XX. CHESTER, S. C.
March 21, 1865 - May 1, 1865
CHESTER, S. C., March 21,1865.-Another flitting has occurred. Captain Ogden came for me; the splendid Childs was true as steel to the last. Surely he is the kindest of men. Captain Ogden was slightly incredulous when I depicted the wonders of Colonel Childs's generosity. So I skilfully led out the good gentleman for inspection, and he walked to the train with us. He offered me Confederate money, silver, and gold; and finally offered to buy our cotton and pay us now in gold. Of course, I laughed at his overflowing bounty, and accepted nothing; but I begged him to come down to Chester or Camden and buy our cotton of General Chesnut there.
On the train after leaving Lincolnton, as Captain Ogden is a refugee, has had no means of communicating with his home since New Orleans fell, and was sure to know how refugees contrive to live, I beguiled the time acquiring information from him. "When people are without a cent, how do they live?" I asked. "I am about to enter the noble band of homeless, houseless refugees, and Confederate pay does not buy one's shoe-strings." To which he replied, "Sponge, sponge. Why did you not let Colonel Childs pay your bills?" "I have no bills," said I. "We have never made bills anywhere, not even at home, where they would trust us, and nobody would trust me in Lincolnton." "Why did you not borrow his money? General Chesnut could pay him at his leisure?" "I am by no
means sure General Chesnut will ever again have any money," said I.
As the train rattled and banged along, and I waved my handkerchief in farewell to Miss Middleton, Isabella, and other devoted friends, I could only wonder if fate would ever throw me again with such kind, clever, agreeable, congenial companions, The McLeans refused to be paid for their rooms. No plummet can sound the depths of the hospitality and kindness of the North Carolina people.
Misfortune dogged us from the outset. Everything went wrong with the train. We broke down within two miles of Charlotte, and had to walk that distance; which was pretty rough on an invalid barely out of a fever. My spirit was further broken by losing an invaluable lace veil, which was worn because I was too poor to buy a cheaper one - that is, if there were any veils at all for sale in our region.
My husband had ordered me to a house in Charlotte kept by some great friends of his. They established me in the drawing-room, a really handsome apartment; they made up a bed there and put in a washstand and plenty of water, with everything refreshingly clean and nice. But it continued to be a public drawing-room, open to all, so that I was half dead at night and wanted to go to bed. The piano was there and the company played it.
The landlady announced, proudly, that for supper there were nine kinds of custard. Custard sounded nice and light, so I sent for some, but found it heavy potato pie. I said: "Ellen, this may kill me, though Dover's powder did not." "Don't you believe dat, Missis; try." We barricaded ourselves in the drawing-room that night and left the next day at dawn. Arrived at the station, we had another disappointment; the train was behind time. There we sat on our boxes nine long hours; for the cars might come at any moment, and we dared not move an inch from the spot.
Finally the train rolled in overloaded with paroled
prisoners, but heaven helped us: a kind mail agent invited us, with two other forlorn women, into his comfortable and clean mail-car. Ogden, true to his theory, did not stay at the boarding-house as we did. Some Christian acquaintances took him in for the night. This he explained with a grin.
My husband was at the Chester station with a carriage. We drove at once to Mrs. Da Vega's.
March 24th.-I have been ill, but what could you expect? My lines, however, have again fallen in pleasant places. Mrs. Da Vega is young, handsome, and agreeable, a kind and perfect hostess; and as to the house, my room is all that I could ask and leaves nothing to be desired; so very fresh, clean, warm, and comfortable is it. It is the drawing-room suddenly made into a bedroom for me. But it is my very own. We are among the civilized of the earth once more.
March 27th. - I have moved again, and now I am looking from a window high, with something more to see than the sky. We have the third story of Dr. Da Vega's house, which opens on the straight street that leads to the railroad about a mile off.
Mrs. Bedon is the loveliest of young widows. Yesterday at church Isaac Hayne nestled so close to her cap-strings that I had to touch him and say, "Sit up!" Josiah Bedon was killed in that famous fight of the Charleston Light Dragoons. The dragoons stood still to be shot down in their; tracks, having no orders to retire. They had been forgotten, doubtless, and they scorned to take care of themselves.
