A DIARY FROM
DIXIE

MRS. JAMES CHESNUT, JR.

From a Portrait in Oil.

A DIARY FROM
DIXIE, as written by

MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT, wife of James
Chesnut, Jr., United States Senator from South
Carolina, 1859-1861, and afterward an Aide
to Jefferson Davis and a Brigadier-General
in the Confederate Army

Edited by
Isabella D. Martin and
Myrta Lockett
Avary

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1905, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published March, 1905

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION
THE AUTHOR AND HER BOOK

In Mrs. Chesnut’s Diary are vivid pictures of the social life that went on uninterruptedly in the midst of war; of the economic conditions that resulted from blockaded ports; of the manner in which the spirits of the people rose and fell with each victory or defeat, and of the momentous events that took place in Charleston, Montgomery, and Richmond. But the Diary has an importance quite apart from the interest that lies in these pictures.

Mrs. Chesnut was close to forty years of age when the war began, and thus had lived through the most stirring scenes in the controversies that led to it. In this Diary, as perhaps nowhere else in the literature of the war, will be found the Southern spirit of that time expressed in words which are not alone charming as literature, but genuinely human in their spontaneousness, their delightfully unconscious frankness. Her words are the farthest possible removed from anything deliberate, academic, or purely intellectual. They ring so true that they start echoes. The most uncompromising Northern heart can scarcely fail to be moved by their abounding sincerity, surcharged though it be with that old Southern fire which overwhelmed the army of McDowell at Bull Run.

In making more clear the unyielding tenacity of the South and the stern conditions in which the war was prosecuted, the Diary has further importance. At the beginning there was no Southern leader, in so far as we can gather from Mrs. Chesnut’s reports of her talks with them, who had any hope that the South would win in the end, provided the North should be able to enlist her full resources. The result, however, was that the South struck something like terror to many hearts, and raised serious expectations that two great European powers would recognize her independence. The South fought as long as she had any soldiers left who were capable of fighting, and at last “robbed the cradle and the grave.” Nothing then remained except to “wait for another generation to grow up.” The North, so far as her stock of men of fighting age was concerned, had done scarcely more than make a beginning, while the South was virtually exhausted when the war was half over.

Unlike the South, the North was never reduced to extremities which led the wives of Cabinet officers and commanding generals to gather in Washington hotels and private drawing-rooms, in order to knit heavy socks for soldiers whose feet otherwise would go bare: scenes like these were common in Richmond, and Mrs. Chesnut often made one of the company. Nor were gently nurtured women of the North forced to wear coarse and ill-fitting shoes, such as negro cobblers made, the alternative being to dispense with shoes altogether. Gold might rise in the North to 2.80, but there came a time in the South when a thousand dollars in paper money were needed to buy a kitchen utensil, which before the war could have been bought for less than one dollar in gold. Long before the conflict ended it was a common remark in the South that, “in going to market, you take your money in your basket, and bring your purchases home in your pocket.”

In the North the counterpart to these facts were such items as butter at 50 cents a pound and flour at $12 a barrel. People in the North actually thrived on high prices. Villages and small towns, as well as large cities, had their “bloated bondholders” in plenty, while farmers everywhere were able to clear their lands of mortgages and put money in the bank besides. Planters in the South, meanwhile, were borrowing money to support the negroes in idleness at home, while they themselves were fighting at the front. Old Colonel Chesnut, the author’s father-in-law, in April, 1862, estimated that he had already lost half a million in bank stock and railroad bonds. When the war closed, he had borrowed such large sums himself and had such large sums due to him from others, that he saw no likelihood of the obligations on either side ever being discharged.

Mrs. Chesnut wrote her Diary from day to day, as the mood or an occasion prompted her to do so. The fortunes of war changed the place of her abode almost as frequently as the seasons changed, but wherever she might be the Diary was continued. She began to write in Charleston when the Convention was passing the Ordinance of Secession. Thence she went to Montgomery, Ala., where the Confederacy was organized and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as its President. She went to receptions where, sitting aside on sofas with Davis, Stephens, Toombs, Cobb, or Hunter, she talked of the probable outcome of the war, should war come, setting down in her Diary what she heard from others and all that she thought herself. Returning to Charleston, where her husband, in a small boat, conveyed to Major Anderson the ultimatum of the Governor of South Carolina, she saw from a housetop the first act of war committed in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. During the ensuing four years, Mrs. Chesnut’s time was mainly passed between Columbia and Richmond. For shorter periods she was at the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs in Virginia, Flat Rock in North Carolina, Portland in Alabama (the home of her mother), Camden and Chester in South Carolina, and Lincolnton in North Carolina.

In all these places Mrs. Chesnut was in close touch with men and women who were in the forefront of the social, military, and political life of the South. Those who live in her pages make up indeed a catalogue of the heroes of the Confederacy—President Jefferson Davis, Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, General Robert E. Lee, General “Stonewall” Jackson, General Joseph E. Johnston, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, General Wade Hampton, General Joseph B. Kershaw, General John B. Hood, General John S. Preston, General Robert Toombs, R. M. T. Hunter, Judge Louis T. Wigfall, and so many others that one almost hears the roll-call. That this statement is not exaggerated may be judged from a glance at the index, which has been prepared with a view to the inclusion of all important names mentioned in the text.

As her Diary constantly shows, Mrs. Chesnut was a woman of society in the best sense. She had love of companionship, native wit, an acute mind, knowledge of books, and a searching insight into the motives of men and women. She was also a notable housewife, much given to hospitality; and her heart was of the warmest and tenderest, as those who knew her well bore witness.

Mary Boykin Miller, born March 31, 1823, was the daughter of Stephen Decatur Miller, a man of distinction in the public affairs of South Carolina. Mr. Miller was elected to Congress in 1817, became Governor in 1828, and was chosen United States Senator in 1830. He was a strong supporter of the Nullification movement. In 1833, owing to ill-health, he resigned his seat in the Senate and not long afterward removed to Mississippi, where he engaged in cotton planting until his death, in March, 1838.

His daughter, Mary, was married to James Chesnut, Jr., April 23, 1840, when seventeen years of age. Thenceforth her home was mainly at Mulberry, near Camden, one of several plantations owned by her father-in-law. Of the domestic life at Mulberry a pleasing picture has come down to us, as preserved in a time-worn scrap-book and written some years before the war:

“In our drive of about three miles to Mulberry, we were struck with the wealth of forest trees along our way for which the environs of Camden are noted. Here is a bridge completely canopied with overarching branches; and, for the remainder of our journey, we pass through an aromatic avenue of crab-trees with the Yellow Jessamine and the Cherokee rose, entwining every shrub, post, and pillar within reach and lending an almost tropical luxuriance and sweetness to the way.

“But here is the house—a brick building, capacious and massive, a house that is a home for a large family, one of the homesteads of the olden times, where home comforts and blessings cluster, sacred alike for its joys and its sorrows. Birthdays, wedding-days, ‘Merry Christmases,’ departures for school and college, and home returnings have enriched this abode with the treasures of life.

“A warm welcome greets us as we enter. The furniture within is in keeping with things without; nothing is tawdry; there is no gingerbread gilding; all is handsome and substantial. In the ‘old arm-chair’ sits the venerable mother. The father is on his usual ride about the plantation; but will be back presently. A lovely old age is this mother’s, calm and serene, as the soft mellow days of our own gentle autumn. She came from the North to the South many years ago, a fair young bride.

“The Old Colonel enters. He bears himself erect, walks at a brisk gait, and needs no spectacles, yet he is over eighty. He is a typical Southern planter. From the beginning he has been one of the most intelligent patrons of the Wateree Mission to the Negroes, taking a personal interest in them, attending the mission church and worshiping with his own people. May his children see to it that this holy charity is continued to their servants forever!”

James Chesnut, Jr., was the son and heir of Colonel James Chesnut, whose wife was Mary Coxe, of Philadelphia. Mary Coxe’s sister married Horace Binney, the eminent Philadelphia lawyer. James Chesnut, Jr., was born in 1815 and graduated from Princeton. For fourteen years he served in the legislature of South Carolina, and in January, 1859, was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. In November, 1860, when South Carolina was about to secede, he resigned from the Senate and thenceforth was active in the Southern cause, first as an aide to General Beauregard, then as an aide to President Davis, and finally as a brigadier-general of reserves in command of the coast of South Carolina.

General Chesnut was active in public life in South Carolina after the war, in so far as the circumstances of Reconstruction permitted, and in 1868 was a delegate from that State to the National convention which nominated Horatio Seymour for President. His death occurred at Sarsfield, February 1, 1885. One who knew him well wrote:

“While papers were teeming with tribute to this knightly gentleman, whose services to his State were part of her history in her prime—tribute that did him no more than justice, in recounting his public virtues—I thought there was another phase of his character which the world did not know and the press did not chronicle—that which showed his beautiful kindness and his courtesy to his own household, and especially to his dependents.

“Among all the preachers of the South Carolina Conference, a few remained of those who ever counted it as one of the highest honors conferred upon them by their Lord that it was permitted to them to preach the gospel to the slaves of the Southern plantations. Some of these retained kind recollections of the cordial hospitality shown the plantation missionary at Mulberry and Sandy Hill, and of the care taken at these places that the plantation chapel should be neat and comfortable, and that the slaves should have their spiritual as well as their bodily needs supplied.

“To these it was no matter of surprise to learn that at his death General Chesnut, statesman and soldier, was surrounded by faithful friends, born in slavery on his own plantation, and that the last prayer he ever heard came from the lips of a negro man, old Scipio, his father’s body-servant; and that he was borne to his grave amid the tears and lamentations of those whom no Emancipation Proclamation could sever from him, and who cried aloud: ‘O my master! my master! he was so good to me! He was all to us! We have lost our best friend!’

“Mrs. Chesnut’s anguish when her husband died, is not to be forgotten; the ‘bitter cry’ never quite spent itself, though she was brave and bright to the end. Her friends were near in that supreme moment at Sarsfield, when, on November 22, 1886, her own heart ceased to beat. Her servants had been true to her; no blandishments of freedom had drawn Ellen or Molly away from ‘Miss Mary.’ Mrs. Chesnut lies buried in the family cemetery at Knight’s Hill, where also sleep her husband and many other members of the Chesnut family.”

The Chesnuts settled in South Carolina at the close of the war with France, but lived originally on the frontier of Virginia. Their Virginia home had been invaded by French and Indians, and in an expedition to Fort Duquesne the father was killed. John Chesnut removed from Virginia to South Carolina soon afterward and served in the Revolution as a captain. His son James, the “Old Colonel,” was educated at Princeton, took an active part in public affairs in South Carolina, and prospered greatly as a planter. He survived until after the War, being a nonogenarian when the conflict closed. In a charming sketch of him in one of the closing pages of this Diary, occurs the following passage: “Colonel Chesnut, now ninety-three, blind and deaf, is apparently as strong as ever, and certainly as resolute of will. Partly patriarch, partly grand seigneur, this old man is of a species that we shall see no more; the last of a race of lordly planters who ruled this Southern world, but now a splendid wreck.”

