CHAPTER NINE RITCHMAN VIRGINIA PART II AUGUST 1 Mrs. Wigfall, with the lone star flag in her carriage, called for me. We drove to the fairgrounds. Mrs.  The fairgrounds are as covered with tense soldiers, etc., as ever. As one regiment moves off to the army, a fresh one from home comes to be mustered in and take its place. The President, with his aides dashed by. My husband was riding with him. The President presented the flag to the Texans. Mr. Chestnut came to us for the flag, and bore it aloft to the President. We seemed to come in for part of the glory. We were too far off to hear the speech, but Jeff Davis is very good at that sort of thing, and we were satisfied that it was well done. Heaven's how that redoubtable Wigfall did rush those poor Texans about. He maneuvered and marched them until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows, it was a hot afternoon in August in the thermometer in the nineties. Mr. Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall replied with his hat on. Is that military? At the fairgrounds today such music, mustering and marching, such cheering and flying of flags, such firing of guns, and all that sort of thing. A gala day it was, with double distilled fourth of July feeling. In the midst of it all a messenger came to tell Mrs. Wigfall that a telegram had been received, saying her children were safe across the lines in Gordon'sville. That was something to thank God for without any doubt. These two little girls came from somewhere in Connecticut with Mrs. Wigfall's sister, the one who gave me my bagotsky, the only person in the world, except Susan Rutledge, who ever seemed to think I had a soul to save. Now suppose Seward had held Louisa and Fanny as hostages for Louis Wigfall's good behavior, eh? Excitement number two. That bold brigadier, the Georgia general tombs, charging about too recklessly, got thrown. His horse dragged him up to the wheels of our carriage. For a moment it was frightful. Down there among the horse's hoofs was a face turned up toward us, purple with rage. His foot was still in the stirrup and he had not let go the bridle. The horse was prancing over him, tearing and plunging. Everybody was himming him in, and they seemed so slow and awkward about it. We felt it an eternity looking down at him and expecting him to be killed before our very faces.  Now if I were to pick out the best abused one where all catch it so bountifully, I should say Mr. Commissary General Northrop was the most cussed and vilified man in the Confederacy. He is held accountable for everything that goes wrong in the army. He may not be efficient, but having been a classmate and crony of Jeff Davis at West Point, points the moral and adorns the tale. I hear that alluded to oftenists of his many crimes. They say Beauregard writes that his army is upon the verge of starvation. Here every man, woman and child is ready to hang to the first lamp-post anybody of whom that army complains. Every Manassas soldier is a hero dear to our patriotic hearts. Put up with any neglect of the heroes of the 21st of July? Never. And now they say we did not move on right after the flying foe because we had no provisions, no wagons, no ammunition, etc. Rain, mud and Northrop. Where were the enemy's supplies that we bragged so of bagging? Echo answers, where? Where there is a will there is a way. We stopped to plunder that rich convoy, and somehow, for a day or so, everybody thought the war was over and stopped to rejoice. So it appeared here. All this was our dinner table talk today. Mr. Mason dined with us, and Mr. Barnwell sits by me always. The latter reproved me sharply, but Mr. Mason laughed at this headlong, unreasonable woman's harangue and female tactics and their war ways. A freshet in the autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring. Time and tide wait for no man, and there was a tide in our affairs which might have led to Washington, and we did not take it and lost our fortune this round. Things which nobody could deny. McClellan virtually supersedes the titan, Scott. Physically General Scott is the largest man I ever saw. Mrs. Scott said nobody but his wife could ever know how little he was. And yet they say old Winfield Scott could have organized an army for them if they had had patience. They would not give him time. August 2nd. Prince Jerome has gone to Washington. Ft. Nutt, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, a grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome and of Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. He was a graduate of West Point, but had entered the French army, where he saw service in the Crimea, Algiers, and Italy, taking part in the Battle of Bellaclava, the Siege of Sebastopol, and the Battle of Sulferino. He died in Massachusetts in 1893. End footnote.  Raw troops are they as yet. Suppose France takes the other side and we have to meet disciplined and armed men, soldiers who understand war, Frenchmen with all the Elan we boast of. Ransom Calhoun, Willie Preston, and Dr. Nott's boys are here. These foolish, rash, harebrained southern lads have been within an ace of a fight with a Maryland company for their camping grounds. It is much too Irish to be so ready to fight anybody, friend or foe. Men are thrilling with fiery ardor. The red-hot southern martial spirit is fair. These young men, however, were all educated abroad, and it is French or German ideas that they are filled with. The Marylanders were as rash and reckless as the others and had their coattails ready for anybody to tread on, Donnybrook fair fashion. One would think there were Yankees enough anticepare for any killing to be done. It began about picketing their horses, but these quarrelsome young soldiers have lovely manners. They are so sweet-tempered and hear among us at the Arlington. August 5. A heavy, heavy heart. Another missive from Jordan, quarrelous and fault-finding. Things are all wrong. Beauregard's Jordan had been crossed. Not the stream in Canaan's fair and happy land where our possessions lie. They seem to feel that the war is over here, except the President and Mr. Barnwell. Above all, that foreboding friend of mine, Captain Ingram, he thinks it hardly begun. Another outburst from Jordan. Beauregard is not seconded properly. A loss to think that any mortal general, even though he had sprung up in a month or so from Captain of Artillery to General, could be so puffed up with vanity, so blinded by any false idea of his own consequence as to the right to intimate that man or men would sacrifice their country, injure themselves, ruin their families, to spite the aforesaid general. Conceit and self-assertion can never reach a higher point than that. And yet they give you to understand Mr. Davis does not like Beauregard. In point of fact they fancy he is jealous of him, and rather than Beauregard shall have a showing, the President, who would be hanged at least if things go wrong, will cripple the army to spite Beauregard. Mr. Mallory says, how we could laugh, but you see it is no laughing matter to have our fate in the hands of such self-sufficient vain army idiots. So the amenities of life are spreading. In the meantime, we seem to be resting on our oars, debating in Congress while the enterprising Yankees are quadrupling their army at their leisure. Every day some of our regiments march away from here. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new ones are fairly running in, fearing the war will be over before they get a side of the fun.  Tuesday. The North requires six hundred thousand men to invade us. Truly we are a formidable power. The Herald says it is useless to move with a man less than that. England has made it all up with them, or rather she will not break with them. Jerome Napoleon is in Washington and not our friend. Dr. Gibbs is a bird of ill omen. Today he tells me eight of our men have died at the Charlottesville Hospital. It seems sickness is more redoubtable in an army than the enemy's guns. There are eleven hundred there or to combat, and typhoid fever is with them. They want money, clothes, and nurses. So as I am riding, right and left the letters fly, calling for help from the sister societies at home. Good and patriotic women at home are easily stirred to their work. Mary Hammie has many strengths to her bow, a fiance in the army, and Dr. Berrien in town. Today she drove out with Major Smith in Colonel Hood. Yesterday Custis Lee was here. She is a prudent little puss and needs no good advice, if I were one to give it. Lawrence does all our shopping. All his master's money has been in his hands until now. I thought it injudicious when gold is at such a premium to leave it lying loose in the tray of a trunk. So I have sewed it up in a belt which I can wear upon an emergency. The cloth is wadded and my diamonds are there too. It has strong strings and can be tied under my hoops about my waist if the worst comes to the worst, as the saying is. Lawrence wears the same bronze mask. No sign of anything he may feel or think of my latest fancy. Only I know he asks for twice as much money now when he goes to buy things. August 8th. Today I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword in the early part of the fray was taken prisoner by the Yankees. They stripped him, possessed themselves of his sleeve buttons, and were in the act of depriving him of his boots when the route began and the play was reversed. Proceedings then took the opposite tack. From a small rill in the mountain has flowed the mighty stream which has made at last Louis Wigfall the worst enemy the president has in the Congress. A fact which complicates our affairs no little. Mr. Davis's hands ought to be strengthened. He ought to be upheld. A divided house must fall, we all say. Mrs. Sam Jones, who is called Becky by her friends and cronies, male and female, said that Mrs. Pickens had confided to the aforesaid Jones, Nay Taylor, and so of the president Taylor family and cousin of Mr. Davis's first wife. That Mrs. Wigfall described Mrs. Davis to Mrs. Pickens as a course Western woman. Now the fair Lucy Holcomb and Mrs. Wigfall had a quarrel of their own out in Texas, and though reconciled, there was bitterness underneath. At first Mrs. Joe Jostin called Mrs. Davis a Western bell. But when the quarrel between General Jostin and the president broke out, Mrs. Jostin took back the bell and substituted woman in the narrative derived from Mrs. Jones. Footnote. Mrs. Davis was born in Natchez, Mississippi and educated in Philadelphia. She was married to Mr. Davis in 1845. In recent years her home has been in New York City where she still resides, December 1904. In footnote. Commodore Barron came with glad tidings. Footnote, Samuel Barron was a native of Virginia who had risen to be a captain in the United States Navy. At the time of succession he received a commission as Commodore in the Confederate Navy. In footnote. We had taken three prizes at sea and brought the men safely, one laden with molasses. General Tombs told us the president complimented Mr. Chestnut when he described the battle scene to his cabinet, etc. General Tombs is certain Colonel Chestnut will be made one of the new batch of brigadiers. Next came Mr. Clayton who calmly informed us Jeff Davis would not get the vote of this Congress for president so we might count him out. Mr. Maynardy first told us how pious a Christian soldier was Kershaw, how he prayed, got up, dusted his knees and led his men owned victory with a dash and courage equal to any Old Testament