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 23, 1861

A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that “recruiting up there is dead.” He came by Cincinnati and Pittsburg and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and quiet it looked like Sunday.

I asked Mr. Brewster if it were true Senator Toombs had turned brigadier. “Yes, soldiering is in the air. Every one will have a touch of it. Toombs could not stay in the Cabinet.” “Why?” “Incompatibility of temper. He rides too high a horse; that is, for so despotic a person as Jeff Davis. I have tried to find out the sore, but I can't. Mr. Toombs has been out with them all for months.” Dissension will break out. Everything does, but it takes a little time. There is a perfect magazine of discord and discontent in that Cabinet; only wants a hand to apply the torch, and up they go. Toombs says old Memminger has his back up as high as any.

Oh, such a day! Since I wrote this morning, I have been with Mrs. Randolph to all the hospitals. I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw there of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all; thinking, yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gilland's was the worst, with long rows of ill men on cots, ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment; on dinner-tables for eating and drinking, wounds being dressed; all the horrors to be taken in at one glance.

Then we went to the St. Charles. Horrors upon horrors again; want of organization, long rows of dead and dying; awful sights. A boy from home had sent for me. He was dying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions as we stood there. I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad; but I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs. Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into a carriage at the door of the hospital. Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. As we drove home the doctor came along with us, I was so upset. He said: “Look at that Georgia regiment marching there; look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them, making an estimate. There is $16,000 — sixteen thousand dollars' worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases.”

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 108-9

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.

_______________

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 John Beauchamp Jones: June 1, 1861

In the absence of the Secretary, I arranged the furniture as well as I could, and took possession of the five offices I had selected. But no business, of course, could be done before his arrival. Yet an immense mass of business was accumulating — letters by the hundreds were demanding attention.

And I soon found, as the other Secretaries came in, that some dissatisfaction was likely to grow out of the appropriation by the Secretary of War of the best offices. Mr. Toombs said the “war office” might do in any ordinary building; but that the Treasury should appropriately occupy the custom-house, which was fireproof. For his own department, he said he should be satisfied with a room or two anywhere. But my arrangement was not countermanded by the President, to whom I referred all objectors. His decision was to be final — and he did not decide against it. I had given him excellent quarters; and I knew he was in the habit of having frequent interviews both with the Secretary of War and the Adjutant-General, and this would be inconvenient if they were in different buildings.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 46-7

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 1, 1861

Mm. Wigfall, with the “Lone Star” flag in her carriage, called for me. We drove to the fair grounds. Mrs. Davis's landau, with her spanking bays, rolled along in front of us. The fair grounds are as covered with tents, soldiers, etc., as ever. As one regiment moves off to the army, a fresh one from home comes to be mustered in and take its place.

The President, with his aides, dashed by. My husband was riding with him. The President presented the flag to the Texans. Mr. Chesnut came to us for the flag, and bore it aloft to the President. We seemed to come in for part of the glory. We were too far off to hear the speech, but Jeff Davis is very good at that sort of thing, and we were satisfied that it was well done.

Heavens! how that redoubtable Wigfall did rush those poor Texans about! He maneuvered and marched them until I was weary for their sakes. Poor fellows; it was a hot afternoon in August and the thermometer in the nineties. Mr. Davis uncovered to speak. Wigfall replied with his hat on. Is that military?

At the fair grounds to-day, such music, mustering, and marching, such cheering and flying of flags, such firing of guns and all that sort of thing. A gala day it was, with double-distilled Fourth-of-July feeling. In the midst of it all, a messenger came to tell Mrs. Wigfall that a telegram had been received, saying her children were safe across the lines in Gordonsville. That was something to thank God for, without any doubt.

These two little girls came from somewhere in Connecticut, with Mrs. Wigfall's sister — the one who gave me my Bogotsky, the only person in the world, except Susan Rutledge who ever seemed to think I had a soul to save. Now suppose Seward had held Louisa and Fanny as hostages for Louis Wigfall's good behavior; eh?

