They say Governor Magrath has absconded, and that the
Yankees have said, “If you have no visible governor, we will send you one.” If
we had one and they found him, they would clap him in prison instanter.
The negroes have flocked to the Yankee squad which has
recently come, but they were snubbed, the rampant freedmen. “Stay where you
are,” say the Yanks. “We have nothing for you.” And they sadly “peruse” their way. Now that they have picked up that
word “peruse,” they use it in season and out. When we met Mrs. Preston's
William we asked, “Where are you going?” “Perusing my way to Columbia,” he
answered.
When the Yanks said they had no rations for idle negroes,
John Walker answered mildly, “This is not at all what we expected.” The colored
women, dressed in their gaudiest array, carried bouquets to the Yankees, making
the day a jubilee. But in this house there is not the slightest change. Every
negro has known for months that he or she was free, but I do not see one
particle of change in their manner. They are, perhaps, more circumspect,
polite, and quiet, but that is all. Otherwise all goes on in antebellum status
quo. Every day I expect to miss some familiar face, but so far have been
disappointed.
Mrs. Huger we found at the hotel here, and we brought her to
Bloomsbury. She told us that Jeff Davis was traveling leisurely with his wife
twelve miles a day, utterly careless whether he were taken prisoner or not, and
that General Hampton had been paroled.
Fighting Dick Anderson and Stephen Elliott, of Fort Sumter
memory, are quite ready to pray for Andy Johnson, and to submit to the powers
that be. Not so our belligerent clergy. “Pray for people when I wish they were
dead?” cries Rev. Mr. Trapier. '”No, never! I will pray for President Davis
till I die. I will do it to my last gasp. My chief is a prisoner, but I am
proud of him still. He is a spectacle to gods and men. He will bear himself as
a soldier, a patriot, a statesman, a Christian gentleman. He is the martyr of
our cause.” And I replied with my tears.
“Look here: taken in woman's clothes?” asked Mr. Trapier. “Rubbish,
stuff, and nonsense. If Jeff Davis has not the pluck of a true man, then there
is no courage left on this earth. If he does not die game, I give it up.
Something, you see, was due to Lincoln and the Scotch cap that he hid his ugly
face with, in that express car, when he rushed through Baltimore in the night.
It is that escapade of their man Lincoln that set them on making up the woman's
clothes story about Jeff Davis.”
Mrs. W. drove up. She, too, is off for New York, to sell
four hundred bales of cotton and a square, or something, which pays
tremendously in the Central Park region, and to capture and bring home her belle
fille, who remained North during the war. She knocked at my door. The day
was barely dawning. I was in bed, and as I sprang up, discovered that my old
Confederate night-gown had to be managed, it was so full of rents. I am afraid
I gave undue attention to the sad condition of my gown, but could nowhere see a
shawl to drape my figure.
She was very kind. In case my husband was arrested and needed
funds, she offered me some “British securities” and bonds. We were very
grateful, but we did not accept the loan of money, which would have been almost
the same as a gift, so slim was our chance of repaying it. But it was a
generous thought on her part; I own that.
Went to our plantation, the Hermitage, yesterday. Saw no
change; not a soul was absent from his or her post. I said, “Good colored folks,
when are you going to kick off the traces and be free?” In their furious,
emotional way, they swore devotion to us all to their dying day. Just the same,
the minute they see an opening to better themselves they will move on. William,
my husband's foster-brother, came up. “Well, William, what do you want?” asked
my husband. “Only to look at you, marster; it does me good.”
SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 394-6
