shown, and we are told that to apply for it would render H. very likely
to be conscripted. I begged him not to try; and as we hear that active
hostilities have ceased at Vicksburg, he left me this morning to return
to his uncle's and see what the prospects are there. I shall be in
misery about conscription till he returns.
_Sunday, Sept. 7._ (_Vicksburg, Washington Hotel._)--H. did not return
for three weeks. An epidemic disease broke out in his uncle's family and
two children died. He stayed to assist them in their trouble. Tuesday
evening he returned for me, and we reached Vicksburg yesterday. It was
my first sight of the "Gibraltar of the South." Looking at it from a
slight elevation suggests the idea that the fragments left from
world-building had tumbled into a confused mass of hills, hollows,
hillocks, banks, ditches, and ravines, and that the houses had rained
down afterward. Over all there was dust impossible to conceive. The
bombardment has done little injury. People have returned and resumed
business. A gentleman asked H. if he knew of a nice girl for sale. I
asked if he did not think it impolitic to buy slaves now.
"Oh, not young ones. Old ones might run off when the enemy's lines
approach ours, but with young ones there is no danger."
We had not been many hours in town before a position was offered to H.
which seemed providential. The chief of a certain department was in ill
health and wanted a deputy. It secures him from conscription, requires
no oath, and pays a good salary. A mountain seemed lifted off my heart.
_Thursday, Sept. 18._ (_Thanksgiving Day._)--We stayed three days at the
Washington Hotel; then a friend of H.'s called and told him to come to
his house till he could find a home. Boarding-houses have all been
broken up, and the army has occupied the few houses that were for rent.
To-day H. secured a vacant room for two weeks in the only
boarding-house.
_Oak Haven, Oct. 3._--To get a house in V. proved impossible, so we
agreed to part for a time till H. could find one. A friend recommended
this quiet farm, six miles from ---- [a station on the Jackson Railroad].
On last Saturday H. came with me as far as Jackson and put me on the
other train for the station.
On my way hither a lady, whom I judged to be a Confederate
"blockade-runner," told me of the tricks resorted to to get things out
of New Orleans, including this: A very large doll was emptied of its
bran, filled with quinine, and elaborately dressed. When the owner's
trunk was opened, she declared with tears that the doll was for a poor
crippled girl, and it was passed.
This farm of Mr. W.'s[2] is kept with about forty negroes. Mr. W.,
nearly sixty, is the only white man on it. He seems to have been wiser
in the beginning than most others, and curtailed his cotton to make room
for rye, rice, and corn. There is a large vegetable-garden and orchard;
he has bought plenty of stock for beef and mutton, and laid in a large
supply of sugar. He must also have plenty of ammunition, for a man is
kept hunting and supplies the table with delicious wild turkeys and
other game. There is abundance of milk and butter, hives for honey, and
no end of pigs. Chickens seem to be kept like game in parks, for I never
see any, but the hunter shoots them, and eggs are plentiful. We have
chicken for breakfast, dinner, and supper, fried, stewed, broiled, and
in soup, and there is a family of ten. Luckily I never tire of it. They
make starch out of corn-meal by washing the meal repeatedly, pouring off
the water, and drying the sediment. Truly the uses of corn in the
Confederacy are varied. It makes coffee, beer, whisky, starch, cake,
bread. The only privations here are the lack of coffee, tea, salt,
matches, and good candles. Mr. W. is now having the dirt floor of his
smoke-house dug up and boiling from it the salt that has dripped into it
for years. To-day Mrs. W. made tea out of dried blackberry leaves, but
no one liked it. The beds, made out of equal parts of cotton and
corn-shucks, are the most elastic I ever slept in. The servants are
dressed in gray homespun. Hester, the chambermaid, has a gray gown so
pretty that I covet one like it. Mrs. W. is now arranging dyes for the
thread to be woven into dresses for herself and the girls. Sometimes her
hands are a curiosity.
[Footnote 2: On this plantation, and in this domestic circle, I myself
afterward sojourned, and from them enlisted in the army. The initials
are fictitious, but the description is perfect.--G.W.C.]
The school at the nearest town is broken up, and Mrs. W. says the
children are growing up heathens. Mr. W. has offered me a liberal price
to give the children lessons in English and French, and I have accepted
transiently.