Excitement number two: that bold brigadier, the Georgia General Toombs, charging about too recklessly, got thrown. His horse dragged him up to the wheels of our carriage. For a moment it was frightful. Down there among the horses' hoofs was a face turned up toward us, purple with rage. His foot was still in the stirrup, and he had not let go the bridle. The horse was prancing over him, tearing and plunging; everybody was hemming him in, and they seemed so slow and awkward about it. We felt it an eternity, looking down at him, and expecting him to be killed before our very faces. However, he soon got it all straight, and, though awfully tousled and tumbled, dusty, rumpled, and flushed, with redder face and wilder hair than ever, he rode off gallantly, having to our admiration bravely remounted the recalcitrant charger.

Now if I were to pick out the best abused one, where all catch it so bountifully, I should say Mr. Commissary-General Northrop was the most “cussed” and villified man in the Confederacy. He is held accountable for everything that goes wrong in the army. He may not be efficient, but having been a classmate and crony of Jeff Davis at West Point, points the moral and adorns the tale. I hear that alluded to oftenest of his many crimes. They say Beauregard writes that his army is upon the verge of starvation. Here every man, woman, and child is ready to hang to the first Lamp-post anybody of whom that army complains. Every Manassas soldier is a hero dear to our patriotic hearts. Put up with any neglect of the heroes of the 21st July — never!

And now they say we did not move on right after the flying foe because we had no provisions, no wagons, no ammunition, etc. Rain, mud, and Northrop. Where were the enemy's supplies that we bragged so of bagging? Echo answers where? Where there is a will there is a way. We stopped to plunder that rich convoy, and somehow, for a day or so, everybody thought the war was over and stopped to rejoice: so it appeared here. All this was our dinner-table talk to-day. Mr. Mason dined with us and Mr. Barnwell sits by me always. The latter reproved me sharply, but Mr. Mason laughed at “this headlong, unreasonable woman's harangue and female tactics and their war-ways.” A freshet in the autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring. Time and tide wait for no man, and there was a tide in our affairs which might have led to Washington, and we did not take it and lost our fortune this round. Things which nobody could deny.

McClellan virtually supersedes the Titan Scott. Physically General Scott is the largest man I ever saw. Mrs. Scott said, “nobody but his wife could ever know how little he was.” And yet they say, old Winfield Scott could have organized an army for them if they had had patience. They would not give him time.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 96-8

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: May 26, 1861 – First Entry

Was called on by the Episcopal minister to-day, Dr. Sawyer having informed him that I was a member of the church — the doctor being one also. He is an enthusiastic young man, and though a native of the North, seems to sympathize with us very heartily. He prays for the President of the Confederate States. The President himself attends very regularly, and some intimate that he intends to become a candidate for membership.  I have not learned whether he has been baptized. Gen. Cooper, the first on our list of generals in the regular army, is a member of the church. The general was, I think, adjutant-general at Washington. He is Northern born. Major Gorgas is likewise a native of the North. He is Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. The Quartermaster-General, Major Myers, is said to be a Jew; while the Commissary-General is almost a Jesuit, so zealous is he in the advocacy of the Pope.

Mr. Mallory, the Secretary of the Navy, I have seen but once; but I have heard him soundly abused for not accepting some propositions and plans from Mobile and elsewhere, to build ironclad steam rams to sink the enemy's navy. Some say Mr. M. is an Irishman born. He was in the United States Senate, and embraced secession with the rest of the “conspirators” at Washington.

I saw the Vice-President to-day. I first saw Mr. Stephens at Washington in 1843. I was behind him as he sat in the House of Representatives, and thought him a boy, for he was sitting beside large members. But when I got in front of him, it was apparent he was a man — every inch a man.

There is some excitement in official circles here against Mr. Browne, the Assistant Secretary of State, on the ground that he interfered in behalf of a Mr. Hurlbut, a Northern man (probably arrested), a writer in the English Reviews against slavery in the South, and a correspondent for the New York Tribune. Mr. B. is an Englishman, who came from Washington on the invitation of Mr. Toombs, and through his influence was appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and the Southern gorge rises at it. I doubt whether he will be molested.

I saw Major Tochman to-day, also a foreigner. He is authorized to enlist a regiment or two of Polanders in New Orleans, where I am told there are none.

And there are several Northern men here wanting to be generals. This does not look much like Southern homogeneity. God save us, if we are not to save ourselves!

How hot it is! But I like hot weather better than cold, and would soon become accustomed to this climate. This morning Mr. Hunter really seemed distressed; but he has four inches on his ribs, and I not the eighth of an inch.

