University of Virginia Library

XX
CHESTER, S. C.

XX. March 21, 1865—May 1, 1865

CHESTER, S. C., March 21, 1865.—Another flitting has
occurred. Captain Ogden came for me; the splendid
Childs was true as steel to the last. Surely
he is the kindest of men. Captain Ogden was slightly incredulous
when I depicted the wonders of Colonel Childs's
generosity. So I skilfully led out the good gentleman for
inspection, and he walked to the train with us. He offered
me Confederate money, silver, and gold; and finally offered
to buy our cotton and pay us now in gold. Of course, I
laughed at his overflowing bounty, and accepted nothing;
but I begged him to come down to Chester or Camden and
buy our cotton of General Chesnut there.

On the train after leaving Lincolnton, as Captain Ogden
is a refugee, has had no means of communicating with his
home since New Orleans fell, and was sure to know how
refugees contrive to live, I beguiled the time acquiring information
from him. "When people are without a cent,
how do they live?" I asked. "I am about to enter the
noble band of homeless, houseless refugees, and Confederate
pay does not buy one's shoe-strings." To which he replied,
"Sponge, sponge. Why did you not let Colonel
Childs pay your bills?" "I have no bills," said I. "We
have never made bills anywhere, not even at home, where
they would trust us, and nobody would trust me in Lincolnton."
"Why did you not borrow his money? General
Chesnut could pay him at his leisure?" "I am by no

means sure General Chesnut will ever again have any
money," said I.

As the train rattled and banged along, and I waved my
handkerchief in farewell to Miss Middleton, Isabella, and
other devoted friends, I could only wonder if fate would
ever throw me again with such kind, clever, agreeable, congenial
companions? The McLeans refused to be paid for
their rooms. No plummet can sound the depths of the hospitality
and kindness of the North Carolina people.

Misfortune dogged us from the outset. Everything
went wrong with the train. We broke down within two
miles of Charlotte, and had to walk that distance; which
was pretty rough on an invalid barely out of a fever. My
spirit was further broken by losing an invaluable lace veil,
which was worn because I was too poor to buy a cheaper
one—that is, if there were any veils at all for sale in our
region.

My husband had ordered me to a house in Charlotte
kept by some great friends of his. They established me in
the drawing-room, a really handsome apartment; they made
up a bed there and put in a washstand and plenty of water,
with everything refreshingly clean and nice. But it continued
to be a public drawing-room, open to all, so that I
was half dead at night and wanted to go to bed. The piano
was there and the company played it.

The landlady announced, proudly, that for supper there
were nine kinds of custard. Custard sounded nice and
light, so I sent for some, but found it heavy potato pie. I
said: "Ellen, this may kill me, though Dover's powder did
not." "Don't you believe dat, Missis; try." We barricaded
ourselves in the drawing-room that night and left the
next day at dawn. Arrived at the station, we had another
disappointment; the train was behind time. There we sat
on our boxes nine long hours; for the cars might come at
any moment, and we dared not move an inch from the spot.

Finally the train rolled in overloaded with paroled prisoners,

but heaven helped us: a kind mail agent invited us,
with two other forlorn women, into his comfortable and
clean mail-car. Ogden, true to his theory, did not stay at
the boarding-house as we did. Some Christian acquaintances
took him in for the night. This he explained with a
grin.

My husband was at the Chester station with a carriage.
We drove at once to Mrs. Da Vega's.

March 24th.—I have been ill, but what could you expect?
My lines, however, have again fallen in pleasant
places. Mrs. Da Vega is young, handsome, and agreeable,
a kind and perfect hostess; and as to the house, my room is
all that I could ask and leaves nothing to be desired; so
very fresh, clean, warm, and comfortable is it. It is the
drawing-room suddenly made into a bedroom for me. But
it is my very own. We are among the civilized of the earth
once more.

March 27th.—I have moved again, and now I am looking
from a window high, with something more to see than the
sky. We have the third story of Dr. Da Vega's house,
which opens on the straight street that leads to the railroad
about a mile off.

