University of Virginia Library

XIII
PORTLAND, ALA.

XIII. July 8, 1863—July 30, 1863

PORTLAND, Ala., July 8, 1863.—My mother ill at
her home on the plantation near here—where I have
come to see her. But to go back first to my trip
home from Flat Rock to Camden. At the station, I saw
men sitting on a row of coffins smoking, talking, and laughing,
with their feet drawn up tailor-fashion to keep them
out of the wet. Thus does war harden people's hearts.

Met James Chesnut at Wilmington. He only crossed
the river with me and then went back to Richmond. He
was violently opposed to sending our troops into Pennsylvania:
wanted all we could spare sent West to make an
end there of our enemies. He kept dark about Vallandigham.[1]
I am sure we could not trust him to do us any good,
or to do the Yankees any harm. The Coriolanus business
is played out.

As we came to Camden, Molly sat by me in the cars.
She touched me, and, with her nose in the air, said: "Look,
Missis." There was the inevitable bride and groom—at
least so I thought—and the irrepressible kissing and lolling
against each other which I had seen so often before. I was
rather astonished at Molly's prudery, but there was a touch

in this scene which was new. The man required for his
peace of mind that the girl should brush his cheek with
those beautiful long eyelashes of hers. Molly became so
outraged in her blue-black modesty that she kept her head
out of the window not to see! When we were detained at a
little wayside station, this woman made an awful row about
her room. She seemed to know me and appealed to me; said
her brother-in-law was adjutant to Colonel K—, etc.

Molly observed, "You had better go yonder, ma'am,
where your husband is calling you." The woman drew
herself up proudly, and, with a toss, exclaimed: "Husband,
indeed! I'm a widow. That is my cousin. I loved
my dear husband too well to marry again, ever, ever!"
Absolutely tears came into her eyes. Molly, loaded as she
was with shawls and bundles, stood motionless, and said:
"After all that gwine-on in the kyars! O, Lord, I should
a let it go 'twas my husband and me! nigger as I am."

Here I was at home, on a soft bed, with every physical
comfort; but life is one long catechism there, due to the
curiosity of stay-at-home people in a narrow world.

In Richmond, Molly and Lawrence quarreled. He declared
he could not put up with her tantrums. Unfortunately
I asked him, in the interests of peace and a quiet
house, to bear with her temper: I did, said I, but she was
so good and useful. He was shabby enough to tell her what
I had said at their next quarrel. The awful reproaches she
overwhelmed me with then! She said she "was mortified
that I had humbled her before Lawrence."

But the day of her revenge came. At negro balls in
Richmond, guests were required to carry "passes," and,
in changing his coat Lawrence forgot his pass. Next day
Lawrence was missing, and Molly came to me laughing to
tears. "Come and look," said she. "Here is the fine gentleman
tied between two black niggers and marched off to
jail." She laughed and jeered so she could not stand without
holding on to the window. Lawrence disregarded her

and called to me at the top of his voice: "Please, ma'am,
ask Mars Jeems to come take me out of this. I ain't done
nothin'."

As soon as Mr. Chesnut came home I told him of Lawrence's
sad fall, and he went at once to his rescue. There
had been a fight and a disturbance at the ball. The police
had been called in, and when every negro was required to
show his "pass," Lawrence had been taken up as having
none. He was terribly chopfallen when he came home
walking behind Mr. Chesnut. He is always so respectable
and well-behaved and stands on his dignity.

I went over to Mrs. Preston's at Columbia. Camden
had become simply intolerable to me. There the telegram
found me, saying I must go to my mother, who was ill at her
home here in Alabama. Colonel Goodwyn, his wife, and
two daughters were going, and so I joined the party. I telegraphed
Mr. Chesnut for Lawrence, and he replied, forbidding
me to go at all; it was so hot, the cars so disagreeable,
fever would be the inevitable result. Miss Kate Hampton,
in her soft voice, said: "The only trouble in life is
when one can't decide in which way duty leads. Once know
your duty, then all is easy."