mighty man of war. Governor Manning's account of Prince Jerome Napoleon. He is stout and he is not handsome. Neither is he young and as he reviewed our troops he was terribly overheated. He heard him say, an avante. Of that he could testify of his own knowledge and he was told he had been heard to say with unction, along more than once. The side of the battlefield had made the prince seasick and he received gratefully a draft of fiery whiskey. Aragos seemed deeply interested in Confederate statistics and praised our dowdy deeds to the skies. It was but soldier fair our guests received though we did our best. It was hard sleeping and worse eating in camp. Beauregard is half Frenchman and speaks French like a native so one awkward mess was done away with and it was a comfort to see Beauregard speak without the agony of finding words in the foreign language and forming them with damp brow into sentences. A different fate befell others who spoke a little French. General and Mrs. Cooper came to see us. She is Mrs. Smith Lee's sister. They were talking of old George Mason. In Virginia a name to conjure with. George Mason violently opposed the extension of slavery. He was a thorough aristocrat and gave as his reason for refusing the blessing of slaves to the new states, southwest and northwest, that vulgar new people were unworthy of so sacred a right as that of holding slaves. It was not an institution intended for such people as they were. Mrs. Lee said, after all what good does it do my sons that they are light horse Harry Lee's grandsons and George Mason's. I do not see that it helps them at all. A friend in Washington writes me that we might have walked into Washington any day for a week after Manassas. Such were the consternation and confusion there. But the God Pan was still blowing his horn in the woods. Now she says northern troops are literally pouring in from all quarters. The horses cover acres of ground and she thinks we have lost our chance forever. A man named Gray, the same gentleman whom Secretary of War Walker so astonished by greeting him with, well sir and what is your business? Describe the battle of the twenty-first is one succession of blunders redeemed by the indomitable courage of the two-thirds who did not run away on our side. Dr. Mason said a fugitive on the other side informed him that a million of men with the devil at their back could not have whipped the rebels at Bull Run. That's nice. There must be opposition in a free country, but it is very uncomfortable. United we stand, divided we fall. Mrs. Davis showed us in the New York Tribune an extract from an Augusta Georgia paper saying, Cobb is our man, Davis is at heart a reconstructionist. We may be flies on the wheel, we know our insignificance, but Mrs. Preston and myself have entered into an agreement. Our oath is recorded on high. We mean to stand by our president and to stop all fault-finding with the powers that be, if we can and where we can be the fault-finders, generals or cabinet ministers. August 13th. Honorable Robert Barnwell says, the Mercury's influence began this opposition to Jeff Davis before he had time to do wrong. They were offended, not with him so much as with the man who was put into what they considered Barnwell Rhett's rightful place. The latter had howled nullification and secession so long that when he found his ideas taken up by all the Confederate world he felt he had a vested right to leadership. Jordan, Beauregard's aide, still writes to Mr. Chestnut that the mortality among the raw troops in that camp is fearful. Everybody seems to be doing all they can.  Our people are only a half-day's journey by rail from Richmond. With a grateful heart I record the fact of reconciliation with the Wigfalls. They dined at the presidents yesterday and the little Wigfall girls stayed all night. Seward is fading the outsiders, the cousin of the emperor, Napoleon III, and Russell of the omnipotent London Times. August 14th. Last night there was a crowd of men to see us, and they were so markedly critical. I made a futile effort to record their sayings, but sleep and heat overcame me. Today I cannot remember a word. One of Mr. Mason's stories relates to our sources of trustworthy information. A man of very respectable appearance, standing on the platform at the depot, announced, I am just from the seat of war. Out came pencil and paper from the newspaper men on the Quiviv. Is Fairfax Courthouse burned? they asked. Yes, burned yesterday. But I am just from there, said another, left it standing there all right an hour or so ago. But I must do them justice to say they burned only the tavern, for they did not want to tear up and burn anything else after the railroad. There is no railroad at Fairfax Courthouse, objected the man just from Fairfax. Oh, indeed, said the seat of war man. I did not know that, is that so? And he coolly seated himself and began talking of something else. Our people are lashing themselves into a fury against the prisoners. Only the mob in any country would do that. But I am told to be quiet. Decency and propriety will not be forgotten. And the prisoners will be treated as prisoners of war ought to be in a civilized country. August 15th Mrs. Randolph came. With her were the Freeland, Rose and Maria. The men rave over Mrs. Randolph's beauty, called her a magnificent specimen of the finest type of dark-eyed, rich and glowing southern woman kind. Clear brunette she is, with the reddest lips, the whitest teeth, and glorious eyes. There is no other word for them. Having given Mrs. Randolph the prize among southern beauties, Mr. Clayton said Prentice was the finest southern orator. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Barnwell dissented. They preferred William C. Preston. Mr. Chestnut had found Colquitt, the best or most effective stump orator. Henry D.'s Knot. He is just from Paris, via New York. Says New York is a blaze with martial fire. At no time during the Crimean War was there ever in Paris the show of soldiers preparing for the war, such as he saw at New York. The face of the earth seemed covered with marching regiments. Not more than five hundred effective men are in Hampton's legion, but they kept the whole Yankee army at bay until half past two. Then just as Hampton was wounded in half his colonel's shot, Cash and Kershaw, from Mrs. Smith Lee audibly, how about Kirby Smith? Dashed in and not only turned the tide, but would have driven the fugitives into Washington, but Beauregard recalled them. Mr. Chestnut finds all this very amusing as he posted many of the regiments, and all the time was carrying orders over the field. The discrepancies in all these private memories amuse him, but he smiles pleasantly and lets every man tell the tale in his own way. August 16th Mr. Barnwell says, fame is an article usually homemade. You must create your own puffs, or super intend their manufacture. And you must see that the newspapers print your own military reports. No one else will give you half the credit you take to yourself. No one will look after your fine name before the world with the loving interest and faith you have yourself. August 17th. Captain Shannon of the Kirkwood Rangers called and has stayed three hours. Has not been under fire yet, but is keen to see or to hear the flashing of the guns. Proud of himself, proud of his company, but proudest of all that he has no end of the bluest blood of the Low Country in his troop. He seemed to find my knitting a pair of socks a day for the soldiers droll in some way. The yarn is coarse. He has been so short a time from home he does not know how the poor soldiers need them. He was so overpoweringly flattering to my husband that I found him very pleasant company. August 18th. Found it quite exciting to have a spy drinking his tea with us, perhaps because I knew his profession. I did not like his face. He is said to have a scheme by which Washington will fall into our hands like an overripe peach. Mr. Barnwell urges Mr. Chestnut to remain in the Senate. There are so many generals or men anxious to be. He says Mr. Chestnut can do his country most good by wise counsels where they are most needed. I do not say to the contrary. I dare not throw my influence on the army side, for if anything happened. Mr. Miles told us last night that he had another letter from General Beauregard. The general wants to know if Mr. Miles has delivered his message to Colonel Kershaw. Mr. Miles says he has not done so. Neither does he mean to do it. They must settle these matters of veracity according to their own military etiquette. He is a civilian once more. It is a foolish wrangle. Colonel Kershaw ought to have reported to his commander-in-chief and not made an independent report and published it. He meant no harm. He is not yet used to the fine ways of war. The New York Tribune is so unfair. It began by howling to get rid of us. We were so wicked. Now that we are so willing to leave them to their over-righteous self-consciousness, they cry, crush our enemy or they will subjugate us. The idea that we want to invade or subjugate anybody, we would be only too grateful to be left alone. We ask no more of gods or men. Went to the hospital with a carriage-load of peaches and grapes. Made glad the hearts of some men thereby. When my supplies gave out, those who had none looked so wistfully as I passed out that I made a second raid on the market. Those eyes sunk in cavernous depths and following me from bed to bed haunt me. Wilmot Decesur harrowed my soul by an account of a recent death by drowning on the beach at Sullivan's Island. Mr. Porcher, who was trying to save his sister's life, lost his own and his child's. People seemed to die out of the army quite as much as in it. Mrs. Randolph presided in all her beautiful majesty at an aid association. The ladies were old and all wanted their own way. They were cross-grained and contradictory, and the blood mounted rebelliously into Mrs. Randolph's clear-cut cheeks, but she held her own with dignity and grace. One of the causes of disturbance was that Mrs. Randolph proposed to divide everything sent on equally with the Yankee wounded and sick prisoners. Some were enthusiastic from a Christian point of view. Some shrieked in wrath at the bare idea of putting our noble soldiers on a par with Yankees, living, dying, or dead. Fear-stames were some of them. August, severe matrons, who evidently had not been accustomed to hear the other side of any question from anybody, and just old enough to find the last pleasure in life to reside in power, the power to make their claws felt. August twenty-third. A brother of Dr. Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and says, or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two, that recruiting up there is dead. He came by Cincinnati in Pittsburgh and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and quiet it looked like Sunday. I asked Mr. Brewster if it were true Senator Toomes had turned Brigadier. Yes, soldiering is in the air. Everyone will have a touch of it. Toomes could not stay in the cabinet. Why? Incompatibility of temper. He rides too high a horse. That is, for so despotic a person as Jeff Davis. I have tried to find out the sore, but I can't. Mr. Toomes has been out with them all for months. Descension will break out. Everything does, but it takes a little time. There is a perfect magazine of discord and discontent in that cabinet. Only wants a hand to apply the torch, and up they go. Toomes says old Miminger has his back up as high as any. Oh, such a day. Since I wrote this morning, I have been with Mrs. Randolph to all the hospitals. I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw there of human misery.  