University of Virginia Library

XIV
RICHMOND, VA.

XIV. August 10, 1863–September 7, 1863

RICHMOND, Va., August 10, 1863.—To-day I had a
letter from my sister, who wrote to inquire about
her old playmate, friend, and lover, Boykin McCaa.
It is nearly twenty years since each was married; each now
has children nearly grown. "To tell the truth," she writes,
"in these last dreadful years, with David in Florida, where
I can not often hear from him, and everything dismal, anxious,
and disquieting, I had almost forgotten Boykin's existence,
but he came here last night; he stood by my bedside
and spoke to me kindly and affectionately, as if we had just
parted. I said, holding out my hand, 'Boykin, you are
very pale.' He answered, 'I have come to tell you good-by,'
and then seized both my hands. His own hands were
as cold and hard as ice; they froze the marrow of my bones.
I screamed again and again until my whole household came
rushing in, and then came the negroes from the yard, all
wakened by my piercing shrieks. This may have been a
dream, but it haunts me.

"Some one sent me an old paper with an account of his
wounds and his recovery, but I know he is dead."
"Stop!" said my husband at this point, and then he read
from that day's Examiner these words: "Captain Burwell
Boykin McCaa found dead upon the battle-field leading
a cavalry charge at the head of his company. He was
shot through the head."

The famous colonel of the Fourth Texas, by name John

Bell Hood,[1] is here—him we call Sam, because his classmates
at West Point did so—for what cause is not known.
John Darby asked if he might bring his hero to us; bragged
of him extensively; said he had won his three stars, etc.,
under Stonewall's eye, and that he was promoted by Stonewall's
request. When Hood came with his sad Quixote
face, the face of an old Crusader, who believed in his cause,
his cross, and his crown, we were not prepared for such a
man as a beau-ideal of the wild Texans. He is tall, thin,
and shy; has blue eyes and light hair; a tawny beard, and
a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of his face, the
whole appearance that of awkward strength. Some one
said that his great reserve of manner he carried only into
the society of ladies. Major Venable added that he had
often heard of the light of battle shining in a man's eyes.
He had seen it once—when he carried to Hood orders from
Lee, and found in the hottest of the fight that the man was
transfigured. The fierce light of Hood's eyes I can never
forget.

Hood came to ask us to a picnic next day at Drury's
Bluff.[2] The naval heroes were to receive us and then we
were to drive out to the Texan camp. We accused John
Darby of having instigated this unlooked-for festivity. We
were to have bands of music and dances, with turkeys,
chickens, and buffalo tongues to eat. Next morning, just
as my foot was on the carriage-step, the girls standing behind
ready to follow me with Johnny and the Infant
Samuel (Captain Shannon by proper name), up rode John
Darby in red-hot haste, threw his bridle to one of the men
who was holding the horses, and came toward us rapidly,
clanking his cavalry spurs with a despairing sound as he

ANOTHER GROUP OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS.

WADE HAMPTON. ROBERT TOOMBS.
JOHN C. PRESTON. JOHN H. MORGAN.
JOSEPH B. KERSHAW. JAMES CHESNUT, JR.

cried: "Stop! it's all up. We are ordered back to the
Rappahannock. The brigade is marching through Richmond
now." So we unpacked and unloaded, dismissed the
hacks and sat down with a sigh.

"Suppose we go and see them pass the turnpike," some
one said. The suggestion was hailed with delight, and off
we marched. Johnny and the Infant were in citizens'
clothes, and the Straggler—as Hood calls John Darby, since
the Prestons have been in Richmond—was all plaided and
plumed in his surgeon's array. He never bated an inch of
bullion or a feather; he was courting and he stalked ahead
with Mary Preston, Buck, and Johnny. The Infant and
myself, both stout and scant of breath, lagged last. They
called back to us, as the Infant came toddling along,
"Hurry up or we will leave you."

At the turnpike we stood on the sidewalk and saw ten
thousand men march by. We had seen nothing like this before.
Hitherto we had seen only regiments marching spick
and span in their fresh, smart clothes, just from home and
on their way to the army. Such rags and tags as we saw
now. Nothing was like anything else. Most garments and
arms were such as had been taken from the enemy. Such
shoes as they had on. "Oh, our brave boys!" moaned
Buck. Such tin pans and pots as were tied to their waists,
with bread or bacon stuck on the ends of their bayonets.
Anything that could be spiked was bayoneted and held
aloft.

They did not seem to mind their shabby condition; they
laughed, shouted, and cheered as they marched by. Not a
disrespectful or light word was spoken, but they went for
the men who were huddled behind us, and who seemed to be
trying to make themselves as small as possible in order to
escape observation.

