University of Virginia Library

III
CHARLESTON, S. C.

III. March 26, 1861—April 15, 1861

CHARLESTON, S. C., March 26, 1861.—I have just
come from Mulberry, where the snow was a foot
deep—winter at last after months of apparently
May or June weather. Even the climate, like everything
else, is upside down. But after that den of dirt and horror,
Montgomery Hall, how white the sheets looked, luxurious
bed linen once more, delicious fresh cream with my
coffee! I breakfasted in bed.

Dueling was rife in Camden. William M. Shannon challenged
Leitner. Rochelle Blair was Shannon's second and
Artemus Goodwyn was Leitner's. My husband was riding
hard all day to stop the foolish people. Mr. Chesnut
finally arranged the difficulty. There was a court of honor
and no duel. Mr. Leitner had struck Mr. Shannon at a
negro trial. That's the way the row began. Everybody
knows of it. We suggested that Judge Withers should arrest
the belligerents. Dr. Boykin and Joe Kershaw[1] aided
Mr. Chesnut to put an end to the useless risk of life.

John Chesnut is a pretty soft-hearted slave-owner. He
had two negroes arrested for selling whisky to his people
on his plantation, and buying stolen corn from them. The
culprits in jail sent for him. He found them (this snowy

weather) lying in the cold on a bare floor, and he thought
that punishment enough; they having had weeks of it.
But they were not satisfied to be allowed to evade justice
and slip away. They begged of him (and got) five dollars
to buy shoes to run away in. I said: "Why, this is flat
compounding a felony." And Johnny put his hands in the
armholes of his waistcoat and stalked majestically before
me, saying, "Woman, what do you know about law?"

Mrs. Reynolds stopped the carriage one day to tell me
Kitty Boykin was to be married to Savage Heyward. He
has only ten children already. These people take the old
Hebrew pride in the number of children they have. This
is the true colonizing spirit. There is no danger of crowding
here and inhabitants are wanted. Old Colonel Chesnut[2]
said one day: " Wife, you must feel that you have
not been useless in your day and generation. You have
now twenty-seven great-grandchildren."

Wednesday.—I have been mobbed by my own house servants.
Some of them are at the plantation, some hired out
at the Camden hotel, some are at Mulberry. They agreed
to come in a body and beg me to stay at home to keep my
own house once more, " as I ought not to have them scattered
and distributed every which way." I had not been
a month in Camden since 1858. So a house there would be
for their benefit solely, not mine. I asked my cook if she
lacked anything on the plantation at the Hermitage.
"Lack anything?" she said, "I lack everything. What
are corn-meal, bacon, milk, and molasses? Would that be

VIEW OF CHARLESTON DURING THE WAR.

From an Old Print.

all you wanted? Ain't I been living and eating exactly
as you does all those years? When I cook for you, didn't I
have some of all? Dere now! " Then she doubled herself
up laughing. They all shouted, "Missis, we is crazy for
you to stay home."

Armsted, my butler, said he hated the hotel. Besides,
he heard a man there abusing Marster, but Mr. Clyburne
took it up and made him stop short. Armsted said he
wanted Marster to know Mr. Clyburne was his friend and
would let nobody say a word behind his back against him,
etc., etc. Stay in Camden? Not if I can help it. "Festers
in provincial sloth"—that's Tennyson's way of putting it.

"We" came down here by rail, as the English say.
Such a crowd of Convention men on board. John Manning[3]
flew in to beg me to reserve a seat by me for a young
lady under his charge."Place aux dames," said my husband
politely, and went off to seek a seat somewhere else.
As soon as we were fairly under way, Governor Manning
came back and threw himself cheerfly down into the vacant
place. After arranging his umbrella and overcoat to his
satisfation, he coolly remarked: "I am the young lady."
He is always the handsomest man alive (now that poor
William Taber has been killed in a duel), and he can be
very agreeable; that is, when pleases to be so. He does
not always please. He seemed to have made his little
maneuver principally to warm me of impending danger to
my husband's political career. "Every election now will
be a surprise. New cliques are not formed yet. The old
ones are pricipally bent upon displacing one another."
"But the Yankees—those dreadful Yankees!" "Oh,

never mind, we are going to take care of home folks first!
How will you like to rusticate?—go back and mind your
own business?" "If I only knew what that was—what
was my own business."

