IX. RICHMOND, VA.
July 13, 1861 - September 2, 1861
RICHMOND, Va., July 13,1861. - Now we feel safe and comfortable. We can not be flanked. Mr. Preston met us at Warrenton. Mr. Chesnut doubtless had too many spies to receive from Washington, galloping in with the exact numbers of the enemy done up in their back hair.
Wade Hampton is here; Doctor Nott also - Nott and Glyddon known to fame. Everybody is here, en route for the army, or staying for the meeting of Congress.
Lamar is out on crutches. His father-in-law, once known only as the humorist Longstreet, 1 author of Georgia Scenes, now a staid Methodist, who has outgrown the follies of his youth, bore him off to-day. They say Judge Longstreet has lost the keen sense of fun that illuminated his life in days of yore. Mrs. Lamar and her daughter were here.
The President met us cordially, but he laughed at our sudden retreat, with baggage lost, etc. He tried to keep us from going; said it was a dangerous experiment. Dare say he knows more about the situation of things than he chooses to tell us.
To-day in the drawing-room, saw a vivandière in the
1. 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.
flesh. She was in the uniform of her regiment, but wore Turkish pantaloons. She frisked about in her hat and feathers; did not uncover her head as a man would have done; played the piano; and sang war-songs. She had no drum, but she gave us rataplan. She was followed at every step by a mob of admiring soldiers and boys.
Yesterday, as we left the cars, we had a glimpse of war. It was the saddest sight: the memory of it is hard to shake off - sick soldiers, not wounded ones. There were quite two hundred (they said) lying about as best they might on the platform. Robert Barnwell1 was there doing all he could. Their pale, ghastly faces! So here is one of the horrors of war we had not reckoned on. There were many good men and women with Robert Barnwell, rendering all the service possible in the circumstances.
Just now I happened to look up and saw Mr. Chesnut with a smile on his face watching me from the passageway. I flew across the room, and as I got half-way saw Mrs. Davis touch him on the shoulder. She said he was to go at once into Mr. Davis's room, where General Lee and General Cooper were. After he left us, Mrs. Davis told me General Beauregard had sent Mr. Chesnut here on , some army business.
July 14th. - Mr. Chesnut remained closeted with the President and General Lee all the afternoon. The news does not seem pleasant. At least, he is not inclined to tell me any of it. He satisfied himself with telling me how sensible and soldierly this handsome General Lee is. General Lee's military sagacity was also his theme. of course the President dominated the party, as well by his weight of brain as by his position. I did not care a fig for a description of the war council. I wanted to know what is in the wind now?
1. Rev. Robert Barnwell, nephew of Hon. Robert Barnwell, established in Richmond a hospital for South Carolinians.
July 16th. - Dined to-day at the President's table. Joe Davis, the nephew, asked me if I liked white port wine. I said I did not know; "all that I had ever known had been dark red." So he poured me out a glass. I drank it, and it nearly burned up my mouth and throat. It was horrid, but I did not let him see how it annoyed me. I pretended to be glad that any one found me still young enough to play off a practical joke upon me. It was thirty years since I had thought of such a thing.
Met Colonel Baldwin in the drawing-room. He pointed significantly to his Confederate colonel's buttons and gray coat. At the White Sulphur last summer he was a "Union man" to the last point. "How much have you changed besides your coat?" "I was always true to our country," he said. "She leaves me no choice now."
As far as I can make out, Beauregard sent Mr. Chesnut to the President to gain permission for the forces of Joe Johnston and Beauregard to join, and, united, to push the enemy, if possible, over the Potomac. Now every day we grow weaker and they stronger; so we had better give a telling blow at once. Already, we begin to cry out for more ammunition, and already the blockade is beginning to shut it all out.
A young Emory is here. His mother writes him to go back. Her Franklin blood certainly calls him with no uncertain sound to the Northern side, while his fatherland is wavering and undecided, split in half by factions. Mrs. Wigfall says he is half inclined to go. She wondered that he did not. With a father in the enemy's army, he will always be "suspect" here, let the President and Mrs. Davis do for him what they will.
I did not know there was such a "bitter cry" left in me, but I wept my heart away to-day when my husband went off. Things do look so black. When he comes up here he rarely brings his body-servant, a negro man. Lawrence has charge of all Mr. Chesnut's things - watch,
clothes, and two or three hundred gold pieces that lie in the tray of his trunk. All these, papers, etc., he tells Lawrence to bring to me if anything happens to him. But I said: "Maybe he will pack off to the Yankees and freedom with all that." "Fiddlesticks! He is not going to leave me for anybody else. After all, what can he ever be, better than he is now - a gentleman's gentleman?" "He is within sound of the enemy's guns, and when he gets to the other army he is free." Maria said of Mr. Preston's man: "What he want with anything more, ef he was free? Don't he live just as well as Mars John do now?"
Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Joe Johnston, Mrs. Wigfall, all came. I am sure so many clever women could divert a soul in extremis. The Hampton Legion all in a snarl - about, I forget what; standing on their dignity, I suppose. I have come to detest a man who says, "My own personal dignity and self-respect require." I long to cry, "No need to respect yourself until you can make other people do it."
July 19th. - Beauregard telegraphed yesterday (they say, to General Johnston), "Come down and help us, or we shall be crushed by numbers." The President telegraphed General Johnston to move down to Beauregard's aid. At Bull Run, Bonham's Brigade, Ewell's, and Longstreet's encountered the foe and repulsed him. Six hundred prisoners have been sent here.
I arose, as the Scriptures say, and washed my face and anointed my head and went down-stairs. At the foot of them stood General Cooper, radiant, one finger nervously arranging his shirt collar, or adjusting his neck to it after his fashion. He called out: "Your South Carolina man, Bonham, has done a capital thing at Bull Run - driven back the enemy, if not defeated him; with killed and prisoners," etc. , etc. Clingman came to tell the particulars, and Colonel Smith (one of the trio with Garnett, McClellan, who were sent to Europe to inspect and report on military matters). Poor Garnett is killed. There was cowardice
or treachery on the part of natives up there, or some of Governor Letcher's appointments to military posts. I hear all these things said. I do not understand, but it was a fatal business.
Mrs. McLane says she finds we do not believe a word of any news unless it comes in this guise: "A great battle fought. Not one Confederate killed. Enemy's loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners taken by us, immense." I was in hopes there would be no battle until Mr. Chesnut was forced to give up his amateur aideship to come and attend to his regular duties in the Congress.
Keitt has come in. He says Bonham's battle was a skirmish of outposts. Joe Davis, Jr., said: "Would Heaven only send us a Napoleon!" Not one bit of use. If Heaven did, Walker would not give him a commission. Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Joe Johnston, "her dear Lydia," were in fine spirits. The effect upon nous autres was evident; we rallied visibly. South Carolina troops pass every day. They go by with a gay step. Tom Taylor and John Rhett bowed to us from their horses as we leaned out of the windows. Such shaking of handkerchiefs. We are forever at the windows.
It was not such a mere skirmish. We took three rifled cannon and six hundred stands of arms. Mr. Davis has gone to Manassas. He did not let Wigfall know he was going. That ends the delusion of Wigfall's aideship. No mistake to-day. I was too ill to move out of my bed. So they all sat in my room.
July 22d. - Mrs. Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said: "A great battle has been fought.1 Joe Johnston led the right
1. 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.
wing, and Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton is wounded. Colonel Johnston of the Legion killed; so are Colonel Bee and Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith1 is wounded or killed."
I had no breath to speak; she went on in that desperate, calm way, to which people betake themselves under the greatest excitement: "Bartow, rallying his men, leading them into the hottest of the light, died gallantly at the head of his regiment. The President telegraphs me only that 'it is a great victory.' General Cooper has all the other telegrams."
Still I said nothing; I was stunned; then I was so grateful. Those nearest and dearest to me were safe still. She then began, in the same concentrated voice, to read from a paper she held in her hand: "Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman's battery taken. Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the Legion wounded."
That got me up. Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed. We went into Mrs. Preston's room, and she made me lie down on her bed. Men, women, and children streamed in. Every living soul had a story to tell. "Complete victory," you heard everywhere. We had been such anxious wretches. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much to bear.
To-day I met my friend, Mr. Hunter. I was on my way to Mrs. Bartow's room and begged him to call at some other time. I was too tearful just then for a morning visit from even the most sympathetic person.
