May 4th.<\/i>\u2014Home again at Bloomsbury. From Chester to Winnsboro we did not see one living thing, man, woman, or animal, except poor William trudging home after his sad disaster. The blooming of the gardens had a funereal effect. Nature is so luxuriant here, she soon covers the ravages of savages. No frost has occurred since the seventh of March, which accounts for the wonderful advance in vegetation. This seems providential to these starving people. In this climate so much that is edible can be grown in two months.<\/p>\n
At Winnsboro we stayed at Mr. Robertson\u2019s. There we left the wagon train. Only Mr. Brisbane, one of the general \u2018s couriers, came with us on escort duty. The Robertsons were very kind and hospitable, brimful of Yankee anecdotes. To my amazement the young people of Winnsboro had a May-day celebration amid the smoking ruins. Irrepressible is youth.<\/p>\n
The fidelity of the negroes is the principal topic. There seems to be not a single case of a negro who betrayed his master, and yet they showed a natural and exultant joy at being free. After we left Winnsboro negroes were seen in the fields plowing and hoeing corn, just as in antebellum times. The fields in that respect looked quite cheerful. We did not pass in the line of Sherman\u2019s savages, and so saw some houses standing.<\/p>\n
Mary Kirkland has had experience with the Yankees. She has been pronounced the most beautiful woman on this side of the Atlantic, and has been spoiled accordingly in all society. When the Yankees came, Monroe, their negro manservant, told her to stand up and hold two of her children in her arms, with the other two pressed as close against her knees as they could get. Mammy Selina and Lizzie then stood grimly on each side of their young missis and her children. For four mortal hours the soldiers surged through the rooms of the house. Sometimes Mary and her children were roughly jostled against the wall, but Mammy and Lizzie were stanch supporters. The Yankee soldiers taunted the negro women for their foolishness in standing by their cruel slave-owners, and taunted Mary with being glad of the protection of her poor ill-used slaves. Monroe meanwhile had one leg bandaged and pretended to be lame, so that he might not be enlisted as a soldier, and kept making pathetic appeals to Mary.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t answer them back, Miss Mary,\u201d said he. \u201cLet \u2019em say what dey want to; don\u2019t answer \u2019em back. Don\u2019t give \u2019em any chance to say you are impudent to \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n
One man said to her: \u201cWhy do you shrink from us and avoid us so? We did not come here to fight for negroes; we hate them. At Port Royal I saw a beautiful white woman driving in a wagon with a coal-black negro man. If she had been anything to me I would have shot her through the heart.\u201d \u201cOh, oh! \u201d said Lizzie, \u201cthat\u2019s the way you talk in here. I\u2019ll remember that when you begin outside to beg me to run away with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally poor Aunt Betsy, Mary\u2019s mother, fainted from pure fright and exhaustion. Mary put down her baby and sprang to her mother, who was lying limp in a chair, and fiercely called out, \u201cLeave this room, you wretches! Do you mean to kill my mother? She is ill; I must put her to bed.\u201d Without a word they all slunk out ashamed. \u201cIf I had only tried that hours ago,\u201d she now said. Outside they remarked that she was \u201can insolent rebel huzzy, who thinks herself too good to speak to a soldier of the United States,\u201d and one of them said: \u201cLet us go in and break her mouth.\u201d But the better ones held the more outrageous back. Monroe slipped in again and said: \u201cMissy, for God\u2019s sake, when dey come in be sociable with \u2019em. Dey will kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen let me die.\u201d<\/p>\n
The negro soldiers were far worse than the white ones.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Bartow drove with me to Mulberry. On one side of the house we found every window had been broken, every bell torn down, every piece of furniture destroyed, and every door smashed in. But the other side was intact. Maria Whitaker and her mother, who had been left in charge, explained this odd state of things. The Yankees were busy as beavers, working like regular carpenters, destroying everything when their general came in and stopped them. He told them it was a sin to destroy a fine old house like that, whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not have had it done for the world. It was wanton mischief. He explained to Maria that soldiers at such times were excited, wild, and unruly. They carried off sacks full of our books, since unfortunately they found a pile of empty sacks in the garret. Our books, our letters, our papers were afterward strewn along the Charleston road. Somebody found things of ours as far away as Vance\u2019s Ferry.<\/p>\n