Hood and his staff finally came galloping up, dismounted,
and joined us. Mary Preston gave him a bouquet.
Thereupon he unwrapped a Bible, which he carried in his

pocket. He said his mother had given it to him. He
pressed a flower in it. Mary Preston suggested that he had
not worn or used it at all, being fresh, new, and beautifully
kept. Every word of this the Texans heard as they
marched by, almost touching us. They laughed and joked
and made their own rough comments.

September 7th.—Major Edward Johnston did not get
into the Confederacy until after the first battle of Manassas.
For some cause, before he could evade that potentate,
Seward rang his little bell and sent him to a prison in the
harbor of New York. I forget whether he was exchanged
or escaped of his own motion. The next thing I heard of
my antebellum friend he had defeated Milroy in Western
Virginia. There were so many Johnstons that for this victory
they named him Alleghany Johnston.

He had an odd habit of falling into a state of incessant
winking as soon as he became the least startled or agitated.
In such times he seemed persistently to be winking one eye
at you. He meant nothing by it, and in point of fact did
not know himself that he was doing it. In Mexico he had
been wounded in the eye, and the nerve vibrates independently
of his will. During the winter of 1862 and 1863 he
was on crutches. After a while he hobbled down Franklin
Street with us, we proud to accommodate our pace to that
of the wounded general. His ankle continued stiff; so when
he sat down another chair had to be put before him. On
this he stretched out his stiff leg, straight as a ramrod. At
that time he was our only wounded knight, and the girls
waited on him and made life pleasant for him.

One night I listened to two love-tales at once, in a distracted
state of mind between the two. William Porcher
Miles, in a perfectly modulated voice, in cadenced accents
and low tones, was narrating the happy end of his affair.
He had been engaged to sweet little Bettie Bierne, and I
gave him my congratulations with all my heart. It was a
capital match, suitable in every way, good for her, and

good for him. I was deeply interested in Mr. Miles's story,
but there was din and discord on the other hand; old Edward,
our pet general, sat diagonally across the room with
one leg straight out like a poker, wrapped in red carpet
leggings, as red as a turkey-cock in the face. His head is
strangely shaped, like a cone or an old-fashioned beehive;
or, as Buck said, there are three tiers of it; it is like a pope's
tiara.

There he sat, with a loud voice and a thousand winks,
making love to Mary P. I make no excuse for listening.
It was impossible not to hear him. I tried not to lose a
word of Mr. Miles's idyl as the despair of the veteran was
thundered into my other ear. I lent an ear to each conversationalist.
Mary can not altogether control her voice, and
her shrill screams of negation, "No, no, never," etc., utterly
failed to suppress her wounded lover's obstreperous
asseverations of his undying affection for her.

Buck said afterward: "We heard every word of it on
our side of the room, even when Mamie shrieked to him that
he was talking too loud. Now, Mamie," said we afterward,
"do you think it was kind to tell him he was forty if he
was a day?"

Strange to say, the pet general, Edward, rehabilitated
his love in a day; at least two days after he was heard to
say that he was "paying attentions now to his cousin,
John Preston's second daughter; her name, Sally, but they
called her Buck—Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston, a
lovely girl." And with her he now drove, rode, and hobbled
on his crutches, sent her his photograph, and in due
time cannonaded her, from the same spot where he had
courted Mary, with proposals to marry him.

Buck was never so decided in her "Nos" as Mary.
("Not so loud, at least"—thus in amendment, says Buck,
who always reads what I have written, and makes comments
of assent or dissent.) So again he began to thunder in
a woman's ears his tender passion. As they rode down

Franklin Street, Buck says she knows the people on the
sidewalk heard snatches of the conversation, though she
rode as rapidly as she could, and she begged him not to talk
so loud. Finally, they dashed up to our door as if they
had been running a race. Unfortunate in love, but fortunate
in war, our general is now winning new laurels with
Ewell in the Valley or with the Army of the Potomac.

I think I have told how Miles, still "so gently o'er me
leaning," told of his successful love while General Edward
Johnston roared unto anguish and disappointment
over his failures. Mr. Miles spoke of sweet little Bettie
Bierne as if she had been a French girl, just from a convent,
kept far from the haunts of men wholly for him.
One would think to hear him that Bettie had never cast
those innocent blue eyes of hers on a man until he came
along.

Now, since I first knew Miss Bierne in 1857, when Pat
Calhoun was to the fore, she has been followed by a tale of
men as long as a Highland chief's. Every summer at the
Springs, their father appeared in the ballroom a little
before twelve and chased the three beautiful Biernes
home before him in spite of all entreaties, and he was said
to frown away their too numerous admirers at all hours of
the day.

