Showing posts with label Georgians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgians. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Fessenden Morse: October 26, 1864

Atlanta, Ga., October 26, 1864.

Yesterday, Captain Crowninshield and Mr. Storrow arrived, after a long journey of thirty days. I think Storrow will prove a good officer; I like his looks very much.

We are still occupying our mansion, quietly living on the fat of the land. Every other day, a forage train of seven or eight hundred wagons goes out about twenty miles into the country, and comes back the third or fourth day loaded with corn, sweet potatoes, flour, chickens, etc. Yesterday, our small mess wagon brought in two barrels of flour, two or three sacks of sweet potatoes, a dozen chickens and ducks, a jar of honey, a keg of sorghum, and several other small articles; so you see that we are not likely to starve for some time to come.

General Sherman says that, as the Georgians have seen fit to get in our rear and break our railroad, we must live on Georgia. Of course, very heavy guards have to go with these trains, for the country is full of cavalry; thus far, however, they have all returned safely.

We keep a cow in our back garden, and have cream in our coffee and new butter every day; we also keep ducks and pigeons. In the city there are concerts or negro minstrel entertainments every night; the concerts by the Thirty-third Massachusetts Band are very good indeed.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 195

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Diary of William Howard Russell: April 30, 1861

At 1:30 P. M. a small party started from Mr. Green's to visit the cemetery of Bonaventure, to which every visitor to Savannah must pay his pilgrimage; difficiles aditus primos habet — a deep sandy road which strains the horses and the carriages; but at last “the shell road is reached — a highway several miles long, consisting of oyster shells — the pride of Savannah, which eats as many oysters as it can to add to the length of this wonderful road. There is no stone in the whole of the vast alluvial ranges of South Carolina and Maritime Georgia, and the only substance available for making a road is the oyster-shell. There is a toll-gate at each end to aid the oyster-shells. Remember they are three times the size of any European crustacean of the sort.

A pleasant drive through the shady hedgerows and bordering trees lead to a dilapidated porter's lodge and gateway, within which rose in a towering mass of green one of the finest pieces of forest architecture possible; nothing to be sure like Burnham Beeches, or some of the forest glades of Windsor, but possessed, nevertheless, of a character quite its own. What we gazed upon was, in fact, the ruin of grand avenues of live-oak, so well-disposed that their peculiar mode of growth afforded an unusual development of the “Gothic idea,” worked out and elaborated by a superabundant fall from the overlacing arms and intertwined branches of the tillandsia, or Spanish moss, a weeping, drooping, plumaceous parasite, which does to the tree what its animal type, the yellow fever — vomitoprieto — does to man — clings to it everlastingly, drying up sap, poisoning blood, killing the principle of life till it dies. The only differ, as they say in Ireland, is, that the tillandsia all the time looks very pretty, and that the process lasts very long. Some there are who praise this tillandsia, hanging like the tresses of a witch's hair over an invisible face, but to me it is a paltry parasite, destroying the grace and beauty of that it preys upon, and letting fall its dull tendrils over the fresh lovely green, as clouds drop over the face of some beautiful landscape. Despite all this, Bonaventure is a scene of remarkable interest; it seems to have been intended for a place of tombs. The Turks would have filled it with turbaned white pillars, and with warm ghosts at night. The French would have decorated it with interlaced hands of stone, with tears of red and black on white ground, with wreaths of immortelles. I am not sure that we would have done much more than have got up a cemetery company, interested Shilliber, hired a beadle, and erected an iron paling. The Savannah people not following any of these fashions, all of which are adopted in Northern cities, have left everything to nature and the gatekeeper, and to the owner of one of the hotels, who has got up a grave-yard in the ground. And there, scattered up and down under the grand old trees, which drop tears of Spanish moss, and weave wreaths of Spanish moss, and shake plumes of Spanish moss over them, are a few monumental stones to certain citizens of Savannah. There is a melancholy air about the place independently of these emblems of our mortality, which might recommend it specially for picnics. There never was before a cemetery where nature seemed to aid the effect intended by man so thoroughly. Every one knows a weeping willow will cry over a wedding party if they sit under it, as well as over a grave. But here the Spanish moss looks like weepers wreathed by some fantastic hand out of the crape of dreamland. Lucian's Ghostlander, the son of Skeleton of the Tribe of the Juiceless, could tell us something of such weird trappings. They are known indeed as the best bunting for yellow fever to fight under. Wherever their flickering horsehair tresses wave in the breeze, taper end downwards, Squire Black Jack is bearing lance and sword. One great green oak says to the other, “This fellow is killing me. Take his deadly robes off my limbs!” “Alas! see how he is ruining me! I have, no life to help you.” It is, indeed, a strange and very ghastly place. Here are so many querci virentes, old enough to be strong, and big, and great, sapful, lusty, wide-armed, green-honored — all dying out slowly beneath tillandsia, as if they were so many monarchies perishing of decay — or so many youthful republics dying of buncombe brag, richness of blood, and other diseases fatal to overgrown bodies politic.