Thinking, yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gillons list the worst, with long rows of ill men on cots. Ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment. On dinner tables for eating and drinking, wounds being dressed. All the horrors to be taken in at one glance. Then we went to the St. Charles. Horrors upon horrors again. Want of organization, long rows of dead and dying? Awful sights. A boy from home had sent for me. He was dying in a cot, ill of fever. Next to him, a man died in convulsions as we stood there. I was making arrangements with a nurse hiring him to take care of this lad. But I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs. Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into a carriage at the door of the hospital. Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. As we drove home the doctor came along with us. I was so upset. He said, look at that Georgia regiment marching there. Look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them, making an estimate. There is sixteen thousand dollars, sixteen thousand dollars worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases. August twenty-fourth. Daniel, of the examiner, was at the President's. Wilmot Desasur wondered if a fellow did not feel a little queer, paying his respects in person at the house of a man whom he abused daily in his newspaper. A fiasco, an aide engaged to two young ladies in the same house. The ladies had been quarreling, but became friends unexpectedly when his treachery, among many other secrets, was revealed under that august roof. Fancy the row when it all came out. Mr. Lowne said we have already reaped one good result from the war. The orators, the spouters, the furious patriots that could hardly be held down and who were so wordily anxious to do or die for their country, they had been the test of our lives. Now they either have not tried the battlefield at all or precipitately left it at their earliest convenience. For very shame we are rid of them for a while. I doubt it. Bright speech is dead against us. Reading this does not brighten one. Footnote. The reference is to John Bright, whose advocacy of the cause of the union in the British Parliament attracted a great deal of attention at the time. In footnote. August twenty-fifth. Mr. Barnwell says democracies tend to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false. So both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits. How about empires? Were there ever more stupendous lies than the Emperor Napoleon's? Mr. Barnwell went on, people dare not tell the truth in a canvas. They must conciliate their constituents. Now everybody in a democracy always wants an office. At least everybody in Richmond just now seems to want one. Never-heating interruptions he went on. As a nation the English are the most truthful in the world.  They own their constituents, at least in some of the parishes where there are few whites, only immense estates peopled by Negroes. Thackery speaks of the lives that were told on both sides in the British Wars with France. England kept quite a long side of her rival in that fine art. England lied then as fluently as Russell lies about us now. Went to see Agnes de Leon, my Columbia school friend. She is fresh from Egypt and I wish to hear of the Nile, the crocodiles, the mummies, the sphinx and the pyramids. But her head ran upon Washington life such as we knew it and her soul was here. No theme was possible but a discussion of the latest war news. Mr. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State, says we spend two millions a week. Where is all that money to come from? They don't want us to plant cotton but to make provisions. Now cotton always means money, or did when there was an outlet for it and anybody to buy it. Where is money to come from now? Mr. Barnwell's new joke I dare say is a Joe Miller, but Mr. Barnwell laughed in telling it till he cried. A man was fined for contempt of court and then, his case coming on, the judge talked such errant nonsense and was so warped in his mind against the poor man that the fined one walked up and handed the August Judge a five-dollar bill. Why, what is that for? said the judge. Oh, I feel such a contempt of this court coming on again.  I was sitting in a rocking chair by an open window, taking my ease and the cool night air, when suddenly the door opened and Captain Blank walked in. He was in the middle of the room before he saw his mistake. He stared and was transfixed as the novels say. I dare say I looked an ancient gorgon. Then with a more frantic glare he turned and fled without a word. I got up and bolted the door after him and then looked in the glass and laughed myself into hysterics. I shall never forget to lock the door again. But it does not matter in this case. I looked totally unlike the person bearing my name, who, covered with lace cap, etc., frequenced the drawing-room. I doubt if he would know me again. End of Chapter 9, Part 2 Chapter 9, Part 3 of A Diary from Dixie This Looper Vox recording is in the public domain, read by Laurie Ann Walden. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 9, Part 3 August 26. The terror has full swing at the north now. All the papers favorable to us have been suppressed. How long would our mob stand a Yankee paper here? But newspapers against our government, such as The Examiner and The Mercury, flourish like green bay trees.  They do sometimes pay out two millions a week. They pay the soldiers this week, but they don't pay the soldiers every week. Not by a long shot, cried a soldier laddie with a grin. Why do you write in your diary at all? Someone said to me. If, as you say, you have to contradict every day what you wrote today. Because I tell the tale as it is told to me, I write current rumour. I do not vouch for anything. We went to Pazzini's, that very best of Italian confectioners. From there we went to Miss Sally Topkin's hospital, loaded with good things for the wounded. The men under Miss Sally's kind care looked so clean and comfortable, cheerful, one might say. They were pleasant and nice to see. One, however, was dismal in tone and aspect, and he repeated at intervals with no change of words in a forlorn monotone. What a hard time we have had since we left home. But nobody seemed to heed his wailing, and it did not impair his appetite. At Mrs. Tomes's, who was raging, so anti-Davis, she will not even admit that the President is ill. All humbug. Nothing to be ill to him. That reception now was not that a humbug, such a failure Mrs. Reagan could have done better than that. Mrs. Walker is a Montgomery beauty with such magnificent dresses. She was an heiress and is so dissatisfied with Richmond, accustomed as she is to being a bell under different conditions. As she is as handsome and well-dressed as ever, it must be the men who are all wrong. Did you give me a $50 bill to go out and change it? I was asked. Suppose he takes himself off to the Yankees. He would leave us with not too many $50 bills. He is not going anywhere, however. I think his situation suits him. That wadded belt of mine with the gold pieces quilted in has made me ashamed more than once. I'll leave it under my pillow, and my maid finds it there and hangs it over the back of a chair in evidence as I do.  August 27th. Theodore Barker and James Lowndes came. The latter has been wretchedly treated. A man said, all that I wish on earth is to have a plantation. To which Mr. Lowndes replied quietly, I wish I had a plantation to be on, but just now I can't see how anyone would feel justified in leaving the army. Mr. Barker was bitter against the spirit of braggadocio so rampant among us. The gentleman who had been answered so completely by James Lowndes said, with spitefulness, those women who are so frantic for their husbands to join the army would like them killed, no doubt. Things were growing rather uncomfortable, but an interruption came in the shape of a card. An old classmate of Mr. Chestnut's, Captain Archer, just now fresh from California, followed his card so quickly that Mr. Chestnut had hardly time to tell us that in Princeton College they called him Sally Archer. He was so pretty. When he entered. He is good looking still, but the service in consequent rough life have destroyed all softness and girlishness. He will never be so pretty again. The North is consolidated. They move as one man with no states, but an army organized by the central power. Russell in the northern camp is cursed of Yankees for that bull run letter. Russell in his capacity of Englishman despises both sides. He divides us equally into north and south. He prefers to attribute our victory at bull run to Yankee cowardice rather than to southern courage. He gives no credit to either side for good qualities. We are, after all, mere Americans. Everything not national is arrested. It looks like the business of Seward. I do not know when I have seen a woman without knitting in her hand. Socks for the soldiers is the cry. One poor man said he had dozens of socks and but one shirt. He preferred more shirts and fewer stockings. We make a quaint appearance with this twinkling of needles resting sock dangling below. They have arrested William B. Reed and Mrs. Winder, she boldly proclaiming herself a secessionist. Why should she seek a martyr's crown? Writing people love notoriety. It is so delightful to be of enough consequence to be arrested. I have often wondered if such incense was ever offered as Napoleon's so-called persecution and alleged jealousy of Madame de Stel. People once more, to whom London, Paris, and India have been an everyday sight, and every night, too, streets and all.  Negro women get married, and after marriage behave as well as other people. Marrying is the amusement of their lives. They take life easily, so do their class everywhere. Bad men are hated here and everywhere.  I hate a man who, you say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this, to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem with its consequences under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters? He holds his head high and poses as the model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God has have given him. From the height of his awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. You with that immoral book, he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight. You see, Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes LaGrie a bachelor. Remember George II and his likes? Oh, I know half of LaGrie. A man said to be as cruel as LaGrie, but the other half of him did not correspond. He was a man of polished manners and the best husband and father and member of the church in the world. Can that be so? Yes, I know it. Exceptional case, that sort of thing, always. And I knew the disillute half of LaGrie well. He was high and mighty, but the kindest creature to his slaves. And the unfortunate results of his war not sold had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. The wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the latter. They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness. Well, yes, if he is rich he is the fountain from whence all blessings flow. The one I have in my eye, my half of LaGrie, the disillute half, was so furious in temper and thundered his wrath so at the poor women, they were glad to let him do as he pleased in peace if they could only escape his everlasting fault finding and noisy bluster making everybody so uncomfortable.  