University of Virginia Library

XI
COLUMBIA, S. C.

XI. February 20, 1862– July 21, 1862

COLUMBIA, S. C., February 20, 1862.– Had an appetite
for my dainty breakfast. Always breakfast in
bed now. But then, my Mercury contained such
bad news. That is an appetizing style of matutinal newspaper.
Fort Donelson[1] has fallen, but no men fell with
it. It is prisoners for them that we can not spare, or prisoners
for us that we may not be able to feed: that is so much
to be "forefended," as Keitt says. They lost six thousand,
we two thousand; I grudge that proportion. In vain, alas!
ye gallant few—few, but undismayed. Again, they make a
stand. "We have Buckner, Beauregard, and Albert Sidney
Johnston. With such leaders and God's help we may be
saved from the hated Yankees; who knows?

February 21st.—A crowd collected here last night and
there was a serenade. I am like Mrs. Niekleby, who never
saw a horse coming full speed but she thought the Cheerybles
had sent post-haste to take Nicholas into co-partnership.
So I got up and dressed, late as it was. I felt sure
England had sought our alliance at last, and we would

make a Yorktown of it before long. Who was it? Will
you ever guess?—Artemus Goodwyn and General Owens,
of Florida.

Just then, Mr. Chesnut rushed in, put out the light,
locked the door and sat still as a mouse. Rap, rap, came
at the door. "I say, Chesnut, they are calling for you."
At last we heard Janney (hotel-keeper) loudly proclaiming
from the piazza that "Colonel Chesnut was not here at all,
at all." After a while, when they had all gone from the
street, and the very house itself had subsided into perfect
quiet, the door again was roughly shaken. "I say, Chesnut,
old fellow, come out—I know you are there. Nobody
here now wants to hear you make a speech. That crowd has
all gone. We want a little quiet talk with you. I am just
from Richmond." That was the open sesame, and to-day I
hear none of the Richmond news is encouraging. Colonel
Shaw is blamed for the shameful Roanoke surrender.[2]

Toombs is out on a rampage and swears he will not accept
a seat in the Confederate Senate given in the insulting
way his was by the Georgia Legislature: calls it shabby
treatment, and adds that Georgia is not the only place
where good men have been so ill used.

The Governor and Council have fluttered the dove-cotes,
or, at least, the tea-tables. They talk of making a call for
all silver, etc. I doubt if we have enough to make the sacrifice
worth while, but we propose to set the example.

February 22d.—What a beautiful day for our Confederate
President to be inaugurated! God speed him; God
keep him; God save him!

John Chesnut's letter was quite what we needed. In
spirit it is all that one could ask. He says, "Our late
reverses are acting finely with the army of the Potomae.
A few more thrashings and every man will enlist for the

war. Victories made us too sanguine and easy, not to say
vainglorious. Now for the rub, and let them have it!"

A lady wrote to Mrs. Bunch: "Dear Emma: When
shall I call for you to go and see Madame de St. André?"
She was answered: "Dear Lou: I can not go with you to
see Madame de St. André, but will always retain the kindest
feeling toward you on account of our past relations,"
etc. The astounded friend wrote to ask what all this meant.
No answer came, and then she sent her husband to ask and
demand an explanation. He was answered thus: "My
dear fellow, there can be no explanation possible. Hereafter
there will be no intercourse between my wife and
yours; simply that, nothing more." So the men meet at
the club as before, and there is no further trouble between
them. The lady upon whom the slur is cast says, "and I
am a woman and can't fight!"

February 23d.—While Mr. Chesnut was in town I was at
the Prestons. John Cochran and some other prisoners had
asked to walk over the grounds, visit the Hampton Gardens,
and some friends in Columbia. After the dreadful
state of the public mind at the escape of one of the prisoners,
General Preston was obliged to refuse his request. Mrs.
Preston and the rest of us wanted him to say "Yes," and
so find out who in Columbia were his treacherous friends.
Pretty bold people they must be, to receive Yankee invaders
in the midst of the row over one enemy already turned
loose amid us.

General Preston said: "We are about to sacrifice life
and fortune for a fickle multitude who will not stand up
to us at last." The harsh comments made as to his lenient
conduct to prisoners have embittered him. I told him
what I had heard Captain Trenholm say in his speech. He
said he would listen to no criticism except from a man with
a musket on his shoulder, and who had beside enlisted for
the war, had given up all, and had no choice but to succeed
or die.

February 24th.—Congress and the newspapers render
one desperate, ready to cut one's own throat. They represent
everything in our country as deplorable. Then comes
some one back from our gay and gallant army at the front.
The spirit of our army keeps us up after all. Letters from
the army revive one. They come as welcome as the flowers
in May. Hopeful and bright, utterly unconscious of our
weak despondency.

February 25th.—They have taken at Nashville[3] more
men than we had at Manassas; there was bad handling of
troops, we poor women think, or this would not be. Mr.
Venable added bitterly, "Giving up our soldiers to the enemy
means giving up the cause. We can not replace them."
The up-country men were Union men generally, and the
low-country seceders. The former growl; they never liked
those aristocratic boroughs and parishes, they had themselves
a good and prosperous country, a good constitution,
and were satisfied. But they had to go—to leave all and
fight for the others who brought on all the trouble, and who
do not show too much disposition to fight for themselves.

That is the extreme up-country view. The extreme low-country
says Jeff Davis is not enough out of the Union yet.
His inaugural address reads as one of his speeches did four
years ago in the United States Senate.

A letter in a morning paper accused Mr. Chesnut of
staying too long in Charleston. The editor was asked for
the writer's name. He gave it as Little Moses, the Governor's
secretary. When Little Moses was spoken to, in a
great trepidation he said that Mrs. Pickens wrote it, and
got him to publish it; so it was dropped, for Little Moses is
such an arrant liar no one can believe him. Besides, if that
sort of thing amuses Mrs. Pickens, let her amuse herself.

March 5th.—Mary Preston went back to Mulberry with

me from Columbia. She found a man there tall enough
to take her in to dinner—Tom Boykin, who is six feet four,
the same height as her father. Tom was very handsome in
his uniform, and Mary prepared for a nice time, but he
looked as if he would so much rather she did not talk to
him, and he set her such a good example, saying never
a word.

Old Colonel Chesnut came for us. When the train
stopped, Quashie, shiny black, was seen on his box, as
glossy and perfect in his way as his blooded bays, but the
old Colonel would stop and pick up the dirtiest little negro
I ever saw who was crying by the roadside. This ragged
little black urchin was made to climb up and sit beside
Quash. It spoilt the symmetry of the turn-out, but it was
a character touch, and the old gentleman knows no law but
his own will. He had a biscuit in his pocket which he gave
this sniffling little negro, who proved to be his man Scip's
son.

I was ill at Mulberry and never left my room. Doctor
Boykin came, more military than medical. Colonel Chesnut
brought him up, also Teams, who said he was down in
the mouth. Our men were not fighting as they should.
We had only pluck and luck, and a dogged spirit of fighting,
to offset their weight in men and munitions of war. I
wish I could remember Teams's words; this is only his idea.
His language was quaint and striking—no grammar, but
no end of sense and good feeling. Old Colonel Chesnut,
catching a word, began his litany, saying, "Numbers will
tell," "Napoleon, you know," etc., etc.

At Mulberry the war has been ever afar off, but threats
to take the silver came very near indeed—silver that we had
before the Revolution, silver that Mrs. Chesnut brought
from Philadelphia. Jack Cantey and Doctor Boykin came
back on the train with us. Wade Hampton is the hero.

Sweet May Dacre. Lord Byron and Disraeli make their
rosebuds Catholic; May Dacre is another Aurora Raby. I

like Disraeli because I find so many clever things in him.
I like the sparkle and the glitter. Carlyle does not hold up
his hands in holy horror of us because of African slavery.
Lord Lyons[4] has gone against us. Lord Derby and Louis
Napoleon are silent in our hour of direst need. People call
me Cassandra, for I cry that outside hope is quenched.
From the outside no help indeed cometh to this beleaguered
land.

March 7th.—Mrs. Middleton was dolorous indeed. General
Lee had warned the planters about Combahee, etc., that
they must take care of themselves now; he could not do it.
Confederate soldiers had committed some outrages on the
plantations and officers had punished them promptly. She
poured contempt upon Yancey's letter to Lord Russell.[5]
It was the letter of a shopkeeper, not in the style of a statesman
at all.

We called to see Mary McDuffie.[6] She asked Mary Preston
what Doctor Boykin had said of her husband as we came
along in the train. She heard it was something very complimentary.
Mary P. tried to remember, and to repeat it all, to the joy of the other Mary, who liked to hear nice
things about her husband.

Mary was amazed to hear of the list of applicants for
promotion. One delicate-minded person accompanied his
demand for advancement by a request for a written description
of the Manassas battle; he had heard Colonel Chesnut
give such a brilliant account of it in Governor Cobb's
room.

The Merrimac[7] business has come like a gleam of lightning

illumining a dark scene. Our sky is black and lowering.

The Judge saw his little daughter at my window and he came up. He was very smooth and kind. It was really
a delightful visit; not a disagreeable word was spoken. He
abused no one whatever, for he never once spoke of any one
but himself, and himself he praised without stint. He did
not look at me once, though he spoke very kindly to me.

March 10th.—Second year of Confederate independence.
I write daily for my own diversion. These mémoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about
these times and prove useful to more important people than
I am. I do not wish to do any harm or to hurt any one. If
any scandalous stories creep in they can easily be burned.
It is hard, in such a hurry as things are now, to separate
the wheat from the chaff. Now that I have made nry protest
and written down my wishes, I can scribble on with a
free will and free conscience.

Congress at the North is down on us. They talk largely
of hanging slave-owners. They say they hold Port Royal,
as we did when we took it originally from the aborigines,
who fled before us; so we are to be exterminated and improved,
à l'Indienne, from the face of the earth.

Medea, when asked: "Country, wealth, husband, children,
all are gone; and now what remains!" answered:
"Medea remains." "There is a time in most men's lives
when they resemble Job, sitting among the ashes and drinking
in the full bitterness of complicated misfortune."

March 11th.—A freshman came quite eager to be instructed
in all the wiles of society. He wanted to try his
hand at a flirtation, and requested minute instructions, as
he knew nothing whatever: he was so very fresh. "Dance
with her," he was told, "and talk with her; walk with her
and flatter her; dance until she is warm and tired; then
propose to walk in a cool, shady piazza. It must be a somewhat
dark piazza. Begin your promenade slowly; warm
up to your work; draw her arm closer and closer; then,
break her wing."

"Heavens, what is that—break her wing?" "Why,
you do not know even that? Put your arm round her waist
and kiss her. After that, it is all plain sailing. She comes
down when you call like the coon to Captain Scott: 'You
need not fire, Captain,' etc."

The aspirant for fame as a flirt followed these lucid directions
literally, but when he seized the poor girl and
kissed her, she uplifted her voice in terror, and screamed
as if the house was on fire. So quick, sharp, and shrill
were her yells for help that the bold flirt sprang over the
banister, upon which grew a strong climbing rose. This he
struggled through, and ran toward the college, taking a bee
line. He was so mangled by the thorns that he had to go
home and have them picked out by his family. The girl's
brother challenged him. There was no mortal combat, however,
for the gay young fellow who had led the freshman's
ignorance astray stepped forward and put things straight.
An explanation and an apology at every turn hushed it
all up.

Now, we all laughed at this foolish story most heartily.
But Mr. Venable remained grave and preoccupied, and was
asked: "Why are you so unmoved? It is funny."
"I like more probable fun; I have been in college
and I have kissed many a girl, but never a one serome
yet."

Last Saturday was the bloodiest we have had in

proportion to numbers.[8] The enemy lost 1,500. The handful
left at home are rushing to arms at last. Bragg has
gone to join Beauregard at Columbus, Miss. Old Abe truly
took the field in that Scotch cap of his.

Mrs. McCord,[9] the eldest daughter of Langdon Cheves,
got up a company for her son, raising it at her own expense.
She has the brains and energy of a man. To-day
she repeated a remark of a low-country gentleman, who is
dissatisfied: "This Government (Confederate) protects
neither person nor property." Fancy the scornful turn of
her lip! Some one asked for Langdon Cheves, her brother.
"Oh, Langdon!" she replied coolly, "he is a pure patriot;
he has no ambition. While I was there, he was letting Confederate
soldiers ditch through his garden and ruin him at
their leisure."

Cotton is five cents a pound and labor of no value at all;
it commands no price whatever. People gladly hire out
their negroes to have them fed and clothed, which latter
can not be done. Cotton osnaburg at 37½ cents a yard,
leaves no chance to clothe them. Langdon was for martial
law and making the bloodsuckers disgorge their ill-gotten
gains. We, poor fools, who are patriotically ruining ourselves
will see our children in the gutter while treacherous
dogs of millionaires go rolling by in their coaches—coaches
that were acquired by taking advantage of our necessities.

This terrible battle of the ships—Monitor, Merrimac,
etc. All hands on board the Cumberland went down. She
fought gallantly and fired a round as she sank. The Congress

ran up a white flag. She fired on our boats as they
went up to take off her wounded. She was burned. The
worst of it is that all this will arouse them to more furious
exertions to destroy us. They hated us so before, but how
now?

In Columbia I do not know a half-dozen men who would
not gaily step into Jeff Davis's shoes with a firm conviction
that they would do better in every respect than he does.
The monstrous conceit, the fatuous ignorance of these critics
! It is pleasant to hear Mrs. McCord on this subject,
when they begin to shake their heads and tell us what Jeff
Davis ought to do.

March 12th.—In the naval battle the other day we had
twenty-five guns in all. The enemy had fifty-four in the
Cumberland, forty-four in the St. Lawrence, besides a fleet
of gunboats, filled with rifled cannon. Why not? They
can have as many as they please. "No pent-up Utica contracts
their powers"; the whole boundless world being
theirs to recruit in. Ours is only this one little spot of
ground—the blockade, or stockade, which hems us in with
only the sky open to us, and for all that, how tender-footed
and cautious they are as they draw near.

An anonymous letter purports to answer Colonel Chesnut's
address to South Carolinians now in the army of the
Potomac. The man says, "All that bosh is no good." He
knows lots of people whose fathers were notorious Tories
in our war for independence and made fortunes by selling
their country. Their sons have the best places, and they
are cowards and traitors still. Names are given, of course.

Floyd and Pillow[10] are suspended from their commands

because of Fort Donelson. The people of Tennessee demand
a like fate for Albert Sidney Johnston. They say lie
is stupid. Can human folly go further than this Tennessee
madness?

I did Mrs. Blank a kindness. I told the women when
her name came up that she was childless now, but that she
had lost three children. I hated to leave her all alone.
Women have such a contempt for a childless wife. Now,
they will be all sympathy and goodness. I took away her
"reproach among women."

March 13th.—Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From
the poor old blind bishop downward everybody is besetting
him to let off students, theological and other, from going
into the army. One comfort is that the boys will go. Mr.
Chesnut answers: "Wait until you have saved your country
before you make preachers and scholars. When you
have a country, there will be no lack of divines, students,
scholars to adorn and purify it." He says he is a one-idea
man. That idea is to get every possible man into the ranks.