A woman from Mrs. Bartow's country was in a fury because they had stopped her as she rushed to be the first to tell Mrs. Bartow her husband was killed, it having been
1. 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.
decided that Mrs. Davis should tell her. Poor thing! She was found lying on her bed when Mrs. Davis knocked. "Come in," she said. When she saw it was Mrs. Davis, she sat up, ready to spring to her feet, but then there was something in Mrs. Davis's pale face that took the life out of her. She stared at Mrs. Davis, then sank back, and covered her face as she asked: "Is it bad news for me?" Mrs. Davis did not speak. "Is he killed?" Afterward Mrs. Bartow said to me: "As soon as I saw Mrs. Davis's face I could not say one word. I knew it all in an instant. I knew it before I wrapped the shawl about my head."
Maria, Mrs. Preston's maid, furiously patriotic, came into my room. "These colored people say it is printed in the papers here that the Virginia people done it all. Now Mars Wade had so many of his men killed and he wounded, it stands to reason that South Carolina was no ways backward. If there was ever anything plain, that's plain."
Tuesday. - Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse - we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream.
Yesterday, Mrs. Singleton and ourselves sat on a bedside and mingled our tears for those noble spirits - John Darby, Theodore Barker, and James Lowndes. To-day we find we wasted our grief; they are not so much as wounded. I dare say all the rest is true about them - in the face of the enemy, with flags in their hands, leading their men. "But Dr. Darby is a surgeon." He is as likely to forget that as I am. He is grandson of Colonel Thomson of the Revolution, called, by way of pet name, by his soldiers, "Old Danger." Thank Heaven they are all quite alive. And we will not cry next time until officially notified.
July 24th. - Here Mr. Chesnut opened my door and
walked in. Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. I had to ask no questions. He gave me an account of the battle as he saw it (walking up and down my room, occasionally seating himself on a window sill, but too restless to remain still many moments) ; and told what regiments he was sent to bring up. He took the orders to Colonel Jackson, whose regiment stood so stock still under file that they were called a "stone wall." Also, they call Beauregard, Eugene, and Johnston, Marlboro. Mr. Chesnut rode with Lay's cavalry after the retreating enemy in the pursuit, they following them until midnight. Then there came such a fall of rain - rain such as is only known in semitropical lands.
In the drawing-room, Colonel Chesnut was the "belle of the ball"; they crowded him so for news. He was the first arrival that they could get at from the field of battle. But the women had to give way to the dignitaries of the land, who were as filled with curiosity as themselves - Mr. Barnwell, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Cobb, Captain Ingraham, etc.
Wilmot de Saussure says Wilson of Massachusetts, a Senator of the United States,1 came to Manassas, en route to Richmond, with his dancing shoes ready for a festive scene which was to celebrate a triumph. The New York Tribune said: "In a few days we shall have Richmond, Memphis, and New Orleans. They must be taken and at once." For "a few days" maybe now they will modestly substitute "in a few years."
They brought me a Yankee soldier's portfolio from the battle-field. The letters had been franked by Senator
1. 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.
Harlan.1 One might shed tears over some of the letters. Women, wives and mothers, are the same everywhere. What a comfort the spelling was! We had been willing to admit that their universal free-school education had put them, rank and file, ahead of us literarily, but these letters do not attest that fact. The spelling is comically bad.
July 27th. - Mrs. Davis's drawing-room last night was brilliant, and she was in great force. Outside a mob called for the President. He did speak - an old war-horse, who scents the battle-fields from afar. His enthusiasm was contagious. They called for Colonel Chesnut, and he gave them a capital speech, too. As public speakers say sometimes, "It was the proudest moment of my life." I did not hear a great deal of it, for always, when anything happens of any moment, my heart beats up in my ears, but the distinguished Carolinians who crowded round told me how good a speech he made. I was dazed. There goes the Dead March for some poor soul.
To-day, the President told us at dinner that Mr. Chesnut's eulogy of Bartow in the Congress was highly praised. Men liked it. Two eminently satisfactory speeches in twenty-four hours is doing pretty well. And now I could be happy, but this Cabinet of ours are in such bitter quarrels among themselves - everybody abusing everybody.
Last night, while those splendid descriptions of the battle were being given to the crowd below from our windows, I said: "Then, why do we not go on to Washington?" "You mean why did they not; the opportunity is lost." Mr. Barnwell said to me: "Silence, we want to listen to the speaker," and Mr. Hunter smiled compassionately, "Don't ask awkward questions."
Kirby Smith came down on the turnpike in the very nick of time. Still, the heroes who fought all day and
1. James Harlan, United States Senator from Iowa from 1855 to 1865. In 1865 he was appointed Secretary of the Interior.
held the Yankees in check deserve credit beyond words, or it would all have been over before the Joe Johnston contingent came. It is another case of the eleventh-hour scrape; the eleventh-hour men claim all the credit, and they who bore the heat and brunt and burden of the day do not like that.
Everybody said at first, "Pshaw! There will be no war." Those who foresaw evil were called ravens, ill-foreboders. Now the same sanguine people all cry, "The war is over" - the very same who were packing to leave Richmond a few days ago. Many were ready to move on at a moment's warning, when the good news came. There are such owls everywhere.
But, to revert to the other kind, the sage and circumspect, those who say very little, but that little shows they think the war barely begun. Mr. Rives and Mr. Seddon have just called. Arnoldus Van der Horst came to see me at the same time. He said there was no great show of victory on our side until two o'clock, but when we began to win, we did it in double-quick time. I mean, of course, the battle last Sunday.
Arnold Harris told Mr. Wigfall the news from Washington last Sunday. For hours the telegrams reported at rapid intervals, "Great victory," "Defeating them at all points." The couriers began to come in on horseback, and at last, after two or three o'clock, there was a sudden cessation of all news, About nine messengers with bulletins came on foot or on horseback - wounded, weary, draggled, footsore, panic-stricken - spreading in their path on every hand terror and dismay. That was our opportunity. Wigfall can see nothing that could have stopped us, and when they explain why we did not go to Washington I understand it all less than ever. Yet here we will dilly-dally, and Congress orate, and generals parade, until they in the North, get up an army three times as large as McDowell's, which we have just defeated.
Trescott says this victory will be our ruin. It lulls us into a fool's paradise of conceit at our superior valor, and the shameful farce of their flight will wake every inch of their manhood. It was the very fillip they needed. There are a quieter sort here who know their Yankees well. They say if the thing begins to pay - government contracts, and all that - we will never hear the end of it, at least, until they get their pay in some way out of us. They will not lose money by us. Of that we may be sure. Trust Yankee shrewdness and vim for that.
There seems to be a battle raging at Bethel, but no mortal here can be got to think of anything but Manassas. Mrs. McLean says she does not see that it was such a great victory, and if it be so great, how can one defeat hurt a nation like the North.
John Waties fought the whole battle over for me. Now I understand it. Before this nobody would take the time to tell the thing consecutively, rationally, and in order. Mr. Venable said he did not see a braver thing done than the cool performance of a Columbia negro. He carried his master a bucket of ham and rice, which he had cooked for him, and he cried: "You must be so tired and hungry, marster; make haste and eat." This was in the thickest of the fight, under the heaviest of the enemy's guns.
The Federal Congressmen had been making a picnic of it: their luggage was all ticketed to Richmond. Cameron has issued a proclamation. They are making ready to come after us on a magnificent scale. They acknowledge us at last foemen worthy of their steel. The Lord help us, since England and France won't, or don't. If we could only get a friend outside and open a port.
One of these men told me he had seen a Yankee prisoner, who asked him "what sort of a diggins Richmond was for trade." He was tired of the old concern, and would like to take the oath and settle here. They brought us handcuffs found in the débacle of the Yankee army. For whom
were they? Jeff Davis, no doubt, and the ringleaders. "Tell that to the marines." We have outgrown the handcuff business on this side of the water.
Dr. Gibbes says he was at a country house near Manassas, when a Federal soldier, who had lost his way, came in exhausted. He asked for brandy, which the lady of the house gave him. Upon second thought, he declined it. She brought it to him so promptly he said he thought it might be poisoned; his mind was; she was enraged, and said: "Sir, I am a Virginia woman. Do you think I could be as base as that? Here, Bill, Tom, disarm this man. He is our prisoner." The negroes came running, and the man surrendered without more ado.