Mrs. Bedon is the loveliest of young widows. Yesterday
at church Isaac Hayne nestled so close to her cap-strings
that I had to touch him and say, "Sit up!" Josiah Bedon
was killed in that famous fight of the Charleston Light Dragoons.
The dragoons stood still to be shot down in their
tracks, having no orders to retire. They had been forgotten,
doubtless, and they scorned to take care of themselves.

In this high and airy retreat, as in Richmond, then in
Columbia, and then in Lincolnton, my cry is still: If they
would only leave me here in peace and if I were sure things
never could be worse with me. Again am I surrounded by
old friends. People seem to vie with each other to show how
good they can be to me.

To-day Smith opened the trenches and appeared laden

with a tray covered with a snow-white napkin. Here was
my first help toward housekeeping again. Mrs. Pride has
sent a boiled ham, a loaf of bread, a huge pancake; another
neighbor coffee already parched and ground; a loaf of
sugar already cracked; candles, pickles, and all the other
things one must trust to love for now. Such money as we
have avails us nothing, even if there were anything left in
the shops to buy.

We had a jolly luncheon. James Lowndes called, the
best of good company. He said of Buck, "She is a queen,
and ought to reign in a palace. No Prince Charming yet;
no man has yet approached her that I think half good
enough for her."

Then Mrs. Prioleau Hamilton, née Levy, came with the
story of family progress, not a royal one, from Columbia
here: "Before we left home," said she, "Major Hamilton
spread a map of the United States on the table, and showed
me with his finger where Sherman was likely to go. Womanlike,
I demurred. ' But, suppose he does not choose to
go that way?' 'Pooh, pooh! what do you know of war?'
So we set out, my husband, myself, and two children, all in
one small buggy. The 14th of February we took up our line
of march, and straight before Sherman's men for five weeks
we fled together. By incessant hurrying and scurrying
from pillar to post, we succeeded in acting as a sort of
avant-courier of the Yankee army. Without rest and with
much haste, we got here last Wednesday, and here we mean
to stay and defy Sherman and his legions. Much the worse
for wear were we."

The first night their beauty sleep was rudely broken into
at Alston with a cry, "Move on, the Yanks are upon us!"
So they hurried on, half-awake, to Winnsboro, but with no
better luck. There they had to lighten the ship, leave
trunks, etc., and put on all sail, for this time the Yankees
were only five miles behind. "Whip and spur, ride for
your life!" was the cry. "Sherman's objective point

seemed to be our buggy," said she; "for you know that
when we got to Lancaster Sherman was expected there, and
he keeps his appointments; that is, he kept that one. Two
small children were in our chariot, and I began to think of
the Red Sea expedition. But we lost no time, and soon we
were in Cheraw, clearly out of the track. We thanked God
for all his mercies and hugged to our bosoms fond hopes of
a bed and bath so much needed by all, especially for the
children.

"At twelve o'clock General Hardee himself knocked us
up with word to 'March! march!' for 'all the blue bonnets
are over the border.' In mad haste we made for Fayetteville,
when they said: 'God bless your soul! This is the
seat of war now; the battle-ground where Sherman and
Johnston are to try conclusions.' So we harked back, as the
hunters say, and cut across country, aiming for this place.
Clean clothes, my dear? Never a one except as we took off
garment by garment and washed it and dried it by our
camp fire, with our loins girded and in haste." I was snug
and comfortable all that time in Lincolnton.

To-day Stephen D. Lee's corps marched through—only
to surrender. The camp songs of these men were a heartbreak;
so sad, yet so stirring. They would have warmed the
blood of an Icelander. The leading voice was powerful,
mellow, clear, distinct, pathetic, sweet. So, I sat down, as
women have done before, when they hung up their harps by
strange streams, and I wept the bitterness of such weeping.
Music? Away, away! Thou speakest to me of things which
in all my long life I have not found, and I shall not find.
There they go, the gay and gallant few, doomed; the last
gathering of the flower of Southern pride, to be killed, or
worse, to a prison. They continue to prance by, light and
jaunty. They march with as airy a tread as if they still believed
the world was all on their side, and that there were

no Yankee bullets for the unwary. What will Joe Johnston
do with them now?

