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: January 14, 1865

Yesterday I broke down — gave way to abject terror under the news of Sherman's advance with no news of my husband. To-day, while wrapped up on the sofa, too dismal even for moaning, there was a loud knock. Shawls on and all, just as I was, I rushed to the door to find a telegram from my husband: “All well; be at home Tuesday.” It was dated from Adam's Run. I felt as lighthearted as if the war were over. Then I looked at the date and the place — Adam's Run. It ends as it began — in a run — Bull's Run, from which their first sprightly running astounded the world, and now Adam's Run. But if we must run, who are left to run? From Bull Run they ran full-handed. But we have fought until maimed soldiers, women, and children are all that remain to run.

To-day Kershaw's brigade, or what is left of it, passed through. What shouts greeted it and what bold shouts of thanks it returned! It was all a very encouraging noise, absolutely comforting. Some true men are left, after all.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 341

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: January 16, 1865

My husband is at home once more — for how long, I do not know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place. The drilling and the marching go on outside. It rains a flood, with freshet after freshet. The forces of nature are befriending us, for our enemies have to make their way through swamps.

A month ago my husband wrote me a letter which I promptly suppressed after showing it to Mrs. McCord. He warned us to make ready, for the end had come. Our resources were exhausted, and the means of resistance could not be found. We could not bring ourselves to believe it, and now, he thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the freshets, which have no time to subside, so constant is the rain, and the negroes utterly apathetic (would they be so if they saw us triumphant?), if we had but an army to seize the opportunity we might do something; but there are no troops; that is the real trouble.

To-day Mrs. McCord exchanged $16,000 in Confederate bills for $300 in gold — sixteen thousand for three hundred.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 341-2

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: January 7, 1865

Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last of his men not gone, as Louis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied.

Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the dentist. Her teeth are of the whitest and most regular, simply perfection. She fancied it was better to have a dentist look in her mouth before returning to the mountains. For that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money. “Why, has this money any value at all?” she asked. Little enough in all truth, sad to say.

Brewster was here and stayed till midnight. Said he must see General Chesnut. He had business with him. His “me and General Hood” is no longer comic. He described Sherman's march of destruction and desolation. “Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide, upon which there is no living thing to be seen,” said Brewster before he departed.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 340-1

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: December 2, 1864

Isabella and I put on bonnets and shawls and went deliberately out for news. We determined to seek until we found. Met a man who was so ugly, I could not forget him or his sobriquet; he was awfully in love with me once. He did not know me, but blushed hotly when Isabella told him who I was. He had forgotten me, I hope, or else I am changed by age and care past all recognition. He gave us the encouraging information that Grahamville had been burned to the ground.

When the call for horses was made, Mrs. McCord sent in her fine bays. She comes now with a pair of mules, and looks too long and significantly at my ponies. If I were not so much afraid of her, I would hint that those mules would be of far more use in camp than my ponies. But they will seize the ponies, no doubt.

In all my life before, the stables were far off from the house and I had nothing to do with them. Now my ponies are kept under an open shed next to the back piazza. Here I sit with my work, or my desk, or my book, basking in our Southern sun, and I watch Nat feed, curry, and rub down the horses, and then he cleans their stables as thoroughly as Smith does my drawing-room. I see their beds of straw comfortably laid. Nat says, “Ow, Missis, ain't lady's business to look so much in de stables.” I care nothing for his grumbling, and I have never had horses in better condition. Poor ponies, you deserve every attention, and enough to eat. Grass does not grow under your feet. By night and day you are on the trot.

To-day General Chesnut was in Charleston on his way from Augusta to Savannah by rail. The telegraph is still working between Charleston and Savannah. Grahamville certainly is burned. There was fighting down there to-day. I came home with enough to think about, Heaven knows! And then all day long we compounded a pound cake in honor of Mrs. Cuthbert, who has things so nice at home. The cake was a success, but was it worth all that trouble?

As my party were driving off to the concert, an omnibus rattled up. Enter Captain Leland, of General Chesnut's staff, of as imposing a presence as a field-marshal, handsome and gray-haired. He was here on some military errand and brought me a letter. He said the Yankees had been repulsed, and that down in those swamps we could give a good account of ourselves if our government would send men enough. With a sufficient army to meet them down “there, they could be annihilated.” “Where are the men to come from?” asked Mamie, wildly. “General Hood has gone off to Tennessee. Even if he does defeat Thomas there, what difference would that make here?”