Professor Le Conte[11] is an able auxiliary. He has undertaken
to supervise and carry on the powder-making enterprise
—the very first attempted in the Confederacy, and
Mr. Chesnut is proud of it. It is a brilliant success, thanks
to Le Conte.

Mr. Chesnut receives anonymous letters urging him to
arrest the Judge as seditious. They say he is a dangerous
and disaffected person. His abuse of Jeff Davis and the
Council is rabid. Mr. Chesnut laughs and throws the letters
into the fire. "Disaffected to Jeff Davis," says he;

"disaffected to the Council, that don't count. He knows
what he is about; he would not injure his country for the
world."

Read Uncle Tom's Cabin again. These negro women
have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They
can redeem themselves—the "impropers" can. They can
marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these
colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels
in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to
rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend
and like to live with such degraded creatures around us—
such men as Legree and his women.

The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as
far away from them as possible. As far as I can see,
Southern women do all that missionaries could do to prevent
and alleviate evils. The social evil has not been suppressed
in old England or in New England, in London or in
Boston. People in those places expect more virtue from a
plantation African than they can insure in practise among
themselves with all their own high moral surroundings—
light, education, training, and support. Lady Mary Montagu
says, "Only men and women at last." "Male and
female, created he them," says the Bible. There are cruel,
graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as well
as South, I dare say. The Northern men and women who
came here were always hardest, for they expected an African
to work and behave as a white man. We do not.

I have often thought from observation truly that perfect
beauty hardens the heart, and as to grace, what so
graceful as a cat, a tigress, or a panther. Much love, admiration,
worship hardens an idol's heart. It becomes utterly
callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to
give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people
suffer. I speak now of what I have watched with horror
and amazement.

Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used.

Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination.
People can't love things dirty, ugly, and repulsive,
simply because they ought to do so, but they can be good to them at a distance; that's easy. You see, I can not
rise very high; I can only judge by what I see.

March 14th.—Thank God for a ship! It has run the
blockade with arms and ammunition.

There are no negro sexual relations half so shocking as
Mormonism. And yet the United States Government makes
no bones of receiving Mormons into its sacred heart. Mr.
Venable said England held her hand over "the malignant
and the turbaned Turk" to save and protect him, slaves,
seraglio, and all. But she rolls up the whites of her eyes
at us when slavery, bad as it is, is stepping out into freedom
every moment through Christian civilization. They do not
grudge the Turk even his bag and Bosphorus privileges.
To a recalcitrant wife it is, "Here yawns the sack; there
rolls the sea," etc. And France, the bold, the brave, the
ever free, she has not been so tender-footed in Algiers. But
then the "you are another" argument is a shabby one.
" You see," says Mary Preston sagaciously, "we are white
Christian descendants of Huguenots and Cavaliers, and
they expect of us different conduct."

Went in Mrs. Preston's landau to bring my boarding-school
girls here to dine. At my door met J. F., who wanted
me then and there to promise to help him with his commission
or put him in the way of one. At the carriage steps I
was handed in by Gus Smith, who wants his brother made
commissary. The beauty of it all is they think I have some
influence, and I have not a particle. The subject of Mr.
Chesnut's military affairs, promotions, etc., is never mentioned
by me.

March 15th.—When we came home from Richmond,
there stood Warren Nelson, propped up against my door,
lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature. He said he
meant to be heard, so I walked back with him to the drawing-room.

They are wasting their time dancing attendance
on me. I can not help them. Let them shoulder their
musket and go to the wars like men.

After tea came "Mars Kit"—he said for a talk, but
that Mr. Preston would not let him have, for Mr. Preston
had arrived some time before him. Mr. Preston said
"Mars Kit" thought it "bad form" to laugh. After that
you may be sure a laugh from "Mars Kit" was secured.
Again and again, he was forced to laugh with a will. I reversed
Oliver Wendell Holmes's good resolution—never
to be as funny as he could. I did my very utmost.

Mr. Venable interrupted the fun, which was fast and
furious, with the very best of bad news! Newbern shelled
and burned, cotton, turpentine—everything. There were
5,000 North Carolinians in the fray, 12,000 Yankees. Now
there stands Goldsboro. One more step and we are cut in
two. The railroad is our backbone, like the Blue Ridge and
the Alleghanies, with which it runs parallel. So many discomforts,
no wonder we are down-hearted.

Mr. Venable thinks as we do—Garnett is our most thorough
scholar; Lamar the most original, and the cleverest of
our men—L. Q. C. Lamar—time fails me to write all his
name. Then, there is R. M. T. Hunter. Muscoe Russell
Garnett and his Northern wife: that match was made at my
house in Washington when Garnett was a member of the
United States Congress.

March 17th.—Back to the Congaree House to await my
husband, who has made a rapid visit to the Wateree region.
As we drove up Mr. Chesnut said: "Did you see the stare
of respectful admiration E. R. bestowed upon you, so curiously
prolonged? I could hardly keep my countenance."
" Yes, my dear child, I feel the honor of it, though my individual
self goes for nothing in it. I am the wife of the
man who has the appointing power just now, with so many
commissions to be filled. I am nearly forty, and they do my
understanding the credit to suppose I can be made to believe

they admire my mature charms. They think they fool
me into thinking that they believe me charming. There is
hardly any farce in the world more laughable."

Last night a house was set on fire; last week two houses.
"The red cock crows in the barn!" Our troubles thicken,
indeed, when treachery comes from that dark quarter.

When the President first offered Johnston Pettigrew a
brigadier-generalship, his answer was: "Not yet. Too
many men are ahead of me who have earned their promotion
in the field. I will come after them, not before. So
far I have done nothing to merit reward," etc. He would
not take rank when he could get it. I fancy he may cool his
heels now waiting for it. He was too high and mighty.
There was another conscientious man—Burnet, of Kentucky.

He gave up his regiment to his lieutenant-colonel
when he found the lieutenant-colonel could command the
regiment and Burnet could not maneuver it in the field. He
went into the fight simply as an aide to Floyd. Modest
merit just now is at a premium.

William Gilmore Simms is here; read us his last poetry;
have forgotten already what it was about. It was not tiresome,
however, and that is a great thing when people will
persist in reading their own rhymes.

I did not hear what Mr. Preston was saying. "The
last piece of Richmond news," Mr. Chesnut said as he went
away, and he looked so fagged out I asked no questions. I
knew it was bad.

At daylight there was a loud knocking at my door. I
hurried on a dressing-gown and flew to open the door.
"Mrs. Chesnut, Mrs. M. says please don't forget her son.
Mr. Chesnut, she hears, has come back. Please get her son a
commission. He must have an office." I shut the door in
the servant's face. If I had the influence these foolish
people attribute to me why should I not help my own? I
have a brother, two brothers-in-law, and no end of kin, all
gentlemen privates, and privates they would stay to the

end of time before they said a word to me about commissions.
After a long talk we were finally disgusted and the
men went off to the bulletin-board. Whatever else it shows,
good or bad, there is always woe for some house in the killed
and wounded. We have need of stout hearts. I feel a
sinking of mine as we drive near the board.

March 18th.—My war archon is beset for commissions,
and somebody says for every one given, you make one ingrate
and a thousand enemies.

As I entered Miss Mary Stark's I whispered: "He
has promised to vote for Louis." What radiant faces. To
my friend, Miss Mary said, "Your son-in-law, what is he
doing for his country?" "He is a tax collector." Then
spoke up the stout old girl: "Look at my cheek; it is red
with blushing for you. A great, hale, hearty young man!
Fie on him! fie on him! for shame! Tell his wife; run him
out of the house with a broomstick; send him down to the
coast at least." Fancy my cheeks. I could not raise my
eyes to the poor lady, so mercilessly assaulted. My face
was as hot with compassion as the outspoken Miss Mary
pretended hers to be with vicarious mortification.

Went to see sweet and saintly Mrs. Bartow. She read
us a letter from Mississippi—not so bad: "More men
there than the enemy suspected, and torpedoes to blow up
the wretches when they came." Next to see Mrs. Izard.
She had with her a relative just from the North. This lady
had asked Seward for passports, and he told her to "hold
on a while; the road to South Carolina will soon be open to
all, open and safe." To-day Mrs. Arthur Hayne heard
from her daughter that Richmond is to be given up. Mrs.
Buell is her daughter.

Met Mr. Chesnut, who said: "New Madrid[12] has been
given up. I do not know any more than the dead where
New Madrid is. It is bad, all the same, this giving up. I

can't stand it. The hemming-in process is nearly complete.
The ring of fire is almost unbroken."

Mr. Chesnut's negroes offered to fight for him if he
would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says
one man can not do it. The whole country must agree to it.
He would trust such as he would select, and he would give
so many acres of land and his freedom to each one as he enlisted.

Mrs. Albert Ehett came for an office for her son John.
I told her Mr. Chesnut would never propose a kinsman for office, but if any one else would bring him forward he would
vote for him certainly, as he is so eminently fit for position.
Now he is a private.

March 19th.—He who runs may read. Conscription
means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer
business. To-morrow conscription begins—the dernier
ressort. The President has remodeled his Cabinet, leaving
Bragg for North Carolina. His War Minister is Randolph,
of Virginia. A Union man par excellence, Watts, of Alabama,
is Attorney-General. And now, too late by one year,
when all the mechanics are in the army, Mallory begins to
telegraph Captain Ingraharn to build ships at any expense.
We are locked in and can not get "the requisites for naval
architecture," says a magniloquent person.

Henry Frost says all hands wink at cotton going out.
Why not send it out and buy ships? "Every now and then
there is a holocaust of cotton burning," says the magniloquent.
Conscription has waked the Rip Van Winkles. The
streets of Columbia were never so crowded with men. To
fight and to be made to fight are different things.

To my small wits, whenever people were persistent,
united, and rose in their might, no general, however great,
succeeded in subjugating them. Have we not swamps, forests,
rivers, mountains—every natural barrier? The Carthaginians
begged for peace because they were a luxurious
people and could not endure the hardship of war, though

the enemy suffered as sharply as they did! "Factions
among themselves" is the rock on which we split. Now for
the great soul who is to rise up and lead us. Why tarry his
footsteps?

March 20th.—The Merrimac is now called the Virginia.
I think these changes of names so confusing and so senseless.
Like the French "Royal Bengal Tiger," "National
Tiger," etc. Rue this, and next day Rue that, the very
days and months a symbol, and nothing signified.

I was lying on the sofa in my room, and two men slowly
walking up and down the corridor talked aloud as if necessarily
all rooms were unoccupied at this midday hour. I
asked Maum Mary who they were. "Yeadon and Barnwell
Rhett, Jr." They abused the Council roundly, and
my husband's name arrested my attention. Afterward,
when Yeadon attacked Mr. Chesnut, Mr. Chesnut surprised
him by knowing beforehand all he had to say. Naturally
I had repeated the loud interchange of views I had
overheard in the corridor.

First, Nathan Davis called. Then Gonzales, who presented
a fine, soldierly appearance in his soldier clothes,
and the likeness to Beauregard was greater than ever.
Nathan, all the world knows, is by profession a handsome
man.

General Gonzales told us what in the bitterness of his
soul he had written to Jeff Davis. He regretted that he had
not been his classmate; then he might have been as well
treated as Northrop. In any case he would not have been
refused a brigadiership, citing General Trapier and Tom
Drayton. He had worked for it, had earned it; they had
not. To his surprise, Mr. Davis answered him, and in a
sharp note of four pages. Mr. Davis demanded from whom
he quoted, "not his classmate." General Gonzales responded,
"from the public voice only." Now he will fight
for us all the same, but go on demanding justice from Jeff
Davis until he get his dues—at least, until one of them gets

A GROUP OF CONFEDERATE WOMEN.

MISS S. B. C. PRESTON. MISS ISABELLA D. MARTIN
MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS. MRS. LOUISA S. McCORD
MRS. FRANCIS W. PICKENS. MRS. DAVID R. WILLIAMS. (The author's sister, Kate.)

his dues, for he means to go on hitting Jeff Davis over the
head whenever he has a chance.

"I am afraid," said I, "you will find it a hard head
to crack." He replied in his flowery Spanish way: "Jeff
Davis will be the sun, radiating all light, heat, and patronage;
he will not be a moon reflecting public opinion, for he
has the soul of a despot; he delights to spite public opinion.
See, people abused him for making Crittenden brigadier.
Straightway he made him major-general, and just after a
blundering, besotted defeat, too." Also, he told the President
in that letter: "Napoleon made his generals after
great deeds on their part, and not for having been educated
at St. Cyr, or Brie, or the Polytechnique," etc., etc. Nathan
Davis sat as still as a Sioux warrior, not an eyelash moved.
And yet he said afterward that he was amused while the
Spaniard railed at his great namesake.

Gonzales said: "Mrs. Slidell would proudly say that she
was a Creole. They were such fools, they thought Creole
meant—" Here Nathan interrupted pleasantly: "At the
St. Charles, in New Orleans, on the bill of fare were
'Creole eggs.' When they were brought to a man who had
ordered them, with perfect simplicity, he held them up,
'Why, they are only hens' eggs, after all.' What in Heaven's
name he expected them to be, who can say?" smiled
Nathan the elegant.

One lady says (as I sit reading in the drawing-room
window while Maum Mary puts my room to rights): "I
clothe my negroes well. I could not bear to see them in
dirt and rags; it would be unpleasant to me." Another
lady: "Yes. Well, so do I. But not fine clothes, you
know. I feel—now—it was one of our sins as a nation, the
way we indulged them in sinful finery. We will be punished
for it."

Last night, Mrs. Pickens met General Cooper. Madam
knew General Cooper only as our adjutant-general, and
Mr. Mason's brother-in-law. In her slow, graceful, impressive

way, her beautiful eyes eloquent with feeling, she inveighed
against Mr. Davis's wickedness in always sending
men born at the North to command at Charleston. General
Cooper is on his way to make a tour of inspection there now.
The dear general settled his head on his cravat with the aid
of his forefinger; he tugged rather more nervously with the
something that is always wrong inside of his collar, and
looked straight up through his spectacles. Some one
crossed the room, stood back of Mrs. Pickens, and murmured
in her ear., "General Cooper was born in New
York." Sudden silence.

Dined with General Cooper at the Prestons. General
Hampton and Blanton Duncan were there also; the latter
a thoroughly free-and-easy Western man, handsome and
clever; more audacious than either, perhaps. He pointed
to Buck—Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston. "What's
that girl laughing at?" Poor child, how amazed she
looked. He bade them "not despair; all the nice young men
would not be killed in the war; there would be a few left.
For himself, he could give them no hope; Mrs. Duncan was
uncommonly healthy." Mrs. Duncan is also lovely. We
have seen her.

March 24th.—I was asked to the Tognos' tea, so refused
a drive with Mary Preston. As I sat at my solitary case-mate,
waiting for the time to come for the Tognos, saw
Mrs. Preston's landau pass, and Mr. Venable making Mary
laugh at some of his army stories, as only Mr. Venable can.
Already I felt that I had paid too much for my whistle—
that is, the Togno tea. The Gibbeses, Trenholms, Edmund
Rhett, there. Edmund Rhett has very fine eyes and makes
fearful play with them. He sits silent and motionless, with
his hands on his knees, his head bent forward, and his eyes
fixed upon you. I could think of nothing like it but a setter
and a covey of partridges.

