June 12th.–Have been looking at Mrs. O’Dowd as she burnished the “Meejor’s arrms” before Waterloo. And I have been busy, too. My husband has gone to join Beauregard, somewhere beyond Richmond. I feel blue-black with melancholy. But I hope to be in Richmond before long myself. That is some comfort. The war is making us [...]
June 6th.–Davin! Have had a talk concerning him to-day with two opposite extremes of people. Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, praises everybody, good and bad. “Judge not,” she says. She is a philosopher; she would not give herself the pain to find fault. The Judge abuses everybody, and he does it so well– short, sharp, and [...]
May 27th.—They look for a fight at Norfolk. Beauregard is there. I think if I were a man I’d be there, too. Also Harper’s Ferry is to be attacked. The Confederate flag has been cut down at Alexandria by a man named Ellsworth,¹ who was in command of Zouaves. Jackson was the name of the [...]
CHARLESTON, S. C, May 25, 1861.—We have come back to South Carolina from the Montgomery Congress, stopping over at Mulberry. We came with R. M. T. Hunter and Mr. Barnwell. Mr. Barnwell has excellent reasons for keeping cotton at home, but I forget what they are. Generally, people take what he says, also Mr. Hunter’s [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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? [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
April 4th.—Mr. Hayne said his wife moaned over the hardness of the chaperones’ seats at St. Andrew’s Hall at a Cecilia Ball.¹ 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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
FORT SUMTER, S.C., March 25, 1861. (Received A. G. O., March 28.) Col. L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General U. S A.: COLONEL: I have the honor to report that everything is quiet around us, and that we do not see any work being prosecuted except that at the new battery at Fort Johnson. They are practicing this [...]
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 [...]
March 11th.–In full conclave to-night, the drawingroom 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 [...]
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 [...]