A heavy, heavy
heart. Another missive from Jordan, querulous and fault-finding; things are all
wrong — Beauregard's Jordan had been crossed, not the stream “in Canaan's fair
and happy land, where our possessions lie.” They seem to feel that the war is
over here, except the President and Mr. Barnwell; above all that foreboding
friend of mine, Captain Ingraham. He thinks it hardly begun.
Another outburst
from Jordan. Beauregard is not seconded properly. Hélas! To think that any mortal general (even
though he had sprung up in a month or so from captain of artillery to general)
could be so puffed up with vanity, so blinded by any false idea of his own
consequence as to write, to intimate that man, or men, would sacrifice their
country, injure themselves, ruin their families, to spite the aforesaid
general! Conceit and self-assertion can never reach a higher point than that.
And yet they give you to understand Mr. Davis does not like Beauregard. In
point of fact they fancy he is jealous of him, and rather than Beauregard shall
have a showing the President (who would be hanged at least if things go wrong)
will cripple the army to spite Beauregard. Mr. Mallory says, “How we could
laugh, but you see it is no laughing matter to have our fate in the hands of
such self-sufficient, vain, army idiots.” So the amenities of life are
spreading.
In the meantime we
seem to be resting on our oars, debating in Congress, while the enterprising
Yankees are quadrupling their army at their leisure. Every day some of our
regiments march away from here. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new
ones are fairly running in; fearing the war will be over before they get a
sight of the fun. Every man from every little precinct wants a place in the
picture.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin
Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary
From Dixie, p. 99-100
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