The Hood melodrama is over, though the curtain has not
fallen on the last scene. Cassandra croaks and makes many
mistakes, but to-day she believes that Hood stock is going
down. When that style of enthusiasm is on the wane, the
rapidity of its extinction is miraculous. It is like the snuffing
out of a candle; "one moment white, then gone forever."
No, that is not right; it is the snow-flake on the
river that is referred to. I am getting things as much
mixed as do the fine ladies of society.

Lee and Johnston have each fought a drawn battle; only
a few more dead bodies lie stiff and stark on an unknown
battle-field. For we do not so much as know where these
drawn battles took place.

Teddy Barnwell, after sharing with me my first luncheon,
failed me cruelly. He was to come for me to go down
to the train and see Isabella pass by. One word with Isabella
worth a thousand ordinary ones! So, she has gone
by and I 've not seen her.

Old Colonel Chesnut refuses to say grace; but as he
leaves the table audibly declares, "I thank God for a good
dinner." When asked why he did this odd thing he said:
"My way is to be sure of a thing before I return thanks for
it." Mayor Goodwyn thanked Sherman for promised protection
to Columbia; soon after, the burning began.

I received the wife of a post-office robber. The poor
thing had done no wrong, and I felt so sorry for her. Who
would be a woman? Who that fool, a weeping, pining,
faithful woman? She hath hard measures still when she
hopes kindest. And all her beauty only makes ingrates!

March 29th.—I was awakened with a bunch of violets
from Mrs. Pride. Violets always remind me of Kate and
of the sweet South wind that blew in the garden of paradise
part of my life. Then, it all came back: the dread unspeakable
that lies behind every thought now.

Thursday.—I find I have not spoken of the box-car
which held the Preston party that day on their way to
York from Richmond. In the party were Mr. and Mrs.
Lawson Clay, General and Mrs. Preston and their three
daughters, Captain Rodgers, and Mr. Portman, whose
father is an English earl, and connected financially and
happily with Portman Square. In my American ignorance
I may not state Mr. Portman's case plainly. Mr. Portman
is, of course, a younger son. Then there was Cellie and her
baby and wet-nurse, with no end of servants, male and female.
In this ark they slept, ate, and drank, such being the
fortune of war. We were there but a short time, but Mr.
Portman, during that brief visit of ours, was said to have
eaten three luncheons, and the number of his drinks, toddies,
so called, were counted, too. Mr. Portman's contribution
to the larder had been three small pigs. They were,
however, run over by the train, and made sausage meat of
unduly and before their time.

General Lee says to the men who shirk duty," This is
the people's war; when they tire, I stop." Wigfall says,
"It is all over; the game is up." He is on his way to
Texas, and when the hanging begins he can step over into
Mexico.

I am plucking up heart, such troops do I see go by every
day. They must turn the tide, and surely they are going
for something more than surrender. It is very late, and the
wind flaps my curtain, which seems to moan, "Too late."
All this will end by making me a nervous lunatic.

Yesterday while I was driving with Mrs. Pride, Colonel
McCaw passed us! He called out, "I do hope you are
in comfortable quarters." "Very comfortable," I replied.
"Oh, Mrs. Chesnut!" said Mrs. Pride, "how can you say
that?" "Perfectly comfortable, and hope it may never be
worse with me," said I. "I have a clean little parlor, 16
by 18, with its bare floor well scrubbed, a dinner-table, six
chairs, and—well, that is all; but I have a charming lookout

from my window high. My world is now thus divided into
two parts—where Yankees are and where Yankees are not."

