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 Thermopylae. 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.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 35-8
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