9 June 1862 – 15 June 1862

When we read of the battles in India, in Italy, in the Crimea, what did we care? Only an interesting topic, like any other, to look for in the paper. Now you hear of a battle with a thrill and a shudder. It has come home to us; half the people that we know in the world are under the enemy’s guns. A telegram reaches you, and you leave it on your lap. You are pale with fright. You handle it, or you dread to touch it, as you would a rattlesnake; worse, worse, a snake could only strike you. How many, many will this scrap of paper tell you have gone to their death? When you meet people, sad and sorrowful is the greeting; they press your hand; tears stand in their eyes or roll down their cheeks, as they happen to possess more or less self-control. They have brother, father, or sons as the case may be, in battle. And now this thing seems never to stop. We have no breathing time given us. It can not be so at the North, for the papers say gentlemen do not go into the ranks there, but are officers, or clerks of departments. Then we see so many members of foreign regiments among our prisoners—Germans, Irish, Scotch. The proportion of trouble is awfully against us. Every company on the field, rank and file, is filled with our nearest and dearest, who are common soldiers. Mem Cohen’s story to-day. A woman she knew heard her son was killed, and had hardly taken in the horror of it when they came to say it was all a mistake in the name. She fell on her knees with a shout of joy. “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” she cried, in her wild delight. The household was totally upset, the swing-back of the pendulum from the scene of weeping and wailing of a few moments before was very exciting. In the midst of this hubbub the hearse drove up with the poor boy in his metallic coffin. Does anybody wonder so many women die? Grief and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women at home as men are killed on the battle-field. Mem’s friend is at the point of death with brain fever; the sudden changes from grief to joy and joy to grief were more than she could bear. A story from New Orleans. As some Yankees passed two boys playing in the street, one of the boys threw a handful of burned cotton at them, saying, “I keep this for you.” The other, not to be outdone, spit at the Yankees, and said, “I keep this for you.” The Yankees marked the house. Afterward, a corporal’s guard came. Madam was affably conversing with a friend, and in vain, the friend, who was a mere morning caller, protested he was not the master of the house; he was marched off to prison. Mr. Moise got his money out of New Orleans. He went to a station with his two sons, who were quite small boys. When he got there, the carriage that he expected was not to be seen. He had brought no money with him, knowing he might be searched. Some friend called out, “I will lend you my horse, but then you will be obliged to leave the children.” This offer was accepted, and, as he rode off, one of the boys called out, “Papa, here is your tobacco, which you have forgotten.” Mr. Moise turned back and the boy handed up a roll of tobacco, which he had held openly in his hand all the time. Mr. Moise took it, and galloped off, waving his hat to them. In that roll of tobacco was encased twenty-five thousand dollars. Now, the Mississippi is virtually open to the Yankees. Beauregard has evacuated Corinth. Henry Nott was killed at Shiloh; Mrs. Auzé wrote to tell us. She had no hope. To be conquered and ruined had always been her fate, strive as she might, and now she knew it would be through her country that she would be made to feel. She had had more than most women to endure, and the battle of life she had tried to fight with courage, patience, faith. Long years ago, when she was young, her lover died. Afterward, she married another. Then her husband died, and next her only son. When New Orleans fell, her only daughter was there and Mrs. Auzé went to her. Well may she say that she has bravely borne her burden till now. Stonewall said, in his quaint way: “I like strong drink, so I never touch it.” May heaven, who sent him to help us, save him from all harm! My husband traced Stonewall’s triumphal career on the map. He has defeated Frémont and taken all his cannon; now he is after Shields. The language of the telegram is vague: “Stonewall has taken plenty of prisoners”—plenty, no doubt, and enough and to spare. We can’t feed our own soldiers, and how are we to feed prisoners? They denounce Toombs in some Georgia paper, which I saw to-day, for planting a full crop of cotton. They say he ought to plant provisions for soldiers. And now every man in Virginia, and the eastern part of South Carolina is in revolt, because old men and boys are ordered out as a reserve corps, and worst of all, sacred property, that is, negroes, have been seized and sent out to work on the fortifications along the coast line. We are in a fine condition to fortify Columbia!

