Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 23, 1865

I want to get to Kate, I am so utterly heart-broken. I hope John Chesnut and General Chesnut may at least get into the same army. We seem scattered over the face of the earth. Isabella sits there calmly reading. I have quieted down after the day's rampage. May our heavenly Father look down on us and have pity.

They say I was the last refugee from Columbia who was allowed to enter by the door of the cars. The government took possession then and women could only be smuggled in by the windows. Stout ones stuck and had to be pushed, pulled, and hauled in by main force. Dear Mrs. Izard, with all her dignity, was subjected to this rough treatment. She was found almost too much for the size of the car windows.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 351

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 22, 1865

Isabella has been reading my diaries. How we laugh because my sage divinations all come to naught. My famous “insight into character” is utter folly. The diaries were lying on the hearth ready to be burned, but she told me to hold on to them; think of them a while and don't be rash. Afterward when Isabella and I were taking a walk, General Joseph E. Johnston joined us. He explained to us all of Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's mistakes. We had nothing to say — how could we say anything? He said he was very angry when he was ordered to take command again. He might well have been in a genuine rage. This on and off procedure would be enough to bewilder the coolest head. Mrs. Johnston knows how to be a partizan of Joe Johnston and still not make his enemies uncomfortable. She can be pleasant and agreeable, as she was to my face.

A letter from my husband who is at Charlotte. He came near being taken a prisoner in Columbia, for he was asleep the morning of the 17th, when the Yankees blew up the railroad depot. That woke him, of course, and he found everybody had left Columbia, and the town was surrendered by the mayor, Colonel Goodwyn. Hampton and his command had been gone several hours. Isaac Hayne came away with General Chesnut. There was no fire in the town when they left. They overtook Hampton's command at Meek's Mill. That night, from the hills where they encamped, they saw the fire, and knew the Yankees were burning the town, as we had every reason to expect they would. Molly was left in charge of everything of mine, including Mrs. Preston's cow, which I was keeping, and Sally Goodwyn's furniture.

Charleston and Wilmington have surrendered. I have no further use for a newspaper. I never want to see another one as long as I live. Wade Hampton has been made a lieutenant-general, too late. If he had been made one and given command in South Carolina six months ago I believe he would have saved us. Shame, disgrace, beggary, all have come at once, and are hard to bear — the grand smash! Rain, rain, outside, and naught but drowning floods of tears inside. I could not bear it; so I rushed down in that rainstorm to the Martins’. Rev. Mr. Martin met me at the door. “Madam,” said he, “Columbia is burned to the ground.” I bowed my head and sobbed aloud. “Stop that!” he said, trying to speak cheerfully. “Come here, wife,” said he to Mrs. Martin. “This woman cries with her whole heart, just as she laughs.” But in spite of his words, his voice broke down, and he was hardly calmer than myself.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 350-1

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 16, 1865

LINCOLNTON, N. C., February 16, 1865.

A change has come o'er the spirit of my dream. Dear old quire of yellow, coarse, Confederate home-made paper, here you are again. An age of anxiety and suffering has passed over my head since last I wrote and wept over your forlorn pages.

My ideas of those last days are confused. The Martins left Columbia the Friday before I did, and Mammy, the negro woman, who had nursed them, refused to go with them. That daunted me. Then Mrs. McCord, who was to send her girls with me, changed her mind. She sent them up-stairs in her house and actually took away the staircase; that was her plan.

Then I met Mr. Christopher Hampton; arranging to take off his sisters. They were flitting, but were to go only as far as Yorkville. He said it was time to move on. Sherman was at Orangeburg, barely a day's journey from Columbia, and had left a track as bare and blackened as a fire leaves on the prairies.

So my time had come, too. My husband urged me to go home. He said Camden would be safe enough. They had no spite against that old town, as they have against Charleston and Columbia. Molly, weeping and wailing, came in while we were at table. Wiping her red-hot face with the cook's grimy apron, she said I ought to go among our own black people on the plantation; they would take care of me better than any one else. So I agreed to go to Mulberry or the Hermitage plantation, and sent Lawrence down with a wagon-load of my valuables.

Then a Miss Patterson called — a refugee from Tennessee. She had been in a country overrun by Yankee invaders, and she described so graphically all the horrors to be endured by those subjected to fire and sword, rapine and plunder, that I was fairly scared, and determined to come here. This is a thoroughly out-of-all-routes place. And yet I can go to Charlotte, am half-way to Kate at Flat Rock, and there is no Federal army between me and Richmond.

As soon as my mind was finally made up, we telegraphed to Lawrence, who had barely got to Camden in the wagon when the telegram was handed to him; so he took the train and came back. Mr. Chesnut sent him with us to take care of the party.

