In the drawing-room a literary lady began a violent attack
upon this mischief-making South Carolina. She told me she was a successful
writer in the magazines of the day, but when I found she used “incredible” for “incredulous,”
I said not a word in defense of my native land. I left her “incredible.”
Another person came in, while she was pouring upon me her home troubles, and
asked if she did not know I was a Carolinian. Then she gracefully reversed her
engine, and took the other tack, sounding our praise, but I left her incredible
and I remained incredulous, too. Brewster says the war specks are growing in
size. Nobody at the North, or in Virginia, believes we are in earnest. They
think we are sulking and that Jeff Davis and Stephens1 are getting
up a very pretty little comedy. The Virginia delegates were insulted at the peace
conference; Brewster said, “kicked out.”
The Judge thought Jefferson Davis rude to him when the
latter was Secretary of War. Mr. Chesnut persuaded the Judge to forego his
private wrong for the public good, and so he voted for him, but now his old
grudge has come back with an increased venomousness. What a pity to bring the
spites of the old Union into this new one! It seems to me already men are
willing to risk an injury to our cause, if they may in so doing hurt Jeff
Davis.
_______________
1 Alexander H. Stephens, the eminent statesman of
Georgia, who before the war had been conspicuous in all the political movements
of his time and in 1861 became Vice-President of the Confederacy.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 10-11
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