Our round table consists of the Judge, Langdon
Cheves,[4] Trescott,[5] and ourselves. Here are four of the
cleverest men that we have, but such very different people,
as opposite in every characteristic as the four points of
the compass. Langdon Cheves and my husband have feelings
and ideas in common. Mr. Petigru[6] said of the brilliant
Trescott: " He is a man without indignation." Trescott
and I laugh at everything.

The Judge, from his life as solicitor, and then on the
bench, has learned to look for the darkest motives for every
action. His judgment on men and things is always so
harsh, it shocks and repels even his best friends. To-day
he said: "Your conversation reminds me of a flashy second-rate
novel." "How?" "By the quantity of French
you sprinkle over it. Do you wish to prevent us from understanding
you?" "No," said Trescott, "we are using
French against Africa. We know the black waiters are all
ears now, and we want to keep what we have to say dark.

We can't afford to take them into our confidence, you
know."

This explanation Trescott gave with great rapidity and
many gestures toward the men standing behind us. Still
speaking the French language, his apology was exasperating,
so the Judge glared at him, and, in unabated rage,
turned to talk with Mr. Cheves, who found it hard to keep
a calm countenance.

On the Battery with the Rutledges, Captain Hartstein
was introduced to me. He has done some heroic things—
brought home some ships and is a man of mark. Afterward
he sent me a beautiful bouquet, not half so beautiful,
however, as Mr. Robert Gourdin's, which already occupied
the place of honor on my center table. What a dear, delightful
place is Charleston!

A lady (who shall be nameless because of her story)
came to see me to-day. Her husband has been on the Island
with the troops for months. She has just been down to see
him. She meant only to call on him, but he persuaded her
to stay two days. She carried him some clothes made from
his old measure. Now they are a mile too wide. "So
much for a hard life! " I said.

"No, no," said she, " they are all jolly down there.
He has trained down; says it is good for him, and he likes
the life." Then she became confidential, although it was
her first visit to me, a perfect stranger. She had taken
no clothes down there—pushed, as she was, in that manner
under Achilles's tent. But she managed things; she tied
her petticoat around her neck for a nightgown.

April 2d.—Governor Manning came to breakfast at
our table. The others had breakfasted hours before. I
looked at him in amazement, as he was in full dress, ready
for a ball, swallow-tail and all, and at that hour. "What
is the matter with you?" "Nothing, I am not mad, most
noble madam. I am only going to the photographer. My
wife wants me taken thus." He insisted on my going, too,

and we captured Mr. Chesirat and Governor Means.[7] The
latter presented me with a book, a photo-book, in which I
am to pillory all the celebrities.

Doctor Gibbes says the Convention is in a snarl. It was
called as a Secession Convention. A secession of places
seems to be what it calls for first of all. It has not stretched
its eyes out to the Yankees yet; it has them turned inward;
introspection is its occupation still.

Last night, as I turned down the gas, I said to myself:
"Certainly this has been one of the pleasantest days of my
life." I can only give the skeleton of it, so many pleasant
people, so much good talk, for, after all, it was talk, talk,
talk à la Caroline du Sud. And yet the day began rather
dismally. Mrs. Capers and Mrs. Tom Middleton came for
me and we drove to Magnolia Cemetery. I saw William
Taber's broken column. It was hard to shake off the
blues after this graveyard business.

The others were off at a dinner party. I dined tête-à-tête
with Langdon Cheves, so quiet, so intelligent, so very
sensible withal. There never was a pleasanter person, or a
better man than he. While we were at table, Judge Whitner,
Tom Frost, and Isaac Hayne came. They broke up
our deeply interesting conversation, for I was hearing
what an honest and brave man feared for his country, and
then the Rutledges dislodged the newcomers and bore me
off to drive on the Battery. On the staircase met Mrs.
Izard, who came for the same purpose. On the Battery
Governor Adams[8] stopped us. He had heard of my saying
he looked like Marshal Pelissier, and he came to say

that at last I had made a personal remark which pleased
him, for once in my life. When we came home Mrs. Isaac
Hayne and Chancellor Carroll called to ask us to join
their excursion to the Island Forts to-morrow. With them
was William Haskell. Last summer at the White Sulphur
he was a pale, slim student from the university. To-day
he is a soldier, stout and robust. A few months in camp,
with soldiering in the open air, has worked this wonder.
Camping out proves a wholesome life after all. Then came
those nice, sweet, fresh, pure-looking Pringle girls. We
had a charming topic in common—their clever brother
Edward.

