General Preston said: “We are about to sacrifice life and fortune for a fickle multitude who will not stand up to us at last.” The harsh comments made as to his lenient conduct to prisoners have embittered him. I told him what I had heard Captain Trenholm say in his speech. He said he would listen to no criticism except from a man with a musket on his shoulder, and who had beside enlisted for the war, had given up all, and had no choice but to succeed or die.
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February 24th. – Congress and the newspapers render one desperate, ready to cut one’s own throat. They represent everything in our country as deplorable. Then comes some one back from our gay and gallant army at the front. The spirit of our army keeps us up after all. Letters from the army revive one. They come as welcome as the flowers in May. Hopeful and bright, utterly unconscious of our weak despondency.
February 25th. – They have taken at Nashville1 more men than we had at Manassas; there was bad handling of troops, we poor women think, or this would not be. Mr. Venable added bitterly, “Giving up our soldiers to the enemy means giving up the cause. We can not replace them.” The up-country men were Union men generally, and the low-country seceders. The former growl; they never liked those aristocratic boroughs and parishes, they had themselves a good and prosperous country, a good constitution, and were satisfied. But they had to go – to leave all and fight for the others who brought on all the trouble, and who do not show too much disposition to fight for themselves.
That is the extreme up-country view. The extreme low-country says Jeff Davis is not enough out of the Union yet. His inaugural address reads as one of his speeches did four years ago in the United States Senate.
A letter in a morning paper accused Mr. Chesnut of staying too long in Charleston. The editor was asked for the writer’s name. He gave it as Little Moses, the Governor’s secretary. When Little Moses was spoken to, in a great trepidation he said that Mrs. Pickens wrote it, and got him to publish it; so it was dropped, for Little Moses is such an arrant liar no one can believe him. Besides, if that sort of thing amuses Mrs. Pickens, let her amuse herself.
March 5th. – Mary Preston went back to Mulberry with
1. Nashville was evacuated by the Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston, in February, 1862.
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me from Columbia. She found a man there tall enough to take her in to dinner – Tom Boykin, who is six feet four, the same height as her father. Tom was very handsome in his uniform, and Mary prepared for a nice time, but he looked as if he would so much rather she did not talk to him, and he set her such a good example, saying never a word.
Old Colonel Chesnut came for us. When the train stopped, Quashie, shiny black, was seen on his box, as glossy and perfect in his way as his blooded bays, but the old Colonel would stop and pick up the dirtiest little negro I ever saw who was crying by the roadside. This ragged little black urchin was made to climb up and sit beside Quash. It spoilt the symmetry of the turn-out, but it was a character touch, and the old gentleman knows no law but his own will. He had a biscuit in his pocket which he gave this sniffling little negro, who proved to be his man Scip’s son.
I was ill at Mulberry and never left my room. Doctor Boykin came, more military than medical. Colonel Chesnut brought him up, also Teams, who said he was down in the mouth. Our men were not fighting as they should. We had only pluck and luck and a dogged spirit of fighting, to offset their weight in men and munitions of war, I wish I could remember Team’s words; this is only his idea. His language was quaint and striking – no grammar, but no end of sense and good feeling. Old Colonel Chesnut, catching a word, began his litany, saying, “Numbers will tell,” “Napoleon, you know,” etc., etc.
At Mulberry the war has been ever afar off, but threats to take the silver came very near indeed – silver that we had before the Revolution, silver that Mrs. Chesnut brought from Philadelphia. Jack Cantey and Doctor Boykin came back on the train with us. Wade Hampton is the hero.
Sweet May Dacre. Lord Byron and Disraeli make their rosebuds Catholic; May Dacre is another Aurora Raby. I
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like Disraeli because I find so many clever things in him. I like the sparkle and the glitter. Carlyle does not hold up his hands in holy horror of us because of African slavery. Lord Lyons1 has gone against us. Lord Derby and Louis Napoleon are silent in our hour of direst need. People call me Cassandra, for I cry that outside hope is quenched. From the outside no help indeed cometh to this beleaguered land.
March 7th. – Mrs. Middleton was dolorous indeed. General Lee had warned the planters about Combahee, etc., that they must take care of themselves now; he could not do it. Confederate soldiers had committed some outrages on the plantations and officers had punished them promptly. She poured contempt Upon Yancey’s letter to Lord Russell.2 It was the letter of a shopkeeper, not in the style of a statesman at all.
We called to see Mary McDuffie.3 She asked Mary Preston what Doctor Boykin had said of her husband as we came along in the train. She heard it was something very complimentary. Mary P. tried to remember, and to repeat it all, to the joy of the other Mary, who liked to hear nice things about her husband.
Mary was amazed to hear of the list of applicants for promotion. One delicate-minded person accompanied his demand for advancement by a request for a written description of the Manassas battle; he had heard Colonel Chesnut give such a brilliant account of it in Governor Cobb’s room.
The Merrimac 4 business has come like a gleam of lightning
1. Richard, Lord Lyons, British minister to the United States from 1858 to 1865.
2. Lord Russell was Foreign Secretary under the Palmerston administration of 1859 to 1865.
3. Mary McDuffie was the second wife of Wade Hampton.
4. The Merrimac was formerly a 40-gun screw frigate of the United States Navy. In April, 1861, when the Norfolk Navy-yard was abandoned by the United States she was sunk. Her hull was afterward raised by the Confederates and she was reconstructed on new plans, and renamed the Virginia. On March 2, 1862, she destroyed the Congress, a sailing-ship of 50 guns, and the Cumberland, a sailing-ship of 30 guns, at Newport News. On March 7th she attacked the Minnesota, but was met by the Monitor and defeated in a memorable engagement. Many features of modern battle-ships have been derived from the Merrimac and Monitor.
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illumining a dark scene. Our sky is black and lowering.
The Judge saw his little daughter at my window and he came up. He was very smooth and kind. It was really a delightful visit; not a disagreeable word was spoken. He abused no one whatever, for he never once spoke of any one but himself, and himself he praised without stint. He did not look at me once, though he spoke very kindly to me.
March 10th. – Second year of Confederate independence. I write daily for my own diversion. These mémoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am. I do not wish to do any harm or to hurt any one. If any scandalous stories creep in they can easily be burned. It is hard, in such a hurry as things are now, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now that I have made my protest and written down my wishes, I can scribble on with a free will and free conscience.
Congress at the North is down on us. They talk largely of hanging slave-owners. They say they hold Port Royal, as we did when we took it originally from the aborigines, who fled before us; so we are to be exterminated and improved, à l’Indienne, from the face of the earth.
Medea, when asked: “Country, wealth, husband, children, all are gone; and now what remains?” answered: “Medea remains.” “There is a time in most men’s lives when they resemble Job, sitting among the ashes and drinking in the full bitterness of complicated misfortune.”
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March 11th. – A freshman came quite eager to be instructed in all the wiles of society. He wanted to try his hand at a flirtation, and requested minute instructions, as he knew nothing whatever: he was so very fresh. “Dance with her,” he was told, “and talk with her; walk with her and flatter her; dance until she is warm and tired; then propose to walk in a cool, shady piazza. It must be a somewhat dark piazza. Begin your promenade slowly; warm up to your work; draw her arm closer and closer; then, break her wing.”