As to President Davis, he sank to profounder deeps of
abuse of him than even Gonzales. I quoted Yancey: "A

crew may not like their captain, but if they are mad enough
to mutiny while a storm is raging, all hands are bound
to go to the bottom." After that I contented myself with a
mild shake of the head when I disagreed with him, and at
last I began to shake so persistently it amounted to incipient
palsy. "Jeff Davis," he said, "is conceited,
wrong-headed, wranglesome, obstinate—a traitor." "Now
I have borne much in silence," said I at last, "but that is
pernicious nonsense. Do not let us waste any more time
listening to your quotations from the Mercury."

He very good-naturedly changed the subject, which was
easy just then, for a delicious supper was on the table
ready for us. But Doctor Gibbes began anew the fighting.
He helped me to some pâté—" Not foie gras," said
Madame Togno, "pâté perdreaux." Doctor Gibbes, however,
gave it a flavor of his own. "Eat it," said he, "it
is good for you; rich and wholesome; healthy as cod-liver
oil."

A queer thing happened. At the post-office a man saw a
small, boy open with a key the box of the Governor and the
Council, take the contents of the box and run for his life.
Of course, this man called to the urchin to stop. The urchin
did not heed, but seeing himself pursued, began tearing up
the letters and papers. He was caught and the fragments
were picked up. Finding himself a prisoner, he pointed
out the negro who gave him the key. The negro was arrested.

Governor Pickens called to see me to-day. We
began with Fort Sumter. For an hour did we hammer at that
fortress. We took it, gun by gun. He was very pleasant
and friendly in his manner.

James Chesnut has been so nice this winter; so reasonable
and considerate—that is, for a man. The night I
came from Madame Togno's, instead of making a row about
the lateness of the hour, he said he was "so wide awake and
so hungry." I put on my dressing-gown and scrambled

some eggs, etc., there on our own fire. And with our feet on
the fender and the small supper-table between us, we enjoyed
the supper and glorious gossip. Rather a pleasant
state of things when one's own husband is in good humor
and cleverer than all the men outside.

This afternoon, the entente cordiale still subsisting,
Maum Mary beckoned me out mysteriously, but Mr. Chesnut
said: "Speak out, old woman; nobody here but myself."
"Mars Nathum Davis wants to speak to her," said
she. So I hurried off to the drawing-room, Maum Mary
flapping her down-at-the-heels shoes in my wake. "He's
gwine bekase somebody done stole his boots. How could he
stay bedout boots? " So Nathan said good-by. Then
we met General Gist, Maum Mary still hovering near, and I
congratulated him on being promoted. He is now a brigadier.
This he received with modest complaisance. "I
knowed he was a general," said Maum Mary as he passed
on, "he told me as soon as he got in his room befo' his boy
put down his trunks."

As Nathan, the unlucky, said good-by, he informed me
that a Mr. Reed from Montgomery was in the drawing-room
and wanted to see me. Mr. Reed had traveled with
our foreign envoy, Yancey. I was keen for news from
abroad. Mr. Reed settled that summarily. "Mr. Yancey
says we need not have one jot of hope. He could bowstring
Mallory for not buying arms in time. The very best citizens
wanted to depose the State government and take
things into their own hands, the powers that be being inefficient.
Western men are hurrying to the front, bestirring
themselves. In two more months we shall be ready."
What could I do but laugh? I do hope the enemy will be
considerate and charitable enough to wait for us.

Mr. Reed's calm faith in the power of Mr. Yancey's
eloquence was beautiful to see. He asked for Mr. Chesnut.
I went back to our rooms, swelling with news like a pouter
pigeon. Mr. Chesnut said: "Well! four hours—a call

from Nathan Davis of four hours!" Men are too absurd!
So I bear the honors of my forty years gallantly. I can
but laugh. "Mr. Nathan Davis went by the five-o'clock
train," I said; "it is now about six or seven, maybe eight.
I have had so many visitors. Mr. Reed, of Alabama, is asking
for you out there." He went without a word, but I
doubt if he went to see Mr. Reed, my laughing had made
him so angry.

At last Lincoln threatens us with a proclamation abolishing
slavery[13] —here in the free Southern Confederacy; and
they say McClellan is deposed. They want more fighting
—I mean the government, whose skins are safe, they want
more fighting, and trust to luck for the skill of the new
generals.

March 28th.—I did leave with regret Maum Mary. She
was such a good, well-informed old thing. My Molly,
though perfection otherwise, does not receive the confidential
communications of new-made generals at the earliest
moment. She is of very limited military information.
Maum Mary was the comfort of my life. She saved me
from all trouble as far as she could. Seventy, if she is a
day, she is spry and active as a cat, of a curiosity that
knows no bounds, black and clean; also, she knows a joke
at first sight, and she is honest. I fancy the negroes are
ashamed to rob people as careless as James Chesnut and
myself.

One night, just before we left the Congaree House, Mr.
Chesnut had forgotten to tell some all-important thing to

Governor Gist, who was to leave on a public mission next
day. So at the dawn of day he put on his dressing-gown and
went to the Governor's room. He found the door unlocked
and the Governor fast asleep. He shook him. Half-asleep,
the Governor sprang up and threw his arms around Mr.
Chesnut's neck and said: "Honey, is it you!" The mistake
was rapidly set right, and the bewildered plenipotentiary
was given his instructions. Mr. Chesnut came into
my room, threw himself on the sofa, and nearly laughed
himself to extinction, imitating again and again the pathetic
tone of the Governor's greeting.

Mr. Chesnut calls Lawrence "Adolphe," but says he is
simply perfect as a servant. Mary Stevens said: "I
thought Cousin James the laziest man alive until I knew his
man, Lawrence." Lawrence will not move an inch or lift
a finger for any one but his master. Mrs. Middleton politely
sent him on an errand; Lawrence, too, was very polite;
hours after, she saw him sitting on the fence of the
front yard. "Didn't you go?" she asked. "No, ma'am.
I am waiting for Mars Jeems." Mrs. Middleton calls him
now, "Mr. Take-it-Easy."

My very last day's experience at the Congaree. I was
waiting for Mars Jeems in the drawing-room when a lady
there declared herself to be the wife of an officer in Clingman's
regiment. A gentleman who seemed quite friendly
with her, told her all Mr. Chesnut said, thought, intended
to do, wrote, and felt. I asked: "Are you certain of all
these things you say of Colonel Chesnut?" The man
hardly deigned to notice this impertinent interruption from
a stranger presuming to speak but who had not been introduced!
After he went out, the wife of Clingman's officer
was seized with an intuitive curiosity. "Madam, will you
tell me your name?" I gave it, adding, "I dare say I
showed myself an intelligent listener when my husband's
affairs were under discussion." At first, I refused to give
my name because it would have embarrassed her friend if

she had told him who I was. The man was Mr. Chesnut's
secretary, but I had never seen him before.

A letter from Kate says she had been up all night preparing
David's things. Little Serena sat up and helped
her mother. They did not know that they would ever see
him again. Upon reading it, I wept and James Chesnut
cursed the Yankees.

Gave the girls a quantity of flannel for soldiers' shirts;
also a string of pearls to be raffled for at the Gunboat Fair.
Mary Witherspoon has sent a silver tea-pot. We do not
spare our precious things now. Our silver and gold, what
are they?—when we give up to war our beloved.

April 2d.—Dr. Trezevant, attending Mr. Chesnut, who
was ill, came and found his patient gone; he could not stand
the news of that last battle. He got up and dressed, weak
as he was, and went forth to hear what he could for himself.
The doctor was angry with me for permitting this,
and more angry with him for such folly. I made him listen
to the distinction between feminine folly and virulent vagaries
and nonsense. He said: "He will certainly be salivated
after all that calomel out in this damp weather."

To-day, the ladies in their landaus were bitterly attacked
by the morning paper for lolling back in their silks and
satins, with tall footmen in livery, driving up and down
the streets while the poor soldiers' wives were on the sidewalks.
It is the old story of rich and poor! My little barouche
is not here, nor has James Chesnut any of his horses
here, but then I drive every day with Mrs. McCord and
Mrs. Preston, either of whose turnouts fills the bill. The
Governor's carriage, horses, servants etc., are splendid—
just what they should be. Why not?

April 14th.—Our Fair is in full blast. We keep a
restaurant. Our waitresses are Mary and Buck Preston,
Isabella Martin, and Grace Elmore.

April 15th.—Trescott is too clever ever to be a bore;
that was proved to-day, for he stayed two hours; as usual,

Mr. Chesnut said "four." Trescott was very surly; calls
himself ex-Secretary of State of the United States; now,
nothing in particular of South Carolina or the Confederate
States. Then he yawned, "What a bore this war is. I
wish it was ended, one way or another." He speaks of
going across the border and taking service in Mexico.
"Rubbish, not much Mexico for you," I answered. Another
patriot came then and averred,"I will take my family
back to town, that we may all surrender together. I
gave it up early in the spring. "Trescott made a face behind
backs, and said: "Lache!"

The enemy have flanked Beauregard at Nashville.
There is grief enough for Albert Sidney Johnston now; we
begin to see what we have lost. We were pushing them into
the river when General Johnston was wounded. Beauregard
was lying in his tent, at the rear, in a green sickness—
melancholy—but no matter what the name of the malady.
He was too slow to move, and lost all the advantage gained
by our dead hero.[14] Without him there is no head to our
Western army. Pulaski has fallen. What more is there
to fall?

April 15th.—Mrs. Middleton: "How did you settle
Molly's little difficulty with Mrs. McMahan, that 'piece of
her mind' that Molly gave our landlady?" "Oh, paid our
way out of it, of course, and I apologized for Molly!"

Gladden, the hero of the Palmettos in Mexico, is killed.
Shiloh has been a dreadful blow to us. Last winter Stephen,
my brother, had it in his power to do such a nice thing for
Colonel Gladden. In the dark he heard his name, also that
he had to walk twenty-five miles in Alabama mud or go on

an ammunition wagon. So he introduced himself as a
South Carolinian to Colonel Gladden, whom he knew only
by reputation as colonel of the Palmetto regiment in the
Mexican war. And they drove him in his carriage comfortably
to where he wanted to go—a night drive of fifty miles
for Stephen, for he had the return trip, too. I would
rather live in Siberia, worse still, in Sahara, than live in a
country surrendered to Yankees.

The Carolinian says the conscription bill passed by Congress
is fatal to our liberties as a people. Let us be a people
"certain and sure," as poor Tom B. said, and then talk of
rebelling against our home government.

Sat up all night. Bead Eothen straight through, our
old Wiley and Putnam edition that we bought in London in
1845. How could I sleep? The power they are bringing
to bear against our country is tremendous. Its weight may
be irresistible—I dare not think of that, however.

April 21st.—Have been ill. One day I dined at Mrs.
Preston's, pâté de foie gras and partridge prepared for
me as I like them. I had been awfully depressed for days
and could not sleep at night for anxiety, but I did not
know that I was bodily ill. Mrs. Preston came home with
me. She said emphatically: "Molly, if your mistress is
worse in the night send for me instantly." I thought it
very odd. I could not breathe if I attempted to lie down,
and very soon I lost my voice. Molly raced out and sent
Lawrence for Doctor Trezevant. She said I had the croup.
The doctor said, "congestion of the lungs."

So here I am, stranded, laid by the heels. Battle after
battle has occurred, disaster after disaster. Every morning's
paper is enough to kill a well woman and age a strong
and hearty one.

To-day, the waters of this stagnant pool were wildly
stirred. The President telegraphed for my husband to
come on to Richmond, and offered him a place on his staff.
I was a joyful woman. It was a way opened by Providence

from this Slough of Despond, this Council whose counsel no
one takes. I wrote to Mr. Davis, "With thanks, and begging
your pardon, how I would like to go." Mrs. Preston
agrees with me, Mr. Chesnut ought to go. Through Mr.
Chesnut the President might hear many things to the advantage
of our State, etc.

Letter from Quinton Washington. That was the best
tonic yet. He writes so cheerfully. We have fifty thousand
men on the Peninsula and McClellan eighty thousand. We
expect that much disparity of numbers. We can stand that.

April 23d.—On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged
seventeen; consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was
thirty-nine. I saw a wedding to-day from my window,
which opens on Trinity Church. Nanna Shand married a
Doctor Wilson. Then, a beautiful bevy of girls rushed into
my room. Such a flutter and a chatter. Well, thank
Heaven for a wedding. It is a charming relief from the
dismal litany of our daily song.

A letter to-day from our octogenarian at Mulberry.
His nephew, Jack Deas, had two horses shot under him; the
old Colonel has his growl, "That's enough for glory, and
no hurt after all." He ends, however, with his never-failing
refrain: We can't fight all the world; two and two only
make four; it can't make a thousand; numbers will not lie.
He says he has lost half a million already in railroad bonds,
bank stock, Western notes of hand, not to speak of negroes
to be freed, and lands to be confiscated, for he takes the
gloomiest views of all things.

April 26th.—Doleful dumps, alarm-bells ringing. Telegrams
say the mortar fleet has passed the forts at New
Orleans. Down into the very depths of despair are we.

April 27th.—New Orleans gone[15] and with it the Confederacy.

That Mississippi ruins us if lost. The Confederacy
has been done to death by the politicians. What
wonder we are lost.

The soldiers have done their duty. All honor to the
army. Statesmen as busy as bees about their own places,
or their personal honor, too busy to see the enemy at a distance
With a microscope they were examining their own
interests, or their own wrongs, forgetting the interests of the
people they represented. They were concocting newspaper
paragraphs to injure the government. No matter how
vital it may be, nothing can be kept from the enemy. They
must publish themselves, night and day, what they are doing
or the omniscient Buncombe will forget them.

This fall of New Orleans means utter ruin to the private
fortunes of the Prestons. Mr. Preston came from New
Orleans so satisfied with Mansfield Lovell and the tremenndous
steam-rams he saw there. While in New Orleans
Burnside offered Mr. Preston five hundred thousand dollars,
a debt due to him from Burnside, and he refused to
take it. He said the money was safer in Burnside's hands
than his. And so it may prove, so ugly is the outlook now.
Burnside is wide awake; he is not a man to be caught napping.

Mary Preston was saying she had asked the Hamptons
how they relished the idea of being paupers. If the country
is saved none of us will care for that sort of thing. Philosophical
and patriotic, Mr. Chesnut came in, saying:
"Conrad has been telegraphed from New Orleans that the
great iron-clad Louisiana went down at the first shot."
Mr. Chesnut and Mary Preston walked off, first to the bulletin-board
and then to the Prestons'.

April 29th.—A grand smash, the news from New Orleans
fatal to us. Met Mr. Weston. He wanted to know
where he could find a place of safety for two hundred negroes.
I looked into his face to see if he were in earnest;
then to see if he were sane. There was a certain set of
two hundred negroes that had grown to be a nuisance. Apparently
all the white men of the family had felt bound
to stay at home to take care of them. There are people
who still believe negroes property—like Noah's neighbors,
who insisted that the Deluge would only be a little shower
after all.

These negroes, however, were Plowden Weston's, a totally
different part of speech. He gave field-rifles to one
company and forty thousand dollars to another. He is
away with our army at Corinth. So I said: "You may
rely upon Mr. Chesnut, who will assist you to his uttermost
in finding a home for these people. Nothing belonging to
that patriotic gentleman shall come to grief if we have to
take charge of them on our own place." Mr. Chesnut did
get a place for them, as I said he would.