A letter from Eliza B., who is in Montgomery: " Mrs.
Mallory got a letter from a lady in Washington a few days
ago, who said that there had recently been several attempts
to be gay in Washington, but they proved dismal failures.
The Black Republicans were invited and came, and stared
at their entertainers and their new Republican companions,
looked unhappy while they said they were enchanted,
showed no ill-temper at the hardly stifled grumbling and
growling of our friends, who thus found themselves condemned
to meet their despised enemy."

I had a letter from the Gwinns to-day. They say Washington
offers a perfect realization of Goldsmith's Deserted
Village.

Celebrated my 38th birthday, but I am too old now to
dwell in public on that unimportant anniversary. A long,
dusty day ahead on those windy islands; never for me, so
I was up early to write a note of excuse to Chancellor Carroll.
My husband went. I hope Anderson will not pay
them the compliment of a salute with shotted guns, as they
pass Fort Sumter, as pass they must.

Here I am interrupted by an exquisite bouquet from the
Rntledges. Are there such roses anywhere else in the
world? Now a loud banging at my door. I get up in a
pet and throw it wide open. "Oh!" said John Manning,

standing there, smiling radiantly; "pray excuse the noise
I made. I mistook the number; I thought it was Rice's
room; that is my excuse. Now that I am here, come, go
with us to Quinby's. Everybody will be there who are
not at the Island. To be photographed is the rage just
now."

We had a nice open carriage, and we made a number
of calls, Mrs. Izard, the Pringles, and the Tradd Street Rutledges,
the handsome ex-Governor doing the honors gallantly.
He had ordered dinner at six, and we dined tête-à-tête.
If he should prove as great a captain in ordering his
line of battle as he is in ordering a dinner, it will be as well
for the country as it was for me to-day.

Fortunately for the men, the beautiful Mrs. Joe Heyward
sits at the next table, so they take her beauty as one
of the goods the gods provide. And it helps to make life
pleasant with English grouse and venison from the West.
Not to speak of the salmon from the lakes which began
the feast. They have me to listen, an appreciative audience,
while they talk, and Mrs. Joe Heyward to look at.

Beauregard[9] called. He is the hero of the hour. That
is, he is believed to be capable of great things. A hero
worshiper was struck dumb because I said: " So far, he
has only been a captain of artillery, or engineers, or something."
I did not see him. Mrs. Wigfall did and reproached
my laziness in not coming out.

Last Sunday at church beheld one of the peculiar local
sights, old negro maumas going up to the communion, in
their white turbans and kneeling devoutly around the
chancel rail.

The morning papers say Mr. Chesnut made the best
shot on the Island at target practice. No war yet, thank
God. Likewise they tell me Mr. Chesnut has made a capital
speech in the Convention.

Not one word of what is going on now. "Out of the
fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," says the Psalmist.
Not so here. Our hearts are in doleful dumps, but we
are as gay, as madly jolly, as sailors who break into the
strong-room when the ship is going down. At first in our
great agony we were out alone. We longed for some of
our big brothers to come out and help us. Well, they are
out, too, and now it is Fort Sumter and that ill-advised
Anderson. There stands Fort Sumter, en evidence, and
thereby hangs peace or war.

Wigfall[10] says before he left Washington, Pickens, our
Governor, and Trescott were openly against secession;
Trescott does not pretend to like it now. He grumbles all
the time, but Governor Pickens is fire-eater down to the
ground. "At the White House Mrs. Davis wore a badge.
Jeff Davis is no seceder," says Mrs. Wigfall.

Captain Ingraham comments in his rapid way, words
tumbling over each other out of his mouth: " Now, Charlotte
Wigfall meant that as a fling at those people. I think
better of men who stop to think; it is too rash to rush on
as some do." " And so," adds Mrs. Wigfall, " the eleventh-hour
men are rewarded; the half-hearted are traitors
in this row."

April 3d.—Met the lovely Lucy Holcombe, now Mrs.
Governor Pickens, last night at Isaac Hayne's. I saw Miles
now begging in dumb show for three violets she had in her

breastpin. She is a consummate actress and he well up in
the part of male flirt. So it was well done.

"And you, who are laughing in your sleeves at the
scene, where did you get that huge bunch?" "Oh, there
is no sentiment when there is a pile like that of anything!"
"Oh, oh!"

To-day at the breakfast table there was a tragic bestowal
of heartsease on the well-known inquirer who, once
more says in austere tones: " Who is the flirt now? "
And so we fool on into the black cloud ahead of us. And
after heartsease cometh rue.

