Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, January 16, 1861

I have been kept for a week, and am still, in a state of great anxiety about the dangerous political excitements at home. The President has taken an attitude less friendly to the secessionists. This has been owing, it would seem, to the occupation of Fort Moultrie and the seizure of a revenue cutter, in the harbour of Charleston, by the South Carolina authorities. General Floyd, as Secretary of War, had pledged his honour to Governor Pickens that there should be no change in the status of the fortifications in the harbour.

Major Anderson, in command, with prudent strategy, shifted his little garrison of twenty men from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter. The South Carolina Commissioners at Washington protested, alleging breach of faith. Floyd demanded orders to Anderson to go back. The President declined. Governor Pickens sent militia into Fort Moultrie and seized a United States cutter. Floyd resigned on 29th of December, and his resignation was quietly accepted on the 31st by the President, who appointed Postmaster-General Holt to conduct the department until a successor was named. The President has addressed Congress, announced his determination to protect the property and collect the revenue of the United States with all the power at his disposal, and is said to have directed the frigate Brooklyn to be held in readiness at Norfolk, while two revenue cutters are proceeding to Charleston harbour, on board which a new Collector, McIntyre, of Pennsylvania, will exact the duties on imports. In the interim reinforcements are being sent to Southern garrisons, as a determination to seize them has shown itself in Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina. These facts, if well founded, place the country in imminent risk of civil war; and if, at the bottom of the whole, there exist, as Mr. Daniel, our Minister to Turin, vehemently assured me on Monday last was the case, an immense majority in the South who desire disunion and have been preparing to accomplish it for twenty years, it would seem that a sanguinary convulsion is unavoidable. Perhaps a large movement of militia, similar to the one made by Washington in 1794 against our Whiskey Insurrection, would overawe the disaffected and restore tranquillity. Certainly, South Carolina has taken, by capturing forts and cutters, a more decisively insurrectionary character than could be attributed to the disorderly riots of Pennsylvania.

My old friend "Betsey Bonaparte" and her son have enlisted Berryer and Legrand in a trial to come off on the 25th inst., before the Court of First Instance in Paris, asserting the validity of the marriage of Jerome in Baltimore in 1803, and claiming to share in the property he has left. If the marriage be sustained, the necessary result would be the illegitimacy of Prince Napoleon and Princess Mathilde. Here is fine garbage for Imperial scandal! and "Betsey" is not one, though she can't lack much of eighty, to shrink in the pursuit of money or to be scared by a crown.

SOURCE: George Mifflin Dallas, Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, While United States Minister to Russia 1837 to 1839, and to England 1856 to 1861, Volume 3, p. 428-30

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: September 9, 1861

CAMDEN, S. C. — Home again at Mulberry, the fever in full possession of me. My sister, Kate, is my ideal woman, the most agreeable person I know in the world, with her soft, low, and sweet voice, her graceful, gracious ways, and her glorious gray eyes, that I looked into so often as we confided our very souls to each other.

God bless old Betsey's yellow face! She is a nurse in a thousand, and would do anything for “Mars Jeems' wife.” My small ailments in all this comfort set me mourning over the dead and dying soldiers I saw in Virginia. How feeble my compassion proves, after all.

I handed the old Colonel a letter from his son in the army. He said, as he folded up the missive from the seat of war, “With this war we may die out. Your husband is the last — of my family.” He means that my husband is his only living son; his grandsons are in the army, and they, too, may be killed — even Johnny, the gallant and gay, may not be bullet-proof. No child have I.

Now this old man of ninety years was born when it was not the fashion for a gentleman to be a saint, and being lord of all he surveyed for so many years, irresponsible, in the center of his huge domain, it is wonderful he was not a greater tyrant — the softening influence of that angel wife, no doubt. Saint or sinner, he understands the world about him — au fond.

Have had a violent attack of something wrong about my heart. It stopped beating, then it took to trembling, creaking and thumping like a Mississippi high-pressure steamboat, and the noise in my ears was more like an ammunition wagon rattling over the stones in Richmond. That was yesterday, and yet I am alive. That kind of thing makes one feel very mortal.

Russell writes how disappointed Prince Jerome Napoleon was with the appearance of our troops, and “he did not like Beauregard at all.” Well! I give Bogar up to him. But how a man can find fault with our soldiers, as I have seen them individually and collectively in Charleston, Richmond, and everywhere — that beats me.

The British are the most conceited nation in the world, the most self-sufficient, self-satisfied, and arrogant. But each individual man does not blow his own penny whistle: they brag wholesale. Wellington — he certainly left it for others to sound his praises — though Mr. Binney thought the statue of Napoleon at the entrance of Apsley House was a little like “‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ ‘I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow.’” But then it is so pleasant to hear them when it is a lump sum of praise, with no private crowing — praise of Trafalgar, Waterloo, the Scots Greys.