In this high and airy retreat, as in Richmond, then in Columbia, and then in Lincolnton, my cry is still: If they would only leave me here in peace and if I were sure things never could be worse with me. Again am I surrounded by old friends. People seem to vie with each other to show how good they can be to me.
To-day Smith opened the trenches and appeared laden
with a tray covered with a snow-white napkin. Here was my first help toward housekeeping again. Mrs. Pride has sent a boiled ham, a loaf of bread, a huge pancake; another neighbor coffee already parched and ground; a loaf of sugar already cracked; candles, pickles, and all the other things one must trust to love for now. Such money as we have avails us nothing, even if there were anything left in the shops to buy.
We had a jolly luncheon. James Lowndes called, the best of good company. He said of Buck, "She is a queen, and ought to reign in a palace. No Prince Charming yet; no man has yet approached her that I think half good enough for her."
Then Mrs. Prioleau Hamilton, née Levy, came with the story of family progress, not a royal one, from Columbia here: "Before we left home," said she, "Major Hamilton spread a map of the United States on the table, and showed me with his finger where Sherman was likely to go. Womanlike, I demurred. 'But, suppose he does not choose to go that way?' 'Pooh, pooh! what do you know of war?' So we set out, my husband, myself, and two children, all in one small buggy. The 14th of February we took up our line of march, and straight before Sherman's men for five weeks we fled together. By incessant hurrying and scurrying from pillar to post, we succeeded in acting as a sort of avant-courier of the Yankee army. Without rest and with much haste, we got here last Wednesday, and here we mean to stay and defy Sherman and his legions. Much the worse for wear were we."
The first night their beauty sleep was rudely broken into at Alston with a cry, "Move on, the Yanks are upon us!" So they hurried on, half-awake, to Winnsboro, but with no better luck. There they had to lighten the ship, leave trunks, etc., and put on all sail, for this time the Yankees were only five miles behind. "Whip and spur, ride for your life!" was the cry. "Sherman's objective point
seemed to be our buggy," said she; "for you know that when we got to Lancaster Sherman was expected there, and he keeps his appointments; that is, he kept that one. Two small children were in our chariot, and I began to think of the Red Sea expedition. But we lost no time, and soon we were in Cheraw, clearly out of the track. We thanked God for all his mercies and hugged to our bosoms fond hopes of a bed and bath so much needed by all, especially for the children.
"At twelve o'clock General Hardee himself knocked us up with word to 'March! march!' for 'all the blue bonnets are over the border.' In mad haste we made for Fayetteville, when they said: 'God bless your soul! This is the seat of war now; the battle-ground where Sherman and Johnston are to try conclusions.' So we harked back, as the hunters say, and cut across country, aiming for this place. Clean clothes, my dear? Never a one except as we took off garment by garment and washed it and dried it by our camp fire, with our loins girded and in haste." I was snug and comfortable all that time in Lincolnton.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
To-day Stephen D. Lee's corps marched through - only to surrender. The camp songs of these men were a heartbreak; so sad, yet so stirring. They would have warmed the blood of an Icelander. The leading voice was powerful, mellow, clear, distinct, pathetic, sweet. So, I sat down, as women have done before, when they hung up their harps by strange streams, and I wept the bitterness of such weeping. Music? Away, away! Thou speakest to me of things which in all my long life I have not found, and I shall not find. There they go, the gay and gallant few, doomed; the last gathering of the flower of Southern pride, to be killed, or worse, to a prison. They continue to prance by, light and jaunty. They march with as airy a tread as if they still believed the world was all on their side, and that there were
no Yankee bullets for the unwary. What will Joe Johnston do with them now?
The Hood melodrama is over, though the curtain has not fallen on the last scene. Cassandra croaks and makes many mistakes, but to-day she believes that Hood stock is going down. When that style of enthusiasm is on the wane, the rapidity of its extinction is miraculous. It is like the snuffing out of a candle; "one moment white, then gone forever." No, that is not right; it is the snow-flake on the river that is referred to. I am getting things as much mixed as do the fine ladies of society.