Another Federal was drinking at the well. A negro girl said: "You go in and see Missis." The man went in and she followed, crying triumphantly: "Look here, Missis, I got a prisoner, too!" This lady sent in her two prisoners, and Beauregard complimented her on her pluck and patriotism, and her presence of mind. These negroes were rewarded by their owners.
Now if slavery is as disagreeable to negroes as we think it, why don't they all march over the border where they would be received with open arms? It all amazes me. I am always studying these creatures. They are to me inscrutable in their way and past finding out. Our negroes were not ripe for John Brown.
This is how I saw Robert E. Lee for the first time: though his family, then living at Arlington, called to see me while I was in Washington (I thought because of old Colonel Chesnut's intimacy with Nellie Custis in the old Philadelphia days, Mrs. Lee being Nelly Custis's niece), I had not known the head of the Lee family. He was somewhere with the army then.
Last summer at the White Sulphur were Roony Lee and his wife, that sweet little Charlotte Wickam, and I spoke of Roony with great praise. Mrs. Izard said: "Don't waste
your admiration on him; wait till you see his father. He is the nearest to a perfect man I ever saw." "How?" "In every way - handsome, clever, agreeable, high-bred."
Now, Mrs. Stanard came for Mrs. Preston and me to drive to the camp in an open carriage. A man riding a beautiful horse joined us. He wore a hat with something of a military look to it, sat his horse gracefully, and was so distinguished at all points that I very much regretted not catching his name as Mrs. Stanard gave it to us. He, however, heard ours, and bowed as gracefully as he rode, and the few remarks he made to each of us showed he knew all about us.
But Mrs. Stanard was in ecstasies of pleasurable excitement. I felt that she had bagged a big fish, for just then they abounded in Richmond. Mrs. Stanard accused him of being ambitious, etc. He remonstrated and said his tastes were "of the simplest." He only wanted "a Virginia farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken - not one fried chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken."
To all this light chat did we seriously incline, because the man and horse and everything about him were so fine-looking; perfection, in fact; no fault to be found if you hunted for it. As he left us, I said eagerly, "Who is he?" "You did not know! Why, it was Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, the first man in Virginia," raising her voice as she enumerated his glories. All the same, I like Smith Lee better, and I like his looks, too. I know Smith Lee well. Can anybody say they know his brother? I doubt it. He looks so cold, quiet, and grand.
Kirby Smith is our Blücher; he came on the field in the nick of time, as Blücher at Waterloo, and now we are as the British, who do not remember Blücher. It is all Wellington. So every individual man I see fought and won the battle. From Kershaw up and down, all the eleventh-hour men won the battle; turned the tide. The Marylanders -
A GROUP OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS. "STONEWALL" JACKSON. ROBERT E. LEE. JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON. PIERRE G. T. BEAUREGARD. JOHN B. HOOD. ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON.
Elzey & Co. - one never hears of - as little as one hears of Blücher in the English stories of Waterloo.
Mr. Venable was praising Hugh Garden and Kershaw's regiment generally. This was delightful. They are my friends and neighbors at home. I showed him Mary Stark's letter, and we agreed with her. At the bottom of our hearts we believe every Confederate soldier to be a hero, sans peur et sans reproche.
Hope for the best to-day. Things must be on a pleasanter footing all over the world. Met the President in the corridor. He took me by both hands. "Have you breakfasted?" said he. "Come in and breakfast with me?" Alas! I had had my breakfast.
At the public dining-room, where I had taken my breakfast with Mr. Chesnut, Mrs. Davis came to him, while we were at table. She said she had been to our rooms. She wanted Wigfall hunted up. Mr. Davis thought Chesnut would be apt to know his whereabouts. I ran to Mrs. Wigfall's room, who told me she was sure he could be found with his regiment in camp, but Mr. Chesnut had not to go to the camp, for Wigfall came to his wife's room while I was there. Mr. Davis and Wigfall would be friends, if - if -
The Northern papers say we hung and quartered a Zouave; cut him into four pieces; and that we tie prisoners to a tree and bayonet them. In other words, we are savages. It ought to teach us not to credit what our papers say of them. It is so absurd an imagination of evil. We are absolutely treating their prisoners as well as our own men: we are complained of for it here. I am going to the hospitals for the enemy's sick and wounded in order to see for myself.
Why did we not follow the flying foe across the Potomac? That is the question of the hour in the drawing-room with those of us who are not contending as to "who took Rickett's Battery?" Allen Green, for one, took it. Allen told us that, finding a portmanteau with nice clean
shirts, he was so hot and dusty he stepped behind a tree and put on a clean Yankee shirt, and was more comfortable.
The New York Tribune soothes the Yankee self-conceit, which has received a shock, by saying we had 100,000 men on the field at Manassas; we had about 15,000 effective men in all. And then, the Tribune tries to inflame and envenom them against us by telling lies as to our treatment of prisoners. They say when they come against us next it will be in overwhelming force. I long to see Russell's letter to the London Times about Bull Run and Manassas. It will be rich and rare. In Washington, it is crimination and recrimination. Well, let them abuse one another to their hearts' content.
August 1st. - Mrs. Wigfall, with the "Lone Star" flag in her carriage, called for me. We drove to the fair grounds. Mrs. Davis's landau, with her spanking bays, rolled along in front of us. The fair grounds are as covered with tents, soldiers, etc., as ever. As one regiment moves off to the army, a fresh one from home comes to be mustered in and take its place.
The President, with his aides, dashed by. My husband was riding with him. The President presented the flag to the Texans. Mr. Chesnut came to us for the flag, and bore it aloft to the President. We seemed to come in for part of the glory. We were too far off to hear the speech, but Jeff Davis is very good at that sort of thing, and we were satisfied that it was well done.
Heavens! how that redoubtable Wigfall did rush those poor Texans about! He maneuvered and marched them until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows; it was a hot afternoon in August and the thermometer in the nineties. Mr. Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall replied with his hat on. Is that military?
At the fair grounds to-day, such music, mustering, and marching, such cheering and flying of flags, such firing of guns and all that sort of thing. A gala day it was, with
double-distilled Fourth-of-July feeling. In the midst of it all, a messenger came to tell Mrs. Wigfall that a telegram had been received, saying her children were safe across the lines in Gordonsville. That was something to thank God for, without any doubt.
These two little girls came from somewhere in Connecticut, with Mrs. Wigfall's sister - the one who gave me my Bogotsky, the only person in the world, except Susan Rutledge who ever seemed to think I had a soul to save. Now suppose Seward had held Louisa and Fanny as hostages for Louis Wigfall's good behavior; eh?
Excitement number two: that bold brigadier, the Georgia General Toombs, charging about too recklessly, got thrown. His horse dragged him up to the wheels of our carriage. For a moment it was frightful. Down there among the horses' hoofs was a face turned up toward us, purple with rage. His foot was still in the stirrup, and he had not let go the bridle. The horse was prancing over him, tearing and plunging; everybody was hemming him in, and they seemed so slow and awkward about it. We felt it an eternity, looking down at him, and expecting him to be killed before our very faces. However, he soon got it all straight, and, though awfully tousled and tumbled, dusty, rumpled, and flushed, with redder face and wilder hair than ever, he rode off gallantly, having to our admiration bravely remounted the recalcitrant charger.
Now if I were to pick out the best abused one, where all catch it so bountifully, I should say Mr. Commissary-General Northrop was the most "cussed " and villified man in the Confederacy. He is held accountable for everything that goes wrong in the army. He may not be efficient, but having been a classmate and crony of Jeff Davis at West Point, points the moral and adorns the tale. I hear that alluded to oftenest of his many crimes. They say Beauregard writes that his army is upon the verge of starvation. Here every man, woman, and child is ready to hang to the
first lamp-post anybody of whom that army complains. Every Manassas soldier is a hero dear to our patriotic hearts. Put up with any neglect of the heroes of the 21st July - never!