The make-believe angels were of the last century. We know and we won't have it. The condition of women is improving, it seems. Women are brought up not to judge their fathers or their husbands. They take them as the Lord provides and are thankful. If they should not go to heaven after all, think what lives most women lead. No heaven, no purgatory, no the other thing? Never. I believe there are future rewards and punishments. How about the wives of drunkards? I heard a woman say once to a friend of her husband, tell it as a cruel matter of fact without bitterness, without comment. Oh, you have not seen him. He has changed. He has not gone to bed sober in thirty years. She has had her purgatory, if not the other thing, here in this world.  To think for no crime a person has gone on thirty years. You wonder from the question I asked. Are southern men worse because of the slave system and the facile black women? Not a bit. They see too much of them. The bar room people don't drink. The confectionary people loathe candy.  You think a nice man from the south is the nicest thing in the world? I know it. Put him by any other man and see. Have seen Yankee letters taken at the masses. The spelling is often atrocious. And we thought they had all gone through a course of blue-covered Noah Webster spelling books. Our soldiers do spell astonishingly. There is Horace Greeley. They say he can't read his own handwriting. But he is candid enough and disregards all time serving. He says in his paper that in our army the north has a hard nut to crack and that the rank and file of our army is superior in education and general intelligence to theirs. My wildest imagination will not picture Mr. Mason as a diplomat. He will say Chaw for Chew and he will call himself Jeans and he will wear a dress coat to breakfast. Over here whatever a Mason does is right in his own eyes. He is above law. Somebody asked him how he pronounced his wife's maiden name. She was a Miss Chew from Philadelphia. Footnote James Murray Mason was a grandson of George Mason and had been elected United States Senator from Virginia in 1847. In 1851 he drafted the fugitive slave law. His mission to England in 1861 was shared by John Sladell. On November 8, 1861 while on board the British steamer Trent in the Bahamas, they were captured by an American named Wilkes and imprisoned in Boston until January 2, 1862. A famous diplomatic difficulty arose with England over this affair. John Sladell was a native of New York who had settled in Louisiana and became a member of Congress from that state in 1843. In 1853 he was elected to the United States Senate. End footnote They say the English will like Mr. Mason. He is so manly, so straightforward, so truthful and bold. A fine old English gentleman, so said Russell to me, I like Mr. Mason and Mr. Hunter better than anybody else. And yet they are wonderfully unlike. Now you just listen to me, said I. Is Mrs. Davis in hearing? No? Well this sending Mr. Mason to London is the maddest thing yet, worse in some points of view than Yancey and that was a catastrophe. August 29, no more feminine gossip but the licensed slanderer, of the times. He says the battle of the twenty-first was fought at long range, five hundred yards apart were the combatants. The Confederates were steadily retreating when some commotion in the wagon-train frightened the Yanks and they made tracks. In good English they fled a main. And on our side we were too frightened to follow them and high flown English to pursue the flying foe. In spite of all this there are glimpses of the truth sometimes and the story leads to our credit with all the sneers and jeers. When he speaks of the Yankees cowardice, falsehood, dishonesty and braggadocio, the best words are in his mouth. He repeats the thrice-told tale so often refuted and denied that we were harsh to wounded prisoners. Dr. Gibson told me that their surgeon general has written to thank our surgeons. Yankee officers write very differently from Russell. I know that in that hospital they were better off than our men were at the other hospitals that I saw with my own eyes. These poor souls are jealously guarded night and day. It is a hideous tale what they tell of their sufferings. Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off in search for papers. Bustles are suspect.  Not legs but arms are looked for under hoops and sad to say found. Then women are used as detectives and searchers to see that no men slip over in petticoats. So the poor creatures coming this way are humiliated to the deepest degree. To men, glory, honour, praise and power if they are patriots. To women, daughters of Eve, punishment comes still in some shape. Do what they will.  What is it? asked I after he had gone. Oh, what a year can bring forth one year. Last summer you remember how he swore he was in love with me? He told you, he told me, he told everybody and if I did refuse to marry him I believed him. Now he says he has seen, fallen in love with, courted and married another person and he raves of his little daughter's beauty. And they say time goes slowly. Thus spoke Mary Hammy with a sigh of wonder at his wonderful cure. Time works wonders, said the explainer general. What conclusion did you come to as to southern men at the Grand Powwow, you know? They are nicer than the nicest, the gentlemen, you know. There are not too many of that kind Ours are generous, truthful, brave and devoted to us, you know. A southern husband is not a bad thing to have about the house. Mrs. Frank Hampton said for one thing you could not flirt with these South Carolinians. They would not stay at the tepid degree of flirtation. They grow so hardly in earnest before you know where you are. Do you think two married people ever lived together without finding each other out? I mean knowing good or how shabby, how weak or how strong, above all, how selfish each was. Yes, unless they are adults they know to a tittle. But you see, if they have common sense they make belief and get on so-so. Like the Marchionesses orange peel wine in old Curiosity Shop. A violent attack upon the north today in the Albion. They mean to let freedom slide a while until they subjugate us. The Marchionesses they use letters de cachet, passports and all the despotic apparatus of regal governments. Russell hears the tramp of the coming man, the king and Kaiser tyrant that is to rule them. Is it McClellan, little Mack? We may tremble when he comes. We down here have only the many-headed monster thing, armed democracy. Our chiefs quarrel among themselves. McClellan is of a forgiving spirit. He does not resent Russell's slurs upon Yankees, but with good policy has Russell with him as a guest. The Adonis of an aid of Urres as one who knows that Sumter Anderson's heart is with us, that he will not fight the south. After all is said and done that sounds like nonsense. Sumter Anderson's wife was a daughter of Governor Clinch of Georgia. Does that explain it? He also told me something of Garnett who was killed at Rich Mountain. The battle of Rich Mountain in western Virginia was fought July 11, 1861. In General Garnett, commander of the Confederate forces, pursued by General McClellan was killed at Carrick's Ford, July 13th, while trying to rally his rear guard. In footnote. He had been an unlucky man clear through. In the army before the war, the aid had found him proud, reserved and morose, cold as an icicle to all. But for his wife and child he was a different creature. He adored them and cared for nothing else. One day he went off on an expedition and was gone six weeks. He was out in the northwest and the Indians were troublesome. When he came back his wife and child were underground. He said not one word but they found him more frozen, stern and isolated than ever. That was all. The night before he left Richmond I have not given me an adequate force. I can do nothing. They have sent me to my death. It is acknowledged that he threw away his life. A dreary-hearted man said the aid and the unluckiest. On the front steps every evening we take our seats and discourse at our pleasure. A nicer or more agreeable set of people were never assembled than our present Arlington crowd. Tonight it was Yancey who occupied our tongues. Footnote, William Lownes Yancey was a native of Virginia who settled in Alabama and in 1844 was elected to Congress where he became a leader among the supporters of slavery and an advocate of secession. He was famous in his day as an effective public speaker. In footnote send a man to England who had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl. That was not knowing England or Englishman surely. Who wants eloquence? Who wants to know who can hold his tongue? People avoid great talkers, men who orate, men given to monologue as they would avoid fire, famine, or pestilence. Yancey will have no mobs to harangue. No stump speeches will be possible. Superb as are his of their kind. But little quiet conversation is best with slow, solid, common-sense people who begin to suspect as soon as any flourish of trumpets meets their ear. If Yancey should use his fine words who would care for them over there? Commodore Barron, when he was a midi, accompanied Phil Augustus Stockton to claim his bride. He, the said Stockton, had secretly wedded a fair heiress, Sally Canty. She was married by a magistrate and returned to Mrs. Griode's boarding school until it was time to go home, that is, to Camden. Lieutenant Stockton, a descendant of the Signor, was the handsomest man in the Navy the bride was barely sixteen. When he was to go down south among those fire-eaters and claim her, Commodore Barron, then his intimate friend, went as his backer. They were to announce the marriage and defy the guardians. Commodore Barron said he anticipated a rough job of it all, but they were prepared for all risks. You expected to find us a horde of savages, no doubt, said I. We did not expect to get off under a half dozen duels. They looked for insults from every quarter, and they found a polished and refined people who lived on prance to say the least of it. They were received with a cold, stately and faultless politeness which made them feel as if they had been sheep-stealing. The young lady had confessed to her guardians, and they were for making the best of it, above all for saving her name from all gossip or publicity. Colonel John Boykin, one of them, took young Lockenvarr to stay with him. His friend Barron was also a guest. Colonel D sent for a parson and made assurance doubly sure by marrying them over again. Their wish was to keep things quiet and not to make a nine days wonder of the young lady. Then came balls, parties and festivities without end. He was enchanted with the easygoing life of these people, with dinners the finest in the world, deer hunting and fox hunting, dancing and pretty girls, in fact everything that heart could wish. But then, said Commodore Barron, the better it was and the kinder the treatment, the more ashamed I grew of my business down there. After all, it was stealing an heiress, you know. I told him how the same fate still haunted that estate in Camden. Mr. Stockton sold it to a gentleman who later sold it to an old man who had married when near eighty and who left it to the daughter born of that marriage. This pretty child of his old age was left an orphan quite young. At the