General Gregg writes that Chickahominy was a victory manqué, because Joe Johnston received a disabling wound and G. W. Smith was ill. The subordinates in command had not been made acquainted with the plan of battle. A letter from John Chesnut, who says it must be all a mistake about Wade Hampton’s wound, for he saw him in the field to the very last; that is, until late that night. Hampton writes to Mary McDuffie that the ball was extracted from his foot on the field, and that he was in the saddle all day, but that, when he tried to take his boot off at night his foot was so inflamed and swollen, the boot had to be cut away, and the wound became more troublesome than he had expected. Mrs. Preston sent her carriage to take us to see Mrs. Herbemont, whom Mary Gibson calls her “Mrs. Burgamot.” Miss Bay came down, ever-blooming, in a cap so formidable, I could but laugh. It was covered with a bristling row of white satin spikes. She coyly refused to enter Mrs. Preston’s carriage—“to put foot into it,” to use her own words; but she allowed herself to be overpersuaded. I am so ill. Mrs. Ben Taylor said to Doctor Trezevant, “Surely, she is too ill to be going about; she ought to be in bed.” “She is very feeble, very nervous, as you say, but then she is living on nervous excitement. If you shut her up she would die at once.” A queer weakness of the heart, I have. Sometimes it beats so feebly I am sure it has stopped altogether. Then they say I have fainted, but I never lose consciousness. Mrs. Preston and I were talking of negroes and cows. A negro, no matter how sensible he is on any other subject, can never be convinced that there is any necessity to feed a cow. “Turn ’em out, and let ’em grass. Grass good nuff for cow.” Famous news comes from Richmond, but not so good from the coast. Mrs. Izard said, quoting I forget whom: “If West Point could give brains as well as training!” Smith is under arrest for disobedience of orders—Pemberton’s orders. This is the third general whom Pemberton has displaced within a few weeks—Ripley, Mercer, and now Smith. When I told my husband that Molly was full of airs since her late trip home, he made answer: “Tell her to go to the devil—she or anybody else on the plantation who is dissatisfied; let them go. It is bother enough to feed and clothe them now.” When he went over to the plantation he returned charmed with their loyalty to him, their affection and their faithfulness. Sixteen more Yankee regiments have landed on James Island. Eason writes, “They have twice the energy and enterprise of our people.” I answered, “Wait a while. Let them alone until climate and mosquitoes and sand-flies and dealing with negroes takes it all out of them.” Stonewall is a regular brick, going all the time, winning his way wherever he goes. Governor Pickens called to see me. His wife is in great trouble, anxiety, uncertainty. Her brother and her brother-in-law are either killed or taken prisoners. Tom Taylor says Wade Hampton did not leave the field on account of his wound. “What heroism!” said some one. No, what luck! He is the luckiest man alive. He’ll never be killed. He was shot in the temple, but that did not kill him. His soldiers believe in his luck. General Scott, on Southern soldiers, says, we have élan, courage, woodcraft, consummate horsemanship, endurance of pain equal to the Indians, but that we will not submit to discipline. We will not take care of things, or husband our resources. Where we are there is waste and destruction. If it could all be done by one wild, desperate dash, we would do it. But he does not think we can stand the long, blank months between the acts—the waiting! We can bear pain without a murmur, but we will not submit to be bored, etc. Now, for the other side. Men of the North can wait; they can bear discipline; they can endure forever. Losses in battle are nothing to them. Their resources in men and materials of war are inexhaustible, and if they see fit they will fight to the bitter end. Here is a nice prospect for us—as comfortable as the old man’s croak at Mulberry, “Bad times, worse coming.” Mrs. McCord says, “In the hospital the better born, that is, those born in the purple, the gentry, those who are accustomed to a life of luxury, are the better patients. They endure in silence. They are hardier, stronger, tougher, less liable to break down than the sons of the soil.” “Why is that?” I asked, and she answered, “Something in man that is more than the body.” I know how it feels to die. I have felt it again and again. For instance, some one calls out, “Albert Sidney Johnston is killed.” My heart stands still. I feel no more. I am, for so many seconds, so many minutes, I know not how long, utterly without sensation of any kind—dead; and then, there is that great throb, that keen agony of physical pain, and the works are wound up again. The ticking of the clock begins, and I take up the burden of life once more. Some day it will stop too long, or my feeble heart will be too worn out to make that awakening jar, and all will be over. I do not think when the end comes that there will be any difference, except the miracle of the new wind-up throb. And now good news is just as exciting as bad. “Hurrah, Stonewall has saved us!” The pleasure is almost pain because of my way of feeling it. Miriam’s Luryea and the coincidences of his life. He was born Moses, and is the hero of the bombshell. His mother was at a hotel in Charleston when kind-hearted Anna De Leon Moses went for her sister-in-law, and gave up her own chamber, that the child might be born in the comfort and privacy of a home. Only our people are given to such excessive hospitality. So little Luryea was born in Anna De Leon’s chamber. After Chickahominy when he, now a man, lay mortally wounded, Anna Moses, who was living in Richmond, found him, and she brought him home, though her house was crowded to the door-steps. She gave up her chamber to him, and so, as he had been born in her room, in her room he died.