April 4th.—Mr. Hayne said his wife moaned over the
hardness of the chaperones' seats at St. Andrew's Hall at
a Cecilia Ball.[11] She was hopelessly deposited on one for
hours. "And the walls are harder, my dear. What are your
feelings to those of the poor old fellows leaning there, with
their beautiful young wives waltzing as if they could never
tire and in the arms of every man in the room. Watch
their haggard, weary faces, the old boys, you know. At
church I had to move my pew. The lovely Laura was too
much for my boys. They all made eyes at her, and nudged
each other and quarreled so, for she gave them glance for
glance. Wink, blink, and snicker as they would, she liked
it. I say, my dear, the old husbands have not exactly a
bed of roses; their wives twirling in the arms of young
men, they hugging the wall."

While we were at supper at the Haynes's, Wigfall was
sent for to address a crowd before the Mills House piazza.
Like James Fitz James when he visits Glen Alpin again,
it is to be in the saddle, etc. So let Washington beware.
We were sad that we could not hear the speaking. But the

supper was a consolation—pâté de foie gras salad, biscuit
glacé and champagne frappé.

A ship was fired into yesterday, and went back to sea.
Is that the first shot? How can one settle down to anything;
one's heart is in one's mouth all the time. Any moment
the cannon may open on us, the fleet come in.

April 6th.—The plot thickens, the air is red hot with
rumors; the mystery is to find out where these utterly
groundless tales originate. In spite of all, Tom Huger
came for us and we went on the Planter to take a look
at Morris Island and its present inhabitants-Mrs. Wigfall
and the Cheves girls, Maxcy Gregg and Colonel Whiting,
also John Rutledge, of the Navy, Dan Hamilton, and William
Haskell. John Rutledge was a figurehead to be proud
of. He did not speak to us. But he stood with a Scotch
shawl draped about him, as handsome and stately a creature
as ever Queen Elizabeth loved to look upon.

There came up such a wind we could not land. I was
not too sorry, though it blew so hard (I am never seasick).
Colonel Whiting explained everything about the forts, what
they lacked, etc., in the most interesting way, and Maxcy
Gregg supplemented his report by stating all the deficiencies
and shortcomings by land.

Beauregard is a demigod here to most of the natives,
but there are always seers who see and say. They give
you to understand that Whiting has all the brains now in
use for our defense. He does the work and Beauregard
reaps the glory. Things seem to draw near a crisis. And
one must think. Colonel Whiting is clever enough for
anything, so we made up our minds to-day, Maxcy Gregg
and I, as judges. Mr. Gregg told me that my husband was
in a minority in the Convention; so much for cool sense
when the atmosphere is phosphorescent. Mrs. Wigfall says
we are mismatched. She should pair with my cool, quiet,
self-poised Colonel. And her stormy petrel is but a male
reflection of me.

April 8th.—Yesterday Mrs. Wigfall and I made a few
visits. At the first house they wanted Mrs. Wigfall to settle
a dispute. "Was she, indeed, fifty-five?" Fancy her
face, more than ten years bestowed upon her so freely.
Then Mrs. Gibbes asked me if I had ever been in Charleston
before. Says Charlotte Wigfall (to pay me for my
snigger when that false fifty was flung in her teeth), " and
she thinks this is her native heath and her name is McGregor."
She said it all came upon us for breaking the
Sabbath, for indeed it was Sunday.

Allen Green came up to speak to me at dinner, in all his
soldier's toggery. It sent a shiver through me. Tried to
read Margaret Fuller Ossoli, but could not. The air is
too full of war news, and we are all so restless.

Went to see Miss Pinckney, one of the last of the old-world
Pinckneys. She inquired particularly about a portrait
of her father, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,[12] which
she said had been sent by him to my husband's grandfather.
I gave a good account of it. It hangs in the place
of honor in the drawing-room at Mulberry. She wanted
to see my husband, for " his grandfather, my father's
friend, was one of the handsomest men of his day." We
came home, and soon Mr. Robert Gourdin and Mr. Miles
called. Governor Manning walked in, bowed gravely, and
seated himself by me. Again he bowed low in mock heroic
style, and with a grand wave of his hand, said: " Madame,
your country is invaded." When I had breath to speak,
I asked, "What does he mean? " He meant this: there

are six men-of-war outside the bar. Talbot and Chew have
come to say that hostilities are to begin. Governor Pickens
and Beauregard are holding a council of war. Mr. Chesnut
then came in and confirmed the story. Wigfall next entered
in boisterous spirits, and said: " There was a sound
of revelry by night." In any stir or confusion my heart
is apt to beat so painfully. Now the agony was so stifling
I could hardly see or hear. The men went off almost immediately.
And I crept silently to my room, where I sat
down to a good cry.