And now they say we did not move on right after the flying foe because we had no provisions, no wagons, no ammunition, etc. Rain, mud, and Northrop. Where were the enemy's supplies that we bragged so of bagging? Echo answers where? Where there is a will there is a way. We stopped to plunder that rich convoy, and somehow, for a day or so, everybody thought the war was over and stopped to rejoice: so it appeared here. All this was our dinner-table talk to-day. Mr. Mason dined with us and Mr. Barnwell sits by me always. The latter reproved me sharply, but Mr. Mason laughed at "this headlong, unreasonable woman's harangue and female tactics and their war-ways." A freshet in the autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring. Time and tide wait for no man, and there was a tide in our affairs which might have led to Washington, and we did not take it and lost our fortune this round. Things which nobody could deny.
McClellan virtually supersedes the Titan Scott. Physically General Scott is the largest man I ever saw. Mrs. Scott said, "nobody but his wife could ever know how little he was." And yet they say, old Winfield Scott could have organized an army for them if they had had patience. They would not give him time.
August 2d. - Prince Jerome1 has gone to Washington. Now the Yankees so far are as little trained as we are; raw troops are they as yet. Suppose France takes the other side
1. 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.
and we have to meet disciplined and armed men, soldiers who understand war, Frenchmen, with all the elan we boast of .
Ransom Calhoun, Willie Preston, and Doctor Nott's boys are here. These foolish, rash, hare-brained Southern lads have been within an ace of a fight with a Maryland company for their camping grounds. It is much too Irish to be so ready to fight anybody, friend or foe. Men are thrilling with fiery ardor. The red-hot Southern martial spirit is in the air. These young men, however, were all educated abroad. And it is French or German ideas that they are filled with. The Marylanders were as rash and reckless as the others, and had their coat-tails ready for anybody to tread on, Donnybrook Fair fashion. One would think there were Yankees enough and to spare for any killing to be done. It began about picketing their horses. But these quarrelsome young soldiers have lovely manners. They are so sweet-tempered when seen here among us at the Arlington.
August 5th. - A heavy, heavy heart. Another missive from Jordan, querulous and fault-finding; things are all wrong - Beauregard's Jordan had been crossed, not the stream "in Canaan's fair and happy land, where our possessions lie." They seem to feel that the war is over here, except the President and Mr. Barnwell; above all that foreboding friend of mine, Captain Ingraham. He thinks it hardly begun.
Another outburst from Jordan. Beauregard is not seconded properly. Hélas! To think that any mortal general (even though he had sprung up in a month or so from captain of artillery to general) could be so puffed up with vanity, so blinded by any false idea of his own consequence as to write, to intimate that man, or men, would sacrifice their country, injure themselves, ruin their families, to spite the aforesaid general! Conceit and self-assertion can never reach a higher point than that. And yet they give
you to understand Mr. Davis does not like Beauregard. In point of fact they fancy he is jealous of him, and rather than Beauregard shall have a showing the President (who would be hanged at least if things go wrong) will cripple the army to spite Beauregard. Mr. Mallory says, "How we could laugh, but you see it is no laughing matter to have our fate in the hands of such self-sufficient, vain, army idiots." So the amenities of life are spreading.
In the meantime we seem to be resting on our oars, debating in Congress, while the enterprising Yankees are quadrupling their army at their leisure. Every day some of our regiments march away from here. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new ones are fairly running in; fearing the war will be over before they get a sight of the fun. Every man from every little precinct wants a place in the picture.
Tuesday. - The North requires 600,000 men to invade us. Truly we are a formidable power! The Herald says it is useless to move with a man less than that. England has made it all up with them, or rather, she will not break with them. Jerome Napoleon is in Washington and not our friend.
Doctor Gibbes is a bird of ill omen. To-day he tells me eight of our men have died at the Charlottesville Hospital. It seems sickness is more redoubtable in an army than the enemy's guns. There are 1,100 there hors de combat, and typhoid fever is with them. They want money, clothes, and nurses. So, as I am writing, right and left the letters fly, calling for help from the sister societies at home. Good and patriotic women at home are easily stirred to their work.
Mary Hammy has many strings to her bow - a fiancé in the army, and Doctor Berrien in town. To-day she drove out with Major Smith and Colonel Hood. Yesterday, Custis Lee was here. She is a prudent little puss and needs no good advice, if I were one to give it.
Lawrence does all our shopping. All his master's money has been in his hands until now. I thought it injudicious
when gold is at such a premium to leave it lying loose in the tray of a trunk. So I have sewed it up in a belt, which I can wear upon an emergency. The cloth is wadded and my diamonds are there, too. It has strong strings, and can be tied under my hoops about my waist if the worst comes to the worst, as the saying is. Lawrence wears the same bronze mask. No sign of anything he may feel or think of my latest fancy. Only, I know he asks for twice as much money now when he goes to buy things.
August 8th. - To-day I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword, in the early part of the fray, was taken prisoner by the Yankees. They stripped him, possessed themselves of his sleeve-buttons, and were in the act of depriving him of his boots when the rout began and the play was reversed; proceedings then took the opposite tack.
From a small rill in the mountain has flowed the mighty stream which has made at last Louis Wigfall the worst enemy the President has in the Congress, a fact which complicates our affairs no little. Mr. Davis's hands ought to be strengthened; he ought to be upheld. A divided house must fall, we all say.
Mrs. Sam Jones, who is called Becky by her friends and cronies, male and female, said that Mrs. Pickens had confided to the aforesaid Jones (née Taylor, and so of the President Taylor family and cousin of Mr. Davis's first wife), that Mrs. Wigfall "described Mrs. Davis to Mrs. Pickens as a coarse Western woman." Now the fair Lucy Holcombe and Mrs. Wigfall had a quarrel of their own out in Texas, and, though reconciled, there was bitterness underneath. At first, Mrs. Joe Johnston called Mrs. Davis "a Western belle,"1 but when the quarrel between General
1. 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).
Johnston and the President broke out, Mrs. Johnston took back the "belle" and substituted "woman" in the narrative derived from Mrs. Jones.
Commodore Barron1 came with glad tidings. We had taken three prizes at sea, and brought them in safely, one laden with molasses. General Toombs told us the President complimented Mr. Chesnut when he described the battle scene to his Cabinet, etc. General Toombs is certain Colonel Chesnut will be made one of the new batch of brigadiers. Next came Mr. Clayton, who calmly informed us Jeff Davis would not get the vote of this Congress for President, so we might count him out.
Mr. Meynardie first told us how pious a Christian Soldier was Kershaw, how he prayed, got up, dusted his knees and led his men on to victory with a dash and courage equal to any Old Testament mighty man of war.
Governor Manning's account of Prince Jerome Napoleon: "He is stout and he is not handsome. Neither is he young, and as he reviewed our troops he was terribly overheated." He heard him say "en avant," of that he could testify of his own knowledge, and he was told he had been heard to say with unction "Allons" more than once. The sight of the battle-field had made the Prince seasick, and he received gratefully a draft of fiery whisky.
Arrago seemed deeply interested in Confederate statistics, and praised our doughty deeds to the skies. It was but soldier fare our guests received, though we did our best. It was hard sleeping and worse eating in camp. Beauregard is half Frenchman and speaks French like a native. So one awkward mess was done away with, and it was a comfort to see Beauregard speak without the agony
1. 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.
of finding words in the foreign language and forming them, with damp brow, into sentences. A different fate befell others who spoke "a little French."
General and Mrs. Cooper came to see us. She is Mrs. Smith Lee's sister. They were talking of old George Mason - in Virginia a name to conjure with. George Mason violently opposed the extension of slavery. He was a thorough aristocrat, and gave as his reason for refusing the blessing of slaves to the new States, Southwest and Northwest, that vulgar new people were unworthy of so sacred a right as that of holding slaves. It was not an institution intended for such people as they were. Mrs. Lee said: "After all, what good does it do my sons that they are Light Horse Harry Lee's grandsons and George Mason's? I do not see that it helps them at all."
A friend in Washington writes me that we might have walked into Washington any day for a week after Manassas, such were the consternation and confusion there. But the god Pan was still blowing his horn in the woods. Now she says Northern troops are literally pouring in from all quarters. The horses cover acres of ground. And she thinks we have lost our chance forever.
A man named Grey (the same gentleman whom Secretary of War Walker so astonished by greeting him with, "Well, sir, and what is your business?") described the battle of the 21st as one succession of blunders, redeemed by the indomitable courage of the two-thirds who did not run away on our side. Doctor Mason said a fugitive on the other side informed him that "a million of men with the devil at their back could not have whipped the rebels at Bull Run." That's nice.