_Oct. 28._--It is a month to-day since I came here. I only wish H. could
share these benefits--the nourishing food, the pure aromatic air, the
sound sleep away from the fevered life of Vicksburg. He sends me all the
papers he can get hold of, and we both watch carefully the movements
reported lest an army should get between us. The days are full of useful
work, and in the lovely afternoons I take long walks with a big dog for
company. The girls do not care for walking. In the evening Mr. W. begs
me to read aloud all the war news. He is fond of the "Memphis Appeal,"
which has moved from town to town so much that they call it the "Moving
Appeal." I sit in a low chair by the fire, as we have no other light to
read by. Sometimes traveling soldiers stop here, but that is rare.
_Oct. 31._--Mr. W. said last night the farmers felt uneasy about the
"Emancipation Proclamation" to take effect in December. The slaves have
found it out, though it had been carefully kept from them.
"Do yours know it?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. Finding it to be known elsewhere, I told it to mine with fair
warning what to expect if they tried to run away. The hounds are not far
off."
The need of clothing for their armies is worrying them too. I never saw
Mrs. W. so excited as on last evening. She said the provost-marshal at
the next town had ordered the women to knit so many pairs of socks.
"Just let him try to enforce it and they will cowhide him. He'll get
none from me. I'll take care of my friends without an order from him."
"Well," said Mr. W., "if the South is defeated and the slaves set free,
the Southern people will all become atheists; for the Bible justifies
slavery and says it shall be perpetual."
"You mean, if the Lord does not agree with you, you'll repudiate him."
"Well, we'll feel it's no use to believe in anything."
At night the large sitting-room makes a striking picture. Mr. W., spare,
erect, gray-headed, patriarchal, sits in his big chair by the odorous
fire of pine logs and knots roaring up the vast fireplace. His driver
brings to him the report of the day's picking and a basket of snowy
cotton for the spinning. The hunter brings in the game. I sit on the
other side to read. The great spinning-wheels stand at the other end of
the room, and Mrs. W. and her black satellites, the elderly women with
their heads in bright bandanas, are hard at work. Slender and
auburn-haired, she steps back and forth out of shadow into shine
following the thread with graceful movements. Some card the cotton, some
reel it into hanks. Over all the firelight glances, now touching the
golden curls of little John toddling about, now the brown heads of the
girls stooping over their books, now the shadowy figure of little Jule,
the girl whose duty it is to supply the fire with rich pine to keep up
the vivid light. If they would only let the child sit down! But that is
not allowed, and she gets sleepy and stumbles and knocks her head
against the wall and then straightens up again. When that happens often
it drives me off. Sometimes while I read the bright room fades and a
vision rises of figures clad in gray and blue lying pale and stiff on
the blood-sprinkled ground.
_Nov. 15._--Yesterday a letter was handed me from H. Grant's army was
moving, he wrote, steadily down the Mississippi Central, and might cut
the road at Jackson. He has a house and will meet me in Jackson
to-morrow.
_Nov. 20._ (_Vicksburg._)--A fair morning for my journey back to
Vicksburg. On the train was the gentleman who in New Orleans had told us
we should have all the butter we wanted from Texas. On the cars, as
elsewhere, the question of food alternated with news of the war.
When we ran into the Jackson station, H. was on the platform, and I
gladly learned that we could go right on. A runaway negro, an old man,
ashy-colored from fright and exhaustion, with his hands chained, was
being dragged along by a common-looking man. Just as we started out of
Jackson the conductor led in a young woman sobbing in a heartbroken
manner. Her grief seemed so overpowering, and she was so young and
helpless, that every one was interested. Her husband went into the army
in the opening of the war, just after their marriage, and she had never
heard from him since. After months of weary searching she learned he had
been heard of at Jackson, and came full of hope, but found no clue. The
sudden breaking down of her hope was terrible. The conductor placed her
in care of a gentleman going her way and left her sobbing. At the next
station the conductor came to ask her about her baggage. She raised her
head to try and answer. "Don't cry so; you'll find him yet." She gave a
start, jumped from her seat with arms flung out and eyes staring. "There
he is now!" she cried. Her husband stood before her.
