We have been to Bloomsbury again and hear that William
Kirkland has been wounded. A scene occurred then, Mary weeping bitterly and
Aunt B. frantic as to Tanny's danger. I proposed to make arrangements for Mary
to go on at once. The Judge took me aside, frowning angrily. “You are unwise to
talk in that way. She can neither take her infant nor leave it. The cars are
closed by order of the government to all but soldiers.”
I told him of the woman who, when the conductor said she
could not go, cried at the top of her voice, “Soldiers, I want to go to Richmond
to nurse my wounded husband.” In a moment twenty men made themselves her
body-guard, and she went on unmolested. The Judge said I talked nonsense. I
said I would go on in my carriage if need be. Besides, there would be no
difficulty in getting Mary a “permit.”
He answered hotly that in no case would he let her go, and
that I had better not go back into the house. We were on the piazza and
my carriage at the door. I took it and crossed over to see Mary Boykin. She was
weeping, too, so washed away with tears one would hardly know her. “So many
killed. My son and my husband—I do not hear a word from them.”
Gave to-day for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee,
and sixty pounds of sugar, $800.
Beauregard is a gentleman and was a genius as long as
Whiting did his engineering for him. Our Creole general is not quite so clever
as he thinks himself.
Mary Ford writes for school-books for her boys. She is in
great distress on the subject. When Longstreet's corps passed through
Greenville there was great enthusiasm; handkerchiefs were waved, bouquets and
flowers were thrown the troops; her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw
their school-books.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 311-2
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