There must be opposition in a free country. But it is very uncomfortable. "United we stand, divided we fall." Mrs. Davis showed us in The New York Tribune an extract from an Augusta (Georgia) paper saying, "Cobb is our man. Davis is at heart a reconstructionist." We may be
flies on the wheel, we know our insignificance; but Mrs. Preston and myself have entered into an agreement; our oath is recorded on high. We mean to stand by our President and to stop all fault-finding with the powers that be, if we can and where we can, be the fault-finders generals or Cabinet Ministers.
August 13th. - Hon. Robert Barnwell says, "The Mercury's influence began this opposition to Jeff Davis before he had time to do wrong. They were offended, not with him so much as with the man who was put into what they considered Barnwell Rhett's rightful place. The latter had howled nullification and secession so long that when he found his ideas taken up by all the Confederate world, he felt he had a vested right to leadership."
Jordan, Beauregard's aide, still writes to Mr. Chesnut that the mortality among the raw troops in that camp is fearful. Everybody seems to be doing all they can. Think of the British sick and wounded away off in the Crimea. Our people are only a half-day's journey by rail from Richmond. With a grateful heart I record the fact of reconciliation with the Wigfalls. They dined at the President's yesterday and the little Wigfall girls stayed all night.
Seward is fêting the outsiders, the cousin of the Emperor, Napoleon III., and Russell, of the omnipotent London Times.
August 14th. - Last night there was a crowd of men to see us and they were so markedly critical. I made a futile effort to record their sayings, but sleep and heat overcame me. To-day I can not remember a word. One of Mr. Mason's stories relates to our sources of trustworthy information. A man of very respectable appearance standing on the platform at the depot, announced, "I am just from the seat of war." Out came pencil and paper from the newspaper men on the qui vive. "Is Fairfax Court House burned?" they asked. "Yes, burned yesterday." "But
I am just from there," said another; "left it standing there all right an hour or so ago." "Oh! But I must do them justice to say they burned only the tavern, for they did not want to tear up and burn anything else after the railroad." "There is no railroad at Fairfax Court House," objected the man just from Fairfax. "Oh! Indeed!" said the seat-of-war man, "I did not know that; is that so?" And he coolly seated himself and began talking of something else.
Our people are lashing themselves into a fury against the prisoners. Only the mob in any country would do that. But I am told to be quiet. Decency and propriety will not be forgotten, and the prisoners will be treated as prisoners of war ought to be in a civilized country.
August 15th. - Mrs. Randolph came. With her were the Freelands, Rose and Maria. The men rave over Mrs. Randolph's beauty; called her a magnificent specimen of the finest type of dark-eyed, rich, and glowing Southern woman-kind. Clear brunette she is, with the reddest lips, the whitest teeth, and glorious eyes; there is no other word for them. Having given Mrs. Randolph the prize among Southern beauties, Mr. Clayton said Prentiss was the finest Southern orator. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Barnwell dissented; they preferred William C. Preston. Mr. Chesnut had found Colquitt the best or most effective stump orator.
Saw Henry Deas Nott. He is just from Paris, via New York. Says New York is ablaze with martial fire. At no time during the Crimean war was there ever in Paris the show of soldiers preparing for the war such as he saw at New York. The face of the earth seemed covered with marching regiments.
Not more than 500 effective men are in Hampton's Legion, but they kept the whole Yankee army at bay until half-past two. Then just as Hampton was wounded and half his colonels shot, Cash and Kershaw (from Mrs. Smith Lee audibly, "How about Kirby Smith?") dashed in and
not only turned the tide, but would have driven the fugitives into Washington, but Beauregard recalled them. Mr. Chesnut finds all this very amusing, as he posted many of the regiments and all the time was carrying orders over the filed. The discrepancies in all these private memories amuse him, but he smiles pleasantly and lets every man tell the tale in his own way.
August 16th. - Mr. Barnwell says, Fame is an article usually home made; you must create your own puffs or superintend their manufacture. And you must see that the newspapers print your own military reports. No one else will give you half the credit you take to yourself. No one will look after your fine name before the world with the loving interest and faith you have yourself.
August 17th. - Captain Shannon, of the Kirkwood Rangers, called and stayed three hours. Has not been under fire yet, but is keen to see or to hear the flashing of the guns; proud of himself, proud of his company, but proudest of all that he has no end of the bluest blood of the low country in his troop. He seemed to find my knitting a pair of socks a day for the soldiers droll in some way. The yarn is coarse. He has been so short a time from home he does not know how the poor soldiers need them. He was so overpoweringly flattering to my husband that I found him very pleasant company.
August 18th. - Found it quite exciting to have a spy drinking his tea with us - perhaps because I knew his profession. I did not like his face. He is said to have a scheme by which Washington will fall into our hands like an overripe peach.
Mr. Barnwell urges Mr. Chesnut to remain in the Senate. There are so many generals, or men anxious to be. He says Mr. Chesnut can do his country most good by wise counsels where they are most needed. I do not say to the contrary; I dare not throw my influence on the army side, for if anything happened!
Mr. Miles told us last night that he had another letter from General Beauregard. The General wants to know if Mr. Miles has delivered his message to Colonel Kershaw. Mr. Miles says he has not done so; neither does he mean to do it. They must settle these matters of veracity according to their own military etiquette. He is a civilian once more. It is a foolish wrangle. Colonel Kershaw ought to have reported to his commander-in-chief, and not made an independent report and published it. He meant no harm. He is not yet used to the fine ways of war.
The New York Tribune is so unfair. It began by howling to get rid of us: we were so wicked. Now that we are so willing to leave them to their overrighteous self-consciousness, they cry: "Crush our enemy, or they will subjugate us." The idea that we want to invade or subjugate anybody; we would be only too grateful to be left alone. We ask no more of gods or men.
Went to the hospital with a carriage load of peaches and grapes. Made glad the hearts of some men thereby. When my supplies gave out, those who had none looked so wistfully as I passed out that I made a second raid on the market. Those eyes sunk in cavernous depths and following me from bed to bed haunt me.
Wilmot de Saussure, harrowed my soul by an account of a recent death by drowning on the beach at Sullivan's Island. Mr. Porcher, who was trying to save his sister's life, lost his own and his child's. People seem to die out of the army quite as much as in it.
Mrs. Randolph presided in all her beautiful majesty at an aid association. The ladies were old, and all wanted their own way. They were cross-grained and contradictory, and the blood mounted rebelliously into Mrs. Randolph's clear-cut cheeks, but she held her own with dignity and grace. One of the causes of disturbance was that Mrs. Randolph proposed to divide everything sent on equally with the Yankee wounded and sick prisoners. Some were enthusiastic
from a Christian point of view; some shrieked in wrath at the bare idea of putting our noble soldiers on a par with Yankees, living, dying, or dead. Fierce dames were some of them, august, severe matrons, who evidently had not been accustomed to hear the other side of any question from anybody, and just old enough to find the last pleasure in life to reside in power - the power to make their claws felt.
August 23d. - A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that "recruiting up there is dead." He came by Cincinnati and Pittsburg and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and quiet it looked like Sunday.
I asked Mr. Brewster if it were true Senator Toombs had turned brigadier. "Yes, soldiering is in the air. Every one will have a touch of it. Toombs could not stay in the Cabinet." "Why?" "Incompatibility of temper. He rides too high a horse; that is, for so despotic a person as Jeff Davis. I have tried to find out the sore, but I can't. Mr. Toombs has been out with them all for months." Dissension will break out. Everything does, but it takes a little time. There is a perfect magazine of discord and discontent in that Cabinet; only wants a hand to apply the torch, and up they go. Toombs says old Memminger has his back up as high as any.
Oh, such a day! Since I wrote this morning, I have been with Mrs. Randolph to all the hospitals. I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw there of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all; thinking, yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gilland's was the worst, with long rows of ill men on cots, ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment; on dinner-tables for eating and drinking, wounds being dressed; all the horrors to be taken in at one glance.
Then we went to the St. Charles. Horrors upon horrors again; want of organization, long rows of dead and
dying; awful sights. A boy from home had sent for me. He was dying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions as we stood there. I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad; but I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs. Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into a carriage at the door of the hospital. Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. As we drove home the doctor came along with us, I was so upset. He said: "Look at that Georgia regiment marching there; look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them, making an estimate. There is $16,000 - sixteen thousand dollars' worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases."