The gentleman beside her yielded his seat, and as hand grasped hand a
hysterical gurgle gave place to a look like Heaven's peace. The low
murmur of their talk began and when I looked around at the next station
they had bought pies and were eating them together like happy children.
Midway between Jackson and Vicksburg we reached the station near where
Annie's parents were staying. I looked out, and there stood Annie with a
little sister on each side of her, brightly smiling at us. Max had
written to H., but we had not seen them since our parting. There was
only time for a word and the train flashed away.
XII
VICKSBURG
We reached Vicksburg that night and went to H.'s room. Next morning the
cook he had engaged arrived, and we moved into this house. Martha's
ignorance keeps me busy, and H. is kept close at his office.
_January 7, 1863._--I have had little to record here recently, for we
have lived to ourselves, not visiting or visited. Every one H. knows is
absent, and I know no one but the family we stayed with at first, and
they are now absent. H. tells me of the added triumph since the repulse
of Sherman in December, and the one paper published here shouts victory
as much as its gradually diminishing size will allow. Paper is a serious
want. There is a great demand for envelops in the office where H. is. He
found and bought a lot of thick and smooth colored paper, cut a tin
pattern, and we have whiled away some long evenings cutting envelops and
making them up. I have put away a package of the best to look at when we
are old. The books I brought from Arkansas have proved a treasure, but
we can get no more. I went to the only book-store open; there were none
but Mrs. Stowe's "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." The clerk said I
could have that cheap, because he couldn't sell her books, so I got it
and am reading it now. The monotony has only been broken by letters from
friends here and there in the Confederacy. One of these letters tells of
a Federal raid to their place, and says: "But the worst thing was, they
would take every toothbrush in the house, because we can't buy any more;
and one cavalryman put my sister's new bonnet on his horse, and said,
'Get up, Jack,' and her bonnet was gone."
_February 25._--A long gap in my journal, because H. has been ill unto
death with typhoid fever, and I nearly broke down from loss of sleep,
there being no one to relieve me. I never understood before how terrible
it was to be alone at night with a patient in delirium, and no one
within call. To wake Martha was simply impossible. I got the best doctor
here, but when convalescence began the question of food was a trial. I
got with great difficulty two chickens. The doctor made the drug-store
sell two of their six bottles of port; he said his patient's life
depended on it. An egg is a rare and precious thing. Meanwhile the
Federal fleet has been gathering, has anchored at the bend, and shells
are thrown in at intervals.
_March 20._--The slow shelling of Vicksburg goes on all the time, and we
have grown indifferent. It does not at present interrupt or interfere
with daily avocations, but I suspect they are only getting the range of
different points; and when they have them all complete, showers of shot
will rain on us all at once. Non-combatants have been ordered to leave
or prepare accordingly. Those who are to stay are having caves built.
Cave-digging has become a regular business; prices range from twenty to
fifty dollars, according to size of cave. Two diggers worked at ours a
week and charged thirty dollars. It is well made in the hill that slopes
just in the rear of the house, and well propped with thick posts, as
they all are. It has a shelf also, for holding a light or water. When we
went in this evening and sat down, the earthy, suffocating feeling, as
of a living tomb, was dreadful to me. I fear I shall risk death outside
rather than melt in that dark furnace. The hills are so honeycombed with
caves that the streets look like avenues in a cemetery. The hill called
the Sky-parlor has become quite a fashionable resort for the few
upper-circle families left here. Some officers are quartered there, and
there is a band and a field-glass. Last evening we also climbed the hill
to watch the shelling, but found the view not so good as on a quiet hill
nearer home. Soon a lady began to talk to one of the officers: "It is
such folly for them to waste their ammunition like that. How can they
ever take a town that has such advantages for defense and protection as
this? We'll just burrow into these hills and let them batter away as
hard as they please."
"You are right, madam; and besides, when our women are so willing to
brave death and endure discomfort, how can we ever be conquered?"
Soon she looked over with significant glances to where we stood, and
began to talk at H.
"The only drawback," she said, "are the contemptible men who are staying
at home in comfort, when they ought to be in the army if they had a
spark of honor."