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 336-7

Diary of William Howard Russell: April 24, 1861

In the morning we found ourselves in chopping little sea-way for which the “Nina” was particularly unsuited, laden as she was with provisions and produce. Eyes and glasses anxiously straining seawards for any trace of the blockading vessels. Every sail scrutinized, but no “stars and stripes” visible.

Our captain — a good specimen of one of the inland-water navigators, shrewd, intelligent, and active, — told me a good deal about the country. He laughed at the fears of the whites as regards the climate. “Why, here am I,” said he, “going up the river, and down the river all times of the year, and at times of day and night when they reckon the air is most deadly, and I've done so for years without any bad effects. The planters whose houses I pass all run away in May, and go off to Europe, or to the piney wood, or to the springs, or they think they'd all die. There's Captain Buck, who lives above here, — he comes from the State of Maine. He had only a thousand dollars to begin with, but he sets to work and gets land on the Maccamaw River at twenty cents an acre. It was death to go nigh it, but it was first-rate rice land, and Captain Buck is now worth a million of dollars. He lives on his estate all the year round, and is as healthy a man as ever you seen.”

To such historiettes my planting friends turn a deaf ear. “I tell you what,” said Pringle, “just to show you what kind our climate is. I had an excellent overseer once, who would insist on staying near the river, and wouldn't go away. He fought against it for more than five-and-twenty years, but he went down with fever at last.” As the overseer was more than thirty years of age when he came to the estate, he had not been cut off so very suddenly. I thought of the quack's advertisement of the “bad leg of sixty years' standing.” The captain says the negroes on the river plantations are very well off. He can buy enough of pork from the slaves on one plantation to last his ship's crew for the whole winter. The money goes to them, as the hogs are their own. One of the stewards on board had bought himself and his family out of bondage with his earnings. The State in general, however, does not approve of such practices.

At three o'clock, P. M., ran into Charleston harbor, ant landed soon afterwards.

I saw General Beauregard in the evening: he was very lively and in good spirits, though he admitted he was rather surprised by the spirit displayed in the North. “A good deal of it is got up, however,” he said, “and belongs to that washy sort of enthusiasm which is promoted by their lecturing and spouting.” Beauregard is very proud of his personal strength, which for his slight frame is said to be very extraordinary, and he seemed to insist on it that the Southern men had more physical strength, owing to their mode of life and their education, than their Northern “brethren.” In the evening held a sort of tabaks consilium in the hotel, where a number of officers  — Manning, Lucas, Chestnut, Calhoun, &c, — discoursed of the affairs of the nation. All my friends, except Trescot, I think were elated at the prospect of hostilities with the North, and overjoyed that a South Carolina regiment had already set out for the frontiers of Virginia.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 135-6

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: November 25, 1864

Sherman is thundering at Augusta's very doors. My General was on the wing, somber, and full of care. The girls are merry enough; the staff, who fairly live here, no better. Cassandra, with a black shawl over her head, is chased by the gay crew from sofa to sofa, for she avoids them, being full of miserable anxiety. There is nothing but distraction and confusion. All things tend to the preparation for the departure of the troops. It rains all the time, such rains as I never saw before; incessant torrents. These men come in and out in the red mud and slush of Columbia streets. Things seem dismal and wretched to me to the last degree, but the staff, the girls, and the youngsters do not see it.

Mrs. S. (born in Connecticut) came, and she was radiant. She did not come to see me, but my nieces. She says exultingly that “Sherman will open a way out at last, and I will go at once to Europe or go North to my relatives there.” How she derided our misery and “mocked when our fear cometh.” I dare say she takes me for a fool. I sat there dumb, although she was in my own house, I have heard of a woman so enraged that she struck some one over the head with a shovel. To-day, for the first time in my life, I know how that mad woman felt. I could have given Mrs. S. the benefit of shovel and tongs both.

That splendid fellow, Preston Hampton; “home they brought their warrior, dead,” and wrapped in that very Legion flag he had borne so often in battle with his own hands.

