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.
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.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 38-9
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