We thought that if the negroes were ever so loyal to us, they could not protect me from an army bent upon sweeping us from the face of the earth, and if they tried to do so so much the worse would it be for the poor things with their Yankee friends. I then left them to shift for themselves, as they are accustomed to do, and I took the same liberty. My husband does not care a fig for the property question, and never did. Perhaps, if he had ever known poverty, it would be different. He talked beautifully about it, as he always does about everything. I have told him often that, if at heaven's gate St. Peter would listen to him a while, and let him tell his own story, he would get in, and the angels might give him a crown extra.

Now he says he has only one care — that I should be safe, and not so harassed with dread; and then there is his blind old father. “A man,” said he, “can always die like a patriot and a gentleman, with no fuss, and take it coolly. It is hard not to envy those who are out of all this, their difficulties ended — those who have met death gloriously on the battle-field, their doubts all solved. One can but do his best, and leave the result to a higher power.”

After New Orleans, those vain, passionate, impatient little Creoles were forever committing suicide, driven to it by despair and “Beast” Butler. As we read these things, Mrs. Davis said: “If they want to die, why not first kill ‘Beast’ Butler, rid the world of their foe and be saved the trouble of murdering themselves?” That practical way of removing their intolerable burden did not occur to them. I repeated this suggestive anecdote to our corps of generals without troops, here in this house, as they spread out their maps on my table where lay this quire of paper from which I write. Every man Jack of them had a safe plan to stop Sherman, if ––

Even Beauregard and Lee were expected, but Grant had double-teamed on Lee. Lee could not save his own — how could he come to save us? Read the list of the dead in those last battles around Richmond and Petersburg¹ if you want to break your heart.

I took French leave of Columbia — slipped away without a word to anybody. Isaac Hayne and Mr. Chesnut came down to the Charlotte depot with me. Ellen, my maid, left her husband and only child, but she was willing to come, and, indeed, was very cheerful in her way of looking at it.

“I wan’ travel ‘roun’ wid Missis some time — stid uh Molly goin’ all de time.”

A woman, fifty years old at least, and uglier than she was old, sharply rebuked my husband for standing at the ear window for a last few words with me. She said rudely: '”Stand aside, sir! I want air!” With his hat off, and his grand air, my husband bowed politely, and said: “In one moment, madam; I have something important to say to my wife.”

She talked aloud and introduced herself to every man, claiming his protection. She had never traveled alone before in all her life. Old age and ugliness are protective in some cases. She was ardently patriotic for a while. Then she was joined by her friend, a man as crazy as herself to get out of this. From their talk I gleaned she had been for years in the Treasury Department. They were about to cross the lines. The whole idea was to get away from the trouble to come down here. They were Yankees, but were they not spies?

Here I am broken-hearted and an exile. And in such a place! We have bare floors, and for a feather-bed, pine table, and two chairs I pay $30 a day. Such sheets! But fortunately I have some of my own. At the door, before I was well out of the back, the woman of the house packed Lawrence back, neck and heels: she would not have him at any price. She treated him as Mr. F. 's aunt did Clenman in Little Dorrit. She said his clothes were too fine for a nigger. “His aim, indeed.” Poor Lawrence was humble and silent. He said at last, “Miss Mary, send me back to Mars Jeems.” I began to look for a pencil to write a note to my husband, but in the flurry could not find one. “Here is one,” said Lawrence, producing one with a gold case. “Go away,” she shouted, “I want no niggers here with gold pencils and airs.'” So Lawrence fled before the storm, but not before he had begged me to go back. He said, “if Mars Jeems knew how you was treated he'd never be willing for you to stay here.”

The Martins had seen my, to them, well-known traveling case as the hack trotted up Main Street, and they arrived at this juncture out of breath. We embraced and wept. I kept my room.

The Fants are refugees here, too; they are Virginians, and have been in exile since the second battle of Manassas. Poor things; they seem to have been everywhere, and seen and suffered everything. They even tried to go back to their own house, but found one chimney only standing alone; even that had been taken possession of by a Yankee, who had written his name upon it.

The day I left home I had packed a box of flour, sugar, rice, and coffee, but my husband would not let me bring it. He said I was coming to a land of plenty — unexplored North Carolina, where the foot of the Yankee marauder was unknown, and in Columbia they would need food. Now I have written for that box and many other things to be sent me by Lawrence, or I shall starve.

The Middletons have come. How joyously I sprang to my feet to greet them. Mrs. Ben Rutledge described the hubbub in Columbia. Everybody was flying in every direction like a flock of swallows. She heard the enemy's guns booming in the distance. The train no longer runs from Charlotte to Columbia. Miss Middleton possesses her soul in peace. She is as cool, clever, rational, and entertaining as ever, and we talked for hours. Mrs. Reed was in a state of despair. I can well understand that sinking of mind and body during the first days as the abject misery of it all closes in upon you. I remember my suicidal tendencies when I first came here.

