Second year of Confederate independence. I write daily for
my own diversion. These mémoires
pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove
useful to more important people than I am. I do not wish to do any harm or to
hurt any one. If any scandalous stories creep in they can easily be burned. It
is hard, in such a hurry as things are now, to separate the wheat from the
chaff. Now that I have made my protest and written down my wishes, I can
scribble on with a free will and free conscience.
Congress at the North is down on us. They talk largely of
hanging slave-owners. They say they hold Port Royal, as we did when we took it
originally from the aborigines, who fled before us; so we are to be
exterminated and improved, à
l'Indienne, from the face of the earth.
Medea, when asked: “Country, wealth, husband, children, all
are gone; and now what remains?” answered: “Medea remains.” “There is a time in
most men's lives when they resemble Job, sitting among the ashes and drinking
in the full bitterness of complicated misfortune.”
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 137
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