August 24th. - Daniel, of The Examiner, was at the President's. Wilmot de Saussure wondered if a fellow did not feel a little queer, paying his respects in person at the house of a man whom he abused daily in his newspaper.
A fiasco: an aide engaged to two young ladies in the same house. The ladies had been quarreling, but became friends unexpectedly when his treachery, among many other secrets, was revealed under that august roof. Fancy the row when it all came out.
Mr. Lowndes said we have already reaped one good result from the war. The orators, the spouters, the furious patriots, that could hardly be held down, and who were so wordily anxious to do or die for their country - they had been the pest of our lives. Now they either have not tried the battle-field at all, or have precipitately left it at their earliest convenience: for very shame we are rid of them for a while. I doubt it. Bright's speech1 is dead against us. Reading this does not brighten one.
1. 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.
August 25th. - Mr. Barnwell says democracies lead to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false; so both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits. "How about empires? Were there ever more stupendous lies than the Emperor Napoleon's?" Mr. Barnwell went on: "People dare not tell the truth in a canvass; they must conciliate their constituents. Now everybody in a democracy always wants an office; at least, everybody in Richmond just now seems to want one." Never heeding interruptions, he went on: "As a nation, the English are the most truthful in the world." "And so are our country gentlemen: they own their constituents - at least, in some of the parishes, where there are few whites; only immense estates peopled by negroes. " Thackeray speaks of the lies that were told on both sides in the British wars with France; England kept quite alongside of her rival in that fine art. England lied then as fluently as Russell lies about us now.
Went to see Agnes De Leon, my Columbia school friend. She is fresh from Egypt, and I wished to hear of the Nile, the crocodiles, the mummies, the Sphinx, and the Pyramids. But her head ran upon Washington life, such as we knew it, and her soul was here. No theme was possible but a discussion of the latest war news.
Mr. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State, says we spend two millions a week. Where is all that money to come from? They don't want us to plant cotton, but to make provisions. Now, cotton always means money, or did when there was an outlet for it and anybody to buy it. Where is money to come from now?
Mr. Barnwell's new joke, I dare say, is a Joe Miller, but Mr. Barnwell laughed in telling it till he cried. A man was fined for contempt of court and then, his case coming on, the Judge talked such arrant nonsense and was so warped in his mind against the poor man, that the "fined one" walked up and handed the august Judge a five-dollar
bill. "Why? What is that for?" said the Judge. "Oh, I feel such a contempt of this court coming on again!"
I came up tired to death; took down my hair; had it hanging over me in a Crazy Jane fashion; and sat still, hands over my head (half undressed, but too lazy and sleepy to move). I was sitting in a rocking-chair by an open window taking my ease and the cool night air, when suddenly the door opened and Captain - - - walked in. He was in the middle of the room before he saw his mistake; he stared and was transfixed, as the novels say. I dare say I looked an ancient Gorgon. Then, with a more frantic glare, he turned and fled without a word. I got up and bolted the door after him, and then looked in the glass and laughed myself into hysterics. I shall never forget to lock the door again. But it does not matter in this case. I looked totally unlike the person bearing my name, who, covered with lace cap, etc., frequents the drawing-room. I doubt if he would know me again.
August 26th. - The Terror has full swing at the North now. All the papers favorable to us have been suppressed. How long would our mob stand a Yankee paper here? But newspapers against our government, such as the Examiner and the Mercury flourish like green bay-trees. A man up to the elbows in finance said to-day: "Clayton's story is all nonsense. They do sometimes pay out two millions a week; they paid the soldiers this week, but they don't pay the soldiers every week." "Not by a long shot," cried a soldier laddie with a grin.
"Why do you write in your diary at all," some one said to me, "if, as you say, you have to contradict every day what you wrote yesterday?" "Because I tell the tale as it is told to me. I write current rumor. I do not vouch for anything."
We went to Pizzini's, that very best of Italian confectioners. From there we went to Miss Sally Tompkins's hospital, loaded with good things for the wounded. The
men under Miss Sally's kind care looked so clean and comfortable - cheerful, one might say. They were pleasant and nice to see. One, however, was dismal in tone and aspect, and he repeated at intervals with no change of words, in a forlorn monotone: "What a hard time we have had since we left home." But nobody seemed to heed his wailing, and it did not impair his appetite.
At Mrs. Toombs's, who was raging; so anti-Davis she will not even admit that the President is ill. "All humbug." "But what good could pretending to be ill do him?" "That reception now, was not that a humbug? Such a failure. Mrs. Reagan could have done better than that. "
Mrs. Walker is a Montgomery beauty, with such magnificent dresses. She was an heiress, and is so dissatisfied with Richmond, accustomed as she is to being a belle under different conditions. As she is as handsome and well dressed as ever, it must be the men who are all wrong.
"Did you give Lawrence that fifty-dollar bill to go out and change it?" I was asked. "Suppose he takes himself off to the Yankees. He would leave us with not too many fifty-dollar bills." He is not going anywhere, however. I think his situation suits him. That wadded belt of mine, with the gold pieces quilted in, has made me ashamed more than once. I leave it under my pillow and my maid finds it there and hangs it over the back of a chair, in evidence as I reenter the room after breakfast. When I forget and leave my trunk open, Lawrence brings me the keys and tells me, "You oughten to do so, Miss Mary." Mr. Chesnut leaves all his little money in his pockets, and Lawrence says that's why he can't let any one but himself brush Mars Jeems's clothes.
August 27th. - Theodore Barker and James Lowndes came; the latter has been wretchedly treated. A man said, "All that I wish on earth is to be at peace and on my own plantation," to which Mr. Lowndes replied quietly, "I
wish I had a plantation to be on, but just now I can't see how any one would feel justified in leaving the army." Mr. Barker was bitter against the spirit of braggadocio so rampant among us. The gentleman who had been answered so completely by James Lowndes said, with spitefulness: "Those women who are so frantic for their husbands to join the army would like them killed, no doubt."
Things were growing rather uncomfortable, but an interruption came in the shape of a card. An old classmate of Mr. Chesnut's - Captain Archer, just now fresh from California - followed his card so quickly that Mr. Chesnut had hardly time to tell us that in Princeton College they called him "Sally." Archer he was so pretty - when he entered. He is good-looking still, but the service and consequent rough life have destroyed all softness and girlishness. He will never be so pretty again.
The North is consolidated; they move as one man, with no States, but an army organized by the central power. Russell in the Northern camp is cursed of Yankees for that Bull Run letter. Russell, in his capacity of Englishman, despises both sides. He divides us equally into North and South. He prefers to attribute our victory at Bull Run to Yankee cowardice rather than to Southern courage. He gives no credit to either side; for good qualities, we are after all mere Americans! Everything not "national" is arrested. It looks like the business of Seward.
I do not know when I have seen a woman without knitting in her hand. Socks for the soldiers is the cry. One poor man said he had dozens of socks and but one shirt. He preferred more shirts and fewer stockings. We make a quaint appearance with this twinkling of needles and the everlasting sock dangling below.
They have arrested Wm. B. Reed and Miss Winder, she boldly proclaiming herself a secessionist. Why should she seek a martyr's crown? Writing people love notoriety. It is so delightful to be of enough consequence to be arrested.
I have often wondered if such incense was ever offered as Napoleon's so-called persecution and alleged jealousy of Madame de Staël.
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Russell once more, to whom London, Paris, and India have been an every-day sight, and every-night, too, streets and all. How absurd for him to go on in indignation because there have been women on negro plantations who were not vestal virgins. Negro women get married, and after marriage behave as well as other people. Marrying is the amusement of their lives. They take life easily; so do their class everywhere. Bad men are hated here as elsewhere.
"I hate slavery. I hate a man who - You say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this - to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters? He holds his head high and poses as the model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him. From the height of his awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. 'You with that immoral book!' he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight. You see Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes Legree a bachelor." " Remember George II. and his likes."
"Oh, I know half a Legree - a man said to be as cruel as Legree, but the other half of him did not correspond. He was a man of polished manners, and the best husband and father and member of the church in the world." "Can that be so?"
"Yes, I know it. Exceptional case, that sort of thing, always. And I knew the dissolute half of Legree well. He
was high and mighty, but the kindest creature to his slaves. And the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice-blocks. They were kept in full view, and provided for handsomely in his will."