I do not know whether she thought it my duty to obey
my husband. But I thought it my duty to go to my mother,
as I risked nothing but myself.

We had two days of an exciting drama under our very
noses, before our eyes. A party had come to Columbia who
said they had run the blockade, had come in by flag of
truce, etc. Colonel Goodwyn asked me to look around and
see if I could pick out the suspected crew. It was easily
done. We were all in a sadly molting condition. We had
come to the end of our good clothes in three years, and
now our only resource was to turn them upside down, or
inside out, and in mending, darning, patching, etc.

Near me on the train to Alabama sat a young woman
in a traveling dress of bright yellow; she wore a profusion

of curls, had pink cheeks, was delightfully airy and easy in
her manner, and was absorbed in a flirtation with a Confederate
major, who, in spite of his nice, new gray uniform and
two stars, had a very Yankee face, fresh, clean-cut, sharp,
utterly unsunburned, florid, wholesome, handsome. What
more in compliment can one say of one's enemies? Two
other women faced this man and woman, and we knew
them to be newcomers by their good clothes. One of these
women was a German. She it was who had betrayed them.
I found that out afterward.

The handsomest of the three women had a hard, Northern
face, but all were in splendid array as to feathers, flowers,
lace, and jewelry. If they were spies why were they
so foolish as to brag of New York, and compare us unfavorably
with the other side all the time, and in loud, shrill
accents? Surely that was not the way to pass unnoticed in
the Confederacy.

A man came in, stood up, and read from a paper, "The
surrender of Vicksburg."[2] I felt as if I had been struck a
hard blow on the top of my head, and my heart took one of
its queer turns. I was utterly unconscious: not long, I dare
say. The first thing I heard was exclamations of joy and
exultation from the overdressed party. My rage and
humiliation were great. A man within earshot of this
party had slept through everything. He had a greyhound
face, eager and inquisitive when awake, but now he was as
one of the seven sleepers.

Colonel Goodwyn wrote on a blank page of my book
(one of De Quincey's—the note is there now), that the
sleeper was a Richmond detective.

Finally, hot and tired out, we arrived at West
Point, on the Chattahoochee River. The dusty cars were
quite still, except for the giggling flirtation of the yellow
gown and her major. Two Confederate officers walked
in. I felt mischief in the air. One touched the smart major,
who was whispering to Yellow Gown. The major
turned quickly. Instantly, every drop of blood left his
face; a spasm seized his throat; it was a piteous sight. And
at once I was awfully sorry for him. He was marched out
of the car. Poor Yellow Gown's color was fast, but the
whites of her eyes were lurid. Of the three women spies
we never heard again. They never do anything worse to
women, the high-minded Confederates, than send them out
of the country. But when we read soon afterward of the
execution of a male spy, we thought of the "major."

At Montgomery the boat waited for us, and in my haste
I tumbled out of the omnibus with Dr. Robert Johnson's
assistance, but nearly broke my neck. The thermometer
was high up in the nineties, and they gave me a stateroom
over the boiler. I paid out my Confederate rags of money
freely to the maid in order to get out of that oven. Surely,
go where we may hereafter, an Alabama steamer in August
lying under the bluff with the sun looking down, will give
one a foretaste, almost an adequate idea, of what's to come,
as far as heat goes. The planks of the floor burned one's
feet under the bluff at Selma, where we stayed nearly all
day—I do not know why.

Met James Boykin, who had lost 1,200 bales of cotton at
Vicksburg, and charged it all to Jeff Davis in his wrath,
which did not seem exactly reasonable to me. At Portland
there was a horse for James Boykin, and he rode away,
promising to have a carriage sent for me at once. But he
had to go seven miles on horseback before he reached my
sister Sally's, and then Sally was to send back. On that
lonely riverside Molly and I remained with dismal swamps
on every side, and immense plantations, the white people

few or none. In my heart I knew my husband was right
when he forbade me to undertake this journey.