As I sat disconsolate, looking out, ready for any new
tramp of men and arms, the magnificent figure of General
Preston hove in sight. He was mounted on a mighty steed,
worthy of its rider, followed by his trusty squire, William
Walker, who bore before him the General's portmanteau.
When I had time to realize the situation, I perceived at
General Preston's right hand Mr. Christopher Hampton
and Mr. Portman, who passed by. Soon Mrs. Pride, in some
occult way, divined or heard that they were coming here,
and she sent me at once no end of good things for my teatable.
General Preston entered very soon after, and with
him Clement Clay, of Alabama, the latter in pursuit of his
wife's trunk. I left it with the Rev. Mr. Martin, and have
no doubt it is perfectly safe, but where? We have written
to Mr. Martin to inquire. Then Wilmot de Saussure appeared.
"I am here," he said, "to consult with General
Chesnut. He and I always think alike." He added, emphatically:
"Slavery is stronger than ever." "If you
think so," said I, "you will find that for once you and
General Chesnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery
was a thing of the past, this many a year."

I said to General Preston: "I pass my days and nights
partly at this window. I am sure our army is silently dispersing.
Men are moving the wrong way, all the time.
They slip by with no songs and no shouts now. They have
given the thing up. See for yourself. Look there." For a
while the streets were thronged with soldiers and then they
were empty again. But the marching now is without tap
of drum.

March 31st.—Mr. Prioleau Hamilton told us of a great
adventure. Mrs. Preston was put under his care on the train.
He soon found the only other women along were "strictly
unfortunate females," as Carlyle calls them, beautiful and
aggressive. He had to communicate the unpleasant fact to

Mrs. Preston, on account of their propinquity, and was lost
in admiration of her silent dignity, her quiet self-possession,
her calmness, her deafness and blindness, her thoroughbred
ignoring of all that she did not care to see. Some
women, no matter how ladylike, would have made a fuss
or would have fidgeted, but Mrs. Preston dominated the situation
and possessed her soul in innocence and peace.

Met Robert Johnston from Camden. He has been a prisoner,
having been taken at Camden. The Yankees robbed
Zack Cantey of his forks and spoons. When Zack did not
seem to like it, they laughed at him. When he said he did
not see any fun in it, they pretended to weep and wiped
their eyes with their coat-tails. All this maddening derision
Zack said was as hard to bear as it was to see them ride
off with his horse, Albine. They stole all of Mrs. Zack's
jewelry and silver. When the Yankee general heard of it
he wrote her a very polite note, saying how sorry he was
that she had been annoyed, and returned a bundle of Zack's
love-letters, written to her before she was married. Robert
Johnston said Miss Chesnut was a brave and determined
spirit. One Yankee officer came in while they were at breakfast
and sat down to warm himself at the fire. "Rebels
have no rights," Miss Chesnut said to him politely. "I
suppose you have come to rob us. Please do so and go.
Your presence agitates my blind old father." The man
jumped up in a rage, and said, "What do you take me for
—a robber?" "No, indeed," said she, and for very shame
he marched out empty-handed.

April 3d.—Saw General Preston ride off. He came to
tell me good-by. I told him he looked like a Crusader on
his great white horse, with William, his squire, at his heels.
Our men are all consummate riders, and have their servants
well mounted behind them, carrying cloaks and traps—how
different from the same men packed like sardines in dirty
railroad cars, usually floating inch deep in liquid tobacco
juice.

For the kitchen and Ellen's comfort I wanted a pine
table and a kitchen chair. A woman sold me one to-day for
three thousand Confederate dollars.

Mrs. Hamilton has been disappointed again. Prioleau
Hamilton says the person into whose house they expected
to move to-day came to say she could not take boarders for
three reasons: First, "that they had smallpox in the
house." "And the two others?" "Oh, I did not ask for
the two others!"

April 5th.—Miss Middleton's letter came in answer to
mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me.
"We long," she says, "for our own small sufficiency of
wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle unto death,
although the neighbors continue to feed us, as you would
say, 'with a spoon.' We have fallen upon a new device.
We keep a cookery book on the mantelpiece, and when the
dinner is deficient we just read off a pudding or a crême.
It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this dessert in imagination,
but perhaps it is as good for the digestion."

