The Washington
Congress has passed peace measures. Glory be to God (as my Irish Margaret used
to preface every remark, both great and small). At last, according to his wish,
I was able to introduce Mr. Hill, of Georgia, to Mr. Mallory,1 and
also Governor Moore and Brewster, the latter the only man without a title of
some sort that I know in this democratic subdivided republic. I have seen a
negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd. I was
walking and felt faint, seasick. The creature looked so like my good little
Nancy, a bright mulatto with a pleasant face. She was magnificently gotten up
in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all, sometimes ogling the
bidders, sometimes looking quiet, coy, and modest, but her mouth never relaxed
from its expanded grin of excitement. I dare say the poor thing knew who would
buy her. I sat down on a stool in a shop and disciplined my wild thoughts. I
tried it Sterne fashion. You know how women sell themselves and are sold in
marriage from queens downward, eh? You know what the Bible says about slavery
and marriage; poor women! poor slaves! Sterne, with his starling — what did he
know? He only thought, he did not feel. In Evan Harrington I read: “Like a true
English female, she believed in her own inflexible virtue, but never trusted
her husband out of sight.”
The New York Herald
says: “Lincoln's carriage is not bomb-proof; so he does not drive out.” Two
flags and a bundle of sticks have been sent him as gentle reminders. The sticks
are to break our heads with. The English are gushingly unhappy as to our family
quarrel. Magnanimous of them, for it is their opportunity.
_______________
1 Stephen R. Mallory was the son of a
shipmaster of Connecticut, who had settled in Key West in 1820. From 1851 to
1861 Mr. Mallory was United States Senator from Florida, and after the
formation of the Confederacy, became its Secretary of the Navy.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 12-13
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