"The wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter. They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness." "Well, yes; if he is rich he is the fountain from whence all blessings flow."
"The one I have in my eye - my half of Legree, the dissolute half - was so furious in temper and thundered his wrath so at the poor women, they were glad to let him do as he pleased in peace if they could only escape his everlasting fault-finding, and noisy bluster, making everybody so uncomfortable." "Now - now, do you know any woman of this generation who would stand that sort of thing? No, never, not for one moment. The make-believe angels were of the last century. We know, and we won't have it."
"The condition of women is improving, it seems." "Women are brought up not to judge their fathers or their husbands. They take them as the Lord provides and are thankful."
"If they should not go to heaven after all; think what lives most women lead." "No heaven, no purgatory, no - the other thing? Never. I believe in future rewards and punishments."
"How about the wives of drunkards? I heard a woman say once to a friend of her husband, tell it as a cruel matter of fact, without bitterness, without comment, 'Oh, you have not seen him! He has changed. He has not gone to bed sober in thirty years.' She has had her purgatory, if not 'the other thing,' here in this world. We all know what a drunken man is. To think, for no crime, a person
may be condemned to live with one thirty years." "You wander from the question I asked. Are Southern men worse because of the slave system and the facile black women? Not a bit. They see too much of them. The barroom people don't drink, the confectionery people loathe candy. They are sick of the black sight of them."
"You think a nice man from the South is the nicest thing in the world? I know it. Put him by any other man and see!"
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Have seen Yankee letters taken at Manassas. The spelling is often atrocious, and we thought they had all gone through a course of blue-covered Noah Webster spelling-books. Our soldiers do spell astonishingly. There is Horace Greeley: they say he can't read his own handwriting. But, he is candid enough and disregards all time-serving. He says in his paper that in our army the North has a hard nut to crack, and that the rank and file of our army is superior in education and general intelligence to theirs.
My wildest imagination will not picture Mr. Mason1 as a diplomat. He will say chaw for chew, and he will call himself Jeems, and he will wear a dress coat to breakfast. Over here, whatever a Mason does is right in his own eyes. He is above law. Somebody asked him how he pronounced his wife's maiden name: she was a Miss Chew from Philadelphia.
1. 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.
They say the English will like Mr. Mason; he is so manly, so straightforward, so truthful and bold. "A fine old English gentleman," so said Russell to me, "but for tobacco." "I like Mr. Mason and Mr. Hunter better than anybody else." "And yet they are wonderfully unlike." "Now you just listen to me," said I. "Is Mrs. Davis in hearing - no? Well, this sending Mr. Mason to London is the maddest thing yet. Worse in some points of view than Yancey, and that was a catastrophe."
August 29th. - No more feminine gossip, but the licensed slanderer, the mighty Russell, of the Times. He says the battle of the 21st was fought at long range: 500 yards apart were the combatants. The Confederates were steadily retreating when some commotion in the wagon train frightened the "Yanks," and they made tracks. In good English, they fled amain. And on our side we were too frightened to follow them - in high-flown English, to pursue the flying foe.
In spite of all this, there are glimpses of the truth sometimes, and the story leads to our credit with all the sneers and jeers. When he speaks of the Yankees' cowardice, falsehood, dishonesty, and braggadocio, the best words are in his mouth. He repeats the thrice-told tale, so often refuted and denied, that we were harsh to wounded prisoners. Dr. Gibson told me that their surgeon-general has written to thank our surgeons: Yankee officers write very differently from Russell. I know that in that hospital with the Sisters of Charity they were better off than our men were at the other hospitals: that I saw with my own eyes. These poor souls are jealously guarded night and day. It is a hideous tale - what they tell of their sufferings.
Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off and searched for papers. Bustles are "suspect." All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn; so they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs but arms are looked
for under hoops, and, sad to say, found. Then women are used as detectives and searchers, to see that no men slip over in petticoats. So the poor creatures coming this way are humiliated to the deepest degree. To men, glory, honor, praise, and power, if they are patriots. To women, daughters of Eve, punishment comes still in some shape, do what they will.
Mary Hammy's eyes were starting from her head with amazement, while a very large and handsome South Carolinian talked rapidly. "What is it?" asked I after he had gone. "Oh, what a year can bring forth - one year! Last summer you remember how he swore he was in love with me? He told you, he told me, he told everybody, and if I did refuse to marry him I believed him. Now he says he has seen, fallen in love with, courted, and married another person, and he raves of his little daughter's beauty. And they say time goes slowly" thus spoke Mary Hammy, with a sigh of wonder at his wonderful cure.
"Time works wonders," said the explainer-general. "What conclusion did you come to as to Southern men at the grand pow-wow, you know?" "They are nicer than the nicest - the gentlemen, you know. There are not too many of that kind anywhere. Ours are generous, truthful, brave, and - and - devoted to us, you know. A Southern husband is not a bad thing to have about the house."
Mrs. Frank Hampton said: "For one thing, you could not flirt with these South Carolinians. They would not stay at the tepid degree of flirtation. They grow so horridly in earnest before you know where you are." "Do you think two married people ever lived together without finding each other out? I mean, knowing exactly how good or how shabby, how weak or how strong, above all, how selfish each was?" "Yes; unless they are dolts, they know to a tittle; but you see if they have common sense they make believe and get on, so so." Like the Marchioness's orange-peel wine in Old Curiosity Shop.
A violent attack upon the North to-day in the Albion. They mean to let freedom slide a while until they subjugate us. The Albion says they use lettres de cachet, passports, and all the despotic apparatus of regal governments. Russell hears the tramp of the coming man - the king and kaiser tyrant that is to rule them. Is it McClellan? - "Little Mac"? We may tremble when he comes. We down here have only "the many-headed monster thing," armed democracy. Our chiefs quarrel among themselves.
McClellan is of a forgiving spirit. He does not resent Russell's slurs upon Yankees, but with good policy has Russell with him as a guest.
The Adonis of an aide avers, as one who knows, that "Sumter" Anderson's heart is with us; that he will not fight the South. After all is said and done that sounds like nonsense. "Sumter" Anderson's wife was a daughter of Governor Clinch, of Georgia. Does that explain it? He also told me something of Garnett (who was killed at Rich Mountain).1 He had been an unlucky man clear through. In the army before the war, the aide had found him proud, reserved, and morose, cold as an icicle to all. But for his wife and child he was a different creature. He adored them and cared for nothing else.
One day he went off on an expedition and was gone six weeks. He was out in the Northwest, and the Indians were troublesome. When he came back, his wife and child were underground. He said not one word, but they found him more frozen, stern, and isolated than ever; that was all. The night before he left Richmond he said in his quiet way: "They have not given me an adequate force. I can do nothing. They have sent me to my death." It is acknowledged
1. 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.
that he threw away his life - "a dreary-hearted man," said the aide, "and the unluckiest."
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On the front steps every evening we take our seats and discourse at our pleasure. A nicer or more agreeable set of people were never assembled than our present Arlington crowd. To-night it was Yancey1 who occupied our tongues. Send a man to England who had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl! That was not knowing England or Englishmen, surely. Who wants eloquence? We want somebody who can hold his tongue. People avoid great talkers, men who orate, men given to monologue, as they would avoid fire, famine, or pestilence. Yancey will have no mobs to harangue. No stump speeches will be possible, superb as are his of their kind, but little quiet conversation is best with slow, solid, common-sense people, who begin to suspect as soon as any flourish of trumpets meets their ear. If Yancey should use his fine words, who would care for them over there?
Commodore Barron, when he was a middy, accompanied Phil Augustus Stockton to claim his bride. He, the said Stockton, had secretly wedded a fair heiress (Sally Cantey). She was married by a magistrate and returned to Mrs. Grillaud's boarding-school until it was time to go home - that is, to Camden.
Lieutenant Stockton (a descendant of the Signer) was the handsomest man in the navy, and irresistible. The bride was barely sixteen. When he was to go down South among those fire-eaters and claim her, Commodore Barron, then his intimate friend, went as his backer. They were to announce the marriage and defy the guardians. Commodore
1. 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.
