Davin! Have had a talk concerning him to-day with two
opposite extremes of people.
Mrs. Chesnut, my mother-in-law, praises everybody, good and
bad. “Judge not,” she says. She is a philosopher; she would not give herself
the pain to find fault. The Judge abuses everybody, and he does it so well —
short, sharp, and incisive are his sentences, and he revels in condemning the
world en Hoc, as the French say. So nobody is the better for her good
word, or the worse for his bad one.
In Camden I found myself in a flurry of women. “Traitors,”
they cried. “Spies; they ought to be hanged; Davin is taken up, Dean and Davis
are his accomplices.” “What has Davin done?” “He'll be hanged, never you mind.”
“For what?” “They caught him walking on the trestle work in the swamp, after no
good, you may be sure.” “They won't hang him for that!” “Hanging is too good
for him!” “You wait till Colonel Chesnut comes.” “He is a lawyer,” I said,
gravely. “Ladies, he will disappoint you. There will be no lynching if he goes
to that meeting to-day. He will not move a step except by habeas corpus and
trial by jury, and a quantity of bench and bar to speak long speeches.”
Mr. Chesnut did come, and gave a more definite account of
poor Davin's precarious situation. They had intercepted treasonable letters of
his at the Post Office. I believe it was not a very black treason after all. At
any rate, Mr. Chesnut spoke for him with might and main at the meeting. It was
composed (the meeting) of intelligent men with cool heads. And they banished Davin
to Fort Sumter. The poor Music Master can't do much harm in the casemates
there. He may thank his stars that Mr. Chesnut gave him a helping hand. In the
red hot state our public mind now is in there will be a short shrift for spies.
Judge Withers said that Mr. Chesnut never made a more telling speech in his
life than he did to save this poor Frenchman for whom Judge Lynch was ready. I
had never heard of Davin in my life until I heard he was to be hanged.
Judge Stephen A. Douglas, the “little giant,” is dead; one
of those killed by the war, no doubt; trouble of mind.
Charleston people are thin-skinned. They shrink from
Russell's touches. I find his criticisms mild. He has a light touch. I expected
so much worse. Those Englishmen come, somebody says, with three P's — pen,
paper, prejudices. I dread some of those after-dinner stories. As to that day
in the harbor, he let us off easily. He says our men are so fine looking. Who
denies it? Not one of us. Also that it is a silly impression which has gone
abroad that men can not work in this climate. We live in the open air, and work
like Trojans at all manly sports, riding hard, hunting, playing at being
soldiers. These fine, manly specimens have been in the habit of leaving the
coast when it became too hot there, and also of fighting a duel or two, if kept
long sweltering under a Charleston sun. Handsome youths, whose size and muscle
he admired so much as they prowled around the Mills House, would not relish
hard work in the fields between May and December. Negroes stand a tropical or
semitropical sun at noon-day better than white men. In fighting it is
different. Men will not then mind sun, or rain, or wind. Major Emory,1
when he was ordered West, placed his resignation in the hands of his Maryland
brothers. After the Baltimore row the brothers sent it in, but Maryland
declined to secede. Mrs. Emory, who at least is two-thirds of that
copartnership, being old Franklin's granddaughter, and true to her blood, tried
to get it back. The President refused point blank, though she went on her
knees. That I do not believe. The Franklin race are stiff-necked and
stiff-kneed; not much given to kneeling to God or man from all accounts.
If Major Emory comes to us won't he have a good time? Mrs.
Davis adores Mrs. Emory. No wonder I fell in love with her myself. I heard of
her before I saw her in this wise. Little Banks told me the story. She was
dancing at a ball when some bad accident maker for the Evening News rushed up
and informed her that Major Emory had been massacred by ten Indians somewhere
out West. She coolly answered him that she had later intelligence; it was not
so. Turning a deaf ear then, she went on dancing. Next night the same officious
fool met her with this congratulation: “Oh, Mrs. Emory, it was all a hoax! The
Major is alive.” She cried: “You are always running about with your bad news,”
and turned her back on him; or, I think it was, “You delight in spiteful
stories,” or, “You are a harbinger of evil.” Banks is a newspaper man and knows
how to arrange an anecdote for effect.
_______________
1 William H. Emory had served in Charleston
harbor during the Nullification troubles of 1831-1836. In 1846 he went to
California, afterward served in the Mexican War, and later assisted in running
the boundary line between Mexico and the United States under the Gadsden Treaty
of 1853. In 1854 he was in Kansas and in 1858 in Utah. After resigning his
commission, as related by the author, he was reappointed a Lieutenant-Colonel
in the United States Army and took an active part in the war on the side of the
North.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 59-62