This new engagement was confided to me as a profound
secret. Of course, I did not mention it, even to my own
household. Next day little Alston, Morgan's adjutant, and
George Deas called. As Colonel Deas removed his gloves,
he said: "Oh! the Miles and Bierne sensation—have you
heard of it?" "No, what is the row about?" "They
are engaged to be married; that's all." "Who told
you?" "Miles himself, as we walked down Franklin
Street, this afternoon." "And did he not beg you not to
mention it, as Bettie did not wish it spoken of?" "God
bless my soul, so he did. And I forgot that part entirely."

Colonel Alston begged the stout Carolinian not to take

his inadvertent breach of faith too much to heart. Miss
Bettie's engagement had caused him a dreadful night. A
young man, who was his intimate friend, came to his room
in the depths of despair and handed him a letter from Miss
Bierne, which was the cause of all his woe. Not knowing
that she was already betrothed to Miles, he had proposed
to her in an eloquent letter. In her reply, she positively
stated that she was engaged to Mr. Miles, and instead of
thanking her for putting him at once out of his misery, he
considered the reason she gave as trebly aggravating the
agony of the love-letter and the refusal. "Too late!" he
yelled, "by Jingo!" So much for a secret.

Miss Bierne and I became fast friends. Our friendship
was based on a mutual admiration for the honorable member
from South Carolina. Colonel and Mrs. Myers and
Colonel and Mrs. Chesnut were the only friends of Mr.
Miles who were invited to the wedding. At the church
door the sexton demanded our credentials. No one but
those whose names he held in his hand were allowed to enter.
Not twenty people were present—a mere handful
grouped about the altar in that large church.

We were among the first to arrive. Then came a faint
flutter and Mrs. Parkman (the bride's sister, swathed in
weeds for her young husband, who had been killed within a
year of her marriage) came rapidly up the aisle alone. She
dropped upon her knees in the front pew, and there remained,
motionless, during the whole ceremony, a mass of
black crape, and a dead weight on my heart. She has had
experience of war. A cannonade around Richmond interrupted
her marriage service—a sinister omen-and in a
year thereafter her bridegroom was stiff and stark—dead
upon the field of battle.

While the wedding-march turned our thoughts from her
and thrilled us with sympathy, the bride advanced in white
satin and point d'Alençon. Mrs. Myers whispered that it
was Mrs. Parkman's wedding-dress that the bride had on.

She remembered the exquisite lace, and she shuddered with
superstitious forebodings.

All had been going on delightfully in-doors, but a sharp
shower cleared the church porch of the curious; and, as the
water splashed, we wondered how we were to assemble ourselves
at Mrs. McFarland's. All the horses in Richmond
had been impressed for some sudden cavalry necessity a
few days before. I ran between Mr. McFarland and Senator
Semmes with my pretty Paris rose-colored silk turned
over my head to save it, and when we arrived at the hospitable
mansion of the McFarlands, Mr. McFarland took me
straight into the drawing-room, man-like, forgetting that
my ruffled plumes needed a good smoothing and preening.

Mrs. Lee sent for me. She was staying at Mrs. Caskie's.
I was taken directly to her room, where she was lying on the
bed. She said, before I had taken my seat: "You know
there is a fight going on now at Brandy Station?"[3] "Yes,
we are anxious. John Chesnut's company is there, too."
She spoke sadly, but quietly. "My son, Roony, is wounded;
his brother has gone for him. They will soon be here
and we shall know all about it unless Roony's wife takes
him to her grandfather. Poor lame mother, I am useless
to my children." Mrs. Caskie said: "You need not be
alarmed. The General said in his telegram that it was not
a severe wound. You know even Yankees believe General
Lee."

That day, Mrs. Lee gave me a likeness of the General in
a photograph taken soon after the Mexican War. She likes
it so much better than the later ones. He certainly was a
handsome man then, handsomer even than now. I shall
prize it for Mrs. Lee's sake, too. She said old Mrs. Chesnut
and her aunt, Nellie Custis (Mrs. Lewis) were very intimate
during Washington's Administration in Philadelphia.
I told her Mrs. Chesnut, senior, was the historical member

of our family; she had so much to tell of Revolutionary
times. She was one of the "white-robed choir" of little
maidens who scattered flowers before Washington at Trenton
Bridge, which everybody who writes a life of Washington
asks her to give an account of.