age of fifteen she ran away and married a boy of seventeen, a canny scotchman. The young couple lived to grow up and it proved after all a happy marriage. This last heiress left six children so the estate will now be divided and no longer tempt the fortune-hunters. The Commodore said, to think how we too in our blue uniforms went down there to bully those people. He was much at Colonel Chestnuts. Mrs. Chestnut being a Philadelphian he was somewhat at ease with them. It was the most thoroughly appointed establishment he had then ever visited. Went with our leviathan of loveliness to a lady's meeting. No scandal today, no wrangling, all harmonious, everybody knitting. Dare say that soothing occupation helped our perturbed spirits to be calm. Mrs. C. is lovely, a perfect beauty, said Brewster. In Circassia think what a price would be set upon her for their beauty sells by the pound. Coming home the following conversation. So Mrs. Blank thinks Purgatory will hold its own, never be abolished while women and children have to live with drunken fathers and brothers. She knows. She is too bitter, she says worse than that. We have an institution worse than the Spanish Inquisition. Worse than Torquemata and all that sort of thing. What does she mean? You ask her, her words are sharp arrows. I am a dull creature and I should spoil all by repeating what she says. It is your own family that she calls the familiars of the Inquisition. She declares that they set upon you, fall foul of you, watch and harass you from more until dewey eve. Perfect right to your life, night and day, unto the fourth and fifth generation. They drop in at breakfast and say, are you not impudent to eat that? Take care now, don't overdo it. I think you eat too much so early in the day. And they help themselves to the only thing you care for on the table. They abuse your friends and tell you it is your duty to praise your enemies. They tell you of all your faults candidly because they love you so. That gives them a right to speak. What family interest they take in you? You ought to do this, you ought to do that. And then the everlasting you ought to have done which comes near making you a murderer at least in heart. Blood's thicker than water, they say. And there is where the longing to spill it comes in. No locks or bolts or bars can keep them out. Are they not your nearest family? They dine with you dropping in after you were at soup.  And you are glad of it. Private life indeed. She says her husband entered public life and they went off to live in a faraway city. Then, for the first time in her life, she knew privacy. She never will forget how she jumped for joy as she told her servant not to admit a soul until after two o'clock in the day. Afterward she took a fixed day at home. Then she was free indeed. She could read and write, stay at home, go out at her own sweet will, no longer sitting for hours with her fingers between the leaves of a frantically interesting book while her kin slowly driveled nonsense by the yard, waiting, waiting, yawning. Would they never go?  In point of fact, they alone can do it. They know the sore and how to hit it every time. You are in their power. She says, did you ever see a really respectable, responsible, revered and beloved head of a family who ever opened his mouth at home except to find fault? He really thinks that is his business in life and that all enjoyment is sinful. He is there to prevent the women from such frivolous things as pleasure, et cetera, et cetera. I sat placidly rocking in my chair by the window, trying to hope all was for the best. Mary Hammy rushed in, literally drowned in tears. I never saw so drenched a face in my life. My heart stopped still. Commodore Barron is taken prisoner, said she. The Yankees have captured him and all his lieutenants. Poor Imogen. And there is my father scouting about. The Lord knows where. I only know he is in the advance guard. The Barron's time has come. Mine may come any minute. Oh, cousin Mary, when Mrs. Lee told Imogen she fainted. Those poor girls, they are nearly dead with trouble and fright. Go straight back to those children, I said. Nobody will touch a hair of their father's head. No. They dare not. They are not savages quite. This is a civilized war, you know. Mrs. Lee said to Mrs. Eustis, Mr. Kokorin's daughter, yesterday. Have you seen those accounts of arrests in Washington? Mrs. Eustis answered calmly. Yes, I know all about it. I suppose you allude to the fact that my father has been imprisoned. No, no! interrupted the explainer. The incarceration of those mature Washington bells suspected as spies. But Mrs. Eustis continued, I have no fears for my father's safety. August 31st. Congress adjourns today. Jeff Davis ill. We go home on Monday if I am able to travel. Already I feel the dread stillness and torpor of our Sahara of a sand hill creeping into my veins. It chills the marrow of my bones. I am reveling in the noise of city life. I know what is before me. Nothing more cheering than the cry of the lone whipper-wheel will break the silence at sandy hill, except as night draws near when the screech owl will add his mournful note. September 1st. North Carolina writes for arms for her soldiers. Have we any to send? No. Brewster, the plain-spoken, says, The President is ill and our affairs are in the hands of noodles. We play with the army. Nobody here. General Lee in western Virginia. Reading the third Psalm. The devil is sick. The devil a saint would be. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. September 2nd. Mr. Miles says he is not going anywhere at all, not even home. He is to sit here permanently, chairman of a committee to overhaul camps, commissariats, etc., etc. We exchanged our ideas of Mr. Mason, in which we agreed perfectly. In the first place he has a noble presence, really a handsome man, is a manly old Virginian, straightforward, brave, truthful, clever, the very beau ideal of an independent, high-spirited FFV. If the English value a genuine man, they will have one here. In every particular he is the exact opposite of Talleyrand. He has some peculiarities. He had never an ache or a pain himself.  It began to grow late. Many people had come to say goodbye to me. I had fever as usual today, but in the excitement of this crowd of friends the invalid forgot fever. Mr. Chestnut held up his watch to me warningly and intimated. It was late indeed for one who has to travel to-morrow. So, as the Yankees say after every defeat, I retired in good order. Not quite, for I forgot handkerchief in fan. Gonzalez rushed after and met me at the foot of the stairs. In his foreign, pathetic, polite, high-bred way he bowed low and said he had made an excuse for the fan, for he had a present to make me, and then, though startled and amazed, I paused and on the stranger gazed. Alas, I am a woman approaching forty, and the offering proved to be a bottle of cherry-bounce. Nothing could have been more opportune, and with a little ice, et cetera, will help, I am sure, to save my life on that dreadful journey home. No discouragement now felt at the north. They take our forts and our satiside for a while. Then the English are strictly neutral. Like the woman who saw her husband fight the bear, it was the first fight she ever saw and she did not care who whipped. Mr. Davis was very kind about it all. He told Mr. Chestnut to go home and have an eye to all the state defenses, et cetera, and that he would give him any position he asked for if he still wished to continue in the army. Now, this would be all that Hart could wish, but Mr. Chestnut will never ask for anything. What will he ask for? That's the rub. I am certain of very few things in life now, but no one I am certain of. Mr. Chestnut will never ask mortal man for any promotion for himself or for one of his own family. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of Adairi from Dixie. This Looper Vox recording is in the public domain. Read Valarianne Walden. Adairi from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 10. Camden, South Carolina. September 9, 1861 to September 19, 1861. Camden, South Carolina. September 9, 1861. Home again at Mulberry, the fever in full possession of me. My sister Kate is my ideal woman, the most agreeable person I know in the world, with her soft, low and sweet voice, her graceful, gracious ways, and her glorious gray eyes that I looked into so often as we confided our very souls to each other. God bless Old Betsy's yellow face. She is a nurse in a thousand and would do anything for Mars James' wife. My small ailments and all this comfort set me mourning over the dead and dying soldiers I saw in Virginia. How feeble my compassion proves after all. I handed the old colonel a letter from his son in the army. He said as he folded up the missive from the seat of war, with this war we may die out.  He means that my husband is his only living son. His grandsons are in the army and they too may be killed. Even Johnny, the gallant and gay, may not be bulletproof. No child have I. Now this old man of ninety years was born when it was not the fashion for a gentleman to be a saint and being lord of all he surveyed for so many years, irresponsible in the center of his huge domain, it is wonderful he was not a greater tyrant, the softening influence of that angel wife, no doubt. Saint Orsinner, he understands the world about him, Ofond. Have had a violent attack of something wrong about my heart. It stopped feeding, then it took to trembling, creaking, and thumping like a Mississippi high pressure steamboat, and the noise in my ears was more like an ammunition wagon rattling over the stones in Richmond. That was yesterday and yet I am alive. That kind of thing makes one feel very mortal. Russell writes how disappointed Prince Jerome Napoleon was with the appearance of our troops, and he did not like Bogar at all. Well, I give Bogar up to him. But how a man can find fault with our soldiers as I have seen them individually and collectively in Charleston, Richmond, and everywhere that beats me.  