Since writing the foregoing, I have seen Mr. Hunter again, and although there is no diminution of heat, he is quite cheerful. Congress has again passed the resolution to remove the seat of government to Richmond, and it is said the President will not veto it this time. The President himself came into our office today and sat some time conversing with Secretary Walker. He did not appear vexed at the determination of Congress, which he must have been apprised of.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 42-4

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: May 23, 1861

To-day the President took the cars for Pensacola, where it had been said everything was in readiness for an assault on Fort Pickens. Military men said it could be taken, and Toombs, I think, said it ought to be taken. It would cost, perhaps, a thousand lives; but is it not the business of war to consume human life? Napoleon counted men as so much powder to be consumed; and he consumed millions in his career of conquest. But still he conquered, which he could not have done without the consumption of life. And is it not better to consume life rapidly, and attain results quickly, than to await events, when all history shows that a protracted war, of immobile armies, always engulfs more men in the grave from camp fevers than usually fall in battle during the most active operations in the field?

To-day I saw Col. Bartow, who has the bearing and eye of a gallant officer. He was attended by a young man named Lamar, of fine open countenance, whom he desired to have as his aid; but the regulations forbid any one acting in that capacity who was not a lieutenant; and Lamar not being old enough to have a commission, he said he would attend the colonel as a volunteer aid till he attained the prescribed age. I saw Ben McCulloch, also — an unassuming but elastic and brave man. He will make his mark. Also Capt. McIntosh, who goes to the West. I think I saw him in 1846, in Paris, at the table of Mr. King, our Minister; but I had no opportunity to ask him. He is all enthusiasm, and will rise with honor or fall with glory. And here I beheld for the first time Wade Hampton; resolved to abandon all the comforts of his great wealth, and encounter the privations of the tented field in behalf of his menaced country.

Arkansas and Tennessee, as I predicted, have followed the example of Virginia and North Carolina; and I see evidence daily in the mass of correspondence, that Missouri and Kentucky will follow in good time.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 40-1

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: May 22, 1861

To-day I had, in our office, a specimen of Mr. Memminger's oratory. He was pleading for an installment of the claims of South Carolina on the Confederacy; and Mr. Walker, always hesitating, argued the other side, merely for delay. Both are fine speakers, with most distinct enunciation and musical voices. The demand was audited and paid, amounting, I believe, to several hundred thousand dollars.

And I heard and saw Mr. Toombs to-day, the Secretary of State. He is a portly gentleman, but with the pale face of the student and the marks of a deep thinker. To gaze at him in repose, the casual spectator would suppose, from his neglect of dress, that he was a planter in moderate circumstances, and of course-not gifted with extraordinary powers of intellect; but let him open his mouth, and the delusion vanishes. At the time alluded to he was surrounded by the rest of the cabinet, in our office, and the topic was the policy of the war. He was for taking the initiative, and carrying the war into the enemy's country. And as he warmed with the subject, the man seemed to vanish, and the genius alone was visible, He was most emphatic in the advocacy of his policy, and bold almost to rashness in his denunciations of the merely defensive idea. He was opposed to all delays, as fraught with danger; the enemy were in the field, and their purposes were pronounced. Why wait to see what they meant to do? If we did that, they would not only invade us, but get a permanent foothold on our soil. We must invade or be invaded; and he was for making the war as terrible as possible from the beginning. It was to be no child's play; and nothing could be gained by reliance upon the blunders and forbearance of the Yankees. News had been received of the occupation of Alexandria and Arlington Heights, in Virginia; and if we permitted them to build fortifications there, we should not be able to expel them. He denounced with bitterness the neglect of the authorities in Virginia. The enemy should not have been permitted to cross the Potomac. During the month which had elapsed since the passage of the ordinance in Virginia, nothing had been done, nothing attempted. It was true, the vote on ratification had not been taken; and although that fact might shield the provisional government from responsibility, yet the delay to act was fraught with danger and perhaps irreparable injury. Virginia alone could have raised and thrown across the Potomac 25,000 men, and driven the Yankees beyond the Susquehanna. But she, to avoid responsibility, had been telegraphing Davis to come to the rescue; and if he (Toombs) had been in Davis's place, he would have taken the responsibility.