Mrs. Ould and Mrs. Davis came home with me. Lawrence
had a basket of delicious cherries. "If there were
only some ice," said I. Respectfully Lawrence answered,
and also firmly: "Give me money and you shall have ice."
By the underground telegraph he had heard of an ice-house
over the river, though its fame was suppressed by certain
Sybarites, as they wanted it all. In a wonderfully short
time we had mint-juleps and sherry-cobblers.

Altogether it has been a pleasant day, and as I sat alone
I was laughing lightly now and then at the memory of
some funny story. Suddenly, a violent ring; and a regular
sheaf of telegrams were handed me. I could not have
drawn away in more consternation if the sheets had been a
nest of rattlesnakes. First, Frank Hampton was killed at
Brandy Station. Wade Hampton telegraphed Mr. Chesnut
to see Robert Barnwell, and make the necessary arrangements
to recover the body. Mr. Chesnut is still at Wilmington.
I sent for Preston Johnston, and my neighbor, Colonel
Patton, offered to see that everything proper was done.
That afternoon I walked out alone. Willie Mountford had
shown me where the body, all that was left of Frank Hampton,
was to be laid in the Capitol. Mrs. Petticola joined me
after a while, and then Mrs. Singleton.

Preston Hampton and Peter Trezevant, with myself and
Mrs. Singleton, formed the sad procession which followed
the coffin. There was a company of soldiers drawn up in
front of the State House porch. Mrs. Singleton said we had
better go in and look at him before the coffin was finally
closed. How I wish I had not looked. I remember him so
well in all the pride of his magnificent manhood. He died
of a saber-cut across the face and head, and was utterly disfigured.

Mrs. Singleton seemed convulsed with grief. In
all my life I had never seen such bitter weeping. She had
her own troubles, but I did not know of them. We sat for
a long time on the great steps of the State House. Everybody
had gone and we were alone.

We talked of it all—how we had gone to Charleston to
see Rachel in Adrienne Lecouvreur, and how, as I stood
waiting in the passage near the drawing-room, I had met
Frank Hampton bringing his beautiful bride from the
steamer. They had just landed. Afterward at Mrs. Singleton's
place in the country we had all spent a delightful
week together. And now, only a few years have passed,
but nearly all that pleasant company are dead, and our
world, the only world we cared for, literally kicked to
pieces. And she cried, "We are two lone women, stranded
here." Rev. Robert Barnwell was in a desperate condition,
and Mary Barnwell, her daughter, was expecting her confinement
every day.

Here now, later, let me add that it was not until I got
back to Carolina that I heard of Robert Barnwell's death,
with scarcely a day's interval between it and that of Mary
and her new-born baby. Husband, wife, and child were
buried at the same time in the same grave in Columbia.
And now, Mrs. Singleton has three orphan grandchildren.
What a woful year it has been to her.

Robert Barnwell had insisted upon being sent to the hospital
at Staunton. On account of his wife's situation the
doctor also had advised it. He was carried off on a mattress.
His brave wife tried to prevent it, and said: "It is only fever."
And she nursed him to the last. She tried to say good-by
cheerfully, and called after him: "As soon as my trouble
is over I will come to you at Staunton." At the hospital
they said it was typhoid fever. He died the second day
after he got there. Poor Mary fainted when she heard the
ambulance drive away with him. Then she crept into a
low trundle-bed kept for the children in her mother's room.

She never left that bed again. When the message came
from Staunton that fever was the matter with Robert and
nothing more, Mrs. Singleton says she will never forget the
expression in Mary's eyes as she turned and looked at her.
"Robert will get well," she said, "it is all right" Her
face was radiant, blazing with light. That night the baby
was born, and Mrs. Singleton got a telegram that Robert
was dead. She did not tell Mary, standing, as she did, at
the window while she read it. She was at the same time
looking for Robert's body, which might come any moment.
As for Mary's life being in danger, she had never
thought of such a thing. She was thinking only of Robert.
Then a servant touched her and said:" Look at Mrs. Barnwell."
She ran to the bedside, and the doctor, who had come
in, said, "It is all over; she is dead." Not in anger, not in
wrath, came the angel of death that day. He came to set
Mary free from a world grown too hard to bear.

During Stoneman's raid[4] I burned some personal papers.
Molly constantly said to me, "Missis, listen to de
guns. Burn up everything. Mrs. Lyons says they are sure
to come, and they'll put in their newspapers whatever you
write here, every day." The guns did sound very near, and
when Mrs. Davis rode up and told me that if Mr. Davis
left Richmond I must go with her, I confess I lost my head.
So I burned a part of my journal but rewrote it afterward
from memory—my implacable enemy that lets me forget
none of the things I would. I am weak with dates. I do
not always worry to look at the calendar and write them
down. Besides I have not always a calendar at hand.