Mrs. Wigfall came in and we had it out on the subject
of civil war. We solaced ourselves with dwelling on all its
known horrors, and then we added what we had a right
to expect with Yankees in front and negroes in the rear.
"The slave-owners must expect a servile insurrection, of
course," said Mrs. Wigfall, to make sure that we were unhappy
enough.

Suddenly loud shouting was heard. We ran out. Cannon
after cannon roared. We met Mrs. Allen Green in
the passageway with blanched cheeks and streaming eyes.
Governor Means rushed out of his room in his dressing-gown
and begged us to be calm. "Governor Pickens,"
said he, " has ordered in the plenitude of his wisdom,
seven cannon to be fired as a signal to the Seventh Regiment.
Anderson will hear as well as the Seventh Regiment.
Now you go back and be quiet; fighting in the
streets has not begun yet."

So we retired. Dr. Gibbes calls Mrs. Allen Green Dame
Placid. There was no placidity to-day, with cannon bursting
and Alien on the Island. No sleep for anybody last
night. The streets were alive with soldiers, men shouting,
marching, singing. Wigfall, the " stormy petrel," is in
his glory, the only thoroughly happy person I see. To-day
things seem to have settled down a little. One can but
hope still. Lincoln, or Seward, has made such silly advances
and then far sillier drawings back. There may be a

chance for peace after all. Things are happening so fast.
My husband has been made an aide-de-camp to General
Beauregard.

Three hours ago we were quickly packing to go home.
The Convention has adjourned. Now he tells me the attack
on Fort Sumter may begin to-night; depends upon Anderson
and the fleet outside. The Herald says that this show
of war outside of the bar is intended for Texas. John Manning
came in with his sword and red sash, pleased as a boy
to be on Beauregard's staff, while the row goes on. He
has gone with Wigfall to Captain Hartstein with instructions.
Mr. Chesnut is finishing a report he had to make
to the Convention.

Mrs. Hayne called. She had, she said, but one feeling;
pity for those who are not here. Jack Preston, Willie
Alston, "the take-life-easys," as they are called, with John
Green, "the big brave," have gone down to the islands—
volunteered as privates. Seven hundred men were sent
over. Ammunition wagons were rumbling along the streets
all night. Anderson is burning blue lights, signs, and signals
for the fleet outside, I suppose.

To-day at dinner there was no allusion to things as they
stand in Charleston Harbor. There was an undercurrent
of intense excitement. There could not have been a more
brilliant circle. In addition to our usual quartette (Judge
Withers, Langdon Cheves, and Trescott), our two ex-Governors
dined with us, Means and Manning. These men all
talked so delightfully. For once in my life I listened.
That over, business began in earnest. Governor Means had
rummaged a sword and red sash from somewhere and
brought it for Colonel Chesnut, who had gone to demand
the surrender of Fort Sumter. And now patience—we
must wait.

Why did that green goose Anderson go into Fort Sumter?
Then everything began to go wrong. Now they have
intercepted a letter from him urging them to let him surrender.

He paints the horrors likely to ensue if they will
not. He ought to have thought of all that before he put
his head in the hole.

April 12th.—Anderson will not capitulate. Yesterday's
was the merriest, maddest dinner we have had yet. Men
were audaciously wise and witty. We had an unspoken
foreboding that it was to be our last pleasant meeting.
Mr. Miles dined with us to-day. Mrs. Henry King rushed
in saying, "The news, I come for the latest news. All the
men of the King family are on the Island," of which fact
she seemed proud.

While she was here our peace negotiator, or envoy,
came in—that is, Mr. Chesnut returned. His interview
with Colonel Anderson had been deeply interesting, but
Mr. Chesnut was not inclined to be communicative. He
wanted his dinner. He felt for Anderson and had telegraphed
to President Davis for instructions—what answer
to give Anderson, etc. He has now gone back to Fort Sumter
with additional instructions. When they were about to
leave the wharf A. H. Boykin sprang into the boat in great
excitement. He thought himself ill-used, with a likelihood
of fighting and he to be left behind!