The Secretary of War well knew how to parry these thrusts; he was not responsible. He was as ultra a man as any; and all he could do was to organize and arm the troops authorized by Congress. Some thirty odd thousand were mustered in already; and at least five thousand volunteers were offering daily. Mr. Toombs said five hundred thousand volunteers ought to be accepted and for the war. We wanted no six or twelve months' men. To this the Secretary replied that the Executive could not transcend the limits prescribed by Congress.

These little discussions were of frequent occurrence; and it soon became apparent that the Secretary of War was destined to be the most important man among the cabinet ministers. His position afforded the best prospect of future distinction — always provided he should be equal to the position, and his administration attended with success. I felt convinced that Toombs would not be long chafing in the cabinet, but that he would seize the first opportunity to repair to the field.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 38-40

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 19, 1861

Mrs. Fitzpatrick says Mr. Davis is too gloomy for her. He says we must prepare for a long war and unmerciful reverses at first, because they are readier for war and so much stronger numerically. Men and money count so in war. “As they do everywhere else,” said I, doubting her accurate account of Mr. Davis's spoken words, though she tried to give them faithfully. We need patience and persistence. There is enough and to spare of pluck and dash among us, the do-and-dare style.

I drove out with Mrs. Davis. She finds playing Mrs. President of this small confederacy slow work, after leaving friends such as Mrs. Emory and Mrs. Joe Johnston¹ in Washington. I do not blame her. The wrench has been awful with us all, but we don't mean to be turned into pillars of salt.

Mr. Mallory came for us to go to Mrs. Toombs's reception. Mr. Chesnut would not go, and I decided to remain with him. This proved a wise decision. First Mr. Hunter² came. In college they called him from his initials, R. M. T., “Run Mad Tom” Hunter. Just now I think he is the sanest, if not the wisest, man in our new-born Confederacy. I remember when I first met him. He sat next to me at some state dinner in Washington. Mr. Clay had taken me in to dinner, but seemed quite satisfied that my “other side” should take me off his hands.

Mr. Hunter did not know me, nor I him. I suppose he inquired, or looked at my card, lying on the table, as I looked at his. At any rate, we began a conversation which lasted steadily through the whole thing from soup to dessert. Mr. Hunter, though in evening dress, presented a rather tumbled-up appearance. His waistcoat wanted pulling down, and his hair wanted brushing. He delivered unconsciously that day a lecture on English literature which, if printed, I still think would be a valuable addition to that literature. Since then, I have always looked forward to a talk with the Senator from Virginia with undisguised pleasure. Next came Mr. Miles and Mr. Jameson, of South Carolina. The latter was President of our Secession Convention; also has written a life of Du Guesclin that is not so bad. So my unexpected reception was of the most charming. Judge Frost came a little later. They all remained until the return of the crowd from Mrs. Toombs's.

These men are not sanguine — I can't say, without hope, exactly. They are agreed in one thing: it is worth while to try a while, if only to get away from New England. Captain Ingraham was here, too. He is South Carolina to the tips of his fingers; yet he has it dyed in the wool — it is part of his nature — to believe the United States Navy can whip anything in the world. All of these little inconsistencies and contrarieties make the times very exciting. One never knows what tack any one of them will take at the next word.

_______________

¹ Mrs. Johnston was Lydia McLane, a daughter of Louis McLane, United States Senator from Delaware from 1827 to 1829, and afterward Minister to England. In 1831 he became Secretary of the Treasury and in 1833 Secretary of State. General Joseph E. Johnston was graduated from West Point in 1829 and had served in the Black Hawk, Seminole, and Mexican Wars. He resigned his commission in the United States Army on April 22,1861.

