Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Joe Johnston, Mrs. Wigfall, all came. I am sure so many clever women could divert a soul in extremis. The Hampton Legion all in a snarl – about, I forget what; standing on their dignity, I suppose. I have come to detest a man who says, “My own personal dignity and self-respect require.” I long to cry, “No need to respect yourself until you can make other people do it.”
July 19th. – Beauregard telegraphed yesterday (they say, to General Johnston), “Come down and help us, or we shall be crushed by numbers.” The President telegraphed General Johnston to move down to Beauregard’s aid. At Bull Run, Bonham’s Brigade, Ewell’s, and Longstreet’s encountered the foe and repulsed him. Six hundred prisoners have been sent here.
I arose, as the Scriptures say, and washed my face and anointed my head and went down-stairs. At the foot of them stood General Cooper, radiant, one finger nervously arranging his shirt collar, or adjusting his neck to it after his fashion. He called out: “Your South Carolina man, Bonham, has done a capital thing at Bull Run – driven back the enemy, if not defeated him; with killed and prisoners,” etc. , etc. Clingman came to tell the particulars, and Colonel Smith (one of the trio with Garnett, McClellan, who were sent to Europe to inspect and report on military matters). Poor Garnett is killed. There was cowardice
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or treachery on the part of natives up there, or some of Governor Letcher’s appointments to military posts. I hear all these things said. I do not understand, but it was a fatal business.
Mrs. McLane says she finds we do not believe a word of any news unless it comes in this guise: “A great battle fought. Not one Confederate killed. Enemy’s loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners taken by us, immense.” I was in hopes there would be no battle until Mr. Chesnut was forced to give up his amateur aideship to come and attend to his regular duties in the Congress.
Keitt has come in. He says Bonham’s battle was a skirmish of outposts. Joe Davis, Jr., said: “Would Heaven only send us a Napoleon!” Not one bit of use. If Heaven did, Walker would not give him a commission. Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Joe Johnston, “her dear Lydia,” were in fine spirits. The effect upon nous autres was evident; we rallied visibly. South Carolina troops pass every day. They go by with a gay step. Tom Taylor and John Rhett bowed to us from their horses as we leaned out of the windows. Such shaking of handkerchiefs. We are forever at the windows.
It was not such a mere skirmish. We took three rifled cannon and six hundred stands of arms. Mr. Davis has gone to Manassas. He did not let Wigfall know he was going. That ends the delusion of Wigfall’s aideship. No mistake to-day. I was too ill to move out of my bed. So they all sat in my room.
July 22d. – Mrs. Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said: “A great battle has been fought.1 Joe Johnston led the right
1. The first battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, fought on July 21, 1861, the Confederates being commanded by General Beauregard, and the Federals by General McDowell. Bull Run is a small stream tributary to the Potomac.
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wing, and Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton is wounded. Colonel Johnston of the Legion killed; so are Colonel Bee and Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith1 is wounded or killed.”
I had no breath to speak; she went on in that desperate, calm way, to which people betake themselves under the greatest excitement: “Bartow, rallying his men, leading them into the hottest of the light, died gallantly at the head of his regiment. The President telegraphs me only that ‘it is a great victory.’ General Cooper has all the other telegrams.”
Still I said nothing; I was stunned; then I was so grateful. Those nearest and dearest to me were safe still. She then began, in the same concentrated voice, to read from a paper she held in her hand: “Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman’s battery taken. Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the Legion wounded.”
That got me up. Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed. We went into Mrs. Preston’s room, and she made me lie down on her bed. Men, women, and children streamed in. Every living soul had a story to tell. “Complete victory,” you heard everywhere. We had been such anxious wretches. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much to bear.
To-day I met my friend, Mr. Hunter. I was on my way to Mrs. Bartow’s room and begged him to call at some other time. I was too tearful just then for a morning visit from even the most sympathetic person.
A woman from Mrs. Bartow’s country was in a fury because they had stopped her as she rushed to be the first to tell Mrs. Bartow her husband was killed, it having been
1. Edmund Kirby Smith, a native of Florida, who had graduated from West Point, served in the Mexican War, and been Professor of Mathematics at West Point. He resigned his commission in the United States Army after the secession of Florida.
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decided that Mrs. Davis should tell her. Poor thing! She was found lying on her bed when Mrs. Davis knocked. “Come in,” she said. When she saw it was Mrs. Davis, she sat up, ready to spring to her feet, but then there was something in Mrs. Davis’s pale face that took the life out of her. She stared at Mrs. Davis, then sank back, and covered her face as she asked: “Is it bad news for me?” Mrs. Davis did not speak. “Is he killed?” Afterward Mrs. Bartow said to me: “As soon as I saw Mrs. Davis’s face I could not say one word. I knew it all in an instant. I knew it before I wrapped the shawl about my head.”
Maria, Mrs. Preston’s maid, furiously patriotic, came into my room. “These colored people say it is printed in the papers here that the Virginia people done it all. Now Mars Wade had so many of his men killed and he wounded, it stands to reason that South Carolina was no ways backward. If there was ever anything plain, that’s plain.”
Tuesday. – Witnessed for the first time a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say Mrs. Bartow fainted. The empty saddle and the led war-horse – we saw and heard it all, and now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes, until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream.
Yesterday, Mrs. Singleton and ourselves sat on a bedside and mingled our tears for those noble spirits – John Darby, Theodore Barker, and James Lowndes. To-day we find we wasted our grief; they are not so much as wounded. I dare say all the rest is true about them – in the face of the enemy, with flags in their hands, leading their men. “But Dr. Darby is a surgeon.” He is as likely to forget that as I am. He is grandson of Colonel Thomson of the Revolution, called, by way of pet name, by his soldiers, “Old Danger.” Thank Heaven they are all quite alive. And we will not cry next time until officially notified.
July 24th. – Here Mr. Chesnut opened my door and
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walked in. Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. I had to ask no questions. He gave me an account of the battle as he saw it (walking up and down my room, occasionally seating himself on a window sill, but too restless to remain still many moments) ; and told what regiments he was sent to bring up. He took the orders to Colonel Jackson, whose regiment stood so stock still under file that they were called a “stone wall.” Also, they call Beauregard, Eugene, and Johnston, Marlboro. Mr. Chesnut rode with Lay’s cavalry after the retreating enemy in the pursuit, they following them until midnight. Then there came such a fall of rain – rain such as is only known in semitropical lands.
In the drawing-room, Colonel Chesnut was the “belle of the ball”; they crowded him so for news. He was the first arrival that they could get at from the field of battle. But the women had to give way to the dignitaries of the land, who were as filled with curiosity as themselves – Mr. Barnwell, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Cobb, Captain Ingraham, etc.