Lee and Johnston have each fought a drawn battle; only a few more dead bodies lie stiff and stark on an unknown battle-field. For we do not so much as know where these drawn battles took place.
Teddy Barnwell, after sharing with me my first luncheon, failed me cruelly. He was to come for me to go down to the train and see Isabella pass by. One word with Isabella worth a thousand ordinary ones! So, she has gone by and I've not seen her.
Old Colonel Chesnut refuses to say grace; but as he leaves the table audibly declares, "I thank God for a good dinner." When asked why he did this odd thing he said: "My way is to be sure of a thing before I return thanks for it." Mayor Goodwyn thanked Sherman for promised protection to Columbia; soon after, the burning began.
I received the wife of a post-office robber. The poor thing had done no wrong, and I felt so sorry for her. Who would be a woman? Who that fool, a weeping, pining, faithful woman? She hath hard measures still when she hopes kindest. And all her beauty only makes ingrates!
March 29th. - I was awakened with a bunch of violets from Mrs. Pride. Violets always remind me of Kate and of the sweet South wind that blew in the garden of paradise part of my life. Then, it all came back: the dread unspeakable that lies behind every thought now.
Thursday. - I find I have not spoken of the box-car which held the Preston party that day on their way to York from Richmond. In the party were Mr. and Mrs. Lawson Clay, General and Mrs. Preston and their three daughters, Captain Rodgers, and Mr. Portman, whose father is an English earl, and connected financially and happily with Portman Square. In my American ignorance I may not state Mr. Portman's case plainly. Mr. Portman is, of course, a younger son. Then there was Cellie and her baby and wet-nurse, with no end of servants, male and female. In this ark they slept, ate, and drank, such being the fortune of war. We were there but a short time, but Mr. Portman, during that brief visit of ours, was said to have eaten three luncheons, and the number of his drinks, toddies, so called, were counted, too. Mr. Portman's contribution to the larder had been three small pigs. They were, however, run over by the train, and made sausage meat of unduly and before their time.
General Lee says to the men who shirk duty, "This is the people's war; when they tire, I stop." Wigfall says, "It is all over; the game is up." He is on his way to Texas, and when the hanging begins he can step over into Mexico.
I am plucking up heart, such troops do I see go by every day. They must turn the tide, and surely they are going for something more than surrender. It is very late, and the wind flaps my curtain, which seems to moan, "Too late." All this will end by making me a nervous lunatic.
Yesterday while I was driving with Mrs. Pride, Colonel McCaw passed us! He called out, "I do hope you are in comfortable quarters." "Very comfortable," I replied. "Oh, Mrs. Chesnut!" said Mrs. Pride, "how can you say that?" "Perfectly comfortable, and hope it may never be worse with me," said I. "I have a clean little parlor, 16 by 18, with its bare floor well scrubbed, a dinner-table, six chairs, and - well, that is all; but I have a charming lookout
from my window high. My world is now thus divided into two parts - where Yankees are and where Yankees are not."
As I sat disconsolate, looking out, ready for any new tramp of men and arms, the magnificent figure of General Preston hove in sight. He was mounted on a mighty steed, worthy of its rider, followed by his trusty squire, William Walker, who bore before him the General's portmanteau. When I had time to realize the situation, I perceived at General Preston's right hand Mr. Christopher Hampton and Mr. Portman, who passed by. Soon Mrs. Pride, in some occult way, divined or heard that they were coming here, and she sent me at once no end of good things for my tea-table. General Preston entered very soon after, and with him Clement Clay, of Alabama, the latter in pursuit of his wife's trunk. I left it with the Rev. Mr. Martin, and have no doubt it is perfectly safe, but where? We have written to Mr. Martin to inquire. Then Wilmot de Saussure appeared. "I am here," he said, "to consult with General Chesnut. He and I always think alike." He added, emphatically: "Slavery is stronger than ever." "If you think so," said I, "you will find that for once you and General Chesnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery was a thing of the past, this many a year."
I said to General Preston: "I pass my days and nights partly at this window. I am sure our army is silently dispersing. Men are moving the wrong way, all the time. They slip by with no songs and no shouts now. They have given the thing up. See for yourself. Look there." For a while the streets were thronged with soldiers and then they were empty again. But the marching now is without tap of drum.