A letter from Mrs. Davis to-day, under date of Richmond, Va., November 20, 1864. She says: “Affairs West are looking so critical now that, before you receive this, you and I will be in the depths or else triumphant. I confess I do not sniff success in every passing breeze, but I am so tired, hoping, fearing, and being disappointed, that I have made up my mind not to be disconsolate, even though thieves break through and steal. Some people expect another attack upon Richmond shortly, but I think the avalanche will not slide until the spring breaks up its winter quarters. I have a blind kind of prognostics of victory for us, but somehow I am not cheered. The temper of Congress is less vicious, but more concerted in its hostile action." Mrs. Davis is a woman that my heart aches for in the troubles ahead.

My journal, a quire of Confederate paper, lies wide open on my desk in the corner of my drawing-room. Everybody reads it who chooses. Buck comes regularly to see what I have written last, and makes faces when it does not suit her. Isabella still calls me Cassandra, and puts her hands to her ears when I begin to wail. Well, Cassandra only records what she hears; she does not vouch for it. For really, one nowadays never feels certain of anything.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 334-5

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: October 28, 1864

Burton Harrison writes to General Preston that supreme anxiety reigns in Richmond.

Oh, for one single port! If the Alabama had had in the whole wide world a port to take her prizes to and where she could be refitted, I believe she would have borne us through. Oh, for one single port by which we could get at the outside world and refit our whole Confederacy! If we could have hired regiments from Europe, or even have imported ammunition and food for our soldiers!

“Some days must be dark and dreary.” At the mantua-maker's, however, I saw an instance of faith in our future: a bride's paraphernalia, and the radiant bride herself, the bridegroom expectant and elect now within twenty miles of Chattanooga and outward bound to face the foe.

Saw at the Laurens's not only Lizzie Hamilton, a perfect little beauty, but the very table the first Declaration of Independence was written upon. These Laurenses are grandchildren of Henry Laurens, of the first Revolution. Alas! we have yet to make good our second declaration of independence — Southern independence — from Yankee meddling and Yankee rule. Hood has written to ask them to send General Chesnut out to command one of his brigades. In whose place?

If Albert Sidney Johnston had lived! Poor old General Lee has no backing. Stonewall would have saved us from Antietam. Sherman will now catch General Lee by the rear, while Grant holds him by the head, and while Hood and Thomas are performing an Indian war-dance on the frontier. Hood means to cut his way to Lee; see if he doesn't. The “Yanks” have had a struggle for it. More than once we seemed to have been too much for them. We have been so near to success it aches one to think of it. So runs the table-talk.

Next to our house, which Isabella calls “Tillytudlem,” since Mr. Davis's visit, is a common of green grass and very level, beyond which comes a belt of pine-trees. On this open space, within forty paces of us, a regiment of foreign deserters has camped. They have taken the oath of allegiance to our government, and are now being drilled and disciplined into form before being sent to our army. They are mostly Germans, with some Irish, however. Their close proximity keeps me miserable. Traitors once, traitors forever.

Jordan has always been held responsible for all the foolish proclamations, and, indeed, for whatever Beauregard reported or proclaimed. Now he has left that mighty chief, and, lo, here comes from Beauregard the silliest and most boastful of his military bulletins. He brags of Shiloh; that was not the way the story was told to us.

A letter from Mrs. Davis, who says: “Thank you, a thousand times, my dear friend, for your more than maternal kindness to my dear child.” That is what she calls her sister, Maggie Howell. “As to Mr. Davis, he thinks the best ham, the best Madeira, the best coffee, the best hostess in the world, rendered Columbia delightful to him when he passed through. We are in a sad and anxious state here just now. The dead come in; but the living do not go out so fast. However, we hope all things and trust in God as the only one able to resolve the opposite state of feeling into a triumphant, happy whole. I had a surprise of an unusually gratifying nature a few days since, I found I could not keep my horses, so I sold them. The next day they were returned to me with a handsome anonymous note to the effect that they had been bought by a few friends for me. But I fear I can not feed them. Strictly between us, things look very anxious here."

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 330-2

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: October 18, 1864

Ten pleasant days I owe to my sister. Kate has descended upon me unexpectedly from the mountains of Flat Rock. We are true sisters; she understands me without words, and she is the cleverest, sweetest woman I know, so graceful and gracious in manner, so good and unselfish in character, but, best of all, she is so agreeable. Any time or place would be charming with Kate for a companion. General Chesnut was in Camden; but I could not wait. I gave the beautiful bride, Mrs. Darby, a dinner, which was simply perfection. I was satisfied for once in my life with my own table, and I know pleasanter guests were never seated around any table whatsoever.