There was one living thing at this little riverside inn—
a white man who had a store opposite, and oh, how drunk
he was! Hot as it was, Molly kept up a fire of pine knots.
There was neither lamp nor candle in that deserted house.
The drunken man reeled over now and then, lantern in
hand; he would stand with his idiotic, drunken glare, or go
solemnly staggering round us, but always bowing in his
politeness. He nearly fell over us, but I sprang out of his
way as he asked, "Well, madam, what can I do for you?"

Shall I ever forget the headache of that night and the
fright? My temples throbbed with dumb misery. I sat
upon a chair, Molly on the floor, with her head resting
against my chair. She was as near as she could get to me,
and I kept my hand on her. "Missis," said she, "now I
do believe you are scared, scared of that poor, drunken
thing. If he was sober I could whip him in a fair fight,
and drunk as he is I kin throw him over the banister, ef
he so much as teches you. I don't value him a button!"

Taking heart from such brave words I laughed. It
seemed an eternity, but the carriage came by ten o'clock,
and then, with the coachman as our sole protector, we poor
women drove eight miles or more over a carriage road,
through long lanes, swamps of pitchy darkness, with plantations
on every side.

The house, as we drew near, looked like a graveyard in
a nightmare, so vague and phantom-like were its outlines.
I found my mother ill in bed, feeble still, but better
than I hoped to see her. "I knew you would come," was
her greeting, with outstretched hands. Then I went to bed
in that silent house, a house of the dead it seemed. I supposed
I was not to see my sister until the next day. But
she came in some time after I had gone to bed. She kissed
me quietly, without a tear. She was thin and pale, but her
voice was calm and kind.

As she lifted the candle over her head, to show me something
on the wall, I saw that her pretty brown hair was
white. It was awfully hard not to burst out into violent
weeping. She looked so sweet, and yet so utterly broken-hearted.
But as she was without emotion, apparently, it
would not become me to upset her by my tears.

Next day, at noon, Hetty, mother's old maid, brought
my breakfast to my bedside. Such a breakfast it was!
Delmonico could do no better. "It is ever so late, I
know," to which Hetty replied: "Yes, we would not let
Molly wake you." "What a splendid cook you have here."
"My daughter, Tenah, is Miss Sally's cook. She's well
enough as times go, but when our Miss Mary comes to see
us I does it myself," and she courtesied down to the floor.
"Bless your old soul," I cried, and she rushed over and
gave me a good hug.

She is my mother's factotum; has been her maid since
she was six years old, when she was bought from a Virginia
speculator along with her own mother and all her brothers
and sisters. She has been pampered until she is a rare old
tyrant at times. She can do everything better than any
one else, and my mother leans on her heavily. Hetty is
Dick's wife; Dick is the butler. They have over a dozen
children and take life very easily.

Sally came in before I was out of bed, and began at
once in the same stony way, pale and cold as ice, to tell me
of the death of her children. It had happened not two weeks
before. Her eyes were utterly without life; no expression
whatever, and in a composed and sad sort of manner she
told the tale as if it were something she had read and
wanted me to hear:

"My eldest daughter, Mary, had grown up to be a lovely
girl. She was between thirteen and fourteen, you know.
Baby Kate had my sister's gray eyes; she was evidently to
be the beauty of the family. Strange it is that here was
one of my children who has lived and has gone and you

have never seen her at all. She died first, and I would not
go to the funeral. I thought it would kill me to see her put
under the ground. I was lying down, stupid with grief
when Aunt Charlotte came to me after the funeral with this
news: 'Mary has that awful disease, too.' There was
nothing to say. I got up and dressed instantly and went to
Mary. I did not leave her side again in that long struggle
between life and death. I did everything for her with my
own hands. I even prepared my darling for the grave. I
went to her funeral, and I came home and walked straight
to my mother and I begged her to be comforted; I would
bear it all without one word if God would only spare me the
one child left me now."