I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson
does not accept terms at four, the orders are, he shall be
fired upon. I count four, St. Michael's bells chime out and
I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a
cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I
prayed as I never prayed before.

There was a sound of stir all over the house, pattering
of feet in the corridors. All seemed hurrying one way.
I put on my double-gown and a shawl and went, too. It
was to the housetop. The shells were bursting. In the
dark I heard a man say, "Waste of ammunition." I knew
my husband was rowing about in a boat somewhere in that
dark bay, and that the shells were roofing it over, bursting
toward the fort. If Anderson was obstinate, Colonel

Chesnut was to order the fort on one side to open fire.
Certainly fire had begun. The regular roar of the cannon,
there it was. And who could tell what each volley accomplished
of death and destruction?

The women were wild there on the housetop. Prayers
came from the women and imprecations from the men.
And then a shell would light up the scene. To-night they
say the forces are to attempt to land. We watched up
there, and everybody wondered that Fort Sumter did not
fire a shot.

To-day Miles and Manning, colonels now, aides to
Beauregard, dined with us. The latter hoped I would keep
the peace. I gave him only good words, for he was to be
under fire all day and night, down in the bay carrying
orders, etc.

Last night, or this morning truly, up on the housetop
I was so weak and weary I sat down on something that
looked like a black stool. "Get up, you foolish woman.
Your dress is on fire," cried a man. And he put me out.
I was on a chimney and the sparks had caught my clothes.
Susan Preston and Mr. Venable then came up. But my
fire had been extinguished before it burst out into a regular
blaze.

Do you know, after all that noise and our tears and
prayers, nobody has been hurt; sound and fury signifying
nothing—a delusion and a snare.

Louisa Hamilton came here now. This is a sort of news
center. Jack Hamilton, her handsome young husband, has
all the credit of a famous battery, which is made of railroad
iron. Mr. Petigru calls it the boomerang, because it
throws the balls back the way they came; so Lou Hamilton
tells us. During her first marriage, she had no children;
hence the value of this lately achieved baby. To divert
Louisa from the glories of " the Battery," of which she
raves, we asked if the baby could talk yet. "No, not
exactly, but he imitates the big gun when he hears that.

He claps his hands and cries 'Boom, boom.'" Her mind
is distinctly occupied by three things: Lieutenant Hamilton,
whom she calls " Randolph," the baby, and the big
gun, and it refuses to hold more.

Pryor, of Virginia, spoke from the piazza of the Charleston
hotel. I asked what he said. An irreverent woman replied:
"Oh, they all say the same thing, but he made
great play with that long hair of his, which he is always
tossing aside!"

Somebody came in just now and reported Colonel Chesnut
asleep on the sofa in General Beauregard's room.
After two such nights he must be so tired as to be able
to sleep anywhere.

Just bade farewell to Langdon Cheves. He is forced to
go home and leave this interesting place. Says he feels
like the man that was not killed at Thermopylae. I think
he said that unfortunate had to hang himself when he got
home for very shame. Maybe he fell on his sword, which
was the strictly classic way of ending matters.

I do not wonder at Louisa Hamilton's baby; we hear
nothing, can listen to nothing; boom, boom goes the cannon
all the time. The nervous strain is awful, alone in this
darkened room. "Richmond and Washington ablaze,"
say the papers—blazing with excitement. "Why not? To
us these last days' events seem frightfully great. We
were all women on that iron balcony. Men are only seen
at a distance now. Stark Means, marching under the piazza
at the head of his regiment, held his cap in his hand all
the time he was in sight. Mrs. Means was leaning over and
looking with tearful eyes, when an unknown creature
asked, "Why did he take his hat off? " Mrs. Means stood
straight up and said: "He did that in honor of his mother;
he saw me." She is a proud mother, and at the same time
most unhappy. Her lovely daughter Emma is dying in
there, before her eyes, of consumption. At that moment
I am sure Mrs. Means had a spasm of the heart; at least,

She looked as I feel sometimes, She took my arm and we
came in.

