Wilmot de Saussure says Wilson of Massachusetts, a Senator of the United States,1 came to Manassas, en route to Richmond, with his dancing shoes ready for a festive scene which was to celebrate a triumph. The New York Tribune said: “In a few days we shall have Richmond, Memphis, and New Orleans. They must be taken and at once.” For “a few days” maybe now they will modestly substitute “in a few years.”
They brought me a Yankee soldier’s portfolio from the battle-field. The letters had been franked by Senator
1. Henry Wilson, son of a farm laborer and self-educated, who rose to much prominence in the Anti-Slavery contests before the war. He was elected United States Senator from Massachusetts in 1855, holding the office until 1873, when he resigned, having been elected Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with Ulysses S. Grant.
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Harlan.1 One might shed tears over some of the letters. Women, wives and mothers, are the same everywhere. What a comfort the spelling was! We had been willing to admit that their universal free-school education had put them, rank and file, ahead of us literarily, but these letters do not attest that fact. The spelling is comically bad.
July 27th. – Mrs. Davis’s drawing-room last night was brilliant, and she was in great force. Outside a mob called for the President. He did speak – an old war-horse, who scents the battle-fields from afar. His enthusiasm was contagious. They called for Colonel Chesnut, and he gave them a capital speech, too. As public speakers say sometimes, “It was the proudest moment of my life.” I did not hear a great deal of it, for always, when anything happens of any moment, my heart beats up in my ears, but the distinguished Carolinians who crowded round told me how good a speech he made. I was dazed. There goes the Dead March for some poor soul.
To-day, the President told us at dinner that Mr. Chesnut’s eulogy of Bartow in the Congress was highly praised. Men liked it. Two eminently satisfactory speeches in twenty-four hours is doing pretty well. And now I could be happy, but this Cabinet of ours are in such bitter quarrels among themselves – everybody abusing everybody.
Last night, while those splendid descriptions of the battle were being given to the crowd below from our windows, I said: “Then, why do we not go on to Washington?” “You mean why did they not; the opportunity is lost.” Mr. Barnwell said to me: “Silence, we want to listen to the speaker,” and Mr. Hunter smiled compassionately, “Don’t ask awkward questions.”
Kirby Smith came down on the turnpike in the very nick of time. Still, the heroes who fought all day and
1. James Harlan, United States Senator from Iowa from 1855 to 1865. In 1865 he was appointed Secretary of the Interior.
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held the Yankees in check deserve credit beyond words, or it would all have been over before the Joe Johnston contingent came. It is another case of the eleventh-hour scrape; the eleventh-hour men claim all the credit, and they who bore the heat and brunt and burden of the day do not like that.
Everybody said at first, “Pshaw! There will be no war.” Those who foresaw evil were called ravens, ill-foreboders. Now the same sanguine people all cry, “The war is over” – the very same who were packing to leave Richmond a few days ago. Many were ready to move on at a moment’s warning, when the good news came. There are such owls everywhere.
But, to revert to the other kind, the sage and circumspect, those who say very little, but that little shows they think the war barely begun. Mr. Rives and Mr. Seddon have just called. Arnoldus Van der Horst came to see me at the same time. He said there was no great show of victory on our side until two o’clock, but when we began to win, we did it in double-quick time. I mean, of course, the battle last Sunday.
Arnold Harris told Mr. Wigfall the news from Washington last Sunday. For hours the telegrams reported at rapid intervals, “Great victory,” “Defeating them at all points.” The couriers began to come in on horseback, and at last, after two or three o’clock, there was a sudden cessation of all news, About nine messengers with bulletins came on foot or on horseback – wounded, weary, draggled, footsore, panic-stricken – spreading in their path on every hand terror and dismay. That was our opportunity. Wigfall can see nothing that could have stopped us, and when they explain why we did not go to Washington I understand it all less than ever. Yet here we will dilly-dally, and Congress orate, and generals parade, until they in the North, get up an army three times as large as McDowell’s, which we have just defeated.
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Trescott says this victory will be our ruin. It lulls us into a fool’s paradise of conceit at our superior valor, and the shameful farce of their flight will wake every inch of their manhood. It was the very fillip they needed. There are a quieter sort here who know their Yankees well. They say if the thing begins to pay – government contracts, and all that – we will never hear the end of it, at least, until they get their pay in some way out of us. They will not lose money by us. Of that we may be sure. Trust Yankee shrewdness and vim for that.
There seems to be a battle raging at Bethel, but no mortal here can be got to think of anything but Manassas. Mrs. McLean says she does not see that it was such a great victory, and if it be so great, how can one defeat hurt a nation like the North.
John Waties fought the whole battle over for me. Now I understand it. Before this nobody would take the time to tell the thing consecutively, rationally, and in order. Mr. Venable said he did not see a braver thing done than the cool performance of a Columbia negro. He carried his master a bucket of ham and rice, which he had cooked for him, and he cried: “You must be so tired and hungry, marster; make haste and eat.” This was in the thickest of the fight, under the heaviest of the enemy’s guns.
The Federal Congressmen had been making a picnic of it: their luggage was all ticketed to Richmond. Cameron has issued a proclamation. They are making ready to come after us on a magnificent scale. They acknowledge us at last foemen worthy of their steel. The Lord help us, since England and France won’t, or don’t. If we could only get a friend outside and open a port.
One of these men told me he had seen a Yankee prisoner, who asked him “what sort of a diggins Richmond was for trade.” He was tired of the old concern, and would like to take the oath and settle here. They brought us handcuffs found in the débacle of the Yankee army. For whom
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were they? Jeff Davis, no doubt, and the ringleaders. “Tell that to the marines.” We have outgrown the handcuff business on this side of the water.
Dr. Gibbes says he was at a country house near Manassas, when a Federal soldier, who had lost his way, came in exhausted. He asked for brandy, which the lady of the house gave him. Upon second thought, he declined it. She brought it to him so promptly he said he thought it might be poisoned; his mind was; she was enraged, and said: “Sir, I am a Virginia woman. Do you think I could be as base as that? Here, Bill, Tom, disarm this man. He is our prisoner.” The negroes came running, and the man surrendered without more ado.
Another Federal was drinking at the well. A negro girl said: “You go in and see Missis.” The man went in and she followed, crying triumphantly: “Look here, Missis, I got a prisoner, too!” This lady sent in her two prisoners, and Beauregard complimented her on her pluck and patriotism, and her presence of mind. These negroes were rewarded by their owners.
Now if slavery is as disagreeable to negroes as we think it, why don’t they all march over the border where they would be received with open arms? It all amazes me. I am always studying these creatures. They are to me inscrutable in their way and past finding out. Our negroes were not ripe for John Brown.
This is how I saw Robert E. Lee for the first time: though his family, then living at Arlington, called to see me while I was in Washington (I thought because of old Colonel Chesnut’s intimacy with Nellie Custis in the old Philadelphia days, Mrs. Lee being Nelly Custis’s niece), I had not known the head of the Lee family. He was somewhere with the army then.