My husband is writing out some resolutions for the Congress.
He is very busy, too, trying to get some poor fellows reprieved. He says they
are good soldiers but got into a scrape. Buck came in. She had on her last
winter's English hat, with the pheasant's wing. Just then Hood entered most
unexpectedly. Said the blunt soldier to the girl: “You look mighty pretty in
that hat; you wore it at the turnpike gate, where I surrendered at first sight.”
She nodded and smiled, and flew down the steps after Mr. Chesnut, looking back
to say that she meant to walk with him as far as the Executive Office.
The General walked to the window and watched until the last
flutter of her garment was gone. He said: “The President was finding fault with
some of his officers in command, and I said: ‘Mr. President, why don't you come
and lead us yourself; I would follow you to the death.’” '”Actually, if you
stay here in Richmond much longer you will grow to be a courtier. And you came
a rough Texan.'”
Mrs. Davis and General McQueen came. He tells me Muscoe
Garnett is dead. Then the best and the cleverest Virginian I know is gone. He
was the most scholarly man they had, and his character was higher than his
requirements.
To-day a terrible onslaught was made upon the President for
nepotism. Burton Harrison's and John Taylor Wood's letters denying the charge
that the President's cotton was unburned, or that he left it to be bought by
the Yankees, have enraged the opposition. How much these people in the
President's family have to bear! I have never felt so indignant.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 289-90