March 31st. - Mr. Prioleau Hamilton told us of a great adventure. Mrs. Preston was put under his care on the train. He soon found the only other women along were "strictly unfortunate females," as Carlyle calls them, beautiful and aggressive. He had to communicate the unpleasant fact to
Mrs. Preston, on account of their propinquity, and was lost in admiration of her silent dignity, her quiet self-possession, her calmness, her deafness and blindness, her thoroughbred ignoring of all that she did not care to see. Some women, no matter how ladylike, would have made a fuss or would have fidgeted, but Mrs. Preston dominated the situation and possessed her soul in innocence and peace.
Met Robert Johnston from Camden. He has been a prisoner, having been taken at Camden. The Yankees robbed Zack Cantey of his forks and spoons. When Zack did not seem to like it, they laughed at him. When he said he did not see any fun in it, they pretended to weep and wiped their eyes with their coat-tails. All this maddening derision Zack said was as hard to bear as it was to see them ride off with his horse, Albine. They stole all of Mrs. Zack's jewelry and silver. When the Yankee general heard of it he wrote her a very polite note, saying how sorry he was that she had been annoyed, and returned a bundle of Zack's love-letters, written to her before she was married. Robert Johnston said Miss Chesnut was a brave and determined spirit. One Yankee officer came in while they were at breakfast and sat down to warm himself at the fire. "Rebels have no rights," Miss Chesnut said to him politely. "I suppose you have come to rob us. Please do so and go. Your presence agitates my blind old father." The man jumped up in a rage, and said, "What do you take me for - a robber?" "No, indeed," said she, and for very shame he marched out empty-handed.
April 3d. - Saw General Preston ride off. He came to tell me good-by. I told him he looked like a Crusader on his great white horse, with William, his squire, at his heels. Our men are all consummate riders, and have their servants well mounted behind them, carrying cloaks and traps - how different from the same men packed like sardines in dirty railroad cars, usually floating inch deep in liquid tobacco juice.
For the kitchen and Ellen's comfort I wanted a pine table and a kitchen chair. A woman sold me one to-day for three thousand Confederate dollars.
Mrs. Hamilton has been disappointed again. Prioleau Hamilton says the person into whose house they expected to move to-day came to say she could not take boarders for three reasons: First, "that they had smallpox in the house." "And the two others?" "Oh, I did not ask for the two others!"
April 5th. - Miss Middleton's letter came in answer to mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me. "We long," she says, "for our own small sufficiency of wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle unto death, although the neighbors continue to feed us, as you would say, 'with a spoon.' We have fallen upon a new device. We keep a cookery book on the mantelpiece, and when the dinner is deficient we just read off a pudding or a creme. It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this dessert in imagination, but perhaps it is as good for the digestion."
As I was ready to go, though still up-stairs, some one came to say General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton cried out, "Send word you are not at home." "Never!" said I. "Why make him climb all these stairs when you must go in five minutes?" "If he had come here dragging Sherman as a captive at his chariot wheels I might say 'not at home,' but not now." And I ran down and greeted him on the sidewalk in the face of all, and walked slowly beside him as he toiled up the weary three stories, limping gallantly. He was so well dressed and so cordial; not depressed in the slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report self-defense; says Joe Johnston attacked him and he was obliged to state things from his point of view. And now follow statements, where one may read between the lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in Western Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned because he and Joe Johnston were not on cordial terms, and as the
fatigue of the mountain campaign would be too great for him, he would like the chance of going across the Mississippi. Texas was true to him, and would be his home, as it had voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General Lee is utterly despondent, and has no plan if Richmond goes, as go it must.
April 7th. - Richmond has fallen and I have no heart to write about it. Grant broke through our lines and Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville. They are too many for us. Everything is lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue black is our horizon. Hood says we shall all be obliged to go West - to Texas, I mean, for our own part of the country will be overrun.
Yes, a solitude and a wild waste it may become, but, as to that, we can rough it in the bush at home.
De Fontaine, in his newspaper, continues the old cry. "Now Richmond is given up," he says, "it was too heavy a load to carry, and we are stronger than ever." "Stronger than ever?" Nine-tenths of our army are under ground and where is another army to come from? Will they wait until we grow one?