But each individual man does not blow his own penny-whistle. They brag wholesale. Wellington, he certainly left it for others to sound his praises, though Mr. Benny thought the Statue of Napoleon at the entrance of Apsley House was a little like Who Killed Cock Robin? I said the sparrow with my bow and arrow. But then it is so pleasant to hear them when it is a lump sum of praise with no private clue the Scots graze. Fighting this and fighting that with their crack-core serves the blood and every heart responds three times three hurrah. But our people feel that they must send forth their own reported prowess with an I did this and I did that. I know they did it, but I hang my head. And those Tarleton memoirs and Lee's memoirs and Moultrie's and in Lord Raulden's letters self is never brought to the front. I've been reading them over and admire their modesty and good taste as much as their courage and cleverness. That kind of British eloquence takes me. It is not Souda Marchon Gloire, not a bit of it, but now my lads stand firm and now up and let them have it. Our name has not gone out of print. Today the examiner, as usual, pitches into the President. It, thanks tombs, cob, sladelle, lamar or chestnut, would have been far in the office. There is considerable choice in that lot. Five men more utterly dissimilar were never named in the same paragraph. September 19th A painful piece of news came to us yesterday. Our cousin, Mrs. Witherspoon of Society Hill, was found dead in her bed. She was quite well the night before. Killed, people say, by family sorrows. She was a proud and high strongwoman. Abbey in word, thought or deed ever came nigh her. She was of a warm and tender heart, too. Truth and uprightness itself. Few persons have ever been more loved and looked up to. She was a very handsome old lady of fine presence, dignified and commanding. Killed by family sorrows. So they said when Mrs. John N. Williams died. So Uncle John said yesterday of his brother Burwell. He deserts the army, said that quaint old soul, and takes fancy shots of the most eccentric kind nearer home. The high and disinterested conduct our enemies seem to expect of us is involuntary and unconscious praise. They pay us the compliment to look for from us, and execrate us for the want of it, a degree of virtue they were never able to practice themselves. It is a crowning misdemeanor for us to hold still in slavery they brought here from Africa, or sold to us when they found it did not pay to own them themselves. Gradually they swid or sold them off down here, or freed them prospectively, giving themselves years in which to get rid of them in a remunerative way. We want to spread them over other lands, too, west and south, or northwest, where the climate would free them or kill them, or improve them out of the world as our friends up north do the Indians. If they had been forced to keep the Negroes in New England, I dare say the Negroes might have shared the Indians' fate, for they are wise in their generation these Yankee children of light. Those pernicious Africans so have just spoken Mr. Chestnut and Uncle John, both C. Devont Union men, now utterly for state rights. It is queer how different the same man may appear viewed from different standpoints. What a perfect gentleman, said that person of another. So fine-looking, high-bred, distinguished, easy, free, and above all graceful in his bearing, so high-toned. He is always indignant at any symptom of wrongdoing. He is charming, the man of all others I like to have strangers see, a noble representative of our country. Yes, every word of that is true, was the reply. He is all that. And then the other side of the picture you can always find him. You know where to find him. Wherever there is a looking glass, a bottle, or a woman, there will he be also. My God, and you call yourself his friend. Yes, I know him down to the ground. This conversation I overheard from an upper window when looking down on the Piazza below, a complicated character truly beyond La Bruyère, with what Mrs. Preston calls skin deep only. An iron steamer has run the blockade at Savannah. We now raise our wilted heads like flowers after a shower. This drop of good news revives us. Footnote. By reason of illness, preoccupation, and other affairs, and various deterrent causes besides, Mrs. Chestnut allowed a considerable period to elapse before making another entry in her diary. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11, Part 1 of A Diary From Dixie. This Looper Fox recording is in the public domain. A Diary From Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 11 Columbia, South Carolina, February 20, 1862 to July 21, 1862. Part 1. Columbia, South Carolina, February 20, 1862. Had an appetite for my dainty breakfast. Always breakfast in bed now. But then my mercury contained such bad news. That is an appetizing style of matudinal newspaper. Fort Donaldson has fallen, but no men fell with it. It is prisoners for them that we cannot spare, or prisoners for us that we may not be able to feed. That is so much to be forfeited, as Keet says. They lost six thousand. We, two thousand. I grudge that proportion. In vain, alas, ye gallant few, few but undismayed. Again they make a stand. We have Buckner, Beauregard, and Albert Sidney Johnston. With such leaders in God's help, we may be saved from the hated Yankees. Who knows? Footnote. Fort Donaldson stood on the Cumberland River about 60 miles northwest of Nashville. The Confederate garrison numbered about 18,000 men. General Grant invested the fort on February 13, 1862. And General Buckner, who commanded it, died on February 16. The federal force at the time of the surrender numbered 27,000 men. Their loss in Killed and Wounded being 2,660 men and the Confederate loss about 2,000. In footnote. February 21. A crowd collected here last night and there was a serenade. I am like Mrs. Nicolby, who never saw a horse coming full speed but she thought the cheerables had sent post haste to take Nicholas ship. So I got up and dressed, late as it was. I felt sure England had sought our alliance at last and we would make a York town of it before long. Who was it? Will you ever guess? Artemis Goodwin and General Owens of Florida. Just then Mr. Chestnut rushed in, put out the light, locked the door and sat still as a mouse. Wrap, wrap came at the door. I say, Chestnut, they are calling for you. At last we heard Janney, hotel keeper, loudly proclaiming from the Piazza that Colonel Chestnut was not here at all, at all. After a while when they had all gone from the street and the very house itself had subsided into perfect quiet the door again was roughly shaken. I say, Chestnut old fella, come out, I know you are there. Nobody here now wants to hear you make a speech. That crowd has all gone. There is no quiet talk with you. I am just from Richmond. That was the open sesame and today I hear none of the Richmond news is encouraging. Colonel Shaw is blamed for the shameful Roanoke surrender. Footnote, General Burnside captured the Confederate garrison at Roanoke Island on February 8, 1862 in Footnote. Tooms is out on a rampage and swears he will not accept a seat in the Confederate Senate in the insulting way his was by the Georgia Legislature calls it shabby treatment and adds that Georgia is not the only place where good men have been so ill-used. The Governor and Council have fluttered the dove coats or at least the tea tables. They talk of making a call for all silver, etc. I doubt if we have enough to make the sacrifice worthwhile but we propose to set the example. February 22 What a beautiful day for our Confederate President to be inaugurated. God speed him. God keep him. God save him. John Chestnut's letter was quite what we needed. In spirit it is all that one could ask. He says Our late reverses are acting finally with the Army of the Potomac. A few more thrashings and every man will enlist for the war. Victories made us too sanguine and easy, not to say glorious. Now for the rub and let them have it. A lady wrote to Mrs. Bunch, Dear Emma, when shall I call for you to go and see Madame de Saint-André? She was answered, Dear Lou, I cannot go with you to see Madame de Saint-André, but will always retain the kindest feeling toward you on account of our past relations, etc. The astounded friend wrote to ask what all this meant. No answer came and then she sent her husband to ask and demand an explanation. He was answered thus. My dear fellow, there can be no explanation possible. Hereafter there will be no intercourse between my wife and yours. Simply that, nothing more. So the men meet at the club as before and there is no further trouble between them. The lady upon whom the slur is cast says and I am a woman and can't fight. February 23 While Mr. Chestnut was in town I was at the Prestons. John Cochran and some other prisoners had asked to walk over the grounds, visit the Hampton Gardens and some friends in Columbia. After the dreadful state of the public mind at the escape of one of the prisoners General Preston was obliged to refuse his request. Mrs. Preston and the rest of us wanted him to say yes and so find out who in Columbia were his treacherous friends. Pretty bold people they must be to receive Yankee invaders in the midst of the row over one enemy already turned loose amid us. General Preston said we are about to sacrifice life and fortune for a fickle multitude who will not stand up to us at last. The harsh comments made as to his lenient conduct to prisoners have embittered him. I told him what I had heard Captain Trenham say in his speech. He said he would listen to no criticism except from a man with a musket on his shoulder and who had besides enlisted for the war had given up all and had no choice but to succeed or die. February 24th Congress and the newspapers render one desperate ready to cut one's own throat. They represent everything in our country as deplorable. Then comes someone back from our gay and gallant army at the front. The spirit of our army keeps us up after all. Letters from the army revive one. They come as welcome as the flowers in May hopeful and bright utterly unconscious of our weak despondency. February 25th They have taken at Nashville more men than we had at Manassas. There was bad handling of troops we poor women think or this would not be. Footnote, Nashville was evacuated by the Confederates under Albert Sydney Johnston in February 1862. End of footnote. Mr. Venable added bitterly giving up our soldiers to the enemy means giving up the cause we cannot replace them. The up country men were union men generally and the low country seceders. The former growl, they never liked those aristocratic burrows and parishes. They had themselves a good and prosperous country, a good constitution and were satisfied but they had to go to leave all and fight for the others who had brought on all the trouble and who do not show too much disposition to fight for themselves. That is the extreme up country view. The extreme low country says Jeff Davis is not enough out of the union yet. His inaugural address reads as one of his speeches did four years ago in the United States Senate. A letter in a morning paper accused Mr. Chestnut of staying along in Charleston. The editor was asked for the writer's name. He gave it as Little Moses the governor secretary. When Little Moses was spoken to in a great trepidation he said that Mrs. Pickens wrote it and got him to publish it. So it was dropped for Little Moses is such an errant liar no one can believe him. Besides if that sort of thing amuses Mrs. Pickens let her amuse herself. Mr. Chestnut went back to Mulberry with me from Columbia. She found a man there tall enough to take her into dinner. Tom Boykin who is six feet four the same height as her father. Tom was very handsome in his uniform and Mary prepared for a nice time but he looked as if he would so much rather she did not talk to him and he set her such a good example saying never a word. Old Colonel Chestnut came for us. When the train stopped he, shiny black, was seen on his box as glossy and perfect in his way as his blooded bays but the old Colonel would stop and pick up the dirtiest little negro I ever saw who was crying by the roadside. This ragged little black urchin was made to climb up and sit beside quash. It spoiled the symmetry of the turnout but it was a character touch and the old gentleman knows no law but his own will.  