As I was ready to go, though still up-stairs, some one
came to say General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton
cried out, "Send word you are not at home." "Never!"
said I. "Why make him climb all these stairs when you
must go in five minutes?" "If he had come here dragging
Sherman as a captive at his chariot wheels I might say 'not
at home,' but not now." And I ran down and greeted him
on the sidewalk in the face of all, and walked slowly beside
him as he toiled up the weary three stories, limping gallantly.
He was so well dressed and so cordial; not depressed in
the slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report
self-defense; says Joe Johnston attacked him and he
was obliged to state things from his point of view. And
now follow statements, where one may read between the
lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in
Western Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned because
he and Joe Johnston were not on cordial terms, and as the

fatigue of the mountain campaign would be too great for
him, he would like the chance of going across the Mississippi.
Texas was true to him, and would he his home, as it
had voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General
Lee is utterly despondent, and has no plan if Richmond
goes, as go it must.

April 7th.—Richmond has fallen and I have no heart
to write about it. Grant broke through our lines and Sherman
cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville.
They are too many for us. Everything is lost in Richmond,
even our archives. Blue black is our horizon. Hood says
we shall all be obliged to go West—to Texas, I mean, for
our own part of the country will be overrun.

Yes, a solitude and a wild waste it may become, but, as
to that, we can rough it in the bush at home.

De Fontaine, in his newspaper, continues the old cry.
"Now Richmond is given up," he says, "it was too heavy
a load to carry, and we are stronger than ever." "Stronger
than ever?" Nine-tenths of our army are under ground
and where is another army to come from? Will they wait
until we grow one?

April 15th.—What a week it has been—madness, sadness,
anxiety, turmoil, ceaseless excitement. The Wigfalls
passed through on their way to Texas. We did not see
them. Louly told Hood they were bound for the Rio
Grande, and intended to shake hands with Maximilian, Emperor
of Mexico. Yankees were expected here every minute.
Mrs. Davis came. We went down to the cars at daylight
to receive her. She dined with me. Lovely Winnie,
the baby, came, too. Buck and Hood were here, and that
queen of women, Mary Darby. Clay behaved like a trump.
He was as devoted to Mrs. Davis in her adversity as if they
had never quarreled in her prosperity. People sent me
things for Mrs. Davis, as they did in Columbia for Mr.
Davis. It was a luncheon or breakfast only she stayed for
here. Mrs. Brown prepared a dinner for her at the station.

I went down with her. She left here at five o'clock.
My heart was like lead, but we did not give way. She was
as calm and smiling as ever. It was but a brief glimpse of
my dear Mrs. Davis, and under altered skies.

April 17th.—A letter from Mrs. Davis, who writes:
"Do come to me, and see how we get on. I shall have a
spare room by the time you arrive, indifferently furnished,
but, oh, so affectionately placed at your service. You will
receive such a loving welcome. One perfect bliss have I.
The baby, who grows fat and is smiling always, is christened,
and not old enough to develop the world's vices or to
be snubbed by it. The name so long delayed is Varina
Anne. My name is a heritage of woe.

"Are you delighted with your husband? I am delighted
with him as well as with my own. It is well to lose
an Arabian horse if one elicits such a tender and at the
same time knightly letter as General Chesnut wrote to my
poor old Prometheus. I do not think that for a time he
felt the vultures after the reception of the General's letter.

"I hear horrid reports about Richmond. It is said
that all below Ninth Street to the Rocketts has been burned
by the rabble, who mobbed the town. The Yankee performances
have not been chronicled. May God take our
cause into His own hands."

April 19th.—Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed up-stairs,
pale as a sheet, saying, "General Lee has capitulated," I
saw it reflected in Mary Darby's face before I heard him
speak. She staggered to the table, sat down, and wept
aloud. Mr. Clay's eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself
Mary shrieked, "Now we belong to negroes and Yankees!"
Buck said, "I do not believe it."

How different from ours of them is their estimate of us.
How contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the
despised and iniquitous South within their borders, as part
of their country, they are willing to enlist millions of men
at home and abroad, and to spend billions, and we know

they do not love fighting per se, nor spending money. They
are perfectly willing to have three killed for our one. We
hear they have all grown rich, through" shoddy," whatever
that is. Genuine Yankees can make a fortune trading jack-knives.