Had to go to the Governor's or they would think we
had hoisted the black flag. Heard there we are going to
be beaten as Cortez beat the Mexicans—by superior arms.
Mexican bows and arrows made a poor showing in the face
of Spanish accoutrements. Our enemies have such superior
weapons of war, we hardly any but what we capture from
them in the fray. The Saxons and the Normans were in
the same plight.

War seems a game of chess, but we have an unequal
number of pawns to begin with. We have knights, kings,
queens, bishops, and castles enough. But our skilful generals,
whenever they can not arrange the board to suit them
exactly, burn up everything and march away. We want
them to save the country. They seem to think their whole
duty is to destroy ships and save the army.

Mr. Robert Barnwell wrote that he had to hang his

head for South Carolina. We had not furnished our quota
of the new levy, five thousand men. To-day Colonel Chesnut
published his statement to show that we have sent thirteen
thousand, instead of the mere number required of us;
so Mr. Barnwell can hold up his head again.

April 30th.—The last day of this month of calamities.
Lovell left the women and children to be shelled, and took
the army to a safe place. I do not understand why we do
not send the women and children to the safe place and let
the army stay where the fighting is to be. Armies are to
save, not to be saved. At least, to be saved is not their
raison d'être exactly. If this goes on the spirit of our people
will be broken. One ray of comfort comes from Henry
Marshall. "Our Army of the Peninsula is fine; so good I
do not think McClellan will venture to attack it." So mote
it be.

May 6th.—Mine is a painful, self-imposed task: but why
write when I have nothing to chronicle but disaster?[16] So
I read instead: First, Consuelo, then Columba, two ends of
the pole certainly, and then a translated edition of Elective
Affinities. Food enough for thought in every one of this
odd assortment of books.

At the Prestons', where I am staying (because Mr.
Chesnut has gone to see his crabbed old father, whom he
loves, and who is reported ill), I met Christopher Hampton.
He tells us Wigf all is out on a warpath; wants them
to strike for Maryland. The President's opinion of the
move is not given. Also Mr. Hampton met the first lieutenant
of the Kirkwoods, E. M. Boykin. Says he is just the
same man he was in the South Carolina College. In whatever
company you may meet him, he is the pleasantest man
there.

A telegram reads: "We have repulsed the enemy at

Williamsburg."[17] Oh, if we could drive them back "to
their ain countree!" Richmond was hard pressed this day.
The Mercury of to-day says, "Jeff Davis now treats all
men as if they were idiotic insects."

Mary Preston said all sisters quarreled. No, we never
quarrel, I and mine. We keep all our bitter words for our
enemies. We are frank heathens; we hate our enemies and
love our friends. Some people (our kind) can never make
up after a quarrel; hard words once only and all is over. To
us forgiveness is impossible. Forgiveness means calm indifference;
philosophy, while love lasts. Forgiveness of
love's wrongs is impossible. Those dutiful wives who
piously overlook—well, everything—do not care one fig for
their husbands. I settled that in my own mind years ago.
Some people think it magnanimous to praise their enemies
and to show their impartiality and justice by acknowledging
the faults of their friends. I am for the simple rule,
the good old plan. I praise whom I love and abuse whom
I hate.

Mary Preston has been translating Schiller aloud. We
are provided with Bulwer's translation, Mrs. Austin's,
Coleridge's, and Carlyle's, and we show how each renders
the passage Mary is to convert into English. In Wallenstein
at one point of the Max and Thekla scene, I like Carlyle
better than Coleridge, though they say Coleridge's Wallenstein
is the only translation in the world half so good as
the original. Mrs. Barstow repeated some beautiful scraps
by Uhland, which I had never heard before. She is to
write them for us. Peace, and a literary leisure for my
old age, unbroken by care and anxiety!

General Preston accused me of degenerating into a
boarding-house gossip, and is answered triumphantly by

his daughters: "But, papa, one you love to gossip with
full well."

Hampton estate has fifteen hundred negroes on Lake
Washington, Mississippi. Hampton girls talking in the
language of James's novels: "Neither Wade nor Preston
—that splendid boy!—would lay a lance in rest—or couch
it, which is the right phrase for fighting, to preserve slavery.
They hate it as we do." "What are they fighting
for?" "Southern rights—whatever that is. And they
do not want to be understrappers forever to the Yankees.
They talk well enough about it, but I forget what they
say." Johnny Chesnut says: "No use to give a reason—
a fellow could not stay away from the fight—not well." It
takes four negroes to wait on Johnny satisfactorily.

It is this giving up that kills me. Norfolk they talk of
now; why not Charleston next? I read in a Western letter,
"Not Beauregard, but the soldiers who stopped to drink
the whisky they had captured from the enemy, lost us Shiloh."
Cock Robin is as dead as he ever will be now; what
matters it who killed him?

May 12th.—Mr. Chesnut says he is very glad he went to
town. Everything in Charleston is so much more satisfactory
than it is reported. Troops are in good spirits. It will
take a lot of iron-clads to take that city.

Isaac Hayne said at dinner yesterday that both Beauregard
and the President had a great opinion of Mr. Chesnut's
natural ability for strategy and military evolution.
Hon. Mr. Barnwell concurred; that is, Mr. Barnwell had
been told so by the President. "Then why did not the President
offer me something better than an aideship?" "I
heard he offered to make you a general last year, and you
said you could not go over other men's shoulders until you
had earned promotion. You are too hard to please." "No,
not exactly that, I was only offered a colonelcy, and Mr.
Barnwell persuaded me to stick to the Senate; then he

wanted my place, and between the two stools I fell to the
ground."

My Molly will forget Lige and her babies, too. I asked
her who sent me that beautiful bouquet I found on my center-table.
"I give it to you. 'Twas give to me." And Molly
was all wriggle, giggle, blush.

May 18th.—Norfolk has been burned and the Merrimac
sunk without striking a blow since her coup d'état in Hampton
Roads. Bead Milton. See the speech of Adam to Eve
in a new light. "Women will not stay at home; will go out
to see and be seen, even if it be by the devil himself.

Very encouraging letters from Hon. Mr. Memminger
and from L. Q. "Washington. They tell the same story in
very different words. It amounts to this: "Not one foot
of Virginia soil is to be given up without a bitter fight for
it. We have one hundred and five thousand men in all,
MeClellan one hundred and ninety thousand. We can
stand that disparity."

What things I have been said to have said! Mr.—
heard me make scoffing remarks about the Governor and the
Council—or he thinks he heard me. James Chesnut wrote
him a note that my name was to be kept out of it—indeed,
that he was never to mention my name again under any possible
circumstances. It was all preposterous nonsense, but it
annoyed my husband amazingly. He said it was a scheme
to use my chatter to his injury. He was very kind about it.
He knows my real style so well that he can always tell my
real impudence from what is fabricated for me.

There is said to be an order from Butler[18] turning over

the women of New Orleans to his soldiers. Thus is the
measure of his iniquities filled. We thought that generals
always restrained, by shot or sword if need be, the brutality
of soldiers. This hideous, cross-eyed beast orders his
men to treat the ladies of New Orleans as women of the
town—to punish them, he says, for their insolence.

Footprints on the boundaries of another world once
more. Willie Taylor, before he left home for the army,
fancied one day—day, remember—that he saw Albert
Rhett standing by his side. He recoiled from the ghostly
presence. "You need not do that, Willie. You will soon
be as I am." Willie rushed into the next room to tell them
what had happened, and fainted. It had a very depressing
effect upon him. And now the other day he died in Virginia.

May 24th.—The enemy are landing at Georgetown.
With a little more audacity where could they not land?
But we have given them such a scare, they are cautious. If
it be true, I hope some cool-headed white men will make
the negroes save the rice for us. It is so much needed.
They say it might have been done at Port Royal with a little
more energy. South Carolinians have pluck enough, but
they only work by fits and starts; there is no continuous
effort; they can't be counted on for steady work. They
will stop to play—or enjoy life in some shape.

Without let or hindrance Halleck is being reenforced.
Beauregard, unmolested, was making some fine speeches—
and issuing proclamations, while we were fatuously looking
for him to make a tiger's spring on Huntsville. Why not?
Hope springs eternal in the Southern breast.

My Hebrew friend, Mem Cohen, has a son in the war.
He is in John Chesnut's company. Cohen is a high name
among the Jews: it means Aaron. She has long fits of
silence, and is absent-minded. If she is suddenly roused,
she is apt to say, with overflowing eyes and clasped hands,
"If it please God to spare his life." Her daughter is the
sweetest little thing. The son is the mother's idol. Mrs.
Cohen was Miriam de Leon. I have known her intimately
ail my life.

Mrs. Bartow, the widow of Colonel Bartow, who was
killed at Manassas, was Miss Berrien, daughter of Judge
Berrien, of Georgia. She is now in one of the departments
here, cutting bonds—Confederate bonds—for five hundred
Confederate dollars a year, a penniless woman. Judge
Carroll, her brother-in-law, has been urgent with her to
come and live in his home. He has a large family and she
will not be an added burden to him. In spite of all he can
say, she will not forego her resolution. She will be independent.
She is a resolute little woman, with the softest,
silkiest voice and ways, and clever to the last point.

Columbia is the place for good living, pleasant people,
pleasant dinners, pleasant drives. I feel that I have put
the dinners in the wrong place. They are the climax of the
good things here. This is the most hospitable place in the
world, and the dinners are worthy of it.

In Washington, there was an endless succession of state
dinners. I was kindly used. I do not remember ever being
condemned to two dull neighbors: on one side or the
other was a clever man; so I liked Washington dinners.

In Montgomery, there were a few dinners—Mrs. Pollard's,
for instance, but the society was not smoothed down
or in shape. Such as it was it was given over to balls and
suppers. In Charleston, Mr. Chesnut went to gentlemen's
dinners all the time; no ladies present. Flowers were sent
to me, and I was taken to drive and asked to tea. There
could not have been nicer suppers, more perfect of their

kind than were to be found at the winding up of those festivities.

In Richmond, there were balls, which I did not attend—
very few to which I was asked: the MacFarlands' and
Lyons's, all I can remember. James Chesnut dined out
nearly every day. But then the breakfasts—the Virginia
breakfasts—where were always pleasant people. Indeed, I
have had a good time everywhere—always clever people,
and people I liked, and everybody so good to me.

Here in Columbia, family dinners are the specialty.
You call, or they pick you up and drive home with you.
"Oh, stay to dinner!" and you stay gladly. They send for
your husband, and he comes willingly. Then comes a perfect
dinner. You do not see how it could be improved;
and yet they have not had time to alter things or add because
of the unexpected guests. They have everything of
the best—silver, glass, china, table linen, and damask, etc.
And then the planters live "within themselves," as they
call it. From the plantations come mutton, beef, poultry,
cream, butter, eggs, fruits, and vegetables.

It is easy to live here, with a cook who has been sent for
training to the best eating-house in Charleston. Old Mrs.
Chesnut's Romeo was apprenticed at Jones's. I do not
know where Mrs. Preston's got his degree, but he deserves
a medal.

At the Prestons', James Chesnut induced Buck to declaim
something about Joan of Arc, which she does in a
manner to touch all hearts. While she was speaking, my
husband turned to a young gentleman who was listening
to the chatter of several girls, and said: "Écontez!" The
youth stared at him a moment in bewilderment; then,
gravely rose and began turning down the gas. Isabella
said: "Écontez, then, means put out the lights."

I recall a scene which took place during a ball given by
Mrs. Preston while her husband was in Louisiana. Mrs.
Preston was resplendent in diamonds, point lace, and velvet.

There is a gentle dignity about her which is very attractive;
her voice is low and sweet, and her will is iron.
She is exceedingly well informed, but very quiet, retiring,
and reserved. Indeed, her apparent gentleness almost
amounts to timidity. She has chiseled regularity of features,
a majestic figure, perfectly molded.

Governor Manning said to me: "Look at Sister Caroline.
Does she look as if she had the pluck of a heroine!"
Then he related how a little while ago "William, the butler,
came to tell her that John, the footman, was drunk in the
cellar—mad with drink; that he had a carving-knife which
he was brandishing in drunken fury, and he was keeping
everybody from their business, threatening to kill any one
who dared to go into the basement. They were like a
flock of frightened sheep down there. She did not speak
to one of us, but followed William down to the basement,
holding up her skirts. She found the servants scurrying
everywhere, screaming and shouting that John was
crazy and going to kill them. John was bellowing like
a bull of Bashan, knife in hand, chasing them at his
pleasure.

Mrs. Preston walked up to him. "Give me that knife,"
she demanded. He handed it to her. She laid it on the
table. "Now come with me," she said, putting her hand
on his collar. She led him away to the empty smoke-house,
and there she locked him in and put the key in her pocket.
Then she returned to her guests, without a ripple on her
placid face. "She told me of it, smiling and serene as you
see her now," the Governor concluded.

Before the war shut him in, General Preston sent to the
lakes for his salmon, to Mississippi for his venison, to the
mountains for his mutton and grouse. It is good enough,
the best dish at all these houses, what the Spanish call "the
hearty welcome." Thackeray says at every American table
he was first served with "grilled hostess." At the head
of the table sat a person, fiery-faced, anxious, nervous, inwardly

murmuring, like Falstaff, "Would it were night,
Hal, and all were well."

At Mulberry the house is always filled to overflowing,
and one day is curiously like another. People are coming
and going, carriages driving up or driving off. It has the
air of a watering-place, where one does not pay, and where
there are no strangers. At Christmas the china closet gives
up its treasures. The glass, china, silver, fine linen reserved
for grand occasions come forth. As for the dinner itself,
it is only a matter of greater quantity—more turkey, more
mutton, more partridges, more fish, etc., and more solemn
stiffness. Usually a half-dozen persons unexpectedly dropping
in make no difference. The family let the housekeeper
know; that is all.

People are beginning to come here from Richmond.
One swallow does not make a summer, but it shows how the
wind blows, these straws do—Mrs. "Constitution" Browne
and Mrs. Wise. The Gibsons are at Doctor Gibbes's. It
does look squally. We are drifting on the breakers.

May 29th.—Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.'s, has
been sold to a telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto
ever gets to be, and clever in every kind of work. My
Molly thinks her mistress "very lucky in getting rid of
her." She was "a dangerous inmate," but she will be a
good cook, a good chambermaid, a good dairymaid, a beautiful
clear-starcher, and the most thoroughly good-for-nothing
woman I know to her new owners, if she chooses.
Molly evidently hates her, but thinks it her duty "to stand
by her color."

Mrs. Gibson is a Philadelphia woman. She is true to
her husband and children, but she does not believe in us—
the Confederacy, I mean. She is despondent and hopeless;
as wanting in faith of our ultimate success as is Sally Baxter
Hampton. I make allowances for those people. If I
had married North, they would have a heavy handful in me
just now up there.

Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, has been sixty years
in the South, and she has not changed in feeling or in taste
one iota. She can not like hominy for breakfast, or rice for
dinner, without a relish to give it some flavor. She can not
eat watermelons and sweet potatoes sans discrétion, as we
do. She will not eat hot corn bread à discrétion, and hot
buttered biscuit without any.