New England’s Butler, best known to us as “Beast” Butler, is famous or infamous now. His amazing order to his soldiers at New Orleans and comments on it are in everybody’s mouth. We hardly expected from Massachusetts behavior to shame a Comanche. One happy moment has come into Mrs. Preston’s life. I watched her face to-day as she read the morning papers. Willie’s battery is lauded to the skies. Every paper gave him a paragraph of praise. South Carolina was at Beauregard’s feet after Fort Sumter. Since Shiloh, she has gotten up, and looks askance rather when his name is mentioned. And without Price or Beauregard who takes charge of the Western forces? “Can we hold out if England and France hold off?” cries Mem. “No, our time has come.” “For shame, faint heart! Our people are brave, our cause is just; our spirit and our patient endurance beyond reproach.” Here came in Mary Cantey’s voice: “I may not have any logic, any sense. I give it up. My woman’s instinct tells me, all the same, that slavery’s time has come. If we don’t end it, they will.” After all this, tried to read Uncle Tom, but could not; too sickening; think of a man sending his little son to beat a human being tied to a tree. It is as bad as Squeers beating Smike. Flesh and blood revolt; you must skip that; it is too bad. Mr. Preston told a story of Joe Johnston as a boy. A party of boys at Abingdon were out on a spree, more boys than horses; so Joe Johnston rode behind John Preston, who is his cousin. While going over the mountains they tried to change horses and got behind a servant who was in charge of them all. The servant’s horse kicked up, threw Joe Johnston, and broke his leg; a bone showed itself. “Hello, boys! come here and look: the confounded bone has come clear through,” called out Joe, coolly. They had to carry him on their shoulders, relieving guard. As one party grew tired, another took him up. They knew he must suffer fearfully, but he never said so. He was as cool and quiet after his hurt as before. He was pretty roughly handled, but they could not help it. His father was in a towering rage because his son’s leg was to be set by a country doctor, and it might be crooked in the process. At Chickahominy, brave but unlucky Joe had already eleven wounds.

Decca’s wedding. It took place last year. We were all lying on the bed or sofas taking it coolly as to undress. Mrs. Singleton had the floor. They were engaged before they went up to Charlottesville; Alexander was on Gregg’s staff, and Gregg was not hard on him; Decca was the worst in love girl she ever saw. “Letters came while we were at the hospital, from Alex, urging her to let him marry her at once. In war times human events, life especially, are very uncertain. “For several days consecutively she cried without ceasing, and then she consented. The rooms at the hospital were all crowded. Decca and I slept together in the same room. It was arranged by letter that the marriage should take place; a luncheon at her grandfather Minor’s, and then she was to depart with Alex for a few days at Richmond. That was to be their brief slice of honeymoon. “The day came. The wedding-breakfast was ready, so was the bride in all her bridal array; but no Alex, no bridegroom. Alas! such is the uncertainty of a soldier’s life. The bride said nothing, but she wept like a water-nymph. At dinner she plucked up heart, and at my earnest request was about to join us. And then the cry, ‘The bridegroom cometh.’ He brought his best man and other friends. We had a jolly dinner. ‘Circumstances over which he had no control’ had kept him away. “His father sat next to Decca and talked to her all the time as if she had been already married. It was a piece of absent-mindedness on his part, pure and simple, but it was very trying, and the girl had had much to stand that morning, you can well understand. Immediately after dinner the belated bridegroom proposed a walk; so they went for a brief stroll up the mountain. Decca, upon her return, said to me: ‘Send for Robert Barnwell. I mean to be married to-day.’ “‘Impossible. No spare room in the house. No getting away from here; the trains all gone. Don’t you know this hospital place is crammed to the ceiling?’ ‘Alex says I promised to marry him to-day. It is not his fault; he could not come before.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t care,’ said the positive little thing, ‘I promised Alex to marry him to-day and I will. Send for the Rev. Robert Barnwell.’ We found Robert after a world of trouble, and the bride, lovely in Swiss muslin, was married. “Then I proposed they should take another walk, and I went to one of my sister nurses and begged her to take me in for the night, as I wished to resign my room to the young couple. At daylight next day they took the train for Richmond.” Such is the small allowance of honeymoon permitted in war time. Beauregard’s telegram: he can not leave the army of the West. His health is bad. No doubt the sea breezes would restore him, but—he can not come now. Such a lovely name—Gustave Tautant Beauregard. But Jackson and Johnston and Smith and Jones will do—and Lee, how short and sweet. “Every day,” says Mem, “they come here in shoals—men to say we can not hold Richmond, and we can not hold Charleston much longer. Wretches, beasts! Why do you come here? Why don’t you stay there and fight? Don’t you see that you own yourselves cowards by coming away in the very face of a battle? If you are not liars as to the danger, you are cowards to run away from it.” Thus roars the practical Mem, growing more furious at each word. These Jeremiahs laugh. They think she means others, not the present company. Tom Huger resigned his place in the United States Navy and came to us. The Iroquois was his ship in the old navy. They say, as he stood in the rigging, after he was shot in the leg, when his ship was leading the attack upon the Iroquois, his old crew in the Iroquois cheered him, and when his body was borne in, the Federals took off their caps in respect for his gallant conduct. When he was dying, Meta Huger said to him: “An officer wants to see you: he is one of the enemy.” “Let him come in; I have no enemies now.” But when he heard the man’s name: “No, no. I do not want to see a Southern man who is now in Lincoln’s navy.” The officers of the United States Navy attended his funeral.