Three miles from Camden still stands Mulberry. During one of the raids committed in the neighborhood by Sherman’s men early in 1865, the house escaped destruction almost as if by accident. The picture of it in this book is from a recent photograph. A change has indeed come over it, since the days when the household servants and dependents numbered between sixty and seventy, and its owner was lord of a thousand slaves. After the war, Mulberry ceased to be the author’s home, she and General Chesnut building for themselves another to which they gave the name of Sarsfield. Sarsfield, of which an illustration is given, still stands in the pine lands not far from Mulberry. Bloomsbury, another of old Colonel Chesnut’s plantation dwellings, survived the march of Sherman, and is now the home of David R. Williams, Jr., and Ellen Manning, his wife, whose children roam its halls, as grandchildren of the author’s sister Kate. Other Chesnut plantations were Cool Spring, Knight’s Hill, The Hermitage, and Sandy Hill.

The Diary, as it now exists in forty-eight thin volumes, of the small quarto size, is entirely in Mrs. Chesnut’s handwriting. She originally wrote it on what was known as “Confederate paper,” but transcribed it afterward. When Richmond was threatened, or when Sherman was coming, she buried it or in some other way secreted it from the enemy. On occasion it shared its hiding-place with family silver, or with a drinking-cup which had been presented to General Hood by the ladies of Richmond. Mrs. Chesnut was fond of inserting on blank pages of the Diary current newspaper accounts of campaigns and battles, or lists of killed and wounded. One item of this kind, a newspaper “extra,” issued in Chester, S. C., and announcing the assassination of Lincoln, is reproduced in this volume.

Mrs. Chesnut, by oral and written bequest, gave the Diary to her friend whose name leads the signatures to this Introduction. In the Diary, here and there, Mrs. Chesnut’s expectation that the work would some day be printed is disclosed, but at the time of her death it did not seem wise to undertake publication for a considerable period. Yellow with age as the pages now are, the only harm that has come to them in the passing of many years, is that a few corners have been broken and frayed, as shown in one of the pages here reproduced in facsimile.

In the summer of 1904, the woman whose office it has been to assist in preparing the Diary for the press, went South to collect material for another work to follow her A Virginia Girl in the Civil War. Her investigations led her to Columbia, where, while the guest of Miss Martin, she learned of the Diary’s existence. Soon afterward an arrangement was made with her publishers under which the Diary’s owner and herself agreed to condense and revise the manuscript for publication. The Diary was found to be of too great length for reproduction in full, parts of it being of personal or local interest rather than general. The editing of the book called also for the insertion of a considerable number of foot-notes, in order that persons named, or events referred to, might be the better understood by the present generation.

Mrs. Chesnut was a conspicuous example of the well-born and high-bred woman, who, with active sympathy and unremitting courage, supported the Southern cause. Born and reared when Nullification was in the ascendent, and acquiring an education which developed and refined her natural literary gifts, she found in the throes of a great conflict at arms the impulse which wrought into vital expression in words her steadfast loyalty to the waning fortunes of a political faith, which, in South Carolina, had become a religion.

Many men have produced narratives of the war between the States, and a few women have written notable chronicles of it; but none has given to the world a record more radiant than hers, or one more passionately sincere. Every line in this Diary throbs with the tumult of deep spiritual passion, and bespeaks the luminous mind, the unconquered soul, of the woman who wrote it.

Isabella D. Martin,
Myrta Lockett Avary.

A PAGE OF THE DIARY IN FACSIMILE.

I
CHARLESTON, S. C.
November 8, 1860-December 27, 1860

Charleston, S. C., November 8, 1860.—Yesterday on the train, just before we reached Fernandina, a woman called out: “That settles the hash.” Tanny touched me on the shoulder and said: “Lincoln’s elected.” “How do you know?” “The man over there has a telegram.”

The excitement was very great. Everybody was talking at the same time. One, a little more moved than the others, stood up and said despondently: “The die is cast; no more vain regrets; sad forebodings are useless; the stake is life or death.” “Did you ever!” was the prevailing exclamation, and some one cried out: “Now that the black radical Republicans have the power I suppose they will Brown[1] us all.” No doubt of it.

I have always kept a journal after a fashion of my own, with dates and a line of poetry or prose, mere quotations, which I understood and no one else, and I have kept letters and extracts from the papers. From to-day forward I will tell the story in my own way. I now wish I had a chronicle of the two delightful and eventful years that have just passed. Those delights have fled and one’s breath is taken away to think what events have since crowded in. Like the woman’s record in her journal, we have had “earthquakes, as usual”—daily shocks.

At Fernandina I saw young men running up a Palmetto flag, and shouting a little prematurely, “South Carolina has seceded!” I was overjoyed to find Florida so sympathetic, but Tanny told me the young men were Gadsdens, Porchers, and Gourdins,[2] names as inevitably South Carolinian as Moses and Lazarus are Jewish.

From my window I can hear a grand and mighty flow of eloquence. Bartow and a delegation from Savannah are having a supper given to them in the dining-room below. The noise of the speaking and cheering is pretty hard on a tired traveler. Suddenly I found myself listening with pleasure. Voice, tone, temper, sentiment, language, all were perfect. I sent Tanny to see who it was that spoke. He came back saying, “Mr. Alfred Huger, the old postmaster.” He may not have been the wisest or wittiest man there, but he certainly made the best after-supper speech.

December 10th.—We have been up to the Mulberry Plantation with Colonel Colcock and Judge Magrath, who were sent to Columbia by their fellow-citizens in the low country, to hasten the slow movement of the wisdom assembled in the State Capital. Their message was, they said: “Go ahead, dissolve the Union, and be done with it, or it will be worse for you. The fire in the rear is hottest.” And yet people talk of the politicians leading! Everywhere that I have been people have been complaining bitterly of slow and lukewarm public leaders.

Judge Magrath is a local celebrity, who has been stretched across the street in effigy, showing him tearing off his robes of office. The painting is in vivid colors, the canvas huge, and the rope hardly discernible. He is depicted with a countenance flaming with contending emotions—rage, disgust, and disdain. We agreed that the time had now come. We had talked so much heretofore. Let the fire-eaters have it out. Massachusetts and South Carolina are always coming up before the footlights.

As a woman, of course, it is easy for me to be brave under the skins of other people; so I said: “Fight it out. Bluffton[3] has brought on a fever that only bloodletting will cure.” My companions breathed fire and fury, but I dare say they were amusing themselves with my dismay, for, talk as I would, that I could not hide.

At Kingsville we encountered James Chesnut, fresh from Columbia, where he had resigned his seat in the United States Senate the day before. Said some one spitefully, “Mrs. Chesnut does not look at all resigned.” For once in her life, Mrs. Chesnut held her tongue: she was dumb. In the high-flown style which of late seems to have gotten into the very air, she was offering up her life to the cause.

We have had a brief pause. The men who are all, like Pickens,[4] “insensible to fear,” are very sensible in case of small-pox. There being now an epidemic of small-pox in Columbia, they have adjourned to Charleston. In Camden we were busy and frantic with excitement, drilling, marching, arming, and wearing high blue cockades. Red sashes, guns, and swords were ordinary fireside accompaniments. So wild were we, I saw at a grand parade of the home-guard a woman, the wife of a man who says he is a secessionist per se, driving about to see the drilling of this new company, although her father was buried the day before.

Edward J. Pringle writes me from San Francisco on November 30th: “I see that Mr. Chesnut has resigned and that South Carolina is hastening into a Convention, perhaps to secession. Mr. Chesnut is probably to be President of the Convention. I see all of the leaders in the State are in favor of secession. But I confess I hope the black Republicans will take the alarm and submit some treaty of peace that will enable us now and forever to settle the question, and save our generation from the prostration of business and the decay of prosperity that must come both to the North and South from a disruption of the Union. However, I won’t speculate. Before this reaches you, South Carolina may be off on her own hook—a separate republic.”

December 21st.—Mrs. Charles Lowndes was sitting with us to-day, when Mrs. Kirkland brought in a copy of the Secession Ordinance. I wonder if my face grew as white as hers. She said after a moment: “God help us. As our day, so shall our strength be.” How grateful we were for this pious ejaculation of hers! They say I had better take my last look at this beautiful place, Combahee. It is on the coast, open to gunboats.

We mean business this time, because of this convocation of the notables, this convention.[5] In it are all our wisest and best. They really have tried to send the ablest men, the good men and true. South Carolina was never more splendidly represented. Patriotism aside, it makes society delightful. One need not regret having left Washington.

THE OLD BAPTIST CHURCH IN COLUMBIA, S. C.

Here First Met the South Carolina Secession Convention.

December 27th.—Mrs. Gidiere came in quietly from her marketing to-day, and in her neat, incisive manner exploded this bombshell: “Major Anderson[6] has moved into Fort Sumter, while Governor Pickens slept serenely.” The row is fast and furious now. State after State is taking its forts and fortresses. They say if we had been left out in the cold alone, we might have sulked a while, but back we would have had to go, and would merely have fretted and fumed and quarreled among ourselves. We needed a little wholesome neglect. Anderson has blocked that game, but now our sister States have joined us, and we are strong. I give the condensed essence of the table-talk: “Anderson has united the cotton States. Now for Virginia!” “Anderson has opened the ball.” Those who want a row are in high glee. Those who dread it are glum and thoughtful enough.

A letter from Susan Rutledge: “Captain Humphrey folded the United States Army flag just before dinner-time. Ours was run up in its place. You know the Arsenal is in sight. What is the next move? I pray God to guide us. We stand in need of wise counsel; something more than courage. The talk is: ‘Fort Sumter must be taken; and it is one of the strongest forts.’ How in the name of sense are they to manage? I shudder to think of rash moves.”

II
MONTGOMERY, ALA.
February 19, 1861-March 11, 1861

Montgomery, Ala., February 19, 1861.—The brand-new Confederacy is making or remodeling its Constitution. Everybody wants Mr. Davis to be General-in-Chief or President. Keitt and Boyce and a party preferred Howell Cobb[7] for President. And the fire-eaters per se wanted Barnwell Rhett.

My brother Stephen brought the officers of the “Montgomery Blues” to dinner. “Very soiled Blues,” they said, apologizing for their rough condition. Poor fellows! they had been a month before Fort Pickens and not allowed to attack it. They said Colonel Chase built it, and so were sure it was impregnable. Colonel Lomax telegraphed to Governor Moore[8] if he might try to take it, “Chase or no Chase,” and got for his answer, “No.” “And now,” say the Blues, “we have worked like niggers, and when the fun and fighting begin, they send us home and put regulars there.” They have an immense amount of powder. The wheel of the car in which it was carried took fire. There was an escape for you! We are packing a hamper of eatables for them.

I am despondent once more. If I thought them in earnest because at first they put their best in front, what now? We have to meet tremendous odds by pluck, activity, zeal, dash, endurance of the toughest, military instinct. We have had to choose born leaders of men who could attract love and secure trust. Everywhere political intrigue is as rife as in Washington.

Cecil’s saying of Sir Walter Raleigh that he could “toil terribly” was an electric touch. Above all, let the men who are to save South Carolina be young and vigorous. While I was reflecting on what kind of men we ought to choose, I fell on Clarendon, and it was easy to construct my man out of his portraits. What has been may be again, so the men need not be purely ideal types.