Barron said he anticipated a rough job of it all, but they were prepared for all risks. "You expected to find us a horde of savages, no doubt," said I. "We did not expect to get off under a half-dozen duels." They looked for insults from every quarter and they found a polished and refined people who lived en prince, to say the least of it. They were received with a cold, stately, and faultless politeness, which made them feel as if they had been sheep-stealing.
The young lady had confessed to her guardians and they were for making the best of it; above all, for saving her name from all gossip or publicity. Colonel John Boykin, one of them, took Young Lochinvar to stay with him. His friend, Barron, was also a guest. Colonel Deas sent for a parson, and made assurance doubly sure by marrying them over again. Their wish was to keep things quiet and not to make a nine-days' wonder of the young lady.
Then came balls, parties, and festivities without end. He was enchanted with the easy-going life of these people, with dinners the finest in the world, deer-hunting, and fox-hunting, dancing, and pretty girls, in fact everything that heart could wish. But then, said Commodore Barron, "the better it was, and the kinder the treatment, the more ashamed I grew of my business down there. After all, it was stealing an heiress, you know."
I told him how the same fate still haunted that estate in Camden. Mr. Stockton sold it to a gentleman, who later sold it to an old man who had married when near eighty, and who left it to the daughter born of that marriage. This pretty child of his old age was left an orphan quite young. At the age of fifteen, she ran away and married a boy of seventeen, a canny Scotchman. The young couple lived to grow up, and it proved after all a happy marriage. This last heiress left six children; so the estate will now be divided, and no longer tempt the fortune-hunters.
The Commodore said: "To think how we two youngsters
in our blue uniforms went down there to bully those people." He was much at Colonel Chesnut's. Mrs. Chesnut being a Philadelphian, he was somewhat at ease with them. It was the most thoroughly appointed establishment he had then ever visited.
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Went with our leviathan of loveliness to a ladies' meeting. No scandal to-day, no wrangling, all harmonious, everybody knitting. Dare say that soothing occupation helped our perturbed spirits to be calm. Mrs. C - - is lovely, a perfect beauty. Said Brewster: "In Circassia, think what a price would be set upon her, for there beauty sells by the pound!"
Coming home the following conversation: "So Mrs. Blank thinks purgatory will hold its own - never be abolished while women and children have to live with drunken fathers and brothers." "She knows." "She is too bitter. She says worse than that. She says we have an institution worse than the Spanish Inquisition, worse than Torquemada, and all that sort of thing." "What does she mean?" "You ask her. Her words are sharp arrows. I am a dull creature, and I should spoil all by repeating what she says."
"It is your own family that she calls the familiars of the Inquisition. She declares that they set upon you, fall foul of you, watch and harass you from morn till dewy eve. They have a perfect right to your life, night and day, unto the fourth and fifth generation. They drop in at breakfast and say, 'Are you not imprudent to eat that?' 'Take care now, don't overdo it.' 'I think you eat too much so early in the day.' And they help themselves to the only thing you care for on the table. They abuse your friends and tell you it is your duty to praise your enemies. They tell you of all your faults candidly, because they love you so; that gives them a right to speak. What family
interest they take in you. You ought to do this; you ought to do that, and then the everlasting 'you ought to have done,' which comes near making you a murderer, at least in heart. 'Blood's thicker than water,' they say, and there is where the longing to spill it comes in. No locks or bolts or bars can keep them out. Are they not your nearest family? They dine with you, dropping in after you are at soup. They come after you have gone to bed, when all the servants have gone away, and the man of the house, in his nightshirt, standing sternly at the door with the huge wooden bar in his hand, nearly scares them to death, and you are glad of it."
"Private life, indeed!" She says her husband entered public life and they went off to live in a far-away city. Then for the first time in her life she knew privacy. She never will forget how she jumped for joy as she told her servant not to admit a soul until after two o'clock in the day. Afterward, she took a fixed day at home. Then she was free indeed. She could read and write, stay at home, go out at her own sweet will, no longer sitting for hours with her fingers between the leaves of a frantically interesting book, while her kin slowly driveled nonsense by the yard - waiting, waiting, yawning. Would they never go? Then for hurting you, who is like a relative? They do it from a sense of duty. For stinging you, for cutting you to the quick, who like one of your own household? In point of fact, they alone can do it. They know the sore, and how to hit it every time. You are in their power. She says, did you ever see a really respectable, responsible, revered and beloved head of a family who ever opened his mouth at home except to find fault? He really thinks that is his business in life and that all enjoyment is sinful. He is there to prevent the women from such frivolous things as pleasure, etc., etc.
I sat placidly rocking in my chair by the window, trying to hope all was for the best. Mary Hammy rushed in
literally drowned in tears. I never saw so drenched a face in my life. My heart stopped still. "Commodore Barron is taken prisoner," said she. "The Yankees have captured him and all his lieutenants. Poor Imogen - and there is my father scouting about, the Lord knows where. I only know he is in the advance guard. The Barron's time has come. Mine may come any minute. Oh, Cousin Mary, when Mrs. Lee told Imogen, she fainted! Those poor girls; they are nearly dead with trouble and fright."
"Go straight back to those children," I said. "Nobody will touch a hair of their father's head. Tell them I say so. They dare not. They are not savages quite. This is a civilized war, you know."
Mrs. Lee said to Mrs. Eustis (Mr. Corcoran's daughter) yesterday: "Have you seen those accounts of arrests in Washington?" Mrs. Eustis answered calmly: "Yes, I know all about it. I suppose you allude to the fact that my father has been imprisoned." "No, no," interrupted the explainer, "she means the incarceration of those mature Washington belles suspected as spies." But Mrs. Eustis continued, "I have no fears for my father's safety."
August 31st. - Congress adjourns to-day. Jeff Davis ill. We go home on Monday if I am able to travel. Already I feel the dread stillness and torpor of our Sahara of a Sand Hill creeping into my veins. It chills the marrow of my bones. I am reveling in the noise of city life. I know what is before me. Nothing more cheering than the cry of the lone whippoorwill will break the silence at Sandy Hill, except as night draws near, when the screech-owl will add his mournful note.
September 1st. - North Carolina writes for arms for her soldiers. Have we any to send? No. Brewster, the plainspoken, says, "The President is ill, and our affairs are in the hands of noodles. All the generals away with the army; nobody here; General Lee in Western Virginia. Reading the third Psalm. The devil is sick, the devil a
saint would be. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me!"
September 2d. - Mr. Miles says he is not going anywhere at all, not even home. He is to sit here permanently - chairman of a committee to overhaul camps, commissariats, etc., etc.
We exchanged our ideas of Mr. Mason, in which we agreed perfectly. In the first place, he has a noble presence - really a handsome man; is a manly old Virginian, straightforward, brave, truthful, clever, the very beau-ideal of an independent, high-spirited F. F. V. If the English value a genuine man they will have one here. In every particular he is the exact opposite of Talleyrand. He has some peculiarities. He had never an ache or a pain himself; his physique is perfect, and he loudly declares that he hates to see persons ill; seems to him an unpardonable weakness.
It began to grow late. Many people had come to say good-by to me. I had fever as usual to-day, but in the excitement of this crowd of friends the invalid forgot fever. Mr. Chesnut held up his watch to me warningly and intimated "it was late, indeed, for one who has to travel tomorrow." So, as the Yankees say after every defeat, I "retired in good order."
Not quite, for I forgot handkerchief and fan. Gonzales rushed after and met me at the foot of the stairs. In his foreign, pathetic, polite, high-bred way, he bowed low and said he had made an excuse for the fan, for he had a present to make me, and then, though "startled and amazed, I paused and on the stranger gazed." Alas! I am a woman approaching forty, and the offering proved to be a bottle of cherry bounce. Nothing could have been more opportune, and with a little ice, etc., will help, I am sure, to save my life on that dreadful journey home.
No discouragement now felt at the North. They take our forts and are satisfied for a while. Then the English
are strictly neutral. Like the woman who saw her husband fight the bear, "It was the first fight she ever saw when she did not care who whipped."
Mr. Davis was very kind about it all. He told Mr. Chesnut to go home and have an eye to all the State defenses, etc., and that he would give him any position he asked for if he still wished to continue in the army. Now, this would be all that heart could wish, but Mr. Chesnut will never ask for anything. What will he ask for? That's the rub. I am certain of very few things in life now, but this is one I am certain of : Mr. Chesnut will never ask mortal man for any promotion for himself or for one of his own family.
