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and at her again. So, though it was only three o’clock, in order to quiet this perturbed spirit she rose and at five drove her to the station, where she had to wait some hours. But Mrs. McCord said, “anything for peace at home.” The restless people who will not let others rest!
December 5th. – Miss Olivia Middleton and Mr. Frederick Blake are to be married. We Confederates have invented the sit-up-all-night for the wedding night; Isabella calls it the wake, not the wedding, of the parties married. The ceremony will be performed early in the evening; the whole company will then sit up until five o’clock, at which hour the bridal couple take the train for Combahee. Hope Sherman will not be so inconsiderate as to cut short the honeymoon.
In tripped Brewster, with his hat on his head, both hands extended, and his greeting, “Well, here we are!” He was travel-stained, disheveled, grimy with dirt. The prophet would have to send him many times to bathe in Jordan before he could be pronounced clean.
Hood will not turn and pursue Sherman. Thomas is at his heels with forty thousand men, and can have as many more as he wants for the asking. Between Thomas and Sherman Hood would be crushed. So he was pushing – I do not remember where or what. I know there was no comfort in anything he said.
Serena’s account of money spent: Paper and envelopes, $12.00; tickets to concert, $10.00; tooth-brush, $10.00; total, $32.00.
December 14th. – And now the young ones are in bed and I am wide awake. It is an odd thing; in all my life how many persons have I seen in love? Not a half-dozen. And I am a tolerably close observer, a faithful watcher have I been from my youth upward of men and manners. Society has been for me only an enlarged field for character study.
Flirtation is the business of society; that is, playing at
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love-making. It begins in vanity, it ends in vanity. It is spurred on by idleness and a want of any other excitement. Flattery, battledore and shuttlecock, how in this game flattery is dashed backward and forward. It is so soothing to self-conceit. If it begins and ends in vanity, vexation of spirit supervenes sometimes. They do occasionally burn their fingers awfully, playing with fire, but there are no hearts broken. Each party in a flirtation has secured a sympathetic listener, to whom he or she can talk of himself or herself – somebody who, for the time, admires one exclusively, and, as the French say, excessivement. It is a pleasant, but very foolish game, and so to bed.
Hood and Thomas have had a fearful fight, with carnage and loss of generals excessive in proportion to numbers. That means they were leading and urging their men up to the enemy. I know how Bartow and Barnard Bee were killed bringing up their men. One of Mr. Chesnut’s sins thrown in his teeth by the Legislature of South Carolina was that he procured the promotion of Gist, “State Rights” Gist, by his influence in Richmond. What have these comfortable, stay-at-home patriots to say of General Gist now? “And how could man die better than facing fearful odds,” etc.
So Fort McAlister has fallen! Good-by, Savannah! Our Governor announces himself a follower of Joe Brown, of Georgia. Another famous Joe.
December 19th. – The deep waters are closing over us and we are in this house, like the outsiders at the time of the flood. We care for none of these things. We eat, drink, laugh, dance, in lightness of heart.
Doctor Trezevant came to tell me the dismal news. How he piled on the agony! Desolation, mismanagement, despair. General Young, with the flower of Hampton’s cavalry, is in Columbia. Horses can not be found to mount them. Neither the Governor of Georgia nor the Governor of South Carolina is moving hand or foot. They have given
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up. The Yankees claim another victory for Thomas.1 Hope it may prove like most of their victories, brag and bluster. Can’t say why, maybe I am benumbed, but I do not feel so intensely miserable.
December 27th. – Oh, why did we go to Camden? The very dismalest Christmas overtook us there. Miss Rhett went with us – a brilliant woman and very agreeable. “The world, you know, is composed,” said she, “of men, women, and Rhetts” (see Lady Montagu). Now, we feel that if we are to lose our negroes, we would as soon see Sherman free them as the Confederate Government; freeing negroes is the last Confederate Government craze. We are a little too slow about it; that is all.
Sold fifteen bales of cotton and took a sad farewell look at Mulberry. It is a magnificent old country-seat, with old oaks, green lawns and all. So I took that last farewell of Mulberry, once so hated, now so beloved.
January 7th. – Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last of his men not gone, as Louis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied.
Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the dentist. Her teeth are of the whitest and most regular, simply perfection. She fancied it was better to have a dentist look in her mouth before returning to the mountains. For that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money. “Why, has this money any value at all?” she asked. Little enough in all truth, sad to say.
Brewster was here and stayed till midnight. Said he must see General Chesnut. He had business with him. His “me and General Hood” is no longer comic. He described Sherman’s march of destruction and desolation. “Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide, upon which there
1. Reference is here made to the battle between Hood and Thomas at Nashville, the result of which was the breaking up of Hood’s army as a fighting force.
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is no living thing to be seen,” said Brewster before he departed.
January 10th. – You do the Anabasis business when you want to get out of the enemy’s country, and the Thermopylae business when they want to get into your country. But we retreated in our own country and we gave up our mountain passes without a blow. But never mind the Greeks; if we had only our own Game Cock, Sumter, our own Swamp Fox, Marion. Marion’s men or Sumter’s, or the equivalent of them, now lie under the sod, in Virginia or Tennessee.
January 14th. – Yesterday I broke down – gave way to abject terror under the news of Sherman’s advance with no news of my husband. To-day, while wrapped up on the sofa, too dismal even for moaning, there was a loud knock. Shawls on and all, just as I was, I rushed to the door to find a telegram from my husband: “All well; be at home Tuesday.” It was dated from Adam’s Run. I felt as lighthearted as if the war were over. Then I looked at the date and the place – Adam’s Run. It ends as it began – in a run -Bull’s Run, from which their first sprightly running astounded the world, and now Adam’s Run. But if we must run, who are left to run? From Bull Run they ran full-handed. But we have fought until maimed soldiers, women, and children are all that remain to run.
To-day Kershaw’s brigade, or what is left of it, passed through. What shouts greeted it and what bold shouts of thanks it returned! It was all a very encouraging noise, absolutely comforting. Some true men are left, after all.
January 16th. – My husband is at home once more – for how long, I do not know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place. The drilling and the marching go on outside. It rains a flood, with freshet after freshet. The forces of nature are befriending us, for our enemies have to make their way through swamps.
A month ago my husband wrote me a letter which I promptly suppressed after showing it to Mrs. McCord. He
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warned us to make ready, for the end had come. Our resources were exhausted, and the means of resistance could not be found. We could not bring ourselves to believe it, and now, he thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the freshets, which have no time to subside, so constant is the rain, and the negroes utterly apathetic (would they be so if they saw us triumphant?), if we had but an army to seize the opportunity we might do something; but there are no troops; that is the real trouble.
To-day Mrs. McCord exchanged $16,000 in Confederate bills for $300 in gold – sixteen thousand for three hundred.