Mr. Toombs[9] told us a story of General Scott and himself. He said he was dining in Washington with Scott, who seasoned every dish and every glass of wine with the eternal refrain, “Save the Union; the Union must be preserved.” Toombs remarked that he knew why the Union was so dear to the General, and illustrated his point by a steamboat anecdote, an explosion, of course. While the passengers were struggling in the water a woman ran up and down the bank crying, “Oh, save the red-headed man!” The red-headed man was saved, and his preserver, after landing him noticed with surprise how little interest in him the woman who had made such moving appeals seemed to feel. He asked her, “Why did you make that pathetic outcry?” She answered, “Oh, he owes me ten thousand dollars.” “Now, General,” said Toombs, “the Union owes you seventeen thousand dollars a year!” I can imagine the scorn on old Scott’s face.

February 25th.—Find every one working very hard here. As I dozed on the sofa last night, could hear the scratch, scratch of my husband’s pen as he wrote at the table until midnight.

After church to-day, Captain Ingraham called. He left me so uncomfortable. He dared to express regrets that he had to leave the United States Navy. He had been stationed in the Mediterranean, where he liked to be, and expected to be these two years, and to take those lovely daughters of his to Florence. Then came Abraham Lincoln, and rampant black Republicanism, and he must lay down his life for South Carolina. He, however, does not make any moan. He says we lack everything necessary in naval gear to retake Fort Sumter. Of course, he only expects the navy to take it. He is a fish out of water here. He is one of the finest sea-captains; so I suppose they will soon give him a ship and send him back to his own element.

At dinner Judge —— was loudly abusive of Congress. He said: “They have trampled the Constitution underfoot. They have provided President Davis with a house.” He was disgusted with the folly of parading the President at the inauguration in a coach drawn by four white horses. Then some one said Mrs. Fitzpatrick was the only lady who sat with the Congress. After the inaugural she poked Jeff Davis in the back with her parasol that he might turn and speak to her. “I am sure that was democratic enough,” said some one.

Governor Moore came in with the latest news—a telegram from Governor Pickens to the President, “that a war steamer is lying off the Charleston bar laden with reenforcements for Fort Sumter, and what must we do?” Answer: “Use your own discretion!” There is faith for you, after all is said and done. It is believed there is still some discretion left in South Carolina fit for use.

Everybody who comes here wants an office, and the many who, of course, are disappointed raise a cry of corruption against the few who are successful. I thought we had left all that in Washington. Nobody is willing to be out of sight, and all will take office.

“Constitution” Browne says he is going to Washington for twenty-four hours. I mean to send by him to Mary Garnett for a bonnet ribbon. If they take him up as a traitor, he may cause a civil war. War is now our dread. Mr. Chesnut told him not to make himself a bone of contention.

Everybody means to go into the army. If Sumter is attacked, then Jeff Davis’s troubles will begin. The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us—anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees. All right, but every man objects to any despot but himself.

Mr. Chesnut, in high spirits, dines to-day with the Louisiana delegation. Breakfasted with “Constitution” Browne, who is appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and so does not go to Washington. There was at table the man who advertised for a wife, with the wife so obtained. She was not pretty. We dine at Mr. Pollard’s and go to a ball afterward at Judge Bibb’s. The New York Herald says Lincoln stood before Washington’s picture at his inauguration, which was taken by the country as a good sign. We are always frantic for a good sign. Let us pray that a Cæsar or a Napoleon may be sent us. That would be our best sign of success. But they still say, “No war.” Peace let it be, kind Heaven!

Dr. De Leon called, fresh from Washington, and says General Scott is using all his power and influence to prevent officers from the South resigning their commissions, among other things promising that they shall never be sent against us in case of war. Captain Ingraham, in his short, curt way, said: “That will never do. If they take their government’s pay they must do its fighting.”

A brilliant dinner at the Pollards’s. Mr. Barnwell[10] took me down. Came home and found the Judge and Governor Moore waiting to go with me to the Bibbs’s. And they say it is dull in Montgomery! Clayton, fresh from Washington, was at the party and told us “there was to be peace.”

February 28th.—In the drawing-room a literary lady began a violent attack upon this mischief-making South Carolina. She told me she was a successful writer in the magazines of the day, but when I found she used “incredible” for “incredulous,” I said not a word in defense of my native land. I left her “incredible.” Another person came in, while she was pouring upon me her home troubles, and asked if she did not know I was a Carolinian. Then she gracefully reversed her engine, and took the other tack, sounding our praise, but I left her incredible and I remained incredulous, too.

Brewster says the war specks are growing in size. Nobody at the North, or in Virginia, believes we are in earnest. They think we are sulking and that Jeff Davis and Stephens[11] are getting up a very pretty little comedy. The Virginia delegates were insulted at the peace conference; Brewster said, “kicked out.”

The Judge thought Jefferson Davis rude to him when the latter was Secretary of War. Mr. Chesnut persuaded the Judge to forego his private wrong for the public good, and so he voted for him, but now his old grudge has come back with an increased venomousness. What a pity to bring the spites of the old Union into this new one! It seems to me already men are willing to risk an injury to our cause, if they may in so doing hurt Jeff Davis.

March 1st.—Dined to-day with Mr. Hill[12] from Georgia, and his wife. After he left us she told me he was the celebrated individual who, for Christian scruples, refused to fight a duel with Stephens.[13] She seemed very proud of him for his conduct in the affair. Ignoramus that I am, I had not heard of it. I am having all kinds of experiences. Drove to-day with a lady who fervently wished her husband would go down to Pensacola and be shot. I was dumb with amazement, of course. Telling my story to one who knew the parties, was informed, “Don’t you know he beats her?” So I have seen a man “who lifts his hand against a woman in aught save kindness.”

Brewster says Lincoln passed through Baltimore disguised, and at night, and that he did well, for just now Baltimore is dangerous ground. He says that he hears from all quarters that the vulgarity of Lincoln, his wife, and his son is beyond credence, a thing you must see before you can believe it. Senator Stephen A. Douglas told Mr. Chesnut that “Lincoln is awfully clever, and that he had found him a heavy handful.”

Went to pay my respects to Mrs. Jefferson Davis. She met me with open arms. We did not allude to anything by which we are surrounded. We eschewed politics and our changed relations.

March 3d.—Everybody in fine spirits in my world. They have one and all spoken in the Congress[14] to their own perfect satisfaction. To my amazement the Judge took me aside, and, after delivering a panegyric upon himself (but here, later, comes in the amazement), he praised my husband to the skies, and said he was the fittest man of all for a foreign mission. Aye; and the farther away they send us from this Congress the better I will like it.

Saw Jere Clemens and Nick Davis, social curiosities. They are Anti-Secession leaders; then George Sanders and George Deas. The Georges are of opinion that it is folly to try to take back Fort Sumter from Anderson and the United States; that is, before we are ready. They saw in Charleston the devoted band prepared for the sacrifice; I mean, ready to run their heads against a stone wall. Dare devils they are. They have dash and courage enough, but science only could take that fort. They shook their heads.

March 4th.—The Washington Congress has passed peace measures. Glory be to God (as my Irish Margaret used to preface every remark, both great and small).

At last, according to his wish, I was able to introduce Mr. Hill, of Georgia, to Mr. Mallory,[15] and also Governor Moore and Brewster, the latter the only man without a title of some sort that I know in this democratic subdivided republic.

I have seen a negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd. I was walking and felt faint, seasick. The creature looked so like my good little Nancy, a bright mulatto with a pleasant face. She was magnificently gotten up in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all, sometimes ogling the bidders, sometimes looking quiet, coy, and modest, but her mouth never relaxed from its expanded grin of excitement. I dare say the poor thing knew who would buy her. I sat down on a stool in a shop and disciplined my wild thoughts. I tried it Sterne fashion. You know how women sell themselves and are sold in marriage from queens downward, eh? You know what the Bible says about slavery and marriage; poor women! poor slaves! Sterne, with his starling—what did he know? He only thought, he did not feel.

In Evan Harrington I read: “Like a true English female, she believed in her own inflexible virtue, but never trusted her husband out of sight.”

The New York Herald says: “Lincoln’s carriage is not bomb-proof; so he does not drive out.” Two flags and a bundle of sticks have been sent him as gentle reminders. The sticks are to break our heads with. The English are gushingly unhappy as to our family quarrel. Magnanimous of them, for it is their opportunity.

March 5th.—We stood on the balcony to see our Confederate flag go up. Roars of cannon, etc., etc. Miss Sanders complained (so said Captain Ingraham) of the deadness of the mob. “It was utterly spiritless,” she said; “no cheering, or so little, and no enthusiasm.” Captain Ingraham suggested that gentlemen “are apt to be quiet,” and this was “a thoughtful crowd, the true mob element with us just now is hoeing corn.” And yet! It is uncomfortable that the idea has gone abroad that we have no joy, no pride, in this thing. The band was playing “Massa in the cold, cold ground.” Miss Tyler, daughter of the former President of the United States, ran up the flag.

Captain Ingraham pulled out of his pocket some verses sent to him by a Boston girl. They were well rhymed and amounted to this: she held a rope ready to hang him, though she shed tears when she remembered his heroic rescue of Koszta. Koszta, the rebel! She calls us rebels, too. So it depends upon whom one rebels against—whether to save or not shall be heroic.

I must read Lincoln’s inaugural. Oh, “comes he in peace, or comes he in war, or to tread but one measure as Young Lochinvar?” Lincoln’s aim is to seduce the border States.

The people, the natives, I mean, are astounded that I calmly affirm, in all truth and candor, that if there were awful things in society in Washington, I did not see or hear of them. One must have been hard to please who did not like the people I knew in Washington.

Mr. Chesnut has gone with a list of names to the President—de Treville, Kershaw, Baker, and Robert Rutledge. They are taking a walk, I see. I hope there will be good places in the army for our list.

March 8th.—Judge Campbell,[16] of the United States Supreme Court, has resigned. Lord! how he must have hated to do it. How other men who are resigning high positions must hate to do it.

Now we may be sure the bridge is broken. And yet in the Alabama Convention they say Reconstructionists abound and are busy.

Met a distinguished gentleman that I knew when he was in more affluent circumstances. I was willing enough to speak to him, but when he saw me advancing for that purpose, to avoid me, he suddenly dodged around a corner—William, Mrs. de Saussure’s former coachman. I remember him on his box, driving a handsome pair of bays, dressed sumptuously in blue broadcloth and brass buttons; a stout, respectable, fine-looking, middle-aged mulatto. He was very high and mighty.

Night after night we used to meet him as fiddler-in-chief of all our parties. He sat in solemn dignity, making faces over his bow, and patting his foot with an emphasis that shook the floor. We gave him five dollars a night; that was his price. His mistress never refused to let him play for any party. He had stable-boys in abundance. He was far above any physical fear for his sleek and well-fed person. How majestically he scraped his foot as a sign that he was tuned up and ready to begin!

Now he is a shabby creature indeed. He must have felt his fallen fortunes when he met me—one who knew him in his prosperity. He ran away, this stately yellow gentleman, from wife and children, home and comfort. My Molly asked him “Why? Miss Liza was good to you, I know.” I wonder who owns him now; he looked forlorn.