I cannot repeat all, but it was the usual tirade. It is strange I have
met no one yet who seems to comprehend an honest difference of opinion,
and stranger yet that the ordinary rules of good breeding are now so
entirely ignored. As the spring comes one has the craving for fresh,
green food that a monotonous diet produces. There was a bed of radishes
and onions in the garden that were a real blessing. An onion salad,
dressed only with salt, vinegar, and pepper, seemed a dish fit for a
king; but last night the soldiers quartered near made a raid on the
garden and took them all.
_April 2._--We have had to move, and thus lost our cave. The owner of
the house suddenly returned and notified us that he intended to bring
his family back; didn't think there'd be any siege. The cost of the cave
could go for the rent. That means he has got tired of the Confederacy
and means to stay here and thus get out of it. This house was the only
one to be had. It was built by ex-Senator G., and is so large our tiny
household is lost in it. We use only the lower floor. The bell is often
rung by persons who take it for a hotel and come beseeching food at any
price. To-day one came who would not be denied. "We do not keep a hotel,
but would willingly feed hungry soldiers if we had the food." "I have
been traveling all night, and am starving; will pay any price for just
bread." I went to the dining-room and found some biscuits, and set out
two, with a large piece of corn-bread, a small piece of bacon, some nice
syrup, and a pitcher of water. I locked the door of the safe and left
him to enjoy his lunch. After he left I found he had broken open the
safe and taken the remaining biscuits.
_April 28._--I never understood before the full force of those
questions--What shall we eat? what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall
we be clothed? We have no prophet of the Lord at whose prayer the meal
and oil will not waste. Such minute attention must be given the wardrobe
to preserve it that I have learned to darn like an artist. Making shoes
is now another accomplishment. Mine were in tatters. H. came across a
moth-eaten pair that he bought me, giving ten dollars, I think, and they
fell into rags when I tried to wear them; but the soles were good, and
that has helped me to shoes. A pair of old coat-sleeves saved--nothing
is thrown away now--was in my trunk. I cut an exact pattern from my old
shoes, laid it on the sleeves, and cut out thus good uppers and sewed
them carefully; then soaked the soles and sewed the cloth to them. I am
so proud of these home-made shoes, think I'll put them in a glass case
when the war is over, as an heirloom. H. says he has come to have an
abiding faith that everything he needs to wear will come out of that
trunk while the war lasts. It is like a fairy casket. I have but a dozen
pins remaining, so many I gave away. Every time these are used they are
straightened and kept from rust. All these curious labors are performed
while the shells are leisurely screaming through the air; but as long as
we are out of range we don't worry. For many nights we have had but
little sleep, because the Federal gunboats have been running past the
batteries. The uproar when this is happening is phenomenal. The first
night the thundering artillery burst the bars of sleep, we thought it an
attack by the river. To get into garments and rush up-stairs was the
work of a moment. From the upper gallery we have a fine view of the
river, and soon a red glare lit up the scene and showed a small boat,
towing two large barges, gliding by. The Confederates had set fire to a
house near the bank. Another night, eight boats ran by, throwing a
shower of shot, and two burning houses made the river clear as day. One
of the batteries has a remarkable gun they call "Whistling Dick,"
because of the screeching, whistling sound it gives, and certainly it
does sound like a tortured thing. Added to all this is the indescribable
Confederate yell, which is a soul-harrowing sound to hear. I have gained
respect for the mechanism of the human ear, which stands it all without
injury. The streets are seldom quiet at night; even the dragging about
of cannon makes a din in these echoing gullies. The other night we were
on the gallery till the last of the eight boats got by. Next day a
friend said to H., "It was a wonder you didn't have your heads taken
off last night. I passed and saw them stretched over the gallery, and
grape-shot were whizzing up the street just on a level with you." The
double roar of batteries and boats was so great, we never noticed the
whizzing. Yesterday the _Cincinnati_ attempted to go by in daylight but
was disabled and sunk. It was a pitiful sight; we could not see the
finale, though we saw her rendered helpless.