My house is always crowded. After all, what a number of pleasant people we have been thrown in with by war's catastrophes. I call such society glorious. It is the windup, but the old life as it begins to die will die royally. General Chesnut came back disheartened. He complains that such a life as I lead gives him no time to think.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 329-30

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.

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: September 24, 1864

These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like blows upon a dead body. Since Atlanta fell I have felt as if all were dead within me forever. Captain Ogden, of General Chesnut's staff, dined here to-day. Had ever brigadier, with little or no brigade, so magnificent a staff? The reserves, as somebody said, have been secured only by robbing the cradle and the grave — the men too old, the boys too young. Isaac Hayne, Edward Barnwell, Bacon, Ogden, Richardson, Miles are the picked men of the agreeable world.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 327

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 10, 1864

To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops are ordered to look after the mountain passes beyond Greenville on the North Carolina and Tennessee quarter.

Misery upon misery. Mobile¹ is going as New Orleans went. Those Western men have not held, their towns as we held and hold Charleston, or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a “frill-shirt, silk-stocking chivalry,” or “a set of dandy Miss Nancy.” They fight desperately in their bloody street brawls, but we bear privation and discipline best.

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¹ The battle of Mobile Bay, won under Farragut, was fought on August 5, 1864.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 319

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 6, 1864

Archer came, a classmate of my husband's at Princeton; they, called him Sally Archer then, he was so girlish and pretty. No trace of feminine beauty about this grim soldier now. He has a hard face, black-bearded and sallow, with the saddest black eyes. His hands are small, white, and well-shaped; his manners quiet. He is abstracted and weary-looking, his mind and body having been deadened by long imprisonment. He seemed glad to be here, and James Chesnut was charmed. “Dear Sally Archer,” he calls him cheerily, and the other responds in a far-off, faded kind of way.

Hood and Archer were given the two Texas regiments at the beginning of the war. They were colonels and Wigfall was their general. Archer's comments on Hood are: “He does not compare intellectually with General Johnston, who is decidedly a man of culture and literary attainments, with much experience in military matters. Hood, however, has youth and energy to help counterbalance all this. He has a simple-minded directness of purpose always. He is awfully shy, and he has suffered terribly, but then he has had consolations — such a rapid rise in his profession, and then his luck to be engaged to the beautiful Miss ——.”

They tried Archer again and again on the heated controversy of the day, but he stuck to his text. Joe Johnston is a fine military critic, a capital writer, an accomplished soldier, as brave as Caesar in his own person, but cautious to a fault in manipulating an army. Hood has all the dash and fire of a reckless young soldier, and his Texans would follow him to the death. Too much caution might be followed easily by too much headlong rush. That is where the swing-back of the pendulum might ruin us.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 318-9

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 26, 1864

Isabella went with me to the bulletin-board. Mrs. D. (with the white linen as usual pasted on her chin) asked me to read aloud what was there written. As I slowly read on, I heard a suppressed giggle from Isabella. I know her way of laughing at everything, and tried to enunciate more distinctly — to read more slowly, and louder, with more precision. As I finished and turned round, I found myself closely packed in by a crowd of Confederate soldiers eager to hear the news. They took off their caps, thanked me for reading all that was on the boards, and made way for me, cap in hand, as I hastily returned to the carriage, which was waiting for us. Isabella proposed, “Call out to them to give three cheers for Jeff Davis and his generals.” “You forget, my child, that we are on our way to a funeral.”

Found my new house already open hospitably to all comers. My husband had arrived. He was seated at a pine table, on which someone had put a coarse, red table-cover, and by the light of one tallow candle was affably entertaining Edward Barnwell, Isaac Hayne, and Uncle Hamilton. He had given them no tea, however. After I had remedied that oversight, we adjourned to the moonlighted piazza. By tallow-candle-light and the light of the moon, we made out that wonderful smile of Teddy's, which identifies him as Gerald Grey.

We have laughed so at broken hearts — the broken hearts of the foolish love stories. But Buck, now, is breaking her heart for her brother Willie. Hearts do break in silence, without a word or a sigh. Mrs. Means and Mary Barnwell made no moan — simply turned their faces to the wall and died. How many more that we know nothing of!