Sally has never shed a tear, but has grown twenty
years older, cold, hard, careworn. With the same rigidity
of manner, she began to go over all the details of Mary's illness.
"I had not given up hope, no, not at all. As I sat by
her side, she said: 'Mamma, put your hand on my knees;
they are so cold.' I put my hand on her knee; the cold
struck to my heart. I knew it was the coldness of death."
Sally put out her hand on me, and it seemed to recall the
feeling. She fell forward in an agony of weeping that
lasted for hours. The doctor said this reaction was a blessing;
without it she must have died or gone mad.

While the mother was so bitterly weeping, the little
girl, the last of them, a bright child of three or four,
crawled into my bed. "Now, Auntie," she whispered, "I
want to tell you all about Mamie and Katie, but they watch
me so. They say I must never talk about them. Katie
died because she ate blackberries, I know that, and then
Aunt Charlotte read Mamie a letter and that made her die,
too. Maum Hetty says they have gone to God, but I know
the people saved a place between them in the ground for
me."

Uncle William was in despair at the low ebb of patriotism
out here. "West of the Savannah River," said he,

"it is property first, life next, honor last." He gave me
an excellent pair of shoes. What a gift! For more than a
year I have had none but some dreadful things Armstead
makes for me, and they hurt my feet so. These do not fit,
but that is nothing; they are large enough and do not pinch
anywhere. I have absolutely a respectable pair of shoes! !

Uncle William says the men who went into the war to
save their negroes are abjectly wretched. Neither side now
cares a fig for these beloved negroes, and would send them
all to heaven in a hand-basket, as Custis Lee says, to win
in the fight.

General Lee and Mr. Davis want the negroes put into
the army. Mr. Chesnut and Major Venable discussed the
subject one night, but would they fight on our side or desert
to the enemy? They don't go to the enemy, because
they are comfortable as they are, and expect to be free
anyway.

When we were children our nurses used to give us tea
out in the open air on little pine tables scrubbed as clean as
milk-pails. Sometimes, as Dick would pass us, with his slow
and consequential step, we would call out, "Do, Dick,
come and wait on us." "No, little missies, I never wait
on pine tables. Wait till you get big enough to put your
legs under your pa's mahogany."

I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself,
perched on his knife-board. He won't look at me now;
but looks over my head, scenting freedom in the air. He
was always very ambitious. I do not think he ever troubled
himself much about books. But then, as my father said,
Dick, standing in front of his sideboard, has heard all subjects
in earth or heaven discussed, and by the best heads
in our world. He is proud, too, in his way. Hetty, his
wife, complained that the other men servants looked finer
in their livery. "Nonsense, old woman, a butler never
demeans himself to wear livery. He is always in plain
clothes." Somewhere he had picked that up.

He is the first negro in whom I have felt a change. Others
go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion
showing, and yet on all other subjects except the war
they are the most excitable of all races. Now Dick might
make a very respectable Egyptian Sphinx, so inscrutably
silent is he. He did deign to inquire about General Richard
Anderson. "He was my young master once," said he.
"I always will like him better than anybody else."

When Dick married Hetty, the Anderson house was
next door. The two families agreed to sell either Dick or
Hetty, whichever consented to be sold. Hetty refused outright,
and the Andersons sold Dick that he might be with
his wife. This was magnanimous on the Andersons' part,
for Hetty was only a lady's-maid and Dick was a trained
butler, on whom Mrs. Anderson had spent no end of pains
in his dining-room education, and, of course, if they had
refused to sell Dick, Hetty would have had to go to them.
Mrs. Anderson was very much disgusted with Dick's ingratitude
when she found he was willing to leave them.
As a butler he is a treasure; he is overwhelmed with dignity,
but that does not interfere with his work at all.

My father had a body-servant, Simon, who could imitate
his master's voice perfectly. He would sometimes call
out from the yard after my father had mounted his horse:
"Dick, bring me my overcoat. I see you there, sir, hurry
up." "When Dick hastened out, overcoat in hand, and only
Simon was visible, after several obsequious "Yes, marster;
just as marster pleases," my mother had always to
step out and prevent a fight. Dick never forgave her
laughing.