All things are against us. Memphis gone. Mississippi fleet annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly apathetic as if it were a story of the English war against China which happened a year or so ago. The sons of Mrs. John Julius Pringle have come. They were left at school in the North. A young Huger is with them. They seem to have had adventures enough. Walked, waded, rowed in boats, if boats they could find; swam rivers when boats there were none; brave lads are they. One can but admire their pluck and energy. Mrs. Fisher, of Philadelphia, née Middleton, gave them money to make the attempt to get home. Stuart’s cavalry have rushed through McClellan’s lines and burned five of his transports. Jackson has been reenforced by 16,000 men, and they hope the enemy will be drawn from around Richmond, and the valley be the seat of war. John Chesnut is in Whiting’s brigade, which has been sent to Stonewall. Mem’s son is with the Boykin Rangers; Company A, No. 1, we call it. And she has persistently wept ever since she heard the news. It is no child’s play, she says, when you are with Stonewall. He doesn’t play at soldiering. He doesn’t take care of his men at all. He only goes to kill the Yankees. Wade Hampton is here, shot in the foot, but he knows no more about France than he does of the man in the moon. Wet blanket he is just now. Johnston badly wounded. Lee is King of Spades. They are all once more digging for dear life. Unless we can reenforce Stonewall, the game is up. Our chiefs contrive to dampen and destroy the enthusiasm of all who go near them. So much entrenching and falling back destroys the morale of any army. This everlasting retreating, it kills the hearts of the men. Then we are scant of powder. James Chesnut is awfully proud of Le Conte’s powder manufactory here. Le Conte knows how to do it. James Chesnut provides him the means to carry out his plans. Colonel Venable doesn’t mince matters: “If we do not deal a blow, a blow that will be felt, it will be soon all up with us. The Southwest will be lost to us. We can not afford to shilly-shally much longer.” Thousands are enlisting on the other side in New Orleans. Butler holds out inducements. To be sure, they are principally foreigners who want to escape starvation. Tennessee we may count on as gone, since we abandoned her at Corinth, Fort Pillow, and Memphis. A man must be sent there, or it is all gone now. “You call a spade by that name, it seems, and not an agricultural implement?” “They call Mars Robert ‘Old Spade Lee.’ He keeps them digging so.” “General Lee is a noble Virginian. Respect something in this world. Cæsar—call him Old Spade Cæsar? As a soldier, he was as much above suspicion, as he required his wife to be, as Cæsar’s wife, you know. If I remember Cæsar’s Commentaries, he owns up to a lot of entrenching. You let Mars Robert alone. He knows what he is about.” “Tell us of the women folk at New Orleans; how did they take the fall of the city?” “They are an excitable race,” the man from that city said. As my informant was standing on the levee a daintily dressed lady picked her way, parasol in hand, toward him. She accosted him with great politeness, and her face was as placid and unmoved as in antebellum days. Her first question was: “Will you be so kind as to tell me what is the last general order?” “No order that I know of, madam; General Disorder prevails now.” “Ah! I see; and why are those persons flying and yelling so noisily and racing in the streets in that unseemly way?” “They are looking for a shell to burst over their heads at any moment.” “Ah!” Then, with a courtesy of dignity and grace, she waved her parasol and departed, but stopped to arrange that parasol at a proper angle to protect her face from the sun. There was no vulgar haste in her movements. She tripped away as gracefully as she came. My informant had failed to discompose her by his fearful revelations. That was the one self-possessed soul then in New Orleans. Another woman drew near, so overheated and out of breath, she had barely time to say she had run miles of squares in her crazy terror and bewilderment, when a sudden shower came up. In a second she was cool and calm. She forgot all the questions she came to ask. “My bonnet, I must save it at any sacrifice,” she said, and so turned her dress over her head, and went off, forgetting her country’s trouble and screaming