_______________

¹ Battles at Hatcher's Run, in Virginia, had been fought on February 5, 6, and 7, 1865.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 344-8

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: November 17, 1864

Although Sherman¹ took Atlanta, he does not mean to stay there, be it heaven or hell. Fire and the sword are for us here; that is the word. And now I must begin my Columbia life anew and alone. It will be a short shrift.

Captain Ogden came to dinner on Sunday and in the afternoon asked me to go with him to the Presbyterian Church and hear Mr. Palmer. We went, and I felt very youthful, as the country people say; like a girl and her beau. Ogden took me into a pew and my husband sat afar off. What a sermon! The preacher stirred my blood. My very flesh crept and tingled. A red-hot glow of patriotism passed through me. Such a sermon must strengthen the hearts and the hands of many people. There was more exhortation to fight and die, à la Joshua, than meek Christianity.

_______________

¹ General Sherman had started from Chattanooga for his march across Georgia on May 6, 1864. He had won the battles of Dalton, Resaca, and New Hope Church in May, the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in June, the battles of Peach Tree Creek and Atlanta in July, and had formally occupied Atlanta on September 2d. On November 16th, he started on his march from Atlanta to the sea and entered Savannah on December 23d. Early in 1865 he moved his army northward through the Carolinas, and on April 26th received the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 333-4

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: [Friday], October 7, 1864

Saturday. The President will be with us here in Columbia next Tuesday, so Colonel McLean brings us word. I have begun at once to prepare to receive him in my small house. His apartments have been decorated as well as Confederate stringency would permit. The possibilities were not great, but I did what I could for our honored chief; besides I like the man — he has been so kind to me, and his wife is one of the few to whom I can never be grateful enough for her generous appreciation and attention. I went out to the gate to greet the President, who met me most cordially; kissed me, in fact. Custis Lee and Governor Lubbock were at his back.

Immediately after breakfast (the Presidential party arrived a little before daylight) General Chesnut drove off with the President's aides, and Mr. Davis sat out on our piazza. There was nobody with him but myself. Some little boys strolling by called out, “Come here and look; there is a man on Mrs. Chesnut's porch who looks just like Jeff Davis on postage-stamps.” People began to gather at once on the street. Mr. Davis then went in.

Mrs. McCord sent a magnificent bouquet — I thought, of course, for the President; but she gave me such a scolding afterward. She did not know he was there; I, in my mistake about the bouquet, thought she knew, and so did not send her word.

The President was watching me prepare a mint julep for Custis Lee when Colonel McLean came to inform us that a great crowd had gathered and that they were coming to ask the President to speak to them at one o 'clock. An immense crowd it was — men, women, and children. The crowd overflowed the house, the President's hand was nearly shaken off. I went to the rear, my head intent on the dinner to be prepared for him, with only a Confederate commissariat. But the patriotic public had come to the rescue. I had been gathering what I could of eatables for a month, and now I found that nearly everybody in Columbia was sending me whatever they had that they thought nice enough for the President's dinner. We had the sixty-year old Madeira from Mulberry, and the beautiful old china, etc. Mrs. Preston sent a boned turkey stuffed with truffles, stuffed tomatoes, and stuffed peppers. Each made a dish as pretty as it was appetizing.

A mob of small boys only came to pay their respects to the President. He seemed to know how to meet that odd delegation.

Then the President's party had to go, and we bade them an affectionate farewell. Custis Lee and I had spent much time gossiping on the back porch. While I was concocting dainties for the dessert, he sat on the banister with a cigar in his mouth. He spoke very candidly, telling me many a hard truth for the Confederacy, and about the bad time which was at hand.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 328-9; The date for this entry comes from Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward, p. 649, October 7, was in fact a Friday.

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Lyman to Elizabeth Russell Lyman, March 29, 1865