April 15th.-What a week it has been - madness, sadness, anxiety, turmoil, ceaseless excitement. The Wigfalls passed through on their way to Texas. We did not see them. Louly told Hood they were bound for the Rio Grande, and intended to shake hands with Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. Yankees were expected here every minute. Mrs. Davis came. We went down to the cars at daylight to receive her. She dined with me. Lovely Winnie, the baby, came, too. Buck and Hood were here, and that queen of women, Mary Darby. Clay behaved like a trump. He was as devoted to Mrs. Davis in her adversity as if they had never quarreled in her prosperity. People sent me things for Mrs. Davis, as they did in Columbia for Mr. Davis. It was a luncheon or breakfast only she stayed for here. Mrs. Brown prepared a dinner for her at the station.
I went down with her. She left here at five o'clock. My heart was like lead, but we did not give way. She was as calm and smiling as ever. It was but a brief glimpse of my dear Mrs. Davis, and under altered skies.
April 17th. - A letter from Mrs. Davis, who writes: "Do come to me, and see how we get on. I shall have a spare room by the time you arrive, indifferently furnished, but, oh, so affectionately placed at your service. You will receive such a loving welcome. One perfect bliss have I. The baby, who grows fat and is smiling always, is christened, and not old enough to develop the world's vices or to be snubbed by it. The name so long delayed is Varina Anne. My name is a heritage of woe.
"Are you delighted with your husband? I am delighted with him as well as with my own. It is well to lose an Arabian horse if one elicits such a tender and at the same time knightly letter as General Chesnut wrote to my poor old Prometheus. I do not think that for a time he felt the vultures after the reception of the General's letter.
"I hear horrid reports about Richmond. It is said that all below Ninth Street to the Rocketts has been burned by the rabble, who mobbed the town. The Yankee performances have not been chronicled. May God take our cause into His own hands."
April 19th. - Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed up-stairs, pale as a sheet, saying, "General Lee has capitulated," I saw it reflected in Mary Darby's face before I heard him speak. She staggered to the table, sat down, and wept aloud. Mr. Clay's eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself Mary shrieked, "Now we belong to negroes and Yankees!" Buck said, "I do not believe it."
How different from ours of them is their estimate of us. How contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the despised and iniquitous South within their borders, as part of their country, they are willing to enlist millions of men at home and abroad, and to spend billions, and we know
they do not love fighting per se, nor spending money. They are perfectly willing to have three killed for our one. We hear they have all grown rich, through "shoddy," whatever that is. Genuine Yankees can make a fortune trading jack-knives.
"Somehow it is borne in on me that we will have to pay the piper," was remarked to-day. "No; blood can not be squeezed from a turnip. You can not pour anything out of an empty cup. We have no money even for taxes or to be confiscated."
While the Preston girls are here, my dining-room is given up to them, and we camp on the landing, with our one table and six chairs. Beds are made on the dining-room floor. Otherwise there is no furniture, except buckets of water and bath-tubs in their improvised chamber. Night and day this landing and these steps are crowded with the élite of the Confederacy, going and coming, and when night comes, or rather, bedtime, more beds are made on the floor of the landing-place for the war-worn soldiers to rest upon. The whole house is a bivouac. As Pickens said of South Carolina in 1861, we are "an armed camp."
My husband is rarely at home. I sleep with the girls, and my room is given up to soldiers. General Lee's few, but undismayed, his remnant of an army, or the part from the South and West, sad and crestfallen, pass through Chester. Many discomfited heroes find their way up these stairs. They say Johnston will not be caught as Lee was. He can retreat; that is his trade. If he would not fight Sherman in the hill country of Georgia, what will he do but retreat in the plains of North Carolina with Grant, Sherman, and Thomas all to the fore?
We are to stay here. Running is useless now; so we mean to bide a Yankee raid, which they say is imminent. Why fly? They are everywhere, these Yankees, like red ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues of Egypt.
The plucky way in which our men keep up is beyond praise. There is no howling, and our poverty is made a matter of laughing. We deride our own penury. Of the country we try not to speak at all.
