We had a serenade last night. It was given by Holbrook,
Fuller, and others. They spoke about it at breakfast and General Hunter laughed
heartily as they wanted to know why it was not appreciated by the household. We
had a very cosy, sociable, pleasant meal. Mrs. Dibble, or Dibbil, the wife of
an officer on Morris Island, who stays with Mrs. Hunter, shared her room with
me, and after the serenade we slept well. I had another long talk with General
and Mrs. Hunter. I told him of the assault upon Mr. Pierce, and the cotton
agents' evil doings generally. He says he shall burn Charleston if he ever has
a chance to take it, but that he has no chance now, for all his troops are
withdrawn except barely enough for defence. He is a generous but too impulsive
man, kind to a fault to his soldiers, and more anti-slavery than I expected. He
wore a loose undress coat made of white cassimir and a straw hat, when walking
on the piazza. His manner is very quick and decided, and to his wife, attentive
and as if he were much attached to her. He told me how she went with him on all
his campaigns and how impossible it was for him to do without her; and she told
me how he had suffered with the cut across the cheek and wound in the ankle
which he received at Ball's Bluff, I think, or Bull Run. I spoke of Fremont
admiringly, and he blazed up. “I admire his anti-slavery,” I said, “and his
proclamation.” “That was well,” he replied, “but his military operations were
ridiculous and he came near losing Missouri;” and he said, I think, that he was
not trustworthy.
“There's that guard asleep again,” he said once. “Let him
sleep, David,” urged his wife. “How would you like to stand and walk about so
long uselessly with a heavy gun on your shoulder in the hot sun? Let him sleep,
David.” “Oh, you would keep pretty order in my camp,” he said, laughingly, and
let the man sleep.
Mr. French took me back, in the Locust Point, to Beaufort.
SOURCE: Rupert Sargent Holland, Editor, Letters and
Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina
1862-1864, p. 71-2
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