Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From the poor old blind
bishop downward everybody is besetting him to let off students, theological and
other, from going into the army. One comfort is that the boys will go. Mr.
Chesnut answers: “Wait until you have saved your country before you make
preachers and scholars. When you have a country, there will be no lack of
divines, students, scholars to adorn and purify it.” He says he is a one-idea
man. That idea is to get every possible man into the ranks.
Professor Le Conte1 is an able auxiliary. He has
undertaken to supervise and carry on the powder-making enterprise — the very
first attempted in the Confederacy, and Mr. Chesnut is proud of it. It is a
brilliant success, thanks to Le Conte.
Mr. Chesnut receives anonymous letters urging him to arrest
the Judge as seditious. They say he is a dangerous and disaffected person. His
abuse of Jeff Davis and the Council is rabid. Mr. Chesnut laughs and throws the
letters into the fire. “Disaffected to Jeff Davis,” says he; “disaffected to
the Council, that don't count. He knows what he is about; he would not injure
his country for the world.”
Read Uncle Tom's Cabin again. These negro women have a
chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves — the “impropers”
can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored
ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully
Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as
to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us — such men as
Legree and his women.
The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as far
away from them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that missionaries
could do to prevent and alleviate evils. The social evil has not been
suppressed in old England or in New England, in London or in Boston. People in
those places expect more virtue from a plantation African than they can insure
in practise among themselves with all their own high moral surroundings —
light, education, training, and support. Lady Mary Montagu says, “Only men and
women at last.” “Male and female, created he them,” says the Bible. There are
cruel, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as well as South, I
dare say. The Northern men and women who came here were always hardest, for
they expected an African to work and behave as a white man. We do not.
I have often thought from observation truly that perfect
beauty hardens the heart, and as to grace, what so graceful as a cat, a
tigress, or a panther. Much love, admiration, worship hardens an idol's heart.
It becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to give
nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. I speak now of
what I have watched with horror and amazement.
Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used.
Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination. People can't love
things dirty, ugly, and repulsive, simply because they ought to do so, but they
can be good to them at a distance; that's easy. You see, I can not rise very
high; I can only judge by what I see.
_______________
1 Joseph Le Conte, who afterward arose to much
distinction as a geologist and writer of text-books on geology. He died in
1901, while he was connected with the University of California. His work at
Columbia was to manufacture, on a large scale, medicines for the Confederate
Army, his laboratory being the main source of supply. In Professor Le Conte's
autobiography published in 1903, are several chapters devoted to his life in
the South.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 141-3
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