Norfolk has been burned and the Merrimac sunk without
striking a blow since her coup d’état in Hampton Roads. Read Milton. See the speech
of Adam to Eve in a new light. Women will not stay at home; will go out to see
and be seen, even if it be by the devil himself.
Very encouraging letters from Hon. Mr. Memminger and from L.
Q. Washington. They tell the same story in very different words. It amounts to
this: “Not one foot of Virginia soil is to be given up without a bitter fight
for it. We have one hundred and five thousand men in all, McClellan one hundred
and ninety thousand. We can stand that disparity.”
What things I have been said to have said! Mr. ––– heard me
make scoffing remarks about the Governor and the Council — or he thinks he
heard me. James Chesnut wrote him a note that my name was to be kept out of it —
indeed, that he was never to mention my name again under any possible
circumstances. It was all preposterous nonsense, but it annoyed my husband
amazingly. He said it was a scheme to use my chatter to his injury. He was very
kind about it. He knows my real style so well that he can always tell my real impudence
from what is fabricated for me.
There is said to be an
order from Butler1 turning over the women of New Orleans to his
soldiers. Thus is the measure of his iniquities filled. We thought that
generals always restrained, by shot or sword if need be, the brutality of
soldiers. This hideous, cross-eyed beast orders his men to treat the ladies of
New Orleans as women of the town — to punish them, he says, for their
insolence.
Footprints on the boundaries of another world once more.
Willie Taylor, before he left home for the army, fancied one day — day, remember
— that he saw Albert Rhett standing by his side. He recoiled from the ghostly
presence. “You need not do that, Willie. You will soon be as I am.” Willie
rushed into the next room to tell them what had happened, and fainted. It had a
very depressing effect upon him. And now the other day he died in Virginia.
_______________
1 General Benjamin F. Butler took command of New Orleans on
May 2, 1862. The author's reference is to his famous “Order
No. 28,” which reads: “As the officers and soldiers of the United States
have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves
ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and
courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by
word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier
of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a
woman of the town plying her vocation.” This and other acts of Butler in New
Orleans led Jefferson Davis to issue a proclamation, declaring Butler to be a
felon and an outlaw, and if captured that he should be instantly hanged. In
December Butler was superseded at New Orleans by General Banks.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 164-5
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