March 29, 1865

This has been a day of manoeuvre and not much fighting. To-morrow may see something more serious. It seems like old times to be once more writing on my knee and sitting in a tent without a board floor. I prefer it; there is novelty in seeing a new bit of country. Yesterday we had an interesting trip to City Point. General Meade said to me, to my great surprise: “I am going down to-morrow to see Sherman!” Which, as I supposed Sherman to be at that moment somewhere near Goldsboro’, seemed a rather preposterous idea! At an early hour we got to Grant's Headquarters and found le monde not yet up. Soon, however, they began to peer out of their log houses and General Meade marched in to visit the great Mogul. As I was looking in that direction, there suddenly issued from the house a tall figure who jerked himself forward, pulled suddenly up, and regarded the landscape with an inquisitive and very wrinkled expression. This was the redoubtable Sherman himself. He is a very remarkable-looking man, such as could not be grown out of America — the concentrated quintessence of Yankeedom. He is tall, spare, and sinewy, with a very long neck, and a big head at the end of the same. The said big head is a most unusual combination. I mean that, when a man is spare, with a high forehead, he usually has a contracted back to his head; but Sherman has a swelling “fighting” back to his head, and all his features express determination, particularly the mouth, which is wide and straight, with lips that shut tightly together. He is a very homely man, with a regular nest of wrinkles in his face, which play and twist as he eagerly talks on each subject; but his expression is pleasant and kindly. But he believes in hard war. I heard him say: “Columbia! — pretty much all burned; and burned good!” There too was “little Phil Sheridan," scarce five feet high, with his sun-browned face and sailor air. I saw Sherman, Grant, Meade, and Sheridan, all together. A thing to speak of in after years!

SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox, p. 326-7

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 29, 1862

Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.'s, has been sold to a telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto ever gets to be, and clever in every kind of work. My Molly thinks her mistress “very lucky in getting rid of her.” She was “a dangerous inmate,” but she will be a good cook, a good chambermaid, a good dairymaid, a beautiful clear-starcher, and the most thoroughly good-for-nothing woman I know to her new owners, if she chooses. Molly evidently hates her, but thinks it her duty “to stand by her color.”

Mrs. Gibson is a Philadelphia woman. She is true to her husband and children, but she does not believe in us — the Confederacy, I mean. She is despondent and hopeless; as wanting in faith of our ultimate success as is Sally Baxter Hampton. I make allowances for those people. If I had married North, they would have a heavy handful in me just now up there.

Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, has been sixty years in the South, and she has not changed in feeling or in taste one iota. She can not like hominy for breakfast, or rice for dinner, without a relish to give it some flavor. She can not eat watermelons and sweet potatoes sans discrétion, as we do. She will not eat hot corn bread à discrétion, and hot buttered biscuit without any.

“Richmond is obliged to fall,” sighed Mrs. Gibson. “You would say so, too, if you had seen our poor soldiers.” “Poor soldiers?” said I. “Are you talking of Stonewall Jackson's men? Poor soldiers, indeed!” She said her mind was fixed on one point, and had ever been, though she married and came South: she never would own slaves. “Who would that was not born to it?” I cried, more excited than ever. She is very handsome, very clever, and has very agreeable manners.

“Dear madam,” she says, with tears in her beautiful eyes, “they have three armies.” “But Stonewall has routed one of them already. Heath another.” She only answered by an unbelieving moan. “Nothing seemed to suit her,” I said, as we went away. “You did not certainly,” said some one to me; “you contradicted every word she said, with a sort of indignant protest.”

We met Mrs. Hampton Gibbes at the door — another Virginia woman as good as gold. They told us Mrs. Davis was delightfully situated at Raleigh; North Carolinians so loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to eat a meal at the hotel. “How different from Columbia,” said Doctor Gibbes, looking at Mrs. Gibson, who has no doubt been left to take all of her meals at his house. “Oh, no!” cried Mary, “you do Columbia injustice. Mrs. Chesnut used to tell us that she was never once turned over to the tender mercies of the Congaree cuisine, and at McMahan's it is fruit, flowers, invitations to dinner every day.”

After we came away, “Why did you not back me up?” I was asked. “Why did you let them slander Columbia,” “It was awfully awkward,” I said, “but you see it would have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs. Gibson see how different it was with other people.”

Took a moonlight walk after tea at the Halcott Greens'. All the company did honor to the beautiful night by walking home with me.

Uncle Hamilton Boykin is here, staying at the de Saussure's'. He says, “Manassas was play to Williamsburg,” and he was at both battles. He lead a part of Stuart's cavalry in the charge at Williamsburg, riding a hundred yards ahead of his company.

Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses freely everything Confederate from the President down to a horse boy. He thinks there is a conspiracy against him in the army. Why? Heavens and earth — why?

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 169-71

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 24, 1862

The enemy are landing at Georgetown. With a little more audacity where could they not land? But we have given them such a scare, they are cautious. If it be true, I hope some cool-headed white men will make the negroes save the rice for us. It is so much needed. They say it might have been done at Port Royal with a little more energy. South Carolinians have pluck enough, but they only work by fits and starts; there is no continuous effort; they can't be counted on for steady work. They will stop to play — or enjoy life in some shape.

Without let or hindrance Halleck is being reenforced. Beauregard, unmolested, was making some fine speeches — and issuing proclamations, while we were fatuously looking for him to make a tiger's spring on Huntsville. Why not? Hope springs eternal in the Southern breast.

