Simon returned, complaining that “them niggers run so he never got in a hundred yards of one of them.”
At Portland, we met a man who said: “Is it not strange that in this poor, devoted land of ours, there are some men who are making money by blockade-running, cheating our embarrassed government, and skulking the fight?”
Montgomery, July 30th. – Coming on here from Portland there was no stateroom for me. My mother alone had one. My aunt and I sat nodding in armchairs, for the doors and sofas were covered with sleepers, too. On the floor that night, so hot that even a little covering of clothes could not be borne, lay a motley crew. Black, white, and yellow disported themselves in promiscuous array. Children and their nurses, bared to the view, were wrapped in the profoundest slumber. No caste prejudices were here. Neither Garrison, John Brown, nor Gerrit Smith ever dreamed of equality more untrammeled. A crow-black, enormously fat negro man waddled in every now and then to look after the lamps. The atmosphere of that cabin was stifling, and the sight of those figures on the floor did not make it more tolerable. So we soon escaped and sat out near the guards.
The next day was the very hottest I have ever known. One supreme consolation was the watermelons, the very finest, and the ice. A very handsome woman, whom I did not know, rehearsed all our disasters in the field. And then, as if she held me responsible, she faced me furiously, “And where are our big men?” “Whom do you mean?” “I
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mean our leaders, the men we have a right to look to to save us. They got us into this scrape. Let them get us out of it. Where are our big men?” I sympathized with her and understood her, but I answered lightly, “I do not know the exact size you want them.”
Here in Montgomery, we have been so hospitably received. Ye gods! how those women talked! and all at the same time! They put me under the care of General Dick Taylor’s brother-in-law, a Mr. Gordon, who married one of the Beranges. A very pleasant arrangement it was for me. He was kind and attentive and vastly agreeable with his New Orleans anecdotes. On the first of last January all his servants left him but four. To these faithful few he gave free papers at once, that they might lose naught by loyalty should the Confederates come into authority once more. He paid high wages and things worked smoothly for some weeks. One day his wife saw some Yankee officers’ cards on a table, and said to her maid, “I did not know any of these people had called?”
“Oh, Missis!” the maid replied, “they come to see me, and I have been waiting to tell you. It is too hard! I can not do it! I can not dance with those nice gentlemen at night at our Union Balls and then come here and be your servant the next day. I can’t!” “So,” said Mr. Gordon, “freedom must be followed by fraternity and equality.” One by one the faithful few slipped away and the family were left to their own devices. Why not?
When General Dick Taylor’s place was sacked his negroes moved down to Algiers, a village near New Orleans. An old woman came to Mr. Gordon to say that these negroes wanted him to get word to “Mars Dick” that they were dying of disease and starvation; thirty had died that day. Dick Taylor’s help being out of the question, Mr. Gordon applied to a Federal officer. He found this one not a philanthropist, but a cynic, who said: “All right; it is working out as I expected. Improve negroes and Indians
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off the continent. Their strong men we put in the army. The rest will disappear.”
Joe Johnston can sulk. As he is sent West, he says, “They may give Lee the army Joe Johnston trained.” Lee is reaping where he sowed, he thinks, but then he was backing straight through Richmond when they stopped his retreating.
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XIV. RICHMOND, VA.
August 10, 1863 – September 7. 1863
RICHMOND, Va., August 10, 1863. – To-day I had letter from my sister, who wrote to inquire about her old playmate, friend, and lover, Boykin McCaa. It is nearly twenty years since each was married; each now has children nearly grown. “To tell the truth,” she writes “in these last dreadful years, with David in Florida, where I can not often hear from him, and everything dismal, anxious, and disquieting, I had almost forgotten Boykin’s existence, but he came here last night; he stood by my bedside and spoke to me kindly and affectionately, as if we had just parted. I said, holding out my hand, ‘Boykin, you are very pale’ He answered, ‘I have come to tell you good by,’ and then seized both my hands. His own hands were as cold and hard as ice; they froze the marrow of my bones. I screamed again and again until my whole household came rushing in, and then came the negroes from the yard, all wakened by my piercing shrieks. This may have been a dream, but it haunts me.
“Some one sent me an old paper with an account of his wounds and his recovery, but I know he is dead.” “Stop!” said my husband at this point, and then he read from that day’s Examiner these words: “Captain Burwell Boykin McCaa found dead upon the battle-field leading a cavalry charge at the head of his company. He was shot through the head.”
The famous colonel of the Fourth Texas, by name John
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Bell Hood,1 is here – him we call Sam, because his classmates at West Point did so – for what cause is not known. John Darby asked if he might bring his hero to us; bragged of him extensively; said he had won his three stars, etc., under Stonewall’s eye, and that he was promoted by Stonewall’s request. When Hood came with his sad Quixote face, the face of an old Crusader, who believed in his cause, his cross, and his crown, we were not prepared for such a man as a beau-ideal of the wild Texans. He is tall, thin, and shy; has blue eyes and light hair; a tawny beard, and a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of his face, the whole appearance that of awkward strength. Some one said that his great reserve of manner he carried only into the society of ladies. Major Venable added that he had often heard of the light of battle shining in a man’s eyes. He had seen it once – when he carried to Hood orders from Lee, and found in the hottest of the fight that the man was transfigured. The fierce light of Hood’s eyes I can never forget.
Hood came to ask us to a picnic next day at Drury’s Bluff.2 The naval heroes were to receive us and then we were to drive out to the Texan camp. We accused John Darby of having instigated this unlooked-for festivity. We were to have bands of music and dances, with turkeys, chickens, and buffalo tongues to eat. Next morning, just as my foot was on the carriage-step, the girls standing behind ready to follow me with Johnny and the Infant Samuel (Captain Shannon by proper name), up rode John Darby in red-hot haste, threw his bridle to one of the men who was holding the horses, and came toward us rapidly, clanking his cavalry spurs with a despairing sound as he
1. Hood was a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point.
2. Drury’s Bluff lies eight miles south of Richmond on the James River. Here, on May 16, 1864, the Confederates under Beauregard repulsed the Federals under Butler.
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ANOTHER GROUP OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS.
WADE HAMPTON. ROBERT TOOMBS. JOHN C. PRESTON. JOHN H. MORGAN. JOSEPH B. KERSHAW. JAMES CHESNUT, JR.
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cried: “Stop! it’s all up. We are ordered back to the Rappahannock. The brigade is marching through Richmond now.” So we unpacked and unloaded, dismissed the hacks and sat down with a sigh.
“Suppose we go and see them pass the turnpike,” some one said. The suggestion was hailed with delight, and off we marched. Johnny and the Infant were in citizens’ clothes, and the Straggler – as Hood calls John Darby, since the Prestons have been in Richmond – was all plaided and plumed in his surgeon’s array. He never bated an inch of bullion or a feather; he was courting and he stalked ahead with Mary Preston, Buck, and Johnny. The Infant and myself, both stout and scant of breath, lagged last. They called back to us, as the Infant came toddling along, “Hurry up or we will leave you.”