"Richmond is obliged to fall," sighed Mrs. Gibson.
"You would say so, too, if you had seen our poor soldiers."
"Poor soldiers?" said I. "Are you talking of Stonewall
Jackson's men! Poor soldiers, indeed! "She said her
mind was fixed on one point, and had ever been, though she
married and came South: she never would own slaves.
"Who would that was not born to it?" I cried, more excited
than ever. She is very handsome, very clever, and
has very agreeable manners.

"Dear madam," she says, with tears in her beautiful
eyes, "they have three armies." "But Stonewall has
routed one of them already. Heath another." She only
answered by an unbelieving moan. "Nothing seemed to
suit her," I said, as we went away. "You did not certainly,"
said some one to me; "you contradicted every
word she said, with a sort of indignant protest."

We met Mrs. Hampton Gibbes at the door—another
Virginia woman as good as gold. They told us Mrs. Davis
was delightfully situated at Raleigh; North Carolinians so
loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to eat a meal
at the hotel. "How different from Columbia," said Doctor
Gibbes, looking at Mrs. Gibson, who has no doubt been
left to take all of her meals at his house. "Oh, no!" cried
Mary," you do Columbia injustice. Mrs. Chesnut used to
tell us that she was never once turned over to the tender
mercies of the Congaree cuisine, and at McMahan's it is
fruit, flowers, invitations to dinner every day."

After we came away, "Why did you not back me up?"
I was asked. "Why did you let them slander Columbia?"

"It was awfully awkward," I said, "but you see it would
have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs. Gibson see
how different it was with other people."

Took a moonlight walk after tea at the Halcott Greens'.
All the company did honor to the beautiful night by walking
home with me.

Uncle Hamilton Boykin is here, staying at the de
Saussures'. He says, "Manassas was play to Williamsburg,
"and he was at both battles. He lead a part of
Stuart's cavalry in the charge at Williamsburg, riding a
hundred yards ahead of his company.

Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses
freely everything Confederate from the President down to
a horse boy. He thinks there is a conspiracy against him
in the army. Why? Heavens and earth—why?

June 2d.—A battle[19] is said to be raging round Richmond.
I am at the Prestons'. James Chesnut has gone to
Richmond suddenly on business of the Military Department.
It is always his luck to arrive in the nick of time
and be present at a great battle.

Wade Hampton shot in the foot, and Johnston Pettigrew
killed. A telegram says Lee and Davis were both on
the field: the enemy being repulsed. Telegraph operator
said: "Madam, our men are fighting." "Of course they
are. What else is there for them to do now but fight?"
"But, madam, the news is encouraging." Each army is
burying its dead: that looks like a drawn battle. We haunt
the bulletin-board.

Back to McMahan's. Mem Cohen is ill. Her daughter,
Isabel, warns me not to mention the battle raging around
Richmond. Young Cohen is in it. Mrs. Preston, anxious

and unhappy about her sons. John is with General Huger
at Richmond; Willie in the swamps on the coast with his
company. Mem tells me her cousin, Edwin de Leon, is sent
by Mr. Davis on a mission to England.

Rev. Robert Barnwell has returned to the hospital. Oh,
that we had given our thousand dollars to the hospital and
not to the gunboat! "Stonewall Jackson's movements,"
the Herald says, "do us no harm; it is bringing out volunteers
in great numbers." And a Philadelphia paper abused
us so fervently I felt all the blood in me rush to my head
with rage.

June 3d.—Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines
in Charleston to blow the Yankees up; pretty name
they have, those machines. My horses, the overseer says,
are too poor to send over. There was corn enough on the
place for two years, they said, in January; now, in June,
they write that it will not last until the new crop comes in.
Somebody is having a good time on the plantation, if it be
not my poor horses.

Molly will tell me all when she comes back, and more.
Mr. Venable has been made an aide to General Robert E.
Lee. He is at Vicksburg, and writes, "When the fight is
over here, I shall be glad to go to Virginia." He is in capital
spirits. I notice army men all are when they write.

Apropos of calling Major Venable "Mr." Let it be
noted that in social intercourse we are not prone to give
handles to the names of those we know well and of our
nearest and dearest. A general's wife thinks it bad form
to call her husband anything but "Mr." When she gives
him his title, she simply "drops" into it by accident. If
I am "mixed" on titles in this diary, let no one blame me.

Telegrams come from Richmond ordering troops from
Charleston. Can not be sent, for the Yankees are attacking
Charleston, doubtless with the purpose to prevent Lee's receiving
reenforcements from there.

Sat down at my window in the beautiful moonlight, and

tried hard for pleasant thoughts. A man began to play on
the flute, with piano accompaniment, first, "Ever of thee
I am fondly dreaming," and then, "The long, long, weary
day." At first, I found this but a complement to the beautiful
scene, and it was soothing to my wrought-up nerves.
But Von Weber's "Last Waltz" was too much; I broke
down. Heavens, what a bitter cry came forth, with such
floods of tears! the wonder is there was any of me left.

I learn that Richmond women go in their carriages for
the wounded, carry them home and nurse them. One saw
a man too weak to hold his musket. She took it from him,
put it on her shoulder, and helped the poor fellow along.

If ever there was a man who could control every expression
of emotion, who could play stoic, or an Indian chief,
it is James Chesnut. But one day when he came in from
the Council he had to own to a break-down. He was awfully
ashamed of his weakness. There was a letter from Mrs.
"Gaillard asking him to help her, and he tried to read it to
the Council. She wanted a permit to go on to her son, who
lies wounded in Virginia. Colonel Chesnut could not control
his voice. There was not a dry eye there, when suddenly
one man called out, "God bless the woman."

Johnston Pettigrew's aide says he left his chief mortally
wounded on the battle-field. Just before Johnston Pettigrew
went to Italy to take a hand in the war there for
freedom, I met him one day at Mrs. Frank Hampton's. A
number of people were present. Some one spoke of the
engagement of the beautiful Miss—to Hugh Rose. Some
one else asked: "How do you know they are engaged?"
"Well, I never heard it, but I saw it. In London, a month
or so ago, I entered Mrs.—'s drawing-room, and I saw
these two young people seated on a sofa opposite the door."
"Well, that amounted to nothing." " No, not in itself.
But they looked so foolish and so happy. I have noticed
newly engaged people always look that way." And so on.
Johnston Pettigrew was white and red in quick succession

during this turn of the conversation; he was in a rage of
indignation and disgust. "I think this kind of talk is taking
a liberty with the young lady's name," he exclaimed
finally, "and that it is an impertinence in us." I fancy
him left dying alone! I wonder what they feel—those who
are left to die of their wounds—alone—on the battle-field.

Free schools are not everything, as witness this spelling.
Yankee epistles found in camp show how illiterate they can
be, with all their boasted schools. Fredericksburg is spelled
"Fredrexbirg," medicine, "metison," and we read, "To
my sweat brother" etc. For the first time in my life no
books can interest me. Life is so real, so utterly earnest,
that fiction is flat. Nothing but what is going on in this
distracted world of ours can arrest my attention for ten
minutes at a time.

June 4th.—Battles occur near Eiehmond, with bombardment
of Charleston. Beauregard is said to be fighting
his way out or in.

Mrs. Gibson is here, at Doctor Gibbes's. Tears are always
in her eyes. Her eldest son is Willie Preston's lieutenant.
They are down on the coast. She owns that she
has no hope at all. She was a Miss Ayer, of Philadelphia,
and says, "We may look for Burnside now, our troops
which held him down to his iron flotilla have been withdrawn.
They are three to one against us now, and they
have hardly begun to put out their strength—in numbers,
I mean. We have come to the end of our tether, except we
wait for the yearly crop of boys as they grow up to the
requisite age," She would make despondent the most sanguine
person alive. "As a general rule" says Mrs. Gibson,
"government people are sanguine, but the son of one
high functionary whispered to Mary G., as he handed her
into the car,' Richmond is bound to go."' The idea now is
that we are to be starved out. If they shut us in, prolong the
agony, it can then have but one end.

Mrs. Preston and I speak in whispers, but Mrs. McCord

scorns whispers, and speaks out. She says: "There are our
soldiers. Since the world began there never were better,
but God does not deign to send us a general worthy of
them. I do not mean drill-sergeants or military old maids,
who will not fight until everything is just so. The real ammunition
of our war is faith in ourselves and enthusiasm in
our cause. West Point sits down on enthusiasm, laughs it
to scorn. It wants discipline. And now comes a new danger,
these blockade-runners. They are filling their pockets
and they gibe and sneer at the fools who fight. Don't you
see this Stonewall, how he fires the soldiers' hearts; he will
be our leader, maybe after all. They say he does not care
how many are killed. His business is to save the country,
not the army. He fights to win, God bless him, and he wins.
If they do not want to be killed, they can stay at home.
They say he leaves the sick and wounded to be cared for by
those whose business it is to do so. His business is war.
They say he wants to hoist the black flag, have a short,
sharp, decisive war and end it. He is a Christian soldier."

June 5th.—Beauregard retreating and his rear-guard
cut off. If Beauregard's veterans will not stand, why
should we expect our newly levied reserves to do it? The
Yankee general who is besieging Savannah announces his
orders are "to take Savannah in two weeks' time, and then
proceed to erase Charleston from the face of the earth."

Albert Luryea was killed in the battle of June 1st. Last
summer when a bomb fell in the very thick of his company
he picked it up and threw it into the water. Think of that,
those of ye who love life! The company sent the bomb to
his father. Inscribed on it were the words, "Albert Luryea,
bravest where all are brave." Isaac Hayne did the same
thing at Fort Moultrie. This race has brains enough, but
they are not active-minded like those old Revolutionary
characters, the Middletons, Lowndeses, Rutledges, Marions,
Sumters. They have come direct from active-minded forefathers,
or they would not have been here; but, with two

or three generations of gentlemen planters, how changed
has the blood become! Of late, all the active-minded men
who have sprung to the front in our government were immediate
descendants of Scotch, or Scotch-Irish—Calhoun,
McDuffie, Cheves, and Petigru, who Huguenotted his name,
but could not tie up his Irish. Our planters are nice fellows,
but slow to move; impulsive but hard to keep moving.
They are wonderful for a spurt, but with all their strength,
they like to rest.

June 6th.—Paul Hayne, the poet, has taken rooms here.
My husband came and offered to buy me a pair of horses.
He says I need more exercise in the open air. "Come, now,
are you providing me with the means of a rapid retreat?"
said I. "I am pretty badly equipped for marching."

Mrs. Rose Greenhow is in Richmond. One-half of the
ungrateful Confederates say Seward sent her. My husband
says the Confederacy owes her a debt it can never pay.
She warned them at Manassas, and so they got Joe Johnston
and his Paladins to appear upon the stage in the very nick
of time. In Washington they said Lord Napier left her a
legacy to the British Legation, which accepted the gift, unlike
the British nation, who would not accept Emma Hamilton
and her daughter, Horatia, though they were willed to
the nation by Lord Nelson.

Mem Cohen, fresh from the hospital where she went
with a beautiful Jewish friend. Rachel, as we will call her
(be it her name or no), was put to feed a very weak patient.
Mem noticed what a handsome fellow he was and how quiet
and clean. She fancied by those tokens that he was a gentleman.
In performance of her duties, the lovely young
nurse leaned kindly over him and held the cup to his lips.
When that ceremony was over and she had wiped his
mouth, to her horror she felt a pair of by no means weak
arms around her neck and a kiss upon her lips, which she
thought strong, indeed. She did not say a word; she made
no complaint. She slipped away from the hospital, and

hereafter in her hospital work will minister at long range,
no matter how weak and weary, sick and sore, the patient
may be. "And," said Mem, "I thought he was a gentleman."
"Well a gentleman is a man, after all, and she
ought not to have put those red lips of hers so near."

June 7th.—Cheves McCord's battery on the coast has
three guns and one hundred men. If this battery should be
captured John's Island and James Island would be open
to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly.

Wade Hampton writes to his wife that Chickahominy
was not as decided a victory as he could have wished.
Fort Pillow and Memphis[20] have been given up. Next! and
next!

June 9th.—When we read of the battles in India, in
Italy, in the Crimea, what did we care? Only an interesting
topic, like any other, to look for in the paper. Now
you hear of a battle with a thrill and a shudder. It has
come home to us; half the people that we know in the world
are under the enemy's guns. A telegram reaches you, and
you leave it on your lap. You are pale with fright. You
handle it, or you dread to touch it, as you would a rattlesnake;
worse, worse, a snake could only strike you. How
many, many will this scrap of paper tell you have gone to
their death?

When you meet people, sad and sorrowful is the greeting;
they press your hand; tears stand in their eyes or roll
down their cheeks, as they happen to possess more or less
self-control. They have brother, father, or sons as the
case may be, in battle. And now this thing seems never to
stop. We have no breathing time given us. It can not be

so at the North, for the papers say gentlemen do not go into
the ranks there, but are officers, or clerks of departments.
Then we see so many members of foreign regiments among
our prisoners—Germans, Irish, Scotch. The proportion of
trouble is awfully against us. Every company on the field,
rank and file, is filled with our nearest and dearest, who are
common soldiers.

Mem Cohen's story to-day. A woman she knew heard
her son was killed, and had hardly taken in the horror of it
when they came to say it was all a mistake in the name.
She fell on her knees with a shout of joy. "Praise the
Lord, O my soul! "she cried, in her wild delight. The
household was totally upset, the swing-back of the pendulum
from the scene of weeping and wailing of a few moments
before was very exciting. In the midst of this hubbub
the hearse drove up with the poor boy in his metallic
coffin. Does anybody wonder so many women die? Grief
and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women at home
as men are killed on the battle-field. Mem's friend is at the
point of death with brain fever; the sudden changes from
grief to joy and joy to grief were more than she could bear.

A story from New Orleans. As some Yankees passed
two boys playing in the street, one of the boys threw a handful
of burned cotton at them, saying, "I keep this for you."
The other, not to be outdone, spit at the Yankees, and said,
"I keep this for you." The Yankees marked the house.
Afterward, a corporal's guard came. Madam was affably
conversing with a friend, and in vain, the friend, who was
a mere morning caller, protested he was not the master of
the house; he was marched off to prison.

Mr. Moise got his money out of New Orleans. He went
to a station with his two sons, who were quite small boys.
When he got there, the carriage that he expected was not to
be seen. He had brought no money with him, knowing he
might be searched. Some friend called out, "I will lend
you my horse, but then you will be obliged to leave the

children." This offer was accepted, and, as he rode off,
one of the boys called out, "Papa, here is your tobacco,
which you have forgotten." Mr. Moise turned back and the
boy handed up a roll of tobacco, which he had held openly
in his hand all the time. Mr. Moise took it, and galloped
off, waving his hat to them. In that roll of tobacco was
encased twenty-five thousand dollars.

Now, the Mississippi is virtually open to the Yankees.
Beauregard has evacuated Corinth.[21]

Henry Nott was killed at Shiloh; Mrs. Auzé wrote to tell
us. She had no hope. To be conquered and ruined had
always been her fate, strive as she might, and now she knew
it would be through her country that she would be made
to feel. She had had more than most women to endure,
and the battle of life she had tried to fight with courage,
patience, faith. Long years ago, when she was young, her
lover died. Afterward, she married another. Then her
husband died, and next her only son. When New Orleans
fell, her only daughter was there and Mrs. Auzè went to
her. Well may she say that she has bravely borne her burden
till now.[22]

Stonewall said, in his quaint way: "I like strong drink,
so I never touch it." May heaven, who sent him to help us,
save him from all harm!