My Hebrew friend, Mem Cohen, has a son in the war. He is in John Chesnut's company. Cohen is a high name among the Jews: it means Aaron. She has long fits of silence, and is absent-minded. If she is suddenly roused, she is apt to say, with overflowing eyes and clasped hands, “If it please God to spare his life.” Her daughter is the sweetest little thing. The son is the mother's idol. Mrs. Cohen was Miriam de Leon. I have known her intimately all my life.

Mrs. Bartow, the widow of Colonel Bartow, who was killed at Manassas, was Miss Berrien, daughter of Judge Berrien, of Georgia. She is now in one of the departments here, cutting bonds — Confederate bonds — for five hundred Confederate dollars a year, a penniless woman. Judge Carroll, her brother-in-law, has been urgent with her to come and live in his home. He has a large family and she will not be an added burden to him. In spite of all he can say, she will not forego her resolution. She will be independent. She is a resolute little woman, with the softest, silkiest voice and ways, and clever to the last point.

Columbia is the place for good living, pleasant people, pleasant dinners, pleasant drives. I feel that I have put the dinners in the wrong place. They are the climax of the good things here. This is the most hospitable place in the world, and the dinners are worthy of it.

In Washington, there was an endless succession of state dinners. I was kindly used. I do not remember ever being condemned to two dull neighbors: on one side or the other was a clever man; so I liked Washington dinners.

In Montgomery, there were a few dinners — Mrs. Pollard's, for instance, but the society was not smoothed down or in shape. Such as it was it was given over to balls and suppers. In Charleston, Mr. Chesnut went to gentlemen's dinners all the time; no ladies present. Flowers were sent to me, and I was taken to drive and asked to tea. There could not have been nicer suppers, more perfect of their kind than were to be found at the winding up of those festivities.

In Richmond, there were balls, which I did not attend — very few to which I was asked: the MacFarlands' and Lyons's, all I can remember. James Chesnut dined out nearly every day. But then the breakfasts — the Virginia breakfasts — where were always pleasant people. Indeed, I have had a good time everywhere — always clever people, and people I liked, and everybody so good to me.

Here in Columbia, family dinners are the specialty. You call, or they pick you up and drive home with you. “Oh, stay to dinner!” and you stay gladly. They send for your husband, and he comes willingly. Then comes a perfect dinner. You do not see how it could be improved; and yet they have not had time to alter things or add because of the unexpected guests. They have everything of the best — silver, glass, china, table linen, and damask, etc. And then the planters live “within themselves,” as they call it. From the plantations come mutton, beef, poultry, cream, butter, eggs, fruits, and vegetables.

It is easy to live here, with a cook who has been sent for training to the best eating-house in Charleston. Old Mrs. Chesnut's Romeo was apprenticed at Jones's. I do not know where Mrs. Preston's got his degree, but he deserves a medal.

At the Prestons', James Chesnut induced Buck to declaim something about Joan of Arc, which she does in a manner to touch all hearts. While she was speaking, my husband turned to a young gentleman who was listening to the chatter of several girls, and said: "Ecoutez!" The youth stared at him a moment in bewilderment; then, gravely rose and began turning down the gas. Isabella said: “Écoutez, then, means put out the lights.”

I recall a scene which took place during a ball given by Mrs. Preston while her husband was in Louisiana. Mrs. Preston was resplendent in diamonds, point lace, and velvet. There is a gentle dignity about her which is very attractive; her voice is low and sweet, and her will is iron. She is exceedingly well informed, but very quiet, retiring, and reserved. Indeed, her apparent gentleness almost amounts to timidity. She has chiseled regularity of features, a majestic figure, perfectly molded.

Governor Manning said to me: “Look at Sister Caroline. Does she look as if she had the pluck of a heroine?” Then he related how a little while ago William, the butler, came to tell her that John, the footman, was drunk in the cellar — mad with drink; that he had a carving-knife which he was brandishing in drunken fury, and he was keeping everybody from their business, threatening to kill any one who dared to go into the basement. They were like a flock of frightened sheep down there. She did not speak to one of us, but followed William down to the basement, holding up her skirts. She found the servants scurrying everywhere, screaming and shouting that John was crazy and going to kill them. John was bellowing like a bull of Bashan, knife in hand, chasing them at his pleasure.

Mrs. Preston walked up to him. “Give me that knife,” she demanded. He handed it to her. She laid it on the table. “Now come with me,” she said, putting her hand on his collar. She led him away to the empty smoke-house, and there she locked him in and put the key in her pocket. Then she returned to her guests, without a ripple on her placid face. “She told me of it, smiling and serene as you see her now,” the Governor concluded.

