Part 10 (1/2)
Before the war shut him in, General Preston sent to the lakes for his salmon, to Mississippi for his venison, to the h, the best dish at all these houses, what the Spanish call ”the hearty welcome” Thackeray says at every Arilled hostess” At the head of the table sat a person, fiery-faced, anxious, nervous,
169 inwardly ht, Hal, and all ell”
At Mulberry the house is always filled to overflowing, and one day is curiously like another People are co off It has the air of a watering-place, where one does not pay, and where there are no strangers At Christlass, china, silver, fine linen reserved for grand occasions coreater quantity - es, more fish, etc, and more solemn stiffness Usually a half-dozen persons unexpectedly dropping in make no difference The family let the housekeeper know; that is all
People are beginning to come here from Richmond One s does not make a summer, but it sho the wind blows, these straws do - Mrs ”Constitution” Browne and Mrs Wise The Gibsons are at Doctor Gibbes's It does look squally We are drifting on the breakers
May 29th - Betsey, recalcitrant raph ets to be, and clever in every kind of work My Molly thinks her erous inood dairyood-for-nothing woman I know to her neners, if she chooses Molly evidently hates her, but thinks it her duty ”to stand by her color”
Mrs Gibson is a Philadelphia woman She is true to her husband and children, but she does not believe in us- the Confederacy, Iin faith of our ultimate success as is Sally Baxter Hampton I make allowances for those people If I had married North, they would have a heavy handful in me just now up there
170 Mrs Chesnut, my mother-in-law, has been sixty years in the South, and she has not changed in feeling or in taste one iota She can not like hoive it some flavor She can not eat watermelons and sweet potatoes sans discrtion, as we do She will not eat hot corn bread discrtion, and hot buttered biscuit without any
”Richhed Mrs Gibson ”You would say so, too, if you had seen our poor soldiers” ”Poor soldiers?” said I ”Are you talking of Stonewall Jackson's men? Poor soldiers, indeed!” She said her h she married and came South: she never would own slaves ”Who would that was not born to it?” I cried, more excited than ever She is very handsoreeable manners
”Dear madam,” she says, with tears in her beautiful eyes, ”they have three armies” ”But Stonewall has routed one of theseemed to suit her,” I said, as ent away ”You did not certainly,” said some one to me; ”you contradicted every word she said, with a sort of indignant protest”
We inia wohtfully situated at Raleigh; North Carolinians so loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to eat a meal at the hotel ”How different fro at Mrs Gibson, who has no doubt been left to take all of her meals at his house ”Oh, no!” cried Mary, ”you do Columbia injustice Mrs Chesnut used to tell us that she was never once turned over to the tender aree cuisine, and at McMahan's it is fruit, flowers, invitations to dinner every day”
After we came away, ”Why did you not back me up?” I was asked ”Why did you let them slander Columbia?”
171 ”It fully aard,” I said, ”but you see it would have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs Gibson see how different it ith other people”
Took a ht walk after tea at the Halcott Greens' All the co ho at the de Saussures' He says, ”Manassas was play to Willia,” and he was at both battles He lead a part of Stuart's cavalry in the charge at Willia a hundred yards ahead of his company
Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses freely everything Confederate from the President down to a horse boy He thinks there is a conspiracy against him in the army Why? Heavens and earth - why?