April 22d. - This yellow Confederate quire of paper, my journal, blotted by entries, has been buried three days with the silver sugar-dish, teapot, milk-jug, and a few spoons and forks that follow my fortunes as I wander. With these valuables was Hood's silver cup, which was partly crushed when he was wounded at Chickamauga.
It has been a wild three days, with aides galloping around with messages, Yankees hanging over us like a sword of Damocles. We have been in queer straits. We sat up at Mrs. Bedon's dressed, without once going to bed for forty-eight hours, and we were aweary.
Colonel Cadwallader Jones came with a despatch, a sealed secret despatch. It was for General Chesnut. I opened it. Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, has been killed, murdered, and Seward wounded! Why? By whom? It is simply maddening, all this.
I sent off messenger after messenger for General Chesnut. I have not the faintest idea where he is, but I know this foul murder will bring upon us worse miseries. Mary Darby says, "But they murdered him themselves. No Confederates are in Washington." "But if they see fit to accuse us of instigating it?" "Who murdered him? Who knows?" "See if they don't take vengeance on us, now that we are ruined and can not repel them any longer."
The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last President put to death in the capital, though he is the first.
Buck never submits to be bored. The bores came to tea at Mrs. Bedon's, and then sat and talked, so prosy, so wearisome was the discourse, so endless it seemed, that we envied Buck, who was mooning on the piazza. She rarely speaks now.
A NEWSPAPER EXTRA.
HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS!
AN ARMISTICE AGREED
UPON!!!
Lincoln Assassinated and Seward Mortally Wounded in Washington!!
GREENSBORO, April 19, 1865.
GENERAL ORDER NO. 14.
It is announced to the Army that a suspension of arms has been agreed upon pending negotiations between the two Governments.
During its continuance the two armies are to occupy their present position.
By command of General Johnston:
[SIGNED,] ARCHER ANDERSON, Lieut. Col. and A. A. G.
Offficial Copy: ISAAC HAYNE.
WASHINGTON, April 12, 1865
TO MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN:
President Lincoln was murdered, about ten o'clock last night, in his private box at Ford's Theatre, in this city, by an assassin, who shot him in the head with a pistol ball. At the same hour Mr. Seward's house was entered by another assassin, who stabbed the Secretary in several places. It is thought he may possibly recover, but his son Fred may possibly die of the wounds he received.
The assassin of the President leaped from the private box, brandishing his dagger and exclaiming: "Sic Semper Tyrannis--VIRGINIA IS REVENGED!" Mr. Lincoln fell senseless from his seat, and continued in that condition until 22 minutes past 10 o'clock this morning, at which time he breathed his last.
Vice President Johnson now becomes President, and will take the oath of office and assume the duties to-day.
[SIGNED,] E. M. STANTON
TO THE CITIZENS OF CHESTER.
CHESTER, S.C., April 22, 1865
FLOUR and MEAL given out to the citizens by order of Major MITCHELL, Chief Commissary of South Carolina, to be returned when called for, is badly wanted to ration General Johnston's army. Please return the same at once.
E. M. GRAHAM, Agent Subsistence Dep't.
HEADQUARTERS RESERVE FORCES S. C.
CHESTERVILLE, APRIL 20, 1865
The Brigadier-General Commanding has been informed that, in view of the approach of the enemy, a large quantity of supplies of various kinds were given out by the various Government officers at this post to the citizens of the place. He now calls upon, and earnestly requests all citizens, who may have such stores in their possession, to return them to the several Departments to which they belong. The stores are much needed at this time for the use of soldiers, passing through the place, and for the sick at the Hospital.
By command of Brig. Gen. Chesnut:
M. R. CLARK, Major and A. A. General.
April 23d. - My silver wedding-day, and I am sure the unhappiest day of my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher Hampton. Portman told of Miss Kate Hampton, who is perhaps the most thoroughly ladylike person in the world. When he told her that Lee had surrendered she started up from her seat and said, "That is a lie." "Well, Miss Hampton, I tell the tale as it was told me. I can do no more."
