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