When I remember all the true-hearted, the light-hearted, the gay and gallant boys, who have come laughing, singing, and dancing in my way in the three years now past; how I have looked into their brave young eyes and helped them as I could in every way and then saw them no more forever; how they lie stark and cold, dead upon the battle-field, or moldering away in hospitals or prisons, which is worse — I think if I consider the long array of those bright youths and loyal men who have gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break, too. Is anything worth it — this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we pay for war?

Allen G. says Johnston was a failure. Now he will wait and see what Hood can do before he pronounces judgment on him. He liked his address to his army. It was grand and inspiring, but every one knows a general has not time to write these things himself. Mr. Kelly, from New Orleans, says Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith have quarreled. One would think we had a big enough quarrel on hand for one while already. The Yankees are enough and to spare. General Lovell says, “Joe Brown, with his Georgians at his back, who importuned our government to remove Joe Johnston, they are scared now, and wish they had not.”

In our democratic Republic, if one rises to be its head, whomever he displeases takes a Turkish revenge and defiles the tombs of his father and mother; hints that his father was a horse-thief and his mother no better than she should be; his sisters barmaids and worse, his brothers Yankee turncoats and traitors. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff Davis indiscriminately.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 315-7

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 8, 1864

CAMDEN, S.C., May 8, 1864. – My friends crowded around me so in those last days in Richmond, I forgot the affairs of this nation utterly; though I did show faith in my Confederate country by buying poor Bones's (my English maid's) Confederate bonds. I gave her gold thimbles, bracelets; whatever was gold and would sell in New York or London, I gave.

My friends in Richmond grieved that I had to leave them—not half so much, however, as I did that I must come away. Those last weeks were so pleasant. No battle, no murder, no sudden death, all went merry as a marriage bell. Clever, cordial, kind, brave friends rallied around me.

Maggie Howell and I went down the river to see an exchange of prisoners. Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan, Mrs. Ould. We picked up Judge Ould and Buck Allan at Curl's Neck. I had seen no genuine Yankees before; prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or Irish. Among our men coming ashore was an officer, who had charge of some letters for a friend of mine whose fiancé had died; I gave him her address. One other man showed me some wonderfully ingenious things he had made while a prisoner. One said they gave him rations for a week; he always devoured them in three days, he could not help it; and then he had to bear the inevitable agony of those four remaining days! Many were wounded, some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. We had supper — or some nondescript meal — with ice-cream on board. The band played Home, Sweet Home.

One man tapped another on the shoulder: '”Well, how do you feel, old fellow?” “Never was so near crying in my life — for very comfort.”

Governor Cummings, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah, was among the returned prisoners. He had been in prison two years. His wife was with him. He was a striking-looking person, huge in size, and with snow-white hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee barbarity or starvation about him.

That evening, as we walked up to Mrs. Davis's carriage, which was waiting for us at the landing, Dr. Garnett with Maggie Howell, Major Hall with me, suddenly I heard her scream, and some one stepped back in the dark and said in a whisper. “Little Joe! he has killed himself!” I felt reeling, faint, bewildered. A chattering woman clutched my arm: “Mrs. Davis's son? Impossible. Whom did you say? Was he an interesting child? How old was he?” The shock was terrible, and unnerved as I was I cried, “For God's sake take her away!”

Then Maggie and I drove two long miles in silence except for Maggie's hysterical sobs. She was wild with terror. The news was broken to her in that abrupt way at the carriage door so that at first she thought it had all happened there, and that poor little Joe was in the carriage.

Mr. Burton Harrison met us at the door of the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Semmes and Mrs. Barksdale were there, too. Every window and door of the house seemed wide open, and the wind was blowing the curtains. It was lighted, even in the third story. As I sat in the drawing-room, I could hear the tramp of Mr. Davis's step as he walked up and down the room above. Not another sound. The whole house as silent as death. It was then twelve o'clock; so I went home and waked General Chesnut, who had gone to bed. We went immediately back to the President's, found Mrs. Semmes still there, but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the family ought to be in the house.

Mrs. Semmes said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by his brother, and he called out to her in great distress: “Mrs. Semmes, I have said all the prayers I know how, but God will not wake Joe.'”

Poor little Joe, the good child of the family, was so gentle and affectionate. He used to run in to say his prayers at his father's knee. Now he was laid out somewhere above us, crushed and killed. Mrs. Semmes, describing the accident, said he fell from the high north piazza upon a brick pavement. Before I left the house I saw him lying there, white and beautiful as an angel, covered with flowers; Catherine, his nurse, flat on the floor by his side, was weeping and wailing as only an Irishwoman can.