"Somehow it is borne in on me that we will have to pay
the piper," was remarked to-day. "No; blood can not be
squeezed from a turnip. You can not pour anything out
of an empty cup. We have no money even for taxes or to
be confiscated."

While the Preston girls are here, my dining-room is
given up to them, and we camp on the landing, with our one
table and six chairs. Beds are made on the dining-room
floor. Otherwise there is no furniture, except buckets of
water and bath-tubs in their improvised chamber. Night
and day this landing and these steps are crowded with the
élite of the Confederacy, going and coming, and when night
comes, or rather, bedtime, more beds are made on the floor
of the landing-place for the war-worn soldiers to rest upon.
The whole house is a bivouac. As Pickens said of South
Carolina in 1861, we are "an armed camp."

My husband is rarely at home. I sleep with the girls,
and my room is given up to soldiers. General Lee's few,
but undismayed, his remnant of an army, or the part from
the South and West, sad and crestfallen, pass through
Chester. Many discomfited heroes find their way up these
stairs. They say Johnston will not be caught as Lee was.
He can retreat; that is his trade. If he would not fight
Sherman in the hill country of Georgia, what will he do
but retreat in the plains of North Carolina with Grant,
Sherman, and Thomas all to the fore?

We are to stay here. Running is useless now; so we
mean to bide a Yankee raid, which they say is imminent.
Why fly? They are everywhere, these Yankees, like red
ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues of
Egypt.

The plucky way in which our men keep up is beyond
praise. There is no howling, and our poverty is made a
matter of laughing. We deride our own penury. Of the
country we try not to speak at all.

April 22d.—This yellow Confederate quire of paper,
my journal, blotted by entries, has been buried three days
with the silver sugar-dish, teapot, milk-jug, and a few
spoons and forks that follow my fortunes as I wander.
With these valuables was Hood's silver cup, which was
partly crushed when he was wounded at Chickamauga.

It has been a wild three days, with aides galloping
around with messages, Yankees hanging over us like a
sword of Damocles. We have been in queer straits. We
sat up at Mrs. Bedon's dressed, without once going to bed
for forty-eight hours, and we were aweary.

Colonel Cadwallader Jones came with a despatch, a
sealed secret despatch. It was for General Chesnut. I
opened it. Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, has been killed, murdered,
and Seward wounded! Why? By whom? It is
simply maddening, all this.

I sent off messenger after messenger for General Chesnut.
I have not the faintest idea where he is, but I know
this foul murder will bring upon us worse miseries. Mary
Darby says, "But they murdered him themselves. No
Confederates are in Washington." "But if they see fit to
accuse us of instigating it?" "Who murdered him? Who
knows?" "See if they don't take vengeance on us, now
that we are ruined and can not repel them any longer."

The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He
will not be the last President put to death in the capital,
though he is the first.

Buck never submits to be bored. The bores came to tea
at Mrs. Bedon's, and then sat and talked, so prosy, so
wearisome was the discourse, so endless it seemed, that we
envied Buck, who was mooning on the piazza. She rarely
speaks now.

April 23d.—My silver wedding-day, and I am sure the
unhappiest day of my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher
Hampton. Portman told of Miss Kate Hampton, who
is perhaps the most thoroughly ladylike person in the world.
When he told her that Lee had surrendered she started
up from her seat and said, "That is a lie." "Well, Miss
Hampton, I tell the tale as it was told me. I can do no
more."

No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry
has been destroyed by a corps commanded by General Logan.
Some one asked coolly, "Will General Chesnut be
shot as a soldier, or hung as a senator?" "I am not of
sufficient consequence," answered he. "They will stop
short of brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States
Senate weeks before there was any secession. So I can not
be hung as a senator. But after all it is only a choice between
drumhead court martial, short shrift, and a lingering
death at home from starvation."

These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask
they wear does not show a ripple of change; they are
sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to keep for a week
or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to
me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they
had been garden peas.

