Theodore Barker and James Lowndes came; the latter has been
wretchedly treated. A man said, “All that I wish on earth is to be at peace and
on my own plantation,” to which Mr. Lowndes replied quietly, “I wish I had a plantation
to be on, but just now I can't see how any one would feel justified in leaving
the army.” Mr. Barker was bitter against the spirit of braggadocio so rampant
among us. The gentleman who had been answered so completely by James Lowndes
said, with spitefulness: “Those women who are so frantic for their husbands to
join the army would like them killed, no doubt.”
Things were growing rather uncomfortable, but an
interruption came in the shape of a card. An old classmate of Mr. Chesnut's — Captain
Archer, just now fresh from California — followed his card so quickly that Mr.
Chesnut had hardly time to tell us that in Princeton College they called him “Sally”
Archer he was so pretty — when he entered. He is good-looking still, but the
service and consequent rough life have destroyed all softness and girlishness.
He will never be so pretty again.
The North is consolidated; they move as one man, with no
States, but an army organized by the central power. Russell in the Northern
camp is cursed of Yankees for that Bull Run letter. Russell, in his capacity of
Englishman, despises both sides. He divides us equally into North and South. He
prefers to attribute our victory at Bull Run to Yankee cowardice rather than to
Southern courage. He gives no credit to either side; for good qualities, we are
after all mere Americans! Everything not '' national '' is arrested. It looks
like the business of Seward.
I do not know when I have seen a woman without knitting in
her hand. Socks for the soldiers is the cry. One poor man said he hid dozens of
socks and but one shirt. He preferred more shirts and fewer stockings. We make
a quaint appearance with this twinkling of needles and the everlasting sock
dangling below.
They have arrested Wm. B. Reed and Miss Winder, she boldly
proclaiming herself a secessionist. Why should she seek a martyr's crown?
Writing people love notoriety. It is so delightful to be of enough consequence
to be arrested. I have often wondered if such incense was ever offered as
Napoleon's so-called persecution and alleged jealousy of Madame de Stael.
Russell once more, to whom London, Paris, and India have
been an every-day sight, and every-night, too, streets and all. How absurd for
him to go on in indignation because there have been women on negro plantations
who were not vestal virgins. Negro women get married, and after marriage behave
as well as other people. Marrying is the amusement of their lives. They take
life easily; so do their class everywhere. Bad men are hated here as elsewhere.
“I hate slavery. I hate a man who — You say there are no
more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But
what do you say to this — to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its
consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful
and accomplished daughters? He holds his head high and poses as the model of
all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him.
From the height of his awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he
never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don
Juan. ‘You with that immoral book!’ he would say, and then he would order her
out of his sight. You see Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes
Legree a bachelor.” “Remember George II and his likes.”
“Oh, I know half a Legree — a man said to be as cruel as
Legree, but the other half of him did not correspond. He was a man of polished
manners, and the best husband and father and member of the church in the world.”
“Can that be so?”
“Yes, I know it. Exceptional case, that sort of thing,
always. And I knew the dissolute half of Legree well. He was high and mighty,
but the kindest creature to his slaves. And the unfortunate results of his bad
ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice-blocks. They were kept in full
view, and provided for handsomely in his will.”
“The wife and daughters in the might of their purity and
innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as
the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.
They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness.” “Well,
yes; if he is rich he is the fountain from whence all blessings flow.”
“The one I have in my eye — my half of Legree, the dissolute
half — was so furious in temper and thundered his wrath so at the poor women,
they were glad to let him do as he pleased in peace if they could only escape
his everlasting fault-finding, and noisy bluster, making everybody so
uncomfortable.” “Now — now, do you know any woman of this generation who would
stand that sort of thing? No, never, not for one moment. The make-believe
angels were of the last century. We know, and we won't have it.”
"The condition of women is improving, it seems."
"Women are brought up not to judge their fathers or their husbands. They
take them as the Lord provides and are thankful."
“If they should not go to heaven after all; think what lives
most women lead.” “No heaven, no purgatory, no — the other thing? Never. I believe
in future rewards and punishments.”
“How about the wives of drunkards? I heard a woman say once
to a friend of her husband, tell it as a cruel matter of fact, without
bitterness, without comment, ‘Oh, you have not seen him! He has changed. He has
not gone to bed sober in thirty years.’ She has had her purgatory, if not ‘the
other thing,’ here in this world. We all know what a drunken man is. To think, for
no crime, a person may be condemned to live with one thirty years.” “You
wander from the question I asked. Are Southern men worse because of the slave
system and the facile black women?” “Not a bit. They see too much of them. The
barroom people don't drink, the confectionery people loathe candy. They are sick
of the black sight of them.”
“You think a nice man from the South is the nicest thing in
the world?” “I know it. Put him by any other man and see!”
Have seen Yankee letters taken at Manassas. The spelling is
often atrocious, and we thought they had all gone through a course of blue-covered
Noah Webster spellingbooks. Our soldiers do spell astonishingly. There is
Horace Greeley: they say he can't read his own handwriting. But he is candid
enough and disregards all time-serving. He says in his paper that in our army
the North has a hard nut to crack, and that the rank and file of our army is
superior in education and general intelligence to theirs.
My wildest imagination will not picture Mr. Mason1
as a diplomat. He will say chaw for chew, and he will call himself Jeems, and
he will wear a dress coat to breakfast. Over here, whatever a Mason does is
right in his own eyes. He is above law. Somebody asked him how he pronounced
his wife's maiden name: she was a Miss Chew from Philadelphia.
They say the English will like Mr. Mason; he is so manly, so
straightforward, so truthful and bold. “A fine old English gentleman,” so said
Russell to me, “but for tobacco.” “I like Mr. Mason and Mr. Hunter better than
anybody else.” “And yet they are wonderfully unlike.” “Now you just listen to
me,” said I. “Is Mrs. Davis in hearing — no? Well, this sending Mr. Mason to
London is the maddest thing yet. Worse in some points of view than Yancey, and
that was a catastrophe.”
_______________
1 James Murray Mason was a grandson of George Mason,
and had been elected United States Senator from Virginia in 1847. In 1851 he
drafted the Fugitive Slave Law. His mission to England in 1861 was shared by
John Slidell. On November 8, 1861, while on board the British steamer Trent, in
the Bahamas, they were captured by an American named Wilkes, and imprisoned in
Boston until January 2, 1862. A famous diplomatic difficulty arose with England
over this affair. John Slidell was a native of New York, who had settled in
Louisiana and became a Member of Congress from that State in 1843. In 1853 he
was elected to the United States Senate.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 112-7
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