17 March 1862 – 23 March 1862

Back to the Congaree House to await my husband, who has made a rapid visit to the Wateree region. As we drove up Mr. Chesnut 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. I am 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. “The red cock crows in the barn!” Our troubles thicken, indeed, when treachery comes from that dark quarter. When the President 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. I fancy he may cool his heels now waiting for it. He was too high and mighty. There was another conscientious man—Burnet, of Kentucky. He gave up his regiment to his lieutenant-colonel when he found the lieutenant-colonel could command the regiment and Burnet could not maneuver it in the field. He went into the fight simply as an aide to Floyd. Modest merit just now is at a premium. William Gilmore Simms is here; read us 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. Chesnut 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. Chesnut, Mrs. M. says please don’t forget her son. Mr. Chesnut, she hears, has come back. Please get her son a commission. He must have an office.” I shut the door in the servant’s face. 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.

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 Miss Mary Stark’s I whispered: “He has promised to vote for Louis.” What radiant faces. To my friend, Miss 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, hale, 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 could 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 a while; the road to South Carolina will soon be open to all, open and safe.” To-day Mrs. Arthur Hayne heard from her daughter that Richmond is to be given up. Mrs. Buell is her daughter. Met Mr. Chesnut, 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.” Mr. Chesnut’s negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says one man can not 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 Rhett came for an office for her son John. I told her Mr. Chesnut would never propose a kinsman for office, but if any one else would bring him forward he would vote for him certainly, as he is so eminently fit for position. Now he is a private.

He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer business. To-morrow conscription begins—the dernier ressort. 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 Ingraham to build ships at any expense. We are locked in and can not get “the requisites for naval architecture,” says a magniloquent 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 magniloquent. 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?

The Merrimac is now called the Virginia. I think these changes of names so confusing and so senseless. Like the French “Royal Bengal Tiger,” “National Tiger,” etc. Rue this, and next day Rue that, the very days and months a symbol, 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 Maum Mary who they were. “Yeadon and Barnwell Rhett, Jr.” They abused the Council roundly, and my husband’s name arrested my attention. Afterward, when Yeadon attacked Mr. Chesnut, Mr. Chesnut 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 Trapier 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.” General Gonzales responded, “from the public voice only.” Now he will fight for us all the same, but go on demanding justice from Jeff Davis until he get 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 sun, 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 St. Cyr, or Brie, or the Polytechnique,” etc., etc. Nathan Davis sat as still as a Sioux 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. Slidell 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, on the bill of fare 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 hens’ 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 Maum Mary puts my room to rights): “I clothe 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 inveighed against Mr. Davis’s 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. Some one crossed the room, stood back of Mrs. Pickens, and murmured in her ear, “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. 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.