Governor Moore brought in, to be presented to me, the President of the Alabama Convention. It seems I had known him before; he had danced with me at a dancing-school ball when I was in short frocks, with sash, flounces, and a wreath of roses. He was one of those clever boys of our neighborhood, in whom my father saw promise of better things, and so helped him in every way to rise, with books, counsel, sympathy. I was enjoying his conversation immensely, for he was praising my father[17] without stint, when the Judge came in, breathing fire and fury. Congress has incurred his displeasure. We are abusing one another as fiercely as ever we have abused Yankees. It is disheartening.

March 10th.—Mrs. Childs was here to-night (Mary Anderson, from Statesburg), with several children. She is lovely. Her hair is piled up on the top of her head oddly. Fashions from France still creep into Texas across Mexican borders. Mrs. Childs is fresh from Texas. Her husband is an artillery officer, or was. They will be glad to promote him here. Mrs. Childs had the sweetest Southern voice, absolute music. But then, she has all of the high spirit of those sweet-voiced Carolina women, too.

Then Mr. Browne came in with his fine English accent, so pleasant to the ear. He tells us that Washington society is not reconciled to the Yankee régime. Mrs. Lincoln means to economize. She at once informed the major-domo that they were poor and hoped to save twelve thousand dollars every year from their salary of twenty thousand. Mr. Browne said Mr. Buchanan’s farewell was far more imposing than Lincoln’s inauguration.

The people were so amusing, so full of Western stories. Dr. Boykin behaved strangely. All day he had been gaily driving about with us, and never was man in finer spirits. To-night, in this brilliant company, he sat dead still as if in a trance. Once, he waked somewhat—when a high public functionary came in with a present for me, a miniature gondola, “A perfect Venetian specimen,” he assured me again and again. In an undertone Dr. Boykin muttered: “That fellow has been drinking.” “Why do you think so?” “Because he has told you exactly the same thing four times.” Wonderful! Some of these great statesmen always tell me the same thing—and have been telling me the same thing ever since we came here.

A man came in and some one said in an undertone, “The age of chivalry is not past, O ye Americans!” “What do you mean?” “That man was once nominated by President Buchanan for a foreign mission, but some Senator stood up and read a paper printed by this man abusive of a woman, and signed by his name in full. After that the Senate would have none of him; his chance was gone forever.”

March 11th.—In full conclave to-night, the drawing-room crowded with Judges, Governors, Senators, Generals, Congressmen. They were exalting John C. Calhoun’s hospitality. He allowed everybody to stay all night who chose to stop at his house. An ill-mannered person, on one occasion, refused to attend family prayers. Mr. Calhoun said to the servant, “Saddle that man’s horse and let him go.” From the traveler Calhoun would take no excuse for the “Deity offended.” I believe in Mr. Calhoun’s hospitality, but not in his family prayers. Mr. Calhoun’s piety was of the most philosophical type, from all accounts.[18]

The latest news is counted good news; that is, the last man who left Washington tells us that Seward is in the ascendency. He is thought to be the friend of peace. The man did say, however, that “that serpent Seward is in the ascendency just now.”

Harriet Lane has eleven suitors. One is described as likely to win, or he would be likely to win, except that he is too heavily weighted. He has been married before and goes about with children and two mothers. There are limits beyond which! Two mothers-in-law!

Mr. Ledyard spoke to Mrs. Lincoln in behalf of a door-keeper who almost felt he had a vested right, having been there since Jackson’s time; but met with the same answer; she had brought her own girl and must economize. Mr. Ledyard thought the twenty thousand (and little enough it is) was given to the President of these United States to enable him to live in proper style, and to maintain an establishment of such dignity as befits the head of a great nation. It is an infamy to economize with the public money and to put it into one’s private purse. Mrs. Browne was walking with me when we were airing our indignation against Mrs. Lincoln and her shabby economy. The Herald says three only of the élite Washington families attended the Inauguration Ball.

The Judge has just come in and said: “Last night, after Dr. Boykin left on the cars, there came a telegram that his little daughter, Amanda, had died suddenly.” In some way he must have known it beforehand. He changed so suddenly yesterday, and seemed so careworn and unhappy. He believes in clairvoyance, magnetism, and all that. Certainly, there was some terrible foreboding of this kind on his part.

Tuesday.—Now this, they say, is positive: “Fort Sumter is to be released and we are to have no war.” After all, far too good to be true. Mr. Browne told us that, at one of the peace intervals (I mean intervals in the interest of peace), Lincoln flew through Baltimore, locked up in an express car. He wore a Scotch cap.

We went to the Congress. Governor Cobb, who presides over that august body, put James Chesnut in the chair, and came down to talk to us. He told us why the pay of Congressmen was fixed in secret session, and why the amount of it was never divulged—to prevent the lodging-house and hotel people from making their bills of a size to cover it all. “The bill would be sure to correspond with the pay,” he said.

In the hotel parlor we had a scene. Mrs. Scott was describing Lincoln, who is of the cleverest Yankee type. She said: “Awfully ugly, even grotesque in appearance, the kind who are always at the corner stores, sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar.” Here I interposed: “But Stephen A. Douglas said one day to Mr. Chesnut, ‘Lincoln is the hardest fellow to handle I have ever encountered yet.’” Mr. Scott is from California, and said Lincoln is “an utter American specimen, coarse, rough, and strong; a good-natured, kind creature; as pleasant-tempered as he is clever, and if this country can be joked and laughed out of its rights he is the kind-hearted fellow to do it. Now if there is a war and it pinches the Yankee pocket instead of filling it——”

Here a shrill voice came from the next room (which opened upon the one we were in by folding doors thrown wide open) and said: “Yankees are no more mean and stingy than you are. People at the North are just as good as people at the South.” The speaker advanced upon us in great wrath.

Mrs. Scott apologized and made some smooth, polite remark, though evidently much embarrassed. But the vinegar face and curly pate refused to receive any concessions, and replied: “That comes with a very bad grace after what you were saying,” and she harangued us loudly for several minutes. Some one in the other room giggled outright, but we were quiet as mice. Nobody wanted to hurt her feelings. She was one against so many. If I were at the North, I should expect them to belabor us, and should hold my tongue. We separated North from South because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate, a “separation à l’agréable,” as the French say it, and not have a horrid fight for divorce.

The poor exile had already been insulted, she said. She was playing “Yankee Doodle” on the piano before breakfast to soothe her wounded spirit, and the Judge came in and calmly requested her to “leave out the Yankee while she played the Doodle.” The Yankee end of it did not suit our climate, he said; was totally out of place and had got out of its latitude.

A man said aloud: “This war talk is nothing. It will soon blow over. Only a fuss gotten up by that Charleston clique.” Mr. Toombs asked him to show his passports, for a man who uses such language is a suspicious character.

III
CHARLESTON, S. C.
March 26, 1861-April 15, 1861

Charleston, S. C., March 26, 1861.—I have just come from Mulberry, where the snow was a foot deep—winter at last after months of apparently May or June weather. Even the climate, like everything else, is upside down. But after that den of dirt and horror, Montgomery Hall, how white the sheets looked, luxurious bed linen once more, delicious fresh cream with my coffee! I breakfasted in bed.

Dueling was rife in Camden. William M. Shannon challenged Leitner. Rochelle Blair was Shannon’s second and Artemus Goodwyn was Leitner’s. My husband was riding hard all day to stop the foolish people. Mr. Chesnut finally arranged the difficulty. There was a court of honor and no duel. Mr. Leitner had struck Mr. Shannon at a negro trial. That’s the way the row began. Everybody knows of it. We suggested that Judge Withers should arrest the belligerents. Dr. Boykin and Joe Kershaw[19] aided Mr. Chesnut to put an end to the useless risk of life.

John Chesnut is a pretty soft-hearted slave-owner. He had two negroes arrested for selling whisky to his people on his plantation, and buying stolen corn from them. The culprits in jail sent for him. He found them (this snowy weather) lying in the cold on a bare floor, and he thought that punishment enough; they having had weeks of it. But they were not satisfied to be allowed to evade justice and slip away. They begged of him (and got) five dollars to buy shoes to run away in. I said: “Why, this is flat compounding a felony.” And Johnny put his hands in the armholes of his waistcoat and stalked majestically before me, saying, “Woman, what do you know about law?”

Mrs. Reynolds stopped the carriage one day to tell me Kitty Boykin was to be married to Savage Heyward. He has only ten children already. These people take the old Hebrew pride in the number of children they have. This is the true colonizing spirit. There is no danger of crowding here and inhabitants are wanted. Old Colonel Chesnut[20] said one day: “Wife, you must feel that you have not been useless in your day and generation. You have now twenty-seven great-grandchildren.”

VIEW OF CHARLESTON DURING THE WAR.

From an Old Print.

Wednesday.—I have been mobbed by my own house servants. Some of them are at the plantation, some hired out at the Camden hotel, some are at Mulberry. They agreed to come in a body and beg me to stay at home to keep my own house once more, “as I ought not to have them scattered and distributed every which way.” I had not been a month in Camden since 1858. So a house there would be for their benefit solely, not mine. I asked my cook if she lacked anything on the plantation at the Hermitage. “Lack anything?” she said, “I lack everything. What are corn-meal, bacon, milk, and molasses? Would that be all you wanted? Ain’t I been living and eating exactly as you does all these years? When I cook for you, didn’t I have some of all? Dere, now!” Then she doubled herself up laughing. They all shouted, “Missis, we is crazy for you to stay home.”

Armsted, my butler, said he hated the hotel. Besides, he heard a man there abusing Marster, but Mr. Clyburne took it up and made him stop short. Armsted said he wanted Marster to know Mr. Clyburne was his friend and would let nobody say a word behind his back against him, etc., etc. Stay in Camden? Not if I can help it. “Festers in provincial sloth”—that’s Tennyson’s way of putting it.

“We” came down here by rail, as the English say. Such a crowd of Convention men on board. John Manning[21] flew in to beg me to reserve a seat by me for a young lady under his charge. “Place aux dames,” said my husband politely, and went off to seek a seat somewhere else. As soon as we were fairly under way, Governor Manning came back and threw himself cheerily down into the vacant place. After arranging his umbrella and overcoat to his satisfaction, he coolly remarked: “I am the young lady.” He is always the handsomest man alive (now that poor William Taber has been killed in a duel), and he can be very agreeable; that is, when he pleases to be so. He does not always please. He seemed to have made his little maneuver principally to warn me of impending danger to my husband’s political career. “Every election now will be a surprise. New cliques are not formed yet. The old ones are principally bent upon displacing one another.” “But the Yankees—those dreadful Yankees!” “Oh, never mind, we are going to take care of home folks first! How will you like to rusticate?—go back and mind your own business?” “If I only knew what that was—what was my own business.”

Our round table consists of the Judge, Langdon Cheves,[22] Trescott,[23] and ourselves. Here are four of the cleverest men that we have, but such very different people, as opposite in every characteristic as the four points of the compass. Langdon Cheves and my husband have feelings and ideas in common. Mr. Petigru[24] said of the brilliant Trescott: “He is a man without indignation.” Trescott and I laugh at everything.