I was ill at Mulberry and never left my room. Dr. Boykin came more military than medical. Colonel Chestnut brought him up also teams who said he was down in the mouth. Our men were not fighting as they should. We had only pluck and luck and a dogged spirit of fighting to offset their weight in men and munitions of war. I wish I could remember teams words this is only his idea. His language was quaint and striking no grammar but no end of sense and good feeling. Old Colonel Chestnut catching a word began his litany saying numbers will tell Napoleon you know et cetera et cetera. At Mulberry the war has been ever a far off but threats to take the silver came very near indeed silver that we had before the revolution silver that Mrs. Chestnut brought from Philadelphia. Jack Canty and Dr. Boykin came back on the train with us. Wade Hampton is the hero. Sweet Mae Daker Lord Byron and Disraeli make their rose buds Catholic. Mae Daker is another Aurora rabie. I like Disraeli because I find so many clever things in him. I like the sparkle and the glitter. Carlisle does not hold up his hands in holy horror office because of African slavery. Lord Lyons has gone against us. Footnote Richard Lord Lyons British Minister to the United States from 1858 to 1865 in footnote Lord Derby and Louis Napoleon are silent in our hour of direst need. People call me Cassandra for I cry that outside hope is quenched. From the outside no help indeed cometh to this beleaguered land. March 7th Mrs. Middleton was dolerous indeed. General Lee had warned the planters about Combehie, etc. that they must take care of themselves now. He could not do it. Confederate soldiers had committed some outrages on the plantations and officers had punished them promptly. She poured contempt upon Yancey's letter to Lord Russell. Footnote Lord Russell was foreign secretary under the Palmerston administration of 1859 to 1865 in footnote It was the letter of a shopkeeper not in the style of a statesman at all. We call to see Mary McDuffie. Footnote Mary McDuffie was the second wife of Wade Hampton in footnote. She asked Mary Preston what Dr. Boykin had said of her husband as we came along in the train. She heard it was something very complimentary. Mary P. tried to remember and to repeat it all to the joy of the other Mary who liked to hear nice things about her husband. Mary was amazed to hear of the list of applicants for promotion. One delicate-minded person accompanied his demand for advancement by a request for a written description of the Manassas battle. He had heard Colonel Chestnut give such a brilliant account of it in Governor Cobb's room. The Merrimack business has come like a gleam of lightning illuminating a dark scene. Footnote The Merrimack was formerly a 40-gun screw frigate of the United States Navy. In April 1861 when the Norfolk Navy Yard was abandoned by the United States she was sunk. Her hull was afterwards raised by the Confederates and she was reconstructed on new plans and renamed the Virginia. On March 2, 1862 she destroyed the Congress a sailing ship of 50 guns and the Cumberland ship of 30 guns at Newport News. On March 7 she attacked the Minnesota but was met by the Monitor and defeated in a memorable engagement. Many features of modern battleships have been derived from the Merrimack and Monitor. End Footnote The judge saw his little daughter at my window and he came up. He was very smooth and kind. It was really a delightful visit not a disagreeable word was spoken. He abused no one whatever for he never once spoke of anyone but himself and himself he praised without stint. He did not look at me once though he spoke very kindly to me. March 10, 2nd Year of Confederate Independence I write daily for my own diversion. These memoirs poor severe may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am. I do not wish to do any harm or to hurt anyone. If any scandalous stories creep in they can easily be burned. It is hard in such a hurry as things are now to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now that I have made my protest and written down my wishes I can scribble on with a free will and free conscience. Congress at the north is down on us. They talk largely of hanging slave owners. They say they hold Port Royal as we did and took it originally from the Aborigines who fled before us. So we are to be exterminated and improved all in the inn from the face of the earth. Medea when asked country, wealth, husband, children all are gone and now what remains? Answered, Medea remains. There is a time in most men's lives when they resemble Job sitting among the ashes and drinking in the full bitterness fortune. March 11th. A freshman came quite eager to be instructed in all the wiles of society. He wanted to try his hand at a flirtation and requested minute instructions as he knew nothing whatever he was so very fresh. Dance with her he was told and talk with her, walk with her and flatter her. Dance until she is warm and tired then propose to walk in a cool shady Piazza. Be a somewhat dark Piazza. Begin your promenade slowly warm up to your work draw her arm closer and closer then break her wing. Heavens, what is that? Break her wing? Why, you do not know even that?  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 beeline. He was so mangled by the thorns 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. Vinnable 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 scrum yet. Last Saturday was the bloodiest we have had in proportion to numbers. Footnote. On March 7 and 8, 1862 occurred the battle of P. Ridge in western Arkansas where the Confederates were defeated and on March 8 and 9 occurred the conflict in Hampton Roads between the warships Mary Mack, Cumberland, Congress and Monitor. In footnote. The enemy lost 1500. The handful left at home are rushing to arms at last. Bragg has gone to join Beauregard at Columbus, Mississippi. Old Abe truly took the field in that scotch cap of his. Mrs. McCord, the eldest daughter of Langdon Chavis, got up a company for her son, raising it at her own expense. Footnote. 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 Kaya Scratches, A Tragedy. She was also a brilliant pamphleteer. In footnote. She has the brains and energy of a man. Today she repeated a remark of a low country gentleman who is dissatisfied. This government, Confederate, protects neither person nor property. Fancy this cornful turn of her lip. Someone asked for Langdon Chavis, 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 in cloth, but this latter cannot be done. Cotton Osnaburg, at thirty-seven and a half 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 Merrimack, et cetera. All hands on board the Cumberland went down. She fought gallantly and fired around as she sank. The Congress 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. End of Chapter 11, Part 1 Chapter 11, Part 2 of A Diary from Dixie This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Laurie Ann Walden. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 11, Columbia, South Carolina. Part 2. March 12. In the naval battle the other day, we had 25 guns in all. The enemy had 54 in the Cumberland, 44 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 hymns 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 Chestnut's address to South Carolinians now in the Army of the Potomac. The man says, all that Bosch 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 Pillow are suspended from their commands because of Fort Donaldson. The people of Tennessee demand a like fate for Albert Sydney Johnston.  Can human folly go further than this Tennessee madness? Footnote. 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 Donaldson. Gideon J. Pillow had been a major general of volunteers in the Mexican War and was second in command at Fort Donaldson. He and Floyd escaped from the fort when it was invested by Grant, leaving General Buckner to make the surrender. Footnote. 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.  Now they will be all sympathy and goodness. I took away her reproach among women. March 13th. Mr. Chestnut 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. Chestnut 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 divine 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 Laconte 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. Chestnut is proud of it. It is a brilliant success thanks to Laconte. Footnote. Joseph Laconte, who afterward arose to much distinction as a geologist and writer of textbooks 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 Laconte's autobiography, published in 1903, are several chapters devoted to his life in the South. In footnote. Mr. Chestnut 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 counsel is rabid. Mr. Chestnut laughs and throws the letters into the fire. Disaffected to Jeff Davis, says he. Disaffected to the counsel, 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 improper's 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 LaGrie 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 ensure and practice among themselves with all their own high moral surroundings, light, education, training and support. Lady Mary Montague 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. I have often thought from observation truly that perfect beauty hardens the heart and as to grace, what's so graceful as a cat, a Tigris or a Panther? Much love, admiration, worship, hardens an idle's heart. It becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. I speak now of what I have watched with horror and amazement. Topsies I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used. Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination.  But they can be good to them at a distance. That's easy. You see, I cannot rise very high. I can only judge by what I see. March 14th. Thank God for a ship. It has run the blockade with arms and ammunition.  And yet the United States government makes no bones of receiving Mormons into its sacred heart. Mr. Vinnable said England held her hand over the malignant and the turbaned Turk to save and protect him, slaves, soralia and all. But she rolls up the whites of her eyes at us when slavery, bad as it is, is stepping out into freedom every moment through Christian civilization. They do not grudge the Turk even his bag and phosphorus privileges. To a recalcitrant wife it is, here yawns the sack, there rolls the sea, et cetera. And France, the bold, the brave, the ever free, she has not been so tender-footed in Algiers. But then the you are another argument is a shabby one. You see, says Mary Preston sagaciously, we are white Christian descendants of Huguenots and Cavaliers and they expect of us different conduct. Went in Mrs. Preston's landow to bring my boarding school girls here to dine. At my door met JF, who wanted me then and there to promise to help him with his commission or put him in the way of one. At the carriage steps I was handed in by Gus Smith, who wants his brother made commissary. The beauty of it all is they think I have some influence and I have not a particle. The subject of Mr. Chestnut's military affairs, promotions, et cetera, is never mentioned by me. When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren Nelson propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature. He said he meant to be heard, so I walked back with him to the drawing-room. They are wasting their time dancing attendants on me. I cannot help them. Let them shoulder their musket and go to the wars like men. After tea came Mars' kit. He said for a talk, but that Mr. Preston would not let him have, because Preston had arrived some time before him. Mr. Preston said Mars' kit thought it bad for him to laugh. After that you may be sure a laugh from Mars' kit was secured. Again and again he was forced to laugh with a will. I reversed Oliver Wendell Holmes's good resolution never to be as funny as he could. I did my very utmost. Mr. Vinnable interrupted the fun, which was fast and furious, with the very best of bad news. Newburn shelled and burned, cotton, turpentine, everything. There were 5,000 North Carolinians in the fray, 12,000 Yankees. Now there stands Goldsboro, one more step and we are cut in too. The railroad is our backbone, like the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, with which it runs parallel. So many discomforts, no wonder we are downhearted. Mr. Vinnable thanks as we do. Garnet is our most thorough scholar, Lamar the most original and the cleverest of our men. LQC Lamar, time fails me to write all his name. Then there is RMT Hunter. Musko Russell Garnet and his northern wife, that match was made at my house in Washington when Garnet was a member of the United States Congress. March 17th, back to the Congaree House to await my husband, who has made a rapid visit to the watery region. As we drove up, Mr. Chestnut said, did you see the stare of respectful admiration E.R. bestowed upon you so curiously prolonged? I could hardly keep my countenance. Yes, my dear child, I feel the honor of it, though my individual self goes for nothing in it. I am the wife of the man who has the appointing power just now, with so many commissions to be filled. It is nearly forty, and they do my understanding the credit to suppose I can be made to believe they admire my mature charms. They think they fool me into thinking that they believe me charming. There is hardly any farce in the world more laughable. Last night a house was set on fire. Last week, two houses.  