Before the war shut him in, General Preston sent to the lakes for his salmon, to Mississippi for his venison, to the mountains for his mutton and grouse. It is good enough, the best dish at all these houses, what the Spanish call “the hearty welcome.” Thackeray says at every American table he was first served with “grilled hostess.” At the head of the table sat a person, fiery-faced, anxious, nervous, inwardly murmuring, like Falstaff, “Would it were night, Hal, and all were well.”

At Mulberry the house is always filled to overflowing, and one day is curiously like another. People are coming and going, carriages driving up or driving off. It has the air of a watering-place, where one does not pay, and where there are no strangers. At Christmas the china closet gives up its treasures. The glass, china, silver, fine linen reserved for grand occasions come forth. As for the dinner itself, it is only a matter of greater quantity — more turkey, more mutton, more partridges, more fish, etc., and more solemn stiffness. Usually a half-dozen persons unexpectedly dropping in make no difference. The family let the housekeeper know; that is all.

People are beginning to come here from Richmond. One swallow does not make a summer, but it shows how the wind blows, these straws do — Mrs. “Constitution” Browne and Mrs. Wise. The Gibsons are at Doctor Gibbes's. It does look squally. We are drifting on the breakers.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 165-9

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 19, 1862

He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer business. To-morrow conscription begins—the dernier ressort. The President has remodeled his Cabinet, leaving Bragg for North Carolina. His War Minister is Randolph, of Virginia. A Union man par excellence, Watts, of Alabama is Attorney-General. And now, too late by one year, when all the mechanics are in the army, Mallory begins to telegraph Captain Ingraham to build ships at any expense. We are locked in and can not get “the requisites for naval architecture,” says a magniloquent person.

Henry Frost says all hands wink at cotton going out. Why not send it out and buy ships? “Every now and then there is a holocaust of cotton burning,” says the magniloquent. Conscription has waked the Rip Van Winkles. The streets of Columbia were never so crowded with men. To fight and to be made to fight are different things.

To my small wits, whenever people were persistent, united, and rose in their might, no general, however great, succeeded in subjugating them. Have we not swamps, forests, rivers, mountains — every natural barrier? The Carthaginians begged for peace because they were a luxurious people and could not endure the hardship of war, though the enemy suffered as sharply as they did! “Factions among themselves” is the rock on which we split. Now for the great soul who is to rise up and lead us. Why tarry his footsteps?

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 147-8

Samuel H. M. Byers

SAMUEL H. M. BYERS was born in Pulaski, Pennsylvania, in 1838. Coming to Iowa in 1851 with his father he was educated in the schools of Oskaloosa, where his father located. He enlisted in the Fifth Iowa Infantry and served in the army until March, 1865, was promoted to adjutant in April, 1863. He was in many battles and in a charge at Missionary Ridge was taken prisoner and for fifteen months suffered the horrors of Libby and other Confederate prisons. He finally escaped and returned to the army, where for a time he was on General Sherman’s staff. At the close of the war he was brevetted major. While in prison at Columbia, South Carolina, he wrote the well-known song, “The March to the Sea,” which brought him into national notice. It gave the name to Sherman’s famous march and thousands of copies were sold immediately after the war. Major Byers was sent by General Sherman to General Grant and President Lincoln as bearer of dispatches announcing his great victories. He served fifteen years as American consul at Zürich in Switzerland and was under President Arthur, Consul General for Italy. Under President Harrison he served as Consul to St. Gall and later as Consul General for Switzerland. Major Byers has been a contributor to the leading magazines of the country. He is the author of “Iowa in War Times,” “Switzerland and the Swiss,” “Twenty Years in Europe” and several volumes of poetry.

Benjamin F. Gue, History of Iowa From The Earliest Times To The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century, Vol. 4, p. 36

Major General William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, March 12, 1865

IN THE FIELD, FAYETTEVILLE, N. C.,

Sunday, March 12, 1865.

We reached this place yesterday in good health and condition. We have had bad roads and weather but made good progress, and have achieved all I aimed to accomplish. Our main columns came through Columbia and Cheraw, South Carolina. We have had no general battle, and only skirmishes on the skirts of the army. The enemy gave ground when I moved in force. The importance of this march exceeds that from Atlanta to Savannah. South Carolina has had a visit from the West that will cure her of her pride and boasting. I sent couriers to Wilmington and a tug boat got up this morning, and I will start her back at 6 P. M. with despatches to Grant, the Secretary of War, and all my subordinate commanders. I do not intend to go to the sea shore, but will move on. I have no doubt you have all been uneasy on our account, but barring bad weather and mud we have had no trouble. . . .