XIII
PREPARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE
_Vicksburg, May 1, 1863._--It is settled at last that we shall spend the
time of siege in Vicksburg. Ever since we were deprived of our cave, I
had been dreading that H. would suggest sending me to the country, where
his relatives lived. As he could not leave his position and go also
without being conscripted, and as I felt certain an army would get
between us, it was no part of my plan to be obedient. A shell from one
of the practising mortars brought the point to an issue yesterday and
settled it. Sitting at work as usual, listening to the distant sound of
bursting shells, apparently aimed at the court-house, there suddenly
came a nearer explosion; the house shook, and a tearing sound was
followed by terrified screams from the kitchen. I rushed thither, but
met in the hall the cook's little girl America, bleeding from a wound in
the forehead, and fairly dancing with fright and pain, while she uttered
fearful yells. I stopped to examine the wound, and her mother bounded
in, her black face ashy from terror. "Oh! Miss V., my child is killed
and the kitchen tore up." Seeing America was too lively to be a killed
subject, I consoled Martha and hastened to the kitchen. Evidently a
shell had exploded just outside, sending three or four pieces through.
When order was restored I endeavored to impress on Martha's mind the
necessity for calmness and the uselessness of such excitement. Looking
round at the close of the lecture, there stood a group of Confederate
soldiers laughing heartily at my sermon and the promising audience I
had. They chimed in with a parting chorus:
"Yes, it's no use hollerin', old lady."
"Oh! H.," I exclaimed, as he entered soon after, "America is wounded."
"That is no news; she has been wounded by traitors long ago."
"Oh, this is real, living, little black America. I am not talking in
symbols. Here are the pieces of shell, the first bolt of the coming
siege."
"Now you see," he replied, "that this house will be but paper to
mortar-shells. You must go in the country."
The argument was long, but when a woman is obstinate and eloquent, she
generally conquers. I came off victorious, and we finished preparations
for the siege to-day. Hiring a man to assist, we descended to the
wine-cellar, where the accumulated bottles told of the "banquet-hall
deserted," the spirit and glow of the festive hours whose lights and
garlands were dead, and the last guest long since departed. To empty
this cellar was the work of many hours. Then in the safest corner a
platform was laid for our bed, and in another portion one arranged for
Martha. The dungeon, as I call it, is lighted only by a trap-door, and
is so damp it will be necessary to remove the bedding and mosquito-bars
every day. The next question was of supplies. I had nothing left but a
sack of rice-flour, and no manner of cooking I had heard or invented
contrived to make it eatable. A column of recipes for making delicious
preparations of it had been going the rounds of Confederate papers. I
tried them all; they resulted only in brick-bats or sticky paste. H.
sallied out on a hunt for provisions, and when he returned the
disproportionate quantity of the different articles obtained provoked a
smile. There was a _hogshead_ of sugar, a barrel of syrup, ten pounds of
bacon and peas, four pounds of wheat-flour, and a small sack of
corn-meal, a little vinegar, and actually some spice! The wheat-flour he
purchased for ten dollars as a special favor from the sole remaining
barrel for sale. We decided that must be left for sickness. The sack of
meal, he said, was a case of corruption, through a special providence to
us. There is no more for sale at any price; but, said he, "a soldier who
was hauling some of the Government sacks to the hospital offered me this
for five dollars, if I could keep a secret. When the meal is exhausted,
perhaps we can keep alive on sugar. Here are some wax candles; hoard
them like gold." He handed me a parcel containing about two pounds of
candles, and left me to arrange my treasures. It would be hard for me to
picture the memories those candles called up. The long years melted
away, and I
Trod again my childhood's track,
And felt its very gladness.
In those childish days, whenever came dreams Of household splendor or
festal rooms or gay illuminations, the lights in my vision were always
wax candles burning with a soft radiance that enchanted every scene....
And, lo! here on this spring day of '63, with war raging through the
land, I was in a fine house, and had my wax candles sure enough; but,
alas! they were neither cerulean blue nor rose-tinted, but dirty brown;
and when I lighted one, it spluttered and wasted like any vulgar tallow
thing, and lighted only a desolate scene in the vast handsome room. They
were not so good as the waxen rope we had made in Arkansas. So, with a
long sigh for the dreams of youth, I return to the stern present in this
besieged town--my only consolation to remember the old axiom, "A city
besieged is a city taken,"--so if we live through it we shall be out of
the Confederacy. H. is very tired of having to carry a pass around in
his pocket and go every now and then to have it renewed. We have been so
very free in America, these restrictions are irksome.
_May 9._--This morning the door-bell rang a startling peal. Martha being
busy, I answered it. An orderly in gray stood with an official envelop
in his hand.
"Who lives here?"
"Mr. L."