Diary of Malvina S. Waring, February 7, 1865

While I cannot sign the bills as rapidly as Nannie Giles can, today I finished up four packages of the denomination of fifty dollars. Mr. Tellifiere says I am a treasury girl worth having, and that I did a big day's work, and a good day's work. Took my vocal lesson and paid Signor Torriani for my last quarter. He is gloriously handsome in the Italian way, which is a very striking way. I also sent check to the milliner for the $200 due on my new bonnet, and paid $80 for the old lilac barege bought from Mary L——.  Miss      P—— does not yet agree to let me have the congress gaiters for $75, and unless she does she may keep them herself, to the end of time! ’Tis a pretty come to pass when $75 of Confederate currency is not the equivalent of an ordinary pair of Massachusetts made shoes! J. C. called this evening. He is pleasant, but stops right there, and that isn't the place to stop. A man must know how to be disagreeable to be dangerously attractive, I think.

SOURCE: South Carolina State Committee United Daughters of the Confederacy, South Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. 1, “A Confederate Girl's Diary,” p. 272-3

Diary of Malvina S. Waring, Tuesday, February 14, 1865

Such a day! It was like "a winnowing of chaos." Very little work was done at the Treasury Department in the midst of such excitement and confusion. We are to remove at once to Richmond, and I am told Colonel Joseph Daniel Pope, Mr. Jamison, and many of the employees of the printing establishment, have already departed. I do not know if this be true; I hear too many contradictory reports for all of them to be true. One thing, however, appears to be quite true—Sherman is coming! And I never believed it before. This afternoon, we could distinctly hear firing in the distance, and at this writing (8.30 p. m.) we can see the sky arched with fire in the direction of the Saluda factory. Must I go with the department to Richmond? In such case, my parents will be entirely alone, Johnny having gone, also, to the front. Does this not clearly show the dire extremity to which we are reduced, when boys of sixteen shoulder the musket? There are other reasons why I should like to remain here to receive Sherman: it is high time I was having some experiences out of the ordinary, and if anything remarkable is going to happen, I want to know something about it; it might be worth relating to my grandchildren! Anyhow, it is frightfully monotonous, just because you are a woman, to be always tucked away in the safe places. I want to stay. I want to have a taste of danger. Midnight.—But I am overruled; I must go. My father says so; my mother says so. Everything is in readiness—my trunks packed, my traveling clothes laid out upon the chair, and now I must try to catch a little sleep. And then on the morrow—what? What will be the next stroke upon the Labensuhr? God only knows.

SOURCE: South Carolina State Committee United Daughters of the Confederacy, South Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. 1, “A Confederate Girl's Diary,” p. 274-5

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: July 7, 1864

Hot and dry, but a light shower at 2 P.M., laying the dust.

A letter from Gen. Gilmer states that the Danville Railroad will not be fully repaired before the last of this month. But there is a good wagon road, and the army can be supplied by wagons when the cars cannot run, some 25 miles.

There is an idle rumor that Wilmington has been taken by the enemy. This, indeed, would hurt us. But we get neither letters nor dispatches from beyond Petersburg.

Last week, when the local forces were recalled, one of the clerks in the Treasury Department, upon being dismissed, fell upon his lieutenant, who had insulted him while in the military service, and as a civilian, gave him a beating. To-day the officer, after consulting his lieutenant-colonel commanding, and, it is said, the Secretary of War, sent a subaltern to the department to arrest the clerk, who resisted. The subaltern said he acted by authority of the lieutenant-colonel and the Secretary of War, and would arrest him and throw him in prison, if he had to come with force enough to pull down the building. To all this the Secretary of the Treasury demurred, and made a formal complaint to the President, who most indignantly indorsed on the paper that the conduct of the officer was "very reprehensible,” that if when the offense was committed, the battalion had been dismissed, the military authority of the officers ceased, and as civil officers, all were on the same footing. He ordered the Secretary to make this known to the officers, None believe now that the President ever threatened to turn the clerks out of office, as represented, nor wished them put in the army, as hinted.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 245-6