Fighting this and fighting that, with their crack corps stirs the blood and every heart responds — three times three! Hurrah!

But our people feel that they must send forth their own reported prowess: with an, “I did this and I did that.” I know they did it; but I hang my head.

In those Tarleton Memoirs, in Lee's Memoirs, in Moultrie's, and in Lord Rawdon's letters, self is never brought to the front. I have been reading them over and admire their modesty and good taste as much as their courage and cleverness. That kind of British eloquence takes me. It is not, “Soldats! marchons, gloire!” Not a bit of it; but, “Now, my lads, stand firm!” and, “Now up, and let them have it!”

Our name has not gone out of print. To-day, the Examiner, as usual, pitches into the President. It thinks Toombs, Cobb, Slidell, Lamar, or Chesnut would have been far better in the office. There is considerable choice in that lot. Five men more utterly dissimilar were never named in the same paragraph.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 127-9

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 13, 1861

Hon. Robert Barnwell says, “The Mercury's influence began this opposition to Jeff Davis before he had time to do wrong. They were offended, not with him so much as with the man who was put into what they considered Barnwell Rhett's rightful place. The latter had howled nullification and secession so long that when he found his ideas taken up by all the Confederate world, he felt he had a vested right to leadership.”

Jordan, Beauregard's aide, still writes to Mr. Chesnut that the mortality among the raw troops in that camp is fearful. Everybody seems to be doing all they can. Think of the British sick and wounded away off in the Crimea. Our people are only a half-day's journey by rail from Richmond. With a grateful heart I record the fact of reconciliation with the Wigfalls. They dined at the President's yesterday and the little Wigfall girls stayed all night.

Seward is fêting the outsiders, the cousin of the Emperor, Napoleon III., and Russell, of the omnipotent London Times.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 104

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 8, 1861

To-day I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword, in the early part of the fray, was taken prisoner by the Yankees. They stripped him, possessed themselves of his sleeve-buttons, and were in the act of depriving him of his boots when the rout began and the play was reversed; proceedings then took the opposite tack.

From a small rill in the mountain has flowed the mighty stream which has made at last Louis Wigfall the worst enemy the President has in the Congress, a fact which complicates our affairs no little. Mr. Davis's hands ought to be strengthened; he ought to be upheld. A divided house must fall, we all say.

Mrs. Sam Jones, who is called Becky by her friends and cronies, male and female, said that Mrs. Pickens had confided to the aforesaid Jones (nee Taylor, and so of the President Taylor family and cousin of Mr. Davis's first wife), that Mrs. Wigfall “described Mrs. Davis to Mrs. Pickens as a coarse Western woman.” Now the fair Lucy Holcombe and Mrs. Wigfall had a quarrel of their own out in Texas, and, though reconciled, there was bitterness underneath. At first, Mrs. Joe Johnston called Mrs. Davis “a Western belle,”¹ but when the quarrel between General Johnston and the President broke out, Mrs. Johnston took back the “belle” and substituted “woman” in the narrative derived from Mrs. Jones.

Commodore Barron² came with glad tidings. We had taken three prizes at sea, and brought them in safely, one laden with molasses. General Toombs told us the President complimented Mr. Chesnut when he described the battle scene to his Cabinet, etc. General Toombs is certain Colonel Chesnut will be made one of the new batch of brigadiers. Next came Mr. Clayton, who calmly informed us Jeff Davis would not get the vote of this Congress for President, so we might count him out.

Mr. Meynardie first told us how pious a Christian soldier was Kershaw, how he prayed, got up, dusted his knees and led his men on to victory with a dash and courage equal to any Old Testament mighty man of war.

Governor Manning's account of Prince Jerome Napoleon: “He is stout and he is not handsome. Neither is he young, and as he reviewed our troops he was terribly overheated.” He heard him say “en avant,” of that he could testify of his own knowledge, and he was told he had been heard to say with unction “Allons” more than once. The sight of the battle-field had made the Prince seasick, and he received gratefully a draft of fiery whisky.

Arrago seemed deeply interested in Confederate statistics, and praised our doughty deeds to the skies. It was but soldier fare our guests received, though we did our best. It was hard sleeping and worse eating in camp. Beauregard is half Frenchman and speaks French like a native. So one awkward mess was done away with, and it was a comfort to see Beauregard speak without the agony of finding words in the foreign language and forming them, with damp brow, into sentences. A different fate befell others who spoke “a little French.”