Immense crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic, but some shoving and pushing rudely. There were thousands of children, and each child had a green bough or a bunch of flowers to throw on little Joe's grave, which was already a mass of white flowers, crosses, and evergreens. The morning I came away from Mrs. Davis's, early as it was, I met a little child with a handful of snow drops. “Put these on little Joe,” she said; “I knew him so well.” and then she turned and fled without another word. I did not know who she was then or now.

As I walked home I met Mr. Reagan, then Wade Hampton. But I could see nothing but little Joe and his brokenhearted mother. And Mr. Davis's step still sounded in my ears as he walked that floor the livelong night.

General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond. Great numbers of people were to go up by rail to see it. Miss Turner McFarland writes: “They did go, but they came back faster than they went. They found the army drawn up in battle array.” Many of the brave and gay spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight, the only flight they know, and their bodies are left dead upon the battle-field. Poor old Edward Johnston is wounded again, and a prisoner. Jones's brigade broke first; he was wounded the day before.

At Wilmington we met General Whiting. He sent us to the station in his carriage, and bestowed upon us a bottle of brandy, which had run the blockade. They say Beauregard has taken his sword from Whiting. Never! I will not believe it. At the capture of Fort Sumter they said Whiting was the brains, Beauregard only the hand. Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou fallen! That they should even say such a thing!

My husband and Mr. Covey got out at Florence to procure for Mrs. Miles a cup of coffee. They were slow about it and they got left. I did not mind this so very much, for I remembered that we were to remain all day at Kingsville, and that my husband could overtake me there by the next train. My maid belonged to the Prestons. She was only traveling home with me, and would go straight on to Columbia. So without fear I stepped off at Kingsville. My old Confederate silk, like most Confederate dresses, had seen better days, and I noticed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous “one-hoss shay,” it had gone to pieces suddenly, and all over. It was literally in strips. I became painfully aware of my forlorn aspect when I asked the telegraph man the way to the hotel, and he was by no means respectful to me. I was, indeed, alone — an old and not too respectable-looking woman. It was my first appearance in the character, and I laughed aloud.

A very haughty and highly painted dame greeted me at the hotel. “No room,” said she. “Who are you?” I gave my name. “Try something else,” said she. "Mrs. Chesnut don't travel round by herself with no servants and no nothing.” I looked down. There I was, dirty, tired, tattered, and torn. “Where do you come from?” said she. “My home is in Camden.” “Come, now, I know everybody in Camden.” I sat down meekly on a bench in the piazza, that was free to all wayfarers.

“Which Mrs. Chesnut?” said she (sharply). “I know both.” “I am now the only one. And now what is the matter with you? Do you take me for a spy? I know you perfectly well. I went to school with you at Miss Henrietta de Leon's, and my name was Mary Miller.” “The Lord sakes alive! and to think you are her! Now I see. Dear! dear me! Heaven sakes, woman, but you are broke!” “And tore,” I added, holding up my dress. “But I had had no idea it was so difficult to effect an entry into a railroad wayside hotel.” I picked up a long strip of my old black dress, torn off by a man's spur as I passed him getting off the train.

It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chesnut, who was the good genius of the place. It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest — the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here — with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter.

Inside, are creature comforts of all kinds — green peas, strawberries, asparagus, spring lamb, spring chicken, fresh eggs, rich, yellow butter, clean white linen for one's beds, dazzling white damask for one's table. It is such a contrast to Richmond, where I wish I were.

Fighting is going on. Hampton is frantic, for his laggard new regiments fall in slowly; no fault of the soldiers; they are as disgusted as he is. Bragg, Bragg, the head of the War Office, can not organize in time.

John Boykin has died in a Yankee prison. He had on a heavy flannel shirt when lying in an open platform car on the way to a cold prison on the lakes. A Federal soldier wanted John's shirt. Prisoners have no rights; so John had to strip off and hand his shirt to him. That caused his death. In two days he was dead of pneumonia — may be frozen to death. One man said: “They are taking us there to freeze.” But then their men will find our hot sun in August and July as deadly as our men find their cold Decembers. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they say. Napoleon's soldiers found out all that in the Russian campaign.