² Mr. Hunter was a Virginian. He had long served in Congress, was twice speaker of the House, and in 1844 was elected a United States Senator, serving until 1861. He supported slavery and became active in the secession movement. At the Charleston Convention in 1860, he received the next highest vote to Stephen A. Douglas for President.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 53-5

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 12, 1861

Tuesday. — Now this, they say, is positive: '”Fort Sumter is to be released and we are to have no war.” After all, far too good to be true. Mr. Browne told us that, at one of the peace intervals (I mean intervals in the interest of peace), Lincoln flew through Baltimore, locked up in an express car. He wore a Scotch cap. We went to the Congress. Governor Cobb, who presides over that august body, put James Chesnut in the chair, and came down to talk to us. He told us why the pay of Congressmen was fixed in secret session, and why the amount of it was never divulged — to prevent the lodging-house and hotel people from making their bills of a size to cover it all. "The bill would be sure to correspond with the pay," he said. In the hotel parlor we had a scene. Mrs. Scott was describing Lincoln, who is of the cleverest Yankee type. She said: “Awfully ugly, even grotesque in appearance, the kind who are always at the corner stores, sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar.” Here I interposed: “But Stephen A. Douglas said one day to Mr. Chesnut, ‘Lincoln is the hardest fellow to handle I have ever encountered yet.’” Mr. Scott is from California, and said Lincoln is “an utter American specimen, coarse, rough, and strong; a good-natured, kind creature; as pleasant-tempered as he is clever, and if this country can be joked and laughed out of its rights he is the kind-hearted fellow to do it. Now if there is a war and it pinches the Yankee pocket instead of filling it.”

Here a shrill voice came from the next room (which opened upon the one we were in by folding doors thrown wide open) and said: “Yankees are no more mean and stingy than you are. People at the North are just as good as people at the South.” The speaker advanced upon us in great wrath.

Mrs. Scott apologized and made some smooth, polite remark, though evidently much embarrassed. But the vinegar face and curly pate refused to receive any concessions, and replied: “That comes with a very bad grace after what you were saying,” and she harangued us loudly for several minutes. Some one in the other room giggled outright, but we were quiet as mice. Nobody wanted to hurt her feelings. She was one against so many. If I were at the North, I should expect them to belabor us, and should hold my tongue. We separated North from South because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate, a “separation à l’agréable,” as the French say it, and not have a horrid fight for divorce. The poor exile had already been insulted, she said. She was playing “Yankee Doodle” on the piano before breakfast to soothe her wounded spirit, and the Judge came in and calmly requested her to “leave out the Yankee while she played the Doodle.” The Yankee end of it did not suit our climate, he said; was totally out of place and had got out of its latitude. A man said aloud: “This war talk is nothing. It will soon blow over. Only a fuss gotten up by that Charleston clique.” Mr. Toombs asked him to show his passports, for a man who uses such language is a suspicious character.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 18-20

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 19, 1861

MONTGOMERY, Ala., – The brand-new Confederacy is making or remodeling its Constitution. Everybody wants Mr. Davis to be General-in-Chief or President. Keitt and Boyce and a party preferred Howell Cobb¹ for President. And the fire-eaters per se wanted Barnwell Rhett.

My brother Stephen brought the officers of the “Montgomery Blues” to dinner. “Very soiled Blues,” they said, apologizing for their rough condition. Poor fellows! they had been a month before Fort Pickens and not allowed to attack it. They said Colonel Chase built it, and so were sure it was impregnable. Colonel Lomax telegraphed to Governor Moore² if he might try to take it, “Chase or no Chase,” and got for his answer, “No.” “And now,'” say the Blues, “we have worked like niggers, and when the fun and fighting begin, they send us home and put regulars there.” They have an immense amount of powder. The wheel of the car in which it was carried took fire. There was an escape for you! We are packing a hamper of eatables for them.

I am despondent once more. If I thought them in earnest because at first they put their best in front, what now? We have to meet tremendous odds by pluck, activity, zeal, dash, endurance of the toughest, military instinct. We have had to choose born leaders of men who could attract love and secure trust. Everywhere political intrigue is as rife as in Washington.Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh that he could “toil terribly” was an electric touch. Above all, let the men who are to save South Carolina be young and vigorous. While I was reflecting on what kind of men we ought to choose, I fell on Clarendon, and it was easy to construct my man out of his portraits. What has been may be again, so the men need not be purely ideal types.

Mr. Toombs³ told us a story of General Scott and himself. He said he was dining in Washington with Scott, who seasoned every dish and every glass of wine with the eternal refrain, “Save the Union; the Union must be preserved.” Toombs remarked that he knew why the Union was so dear to the General, and illustrated his point by a steamboat anecdote, an explosion, of course. While the passengers were struggling in the water a woman ran up and down the bank crying, “Oh, save the red-headed man!” The red-headed man was saved, and his preserver, after landing him noticed with surprise how little interest in him the woman who had made such moving appeals seemed to feel. He asked her, “Why did you make that pathetic outcry?” She answered, “Oh, he owes me ten thousand dollars.” “Now, General,” said Toombs, “the Union owes you seventeen thousand dollars a year!” I can imagine the scorn on old Scott's face.