The Judge, from his life as solicitor, and then on the bench, has learned to look for the darkest motives for every action. His judgment on men and things is always so harsh, it shocks and repels even his best friends. To-day he said: “Your conversation reminds me of a flashy second-rate novel.” “How?” “By the quantity of French you sprinkle over it. Do you wish to prevent us from understanding you?” “No,” said Trescott, “we are using French against Africa. We know the black waiters are all ears now, and we want to keep what we have to say dark. We can’t afford to take them into our confidence, you know.”

This explanation Trescott gave with great rapidity and many gestures toward the men standing behind us. Still speaking the French language, his apology was exasperating, so the Judge glared at him, and, in unabated rage, turned to talk with Mr. Cheves, who found it hard to keep a calm countenance.

On the Battery with the Rutledges, Captain Hartstein was introduced to me. He has done some heroic things—brought home some ships and is a man of mark. Afterward he sent me a beautiful bouquet, not half so beautiful, however, as Mr. Robert Gourdin’s, which already occupied the place of honor on my center table. What a dear, delightful place is Charleston!

A lady (who shall be nameless because of her story) came to see me to-day. Her husband has been on the Island with the troops for months. She has just been down to see him. She meant only to call on him, but he persuaded her to stay two days. She carried him some clothes made from his old measure. Now they are a mile too wide. “So much for a hard life!” I said.

“No, no,” said she, “they are all jolly down there. He has trained down; says it is good for him, and he likes the life.” Then she became confidential, although it was her first visit to me, a perfect stranger. She had taken no clothes down there—pushed, as she was, in that manner under Achilles’s tent. But she managed things; she tied her petticoat around her neck for a night-gown.

April 2d.—Governor Manning came to breakfast at our table. The others had breakfasted hours before. I looked at him in amazement, as he was in full dress, ready for a ball, swallow-tail and all, and at that hour. “What is the matter with you?” “Nothing, I am not mad, most noble madam. I am only going to the photographer. My wife wants me taken thus.” He insisted on my going, too, and we captured Mr. Chesnut and Governor Means.[25] The latter presented me with a book, a photo-book, in which I am to pillory all the celebrities.

Doctor Gibbes says the Convention is in a snarl. It was called as a Secession Convention. A secession of places seems to be what it calls for first of all. It has not stretched its eyes out to the Yankees yet; it has them turned inward; introspection is its occupation still.

Last night, as I turned down the gas, I said to myself: “Certainly this has been one of the pleasantest days of my life.” I can only give the skeleton of it, so many pleasant people, so much good talk, for, after all, it was talk, talk, talk à la Caroline du Sud. And yet the day began rather dismally. Mrs. Capers and Mrs. Tom Middleton came for me and we drove to Magnolia Cemetery. I saw William Taber’s broken column. It was hard to shake off the blues after this graveyard business.

The others were off at a dinner party. I dined tête-à-tête with Langdon Cheves, so quiet, so intelligent, so very sensible withal. There never was a pleasanter person, or a better man than he. While we were at table, Judge Whitner, Tom Frost, and Isaac Hayne came. They broke up our deeply interesting conversation, for I was hearing what an honest and brave man feared for his country, and then the Rutledges dislodged the newcomers and bore me off to drive on the Battery. On the staircase met Mrs. Izard, who came for the same purpose. On the Battery Governor Adams[26] stopped us. He had heard of my saying he looked like Marshal Pelissier, and he came to say that at last I had made a personal remark which pleased him, for once in my life. When we came home Mrs. Isaac Hayne and Chancellor Carroll called to ask us to join their excursion to the Island Forts to-morrow. With them was William Haskell. Last summer at the White Sulphur he was a pale, slim student from the university. To-day he is a soldier, stout and robust. A few months in camp, with soldiering in the open air, has worked this wonder. Camping out proves a wholesome life after all. Then came those nice, sweet, fresh, pure-looking Pringle girls. We had a charming topic in common—their clever brother Edward.

A letter from Eliza B., who is in Montgomery: “Mrs. Mallory got a letter from a lady in Washington a few days ago, who said that there had recently been several attempts to be gay in Washington, but they proved dismal failures. The Black Republicans were invited and came, and stared at their entertainers and their new Republican companions, looked unhappy while they said they were enchanted, showed no ill-temper at the hardly stifled grumbling and growling of our friends, who thus found themselves condemned to meet their despised enemy.”

I had a letter from the Gwinns to-day. They say Washington offers a perfect realization of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village.

Celebrated my 38th birthday, but I am too old now to dwell in public on that unimportant anniversary. A long, dusty day ahead on those windy islands; never for me, so I was up early to write a note of excuse to Chancellor Carroll. My husband went. I hope Anderson will not pay them the compliment of a salute with shotted guns, as they pass Fort Sumter, as pass they must.

Here I am interrupted by an exquisite bouquet from the Rutledges. Are there such roses anywhere else in the world? Now a loud banging at my door. I get up in a pet and throw it wide open. “Oh!” said John Manning, standing there, smiling radiantly; “pray excuse the noise I made. I mistook the number; I thought it was Rice’s room; that is my excuse. Now that I am here, come, go with us to Quinby’s. Everybody will be there who are not at the Island. To be photographed is the rage just now.”

We had a nice open carriage, and we made a number of calls, Mrs. Izard, the Pringles, and the Tradd Street Rutledges, the handsome ex-Governor doing the honors gallantly. He had ordered dinner at six, and we dined tête-à-tête. If he should prove as great a captain in ordering his line of battle as he is in ordering a dinner, it will be as well for the country as it was for me to-day.

Fortunately for the men, the beautiful Mrs. Joe Heyward sits at the next table, so they take her beauty as one of the goods the gods provide. And it helps to make life pleasant with English grouse and venison from the West. Not to speak of the salmon from the lakes which began the feast. They have me to listen, an appreciative audience, while they talk, and Mrs. Joe Heyward to look at.

Beauregard[27] called. He is the hero of the hour. That is, he is believed to be capable of great things. A hero worshiper was struck dumb because I said: “So far, he has only been a captain of artillery, or engineers, or something.” I did not see him. Mrs. Wigfall did and reproached my laziness in not coming out.

Last Sunday at church beheld one of the peculiar local sights, old negro maumas going up to the communion, in their white turbans and kneeling devoutly around the chancel rail.

The morning papers say Mr. Chesnut made the best shot on the Island at target practice. No war yet, thank God. Likewise they tell me Mr. Chesnut has made a capital speech in the Convention.

Not one word of what is going on now. “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” says the Psalmist. Not so here. Our hearts are in doleful dumps, but we are as gay, as madly jolly, as sailors who break into the strong-room when the ship is going down. At first in our great agony we were out alone. We longed for some of our big brothers to come out and help us. Well, they are out, too, and now it is Fort Sumter and that ill-advised Anderson. There stands Fort Sumter, en evidence, and thereby hangs peace or war.

Wigfall[28] says before he left Washington, Pickens, our Governor, and Trescott were openly against secession; Trescott does not pretend to like it now. He grumbles all the time, but Governor Pickens is fire-eater down to the ground. “At the White House Mrs. Davis wore a badge. Jeff Davis is no seceder,” says Mrs. Wigfall.

Captain Ingraham comments in his rapid way, words tumbling over each other out of his mouth: “Now, Charlotte Wigfall meant that as a fling at those people. I think better of men who stop to think; it is too rash to rush on as some do.” “And so,” adds Mrs. Wigfall, “the eleventh-hour men are rewarded; the half-hearted are traitors in this row.”

April 3d.—Met the lovely Lucy Holcombe, now Mrs. Governor Pickens, last night at Isaac Hayne’s. I saw Miles now begging in dumb show for three violets she had in her breastpin. She is a consummate actress and he well up in the part of male flirt. So it was well done.

“And you, who are laughing in your sleeves at the scene, where did you get that huge bunch?” “Oh, there is no sentiment when there is a pile like that of anything!” “Oh, oh!”

To-day at the breakfast table there was a tragic bestowal of heartsease on the well-known inquirer who, once more says in austere tones: “Who is the flirt now?” And so we fool on into the black cloud ahead of us. And after heartsease cometh rue.

April 4th.—Mr. Hayne said his wife moaned over the hardness of the chaperones’ seats at St. Andrew’s Hall at a Cecilia Ball.[29] She was hopelessly deposited on one for hours. “And the walls are harder, my dear. What are your feelings to those of the poor old fellows leaning there, with their beautiful young wives waltzing as if they could never tire and in the arms of every man in the room. Watch their haggard, weary faces, the old boys, you know. At church I had to move my pew. The lovely Laura was too much for my boys. They all made eyes at her, and nudged each other and quarreled so, for she gave them glance for glance. Wink, blink, and snicker as they would, she liked it. I say, my dear, the old husbands have not exactly a bed of roses; their wives twirling in the arms of young men, they hugging the wall.”

While we were at supper at the Haynes’s, Wigfall was sent for to address a crowd before the Mills House piazza. Like James Fitz James when he visits Glen Alpin again, it is to be in the saddle, etc. So let Washington beware. We were sad that we could not hear the speaking. But the supper was a consolation—pâté de foie gras salad, biscuit glacé and champagne frappé.

A ship was fired into yesterday, and went back to sea. Is that the first shot? How can one settle down to anything; one’s heart is in one’s mouth all the time. Any moment the cannon may open on us, the fleet come in.

April 6th.—The plot thickens, the air is red hot with rumors; the mystery is to find out where these utterly groundless tales originate. In spite of all, Tom Huger came for us and we went on the Planter to take a look at Morris Island and its present inhabitants—Mrs. Wigfall and the Cheves girls, Maxcy Gregg and Colonel Whiting, also John Rutledge, of the Navy, Dan Hamilton, and William Haskell. John Rutledge was a figurehead to be proud of. He did not speak to us. But he stood with a Scotch shawl draped about him, as handsome and stately a creature as ever Queen Elizabeth loved to look upon.

There came up such a wind we could not land. I was not too sorry, though it blew so hard (I am never seasick). Colonel Whiting explained everything about the forts, what they lacked, etc., in the most interesting way, and Maxcy Gregg supplemented his report by stating all the deficiencies and shortcomings by land.

Beauregard is a demigod here to most of the natives, but there are always seers who see and say. They give you to understand that Whiting has all the brains now in use for our defense. He does the work and Beauregard reaps the glory. Things seem to draw near a crisis. And one must think. Colonel Whiting is clever enough for anything, so we made up our minds to-day, Maxcy Gregg and I, as judges. Mr. Gregg told me that my husband was in a minority in the Convention; so much for cool sense when the atmosphere is phosphorescent. Mrs. Wigfall says we are mismatched. She should pair with my cool, quiet, self-poised Colonel. And her stormy petrel is but a male reflection of me.

April 8th.—Yesterday Mrs. Wigfall and I made a few visits. At the first house they wanted Mrs. Wigfall to settle a dispute. “Was she, indeed, fifty-five?” Fancy her face, more than ten years bestowed upon her so freely. Then Mrs. Gibbes asked me if I had ever been in Charleston before. Says Charlotte Wigfall (to pay me for my snigger when that false fifty was flung in her teeth), “and she thinks this is her native heath and her name is McGregor.” She said it all came upon us for breaking the Sabbath, for indeed it was Sunday.