June 2d - A battle1 is said to be raging round Richone to Richmond suddenly on business of the Military Department It is always his luck to arrive in the nick of tireat battle
Wade Hara repulsed Telegraph operator said: ”Mada” ”Of course they are What else is there for the” Each ar its dead: that looks like a drawn battle We haunt the bulletin-board
Back to McMahan's Mehter, Isabel, warnsCohen is in it Mrs Preston, anxious 1 The Battle of Fair Oaks or Seven Pines, took place a few miles east of Rich commanded by McClellan and the Confederates by General Joseph E Johnston
172 and unhappy about her sons John is with General Huger at Richmond; Willie in the swamps on the coast with his company Mem tells me her cousin, Edwin de Leon, is sent by Mr Davis on a land
Rev Robert Barnwell has returned to the hospital Oh, that we had given our thousand dollars to the hospital and not to the gunboat! ”Stonewall Jackson'sout volunteers in great numbers” And a Philadelphia paper abused us so fervently I felt all the blood in e
June 3d - Doctor John Cheves isinfernal machines in Charleston to blow the Yankees up; pretty name they have, those machines My horses, the overseer says, are too poor to send over There was corn enough on the place for two years, they said, in January; now, in June, they write that it will not last until the new crop coood time on the plantation, if it be not my poor horses
Molly will tell me all when she comes back, and more Mr Venable has been , and writes, ”When the fight is over here, I shall be glad to go to Virginia” He is in capital spirits I notice ar Major Venable ”Mr” Let it be noted that in social intercourse we are not prone to give handles to the naeneral's wife thinks it bad forives him his title, she simply ”drops” into it by accident If I am ”mixed” on titles in this diary, let no one bla troops fro Charleston, doubtless with the purpose to prevent Lee's receiving reenforcements froht, and
173 tried hard for pleasant thoughts A an to play on the flute, with piano acco,” and then, ”The long, long, weary day” At first, I found this but a co to ht-up nerves But Von Weber's ”Last Waltz” was too much; I broke down Heavens, what a bitter cry came forth, with such floods of tears! the wonder is there was any of es for the wounded, carry them home and nurse them One saw a man too weak to hold his musket She took it from hi
If ever there was a man who could control every expression of emotion, who could play stoic, or an Indian chief, it is James Chesnut But one day when he came in from the Council he had to own to a break-down He fully ashamed of his weakness There was a letter fro him to help her, and he tried to read it to the Council She wanted a perinia Colonel Chesnut could not control his voice There was not a dry eye there, when suddenly one rew's aide says he left his chief mortally wounded on the battle-field Just before Johnston Pettigreent to Italy to take a hand in the war there for freedom, I met him one day at Mrs Frank Hampton's A nueh Rose Soed?” ”Well, I never heard it, but I saw it In London, a -roo people seated on a sofa opposite the door” ”Well, that a” ”No, not in itself But they looked so foolish and so happy I have noticed newly engaged people always look that way” And so on Johnston Pettigrehite and red in quick succession
174 during this turn of the conversation; he was in a rage of indignation and disgust ”I think this kind of talk is taking a liberty with the young lady's name,” he exclaimed finally, ”and that it is an i alone! I wonder what they feel - those who are left to die of their wounds - alone - on the battle-field
Free schools are not everything, as witness this spelling Yankee epistles found in camp sho illiterate they can be, with all their boasted schools Fredericksburg is spelled ”Fredrexbirg,” medicine, ”metison,” and we read, ”To my sweat brother,” etc For the first time in my life no books can interest me Life is so real, so utterly earnest, that fiction is flat Nothing but what is going on in this distracted world of ours can arrest my attention for ten minutes at a time
June 4th - Battles occur near Richard is said to be fighting his way out or in
Mrs Gibson is here, at Doctor Gibbes's Tears are always in her eyes Her eldest son is Willie Preston's lieutenant They are down on the coast She owns that she has no hope at all She was a Miss Ayer, of Philadelphia, and says, ”We may look for Burnside now, our troops which held him down to his iron flotilla have been withdrawn They are three to one against us now, and they have hardly begun to put out their strength - in numbers, I mean We have come to the end of our tether, except ait for the yearly crop of boys as they grow up to the requisite age” She would eneral rule,” says Mrs Gibson, ”governh functionary whispered to Mary G, as he handed her into the car, 'Richo' ” The idea now is that we are to be starved out If they shut us in, prolong the agony, it can then have but one end