The same brags and boasts are kept up, but when I reach the path where the lion crouched I find him slinking away. My army is in the same condition as before, and seems to possess abiding confidence in its officers. It would amuse you to hear their comments on me as I ride along the ranks, but I hope you will hear the jokes and fun of war at a fitter time for amusement. Now it is too serious. I think we are bringing matters to an issue. Johnston is restored to the supreme command and will unite the forces hitherto scattered and fight me about Raleigh or Goldsboro. Lee may reinforce him from Richmond, but if he attempts that Grant will pitch in. I can whip Joe Johnston unless his men fight better than they have since I left Savannah.

As I rode into Columbia crowds gathered round me, composed of refugees and many officers who had escaped their prison guards and hid themselves. One of them handed me the enclosed¹ which is so handsomely got up that I deem it worthy of preservation. I want Lizzie to keep it. The versification is good, and I am told the music to which the prisoners set and sung it is equally so. I have never heard it sung, as the officers who composed the Glee Club in their prison at Columbia were not of the number who did escape. The author did escape and he is the one I have appointed to carry my despatches down to Wilmington tonight.

I expect to stay here a few days in hopes to receive some bread and shoes from Wilmington. The river is now high and easily navigated, and had I time I should have no trouble in getting supplies up, but time is so important that I must “Forward.” . . .

It is now 2 P. M. and I have written ten letters of four pages each, orders and instructions to my commanders on the seaboard. . . .

__________

¹ A copy of "Sherman's March to the Sea," by Major S. H. M. Byers, later U. S. Consul-General to Italy and Switzerland.

SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of General Sherman, p. 332-3.  A full copy of this letter can be found in the William T Sherman Family papers (SHR), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556, Folder CSHR 2/21

Major General William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, January 15, 1865

SAVANNAH, Geo., January 15, 1865.

. . . It may be some days yet before I dive again beneath the surface to turn up again in some mysterious place. I have a clear perception of the move, but take it for granted that Lee will not let me walk over the track without making me sustain some loss. Of course my course will be north. I will feign on Augusta and Charleston, avoid both and make for Columbia, Fayetteville and Newbern, N. C. Don't breathe, for the walls have ears, and foreknowledge published by some mischievous fool might cost many lives. We have lived long enough for men to thank me for keeping my own counsels, and keeping away from armies those pests of newspaper men. If I have attained any fame it is pure and unalloyed by the taint of parasitic flattery and the result is to you and the children more agreeable, for it will go to your and their benefit more than all the surface flattery of all the newspaper men of the country. Mr. Stanton has been here and is cured of that Negro nonsense which arises, not from a love of the Negro but a desire to dodge service. Mr. Chase and others have written to me to modify my opinions, but you know I cannot, for if I attempt the part of a hypocrite it would break out at each sentence. I want soldiers made of the best bone and muscle in the land, and won't attempt military feats with doubtful materials. I have said that slavery is dead and the Negro free, and want him treated as free, and not hunted and badgered to make a soldier of, when his family is left back on the plantations. I am right and won't change.¹ The papers of the 11th are just in and I see Butler is out. That is another of the incubi of the army. We want and must have professional soldiers, young and vigorous. Mr. Stanton was delighted at my men and the tone which pervades the army. He enjoyed a good story, which is true, told by one of my old 15th corps men. After we reached the coast we were out of bread, and it took some days for us to get boats up. A foraging party was out and got a boat and pulled down the Ogeechee to Ossabaw and met a steamer coming up. They hailed her and got answer that it was the Nemeha, and had Major General Foster on board; the soldiers answered “Oh H—1, we've got twenty-seven Major-Generals up at camp. What we want is hard tack.” The soldiers manifest to me the most thorough affection, and a wonderful confidence. They haven't found out yet where I have not been. Every place we go, they hear I lived there once, and the usual exclamation is, The “Old Man” must be “omnipresent” as well as “omnipotent.” I was telling some officers the other day if events should carry us to Charleston I would have advantage because I know the ground, etc., etc. They laughed heartily at my innocence, for they knew I had been everywhere. But really my long sojourn in this quarter of the world from 1840 to 1846 was and is providential to me.

I have read most of the current discourses about me, those you sent inclusive; but take more interest in the London Spectator, the same that reviewed my Knoxville Campaign. He is surely a critic, for he catches the real points well. The Times utterly overstates the cases and the Dublin papers are too fulsome. Our American papers are shallow. They don't look below the surface. I receive letters from all the great men, so full of real respect that I cannot disregard them, yet I dread the elevation to which they have got me. A single mistake or accident, my pile, though well founded, would tumble; but I base my hopes of fair fame on the opinion of my own army, and my associates. . . .

