Dined to-day with Mr. Hill1 from Georgia, and his
wife. After he left us she told me he was the celebrated individual who, for
Christian scruples, refused to fight a duel with Stephens.2 She
seemed very proud of him for his conduct in the affair. Ignoramus that I am, I
had not heard of it. I am having all kinds of experiences. Drove to-day with a
lady who fervently wished her husband would go down to Pensacola and be shot. I
was dumb with amazement, of course. Telling my story to one who knew the
parties, was informed, “Don't you know he beats her?” So I have seen a man “who
lifts his hand against a woman in aught save kindness.”
Brewster says Lincoln passed through Baltimore disguised,
and at night, and that he did well, for just now Baltimore is dangerous ground.
He says that he hears from all quarters that the vulgarity of Lincoln, his
wife, and his son is beyond credence, a thing you must see before you can
believe it. Senator Stephen A. Douglas told Mr. Chesnut that “Lincoln is
awfully clever, and that he had found him a heavy handful.”
Went to pay my respects to Mrs. Jefferson Davis. She met me
with open arms. We did not allude to anything by which we are surrounded. We
eschewed politics and our changed relations.
_______________
1 Benjamin H. Hill, who had already been active
in State and National affairs when the Secession movement was carried through.
He had been an earnest advocate of the Union until in Georgia the resolution
was passed declaring that the State ought to secede. He then became a prominent
supporter of secession. He was a member of the Confederate Congress, which met
in Montgomery in 1861, and served in the Confederate Senate until the end of
the war. After the war, he was elected to Congress and opposed the
Reconstruction policy of that body. In 1877 he was elected United States
Senator from Georgia.
2 Governor Herschel V. Johnson also declined, and
doubtless for similar reasons, to accept a challenge from Alexander H.
Stephens, who, though endowed with the courage of a gladiator, was very small
and frail.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 11-2
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