Allen Green came up to speak to me at dinner, in all his soldier’s toggery. It sent a shiver through me. Tried to read Margaret Fuller Ossoli, but could not. The air is too full of war news, and we are all so restless.

Went to see Miss Pinckney, one of the last of the old-world Pinckneys. She inquired particularly about a portrait of her father, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,[30] which she said had been sent by him to my husband’s grandfather. I gave a good account of it. It hangs in the place of honor in the drawing-room at Mulberry. She wanted to see my husband, for “his grandfather, my father’s friend, was one of the handsomest men of his day.” We came home, and soon Mr. Robert Gourdin and Mr. Miles called. Governor Manning walked in, bowed gravely, and seated himself by me. Again he bowed low in mock heroic style, and with a grand wave of his hand, said: “Madame, your country is invaded.” When I had breath to speak, I asked, “What does he mean?” He meant this: there are six men-of-war outside the bar. Talbot and Chew have come to say that hostilities are to begin. Governor Pickens and Beauregard are holding a council of war. Mr. Chesnut then came in and confirmed the story. Wigfall next entered in boisterous spirits, and said: “There was a sound of revelry by night.” In any stir or confusion my heart is apt to beat so painfully. Now the agony was so stifling I could hardly see or hear. The men went off almost immediately. And I crept silently to my room, where I sat down to a good cry.

Mrs. Wigfall came in and we had it out on the subject of civil war. We solaced ourselves with dwelling on all its known horrors, and then we added what we had a right to expect with Yankees in front and negroes in the rear. “The slave-owners must expect a servile insurrection, of course,” said Mrs. Wigfall, to make sure that we were unhappy enough.

Suddenly loud shouting was heard. We ran out. Cannon after cannon roared. We met Mrs. Allen Green in the passageway with blanched cheeks and streaming eyes. Governor Means rushed out of his room in his dressing-gown and begged us to be calm. “Governor Pickens,” said he, “has ordered in the plenitude of his wisdom, seven cannon to be fired as a signal to the Seventh Regiment. Anderson will hear as well as the Seventh Regiment. Now you go back and be quiet; fighting in the streets has not begun yet.”

So we retired. Dr. Gibbes calls Mrs. Allen Green Dame Placid. There was no placidity to-day, with cannon bursting and Allen on the Island. No sleep for anybody last night. The streets were alive with soldiers, men shouting, marching, singing. Wigfall, the “stormy petrel,” is in his glory, the only thoroughly happy person I see. To-day things seem to have settled down a little. One can but hope still. Lincoln, or Seward, has made such silly advances and then far sillier drawings back. There may be a chance for peace after all. Things are happening so fast. My husband has been made an aide-de-camp to General Beauregard.

Three hours ago we were quickly packing to go home. The Convention has adjourned. Now he tells me the attack on Fort Sumter may begin to-night; depends upon Anderson and the fleet outside. The Herald says that this show of war outside of the bar is intended for Texas. John Manning came in with his sword and red sash, pleased as a boy to be on Beauregard’s staff, while the row goes on. He has gone with Wigfall to Captain Hartstein with instructions. Mr. Chesnut is finishing a report he had to make to the Convention.

Mrs. Hayne called. She had, she said, but one feeling; pity for those who are not here. Jack Preston, Willie Alston, “the take-life-easys,” as they are called, with John Green, “the big brave,” have gone down to the islands—volunteered as privates. Seven hundred men were sent over. Ammunition wagons were rumbling along the streets all night. Anderson is burning blue lights, signs, and signals for the fleet outside, I suppose.

To-day at dinner there was no allusion to things as they stand in Charleston Harbor. There was an undercurrent of intense excitement. There could not have been a more brilliant circle. In addition to our usual quartette (Judge Withers, Langdon Cheves, and Trescott), our two ex-Governors dined with us, Means and Manning. These men all talked so delightfully. For once in my life I listened. That over, business began in earnest. Governor Means had rummaged a sword and red sash from somewhere and brought it for Colonel Chesnut, who had gone to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. And now patience—we must wait.

Why did that green goose Anderson go into Fort Sumter? Then everything began to go wrong. Now they have intercepted a letter from him urging them to let him surrender. He paints the horrors likely to ensue if they will not. He ought to have thought of all that before he put his head in the hole.

April 12th.—Anderson will not capitulate. Yesterday’s was the merriest, maddest dinner we have had yet. Men were audaciously wise and witty. We had an unspoken foreboding that it was to be our last pleasant meeting. Mr. Miles dined with us to-day. Mrs. Henry King rushed in saying, “The news, I come for the latest news. All the men of the King family are on the Island,” of which fact she seemed proud.

While she was here our peace negotiator, or envoy, came in—that is, Mr. Chesnut returned. His interview with Colonel Anderson had been deeply interesting, but Mr. Chesnut was not inclined to be communicative. He wanted his dinner. He felt for Anderson and had telegraphed to President Davis for instructions—what answer to give Anderson, etc. He has now gone back to Fort Sumter with additional instructions. When they were about to leave the wharf A. H. Boykin sprang into the boat in great excitement. He thought himself ill-used, with a likelihood of fighting and he to be left behind!

I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms at four, the orders are, he shall be fired upon. I count four, St. Michael’s bells chime out and I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before.

There was a sound of stir all over the house, pattering of feet in the corridors. All seemed hurrying one way. I put on my double-gown and a shawl and went, too. It was to the housetop. The shells were bursting. In the dark I heard a man say, “Waste of ammunition.” I knew my husband was rowing about in a boat somewhere in that dark bay, and that the shells were roofing it over, bursting toward the fort. If Anderson was obstinate, Colonel Chesnut was to order the fort on one side to open fire. Certainly fire had begun. The regular roar of the cannon, there it was. And who could tell what each volley accomplished of death and destruction?

The women were wild there on the housetop. Prayers came from the women and imprecations from the men. And then a shell would light up the scene. To-night they say the forces are to attempt to land. We watched up there, and everybody wondered that Fort Sumter did not fire a shot.

To-day Miles and Manning, colonels now, aides to Beauregard, dined with us. The latter hoped I would keep the peace. I gave him only good words, for he was to be under fire all day and night, down in the bay carrying orders, etc.

Last night, or this morning truly, up on the housetop I was so weak and weary I sat down on something that looked like a black stool. “Get up, you foolish woman. Your dress is on fire,” cried a man. And he put me out. I was on a chimney and the sparks had caught my clothes. Susan Preston and Mr. Venable then came up. But my fire had been extinguished before it burst out into a regular blaze.

Do you know, after all that noise and our tears and prayers, nobody has been hurt; sound and fury signifying nothing—a delusion and a snare.

Louisa Hamilton came here now. This is a sort of news center. Jack Hamilton, her handsome young husband, has all the credit of a famous battery, which is made of railroad iron. Mr. Petigru calls it the boomerang, because it throws the balls back the way they came; so Lou Hamilton tells us. During her first marriage, she had no children; hence the value of this lately achieved baby. To divert Louisa from the glories of “the Battery,” of which she raves, we asked if the baby could talk yet. “No, not exactly, but he imitates the big gun when he hears that. He claps his hands and cries ‘Boom, boom.’” Her mind is distinctly occupied by three things: Lieutenant Hamilton, whom she calls “Randolph,” the baby, and the big gun, and it refuses to hold more.

Pryor, of Virginia, spoke from the piazza of the Charleston hotel. I asked what he said. An irreverent woman replied: “Oh, they all say the same thing, but he made great play with that long hair of his, which he is always tossing aside!”

Somebody came in just now and reported Colonel Chesnut asleep on the sofa in General Beauregard’s room. After two such nights he must be so tired as to be able to sleep anywhere.

Just bade farewell to Langdon Cheves. He is forced to go home and leave this interesting place. Says he feels like the man that was not killed at Thermopylæ. I think he said that unfortunate had to hang himself when he got home for very shame. Maybe he fell on his sword, which was the strictly classic way of ending matters.

I do not wonder at Louisa Hamilton’s baby; we hear nothing, can listen to nothing; boom, boom goes the cannon all the time. The nervous strain is awful, alone in this darkened room. “Richmond and Washington ablaze,” say the papers—blazing with excitement. Why not? To us these last days’ events seem frightfully great. We were all women on that iron balcony. Men are only seen at a distance now. Stark Means, marching under the piazza at the head of his regiment, held his cap in his hand all the time he was in sight. Mrs. Means was leaning over and looking with tearful eyes, when an unknown creature asked, “Why did he take his hat off?” Mrs. Means stood straight up and said: “He did that in honor of his mother; he saw me.” She is a proud mother, and at the same time most unhappy. Her lovely daughter Emma is dying in there, before her eyes, of consumption. At that moment I am sure Mrs. Means had a spasm of the heart; at least, she looked as I feel sometimes. She took my arm and we came in.

April 13th.—Nobody has been hurt after all. How gay we were last night. Reaction after the dread of all the slaughter we thought those dreadful cannon were making. Not even a battery the worse for wear. Fort Sumter has been on fire. Anderson has not yet silenced any of our guns. So the aides, still with swords and red sashes by way of uniform, tell us. But the sound of those guns makes regular meals impossible. None of us go to table. Tea-trays pervade the corridors going everywhere. Some of the anxious hearts lie on their beds and moan in solitary misery. Mrs. Wigfall and I solace ourselves with tea in my room. These women have all a satisfying faith. “God is on our side,” they say. When we are shut in Mrs. Wigfall and I ask “Why?” “Of course, He hates the Yankees, we are told. You’ll think that well of Him.”

Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Lawrence sits at our door, sleepy and respectful, and profoundly indifferent. So are they all, but they carry it too far. You could not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on in the bay, though it has been dinning in their ears night and day. People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?

So tea and toast came; also came Colonel Manning, red sash and sword, to announce that he had been under fire, and didn’t mind it. He said gaily: “It is one of those things a fellow never knows how he will come out until he has been tried. Now I know I am a worthy descendant of my old Irish hero of an ancestor, who held the British officer before him as a shield in the Revolution, and backed out of danger gracefully.” We talked of St. Valentine’s eve, or the maid of Perth, and the drop of the white doe’s blood that sometimes spoiled all.

FORT SUMTER UNDER BOMBARDMENT.

From an Old Print.

The war-steamers are still there, outside the bar. And there are people who thought the Charleston bar “no good” to Charleston. The bar is the silent partner, or sleeping partner, and in this fray it is doing us yeoman service.

April 15th.—I did not know that one could live such days of excitement. Some one called: “Come out! There is a crowd coming.” A mob it was, indeed, but it was headed by Colonels Chesnut and Manning. The crowd was shouting and showing these two as messengers of good news. They were escorted to Beauregard’s headquarters. Fort Sumter had surrendered! Those upon the house-tops shouted to us “The fort is on fire.” That had been the story once or twice before.

