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RUINS OF MILLWOOD, WADE HAMPTON’S ANCESTRAL HOME.
From a Recent Photograph.
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have come at once, and are hard to bear – the grand smash! Rain, rain, outside, and naught but drowning floods of tears inside. I could not bear it; so I rushed down in that rainstorm to the Martins’. Rev. Mr. Martin met me at the door. “Madam,” said he, “Columbia is burned to the ground.” I bowed my head and sobbed aloud. “Stop that!” he said, trying to speak cheerfully. “Come here, wife,” said he to Mrs. Martin. “This woman cries with her whole heart, just as she laughs.” But in spite of his words, his voice broke down, and he was hardly calmer than myself.
February 23d. – I want to get to Kate, I am so utterly heart-broken. I hope John Chesnut and General Chesnut may at least get into the same army. We seem scattered over the face of the earth. Isabella sits there calmly reading. I have quieted down after the day’s rampage. May our heavenly Father look down on us and have pity.
They say I was the last refugee from Columbia who was allowed to enter by the door of the cars. The government took possession then and women could only be smuggled in by the windows. Stout ones stuck and had to be pushed, pulled, and hauled in by main force. Dear Mrs. Izard, with all her dignity, was subjected to this rough treatment. She was found almost too much for the size of the car windows.
February 25th. – The Pfeifers, who live opposite us here, are descendants of those Pfeifers who came South with Mr. Chesnut’s ancestors after the Fort Duquesne disaster. They have now, therefore, been driven out of their Eden, the valley of Virginia, a second time. The present Pfeifer is the great man, the rich man par excellence of Lincolnton. They say that with something very near to tears in his eyes he heard of our latest defeats. “It is only a question of time with us now,” he said. “The raiders will come, you know.”
In Washington, before I knew any of them. except by
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sight, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Emory, and Mrs. Johnston were always together, inseparable friends, and the trio were pointed out to me as the cleverest women in the United States. Now that I do know them all well, I think the world was right in its estimate of them.
Met a Mr. Ancrum of serenely cheerful aspect, happy and hopeful. “All right now,” said he. “Sherman sure to be thrashed. Joe Johnston is in command.” Dr. Darby says, when the oft-mentioned Joseph, the malcontent, gave up his command to Hood, he remarked with a smile, “I hope you will be able to stop Sherman; it was more than I could do.” General Johnston is not of Mr. Ancrum’s way of thinking as to his own powers, for he stayed here several days after he was ordered to the front. He must have known he could do no good, and I am of his opinion.
When the wagon, in which I was to travel to Flat Rock, drove up to the door, covered with a tent-like white cloth, in my embarrassment for an opening in the conversation I asked the driver’s name. He showed great hesitation in giving it, but at last said: “My name is Sherman,” adding, “and now I see by your face that you won’t go with me. My name is against me these times.” Here he grinned and remarked: “But you would leave Lincolnton.”
That name was the last drop in my cup, but I gave him Mrs. Glover’s reason for staying here. General Johnston had told her this “might be the safest place after all.” He thinks the Yankees are making straight for Richmond and General Lee’s rear, and will go by Camden and Lancaster, leaving Lincolnton on their west flank.
The McLeans are kind people. They ask no rent for for their rooms – only $20 a week for firewood. Twenty dollars! and such dollars – mere waste paper.
Mrs. Munroe took up my photograph book, in which I have a picture of all the Yankee generals. “I want to see the men who are to be our masters,” said she. “Not mine” I answered, “thank God, come what may. This
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was a free fight. We had as much right to fight to get out as they had to fight to keep us in. If they try to play the masters, anywhere upon the habitable globe will I go, never to see a Yankee, and if I die on the way so much the better.” Then I sat down and wrote to my husband in language much worse than anything I can put in this book. As I wrote I was blinded by tears of rage. Indeed, I nearly wept myself away.
February 26th. – Mrs. Munroe offered me religious books, which I declined, being already provided with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Psalms of David, the denunciations of Hosea, and, above all, the patient wail of Job. Job is my comforter now. I should be so thankful to know life never would be any worse with me. My husband is well, and has been ordered to join the great Retreater. I am bodily comfortable, if somewhat dingily lodged, and I daily part with my raiment for food. We find no one who will exchange eatables for Confederate money; so we are devouring our clothes.
Opportunities for social enjoyment are not wanting. Miss Middleton and Isabella often drink a cup of tea with me. One might search the whole world and not find two cleverer or more agreeable women. Miss Middleton is brilliant and accomplished. She must have been a hard student all her life. She knows everybody worth knowing, and she has been everywhere. Then she is so high-bred, high-hearted, pure, and true. She is so clean-minded; she could not harbor a wrong thought. She is utterly unselfish, a devoted daughter and sister. She is one among the many large-brained women a kind Providence has thrown in my way, such as Mrs. McCord, daughter of Judge Cheves; Mary Preston Darby, Mrs. Emory, granddaughter of old Franklin, the American wise man, and Mrs. Jefferson Davis. How I love to praise my friends!
As a ray of artificial sunshine, Mrs. Munroe sent me an Examiner. Daniel thinks we are at the last gasp, and now
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England and France are bound to step in. England must know if the United States of America are triumphant they will tackle her next, and France must wonder if she will not have to give up Mexico. My faith fails me. It is all too late; no help for us now from God or man.
Thomas, Daniel says, was now to ravage Georgia, but Sherman, from all accounts, has done that work once for all. There will be no aftermath. They say no living thing is found in Sherman’s track, only chimneys, like telegraph poles, to carry the news of Sherman’s army backward.
In all that tropical down-pour, Mrs. Munroe sent me overshoes and an umbrella, with the message, “Come over” I went, for it would be as well to drown in the streets as to hang myself at home to my own bedpost. At Mrs. Munroe’s I met a Miss McDaniel. Her father, for seven years, was the Methodist preacher at our negro church. The negro church is in a grove just opposite Mulberry house. She says her father has so often described that fine old establishment and its beautiful lawn, live-oaks, etc. Now, I dare say there stand at Mulberry only Sherman’s sentinels -stacks of chimneys. We have made up our minds for the worst. Mulberry house is no doubt razed to the ground.
Miss McDaniel was inclined to praise us. She said: “As a general rule the Episcopal minister went to the family mansion, and the Methodist missionary preached to the negroes and dined with the overseer at his house, but at Mulberry her father always stayed at the ‘House,’ and the family were so kind and attentive to him.” It was rather pleasant to hear one’s family so spoken of among strangers.
So, well equipped to brave the weather, armed cap-a-pie, so to speak, I continued my prowl farther afield and brought up at the Middletons’. I may have surprised them for “at such an inclement season” they hardly expected a visitor. Never, however, did lonely old woman receive such a warm and hearty welcome. Now we know the worst. Are
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we growing hardened? We avoid all allusion to Columbia; we never speak of home, and we begin to deride the certain poverty that lies ahead.
How it pours! Could I live many days in solitary confinement? Things are beginning to be unbearable, but I must sit down and be satisfied. My husband is safe so far. Let me be thankful it is no worse with me. But there is the gnawing pain all the same. What is the good of being here at all, Our world has simply gone to destruction. And across the way the fair Lydia languishes. She has not even my resources against ennui. She has no Isabella, no Miss Middleton, two as brilliant women as any in Christendom. Oh, how does she stand it! I mean to go to church if it rains cats and dogs. My feet are wet two or three times a day. We never take cold; our hearts are too hot within us for that.