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was high and mighty, but the kindest creature to his slaves. And the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice-blocks. They were kept in full view, and provided for handsomely in his will.”
“The wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter. They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness.” “Well, yes; if he is rich he is the fountain from whence all blessings flow.”
“The one I have in my eye – my half of Legree, the dissolute half – was so furious in temper and thundered his wrath so at the poor women, they were glad to let him do as he pleased in peace if they could only escape his everlasting fault-finding, and noisy bluster, making everybody so uncomfortable.” “Now – now, do you know any woman of this generation who would stand that sort of thing? No, never, not for one moment. The make-believe angels were of the last century. We know, and we won’t have it.”
“The condition of women is improving, it seems.” “Women are brought up not to judge their fathers or their husbands. They take them as the Lord provides and are thankful.”
“If they should not go to heaven after all; think what lives most women lead.” “No heaven, no purgatory, no – the other thing? Never. I believe in future rewards and punishments.”
“How about the wives of drunkards? I heard a woman say once to a friend of her husband, tell it as a cruel matter of fact, without bitterness, without comment, ‘Oh, you have not seen him! He has changed. He has not gone to bed sober in thirty years.’ She has had her purgatory, if not ‘the other thing,’ here in this world. We all know what a drunken man is. To think, for no crime, a person
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may be condemned to live with one thirty years.” “You wander from the question I asked. Are Southern men worse because of the slave system and the facile black women? Not a bit. They see too much of them. The barroom people don’t drink, the confectionery people loathe candy. They are sick of the black sight of them.”
“You think a nice man from the South is the nicest thing in the world? I know it. Put him by any other man and see!”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Have seen Yankee letters taken at Manassas. The spelling is often atrocious, and we thought they had all gone through a course of blue-covered Noah Webster spelling-books. Our soldiers do spell astonishingly. There is Horace Greeley: they say he can’t read his own handwriting. But, he is candid enough and disregards all time-serving. He says in his paper that in our army the North has a hard nut to crack, and that the rank and file of our army is superior in education and general intelligence to theirs.
My wildest imagination will not picture Mr. Mason1 as a diplomat. He will say chaw for chew, and he will call himself Jeems, and he will wear a dress coat to breakfast. Over here, whatever a Mason does is right in his own eyes. He is above law. Somebody asked him how he pronounced his wife’s maiden name: she was a Miss Chew from Philadelphia.
1. James Murray Mason was a grandson of George Mason, and had been elected United States Senator from Virginia in 1847. In 1851 he drafted the Fugitive Slave Law. His mission to England in 1861 was shared by John Slidell. On November 8, 1861, while on board the British steamer Trent, in the Bahamas, they were captured by an American named Wilkes, and imprisoned in Boston until January 2, 1862. A famous diplomatic difficulty arose with England over this affair. John Slidell was a native of New York, who had settled in Louisiana and became a Member of Congress from that State in 1843. In 1853 he was elected to the United States Senate.
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They say the English will like Mr. Mason; he is so manly, so straightforward, so truthful and bold. “A fine old English gentleman,” so said Russell to me, “but for tobacco.” “I like Mr. Mason and Mr. Hunter better than anybody else.” “And yet they are wonderfully unlike.” “Now you just listen to me,” said I. “Is Mrs. Davis in hearing – no? Well, this sending Mr. Mason to London is the maddest thing yet. Worse in some points of view than Yancey, and that was a catastrophe.”
August 29th. – No more feminine gossip, but the licensed slanderer, the mighty Russell, of the Times. He says the battle of the 21st was fought at long range: 500 yards apart were the combatants. The Confederates were steadily retreating when some commotion in the wagon train frightened the “Yanks,” and they made tracks. In good English, they fled amain. And on our side we were too frightened to follow them – in high-flown English, to pursue the flying foe.
In spite of all this, there are glimpses of the truth sometimes, and the story leads to our credit with all the sneers and jeers. When he speaks of the Yankees’ cowardice, falsehood, dishonesty, and braggadocio, the best words are in his mouth. He repeats the thrice-told tale, so often refuted and denied, that we were harsh to wounded prisoners. Dr. Gibson told me that their surgeon-general has written to thank our surgeons: Yankee officers write very differently from Russell. I know that in that hospital with the Sisters of Charity they were better off than our men were at the other hospitals: that I saw with my own eyes. These poor souls are jealously guarded night and day. It is a hideous tale – what they tell of their sufferings.
Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off and searched for papers. Bustles are “suspect.” All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn; so they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs but arms are looked
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for under hoops, and, sad to say, found. Then women are used as detectives and searchers, to see that no men slip over in petticoats. So the poor creatures coming this way are humiliated to the deepest degree. To men, glory, honor, praise, and power, if they are patriots. To women, daughters of Eve, punishment comes still in some shape, do what they will.
Mary Hammy’s eyes were starting from her head with amazement, while a very large and handsome South Carolinian talked rapidly. “What is it?” asked I after he had gone. “Oh, what a year can bring forth – one year! Last summer you remember how he swore he was in love with me? He told you, he told me, he told everybody, and if I did refuse to marry him I believed him. Now he says he has seen, fallen in love with, courted, and married another person, and he raves of his little daughter’s beauty. And they say time goes slowly” thus spoke Mary Hammy, with a sigh of wonder at his wonderful cure.
“Time works wonders,” said the explainer-general. “What conclusion did you come to as to Southern men at the grand pow-wow, you know?” “They are nicer than the nicest – the gentlemen, you know. There are not too many of that kind anywhere. Ours are generous, truthful, brave, and – and – devoted to us, you know. A Southern husband is not a bad thing to have about the house.”
Mrs. Frank Hampton said: “For one thing, you could not flirt with these South Carolinians. They would not stay at the tepid degree of flirtation. They grow so horridly in earnest before you know where you are.” “Do you think two married people ever lived together without finding each other out? I mean, knowing exactly how good or how shabby, how weak or how strong, above all, how selfish each was?” “Yes; unless they are dolts, they know to a tittle; but you see if they have common sense they make believe and get on, so so.” Like the Marchioness’s orange-peel wine in Old Curiosity Shop.
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A violent attack upon the North to-day in the Albion. They mean to let freedom slide a while until they subjugate us. The Albion says they use lettres de cachet, passports, and all the despotic apparatus of regal governments. Russell hears the tramp of the coming man – the king and kaiser tyrant that is to rule them. Is it McClellan? – “Little Mac”? We may tremble when he comes. We down here have only “the many-headed monster thing,” armed democracy. Our chiefs quarrel among themselves.