When we had calmed down, Colonel Chesnut, who had taken it all quietly enough, if anything more unruffled than usual in his serenity, told us how the surrender came about. Wigfall was with them on Morris Island when they saw the fire in the fort; he jumped in a little boat, and with his handkerchief as a white flag, rowed over. Wigfall went in through a porthole. When Colonel Chesnut arrived shortly after, and was received at the regular entrance, Colonel Anderson told him he had need to pick his way warily, for the place was all mined. As far as I can make out the fort surrendered to Wigfall. But it is all confusion. Our flag is flying there. Fire-engines have been sent for to put out the fire. Everybody tells you half of something and then rushes off to tell something else or to hear the last news.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Preston,[31] Mrs. Joe Heyward, and I drove around the Battery. We were in an open carriage. What a changed scene—the very liveliest crowd I think I ever saw, everybody talking at once. All glasses were still turned on the grim old fort.

Russell,[32] the correspondent of the London Times, was there. They took him everywhere. One man got out Thackeray to converse with him on equal terms. Poor Russell was awfully bored, they say. He only wanted to see the fort and to get news suitable to make up into an interesting article. Thackeray had become stale over the water.

Mrs. Frank Hampton[33] and I went to see the camp of the Richland troops. South Carolina College had volunteered to a boy. Professor Venable (the mathematical), intends to raise a company from among them for the war, a permanent company. This is a grand frolic no more for the students, at least. Even the staid and severe of aspect, Clingman, is here. He says Virginia and North Carolina are arming to come to our rescue, for now the North will swoop down on us. Of that we may be sure. We have burned our ships. We are obliged to go on now. He calls us a poor, little, hot-blooded, headlong, rash, and troublesome sister State. General McQueen is in a rage because we are to send troops to Virginia.

Preston Hampton is in all the flush of his youth and beauty, six feet in stature; and after all only in his teens; he appeared in fine clothes and lemon-colored kid gloves to grace the scene. The camp in a fit of horse-play seized him and rubbed him in the mud. He fought manfully, but took it all naturally as a good joke.

Mrs. Frank Hampton knows already what civil war means. Her brother was in the New York Seventh Regiment, so roughly received in Baltimore. Frank will be in the opposite camp.

Good stories there may be and to spare for Russell, the man of the London Times, who has come over here to find out our weakness and our strength and to tell all the rest of the world about us.

IV
CAMDEN, S. C.
April 20, 1861-April 23, 1861

Camden, S. C., April 20, 1861.—Home again at Mulberry. In those last days of my stay in Charleston I did not find time to write a word.

And so we took Fort Sumter, nous autres; we—Mrs. Frank Hampton, and others—in the passageway of the Mills House between the reception-room and the drawing-room, for there we held a sofa against all comers. All the agreeable people South seemed to have flocked to Charleston at the first gun. That was after we had found out that bombarding did not kill anybody. Before that, we wept and prayed and took our tea in groups in our rooms, away from the haunts of men.

Captain Ingraham and his kind also took Fort Sumter—from the Battery with field-glasses and figures made with their sticks in the sand to show what ought to be done.

Wigfall, Chesnut, Miles, Manning, took it rowing about the harbor in small boats from fort to fort under the enemy’s guns, with bombs bursting in air.

And then the boys and men who worked those guns so faithfully at the forts—they took it, too, in their own way.

Old Colonel Beaufort Watts told me this story and many more of the jeunesse dorée under fire. They took the fire easily, as they do most things. They had cotton bag bomb-proofs at Fort Moultrie, and when Anderson’s shot knocked them about some one called out “Cotton is falling.” Then down went the kitchen chimney, loaves of bread flew out, and they cheered gaily, shouting, “Bread-stuffs are rising.”

Willie Preston fired the shot which broke Anderson’s flag-staff. Mrs. Hampton from Columbia telegraphed him, “Well done, Willie!” She is his grandmother, the wife, or widow, of General Hampton, of the Revolution, and the mildest, sweetest, gentlest of old ladies. This shows how the war spirit is waking us all up.

Colonel Miles (who won his spurs in a boat, so William Gilmore Simms[34] said) gave us this characteristic anecdote. They met a negro out in the bay rowing toward the city with some plantation supplies, etc. “Are you not afraid of Colonel Anderson’s cannon?” he was asked. “No, sar, Mars Anderson ain’t daresn’t hit me; he know Marster wouldn’t ’low it.”

I have been sitting idly to-day looking out upon this beautiful lawn, wondering if this can be the same world I was in a few days ago. After the smoke and the din of the battle, a calm.

April 22d.—Arranging my photograph book. On the first page, Colonel Watts. Here goes a sketch of his life; romantic enough, surely: Beaufort Watts; bluest blood; gentleman to the tips of his fingers; chivalry incarnate. He was placed in charge of a large amount of money, in bank bills. The money belonged to the State and he was to deposit it in the bank. On the way he was obliged to stay over one night. He put the roll on a table at his bedside, locked himself in, and slept the sleep of the righteous. Lo, next day when he awaked, the money was gone. Well! all who knew him believed him innocent, of course. He searched and they searched, high and low, but to no purpose. The money had vanished. It was a damaging story, in spite of his previous character, and a cloud rested on him.

Years afterward the house in which he had taken that disastrous sleep was pulled down. In the wall, behind the wainscot, was found his pile of money. How the rats got it through so narrow a crack it seemed hard to realize. Like the hole mentioned by Mercutio, it was not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but it did for Beaufort Watts until the money was found. Suppose that house had been burned, or the rats had gnawed up the bills past recognition?

People in power understood how this proud man suffered those many years in silence. Many men looked askance at him. The country tried to repair the work of blasting the man’s character. He was made Secretary of Legation to Russia, and was afterward our Consul at Santa Fé de Bogota. When he was too old to wander far afield, they made him Secretary to all the Governors of South Carolina in regular succession.

I knew him more than twenty years ago as Secretary to the Governor. He was a made-up old battered dandy, the soul of honor. His eccentricities were all humored. Misfortune had made him sacred. He stood hat in hand before ladies and bowed as I suppose Sir Charles Grandison might have done. It was hard not to laugh at the purple and green shades of his overblack hair. He came at one time to show me the sword presented to Colonel Shelton for killing the only Indian who was killed in the Seminole war. We bagged Osceola and Micanopy under a flag of truce—that is, they were snared, not shot on the wing.

To go back to my knight-errant: he knelt, handed me the sword, and then kissed my hand. I was barely sixteen and did not know how to behave under the circumstances. He said, leaning on the sword, “My dear child, learn that it is a much greater liberty to shake hands with a lady than to kiss her hand. I have kissed the Empress of Russia’s hand and she did not make faces at me.” He looks now just as he did then. He is in uniform, covered with epaulettes, aigulettes, etc., shining in the sun, and with his plumed hat reins up his war-steed and bows low as ever.

Now I will bid farewell for a while as Othello did to all the “pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war,” and come down to my domestic strifes and troubles. I have a sort of volunteer maid, the daughter of my husband’s nurse, dear old Betsy. She waits on me because she so pleases. Besides, I pay her. She belongs to my father-in-law, who has too many slaves to care very much about their way of life. So Maria Whitaker came, all in tears. She brushes hair delightfully, and as she stood at my back I could see her face in the glass. “Maria, are you crying because all this war talk scares you?” said I. “No, ma’am.” “What is the matter with you?” “Nothing more than common.” “Now listen. Let the war end either way and you will be free. We will have to free you before we get out of this thing. Won’t you be glad?” “Everybody knows Mars Jeems wants us free, and it is only old Marster holds hard. He ain’t going to free anybody any way, you see.”

And then came the story of her troubles. “Now, Miss Mary, you see me married to Jeems Whitaker yourself. I was a good and faithful wife to him, and we were comfortable every way—good house, everything. He had no cause of complaint, but he has left me.” “For heaven’s sake! Why?” “Because I had twins. He says they are not his because nobody named Whitaker ever had twins.”

Maria is proud in her way, and the behavior of this bad husband has nearly mortified her to death. She has had three children in two years. No wonder the man was frightened. But then Maria does not depend on him for anything. She was inconsolable, and I could find nothing better to say than, “Come, now, Maria! Never mind, your old Missis and Marster are so good to you. Now let us look up something for the twins.” The twins are named “John and Jeems,” the latter for her false loon of a husband. Maria is one of the good colored women. She deserved a better fate in her honest matrimonial attempt. But they do say she has a trying temper. Jeems was tried, and he failed to stand the trial.

April 23d.—Note the glaring inconsistencies of life. Our chatelaine locked up Eugene Sue, and returned even Washington Allston’s novel with thanks and a decided hint that it should be burned; at least it should not remain in her house. Bad books are not allowed house room, except in the library under lock and key, the key in the Master’s pocket; but bad women, if they are not white, or serve in a menial capacity, may swarm the house unmolested; the ostrich game is thought a Christian act. Such women are no more regarded as a dangerous contingent than canary birds would be.

If you show by a chance remark that you see some particular creature, more shameless than the rest, has no end of children, and no beginning of a husband, you are frowned down; you are talking on improper subjects. There are certain subjects pure-minded ladies never touch upon, even in their thoughts. It does not do to be so hard and cruel. It is best to let the sinners alone, poor things. If they are good servants otherwise, do not dismiss them; all that will come straight as they grow older, and it does! They are frantic, one and all, to be members of the church. The Methodist Church is not so pure-minded as to shut its eyes; it takes them up and turns them out with a high hand if they are found going astray as to any of the ten commandments.

V
MONTGOMERY, ALA.
April 27, 1861-May 20, 1861

Montgomery, Ala., April 27, 1861.—Here we are once more. Hon. Robert Barnwell came with us. His benevolent spectacles give him a most Pickwickian expression. We Carolinians revere his goodness above all things. Everywhere, when the car stopped, the people wanted a speech, and we had one stream of fervid oratory. We came along with a man whose wife lived in Washington. He was bringing her to Georgia as the safest place.

The Alabama crowd are not as confident of taking Fort Pickens as we were of taking Fort Sumter.

Baltimore is in a blaze. They say Colonel Ben Huger is in command there—son of the “Olmutz” Huger. General Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, has been made General-in-Chief of Virginia. With such men to the fore, we have hope. The New York Herald says, “Slavery must be extinguished, if in blood.” It thinks we are shaking in our shoes at their great mass meetings. We are jolly as larks, all the same.

Mr. Chesnut has gone with Wade Hampton[35] to see President Davis about the legion Wade wants to get up. The President came across the aisle to speak to me at church to-day. He was very cordial, and I appreciated the honor.

Wigfall is black with rage at Colonel Anderson’s account of the fall of Sumter. Wigfall did behave magnanimously, but Anderson does not seem to see it in that light. “Catch me risking my life to save him again,” says Wigfall. “He might have been man enough to tell the truth to those New Yorkers, however unpalatable to them a good word for us might have been. We did behave well to him. The only men of his killed, he killed himself, or they killed themselves firing a salute to their old striped rag.”

Mr. Chesnut was delighted with the way Anderson spoke to him when he went to demand the surrender. They parted quite tenderly. Anderson said: “If we do not meet again on earth, I hope we may meet in Heaven.” How Wigfall laughed at Anderson “giving Chesnut a howdy in the other world!”

What a kind welcome the old gentlemen gave me! One, more affectionate and homely than the others, slapped me on the back. Several bouquets were brought me, and I put them in water around my plate. Then General Owens gave me some violets, which I put in my breastpin.

