A Diary From Dixie, Chapter 07

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VII. RICHMOND, VA.

June 27, 1861 - July 4, 1861

        RICHMOND, Va., June 27, 1861. - Mr. Meynardie was perfect in the part of traveling companion. He had his pleasures, too. The most pious and eloquent of parsons is human, and he enjoyed the converse of the "eminent persons" who turned up on every hand and gave their views freely on all matters of state.

        Mr. Lawrence Keitt joined us en route. With him came his wife and baby. We don't think alike, but Mr. Keitt is always original and entertaining. Already he pronounces Jeff Davis a failure and his Cabinet a farce. "Prophetic," I suggested, as he gave his opinion before the administration had fairly got under way. He was fierce in his fault-finding as to Mr. Chesnut's vote for Jeff Davis. He says Mr. Chesnut overpersuaded the Judge, and those two turned the tide, at least with the South Carolina delegation. We wrangled, as we always do. He says Howell Cobb's common sense might have saved us.

        Two quiet, unobtrusive Yankee school-teachers were on the train. I had spoken to them, and they had told me all about themselves. So I wrote on a scrap of paper, "Do not abuse our home and house so before these Yankee strangers, going North. Those girls are schoolmistresses returning from whence they came."

        Soldiers everywhere. They seem to be in the air, and certainly to fill all space. Keitt quoted a funny Georgia man who says we try our soldiers to see if they are hot

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enough before we enlist them. If , when water is thrown on them they do not sizz, they won't do; their patriotism is too cool.

        To show they were wide awake and sympathizing enthusiastically, every woman from every window of every house we passed waved a handkerchief, if she had one. This fluttering of white flags from every side never ceased from Camden to Richmond. Another new symptom - Parties of girls came to every station simply to look at the troops passing. They always stood (the girls , I mean) in solid phalanx, and as the sun was generally in their eyes, they made faces. Mary Hammy never tired of laughing at this peculiarity of her sister patriots.

        At the depot in Richmond, Mr. Mallory, with Wigfall and Garnett, met us. We had no cause to complain of the warmth of our reception. They had a carriage for us, and our rooms were taken at the Spotswood. But then the people who were in the rooms engaged for us had not departed at the time they said they were going. They lingered among the delights of Richmond, and we knew of no law to make them keep their words and go. Mrs. Preston had gone for a few days to Manassas. So we took her room. Mrs. Davis is as kind as ever. She met us in one of the corridors accidentally, and asked us to join her party and to take our meals at her table. Mr. Preston came, and we moved into a room so small there was only space for a bed, wash-stand, and glass over it. My things were hung up out of the way on nails behind the door.

        As soon as my husband heard we had arrived, he came, too. After dinner he sat smoking, the solitary chair of the apartment tilted against the door as he smoked, and my poor dresses were fumigated. I remonstrated feebly. "War times," said he; "nobody is fussy now. When I go back to Manassas to-morrow you will be awfully sorry you snubbed me about those trumpery things up there." So he smoked the pipe of peace, for I knew that his remarks

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were painfully true. As soon as he was once more under the enemy's guns, I would repent in sackcloth and ashes.

        Captain Ingraham came with Colonel Lamar.1 The latter said he could only stay five minutes; he was obliged to go back at once to his camp. That was a little before eight. However, at twelve he was still talking to us on that sofa. We taunted him with his fine words to the the F. F. V. crowd before the Spotswood: "Virginia has no grievance. She raises her strong arm to catch the blow aimed at her weaker sisters." He liked it well, however, that we knew his speech by heart.

        This Spotswood is a miniature world. The war topic is not so much avoided, as that everybody has some personal dignity to take care of and everybody else is indifferent to it. I mean the "personal dignity of" autrui. In this wild confusion everything likely and unlikely is told you, and then everything is as flatly contradicted. At any rate, it is safest not to talk of the war.

        Trescott was telling us how they laughed at little South Carolina in Washington. People said it was almost as large as Long Island, which is hardly more than a tailfeather of New York. Always there is a child who sulks and won't play; that was our role. And we were posing as San Marino and all model-spirited, though small, republics, pose.

1. 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.
 

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        He tells us that Lincoln is a humorist. Lincoln sees the fun of things; he thinks if they had left us in a corner or out in the cold a while pouting, with our fingers in our mouth, by hook or by crook he could have got us back, but Anderson spoiled all.

