A painful piece of news came to us yesterday — our cousin,
Mrs. Witherspoon, of Society Hill, was found dead in her bed. She was quite
well the night before. Killed, people say, by family sorrows. She was a proud
and high-strung woman. Nothing shabby in word, thought, or deed ever came nigh
her. She was of a warm and tender heart, too; truth and uprightness itself. Few
persons have ever been more loved and looked up to. She was a very handsome old
lady, of fine presence, dignified and commanding.
“Killed by family sorrows,” so they said when Mrs. John N.
Williams died. So Uncle John said yesterday of his brother, Burwell. “Death
deserts the army,” said that quaint old soul, “and takes fancy shots of the most
eccentric kind nearer home.”
The high and disinterested conduct our enemies seem to
expect of us is involuntary and unconscious praise. They pay us the compliment
to look for from us (and execrate us for the want of it) a degree of virtue
they were never able to practise themselves. It is a crowning misdemeanor for
us to hold still in slavery those Africans whom they brought here from Africa,
or sold to us when they found it did not pay to own them themselves. Gradually,
they slid or sold them off down here; or freed them prospectively, giving
themselves years in which to get rid of them in a remunerative way. We want to
spread them over other lands, too — West and South, or Northwest, where the
climate would free them or kill them, or improve them out of the world, as our
friends up North do the Indians. If they had been forced to keep the negroes in
New England, I dare say the negroes might have shared the Indians’ fate, for
they are wise in their generation, these Yankee children of light. Those
pernicious Africans! So have just spoken Mr. Chesnut and Uncle John, both ci-devant
Union men, now utterly for State rights.
It is queer how different the same man may appear viewed
from different standpoints. “What a perfect gentleman,” said one person of
another; “so fine-looking, high-bred, distinguished, easy, free, and above all
graceful in his bearing; so high-toned! He is always indignant at any symptom
of wrong-doing. He is charming — the man of all others I like to have strangers
see — a noble representative of our country.” “Yes, every word of that is true,”
was the reply. “He is all that. And then the other side of the picture is true,
too. You can always find him. You know where to find him! Wherever there
is a looking-glass, a bottle, or a woman, there will he be also.” “My God! and
you call yourself his friend.” “Yes, I know him down to the ground.”
This conversation I overheard from an upper window when
looking down on the piazza below — a complicated character truly beyond La Bruyรจre—with what Mrs.
Preston calls refinement spread thin until it is skin-deep only.
An iron steamer has run the blockade at Savannah. We now
raise our wilted heads like flowers after a shower. This drop of good news
revives us.1
_______________
1 By reason of illness, preoccupation in other
affairs, and various deterrent causes besides, Mrs. Chesnut allowed a
considerable period to elapse before making another entry in her diary.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 129-30
No comments:
Post a Comment