Our troubles thicken indeed when treachery comes from that dark quarter. First offered Johnston Pettigrew a brigadier generalship. His answer was, not yet, too many men are ahead of me who have earned their promotion in the field. I will come after them, not before. So far I have done nothing to merit reward, etc. He would not take rank when he could get it. A fancy he may cool his heels now waiting for it. He was too high and mighty. There was another conscientious man, Burnett of Kentucky. He gave up his regiment to his lieutenant colonel when he found the lieutenant colonel could command the regiment and Burnett could not maneuver it in the field. He went into the fight simply as an aid to Floyd. Modest merit just now is at a premium. William Gilmore Sims is here. Redis, his last poetry, have forgotten already what it was about. It was not tiresome, however, and that is a great thing when people will persist in reading their own rhymes. I did not hear what Mr. Preston was saying. The last piece of Richmond news, Mr. Chestnut said as he went away, and he looked so fagged out I asked no questions. I knew it was bad. At daylight there was a loud knocking at my door. I hurried on a dressing-gown and flew to open the door. Mrs. Chestnut, Mrs. M says, please don't forget her son. Mr. Chestnut, she hears, has come back. Please get her son a commission. He must have an office.  If I had the influence these foolish people attribute to me, why should I not help my own? I have a brother, two brothers-in-law, and no end of kin, all gentlemen privates, and privates they would stay to the end of time before they said a word to me about commissions. After a long talk we were finally disgusted and the men went off to the bulletin board. Whatever else it shows, good or bad, there is always woe for some house in the killed and wounded. We have need of stout hearts. I feel a sinking of mine as we drive near the board. March 18th, my war archon is beset for commissions, and somebody says for every one given you make one ingrate and a thousand enemies. As I entered Mrs. Mary's starks I whispered, he has promised to vote for Lewis. What radiant faces. To my friend Mrs. Mary said, your son-in-law, what is he doing for his country? He is a tax collector. Then spoke up the stout old girl. Look at my cheek, it is red with blushing for you. A great, hail, hearty young man. Fie on him, fie on him for shame. Tell his wife, run him out of the house with a broomstick, send him down to the coast at least. Fancy my cheeks. I would not raise my eyes to the poor lady so mercilessly assaulted. My face was as hot with compassion as the outspoken Miss Mary pretended hers to be with vicarious mortification. Went to see sweet and saintly Mrs. Bartow. She read us a letter from Mississippi, not so bad. More men there than the enemy suspected, and torpedoes to blow up the wretches when they came. Next to see Mrs. Izard. She had with her a relative just from the north. This lady had asked Seward for passports, and he told her to hold on awhile, the road to South Carolina will soon be open to all, open and safe. Today Mrs. Arthur Hain heard from her daughter that Richmond is to be given up. Mrs. Buell is her daughter. Met Mr. Chestnut who said, New Madrid has been given up. I do not know any more than the dead where New Madrid is. It is bad all the same this giving up. I can't stand it. The hemming in process is nearly complete. The ring of fire is almost unbroken. Footnote. New Madrid, Missouri had been under siege since March 3, 1862. End footnote. Mr. Chestnut's Negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says one man cannot do it. The whole country must agree to it. He would trust such as he would select, and he would give so many acres of land and his freedom to each one as he enlisted. Mrs. Albert Rett came for an office for her son, John. I told her Mr. Chestnut would never propose a kinsman for an office, but if anyone else would bring him forward he would vote for him, certainly, as he is so eminently fit for position. Now he is a private. March 19th. He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer business. Tomorrow, conscription begins. The Dernier Resort. The President has remodeled his cabinet, leaving Bragg for North Carolina. His War Minister is Randolph of Virginia. A Union man par excellence, Watts of Alabama, is Attorney General. And now, too late by one year, when all the mechanics are in the army, Mallory begins to telegraph Captain Ingram to build ships at any expense. We are locked in and cannot get the requisites for naval architecture, says a magniliquent person. Henry Frost says all hands wink at cotton going out. Why not send it out and buy ships? Every now and then there is a holocaust of cotton burning, says the magniliquent. Conscription has waked the Rip Van Winkles. The streets of Columbia were never so crowded with men. To fight and to be made to fight are different things. To my small wits, whenever people were persistent, united and rose in their might, no general, however great, succeeded in subjugating them. Have we not swamps, forests, rivers, mountains, every natural barrier? The Carthaginians begged for peace because they were a luxurious people and could not endure the hardship of war, though the enemy suffered as sharply as they did. Factions among themselves is the rock on which we split. Now for the great soul who is to rise up and lead us. Why tarry his footsteps? March 20th, the Merrimack is now called the Virginia. I think these changes of names so confusing and so senseless, like the French Royal Bingle Tiger, National Tiger, etc. Rue this and next day, Rue that, the very days and months assemble and nothing signified. I was lying on the sofa in my room and two men, slowly walking up and down the corridor, talked aloud as if necessarily all rooms were unoccupied at this midday hour. I asked Mom Mary who they were. Jaiden and Barnwell Rhett, Jr. They abused the council roundly and my husband's name arrested my attention. Afterward, when Jaiden attacked Mr. Chestnut, Mr. Chestnut surprised him by knowing beforehand all he had to say. Naturally I had repeated the loud interchange of views I had overheard in the corridor. First Nathan Davis called. Then Gonzales, who presented a fine, soldierly appearance in his soldier clothes, and the likeness to Beauregard was greater than ever. Nathan, all the world knows, is by profession a handsome man. General Gonzales told us what in the bitterness of his soul he had written to Jeff Davis. He regretted that he had not been his classmate, then he might have been as well treated as Northrop. In any case, he would not have been refused a brigadiership, citing General Trapeyer and Tom Drayton. He had worked for it, had earned it, they had not. To his surprise Mr. Davis answered him and in a sharp note of four pages. Mr. Davis demanded from whom he quoted, not his classmate. From the public voice only. Now he will fight for us all the same, but go on demanding justice from Jeff Davis until he gets his dues. At least until one of them gets his dues, for he means to go on hitting Jeff Davis over the head whenever he has a chance. I am afraid, said I, you will find it a hard head to crack. He replied in his flowery Spanish way. Jeff Davis will be the son radiating all light, heat and patronage. He will not be a moon reflecting public opinion, for he has the soul of a despot. He delights to spite public opinion. See, people abused him for making crittenden brigadier. Straightway he made him major general, and just after a blundering, besotted defeat too. Also he told the president in that letter. Napoleon made his generals after great deeds on their part, and not for having been educated at Sanseer or Brie or the polytechnique, et cetera, et cetera. Nathan Davis sat as still as a Sue warrior, not an eyelash moved. And yet he said afterward that he was amused while the Spaniard railed at his great namesake. Gonzales said, Mrs. Slidel would proudly say that she was a Creole. They were such fools they thought Creole meant. Here Nathan interrupted pleasantly. At the St. Charles in New Orleans, the Bill of Fair were Creole eggs. When they were brought to a man who had ordered them with perfect simplicity, he held them up. Why, they are only hen's eggs after all. What in heaven's name he expected them to be, who can say? smiled Nathan the elegant. One lady says, as I sit reading in the drawing room window while Ma and Mary puts my room to write, I clothed my negroes well. I could not bear to see them in dirt and rags. It would be unpleasant to me. Another lady. Yes, well, so do I. But not fine clothes, you know. I feel, now, it was one of our sins as a nation, the way we indulged them in sinful finery. We will be punished for it. Last night Mrs. Pickens met General Cooper. Madam knew General Cooper only as our adjutant general and Mr. Mason's brother-in-law. In her slow, graceful, impressive way, her beautiful eyes eloquent with feeling, she invade against Mr. Davis' wickedness in always sending men born at the north to command at Charleston. General Cooper is on his way to make a tour of inspection there now. The dear general settled his head on his cravat with the aid of his forefinger. He tugged rather more nervously with the something that is always wrong inside of his collar and looked straight up through his spectacles. Someone crossed the room, stood back of Mrs. Pickens, and murmured in her ear, that General Cooper was born in New York. Sudden silence. Dined with General Cooper at the Prestons. General Hampton and Blanton Duncan were there also. The latter a thoroughly free and easy western man, handsome and clever, more audacious than either perhaps. He pointed to Buck, Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston. What's that girl laughing at? Poor child, how amazed she looked. If he bade them not despair all the nice young men would not be killed in the war there would be a few left. For himself he could give them no hope. Mrs. Duncan was uncommonly healthy. Mrs. Duncan is also lovely. We have seen her.