I will surely be off in the course of this week, and you will hear of me only through Richmond for two months. You have got used to it now and will not be concerned though I think the chances of getting killed on this trip about even. If South Carolina lets me pass across without desperate fighting, her fame is gone forever. . . .

I would not be surprised if I would involve our government with England. I have taken all the cotton as prize of war, thirty thousand bales, equal to thirteen millions of dollars, much of which is claimed by English merchants. I disregard their consular certificates on the ground that this cotton has been notoriously employed to buy cartridges and arms and piratical ships, and was collected here for that very purpose. Our own merchants are equally culpable. They buy cotton in advance and take the chances of capture, and then claim. . . .

___________

¹ Sherman's unwillingness to weaken his army by increasing it with any but the most effective fighting men was frequently construed as an evidence of hostility to the negro. His true feeling on this subject is shown especially in the account of Stanton's visit to Savannah in the Memoirs (Vol. II, chap. xxii). The clear remembrance of those who knew him best warrants the belief that his knowledge of the South gave him a sympathetic understanding of the moral effect of employing negro troops, which increased his reluctance to include them in his army.

SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of General Sherman, p. 327-30.  A full copy of this letter can be found in the William T Sherman Family papers (SHR), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556, Folder CSHR 2/20

Late From The Prisoners

A letter was received in this city on Saturday from Col. W. E. Woodruff, of the Second Kentucky Volunteers who is now a prisoner with the rebels. – The letter was dated the 1st of January.  Col. Woodruff and his companions, Lieut. Col. Neff, and Capt. Austin, are now incarcerated at Columbia, S. C., and were on the 1st inst. enjoying excellent health.  They await their release and return to the service with much anxiety. – {Lou. Jour., 27th.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 2

Gov. Morton, now in Washington . . .

. . . has telegraphed to Indianapolis ordering clothing, blankets, and many other necessaries, to be sent to Indiana prisoners at Richmond, Va., Columbia, S. C., and Tuscaloosa, Ala.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2

Justin C. Kennedy, Lt. Col. Commanding, 13th Iowa Infantry to Nathaniel B. Baker, Adjutant General of Iowa, April 27, 1865

Head Quarters 13^th Iowa Inf. Vet. Vol.

Near Raleigh, N.C. April 27, 1865

N. B. Baker

Adjt. Genl. of Iowa

Sir,

I have been shown the report of Col. Geo. A. Stone, 25^th Iowa Vol. Comdg. 3^rd Brig. 1^st Div. 15^th A. C. published in the Mt. Pleasant “Home Journal” of April 14, 1865. Of the part taken by them in the capture of Columbia, S. C. in which appears the following sentence: “Preceding to the State House with Captain Pratt I planted the first United States flag on that building.” Begging Col. Stones pardon, I am obliged to say he did no such a thing. I planted the first United States flag on the capital building of South Carolina myself. A detachment of my regiment the 13^th Iowa Vet. Vol. Inf. with Lieutenants Goodsell and McArthur of Genl. Belknap’s Staff were the first to into Columbia, S.C on the morning of February 17, 1865 and the colors of the 13^th Iowa were hoisted over the capital building from half to three-fourths of an hour before Col. Stones Brigade reached the building and I defy contradiction to that fact.

For further proof, I respectfully refer you to the report of Brigadier General Wm. W. Belknap, commanding Iowa Brigade of the 17^th Army Corps. for the part they acted in the memorable campaign of the Carolina’s. Also, the congratulatory letter of Brvt. Maj. Genl. Giles A. Smith to General Belknap for the capture of Columbia, which was published in the Army and Navy Journal of April 8, 1865 – and his official note to Maj. Genl. Blair of Feb. 17, 1865 which said:

“The colors of the 13^th Iowa were suspended over the capital at eleven o’clock this forenoon. National salute is now being fired by Captain Clayton 1^st Minnesota Battery to commemorate this event.”

I have these statements and particularly refer you to these official documents out of justice to the brave men of my regiment. They crossed Congaree River, a swift and turbulent stream opposite the city, in flat boats not to get ahead of anyone for the detachment that first crossed and entered Columbia, were entirely ignorant of the approach of the 15^th Corps. The hazardous undertaking was accomplished merely as an act of duty for we thought Columbia could be captured in that way.

I am, General,

very respectfully

your Obt. Servt.,

J. C. Kennedy

Lt. Col. Comdg. 13^th Iowa Infy.

13^th

Raleigh N. C.

Apr 27/65

Lt. Col. J. C. Kennedy

States that Col Stone of the 25^th Iowa is mistaken in saying that he was the first to plant the stars and stripes on the capitol at Columbia S. C.

Filed May 26 1865

SOUCE:  This letter is listed for sale HERE by Museum Quality Americana.