General and Mrs. Cooper came to see us. She is Mrs. Smith Lee's sister. They were talking of old George Mason — in Virginia a name to conjure with. George Mason violently opposed the extension of slavery. He was a thorough aristocrat, and gave as his reason for refusing the blessing of slaves to the new States, Southwest and Northwest, that vulgar new people were unworthy of so sacred a right as that of holding slaves. It was not an institution intended for such people as they were. Mrs. Lee said: “After all, what good does it do my sons that they are Light Horse Harry Lee's grandsons and George Mason's? I do not see that it helps them at all.”

A friend in Washington writes me that we might have walked into Washington any day for a week after Manassas, such were the consternation and confusion there. But the god Pan was still blowing his horn in the woods. Now she says Northern troops are literally pouring in from all quarters. The horses cover acres of ground. And she thinks we have lost our chance forever.

A man named Grey (the same gentleman whom Secretary of War Walker so astonished by greeting him with, “Well, sir, and what is your business?”) described the battle of the 21st as one succession of blunders, redeemed by the indomitable courage of the two-thirds who did not run away on our side. Doctor Mason said a fugitive on the other side informed him that “a million of men with the devil at their back could not have whipped the rebels at Bull Run.” That's nice.

There must be opposition in a free country. But it is very uncomfortable. “United we stand, divided we fall.” Mrs. Davis showed us in The New York Tribune an extract from an Augusta (Georgia) paper saying, “Cobb is our man. Davis is at heart a reconstructionist.” We may be flies on the wheel, we know our insignificance; but Mrs. Preston and myself have entered into an agreement; our oath is recorded on high. We mean to stand by our President and to stop all fault-finding with the powers that be, if we can and where we can, be the fault-finders generals or Cabinet Ministers.

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¹ Mrs. Davis was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and educated in Philadelphia. She was married to Mr. Davis in 1845. In recent years her home has been in New York City, where she still resides (Dec. 1904).

² Samuel Barron was a native of Virginia, who had risen to be a captain in the United States Navy. At the time of Secession he received a commission as Commodore in the Confederate Navy.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 101-4

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: Tuesday August 6, 1861

The North requires 600,000 men to invade us. Truly we are a formidable power! The Herald says it is useless to move with a man less than that. England has made it all up with them, or rather, she will not break with them. Jerome Napoleon is in Washington and not our friend.

Doctor Gibbes is a bird of ill omen. To-day he tells me eight of our men have died at the Charlottesville Hospital. It seems sickness is more redoubtable in an army than the enemy's guns. There are 1,100 there hors de combat, and typhoid fever is with them. They want money, clothes, and nurses. So, as I am writing, right and left the letters fly, calling for help from the sister societies at home. Good and patriotic women at home are easily stirred to their work.

Mary Hammy has many strings to her bow — a fiancé in the army, and Doctor Berrien in town. To-day she drove out with Major Smith and Colonel Hood. Yesterday, Custis Lee was here. She is a prudent little puss and needs no good advice, if I were one to give it.

Lawrence does all our shopping. All his master's money has been in his hands until now. I thought it injudicious when gold is at such a premium to leave it lying loose in the tray of a trunk. So I have sewed it up in a belt, which I can wear upon an emergency. The cloth is wadded and my diamonds are there, too. It has strong strings, and can be tied under my hoops about my waist if the worst comes to the worst, as the saying is. Lawrence wears the same bronze mask. No sign of anything he may feel or think of my latest fancy. Only, I know he asks for twice as much money now when he goes to buy things.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 100-1

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 2, 1861

Prince Jerome¹ has gone to Washington. Now the Yankees so far are as little trained as we are; raw troops are they as yet. Suppose France takes the other side and we have to meet disciplined and armed men, soldiers who understand war, Frenchmen, with all the elan we boast of.

Ransom Calhoun, Willie Preston, and Doctor Nott's boys are here. These foolish, rash, hare-brained Southern lads have been within an ace of a fight with a Maryland company for their camping grounds. It is much too Irish to be so ready to fight anybody, friend or foe. Men are thrilling with fiery ardor. The red-hot Southern martial spirit is in the air. These young men, however, were all educated abroad. And it is French or German ideas that they are filled with. The Marylanders were as rash and reckless as the others, and had their coat-tails ready for anybody to tread on, Donnybrook Fair fashion. One would think there were Yankees enough and to spare for any killing to be done. It began about picketing their horses. But these quarrelsome young soldiers have lovely manners. They are so sweet-tempered when seen here among us at the Arlington.

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¹ Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, a grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome and of Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. He was a graduate of West Point, but had entered the French Army, where he saw service in the Crimea, Algiers, and Italy, taking part in the battle of Balaklava, the siege of Sebastopol, and the battle of Solferino. He died in Massachusetts in 1893.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 98-9