Mrs. Huger was in church in Richmond when the news
of the surrender came. Worshipers were in the midst of
the communion service. Mr. McFarland was called out to
send away the gold from his bank. Mr. Minnegerode's English
grew confused. Then the President was summoned,
and distress of mind showed itself in every face. The night
before one of General Lee's aides, Walter Taylor, was married,
and was off to the wars immediately after the ceremony.

One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has
double-quicked down hill since then. One year since I
stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis's

grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted plantations,
sacked villages. "You seem resolute to look the worst in the
face," said General Chesnut, wearily. "Yes, poverty, with
no future and no hope." "But no slaves, thank God!"
cried Buck. "We would be the scorn of the world if the
world thought of us at all. You see, we are exiles and paupers."
"Pile on the agony." "How does our famous
captain, the great Lee, bear the Yankees' galling chain?"
I asked. "He knows how to possess his soul in patience,"
answered my husband. "If there were no such word as
subjugation, no debts, no poverty, no negro mobs backed by
Yankees; if all things were well, you would shiver and feel
benumbed," he went on, pointing at me in an oratorical
attitude. "Your sentence is pronounced—Camden for
life."

May 1st.—In Chester still. I climb these steep steps
alone. They have all gone, all passed by. Buck went with
Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary, Mrs. Huger, and Pinckney
took flight together. One day just before they began to
dissolve in air, Captain Gay was seated at the table, halfway
between me on the top step and John in the window,
with his legs outside. Said some one to-day, "She showed
me her engagement ring, and I put it back on her hand.
She is engaged, but not to me." "By the heaven that is
above us all, I saw you kiss her hand." "That I deny."
Captain Gay glared in angry surprise, and insisted that
he had seen it. "Sit down, Gay," said the cool captain in
his most mournful way. "You see, my father died when I
was a baby, and my grandfather took me in hand. To him
I owe this moral maxim. He is ninety years old, a wise old
man. Now, remember my grandfather's teaching forever-more
—'A gentleman must not kiss and tell.'"

General Preston came to say good-by. He will take his
family abroad at once. Burnside, in New Orleans, owes
him some money and will pay it. "There will be no more
confiscation, my dear madam," said he; "they must see
that we have been punished enough." "They do not think

so, my dear general. This very day a party of Federals
passed in hot pursuit of our President."

A terrible fire-eater, one of the few men left in the world
who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold
Africans, who are black, in bonds forever; he is six feet two;
an athlete; a splendid specimen of the animal man; but he
has never been under fire; his place in the service was a
bomb-proof office, so-called. With a face red-hot with rage
he denounced Jeff Davis and Hood. "Come, now," said
Edward, the handsome, "men who could fight and did not,
they are the men who ruined us. We wanted soldiers. If
the men who are cursing Jeff Davis now had fought with
Hood, and fought as Hood fought, we'd be all right now."

And then he told of my trouble one day while Hood was
here. "Just such a fellow as you came up on this little
platform, and before Mrs. Chesnut could warn him, began
to heap insults on Jeff Davis and his satrap, Hood. Mrs.
Chesnut held up her hands. 'Stop, not another word.
You shall not abuse my friends here! Not Jeff Davis behind
his back, not Hood to his face, for he is in that room
and hears you.'" Fancy how dumfounded this creature
was.

Mrs. Huger told a story of Joe Johnston in his callow
days before he was famous. After an illness Johnston's
hair all fell out; not a hair was left on his head, which
shone like a fiery cannon-ball. One of the gentlemen from
Africa who waited at table sniggered so at dinner that
he was ordered out by the grave and decorous black butler.
General Huger, feeling for the agonies of young Africa, as
he strove to stifle his mirth, suggested that Joe Johnston
should cover his head with his handkerchief. A red silk one
was produced, and turban-shaped, placed on his head.
That completely finished the gravity of the butler, who fled
in helplessness. His guffaw on the outside of the door became
plainly audible. General Huger then suggested, as
they must have the waiter back, or the dinner could not go
on, that Joe should eat with his hat on, which he did.