The void left in the midst of all these designed walks and stately avenues, by the absence of any suitable centre, increases the seclusion and solitude. A house ought to be there somewhere you feel — in fact there was once the mansion of the Tatnalls, a good old English family, whose ancestors came from the old country, ere the rights of man were talked of, and lived among the Oglethorpes, and such men of the pigtail school, who would have been greatly astonished at finding themselves in company with Benjamin Franklin or his kind. I don't know anything of old Tatnall. Indeed who does? But he had a fine idea of planting trees, which he never got in America, where he would have received scant praise for anything but his power to plant cotton or sugar-cane just now. In his knee breeches, and top boots, I can fancy the old gentleman reproducing some home scene, and boasting to himself, “I will make it as fine as Lord Nihilo's park.” Could he see it now? — A decaying army of the dead. The mansion was burned down during a Christmas merrymaking, and was never built again, and the young trees have grown up despite the Spanish moss, and now they stand, as it were in cathedral aisles, around the ruins of the departed house, shading the ground, and enshrining its memories in an antiquity which seems of the remotest, although it is not as ancient as that of the youngest oak in the Squire's park at home.

I have before oftentimes in my short voyages here, wondered greatly at the reverence bestowed on a tree. In fact, it is because a tree of any decent growth is sure to be older than anything else around it; and although young America revels in her future, she is becoming old enough to think about her past.

In the evening Mr. Green gave a dinner to some very agreeable people, Mr. Ward, the Chinese Minister — (who tried, by the by, to make it appear that his wooden box was the Pekin State carriage for distinguished foreigners) — Mr. Locke, the clever and intelligent editor of the principal journal in Savannah, Brigadier Lawton, one of the Judges, a Britisher, owner of the once renowned America which, under the name of Camilla, was now lying in the river (not perhaps without reference to a little speculation in running the blockade, hourly expected), Mr. Ward and Commodore Tatnall, so well known to us in England for his gallant conduct in the Peiho affair, when he offered and gave our vessels aid, though a neutral, and uttered the exclamation in doing so, — in his despatch at all events, — “that blood was thicker than water.” Of our party was also Mr. Hodgson, well known to most of our Mediterranean travellers some years back, when he was United States Consul in the East. He amuses his leisure still by inditing and reading monographs on the languages of divers barbarous tribes in Numidia and Mauritania.

The Georgians are not quite so vehement as the South Carolinians in their hate of the Northerners; but they are scarcely less determined to fight President Lincoln and all his men. And that is the test of this rebellion's strength. I did not hear any profession of a desire to become subject to England, or to borrow a prince of us; but I have nowhere seen stronger determination to resist any reunion with the New England States. “They can't conquer us, sir?” “If they try it, we'll whip them.”

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 151-4

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes to Lucy Webb Hayes, Tuesday, November 19, 1861

Fayetteville, Virginia, November 19, 1861. (Tuesday).

Dearest: — We are housed comfortably in a fine village deserted by its people, leaving us capital winter quarters. Floyd intended to winter here, but since his retreat we are left in possession.

We have had severe marching; two nights out without tents — one in the rain and one on the snow. We stood it well. Not a man sick of those who were well, and the sick all improving — due to the clear frosty weather.

Dr. Joe is reading with much satisfaction the news of the success of our fleet. It is most important. We are hoping to stay here for the winter if we do not leave Virginia. It is much the best place we have been in. All, or nearly all, people gone, fine houses, forage, healthy location, etc., etc. Direct to Gauley as usual. I think of you almost constantly these days.

We are now entirely clear of the enemy. I met a party of Georgians yesterday with a flag of truce; had a good friendly chat with them. They are no doubt brave fine fellows but not hardy or persevering enough for this work. They really envied us our healthy and rugged men. They are tired of it heartily.

I can't yet tell when Dr. Joe or Jim or myself will come home, but one of us will pretty certainly come within a fortnight. No, I shall not be able to come so soon, but one of the doctors, will I think. Love to the dear boys and Grandma and so much for your own dear self.

Affectionately,
R.
Mrs. Hayes.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 145-6