______________

¹A native of Georgia, Howell Cobb had long served in Congress, and in 1849 was elected Speaker. In 1851 he was elected Governor of Georgia, and in 1857 became Secretary of the Treasury in Buchanan's Administration. In 1861 he was a delegate from Georgia to the Provisional Congress which adopted the Constitution of the Confederacy, and presided over each of its four sessions.

² Andrew Bary Moore, elected Governor of Alabama in 1859. In 1861, before Alabama seceded, he directed the seizure of United States forts and arsenals and was active afterward in the equipment of State troops.

³ Robert Toombs, a native of Georgia, who early acquired fame as a lawyer, served in the Creek War under General Scott, became known in 1842 as a “State Rights_Whig,” being elected to Congress, where he was active in the Compromise measures of 1850. He served in the United States Senate from 1853 to 1861, where he was a pronounced advocate of the sovereignty of States, the extension of slavery, and secession. He was a member of the Confederate Congress at its first session and, by a single vote, failed of election as President of the Confederacy. After the war, he was conspicuous for his hostility to the Union.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 6-8

Speech of Senator James W. Grimes, January 30, 1860

It is true that the Republican party have been in possession of the government of the State of Iowa during the last five years and upward. They have had the unlimited control of the government of that State in every one of its departments. They have had a succession of Governors of that political party. They have had all the judicial tribunals, with very few exceptions; and all the judges of the Supreme Court have belonged to that party. Their majorities in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of the State have been predominating, almost two to one, during four successive Legislative Assemblies. But it is not true that the General Assembly of that State has ever passed any law in violation of the Constitution of the United States, in regard to the fugitive-slave law, or in regard to any other act of Congress. No law has been passed by that State, either since it has been under the domination of the Republican party, or before it came under their control, that in the remotest degree contravenes the rights of any of the sister States, or interferes with the relation of master and slave, or master and servant.

I have not risen for the purpose of making this explanation, because I am disposed to censure or approve the acts of this kind that have been passed by other States. I have no judgment to pronounce upon that subject. I have no criticism to make on that species of legislation. It is no part of my business, as I understand it, to sit here and arraign the action of sovereign States of this Union in regard to their local laws, whether they may be as objectionable as are the laws of Louisiana and South Carolina to Senators, like the Senator from Massachusetts, or whether they are as objectionable as are the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut to the Senator from Georgia, and others who act and feel with him. That is not my business. But I am not disposed to let the State of my adoption, where I have the happiness to reside, and which I have the honor here in part to represent, have either the glory or the discredit—whichever way they may be regarded by Senators — of passing any law which she did not pass. Whenever she shall see fit to pass a law of this kind, or of any other kind, I, as a citizen of that State, will express my opinion in approbation or in disapprobation of it, as my judgment shall dictate.

Nor do I allude to this subject at this time for the purpose of relieving myself, my State, or the people whom I represent, from the epithets which were so abundantly poured out upon them by the Senator from Georgia. If there are any people in my State who will be disturbed by them it will not be the men with whom I act, but those who profess a sympathy and affinity for the political party with which the Senator from Georgia associates. So far as the Republicans are concerned, I can vouch for them that they will never be won or intimidated by adjectives, no matter how boisterously, or how numerously, or how harshly, they may be applied.

SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, p. 123-4

Senator William P. Fessenden to William Willis, December 22, 1860

December 22.

Your letter was quite welcome. In these times I am glad to get an encouraging word, especially from calm and moderate men, for I fear sometimes that indignation may get the better of my judgment.

