Mrs. Middleton was dolorous indeed. General Lee had warned
the planters about Combahee, etc., that they must take care of themselves now;
he could not do it. Confederate soldiers had committed some outrages on the
plantations and officers had punished them promptly. She poured contempt upon
Yancey's letter to Lord Russell.1 It was the letter of a shopkeeper,
not in the style of a statesman at all.
We called to see Mary McDuffie.2 She asked Mary
Preston what Doctor Boykin had said of her husband as we came along in the
train. She heard it was something very complimentary. Mary P. tried to
remember, and to repeat it all, to the joy of the other Mary, who liked to hear
nice things about her husband.
Mary was amazed to hear of the list of applicants for
promotion. One delicate-minded person accompanied his demand for advancement by
a request for a written description of the Manassas battle; he had heard
Colonel Chesnut give such a brilliant account of it in Governor Cobb's room.
The Merrimac3 business has come like a
gleam of lightning illumining a dark scene. Our sky is black and lowering.
The Judge saw his little daughter at my window and he came
up. He was very smooth and kind. It was really a delightful visit; not a
disagreeable word was spoken. He abused no one whatever, for he never once
spoke of any one but himself, and himself he praised without stint. He did not
look at me once, though he spoke very kindly to me.
_______________
1 Lord Russell was Foreign Secretary under the
Palmerston administration of 1859 to 1865.
2 Mary McDuffie was the second wife of Wade
Hampton.
3 The Merrimac was formerly a 40-gun screw
frigate of the United States Navy. In April, 1861, when the Norfolk Navy-yard
was abandoned by the United States she was sunk. Her hull was afterward raised
by the Confederates and she was reconstructed on new plans, and renamed the
Virginia. On March 2, 1862, she destroyed the Congress, a sailing-ship of 50
guns, and the Cumberland, a sailing-ship of 30 guns, at Newport News. On March
7th she attacked the Minnesota, but was met by the Monitor and defeated in a
memorable engagement. Many features of modern battle-ships have been derived
from the Merrimac and Monitor.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 136-7
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