Mm. Wigfall, with the “Lone Star” flag in her carriage,
called for me. We drove to the fair grounds. Mrs. Davis's landau, with her
spanking bays, rolled along in front of us. The fair grounds are as covered
with tents, soldiers, etc., as ever. As one regiment moves off to the army, a
fresh one from home comes to be mustered in and take its place.
The President, with his aides, dashed by. My husband was
riding with him. The President presented the flag to the Texans. Mr. Chesnut
came to us for the flag, and bore it aloft to the President. We seemed to come
in for part of the glory. We were too far off to hear the speech, but Jeff
Davis is very good at that sort of thing, and we were satisfied that it was
well done.
Heavens! how that redoubtable Wigfall did rush those poor
Texans about! He maneuvered and marched them until I was weary for their sakes.
Poor fellows; it was a hot afternoon in August and the thermometer in the
nineties. Mr. Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall replied with his hat on. Is
that military?
At the fair grounds to-day, such music, mustering, and
marching, such cheering and flying of flags, such firing of guns and all that
sort of thing. A gala day it was, with double-distilled Fourth-of-July feeling.
In the midst of it all, a messenger came to tell Mrs. Wigfall that a telegram
had been received, saying her children were safe across the lines in
Gordonsville. That was something to thank God for, without any doubt.
These two little girls came from somewhere in Connecticut,
with Mrs. Wigfall's sister — the one who gave me my Bogotsky, the only person
in the world, except Susan Rutledge who ever seemed to think I had a soul to
save. Now suppose Seward had held Louisa and Fanny as hostages for Louis
Wigfall's good behavior; eh?
Excitement number two: that bold brigadier, the Georgia
General Toombs, charging about too recklessly, got thrown. His horse dragged
him up to the wheels of our carriage. For a moment it was frightful. Down there
among the horses' hoofs was a face turned up toward us, purple with rage. His
foot was still in the stirrup, and he had not let go the bridle. The horse was
prancing over him, tearing and plunging; everybody was hemming him in, and they
seemed so slow and awkward about it. We felt it an eternity, looking down at
him, and expecting him to be killed before our very faces. However, he soon got
it all straight, and, though awfully tousled and tumbled, dusty, rumpled, and
flushed, with redder face and wilder hair than ever, he rode off gallantly,
having to our admiration bravely remounted the recalcitrant charger.
Now if I were to pick out the best abused one, where all
catch it so bountifully, I should say Mr. Commissary-General Northrop was the
most “cussed” and villified man in the Confederacy. He is held accountable for
everything that goes wrong in the army. He may not be efficient, but having
been a classmate and crony of Jeff Davis at West Point, points the moral and
adorns the tale. I hear that alluded to oftenest of his many crimes. They say Beauregard
writes that his army is upon the verge of starvation. Here every man, woman,
and child is ready to hang to the first Lamp-post anybody of whom that army
complains. Every Manassas soldier is a hero dear to our patriotic hearts. Put
up with any neglect of the heroes of the 21st July — never!
And now they say we did not move on right after the flying
foe because we had no provisions, no wagons, no ammunition, etc. Rain, mud, and
Northrop. Where were the enemy's supplies that we bragged so of bagging? Echo
answers where? Where there is a will there is a way. We stopped to plunder that
rich convoy, and somehow, for a day or so, everybody thought the war was over
and stopped to rejoice: so it appeared here. All this was our dinner-table talk
to-day. Mr. Mason dined with us and Mr. Barnwell sits by me always. The latter
reproved me sharply, but Mr. Mason laughed at “this headlong, unreasonable
woman's harangue and female tactics and their war-ways.” A freshet in the
autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring. Time and tide wait for
no man, and there was a tide in our affairs which might have led to Washington,
and we did not take it and lost our fortune this round. Things which nobody
could deny.
McClellan virtually supersedes the Titan Scott. Physically
General Scott is the largest man I ever saw. Mrs. Scott said, “nobody but his
wife could ever know how little he was.” And yet they say, old Winfield Scott
could have organized an army for them if they had had patience. They would not
give him time.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 96-8
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