My husband traced Stonewall's triumphal career on
the map. He has defeated Frémont and taken all his
cannon; now he is after Shields. The language of
the telegram is vague: "Stonewall has taken plenty of
prisoners"—plenty, no doubt, and enough and to spare.
We can't feed our own soldiers, and how are we to feed
prisoners?

They denounce Toombs in some Georgia paper, which I

saw to-day, for planting a full crop of cotton. They say he
ought to plant provisions for soldiers.

And now every man in Virginia, and the eastern part of
South Carolina is in revolt, because old men and boys are
ordered out as a reserve corps, and worst of all, sacred
property, that is, negroes, have been seized and sent out to
work on the fortifications along the coast line. We are in
a fine condition to fortify Columbia!

June 10th.—General Gregg writes that Chickahominy[23]
was a victory manqué, because Joe Johnston received a disabling
wound and G. W. Smith was ill. The subordinates
in command had not been made acquainted with the plan
of battle.

A letter from John Chesnut, who says it must be all a
mistake about Wade Hampton's wound, for he saw him in
the field to the very last; that is, until late that night.
Hampton writes to Mary McDuffie that the ball was extracted
from his foot on the field, and that he was in the
saddle all day, but that, when he tried to take his boot off
at night his foot was so inflamed and swollen, the boot had
to be cut away, and the wound became more troublesome
than he had expected.

Mrs. Preston sent her carriage to take us to see Mrs.
Herbemont, whom Mary Gibson calls her "Mrs. Burgamot."
Miss Bay came down, ever-blooming, in a cap so
formidable, I could but laugh. It was covered with a
bristling row of white satin spikes. She coyly refused to
enter Mrs. Preston's carriage—" to put foot into it," to use
her own words; but she allowed herself to be overpersuaded.

I am so ill. Mrs. Ben Taylor said to Doctor Trezevant,
" Surely, she is too ill to be going about; she ought to be in
bed." " She is very feeble, very nervous, as you say, but
then she is living on nervous excitement. If you shut her

up she would die at once." A queer weakness of the heart,
I have. Sometimes it beats so feebly I am sure it has
stopped altogether. Then they say I have fainted, but I
never lose consciousness.

Mrs. Preston and I were talking of negroes and cows.
A negro, no matter how sensible he is on any other subject,
can never be convinced that there is any necessity to feed a
cow. "Turn 'em out, and let 'em grass. Grass good nuff
for cow."

Famous news comes from Richmond, but not so good
from the coast. Mrs. Izard said, quoting I forget whom:
"If West Point could give brains as well as training!"
Smith is under arrest for disobedience of orders—Pemberton's
orders. This is the third general whom Pemberton
has displaced within a few weeks—Ripley, Mercer, and now
Smith.

When I told my husband that Molly was full of airs
since her late trip home, he made answer: "Tell her to go
to the devil—she or anybody else on the plantation who is
dissatisfied; let them go. It is bother enough to feed and
clothe them now." When he went over to the plantation
he returned charmed with their loyalty to him, their affection
and their faithfulness.

Sixteen more Yankee regiments have landed on James
Island. Eason writes, "They have twice the energy and
enterprise of our people." I answered, "Wait a while.
Let them alone until climate and mosquitoes and sand-flies
and dealing with negroes takes it all out of them." Stonewall
is a regular brick, going all the time, winning his
way wherever he goes. Governor Pickens called to see me.
His wife is in great trouble, anxiety, uncertainty. Her
brother and her brother-in-law are either killed or taken
prisoners.

Tom Taylor says Wade Hampton did not leave the field
on account of his wound. "What heroism!" said some
one. No, what luck! He is the luckiest man alive. He'll

never be killed. He was shot in the temple, but that did
not kill him. His soldiers believe in his luck.

General Scott, on Southern soldiers, says, we have élan,
courage, woodcraft, consummate horsemanship, endurance
of pain equal to the Indians, but that we will not submit to
discipline. We will not take care of things, or husband our
resources. Where we are there is waste and destruction.
If it could all be done by one wild, desperate dash, we would
do it. But he does not think we can stand the long, blank
months between the acts—the waiting! We can bear pain
without a murmur, but we will not submit to be bored, etc.

Now, for the other side. Men of the North can wait;
they can bear discipline; they can endure forever. Losses
in battle are nothing to them. Their resources in men and
materials of war are inexhaustible, and if they see fit they
will fight to the bitter end. Here is a nice prospect for us—
as comfortable as the old man's croak at Mulberry, "Bad
times, worse coming."

Mrs. McCord says, "In the hospital the better born,
that is, those born in the purple, the gentry, those who are
accustomed to a life of luxury, are the better patients.
They endure in silence. They are hardier, stronger,
tougher, less liable to break down than the sons of the soil."
Why is that? "I asked, and she answered, "Something
in man that is more than the body."

I know how it feels to die. I have felt it again and again.
For instance, some one calls out, "Albert Sidney Johnston
is killed." My heart stands still. I feel no more. I am,
for so many seconds, so many minutes, I know not how
long, utterly without sensation of any kind—dead; and
then, there is that great throb, that keen agony of physical
pain, and the works are wound up again. The ticking of
the clock begins, and I take up the burden of life once
more. Some day it will stop too long, or my feeble heart
will be too worn out to make that awakening jar, and
all will be over. I do not think when the end comes that

there will be any difference, except the miracle of the new
wind-up throb. And now good news is just as exciting as
bad. "Hurrah, Stonewall has saved us!" The pleasure
is almost pain because of my way of feeling it.

Miriam's Luryea and the coincidences of his life. He
was born Moses, and is the hero of the bombshell. His
mother was at a hotel in Charleston when kind-hearted
Anna De Leon Moses went for her sister-in-law, and gave
up her own chamber, that the child might be born in the
comfort and privacy of a home. Only our people are
given to such excessive hospitality. So little Luryea was
born in Anna De Leon's chamber. After Chickahominy
when he, now a man, lay mortally wounded, Anna Moses,
who was living in Richmond, found him, and she brought
him home, though her house was crowded to the door-steps.
She gave up her chamber to him, and so, as he had been
born in her room, in her room he died.

June 12th.—New England's Butler, best known to us as
"Beast" Butler, is famous or infamous now. His amazing
order to his soldiers at New Orleans and comments on it
are in everybody's mouth. We hardly expected from Massachusetts
behavior to shame a Comanche.

One happy moment has come into Mrs. Preston's life.
I watched her face to-day as she read the morning papers.
Willie's battery is lauded to the skies. Every paper gave
him a paragraph of praise.

South Carolina was at Beauregard's feet after Fort
Sumter. Since Shiloh, she has gotten up, and looks askance
rather when his name is mentioned. And without Price or
Beauregard who takes charge of the Western forces?
"Can we hold out if England and France hold off!" cries
Mem. "No, our time has come."

For shame, faint heart! Our people are brave, our
cause is just; our spirit and our patient endurance beyond
reproach." Here came in Mary Cantey's voice: " I may
not have any logic, any sense. I give it up. My woman's

instinct tells me, all the same, that slavery's time has come.
If we don't end it, they will."

After all this, tried to read Uncle Tom, but could not;
too sickening; think of a man sending his little son to beat
a human being tied to a tree. It is as bad as Squeers beating
Smike. Flesh and blood revolt; you must skip that; it
is too bad.

Mr. Preston told a story of Joe Johnston as a boy. A
party of boys at Abingdon were out on a spree, more boys
than horses; so Joe Johnston rode behind John Preston,
who is his cousin. While going over the mountains they
tried to change horses and got behind a servant who was in
charge of them all. The servant's horse kicked up, threw
Joe Johnston, and broke his leg; a bone showed itself.
"Hello, boys! come here and look: the confounded bone
has come clear through,"called out Joe, coolly.

They had to carry him on their shoulders, relieving
guard. As one party grew tired, another took him up.
They knew he must suffer fearfully, but he never said so.
He was as cool and quiet after his hurt as before. He was
pretty roughly handled, but they could not help it. His
father was in a towering rage because his son's leg was to
be set by a country doctor, and it might be crooked in the
process. At Chickahominy, brave but unlucky Joe had
already eleven wounds.

June 13th.—Decca's wedding. It took place last year.
We were all lying on the bed or sofas taking it coolly as to
undress. Mrs. Singleton had the floor. They were engaged
before they went up to Charlottesville; Alexander was on
Gregg's staff, and Gregg was not hard on him; Decca was
the worst in love girl she ever saw. "Letters came while
we were at the hospital, from Alex, urging her to let him
marry her at once. In war times human events, life especially,
are very uncertain.

"For several days consecutively she cried without ceasing,
and then she consented. The rooms at the hospital

were all crowded. Decca and I slept together in the same
room. It was arranged by letter that the marriage should
take place; a luncheon at her grandfather Minor's, and
then she was to depart with Alex for a few days at Richmond.
That was to be their brief slice of honeymoon.

"The day came. The wedding-breakfast was ready, so
was the bride in all her bridal array; but no Alex, no
bridegroom. Alas! such is the uncertainty of a soldier's
life. The bride said nothing, but she wept like a water-nymph.
At dinner she plucked up heart, and at my earnest
request was about to join us. And then the cry, ' The
bridegroom cometh.' He brought his best man and other
friends. We had a jolly dinner. 'Circumstances over
which he had no control' had kept him away.

"His father sat next to Decca and talked to her all the
time as if she had been already married. It was a piece of
absent-mindedness on his part, pure and simple, but it was
very trying, and the girl had had much to stand that morning,
you can well understand. Immediately after dinner
the belated bridegroom proposed a walk; so they went for
a brief stroll up the mountain. Decca, upon her return,
said to me: 'Send for Robert Barnwell. I mean to be
married to-day.'

"'Impossible. No spare room in the house. No getting
away from here; the trains all gone. Don't you know this
hospital place is crammed to the ceiling?' 'Alex says I
promised to marry him to-day. It is not his fault; he could
not come before.' I shook my head. ' I don't care,' said
the positive little thing, ' I promised Alex to marry him
to-day and I will. Send for the Rev. Robert Barnwell.'
We found Robert after a world of trouble, and the bride,
lovely in Swiss muslin, was married.

"Then I proposed they should take another walk, and I
went to one of my sister nurses and begged her to take me
in for the night, as I wished to resign my room to the young
couple. At daylight next day they took the train for

Richmond." Such is the small allowance of honeymoon
permitted in war time.

Beauregard's telegram: he can not leave the army of
the West. His health is bad. No doubt the sea breezes
would restore him, but—he can not come now. Such a
lovely name—Gustave Tautant Beauregard, But Jackson
and Johnston and Smith and Jones will do—and Lee, how
short and sweet.

"Every day," says Mem, "they come here in shoals—
men to say we can not hold Richmond, and we can not hold
Charleston much longer. Wretches, beasts! Why do you
come here? Why don't you stay there and fight? Don't
you see that you own yourselves cowards by coming away
in the very face of a battle? If you are not liars as to the
danger, you are cowards to run away from it." Thus roars
the practical Mem, growing more furious at each word.
These Jeremiahs laugh. They think she means others, not
the present company.

Tom Huger resigned his place in the United States
Navy and came to us. The Iroquois was his ship in the old
navy. They say, as he stood in the rigging, after he was
shot in the leg, when his ship was leading the attack upon
the Iroquois, his old crew in the Iroquois cheered him. and
when his body was borne in, the Federals took off? their caps
in respect for his gallant conduct. When he was dying,
Meta Huger said to him: "An officer wants to see you: he
is one of the enemy." "Let him come in; I have no enemies
now." But when he heard the man's name:

"No, no. I do not want to see a Southern man who is
now in Lincoln's navy." The officers of the United States
Navy attended his funeral.

June 14th.—All things are against us. Memphis gone.
Mississippi fleet annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly
apathetic as if it were a story of the English war against
China which happened a year or so ago.

The sons of Mrs. John Julius Pringle have come. They

were left at school in the North. A young Huger is with
them. They seem to have had adventures enough. Walked,
waded, rowed in boats, if boats they could find; swam rivers
when boats there were none; brave lads are they. One
can but admire their pluck and energy. Mrs. Fisher, of
Philadelphia, née Middleton, gave them money to make the
attempt to get home.

Stuart's cavalry have rushed through McClellan's lines
and burned five of his transports. Jackson has been reenforced
by 16,000 men, and they hope the enemy will be
drawn from, around Richmond, and the valley be the seat
of war.

John Chesnut is in Whiting's brigade, which has been
sent to Stonewall. Mem's son is with the Boykin Rangers;
Company A, No. 1, we call it. And she has persistently
wept ever since she heard the news, It is no child's play,
she says, when you are with Stonewall. He doesn't play
at soldiering. He doesn 't take care of his men at all. He
only goes to kill the Yankees.

Wade Hampton is here, shot in the foot, but he knows
no more about France than he does of the man in the moon.
Wet blanket he is just now. Johnston badly wounded.
Lee is King of Spades. They are all once more digging for
dear life. Unless we can reenforce Stonewall, the game is
up. Our chiefs contrive to dampen, and destroy the enthusiasm
of all who go near them. So much entrenching and
falling back destroys the morale of any army. This everlasting
retreating, it kills the hearts of the men. Then we
are scant of powder.

James Chesnut is awfully proud of Le Conte's powder
manufactory here. Le Conte knows how to do it. James
Chesnut provides him. the means to carry out his plans.

Colonel Venable doesn't mince matters: "If we do not
deal a blow, a blow that will be felt it will be soon all up
with us. The Southwest will be lost to us. We can not afford
to shilly-shally much longer."

Thousands are enlisting on the other side in New Orleans.
Butler holds out inducements. To be sure, they are
principally foreigners who want to escape starvation. Tennessee
we may count on as gone, since we abandoned her at
Corinth, Fort Pillow, and Memphis. A man must be sent
there, or it is all gone now.

"You call a spade by that name, it seems, and not an
agricultural implement?" "They call Mars Robert 'Old
Spade Lee.' He keeps them digging so." "General Lee
is a noble Virginian. Respect something in this world.
Cæsar—call him Old Spade Cæsar As a soldier, he was
as much above suspicion, as he required his wife to be, as
Cæsar's wife, you know. If I remember Cæsar's Commentaries,
he owns up to a lot of entrenching. You let Mars
Robert alone. He knows what he is about."

"Tell us of the women folk at New Orleans; how did
they take the fall of the city?" "They are an excitable
race," the man from that city said. As my informant
was standing on the levee a daintily dressed lady
picked her way, parasol in hand, toward him. She
accosted him with great politeness, and her face was
as placid and unmoved as in antebellum days. Her
first question was: "Will you be so kind as to tell me
what is the last general order?" "No order that I know
of, madam; General Disorder prevails now." "Ah! I
see; and why are those persons flying and yelling so noisily
and racing in the streets in that unseemly way? " "They
are looking for a shell to burst over their heads at any moment."
"Ah!" Then, with a courtesy of dignity and
grace, she waved her parasol and departed, but stopped to
arrange that parasol at a proper angle to protect her face
from the sun. There was no vulgar haste in her movements.
She tripped away as gracefully as she came. My
informant had failed to discompose her by his fearful revelations.
That was the one self-possessed soul then in New
Orleans.

