Mrs. Davis came in
so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said: “A
great battle has been fought.1 Joe Johnston led the right wing, and
Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton
is wounded. Colonel Johnston of the Legion killed; so are Colonel Bee and
Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith2 is wounded or killed."
I had no breath to
speak; she went on in that desperate, calm way, to which people betake
themselves under the greatest excitement: “Bartow, rallying his men, leading
them into the hottest of the fight, died gallantly at the head of his regiment.
The President telegraphs me only that ‘it is a great victory.’ General Cooper
has all the other telegrams.”
Still I said
nothing; I was stunned; then I was so grateful. Those nearest and dearest to me
were safe still. She then began, in the same concentrated voice, to read from a
paper she held in her hand: “Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman's battery
taken. Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the Legion wounded.”
That got me up.
Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed. We went into Mrs. Preston's
room, and she made me lie down on her bed. Men, women, and children streamed
in. Every living soul had a story to tell. “Complete victory,” you heard
everywhere. We had been such anxious wretches. The revulsion of feeling was almost
too much to bear.
To-day I met my
friend, Mr. Hunter. I was on my way to Mrs. Bartow's room and begged him to
call at some other time. I was too tearful just then for a morning visit from
even the most sympathetic person. A woman from Mrs. Bartow's country was in a
fury because they had stopped her as she rushed to be the first to tell Mrs.
Bartow her husband was killed, it having been decided that Mrs. Davis should
tell her. Poor thing! She was found lying on her bed when Mrs. Davis knocked. “Come
in,” she said. When she saw it was Mrs. Davis, she sat up, ready to spring to
her feet, but then there was something in Mrs. Davis's pale face that took the
life out of her. She stared at Mrs. Davis, then sank back, and covered her face
as she asked: “Is it bad news for me?” Mrs. Davis did not speak. “Is he killed?”
Afterward Mrs. Bartow said to me: “As soon as I saw Mrs. Davis's face I could
not say one word. I knew it all in an instant. I knew it before I wrapped the
shawl about my head.”
Maria, Mrs. Preston's
maid, furiously patriotic, came into my room. “These colored people say it is
printed in the papers here that the Virginia people done it all. Now Mars Wade
had so many of his men killed and he wounded, it stands to reason that South
Carolina was no ways backward. If there was ever anything plain, that's plain.”
_______________
1 The first battle of Bull Run, or Manassas,
fought on July 21, 1861, the Confederates being commanded by General
Beauregard, and the Federals by General McDowell. Bull Run is a small stream
tributary to the Potomac.
2 Edmund Kirby Smith, a native of Florida,
who had graduated from West Point, served in the Mexican War, and been
Professor of Mathematics at West Point. He resigned his commission in the
United States Army after the secession of Florida.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 86-8
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