A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg: February 25, 1863

A long gap in my journal, because H–– has been ill unto death with typhoid fever, and I nearly broke down from loss of sleep, there being no one to relieve me. I never understood before how terrible it was to be alone at night with a patient in delirium, and no one within call. To wake Martha was simply impossible. I got the best doctor here, but when convalescence began the question of food was a trial. I got with great difficulty two chickens. The doctor made the drug-store sell two of their six bottles of port; he said his patient's life depended on it. An egg is a rare and precious thing. Meanwhile the Federal fleet has been gathering, has anchored at the bend, and shells are thrown in at intervals.

SOURCE: George W. Cable, “A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg”, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXX, No. 5, September 1885, p. 767

A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg

JUST a quarter of a century ago a young lady of New Orleans found herself an alien and an enemy to the sentiments of the community about her. Surrounded by friends and social companions, she was nevertheless painfully alone. In her enforced silence she began a diary intended solely for her own eye. A betrothed lover came suddenly from a neighboring State, claimed her hand in haste, and bore her away, a happy bride. Happy, yet anxious. The war was now fairly upon the land, and her husband, like herself, cherished sympathies whose discovery would have brought jeopardy of life, ruin, and exile. In the South, those days, all life was romantic. Theirs was full of adventure. At length they were shut up in Vicksburg. I hope some day to publish the whole diary; but the following portion is specially appropriate to the great panorama of battle in which a nation of readers is just now so interested. I shall not delay the reader to tell how I came by the manuscript, but only to say that I have not molested its original text. The name of the writer is withheld at her own request.

 

Geo. W. Cable.

 

 

We reached Vicksburg that night and went to H––’s room. Next morning the cook he had engaged arrived, and we moved into this house. Martha's ignorance keeps me busy, and H–– is kept close at his office.

 

SOURCE: George W. Cable, “A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg”, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXX, No. 5, September 1885, p. 767

A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg: January 7, 1863

I have had little to record here recently, for we have lived to ourselves, not visiting or visited. Every one H–– knows is absent, and I know no one but the family we staid with at first, and they are now absent. H–– tells me of the added triumph since the repulse of Sherman in December, and the one paper published here, shouts victory as much as its gradually diminishing size will allow. Paper is a serious want. There is a great demand for envelopes in the office where H–– is. He found and bought a lot of thick and smooth colored paper, cut a tin pattern, and we have whiled away some long evenings cutting envelopes and making them up. I have put away a package of the best to look at when we are old. The books I brought from Arkansas have proved a treasure, but we can get no more. I went to the only book-store open; there were none but Mrs. Stowe's “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands.” The clerk said I could have that cheap, because he couldn't sell her books, so I got it and am reading it now. The monotony has only been broken by letters from friends here and there in the Confederacy. One of these letters tells of a Federal raid to their place, and says, “But the worst thing was, they would take every tooth-brush in the house, because we can't buy any more; and one cavalryman put my sister's new bonnet on his horse, and said ‘Get up, Jack,’ and her bonnet was gone.”

 

SOURCE: George W. Cable, “A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg”, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXX, No. 5, September 1885, p. 767