Once in Sumter, when my father was very busy preparing
a law case, the mob in the street annoyed him, and
he grumbled about it as Simon was making up his fire.
Suddenly he heard, as it were, himself speaking, "the Hon.
S. D. Miller—Lawyer Miller," as the colored gentleman
announced himself in the dark—appeal to the gentlemen

outside to go away and leave a lawyer in peace to prepare
his case for the next day. My father said he could have
sworn the sound was that of his own voice. The crowd dispersed,
but some noisy negroes came along, and upon them
Simon rushed with the sulky whip, slashing around in the
dark, calling himself "Lawyer Miller," who was determined
to have peace.

Simon returned, complaining that "them niggers run
so he never got in a hundred yards of one of them."

At Portland, we met a man who said: "Is it not
strange that in this poor, devoted land of ours, there are
some men who are making money by blockade-running,
cheating our embarrassed government, and skulking the
fight?"

Montgomery, July 30th.—Coming on here from Portland
there was no stateroom for me. My mother alone had
one. My aunt and I sat nodding in armchairs, for the
floors and sofas were covered with sleepers, too. On the
floor that night, so hot that even a little covering of clothes
could not be borne, lay a motley crew. Black, white, and
yellow disported themselves in promiscuous array. Children
and their nurses, bared to the view, were wrapped
in the profoundest slumber. No caste prejudices were here.
Neither Garrison, John Brown, nor Gerrit Smith ever
dreamed of equality more untrammeled. A crow-black,
enormously fat negro man waddled in every now and then
to look after the lamps. The atmosphere of that cabin was
stifling, and the sight of those figures on the floor did not
make it more tolerable. So we soon escaped and sat out
near the guards.

The next day was the very hottest I have ever known.
One supreme consolation was the watermelons, the very finest,
and the ice. A very handsome woman, whom I did not
know, rehearsed all our disasters in the field. And then, as
if she held me responsible, she faced me furiously, "And
where are our big men?" "Whom do you mean?" "I

mean our leaders, the men we have a right to look to to save
us. They got us into this scrape. Let them get us out of
it. Where are our big men?" I sympathized with her and
understood her, but I answered lightly, "I do not know
the exact size you want them."

Here in Montgomery, we have been so hospitably received.
Ye gods! how those women talked! and all at the
same time! They put me under the care of General Dick
Taylor's brother-in-law, a Mr. Gordon, who married one
of the Beranges. A very pleasant arrangement it was for
me. He was kind and attentive and vastly agreeable with
his New Orleans anecdotes. On the first of last January all
his servants left him but four. To these faithful few he
gave free papers at once, that they might lose naught by
loyalty should the Confederates come into authority once
more. He paid high wages and things worked smoothly for
some weeks. One day his wife saw some Yankee officers'
cards on a table, and said to her maid, "I did not know
any of these people had called?"

"Oh, Missis!" the maid replied, "they come to see me,
and I have been waiting to tell you. It is too hard! I can
not do it! I can not dance with those nice gentlemen at
night at our Union Balls and then come here and be your
servant the next day. I can't!" "So," said Mr. Gordon,
"freedom must be followed by fraternity and equality."
One by one the faithful few slipped away and the family
were left to their own devices. Why not?

When General Dick Taylor's place was sacked his negroes
moved down to Algiers, a village near New Orleans.
An old woman came to Mr. Gordon to say that these negroes
wanted him to get word to "Mars Dick" that they
were dying of disease and starvation; thirty had died that
day. Dick Taylor's help being out of the question, Mr.
Gordon applied to a Federal officer. He found this one not
a philanthropist, but a cynic, who said: "All right; it is
working out as I expected. Improve negroes and Indians

off the continent. Their strong men we put in the army.
The rest will disappear."

Joe Johnston can sulk. As he is sent West, he says,
"They may give Lee the army Joe Johnston trained."
Lee is reaping where he sowed, he thinks, but then he was
backing straight through Richmond when they stopped his
retreating.