from 1861 to 1865 as

Attorney-General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State. At the close

of the war he went to England where he achieved remarkable success at the

bar.

[112] The New York Hotel, covering a block front on Broadway at Waverley

Place, was a favorite stopping place for Southerners for many years

before the war and after it. In comparatively recent times it was torn

down and supplanted by a business block.

[113] General Polk, commanding about 24,000 men scattered throughout

Mississippi and Alabama, found it impossible to check the advance of

Sherman at the head of some 40,000, and moved from Meridian south to

protect Mobile. February 16, 1864, Sherman took possession of Meridian.

[114] Colonel Ulric Dahlgren was a son of the noted Admiral, John

H. Dahlgren, who, in July, 1863, had been placed in command of the

South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and conducted the naval operations

against Charleston, between July 10 and September 7, 1863. Colonel

Dahlgren distinguished himself at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and

Gettysburg. The raid in which he lost his life on March 4, 1864, was

planned by himself and General Kilpatrick.

[115] During the month of May, 1864, important battles had been fought in

Virginia, including that of the Wilderness on May 6th-7th, and the series

later in that month around Spottsylvania Court House.

[116] The battle of Stony Creek in Virginia was fought on June 28-29,

1864.

[117] General Johnston in 1863 had been appointed to command the Army of

the Tennessee, with headquarters at Dalton, Georgia. He was to oppose

the advance of Sherman’s army toward Atlanta. In May, 1864, he fought

unsuccessful battles at Resaca and elsewhere, and in July was compelled

to retreat across the Chattahoochee River. Fault was found with him

because of his continual retreating. There were tremendous odds against

him. On July 17th he was superseded by Hood.

[118] Raphael Semmes was a native of Maryland and had served in the

Mexican War. The Alabama was built for the Confederate States at

Birkenhead, England, and with an English crew and English equipment was

commanded by Semmes. In 1863 and 1864 the Alabama destroyed much Federal

shipping. On June 19, 1864, she was sunk by the Federal ship Kearsarge

in a battle off Cherbourg. Claims against England for damages were made

by the United States, and as a result the Geneva Arbitration Court was

created. Claims amounting to $15,500,000 were finally awarded. This case

has much importance in the history of international law.

[119] The battle of Mobile Bay, won under Farragut, was fought on August

5, 1864.

[120] On July 22d, Hood made a sortie from Atlanta, but after a battle

was obliged to return.

[121] General Forrest made his raid on Memphis in August of this year.

[122] General McPherson was killed before Atlanta during the sortie made

by Hood on July 22d. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of West Point,

and under Sherman commanded the Army of the Tennessee.

[123] After the battle, Atlanta was taken possession of and partly burned

by the Federals.

[124] During the summer and autumn of 1864 several important battles

had occurred. In addition to the engagements by Sherman’s army farther

south, there had occurred in Virginia the battle of Cold Harbor in the

early part of June; those before Petersburg in the latter part of June

and during July and August; the battle of Winchester on September 19th,

during Sheridan’s Shenandoah campaign, and the battle of Cedar Creek on

October 19th.

[125] After the war, Dr. Darby became professor of Surgery in the

University of the City of New York; he had served as Medical Director

in the Army of the Confederate States and as Professor of Anatomy and

Surgery in the University of South Carolina; had also served with

distinction in European wars.

[126] General Sherman had started from Chattanooga for his march across

Georgia on May 6, 1864. He had won the battles of Dalton, Resaca, and New

Hope Church in May, the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in June, the battles

of Peach Tree Creek and Atlanta in July, and had formally occupied

Atlanta on September 2d. On November 16th, he started on his march from

Atlanta to the sea and entered Savannah on December 23d. Early in 1865

he moved his army northward through the Carolinas, and on April 26th

received the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston.

[127] Reference is here made to the battle between Hood and Thomas at

Nashville, the result of which was the breaking up of Hood’s army as a

fighting force.

[128] Under last date entry, January 17th, the author chronicles events

of later occurrence; it was her not infrequent custom to jot down

happenings in dateless lines or paragraphs. Mr. Blair visited President

Davis January 12th; Stephens, Hunter and Campbell were appointed Peace

Commissioners, January 28th.

[129] Battles at Hatchen’s Run, in Virginia, had been fought on February

5, 6, and 7, 1865.

[130] The reference appears to be to General Edward E. Potter, a native

of New York City, who died in 1889. General Potter entered the Federal

service early in the war. He recruited a regiment of North Carolina

troops and engaged in operations in North and South Carolina and Eastern

Tennessee.

[131] John Taylor was graduated from Princeton in 1790 and became a

planter in South Carolina. He served in Congress from 1806 to 1810, and

in the latter year was chosen to fill a vacancy in the United States

Senate, caused by the resignation of Thomas Sumter. In 1826 he was chosen

Governor of South Carolina. He died in 1832.

[132] Fort Duquesne stood at the junction of the Monongahela and

Alleghany Rivers. Captain Trent, acting for the Ohio Company, with

some Virginia militiamen, began to build this fort in February, 1754.

On April 17th of the same year, 700 Canadians and French forced him to

abandon the work. The French then completed the fortress and named it

Fort Duquesne. The unfortunate expedition of General Braddock, in the

summer of 1755, was an attempt to retake the fort, Braddock’s defeat

occurring eight miles east of it. In 1758 General Forbes marched westward

from Philadelphia and secured possession of the place, after the French,

alarmed at his approach, had burned it. Forbes gave it the name of

Pittsburg.

[133] Elizabeth K. Adger, wife of the Rev. John B. Adger, D. D., of

Charleston, a distinguished Presbyterian divine, at one time a missionary

to Smyrna where he translated the Bible into the Armenian tongue. He was

afterward and before the war a professor in the Theological Seminary at

Columbia. His wife was a woman of unusual judgment and intelligence,

sharing her husband’s many hardships and notable experiences in the East.

[134] Mr. Davis, while encamped near Irwinsville, Ga., had been captured

on May 10th by a body of Federal cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel

Pritchard. He was taken to Fortress Monroe and confined there for two

years, his release being effected on May 13, 1867, when he was admitted

to bail in the sum of $100,000, the first name on his bail-bond being

that of Horace Greeley.

[135] Simon Cameron became Secretary of War in Lincoln’s Administration,

on March 4, 1861. On January 11, 1862, he resigned and was made Minister

to Russia.

INDEX

Adams, James H., 26.

Adger, Mrs. John B., 396.

Aiken, Gov. William, his style of living, 253.

Aiken, Miss, her wedding, 240-241.

Alabama, the, surrender of, 314.

Alabama Convention, the, 15.

Alexandria, Va., Ellsworth killed at, 58.

Allan, Mrs. Scotch, 258.

Allston, Ben, his duel, 66;

a call from, 73.

Allston, Col., 234.

Allston, Washington, 46.

Anderson, Gen. Richard, 49, 225.