“Heavens, what is that – break her wing?” “Why, you do not know even that? Put your arm round her waist and kiss her. After that, it is all plain sailing. She comes down when you call like the coon to Captain Scott: ‘You need not fire, Captain,’ etc.”
The aspirant for fame as a flirt followed these lucid directions literally, but when he seized the poor girl and kissed her, she uplifted her voice in terror, and screamed as if the house was on fire. So quick, sharp, and shrill were her yells for help that the bold flirt sprang over the banister, upon which grew a strong climbing rose. This he struggled through, and ran toward the college, taking a bee line. He was so mangled by the thorns that he had to go home and have them picked out by his family. The girl’s brother challenged him. There was no mortal combat, however, for the gay young fellow who had led the freshman’s ignorance astray stepped forward and put things straight. An explanation and an apology at every turn hushed it all up.
Now, we all laughed at this foolish story most heartily. But Mr. Venable remained grave and preoccupied, and was asked: “Why are you so unmoved? It is funny.” “I like more probable fun; I have been in college and I have kissed many a girl, but never a one scrome yet.”
Last Saturday was the bloodiest we have had in
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proportion to numbers.1 The enemy lost 1,500. The handful left at home are rushing to arms at last. Bragg has gone to join Beauregard at Columbus, Miss. Old Abe truly took the field in that Scotch cap of his.
Mrs. McCord,2 the eldest daughter of Langdon Cheves, got up a company for her son, raising it at her own expense. She has the brains and energy of a man. To-day she repeated a remark of a low-country gentleman, who is dissatisfied: “This Government (Confederate) protects neither person nor property.” Fancy the scornful turn of her lip! Some one asked for Langdon Cheves, her brother. “Oh, Langdon!” she replied coolly, “he is a pure patriot; he has no ambition. While I was there, he was letting Confederate soldiers ditch through his garden and ruin him at their leisure.”
Cotton is five cents a pound and labor of no value at all; it commands no price whatever. People gladly hire out their negroes to have them fed and clothed, which latter can not be done. Cotton osnaburg at 37 1/2 cents a yard, leaves no chance to clothe them. Langdon was for martial law and making the bloodsuckers disgorge their ill-gotten gains. We, poor fools, who are patriotically ruining ourselves will see our children in the gutter while treacherous dogs of millionaires go rolling by in their coaches – coaches that were acquired by taking advantage of our necessities.
This terrible battle of the ships – Monitor, Merrimac, etc. All hands on board the Cumberland went down. She fought gallantly and fired a round as she sank. The Congress
1. On March 7 and 8, 1862, occurred the battle of Pea Ridge in Western Arkansas, where the Confederates were defeated, and on March 8th and 9th, occurred the conflict in Hampton Roads between the warships Merrimac, Cumberland, Congress, and Monitor.
2. Louisa Susanna McCord, whose husband was David J. McCord, a lawyer of Columbia, who died in 1855. She was educated in Philadelphia, and was the author of several books of verse, including Caius Gracchus, a tragedy; she was also a brilliant pamphleteer.
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ran up a white flag. She fired on our boats as they went up to take off her wounded. She was burned. The worst of it is that all this will arouse them to more furious exertions to destroy us. They hated us so before, but how now?
In Columbia I do not know a half-dozen men who would not gaily step into Jeff Davis’s shoes with a firm conviction that they would do better in every respect than he does. The monstrous conceit, the fatuous ignorance of these critics! It is pleasant to hear Mrs. McCord on this subject, when they begin to shake their heads and tell us what Jeff Davis ought to do.
March 12th. – In the naval battle the other day we had twenty-five guns in all. The enemy had fifty-four in the Cumberland, forty-four in the St. Lawrence, besides a fleet of gunboats, filled with rifled cannon. Why not? They can have as many as they please. “No pent-up Utica contracts their powers”; the whole boundless world being theirs to recruit in. Ours is only this one little spot of ground – the blockade, or stockade, which hems us in with only the sky open to us, and for all that, how tender-footed and cautious they are as they draw near.
An anonymous letter purports to answer Colonel Chesnut’s address to South Carolinians now in the army of the Potomac. The man says, “All that bosh is no good.” He knows lots of people whose fathers were notorious Tories in our war for independence and made fortunes by selling their country. Their sons have the best places, and they are cowards and traitors still. Names are given, of course.
Floyd and Pillow1 are suspended from their commands
1. John D. Floyd, who had been Governor of Virginia from 1850 to 1853, became Secretary of War in 1857 He was first in command at Fort Donelson. Gideon J. Pillow had been a Major-General of volunteers in the Mexican War and was second in command at Fort Donelson. He and Floyd escaped from the Fort when it was invested by Grant, leaving General Buckner to make the surrender.
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because of Fort Donelson. The people of Tennessee demand a like fate for Albert Sidney Johnston. They say he is stupid. Can human folly go further than this Tennessee madness?
I did Mrs. Blank a kindness. I told the women when her name came up that she was childless now, but that she had lost three children. I hated to leave her all alone. Women have such a contempt for a childless wife. Now, they will be all sympathy and goodness. I took away her “reproach among women.”
March 13th. – Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From the poor old blind bishop downward everybody is besetting him to let off students, theological and other, from going into the army. One comfort is that the boys will go. Mr. Chesnut answers: “Wait until you have saved your country before you make preachers and scholars. When you have a country, there will be no lack of divines, students, scholars to adorn and purify it.” He says he is a one-idea man. That idea is to get every possible man into the ranks.
Professor Le Conte1 is an able auxiliary. He has undertaken to supervise and carry on the powder-making enterprise – the very first attempted in the Confederacy, and Mr. Chesnut is proud of it. It is a brilliant success, thanks to Le Conte.
Mr. Chesnut receives anonymous letters urging him to arrest the Judge as seditious. They say he is a dangerous and disaffected person. His abuse of Jeff Davis and the Council is rabid. Mr. Chesnut laughs and throws the letters into the fire. “Disaffected to Jeff Davis,” says he;
1. Joseph Le Conte, who afterward arose to much distinction as a geologist and writer of text-books on geology. He died in 1901, while he was connected with the University of California. His work at Columbia was to manufacture, on a large scale, medicines for the Confederate Army, his laboratory being the main source of supply. In Professor Le Conte’s autobiography published in 1903, are several chapters devoted to his life in the South.
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“disaffected to the Council, that don’t count. He knows what he is about; he would not injure his country for the world.”
Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. These negro women have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves – the “impropers” can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us – such men as Legree and his women.
The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as far away from them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that missionaries could do to prevent and alleviate evils. The social evil has not been suppressed in old England or in New England, in London or in Boston. People in those places expect more virtue from a plantation African than they can insure in practise among themselves with all their own high moral surroundings – light, education, training, and support. Lady Mary Montagu says, “Only men and women at last.” “Male and female, created he them,” says the Bible. There are cruel, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as well as South, I dare say. The Northern men and women who came here were always hardest, for they expected an African to work and behave as a white man. We do not.