Have brought my houseless, homeless friends, refugees here, to luxuriate in Mulberry's plenty. I can but remember the lavish kindness of the Virginia people when I was there and in a similar condition. The Virginia people do the rarest acts of hospitality and never seem to know it is not in the ordinary course of events.

The President's man, Stephen, bringing his master's Arabian to Mulberry for safe-keeping, said: “Why, Missis, your niggers down here are well off. I call this Mulberry place heaven, with plenty to eat, little to do, warm house to sleep in, a good church.”

John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment. The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering. The Secretary of War authorizes General Chesnut to reorganize the men who have been hitherto detailed for special duty, and also those who have been exempt. He says General Chesnut originated the plan and organized the corps of clerks which saved Richmond in the Dahlgren raid.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 304-9

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: April 11, 1864

Drove with Mrs. Davis and all her infant family; wonderfully clever and precocious children, with unbroken wills. At one time there was a sudden uprising of the nursery contingent. They laughed, fought, and screamed. Bedlam broke loose. Mrs. Davis scolded, laughed, and cried. She asked me if my husband would speak to the President about the plan in South Carolina, which everybody said suited him. “No, Mrs. Davis,” said I. “That is what I told Mr. Davis,” said she. “Colonel Chesnut rides so high a horse. Now Browne is so much more practical. He goes forth to be general of conscripts in Georgia. His wife will stay at the Cobbs's.”

Mrs. Ould gave me a luncheon on Saturday. I felt that this was my last sad farewell to Richmond and the people there I love so well. Mrs. Davis sent her carriage for me, and we went to the Oulds' together. Such good things were served — oranges, guava jelly, etc. The Examiner says Mr. Ould, when he goes to Fortress Monroe, replenishes his larder; why not? The Examiner has taken another fling at the President, as, “haughty and austere with his friends, affable, kind, subservient to his enemies.” I wonder if the Yankees would indorse that certificate. Both sides abuse him. He can not please anybody, it seems. No doubt he is right.

My husband is now brigadier-general and is sent to South Carolina to organize and take command of the reserve troops. C. C. Clay and L. Q. C. Lamar are both spoken of to fill the vacancy made among Mr. Davis's aides by this promotion.

To-day, Captain Smith Lee spent the morning here and gave a review of past Washington gossip. I am having such a busy, happy life, with so many friends, and my friends are so clever, so charming. But the change to that weary, dreary Camden! Mary Preston said: “I do think Mrs. Chesnut deserves to be canonized; she agrees to go back to Camden.” The Prestons gave me a farewell dinner; my twenty-fourth wedding day, and the very pleasantest day I have spent in Richmond.

Maria Lewis was sitting with us on Mrs. Huger's steps, and Smith Lee was lauding Virginia people as usual. As Lee would say, there “hove in sight” Frank Parker, riding one of the finest of General Bragg's horses; by his side Buck on Fairfax, the most beautiful home in Richmond, his brown coat looking like satin, his proud neck arched, moving slowly, gracefully, calmly, no fidgets, aristocratic in his bearing to the tips of his bridle-reins. There sat Buck tall and fair, managing her horse with infinite ease, her English riding-habit showing plainly the exquisite proportions of her figure. “Supremely lovely,” said Smith Lee. “Look at them both,” said I proudly; “can you match those two in Virginia?” “Three cheers for South Carolina!” was the answer of Lee, the gallant Virginia sailor.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 302-3

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: April 1, 1864

Mrs. Davis is utterly depressed. She said the fall of Richmond must come; she would send her children to me and Mrs. Preston. We begged her to come to us also. My husband is as depressed as I ever knew him to be. He has felt the death of that angel mother of his keenly, and now he takes his country's woes to heart.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 301-2

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 19, 1864

A new experience: Molly and Lawrence have both gone home, and I am to be left for the first time in my life wholly at the mercy of hired servants. Mr. Chesnut, being in such deep mourning for his mother, we see no company. I have a maid of all work.

Tudy came with an account of yesterday's trip to Petersburg. Constance Cary raved of the golden ripples in Tudy's hair. Tudy vanished in a halo of glory, and Constance Cary gave me an account of a wedding, as it was given to her by Major von Borcke. The bridesmaids were dressed in black, the bride in Confederate gray, homespun. She had worn the dress all winter, but it had been washed and turned for the wedding. The female critics pronounced it “flabby-dabby.” They also said her collar was only "net," and she wore a cameo breastpin. Her bonnet was self-made.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 300-1