        In Mrs. Davis's drawing-room last night, the President took a seat by me on the sofa where I sat. He talked for nearly an hour. He laughed at our faith in our own powers. We are like the British. We think every Southerner equal to three Yankees at least. We will have to be equivalent to a dozen now. After his experience of the fighting qualities of Southerners in Mexico, he believes that we will do all that can be done by pluck and muscle, endurance, and dogged courage, dash, and red-hot patriotism. And yet his tone was not sanguine. There was a sad refrain running through it all. For one thing, either way, he thinks it will be a long war. That floored me at once. It has been too long for me already. Then he said, before the end came we would have many a bitter experience. He said only fools doubted the courage of the Yankees, or their willingness to fight when they saw fit. And now that we have stung their pride, we have roused them till they will fight like devils.

        Mrs. Bradley Johnson is here, a regular heroine. She outgeneraled the Governor of North Carolina in some way and has got arms and clothes and ammunition for her husband's regiment.1 There was some joke. The regimental breeches were all wrong, but a tailor righted that - hind part before, or something odd.

        Captain Hartstein came to-day with Mrs. Bartow. Colonel Bartow is Colonel of a Georgia regiment now in 
1. 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.
 

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Virginia. He was the Mayor of Savannah who helped to wake the patriotic echoes the livelong night under my sleepless head into the small hours in Charleston in November last. His wife is a charming person, witty and wise, daughter of Judge Berrien. She had on a white muslin apron with pink bows on the pockets. It gave her a gay and girlish air, and yet she must be as old as I am.

        Mr. Lamar, who does not love slavery more than Sumner does, nor than I do, laughs at the compliment New England pays us. We want to separate from them; to be rid of the Yankees forever at any price. And they hate us so, and would clasp us, or grapple us, as Polonius has it, to their bosoms "with hooks of steel." We are an unwilling bride. I think incompatibility of temper began when it was made plain to us that we got all the opprobrium of slavery and they all the money there was in it with their tariff.

        Mr. Lamar says, the young men are light-hearted because there is a fight on hand, but those few who look ahead, the clear heads, they see all the risk, the loss of land, limb, and life, home, wife, and children. As in "the brave days of old," they take to it for their country's sake. They are ready and willing, come what may. But not so light-hearted as the jeunesse dorée.

        June 29th. - Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Wigfall, Mary Hammy and I drove in a fine open carriage to see the Champ de Mars. It was a grand tableau out there. Mr. Davis rode a beautiful gray horse, the Arab Edwin de Leon brought him from Egypt. His worst enemy will allow that he is a consummate rider, graceful and easy in the saddle, and Mr. Chesnut, who has talked horse with his father ever since he was born, owns that Mr. Davis knows more about horses than any man he has met yet. General Lee was there with him; also Joe Davis and Wigfall acting as his aides.

        Poor Mr. Lamar has been brought from his camp - paralysis or some sort of shock. Every woman in the house is ready to rush into the Florence Nightingale business. I

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think I will wait for a wounded man, to make my first effort as Sister of Charity. Mr. Lamar sent for me. As everybody went, Mr. Davis setting the example, so did I. Lamar will not die this time. Will men flatter and make eyes, until their eyes close in death, at the ministering angels? He was the same old Lamar of the drawing-room.

        It is pleasant at the President's table. My seat is next to Joe Davis, with Mr. Browne on the other side, and Mr. Mallory opposite. There is great constraint, however. As soon as I came I repeated what the North Carolina man said on the cars, that North Carolina had 20,000 men ready and they were kept back by Mr. Walker, etc. The President caught something of what I was saying, and asked me to repeat it, which I did, although I was scared to death. "Madame, when you see that person tell him his statement is false. We are too anxious here for troops to refuse a man who offers himself, not to speak of 20,000 men." Silence ensued - of the most profound.

        Uncle H. gave me three hundred dollars for his daughter Mary's expenses, making four in all that I have of hers. He would pay me one hundred, which he said he owed my husband for a horse. I thought it an excuse to lend me money. I told him I had enough and to spare for all my needs until my Colonel came home from the wars.