Another woman drew near, so overheated and out of
breath, she had barely time to say she had run miles
of squares in her crazy terror and bewilderment, when a
sudden shower came up. In a second she was cool and calm.
She forgot all the questions she came to ask. "My bonnet,
I must save it at any sacrifice," she said, and so turned her
dress over her head, and went off, forgetting her country's
trouble and screaming for a cab.

Went to see Mrs. Burroughs at the old de Saussure
house. She has such a sweet face, such soft, kind, beautiful,
dark-gray eyes. Such eyes are a poem. No wonder she
had a long love-story. We sat in the piazza at twelve
o'clock of a June day, the glorious Southern sun shining
its very hottest. But we were in a dense shade—magnolias
in full bloom, ivy, vines of I know not what, and roses in
profusion closed us in. It was a living wall of everything
beautiful and sweet. In all this flower-garden of
a Columbia, that is the most delicious corner I have been
in yet.

Got from the Prestons' French library, Fanny, with a
brilliant preface by Jules Janier. Now, then, I have come
to the worst. There can be no worse book than Fanny.
The lover is jealous of the husband. The woman is for the
polyandry rule of life. She cheats both and refuses to
break with either. But to criticize it one must be as shameless
as the book itself. Of course, it is clever to the last degree,
or it would be kicked into the gutter. It is not nastier
or coarser than Mrs. Stowe, but then it is not written in
the interests of philanthropy.

We had an unexpected dinner-party to-day. First,
Wade Hampton came and his wife. Then Mr. and Mrs.
Rose. I remember that the late Colonel Hampton once
said to me, a thing I thought odd at the time, "Mrs.
James Rose" (and I forget now who was the other) "are
the only two people on this side of the water who know how
to give a state dinner." Mr. and Mrs. James Rose: if anybody

wishes to describe old Carolina at its best, let them
try their hands at painting these two people.

Wade Hampton still limps a little, but he is rapidly
recovering. Here is what he said, and he has fought so
well that he is listened to: "If we mean to play at war,
as we play a game of chess, West Point tactics prevailing,
we are sure to lose the game. They have every advantage.
They can lose pawns ad infinitum, to the end of time and
never feel it. We will be throwing away all that we had
hoped so much from—Southern hot-headed dash, reckless
gallantry, spirit of adventure, readiness to lead forlorn
hopes."

Mrs. Rose is Miss Sarah Parker's aunt. Somehow it
came out when I was not in the room, but those girls tell
me everything. It seems Miss Sarah said: "The reason I
can not bear Mrs. Chesnut is that she laughs at everything
and at everybody. "If she saw me now she would give me
credit for some pretty hearty crying as well as laughing.
It was a mortifying thing to hear about one's self, all the
same.

General Preston came in and announced that Mr. Chesnut
was in town. He had just seen Mr. Alfred Huger, who
came up on the Charleston train with him. Then Mrs. McCord
came and offered to take me back to Mrs. McMahan's
to look him up. I found my room locked up. Lawrence
said his master had gone to look for me at the Prestons'.

Mrs. McCord proposed we should further seek for my
errant husband. At the door, we met Governor Pickens,
who showed us telegrams from the President of the most
important nature. The Governor added, "And I have one
from Jeems Chesnut, but I hear he has followed it so closely,
coming on its heels, as it were, that I need not show you
that one."

"You don't look interested at the sound of your husband's
name? "said he. "Is that his name?" asked I.
"I supposed it was James." "My advice to you is to find

him, for Mrs. Pickens says he was last seen in the company
of two very handsome women, and now you may call him
any name you please."

We soon met. The two beautiful dames Governor
Pickens threw in my teeth were some ladies from Rafton
Creek, almost neighbors, who live near Camden.

By way of pleasant remark to Wade Hampton: "Oh,
General! The next battle will give you a chance to be
major-general." "I was very foolish to give up my Legion,"
he answered gloomily. "Promotion don't really
annoy many people." Mary Gibson says her father writes
to them, that they may go back. He thinks now that the
Confederates can hold Richmond. Gloria in excelsis!

Another personal defeat. Little Kate said: "Oh, Cousin
Mary, why don't you cultivate heart? They say at Kirkwood
that you had better let your brains alone a while and
cultivate heart." She had evidently caught up a phrase
and repeated it again and again for my benefit. So that is
the way they talk of me! The only good of loving any one
with your whole heart is to give that person the power
to hurt you.

June 24th.—Mr. Chesnut, having missed the Secessionville[24]
fight by half a day, was determined to see the one
around Richmond. He went off with General Cooper and
Wade Hampton. Blanton Duncan sent them for a luncheon
on board the cars,—ice, wine, and every manner of good
thing.

In all this death and destruction, the women are the
same—chatter, patter, clatter. "Oh, the Charleston refugees
are so full of airs; there is no sympathy for them
here! " "Oh, indeed! That is queer. They are not half
as exclusive as these Hamptons and Prestons. The airs
these people do give themselves." "Airs, airs," laughed

Mrs. Bartow, parodying Tennyson's Charge of the Light
Brigade. "Airs to the right of them, Airs to the left of
them, some one had blundered." "Volleyed and thundered
rhymes but is out of place."

The worst of all airs came from a democratic landlady,
who was asked by Mrs. President Davis to have a carpet
shaken, and shook herself with rage as she answered, "You
know, madam, you need not stay here if my carpet or anything
else does not suit you."

John Chesnut gives us a spirited account of their ride
around McClellan. I sent the letter to his grandfather.
The women ran out screaming with joyful welcome as soon
as they caught sight of our soldiers' gray uniforms; ran to
them bringing handfuls and armfuls of food. One gray-headed
man, after preparing a hasty meal for them, knelt
and prayed as they snatched it, as you may say. They were
in the saddle from Friday until Sunday. They were used
up; so were their horses. Johnny writes for clothes and
more horses. Miss S. C. says: "No need to send any more
of his fine horses to be killed or captured by the Yankees;
wait and see how the siege of Richmond ends." The horses
will go all the same, as Johnny wants them

June 25th.—I forgot to tell of Mrs. Pickens's reception
for General Hampton. My Mem dear, described it all.
"The Governess" ("Tut, Mem! that is not the right name
for her—she is not a teacher." "Never mind, it is the
easier to say than the Governor's wife." "Madame la
Gouvernante " was suggested. "Why? That is worse than
the other!") "met him at the door, took his crutch away,
putting his hand upon her shoulder instead. "That is the
way to greet heroes," she said. Her blue eyes were aflame,
and in response poor Wade smiled, and smiled until his
face hardened into a fixed grin of embarrassment and annoyance.
He is a simple-mannered man, you know, and
does not want to be made much of by women.

The butler was not in plain clothes, but wore, as the

other servants did, magnificent livery brought from the
Court of St. Petersburg, one mass of gold embroidery, etc.
They had champagne and Russian tea, the latter from a
samovar made in Russia. Little Moses was there. Now
for us they have never put their servants into Russian
livery, nor paraded Little Moses under our noses, but I
must confess the Russian tea and champagne set before us
left nothing to be desired. "How did General Hampton
bear his honors?" "Well, to the last he looked as if he
wished they would let him alone."

Met Mr. Ashmore fresh from Richmond. He says
Stonewall is coming up behind McClellan. And here comes
the tug of war. He thinks we have so many spies in Richmond,
they may have found out our strategic movements
and so may circumvent them.

Mrs. Bartow's story of a clever Miss Toombs. So many
men were in love with her, and the courtship, while it lasted,
of each one was as exciting and bewildering as a fox-chase.
She liked the fun of the run, but she wanted something
more than to know a man was in mad pursuit of her; that
he should love her, she agreed, but she must love him, too.
How was she to tell? Yet she must be certain of it before
she said "Yes" So, as they sat by the lamp she would
look at him and inwardly ask herself, "Would I be willing
to spend the long winter evenings forever after sitting here
darning your old stockings? "Never, echo answered. No,
no, a thousand times no. So, each had to make way for
another.

June 27th.—We went in a body (half a dozen ladies,
with no man on escort duty, for they are all in the army) to
a concert. Mrs. Pickens came in. She was joined soon by
Secretary Moses and Mr. Follen. Doctor Berrien came to
our relief. Nothing could be more execrable than the singing.
Financially the thing was a great success, for though
the audience was altogether feminine, it was a very large
one.

Telegram from Mr. Chesnut, "Safe in Richmond";
that is, if Richmond be safe, with all the power of the
United States of America battering at her gates. Strange
not a word from Stonewall Jackson, after all! Doctor
Gibson telegraphs his wife, "Stay where you are; terrible
battle[25] looked for here."

Deeca is dead. That poor little darling! Immediately
after her baby was born, she took it into her head that Alex
was killed. He was wounded, but those around had not
told her of it. She surprised them by asking, "Does any
one know how the battle has gone since Alex was killed?"
She could not read for a day or so before she died. Her
head was bewildered, but she would not let any one else
touch her letters; so she died with several unopened ones in
her bosom. Mrs. Singleton, Decca's mother, fainted dead
away, but she shed no tears. We went to the house and saw
Alex's mother, a daughter of Langdon Cheves. Annie was
with us. She said: "This is the saddest thing for Alex."
"No," said his mother, "death is never the saddest thing.
If he were not a good man, that would be a far worse
thing' Annie, in utter amazement, whimpered, "But
Alex is so good already." "Yes, seven years ago the death
of one of his sisters that he dearly loved made him a Christian.
That death in our family was worth a thousand
lives."

One needs a hard heart now. Even old Mr. Shand shed
tears. Mary Barnwell sat as still as a statue, as white and
stony. "Grief which can relieve itself by tears is a thing to
pray for," said the Rev. Mr. Shand. Then came a telegram
from Hampton, "All well; so far we are successful."
Robert Barnwell had been telegraphed for. His answer
came, "Can't leave here; Gregg is fighting across the

Chickahominy." Said Alex's mother: "My son, Alex, may
never hear this sad news," and her lip settled rigidly.
"Go on; what else does Hampton say? "asked she. "Lee
has one wing of the army, Stonewall the other."

Annie Hampton came to tell us the latest news—that
we have abandoned James Island and are fortifying
Morris Island. "And now," she says, "if the enemy will
be so kind as to wait, we will be ready for them in two
months."

Rev. Mr. Shand and that pious Christian woman, Alex's
mother (who looks into your very soul with those large
and lustrous blue eyes of hers) agreed that the Yankees,
even if they took Charleston, would not destroy it. I think
they will, sinner that I am. Mr. Shand remarked to her,
"Madam, you have two sons in the army." Alex's mother
replied, "I have had six sons in the army; I now have
five."

There are people here too small to conceive of any
larger business than quarreling in the newspapers. One
laughs at squibs in the papers now, in such times as these,
with the wolf at our doors. Men safe in their closets writing
fiery articles, denouncing those who are at work, are beneath
contempt. Only critics with muskets on their shoulders
have the right to speak now, as Trenholm said the other
night.

In a pouring rain we went to that poor child's funeral
—to Decca's. They buried her in the little white frock
she wore when she engaged herself to Alex, and which
she again put on for her bridal about a year ago. She
lies now in the churchyard, in sight of my window. Is
she to be pitied? She said she had had "months of perfect
happiness." How many people can say that? So many of
us live their long, dreary lives and then happiness never
comes to meet them at all. It seems so near, and yet it
eludes them forever.

June 28th.—Victory! Victory heads every telegram

now;[26] 1 one reads it on the bulletin-board. It is the anniversary
of the battle of Fort Moultrie. The enemy went off
so quickly, I wonder if it was not a trap laid for us, to lead
us away from Richmond, to some place where they can
manage to do us more harm. And now comes the list of
killed and wounded. Victory does not seem to soothe sore
hearts. Mrs. Haskell has five sons before the enemy's illimitable
cannon. Mrs. Preston two. McClellan is routed and
we have twelve thousand prisoners. Prisoners! My God!
and what are we to do with them? We can't feed our own
people.

For the first time since Joe 'Johnston was wounded at
Seven Pines, we may breathe freely; we were so afraid of
another general, or a new one. Stonewall can not be
everywhere, though he comes near it.

Magruder did splendidly at Big Bethel. It was a wonderful
thing how he played his ten thousand before McClellan
like fireflies and utterly deluded him. It was partly
due to the Manassas scare that we gave them; they will
never be foolhardy again. Now we are throwing up our
caps for R. E. Lee. We hope from the Lees what the first
sprightly running (at Manassas) could not give. We do
hope there will be no "ifs." "Ifs" have ruined us. Shiloh
was a victory if Albert Sidney Johnston had not been
killed; Seven Pines if Joe Johnston had not been wounded.
The "ifs" bristle like porcupines. That victory at Manassas
did nothing but send us off in a fool's paradise of conceit,
and it roused the manhood of the Northern people.
For very shame they had to move up.

A French man-of-war lies at the wharf at Charleston to
take off French subjects when the bombardment begins.
William Mazyck writes that the enemy's gunboats are

shelling and burning property up and down the Santee
River. They raise the white flag and the negroes rush
down on them. Planters might as well have let these
negroes be taken by the Council to work on the fortifications.
A letter from my husband:

A telegram from my husband of June 29th from Richmond:
"Was on the field, saw it all. Things satisfying
so far. Can hear nothing of John Chesnut. He is in
Stuart's command. Saw Jack Preston; safe so far. No
reason why we should not bag McClellan's army or cut it to
pieces. From four to six thousand prisoners already."
Doctor Gibbes rushed in like a whirlwind to say we were
driving McClellan into the river.

June 30th.—First came Dr. Trezevant, who announced
Burnet Rhett's death. "No, no; I have just seen the bulletin-board.
It was Grimké Rhett's." When the doctor went
out it was added: "Howell Trezevant's death is there, too.
The doctor will see it as soon as he goes down to the board."
The girls went to see Lucy Trezevant. The doctor was lying
still as death on a sofa with his face covered.

July 1st.—No more news. It has settled down into
this. The general battle, the decisive battle, has to be
fought yet. Edward Cheves, only son of John Cheves,
killed. His sister kept crying, "Oh, mother, what shall
we do; Edward is killed," but the mother sat dead still,
white as a sheet, never uttering a word or shedding a tear.
Are our women losing the capacity to weep? The father
came to-day, Mr. John Cheves. He has been making infernal
machines in Charleston to blow up Yankee ships.

While Mrs. McCord was telling me of this terrible
trouble in her brother's family, some one said: "Decca's
husband died of grief." Stuff and nonsense; silly sentiment,
folly! If he is not wounded, he is alive. His
brother, John, may die of that shattered arm in this hot
weather. Alex will never die of a broken heart. Take my
word for it.

July 3d.—Mem says she feels like sitting down, as an
Irishwoman does at a wake, and howling night and day.
Why did Huger let McClellan slip through his fingers?
Arrived at Mrs. MeMahan's at the wrong moment. Mrs.
Bartow was reading to the stricken mother an account of
the death of her son. The letter was written by a man who
was standing by him when he was shot through the head.
"My God!" he said; that was all, and he fell dead.

James Taylor was color-bearer. He was shot three times
before he gave in. Then he said, as he handed the colors
to the man next him, "You see I can't stand it any
longer," and dropped stone dead. He was only seventeen
years old.

