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[Let me insert here now, much later, all I know of that brave spirit, George Cuthbert. While I was living in the winter of 1863 at the corner of Clay and Twelfth Streets in Richmond, he came to see me. Never did man enjoy life more. The Preston girls were staying at my house then, and it was very gay for the young soldiers who ran down from the army for a day or so. We had heard of him, as usual, gallantly facing odds at Sharpsburg.1 And he asked if he should chance to be wounded would I have him brought to Clay Street.
He was shot at Chancellorsville,2 leading his men. The surgeon did not think him mortally wounded. He sent me a message that “he was coming at once to our house.” He knew he would soon get well there. Also that “I need not be alarmed; those Yankees could not kill me.” He asked one of his friends to write a letter to his mother. Afterward he said he had another letter to write, but that he wished to sleep first, he felt so exhausted. At his request they then turned his face away from the light and left him. When they came again to look at him, they found him dead. He had been dead for a long time. It was bitter cold; wounded men lost much blood and were weakened in that way; they lacked warm blankets and all comforts. Many died who might have been saved by one good hot drink or a few mouthfuls of nourishing food.
One of the generals said to me: “Fire and reckless courage like Captain Cuthbert’s are contagious; such men in an
1. The battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, one of the bloodiest of the war, was fought in western Maryland, a few miles north of Harper’s Ferry, on September 16 and 17, 1862, the Federals being under McClellan, and the Confederates under Lee.
2. The battle of Chancellorsville, where the losses on each side were more than ten thousand men, was fought about fifty miles northwest of Richmond on May 2, 3, and 4, 1863. The Confederates were under Lee and the Federals under Hooker. In this battle Stonewall Jackson was killed.
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army are invaluable; losses like this weakened us, indeed.” But I must not linger longer around the memory of the bravest of the brave – a true exemplar of our old régime, gallant, gay, unfortunate. – M. B. C.]
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August 8th. – Mr. Daniel Blake drove down to my sister’s in his heavy, substantial English phaeton, with stout and strong horses to match. I went back with him and spent two delightful days at his hospitable mansion. I met there, as a sort of chaplain, the Rev. Mr. – . He dealt unfairly by me. We had a long argument, and when we knelt down for evening prayers, he introduced an extemporaneous prayer and prayed for me most palpably. There was I down on my knees, red-hot with rage and fury. David W. said it was a clear case of hitting a fellow when he was down. Afterward the fun of it all struck me, and I found it difficult to keep from shaking with laughter. It was not an edifying religious exercise, to say the least, as far as I was concerned.
Before Chancellorsville, was fatal Sharpsburg.1 My friend, Colonel Means, killed on the battle-field; his only son, Stark, wounded and a prisoner. His wife had not recovered from the death of her other child, Emma, who had died of consumption early in the war. She was lying on a bed when they told her of her husband’s death, and then they tried to keep Stark’s condition from her. They think now that she misunderstood and believed him dead, too. She threw something over her face. She did not utter one word. She remained quiet so long, some one removed the light shawl which she had thrown over her head and found
1. During the summer of 1862, after the battle of Malvern Hill and before Sharpsburg, or Antietam, the following important battles had taken place: Harrison’s Landing, July 3d and 4th; Harrison’s Landing again, July 31st; Cedar Mountain, August 9th; Bull Run (second battle), August 29th and 30th, and South Mountain, September 14th.
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she was dead. Miss Mary Stark, her sister, said afterward, “No wonder! How was she to face life without her husband and children? That was all she had ever lived for.” These are sad, unfortunate memories. Let us run away from them.
What has not my husband been doing this year, 1862, when all our South Carolina troops are in Virginia? Here we were without soldiers or arms. He raised an army, so to speak, and imported arms, through the Trenholm firm. He had arms to sell to the Confederacy. He laid the foundation of a niter-bed; and the Confederacy sent to Columbia to learn of Professor Le Conte how to begin theirs. He bought up all the old arms and had them altered and repaired. He built ships. He imported clothes and shoes for our soldiers, for which things they had long stood sorely in need. He imported cotton cards and set all idle hands carding and weaving. All the world was set to spinning cotton. He tried to stop the sale of whisky, and alas, he called for reserves – that is, men over age, and he committed the unforgivable offense of sending the sacred negro property to work on fortifications away from their owners’ plantations.
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XIII. PORTLAND, ALA.
July 8, 1863 – July 30, 1863
PORTLAND, Ala., July 8, 1863. – My mother ill at her home on the plantation near here – where I have come to see her. But to go back first to my trip home from Flat Rock to Camden. At the station, I saw men sitting on a row of coffins smoking, talking, and laughing, with their feet drawn up tailor-fashion to keep them out of the wet. Thus does war harden people’s hearts.
Met James Chesnut at Wilmington. He only crossed the river with me and then went back to Richmond. He was violently opposed to sending our troops into Pennsylvania: wanted all we could spare sent West to make an end there of our enemies. He kept dark about Vallandigham.1 I am sure we could not trust him to do us any good, or to do the Yankees any harm. The Coriolanus business is played out.
As we came to Camden, Molly sat by me in the cars. She touched me, and, with her nose in the air, said: “Look, Missis.” There was the inevitable bride and groom – at least so I thought – and the irrepressible kissing and lolling against each other which I had seen so often before. I was rather astonished at Molly’s prudery. but there was a touch
1. Clement Baird Vallandigham was an Ohio Democrat who represented the extreme wing of Northern sympathizers with the South. He was arrested by United States troops in May, 1863, court-martialed and banished to the Confederacy. Not being well received in the South, he went to Canada, but after the war returned to Ohio.
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in this scene which was new. The man required for his peace of mind that the girl should brush his cheek with those beautiful long eyelashes of hers. Molly became so outraged in her blue-black modesty that she kept her head out of the window not to see! When we were detained at a little wayside station, this woman made an awful row about her room. She seemed to know me and appealed to me; said her brother-in-law was adjutant to Colonel K – , etc.
Molly observed, “You had better go yonder, ma’am, where your husband is calling you.” The woman drew herself up proudly, and, with a toss, exclaimed: “Husband, indeed! I’m a widow. That is my cousin. I loved my dear husband too well to marry again, ever, ever!” Absolutely tears came into her eyes. Molly, loaded as she was with shawls and bundles, stood motionless, and said: “After all that gwine-on in the kyars! O, Lord, I should a let it go ’twas my husband and me! nigger as I am.”
Here I was at home, on a soft bed, with every physical comfort; but life is one long catechism there, due to the curiosity of stay-at-home people in a narrow world.
In Richmond, Molly and Lawrence quarreled. He declared he could not put up with her tantrums. Unfortunately I asked him, in the interests of peace and a quiet house, to bear with her temper; I did, said I, but she was so good and useful. He was shabby enough to tell her what I had said at their next quarrel. The awful reproaches she overwhelmed me with then! She said she “was mortified that I had humbled her before Lawrence.”