No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry has been destroyed by a corps commanded by General Logan. Some one asked coolly, "Will General Chesnut be shot as a soldier, or hung as a senator?" "I am not of sufficient consequence," answered he. "They will stop short of brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States Senate weeks before there was any secession. So I can not be hung as a senator. But after all it is only a choice between drumhead court martial, short shrift, and a lingering death at home from starvation."
These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask they wear does not show a ripple of change; they are sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to keep for a week or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they had been garden peas.
Mrs. Huger was in church in Richmond when the news of the surrender came. Worshipers were in the midst of the communion service. Mr. McFarland was called out to send away the gold from his bank. Mr. Minnegerode's English grew confused. Then the President was summoned, and distress of mind showed itself in every face. The night before one of General Lee's aides, Walter Taylor, was married, and was off to the wars immediately after the ceremony.
One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked down hill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis's
grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted plantations, sacked villages. "You seem resolute to look the worst in the face," said General Chesnut, wearily. "Yes, poverty, with no future and no hope." "But no slaves, thank God!" cried Buck. "We would be the scorn of the world if the world thought of us at all. You see, we are exiles and paupers." "Pile on the agony." "How does our famous captain, the great Lee, bear the Yankees' galling chain?" I asked. "He knows how to possess his soul in patience," answered my husband. "If there were no such word as subjugation, no debts, no poverty, no negro mobs backed by Yankees; if all things were well, you would shiver and feel benumbed," he went on, pointing at me in an oratorical attitude. "Your sentence is pronounced - Camden for life."
May 1st. - In Chester still. I climb these steep steps alone. They have all gone, all passed by. Buck went with Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary, Mrs. Huger, and Pinckney took flight together. One day just before they began to dissolve in air, Captain Gay was seated at the table, halfway between me on the top step and John in the window, with his legs outside. Said some one to-day, "She showed me her engagement ring, and I put it back on her hand. She is engaged, but not to me." "By the heaven that is above us all, I saw you kiss her hand." "That I deny." Captain Gay glared in angry surprise, and insisted that he had seen it. "Sit down, Gay," said the cool captain in his most mournful way. "You see, my father died when I was a baby, and my grandfather took me in hand. To him I owe this moral maxim. He is ninety years old, a wise old man. Now, remember my grandfather's teaching forevermore - 'A gentleman must not kiss and tell.' "
General Preston came to say good-by. He will take his family abroad at once. Burnside, in New Orleans, owes him some money and will pay it. "There will be no more confiscation, my dear madam," said he; "they must see that we have been punished enough." "They do not think
so, my dear general. This very day a party of Federals passed in hot pursuit of our President."
A terrible fire-eater, one of the few men left in the world who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans, who are black, in bonds forever; he is six feet two; an athlete; a splendid specimen of the animal man; but he has never been under fire; his place in the service was a bomb-proof office, so-called. With a face red-hot with rage he denounced Jeff Davis and Hood. "Come, now," said Edward, the handsome, "men who could fight and did not, they are the men who ruined us. We wanted soldiers. If the men who are cursing Jeff Davis now had fought with Hood, and fought as Hood fought, we'd be all right now."
And then he told of my trouble one day while Hood was here. "Just such a fellow as you came up on this little platform, and before Mrs. Chesnut could warn him, began to heap insults on Jeff Davis and his satrap, Hood. Mrs. Chesnut held up her hands. 'Stop, not another ward. You shall not abuse my friends here! Not Jeff Davis behind his back, not Hood to his face, for he is in that room and hears you.' " Fancy how dumfounded this creature was.
Mrs. Huger told a story of Joe Johnston in his callow days before he was famous. After an illness Johnston's hair all fell out; not a hair was left on his head, which shone like a fiery cannon-ball. One of the gentlemen from Africa who waited at table sniggered so at dinner that he was ordered out by the grave and decorous black butler. General Huger, feeling for the agonies of young Africa, as he strove to stifle his mirth, suggested that Joe Johnston should cover his head with his handkerchief. A red silk one was produced, and turban-shaped, placed on his head. That completely finished the gravity of the butler, who fled in helplessness. His guffaw on the outside of the door became plainly audible. General Huger then suggested, as they must have the waiter back, or the dinner could not go on, that Joe should eat with his hat on, which he did.