April 13th.—Nobody has been hurt after all. How gay
we were last night. Reaction after the dread of all the
slaughter we thought those dreadful cannon were making.
Not even a battery the worse for wear. Fort Sumter has
been on fire. Anderson has not yet silenced any of our
guns. So the aides, still with swords and red sashes by
way of uniform, tell us. But the sound of those guns
makes regular meals impossible. None of us go to table.
Tea-trays pervade the corridors going everywhere. Some
of the anxious hearts lie on their beds and moan in solitary
misery. Mrs. Wigfall and I solace ourselves with tea in
my room. These women have all a satisfying faith. "God
is on our side," they say. When we are shunt in Mrs. Wigfall
and I ask "Why?" "Of course, He hates the Yankees,
we are told. You'll think that well of Him."

Not by one word or look can we detect any change in
the demeanor of these negro servants. Lawrence sits at
our door, sleepy and respectful, and profoundly indifferent.
So are they all, but they carry it too far. You could
not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on in
the bay, though it has been dinning in their ears night and
day. People talk before them as if they were chairs and
tables. They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? or
wiser than we are; silent and strong biding their time?

So tea and toast came; also came Colonel Manning, red
sash and sword, to announce that he had been under fire,
and didn't mind it. He said gaily: "It is one of those
things a fellow never knows how he will come out until he
has been tried. Now I know I am a worthy descendant of
my old Irish hero of an ancestor, who held the British officer
before him as a shield in the Revolution, and backed
out of danger gracefully." We talked of St. Valentine's
eve, or the maid of Perth, and the drop of the white doe's
blood that sometimes spoiled all.

FORT SUMTER UNDER BOMBARDMENT.

From an Old Print.

The war-steamer are still there, outside the bar. And
there are people who thought the Charleston bar "no
good" to Charleston. The bar is the silent partner, or
sleeping partner, and in this fray it is doing us yeoman
service.

April 15th.—I did not know that one could live such
days of excitement. Some one called: "Come out! There
is a crowd coming." A mob it was, indeed, but it was
headed by Colonels Chesnut and Manning. The crowd was
shouting and showing these two as messengers of good
news. They were escorted to Beauregard's headquarters.
Fort Sumter had surrendered! Those upon the housetops
shouted to us "The fort is on fire." That had been the
story once or twice before.

When we had calmed down, Colonel Chesnut, who had
taken it all quietly enough, if anything more unruffled
than usual in his serenity, told us how the surrender came
about. Wigfall was with them on Morris Island when they
saw the fire in the fort; he jumped in a little boat, and
with his handkerchief as a white flag, rowed over. Wigfall
went in through a porthole. When Colonel Chesnut
arrived shortly after, and was received at the regular entrance,
Colonel Anderson told him he had need to pick his
way warily, for the place was all mined. As far as I can
make out the fort surrendered to Wigfall. But it is all confusion.
Our flag is flying there. Fire-engines have been
sent for to put the fire. Everybody tells you half of
something and then rushes off to tell something else or to
hear the last news.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Freston,[13] Mrs. Joe Heyward,
and I drove around the Battery. We were in an open carriage.

What a changed scene—the very liveliest crowd I
think I ever saw, everybody talking at once. All glasses
were still turned on the grim old fort.

Russell,[14] the correspondent of the London Times, was
there. They took him everywhere. One man got out
Thackeray to converse with him on equal terms. Poor
Russell was awfully bored, they say. He only wanted
to see the fort and to get news suitable to make up into
an interesting article. Thackeray had become stale over
the water.

Mrs. Prank Hampton[15] and I went to see the camp of the
Richland troops. South Carolina College had volunteered
to a boy. Professor Venable (the mathematical), intends to
raise a company from among them for the war, a permanent
company. This is a grand frolic no more for the students,
at least. Even the staid and severe of aspect, Clingman,
is here. He says Virginia and North Carolina are
arming to come to our rescue, for now the North will
swoop down on us. Of that we may be sure. "We have
burned our ships. We are obliged to go on now. He calls
us a poor, little, hot-blooded, headlong, rash, and troublesome
sister State. General McQueen is in a rage because
we are to send troops to Virginia.

Preston Hampton is in all the flush of his youth and
beauty, six feet in stature; and after all only in his teens;
he appeared in fine clothes and lemon-colored kid gloves to
grace the scene. The camp in a fit of horse-play seized him
and rubbed him in the mud. He fought manfully, but took
it all naturally as a good joke.

Mrs. Frank Hampton knows already what civil war
means. Her brother was in the New York Seventh Regiment,
so roughly received in Baltimore. Frank will be in
the opposite camp.

Good stories there may be and to spare for Russell, the
man of the London Times, who has come over here to find
out our weakness and our strength and to tell all the rest
of the world about us.