“Oh,” said my “Gutta Percha” Hemphill,[36] “if I had known how those bouquets were to be honored I would have been up by daylight seeking the sweetest flowers!” Governor Moore came in, and of course seats were offered him. “This is a most comfortable chair,” cried an overly polite person. “The most comfortable chair is beside Mrs. Chesnut,” said the Governor, facing the music gallantly, as he sank into it gracefully. Well done, old fogies!

Browne said: “These Southern men have an awfully flattering way with women.” “Oh, so many are descendants of Irishmen, and so the blarney remains yet, even, and in spite of their gray hairs!” For it was a group of silver-gray flatterers. Yes, blarney as well as bravery came in with the Irish.

At Mrs. Davis’s reception dismal news, for civil war seems certain. At Mrs. Toombs’s reception Mr. Stephens came by me. Twice before we have had it out on the subject of this Confederacy, once on the cars, coming from Georgia here, once at a supper, where he sat next to me. To-day he was not cheerful in his views. I called him half-hearted, and accused him of looking back. Man after man came and interrupted the conversation with some frivle-fravle, but we held on. He was deeply interesting, and he gave me some new ideas as to our dangerous situation. Fears for the future and not exultation at our successes pervade his discourse.

Dined at the President’s and never had a pleasanter day. He is as witty as he is wise. He was very agreeable; he took me in to dinner. The talk was of Washington; nothing of our present difficulties.

A General Anderson from Alexandria, D. C., was in doleful dumps. He says the North are so much better prepared than we are. They are organized, or will be, by General Scott. We are in wild confusion. Their army is the best in the world. We are wretchedly armed, etc., etc. They have ships and arms that were ours and theirs.

Mrs. Walker, resplendently dressed, one of those gorgeously arrayed persons who fairly shine in the sun, tells me she mistook the inevitable Morrow for Mr. Chesnut, and added, “Pass over the affront to my powers of selection.” I told her it was “an insult to the Palmetto flag.” Think of a South Carolina Senator like that!

Men come rushing in from Washington with white lips, crying, “Danger, danger!” It is very tiresome to have these people always harping on this: “The enemy’s troops are the finest body of men we ever saw.” “Why did you not make friends of them,” I feel disposed to say. We would have war, and now we seem to be letting our golden opportunity pass; we are not preparing for war. There is talk, talk, talk in that Congress—lazy legislators, and rash, reckless, headlong, devil-may-care, proud, passionate, unruly, raw material for soldiers. They say we have among us a regiment of spies, men and women, sent here by the wily Seward. Why? Our newspapers tell every word there is to be told, by friend or foe.

A two-hours’ call from Hon. Robert Barnwell. His theory is, all would have been right if we had taken Fort Sumter six months ago. He made this very plain to me. He is clever, if erratic. I forget why it ought to have been attacked before. At another reception, Mrs. Davis was in fine spirits. Captain Dacier was here. Came over in his own yacht. Russell, of The London Times, wondered how we had the heart to enjoy life so thoroughly when all the Northern papers said we were to be exterminated in such a short time.

May 9th.—Virginia Commissioners here. Mr. Staples and Mr. Edmonston came to see me. They say Virginia “has no grievance; she comes out on a point of honor; could she stand by and see her sovereign sister States invaded?”

Sumter Anderson has been offered a Kentucky regiment. Can they raise a regiment in Kentucky against us? In Kentucky, our sister State?

Suddenly General Beauregard and his aide (the last left him of the galaxy who surrounded him in Charleston), John Manning, have gone—Heaven knows where, but out on a war-path certainly. Governor Manning called himself “the last rose of summer left blooming alone” of that fancy staff. A new fight will gather them again.

Ben McCulloch, the Texas Ranger, is here, and Mr. Ward,[37] my “Gutta Percha” friend’s colleague from Texas. Senator Ward in appearance is the exact opposite of Senator Hemphill. The latter, with the face of an old man, has the hair of a boy of twenty. Mr. Ward is fresh and fair, with blue eyes and a boyish face, but his head is white as snow. Whether he turned it white in a single night or by slower process I do not know, but it is strangely out of keeping with his clear young eye. He is thin, and has a queer stooping figure.

This story he told me of his own experience. On a Western steamer there was a great crowd and no unoccupied berth, or sleeping place of any sort whatsoever in the gentlemen’s cabin—saloon, I think they called it. He had taken a stateroom, 110, but he could not eject the people who had already seized it and were asleep in it. Neither could the Captain. It would have been a case of revolver or “’leven inch Bowie-knife.”

Near the ladies’ saloon the steward took pity on him. “This man,” said he, “is 110, and I can find no place for him, poor fellow.” There was a peep out of bright eyes: “I say, steward, have you a man 110 years old out there? Let us see him. He must be a natural curiosity.” “We are overcrowded,” was the answer, “and we can’t find a place for him to sleep.” “Poor old soul; bring him in here. We will take care of him.”

“Stoop and totter,” sniggered the steward to No. 110, “and go in.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Ward, “how those houris patted and pitied me and hustled me about and gave me the best berth! I tried not to look; I knew it was wrong, but I looked. I saw them undoing their back hair and was lost in amazement at the collapse when the huge hoop-skirts fell off, unheeded on the cabin floor.”

One beauty who was disporting herself near his curtain suddenly caught his eye. She stooped and gathered up her belongings as she said: “I say, stewardess, your old hundred and ten is a humbug. His eyes are too blue for anything,” and she fled as he shut himself in, nearly frightened to death. I forget how it ended. There was so much laughing at his story I did not hear it all. So much for hoary locks and their reverence-inspiring power!

Russell, the wandering English newspaper correspondent, was telling how very odd some of our plantation habits were. He was staying at the house of an ex-Cabinet Minister, and Madame would stand on the back piazza and send her voice three fields off, calling a servant. Now that is not a Southern peculiarity. Our women are soft, and sweet, low-toned, indolent, graceful, quiescent. I dare say there are bawling, squalling, vulgar people everywhere.

May 13th.—We have been down from Montgomery on the boat to that God-forsaken landing, Portland, Ala. Found everybody drunk—that is, the three men who were there. At last secured a carriage to carry us to my brother-in-law’s house. Mr. Chesnut had to drive seven miles, pitch dark, over an unknown road. My heart was in my mouth, which last I did not open.

Next day a patriotic person informed us that, so great was the war fever only six men could be found in Dallas County. I whispered to Mr. Chesnut: “We found three of the lone ones hors de combat at Portland.” So much for the corps of reserves—alcoholized patriots.

Saw for the first time the demoralization produced by hopes of freedom. My mother’s butler (whom I taught to read, sitting on his knife-board) contrived to keep from speaking to us. He was as efficient as ever in his proper place, but he did not come behind the scenes as usual and have a friendly chat. Held himself aloof so grand and stately we had to send him a “tip” through his wife Hetty, mother’s maid, who, however, showed no signs of disaffection. She came to my bedside next morning with everything that was nice for breakfast. She had let me sleep till midday, and embraced me over and over again. I remarked: “What a capital cook they have here!” She curtsied to the ground. “I cooked every mouthful on that tray—as if I did not know what you liked to eat since you was a baby.”

May 19th.—Mrs. Fitzpatrick says Mr. Davis is too gloomy for her. He says we must prepare for a long war and unmerciful reverses at first, because they are readier for war and so much stronger numerically. Men and money count so in war. “As they do everywhere else,” said I, doubting her accurate account of Mr. Davis’s spoken words, though she tried to give them faithfully. We need patience and persistence. There is enough and to spare of pluck and dash among us, the do-and-dare style.

I drove out with Mrs. Davis. She finds playing Mrs. President of this small confederacy slow work, after leaving friends such as Mrs. Emory and Mrs. Joe Johnston[38] in Washington. I do not blame her. The wrench has been awful with us all, but we don’t mean to be turned into pillars of salt.

Mr. Mallory came for us to go to Mrs. Toombs’s reception. Mr. Chesnut would not go, and I decided to remain with him. This proved a wise decision. First Mr. Hunter[39] came. In college they called him from his initials, R. M. T., “Run Mad Tom” Hunter. Just now I think he is the sanest, if not the wisest, man in our new-born Confederacy. I remember when I first met him. He sat next to me at some state dinner in Washington. Mr. Clay had taken me in to dinner, but seemed quite satisfied that my “other side” should take me off his hands.

Mr. Hunter did not know me, nor I him. I suppose he inquired, or looked at my card, lying on the table, as I looked at his. At any rate, we began a conversation which lasted steadily through the whole thing from soup to dessert. Mr. Hunter, though in evening dress, presented a rather tumbled-up appearance. His waistcoat wanted pulling down, and his hair wanted brushing. He delivered unconsciously that day a lecture on English literature which, if printed, I still think would be a valuable addition to that literature. Since then, I have always looked forward to a talk with the Senator from Virginia with undisguised pleasure. Next came Mr. Miles and Mr. Jameson, of South Carolina. The latter was President of our Secession Convention; also has written a life of Du Guesclin that is not so bad. So my unexpected reception was of the most charming. Judge Frost came a little later. They all remained until the return of the crowd from Mrs. Toombs’s.

These men are not sanguine—I can’t say, without hope, exactly. They are agreed in one thing: it is worth while to try a while, if only to get away from New England. Captain Ingraham was here, too. He is South Carolina to the tips of his fingers; yet he has it dyed in the wool—it is part of his nature—to believe the United States Navy can whip anything in the world. All of these little inconsistencies and contrarieties make the times very exciting. One never knows what tack any one of them will take at the next word.

May 20th.—Lunched at Mrs. Davis’s; everything nice to eat, and I was ravenous. For a fortnight I have not even gone to the dinner table. Yesterday I was forced to dine on cold asparagus and blackberries, so repulsive in aspect was the other food they sent me. Mrs. Davis was as nice as the luncheon. When she is in the mood, I do not know so pleasant a person. She is awfully clever, always.

We talked of this move from Montgomery. Mr. Chesnut opposes it violently, because this is so central a position for our government. He wants our troops sent into Maryland in order to make our fight on the border, and so to encompass Washington. I see that the uncomfortable hotels here will at last move the Congress. Our statesmen love their ease, and it will be hot here in summer. “I do hope they will go,” Mrs. Davis said. “The Yankees will make it hot for us, go where we will, and truly so if war comes.” “And it has come,” said I. “Yes, I fancy these dainty folks may live to regret losing even the fare of the Montgomery hotels.” “Never.”

Mr. Chesnut has three distinct manias. The Maryland scheme is one, and he rushes off to Jeff Davis, who, I dare say, has fifty men every day come to him with infallible plans to save the country. If only he can keep his temper. Mrs. Davis says he answers all advisers in softly modulated, dulcet accents.

What a rough menagerie we have here. And if nice people come to see you, up walks an irate Judge, who engrosses the conversation and abuses the friends of the company generally; that is, abuses everybody and prophesies every possible evil to the country, provided he finds that denouncing your friends does not sufficiently depress you. Everybody has manias—up North, too, by the papers.

But of Mr. Chesnut’s three crazes: Maryland is to be made the seat of war, old Morrow’s idea of buying up steamers abroad for our coast defenses should be adopted, and, last of all, but far from the least, we must make much cotton and send it to England as a bank to draw on. The very cotton we have now, if sent across the water, would be a gold mine to us.