If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure
after all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees,
it is Lincoln's proclamation freeing the negroes. Especially
yours, Messieurs, who write insults to your Governor
and Council, dated from Clarendon. Three hundred
of Mr. Walter Blake's negroes have gone to the Yankees.
Remember, that recalcitrant patriot's property on two legs

may walk off without an order from the Council to work on
fortifications.

Have been reading The Potiphar Papers by Curtis.
Can this be a picture of New York socially? If it were not
for this horrid war, how nice it would be here. We might
lead such a pleasant life. This is the most perfectly appointed
establishment—such beautiful grounds, flowers,
and fruits; indeed, all that heart could wish; such delightful
dinners, such pleasant drives, such jolly talks, such
charming people; but this horrid war poisons everything.

July 5th.—Drove out with Mrs. "Constitution"
Browne, who told us the story of Ben McCulloch's devotion
to Lucy Gwynn. Poor Ben McCulloch—another dead hero.
Called at the Tognos' and saw no one; no wonder. They
say Ascelie Togno was to have been married to Grimké
Rhett in August, and he is dead on the battle-field. I had
not heard of the engagement before I went there.

July 8th.—Gunboat captured on the Santee. So much
the worse for us. We do not want any more prisoners, and
next time they will send a fleet of boats, if one will not do.
The Governor sent me Mr. Chesnut's telegram with a note
saying, "I regret the telegram does not come up to what
we had hoped might be as to the entire destruction of McClellan's
army. I think, however, the strength of the war
with its ferocity may now be considered as broken."

Table-talk to-day: This war was undertaken by us to
shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our
cause righteous. The Yankees, since the war has begun,
have discovered it is to free the slaves that they are fighting.
So their cause is noble. They also expect to make the war
pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay.
They think we belong to them. We have been good milk
cows—milked by the tariff, or skimmed. We let them have
all of our hard earnings. We bear the ban of slavery;
they get the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles
it, sells it, manufactures it, but rarely pays the man who

grows it. Second hand the Yankees received the wages of
slavery. They grew rich. We grew poor. The receiver is
as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too, for we received
the savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in
their slave-ships. As with the Egyptians, so it shall be
with us: if they let us go, it must be across a Bed Sea—but
one made red by blood.

July 10th.—My husband has come. He believes from
what he heard in Richmond that we are to be recognized as
a nation by the crowned heads across the water, at last. Mr.
Davis was very kind; he asked him to stay at his house,
which he did, and went every day with General Lee and Mr.
Davis to the battle-field as a sort of amateur aide to the
President. Likewise they admitted him to the informal
Cabinet meetings at the President's house. He is so hopeful
now that it is pleasant to hear him, and I had not the heart
to stick the small pins of Yeadon and Piekens in him yet
a while.

Public opinion is hot against Huger and Magruder for
MeClellan's escape. Doctor Gibbes gave me some letters
picked up on the battle-field. One signed "Laura," tells
her lover to fight in such a manner that no Southerner can
ever taunt Yankees again with cowardice. She speaks of a
man at home whom she knows, "who is still talking of his
intention to seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's
mouth." "Miserable coward! "she writes, "I will never
speak to him again." It was a relief to find one silly young
person filling three pages with a description of her new
bonnet and the bonnet still worn by her rival. Those fiery
Joan of Arc damsels who goad on their sweethearts bode us
no good.

Rachel Lyons was in Richmond, hand in glove with Mrs.
Greenhow. Why not? "So handsome, so clever, so angelically
kind," says Rachel of the Greenhow, "and she offers
to matronize me."

Mrs. Philips, another beautiful and clever Jewess, has

been put into prison again by "Beast" Butler because she
happened to be laughing as a Yankee funeral procession
went by.

Captain B. told of John Chesnut's pranks. Johnny was
riding a powerful horse, captured from the Yankees. The
horse dashed with him right into the Yankee ranks. A
dozen Confederates galloped after him, shouting, "Stuart!
Stuart!" The Yankees, mistaking this mad charge for
Stuart's cavalry, broke ranks and fled. Daredevil Camden
boys ride like Arabs!

Mr. Chesnut says he was riding with the President when
Colonel Browne, his aide, was along. The General commanding
rode up and, bowing politely, said: "Mr. President,
am I in command here?" "Yes." "Then I forbid
you to stand here under the enemy's guns. Any exposure
of a life like yours is wrong, and this is useless
exposure. You must go back." Mr. Davis answered:
"Certainly, I will set an example of obedience to orders.
Discipline must be maintained." But he did not go back.

Mr. Chesnut met the Haynes, who had gone on to nurse
their wounded son and found him dead. They were standing
in the corridor of the Spotswood. Although Mr. Chesnut
was staying at the President's, he retained his room at
the hotel. So he gave his room to them. Next day, when
he went back to his room he found that Mrs. Hayne had
thrown herself across the foot of the bed and never moved.
No other part of the bed had been touched. She got up and
went back to the cars, or was led back. He says these heartbroken
mothers are hard to face.

July 12th.—At McMahan's our small colonel, Paul
Hayne's son, came into my room. To amuse the child I
gave him a photograph album to look over. "You have
Lincoln in your book!" said he. "I am astonished at you.
I hate him!" And he placed the book on the floor and
struck Old Abe in the face with his fist.

An Englishman told me Lincoln has said that had he

known such a war would follow his election he never would
have set foot in Washington, nor have been inaugurated.
He had never dreamed of this awful fratricidal bloodshed.
That does not seem like the true John Brown spirit. I was
very glad to hear it—to hear something from the President
of the United States which was not merely a vulgar joke,
and usually a joke so vulgar that you were ashamed to
laugh, funny though it was. They say Seward has gone to
England and his wily tongue will turn all hearts against us.
Browne told us there was a son of the Duke of Somerset
in Richmond. He laughed his fill at our ragged, dirty
soldiers, but he stopped his laughing when he saw them under
fire. Our men strip the Yankee dead of their shoes,
but will not touch the shoes of a comrade. Poor fellows,
they are nearly barefoot.

Alex has come. I saw him ride up about dusk and go
into the graveyard. I shut up my windows on that side.
Poor fellow!

July 13th.—Halcott Green came to see us. Bragg is a
stern disciplinarian, according to Halcott. He did not in
the least understand citizen soldiers. In the retreat from
Shiloh he ordered that not a gun should be fired. A soldier
shot a chicken, and then the soldier was shot. "For a
chicken!" said Halcott. "A Confederate soldier for a
chicken!"

Mrs. McCord says a nurse, who is also a beauty, had
better leave her beauty with her cloak and hat at the door.
One lovely lady nurse said to a rough old soldier, whose
wound could not have been dangerous, "Well, my good
soul, what can I do for you!" "Kiss me! "said he. Mrs.
McCord's fury was "at the woman's telling it," for it
brought her hospital into disrepute, and very properly.
She knew there were women who would boast of an insult
if it ministered to their vanity. She wanted nurses to come
dressed as nurses, as Sisters of Charity, and not as fine ladies.
Then there would be no trouble. When she saw them

coming in angel sleeves, displaying all their white arms and
in their muslin, showing all their beautiful white shoulders
and throats, she felt disposed to order them off the premises.
That was no proper costume for a nurse. Mrs. Bartow goes
in her widow's weeds, which is after Mrs. McCord's own
heart. But Mrs. Bartow has her stories, too. A surgeon
said to her, "I give you no detailed instructions: a mother
necessarily is a nurse." She then passed on quietly, "as
smilingly acquiescent, my dear, as if I had ever been a
mother."

Mrs. Greenhow has enlightened Rachel Lyons as to Mr.
Chesnut's character in Washington. He one "was of the
very few men of whom there was not a word of scandal
spoken. I do not believe, my dear, that he ever spoke to a
woman there." He did know Mrs. John R. Thompson,
however.

Walked up and down the college campus with Mrs. McCord.
The buildings all lit up with gas, the soldiers seated
under the elms in every direction, and in every stage of
convalescence. Through the open windows, could see the
nurses flitting about. It was a strange, weird scene. Walked
home with Mrs. Bartow. We stopped at Judge Carroll's.

Mrs. Carroll gave us a cup of tea. When we got home,
found the Prestons had called for me to dine at their house
to meet General Magruder.

Last night the Edgefield Band serenaded Governor
Piekens. Mrs. Harris stepped on the porch and sang the
Marseillaise for them. It has been more than twenty years
since I first heard her voice; it was a very fine one then, but
there is nothing which the tooth of time lacerates more
cruelly than the singing voice of women. There is an incongruous
metaphor for you.

The negroes on the coast received the Rutledge's Mounted
Rifles apparently with great rejoicings. The troops were
gratified to find the negroes in such a friendly state of mind.
One servant whispered to his master, "Don't you mind

'em, don't trust 'em"—meaning the negroes. The master
then dressed himself as a Federal officer and went down to
a negro quarter. The very first greeting was, "Ki! massa,
you come fuh ketch rebels? We kin show you way you
kin ketch thirty to-night." They took him to the Confederate
camp, or pointed it out, and then added for his edification,
"We kin ketch officer fuh vou whenever you want
'em."

Bad news. Gunboats have passed Vicksburg. The
Yankees are spreading themselves over our fair Southern
land like red ants.

July 21st.—Jackson has gone into the enemy's country.
'Joe Johnston and Wade Hampton are to follow.

Think of Rice, Mr. Senator Rice,[1] who sent us the buffalo-robes.
I see from his place in the Senate that he
speaks of us as savages, who put powder and whisky into
soldiers' canteens to make them mad with ferocity in the
fight. No, never. We admire coolness here, because we
lack it; we do not need to be fired by drink to be brave.
My classical lore is small, indeed, but I faintly remember
something of the Spartans who marched to the music of
lutes. No drum and life were needed to revive their fainting
spirits. In that one thing we are Spartans.

The Wayside Hospital[2] is duly established at the Columbia

Station, where all the railroads meet. All honor to
Mrs. Fisher and the other women who work there so faithfully!
The young girls of Columbia started this hospital.
In the first winter of the war, moneyless soldiers, sick and
wounded, suffered greatly when they had to lie over here
because of faulty connections between trains. Rev. Mr.
Martin, whose habit it was to meet trains and offer his aid
to these unfortunates, suggested to the Young Ladies' Hospital
Association their opportunity; straightway the blessed
maidens provided a room where our poor fellows might
have their wounds bound up and be refreshed. And now,
the "Soldiers' Best" has grown into the Wayside Hospital,
and older heads and hands relieve younger ones of the
grimmer work and graver responsibilities. I am ready to
help in every way, by subscription and otherwise, but too
feeble in health to go there much.

Mrs. Browne heard a man say at the Congaree House,
"We are breaking our heads against a stone wall. We are
bound to be conquered. We can not keep it up much longer
against so powerful a nation as the United States. Crowds
of Irish, Dutch, and Scotch are pouring in to swell their
armies. They are promised our lands, and they believe
they will get them. Even if we are successful we can not
live without Yankees." "Now," says Mrs. Browne, "I
call that man a Yankee spy." To which I reply, "If he
were a spy, he would not dare show his hand so plainly."

"To think," says Mrs. Browne, "that he is not taken
up. Seward's little bell would tinkle, a guard would come,
and the Grand Inquisition of America would order that
man put under arrest in the twinkling of an eye, if he had
ventured to speak against Yankees in Yankee land."

General Preston said he had "the right to take up any

one who was not in his right place and send him where he
belonged." "Then do take up my husband instantly. He
is sadly out of his right place in this little Governor's Council."
The general stared at me and slowly uttered in his
most tragic tones, "If I could put him where I think he
ought to be!" This I immediately hailed as a high compliment
and was duly ready with my thanks. Upon reflection,
it is borne in upon me, that he might have been more explicit.
He left too much to the imagination.

Then Mrs. Browne described the Prince of Wales, whose
manners, it seems, differ from those of Mrs.—, who arraigned
us from morn to dewy eve, and upbraided us with
our ill-bred manners and customs. The Prince, when he
was here, conformed at once to whatever he saw was the
way of those who entertained him. He closely imitated
President Buchanan's way of doing things. He took off
his gloves at once when he saw that the President wore
none. He began by bowing to the people who were presented
to him, but when he saw Mr. Buchanan shaking
hands, he shook hands, too. When smoking affably with
Browne on the White House piazza, he expressed his content
with the fine cigars Browne had given him. The President
said: "I was keeping some excellent ones for you, but
Browne has got ahead of me." Long after Mr. Buchanan
had gone to bed, the Prince ran into his room in a jolly,
boyish way, and said: "Mr. Buchanan, I have come for the
fine cigars you have for me."

As I walked up to the Prestons', along a beautiful
shaded back street, a carriage passed with Governor Means
in it. As soon as he saw me he threw himself half out and
kissed both hands to me again and again. It was a whole-souled
greeting, as the saying is, and I returned it with my
whole heart, too. "Good-by," he cried, and I responded
"Good-by." I may never see him again. I am not sure
that I did not shed a few tears.

General Preston and Mr. Chesnut were seated on the

piazza of the Hampton house as I walked in. I opened niy
batteries upon them in this scornful style: "You cold, formal,
solemn, overly-polite creatures, weighed down by your
own dignity. You will never know the rapture of such a
sad farewell as John Means and I have just interchanged.
He was in a hack," I proceeded to relate, "and I was on the
sidewalk. He was on his way to the war, poor fellow. The
hackman drove steadily along in the middle of the street;
but for our gray hairs I do not know what he might have
thought of us. John Means did not suppress his feelings
at an unexpected meeting with an old friend, and a good
cry did me good. It is a life of terror and foreboding we
lead. My heart is in my mouth half the time. But you
two, under no possible circumstances could you forget your
manners."

Read Russell's India all day. Saintly folks those English
when their blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not
expect anything better from, but what an example of Christian
patience and humanity the white "angels "from the
West set them.

The beautiful Jewess, Rachel Lyons, was here to-day.
She flattered Paul Hayne audaciously, and he threw back
the ball.

To-day I saw the Rowena to this Rebecca, when Mrs.
Edward Barnwell called. She is the purest type of Anglo-Saxon
—exquisitely beautiful, cold, quiet, calm, lady-like,
fair as a lily, with the blackest and longest eyelashes, and
her eyes so light in color some one said "they were the
hue of cologne and water." At any rate, she has a patent
right to them; there are no more like them to be had. The
effect is startling, but lovely beyond words.

Blanton Duncan told us a story of Morgan in Kentucky.
Morgan walked into a court where they were trying some
Secessionists. The Judge was about to pronounce sentence,
but Morgan rose, and begged that he might be allowed to
call some witnesses. The Judge asked who were his witnesses.

"My name is John Morgan, and my witnesses are
1,400 Confederate soldiers."

Mrs. Izard witnessed two instances of patriotism in the
caste called "Sandhill tackeys." One forlorn, chill, and
fever-freckled creature, yellow, dirty, and dry as a nut,
was selling peaches at ten cents a dozen. Soldiers collected
around her cart. She took the cover off and cried, "Eat
away. Eat your fill. I never charge our soldiers anything."
They tried to make her take pay, but when she
steadily refused it, they cheered her madly and said:
"Sleep in peace. Now we will fight for you and keep off
the Yankees." Another poor Sandhill man refused to sell
his cows, and gave them to the hospital.