        Ben Allston, the Governor's son, is here - came to see me; does not show much of the wit of the Petigrus; pleasant person, however. Mr. Brewster and Wigfall came at the same time. The former, chafing at Wigfall's anomalous position here, gave him fiery advice. Mr. Wigfall was calm and full of common sense. A brave man, and without a thought of any necessity for displaying his temper, he said: "Brewster, at this time, before the country is strong and settled in her new career, it would be disastrous for us, the head men, to engage in a row among ourselves."

        As I was brushing flies away and fanning the prostrate Lamar, I reported Mr. Davis's conversation of the night

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before. "He is all right," said Mr. Lamar, "the fight had to come. We are men, not women. The quarrel had lasted long enough. We hate each other so, the fight had to come. Even Homer's heroes, after they had stormed and scolded enough, fought like brave men, long and well. If the athlete, Sumner, had stood on his manhood and training and struck back when Preston Brooks assailed him, Preston Brooks's blow need not have been the opening skirmish of the war. Sumner's country took up the fight because he did not. Sumner chose his own battle-field, and it was the worse for us. What an awful blunder that Preston Brooks business was!" Lamar said Yankees did not fight for the fun of it; they always made it pay or let it alone.

        Met Mr. Lyon with news, indeed - a man here in the midst of us, taken with Lincoln's passports, etc., in his pocket - a palpable spy. Mr. Lyon said he would be hanged - in all human probability, that is.

        A letter from my husband written at Camp Pickens, and saying: "If you and Mrs. Preston can make up your minds to leave Richmond, and can come up to a nice little country house near Orange Court House, we could come to see you frequently while the army is stationed here. It would be a safe place for the present, near the scene of action, and directly in the line of news from all sides." So we go to Orange Court House.

        Read the story of Soulouque,1 the Haytian man: he has wonderful interest just now. Slavery has to go, of course, and joy go with it. These Yankees may kill us and lay waste our land for a while, but conquer us - never!

        July 4th. - Russell abuses us in his letters. People here care a great deal for what Russell says, because he represents 
1. 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.
 

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the London Times, and the Times reflects the sentiment of the English people. How we do cling to the idea of an alliance with England or France! Without France even Washington could not have done it.

        We drove to the camp to see the President present a flag to a Maryland regiment. Having lived on the battlefield (Kirkwood), near Camden,1 we have an immense respect for the Maryland line. When our militia in that fight ran away, Colonel Howard and the Marylanders held their own against Rawdon, Cornwallis, and the rest, and everywhere around are places named for a doughty captain killed in our defense - Kirkwood, De Kalb, etc. The last, however, was a Prussian count. A letter from my husband, written June 22d, has just reached me. He says:

        "We are very strongly posted, entrenched, and have now at our command about 15,000 of the best troops in the world. We have besides, two batteries of artillery, a regiment of cavalry, and daily expect a battalion of flying artillery from Richmond. We have sent forward seven regiments of infantry and rifles toward Alexandria. Our outposts have felt the enemy several times, and in every instance the enemy recoils. General Johnston has had several encounters - the advancing columns of the two armies - and with him, too, the enemy, although always superior in numbers, are invariably driven back.

        "There is great deficiency in the matter of ammunition. General Johnston's command, in the very face of overwhelming numbers, have only thirty rounds each. If they had been well provided in this respect, they could and would have defeated Cadwallader and Paterson with great ease. I find the opinion prevails throughout the army that 
1. 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.
 

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there is great imbecility and shameful neglect in the War Department.

        "Unless the Republicans fall back, we must soon come together on both lines, and have a decided engagement. But the opinion prevails here that Lincoln's army will not meet us if they can avoid it. They have already fallen back before a slight check from 400 of Johnston's men. They had 700 and were badly beaten. You have no idea how dirty and irksome the camp life is. You would hardly know your best friend in camp guise."

        Noise of drums, tramp of marching regiments all day long; rattling of artillery wagons, bands of music, friends from every quarter coming in. We ought to be miserable and anxious, and yet these are pleasant days. Perhaps we are unnaturally exhilarated and excited.

        Heard some people in the drawing-room say: "Mrs. Davis's ladies are not young, are not pretty," and I am one of them. The truthfulness of the remark did not tend to alleviate its bitterness. We must put Maggie Howell and Mary Hammy in the foreground, as youth and beauty are in request. At least they are young things - bright spots in a somber-tinted picture. The President does not forbid our going, but he is very much averse to it. We are consequently frightened by our own audacity, but we are wilful women, and so we go.