University of Virginia Library

VII
RICHMOND, VA.

VII. June 27, 1861—July 4, 1861

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Bradley Johnson is here, a regular heroine. She
outgeneraled the Governor of North Carolina in some way
and has got arms and clothes and ammunition for her husband's
regiment.[2] There was some joke. The regimental
breeches were all wrong, but a tailor righted that—hind
part before, or something odd.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the story of Soulouque,[3] the Haytian man: he has
wonderful interest just now. Slavery has to go, of course,
and joy go with it. These Yankees may kill us and lay
waste our land for a while, but conquer us—never!

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

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

We drove to the camp to see the President present a
flag to a Maryland regiment. Having lived on the battlefield
(Kirkwood), near Camden,[4] we have an immense respect
for the Maryland line. When our militia in that
fight ran away, Colonel Howard and the Marylanders held
their own against Rawdon, Cornwallis, and the rest, and
everywhere around are places named for a doughty captain
killed in our defense—Kirkwood, De Kalb, etc. The
last, however, was a Prussian count. A letter from my
husband, written June 22d, has just reached me. He
says:

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

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

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

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

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

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