Mrs Preston and I speak in whispers, but Mrs McCord
175 scorns whispers, and speaks out She says: ”There are our soldiers Since the world began there never were better but God does not deign to send us a general worthy of theeants oris just so The real ammunition of our war is faith in ourselves and enthusiashs it to scorn It wants discipline And now co their pockets and they gibe and sneer at the fools who fight Don't you see this Stonewall, how he fires the soldiers' hearts; he will be our leader, maybe after all They say he does not care how many are killed His business is to save the country, not the arhts to win, God bless him, and he wins If they do not want to be killed, they can stay at home They say he leaves the sick and wounded to be cared for by those whose business it is to do so His business is war They say he wants to hoist the black flag, have a short, sharp, decisive war and end it He is a Christian soldier”
June 5th - Beauregard retreating and his rear-guard cut off If Beauregard's veterans will not stand, why should we expect our newly levied reserves to do it? The Yankee general who is besieging Savannah announces his orders are ”to take Savannah in teeks' time, and then proceed to erase Charleston from the face of the earth”
Albert Luryea was killed in the battle of June 1st Last summer when a bomb fell in the very thick of his company he picked it up and threw it into the water Think of that, those of ye who love life! The company sent the bomb to his father Inscribed on it were the words, ”Albert Luryea, bravest where all are brave” Isaac Hayne did the sah, but they are not active-minded like those old Revolutionary characters, the Middletons, Lowndeses, Rutledges, Marions, Summers They have come direct from active-minded forefathers, or they would not have been here; but, with two
176 or three generations of gentleed has the blood beco to the front in our government were immediate descendants of Scotch, or Scotch-Irish-Calhoun, McDuffie, Cheves, and Petigru, who Huguenotted his name, but could not tie up his Irish Our planters are nice fellows, but slow toThey are wonderful for a spurt, but with all their strength, they like to rest
June 6th - Paul Hayne, the poet, has taken rooms here My husband came and offered to buy me a pair of horses He says I needme with the means of a rapid retreat?” said I ”I a”
Mrs Rose Greenhow is in Richrateful Confederates say Seward sent her My husband says the Confederacy owes her a debt it can never pay She warned theot Joe Johnston and his Paladins to appear upon the stage in the very nick of tiacy to the British Legation, which accepted the gift, unlike the British nation, ould not accept Eh they illed to the nation by Lord Nelson
Mem Cohen, fresh from the hospital where she ith a beautiful Jewish friend Rachel, as ill call her (be it her name or no), was put to feed a very weak patient Mem noticed what a handsome felloas and how quiet and clean She fancied by those tokens that he was a gentle nurse leaned kindly over him and held the cup to his lips When that ceremony was over and she had wiped his mouth, to her horror she felt a pair of by no means weak arht strong, indeed She did not say a word; she made no complaint She slipped away from the hospital, and
177 hereafter in her hospital ill e, no matter hoeak and weary, sick and sore, the patient entleht not to have put those red lips of hers so near”
June 7th - Cheves McCord's battery on the coast has three guns and one hundred men If this battery should be captured John's Island and James Island would be open to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly
Wade Hampton writes to his wife that Chickahominy was not as decided a victory as he could have wished Fort Pillow and Meiven up Next! and next!
June 9th - When we read of the battles in India, in Italy, in the Cri topic, like any other, to look for in the paper Now you hear of a battle with a thrill and a shudder It has come home to us; half the people that we know in the world are under the eneram reaches you, and you leave it on your lap You are pale with fright You handle it, or you dread to touch it, as you would a rattlesnake; worse, worse, a snake could only strike you How one to their death?
When you ; they press your hand; tears stand in their eyes or roll down their cheeks, as they happen to possess more or less self-control They have brother, father, or sons as the caseseeiven us It can not be 1 Fort Pilloas on the Mississippi above Memphis It had been erected by the Confederates, but was occupied by the Federals on June 5, 1862, the Confederates having evacuated and partially destroyed it the day before On June 6, 1862, the Federal fleet defeated the Confederates near Memphis The city soon afteras occupied by the Federals