Andy, made lord of all by the madman, Booth, says, “Destruction
only to the wealthy classes.” Better teach the negroes to stand alone before you
break up all they leaned on, O Yankees! After all, the number who possess over
$20,000 are very few.
Andy has shattered some fond hopes. He denounces Northern
men who came South to espouse our cause. They may not take the life-giving
oath. My husband will remain quietly at home. He has done nothing that he had
not a right to do, nor anything that he is ashamed of. He will not fly from his
country, nor hide anywhere in it. These are his words. He has a huge volume of
Macaulay, which seems to absorb him. Slily I slipped Silvio Pellico in his way.
He looked at the title and moved it aside. “Oh,” said I, “I only wanted you to
refresh your memory as to a prisoner's life and what a despotism can do to make
its captives happy!”
Two weddings — in Camden, Ellen Douglas Ancrum to Mr. Lee,
engineer and architect, a clever man, which is the best investment now. In
Columbia, Sally Hampton and John Cheves Haskell, the bridegroom, a brave,
one-armed soldier.
A wedding to be. Lou McCord's. And Mrs. McCord is going
about frantically, looking for eggs “to mix and make into wedding-cake,” and
finding none. She now drives the funniest little one-mule vehicle.
I have been ill since I last wrote in this journal. Serena
's letter came. She says they have been visited by bushwhackers, the roughs
that always follow in the wake of an army. My sister Kate they forced back
against the wall. She had Katie, the baby, in her arms, and Miller, the brave
boy, clung to his mother, though he could do no more. They tried to pour brandy
down her throat. They knocked Mary down with the butt end of a pistol, and
Serena they struck with an open hand, leaving the mark on her cheek for weeks.
Mr. Christopher Hampton says in New York people have been
simply intoxicated with the fumes of their own glory. Military prowess is a new
wrinkle of delight to them. They are mad with pride that, ten to one, they
could, after five years' hard fighting, prevail over us, handicapped, as we
were, with a majority of aliens, quasi foes, and negro slaves whom they
tried to seduce, shut up with us. They pay us the kind of respectful fear the
British meted out to Napoleon when they sent him off with Sir Hudson Lowe to
St. Helena, the lone rock by the sea, to eat his heart out where he could not
alarm them more.
Of course, the Yankees know and say they were too many for
us, and yet they would all the same prefer not to try us again. Would
Wellington be willing to take the chances of Waterloo once more with Grouchy,
Blucher, and all that left to haphazard? Wigfall said to old Cameron1
in 1861, “Then you will a sutler be, and profit shall accrue.” Christopher
Hampton says that in some inscrutable way in the world North, everybody “has
contrived to amass fabulous wealth by this war.'”
There are two classes of vociferous sufferers in this
community: 1. Those who say, “If people would only pay me what they owe me!” 2.
Those who say, “If people would only let me alone. I can not pay them. I could
stand it if I had anything with which to pay debts.”
Now we belong to both classes. Heavens! the sums people owe
us and will not, or can not, pay, would settle all our debts ten times over and
leave us in easy circumstances for life. But they will not pay. How can they?
We are shut in here, turned with our faces to a dead wall.
No mails. A letter is sometimes brought by a man on horseback, traveling
through the wilderness made by Sherman. All railroads have been destroyed and
the bridges are gone. We are cut off from the world, here to eat out our
hearts. Yet from my window I look out on many a gallant youth and maiden fair.
The street is crowded and it is a gay sight. Camden is thronged with refugees
from the low country, and here they disport themselves. They call the walk in
front of Bloomsbury “the Boulevard.”
H. Lang tells us that poor Sandhill Milly Trimlin is dead,
and that as a witch she had been denied Christian burial. Three times she was
buried in consecrated ground in different churchyards, and three times she was
dug up by a superstitious horde, who put her out of their holy ground. Where
her poor, old, ill-used bones are lying now I do not know. I hope her soul is
faring better than her body. She was a good, kind creature. Why supposed to be
a witch? That H. Lang could not elucidate.
Everybody in our walk of life gave Milly a helping hand. She
was a perfect specimen of the Sandhill “tackey” race, sometimes called “country
crackers.” Her skin was yellow and leathery, even the whites of her eyes were
bilious in color. She was stumpy, strong, and lean, hard-featured,
horny-fisted. Never were people so aided in every way as these Sandhillers. Why
do they remain Sandhillers from generation to generation? Why should Milly
never have bettered her condition?
My grandmother lent a helping hand to her grandmother. My
mother did her best for her mother, and I am sure the so-called witch could
never complain of me. As long as I can remember, gangs of these Sandhill women
traipsed in with baskets to be filled by charity, ready to carry away anything
they could get. All are made on the same pattern, more or less alike. They were
treated as friends and neighbors, not as beggars. They were asked in to take
seats by the fire, and there they sat for hours, stony-eyed, silent, wearing
out human endurance and politeness. But their husbands and sons, whom we never
saw, were citizens and voters! When patience was at its last ebb, they would
open their mouths and loudly demand whatever they had come to seek.
One called Judy Bradly, a one-eyed virago, who played the
fiddle at all the Sandhill dances and fandangoes, made a deep impression on my
youthful mind. Her list of requests was always rather long, and once my
grandmother grew restive and actually hesitated. “Woman, do you mean to let me
starve?” she cried furiously. My grandmother then attempted a meek lecture as
to the duty of earning one's bread. Judy squared her arms akimbo and answered, “And
pray, who made you a judge of the world? Lord, Lord, if I had 'er knowed I had
ter stand all this jaw, I wouldn't a took your ole things,” but she did take
them and came afterward again and again.
_______________
1 Simon Cameron became Secretary of War in
Lincoln's Administration, on March 4, 1861. On January 11, 1862, he resigned
and was made Minister to Russia.
SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 398-401