for a cab. Went to see Mrs. Burroughs at the old de Saussure house. She has such a sweet face, such soft, kind, beautiful, dark-gray eyes. Such eyes are a poem. No wonder she had a long love-story. We sat in the piazza at twelve o’clock of a June day, the glorious Southern sun shining its very hottest. But we were in a dense shade—magnolias in full bloom, ivy, vines of I know not what, and roses in profusion closed us in. It was a living wall of everything beautiful and sweet. In all this flower-garden of a Columbia, that is the most delicious corner I have been in yet. Got from the Prestons’ French library, Fanny, with a brilliant preface by Jules Janier. Now, then, I have come to the worst. There can be no worse book than Fanny. The lover is jealous of the husband. The woman is for the polyandry rule of life. She cheats both and refuses to break with either. But to criticize it one must be as shameless as the book itself. Of course, it is clever to the last degree, or it would be kicked into the gutter. It is not nastier or coarser than Mrs. Stowe, but then it is not written in the interests of philanthropy. We had an unexpected dinner-party to-day. First, Wade Hampton came and his wife. Then Mr. and Mrs. Rose. I remember that the late Colonel Hampton once said to me, a thing I thought odd at the time, “Mrs. James Rose” (and I forget now who was the other) “are the only two people on this side of the water who know how to give a state dinner.” Mr. and Mrs. James Rose: if anybody wishes to describe old Carolina at its best, let them try their hands at painting these two people. Wade Hampton still limps a little, but he is rapidly recovering. Here is what he said, and he has fought so well that he is listened to: “If we mean to play at war, as we play a game of chess, West Point tactics prevailing, we are sure to lose the game. They have every advantage. They can lose pawns ad infinitum, to the end of time and never feel it. We will be throwing away all that we had hoped so much from—Southern hot-headed dash, reckless gallantry, spirit of adventure, readiness to lead forlorn hopes.” Mrs. Rose is Miss Sarah Parker’s aunt. Somehow it came out when I was not in the room, but those girls tell me everything. It seems Miss Sarah said: “The reason I can not bear Mrs. Chesnut is that she laughs at everything and at everybody.” If she saw me now she would give me credit for some pretty hearty crying as well as laughing. It was a mortifying thing to hear about one’s self, all the same. General Preston came in and announced that Mr. Chesnut was in town. He had just seen Mr. Alfred Huger, who came up on the Charleston train with him. Then Mrs. McCord came and offered to take me back to Mrs. McMahan’s to look him up. I found my room locked up. Lawrence said his master had gone to look for me at the Prestons’. Mrs. McCord proposed we should further seek for my errant husband. At the door, we met Governor Pickens, who showed us telegrams from the President of the most important nature. The Governor added, “And I have one from Jeems Chesnut, but I hear he has followed it so closely, coming on its heels, as it were, that I need not show you that one.” “You don’t look interested at the sound of your husband’s name?” said he. “Is that his name?” asked I. “I supposed it was James.” “My advice to you is to find him, for Mrs. Pickens says he was last seen in the company of two very handsome women, and now you may call him any name you please.” We soon met. The two beautiful dames Governor Pickens threw in my teeth were some ladies from Rafton Creek, almost neighbors, who live near Camden. By way of pleasant remark to Wade Hampton: “Oh, General! The next battle will give you a chance to be major-general.” “I was very foolish to give up my Legion,” he answered gloomily. “Promotion don’t really annoy many people.” Mary Gibson says her father writes to them, that they may go back. He thinks now that the Confederates can hold Richmond. Gloria in excelsis! Another personal defeat. Little Kate said: “Oh, Cousin Mary, why don’t you cultivate heart? They say at Kirkwood that you had better let your brains alone a while and cultivate heart.” She had evidently caught up a phrase and repeated it again and again for my benefit. So that is the way they talk of me! The only good of loving any one with your whole heart is to give that person the power to hurt you.