We have troubles and rumors of worse to come. If the Southern gentlemen are to be believed, one half the slave States are already out of the Union, and the rest are sure to follow. In our committee-room, for instance, Mr. Toombs says his State now feels no interest in the tariff, but he votes to postpone it to the 4th of March in order that no harm may be done the country while Georgia does remain a part of it. Even Mr. Hunter fears that by the middle of January the Republicans will be strong enough to pass any bill they like. There is much of this kind of flourish, but there is great anxiety to have the Republicans do something, make some proposition, and not stand still and see the country go to destruction. “They don't think there is much hope, but if the Republicans would tender sufficient guarantees, perhaps the thing might be deferred a little longer.” Any man with half an eye can see what all this means. It was begun for the purpose of frightening us into an abandonment of our position, thus strengthening the South and disgracing the Republicans. Unfortunately, however, the public mind had been so excited and poisoned that the leaders soon lost control of the movement, and they are now pushed on in their own despite. They are not happy. Jeff. Davis says as little as possible, and there is an affectation of ease about most of them which indicates concern of mind. We cannot conceal from ourselves that the country has suffered and must suffer still more. But I regard this as the crisis of our fate. Concession under menace would be fatal to us as a party; and what is vastly more and worse, it would prostrate the North forever at the feet of slavery. It is only by preserving a firm and uncompromising attitude that we can rescue the government from its downward tendency and place it upon the side of freedom where the fathers designed it should stand. While, therefore, perceiving and fully appreciating the danger, I am not disposed to avoid it by timidity or by qualifying in any way the platform of principles on which we stand. If the Union can only be saved by acknowledging the power of a minority to coerce the majority through fear of disruption, I am ready to part company with the slave States and trust God and the people for reconstruction on narrower ground, but on a sounder and safer basis.

SOURCE: Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden, Volume 1, p. 117-9

Robert Toombs to Congressman Alexander H. Stephens, January 1, 1844

Washington [ga.], Jan. 1st, 1844¹

Dear Stephens, . . .  The session² passed off well. We succeeded in carrying everything but the Court³ — lost that in the Senate by three votes. When I was at Milledgeville I thought its passage would have injured the party⁴ but benefitted the country; but from the general regret expressed at its loss among the people since we adjourned, I am inclined to think it would have been popular with the people. The session is decidedly popular with all classes. The people are better pleased than they have been for many years with their legislature, and I begin to think our power in Georgia is tolerably firmly fixed. Our election for Congress took place to-day. I have not heard from all the precincts, but from what we have heard Wilkes will give a considerably increased majority to Clinch,⁵ say over 100 votes. I have no doubt of his election by at least four thousand. The Democrats made a false move on the Rail Road question,⁶ which I think will very seriously affect them in the Cherokee counties.⁷ They made a party question of its abandonment. The Whigs stood up well in the House and tolerably in the Senate. We had to gild the pill a little for them. But I have no doubt but that a large majority of the people are opposed to its abandonment, and since our adjournment I see some of the Democratic papers are inclined to claw off. Even the Columbus Times talks softly on the subject.

The congressional district bill is a fair one. We had to gerrymander a little in order to give the Democrats their third district — the first instance I expect of a party's ever doing that thing for the benefit their opponents. The Senatorial district bill looks strong but is in fact weak — we could have done much better with greater appearance of fairness but every Senator almost was fixing for himself. Crawford⁸ is much pleased and says we have left him the State government in such condition that if it is not satisfactorily administered it will be his fault. Write me as often as you can. It will give me pleasure to attend to any business for you.

_______________

¹ Erroneously dated Jan. 1, 1843, in the original.

² Of the State legislature.

³ A bill to establish a supreme court for the State of Georgia.

⁴ Whig.

⁵ Duncan L. Clinch, Whig candidate for Congress. He was elected in place of John Millen, deceased.

⁶ The question of completing or abandoning the Western & Atlantic Railroad, then under construction by the State of Georgia.

⁷ The northwestern portion of Georgia, recently vacated by the-Cherokee Indians.

⁸ George W. Crawford, then governor of Georgia.

SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p. 53-4

Sensible to the Last

The Democrat cannot endorse the Democratic address recently promulgated by Vallandigham and thirteen other pro-slavery members of Congress.  Good for Dick!  It is a vile production and we cannot see how any man having a particle of loyalty in his heart can give in his adhesion to such a document.  The Democrat does not, however, seem to object to the substance of the address so much as to the fact of it having so few signatures.  If he will wait awhile until Jeff. Davis, Floyd, Toombs, Wise and all those other chaps get a squint at it, and Mason and Slidell return from their excursion to Europe, it will get plenty of signatures.  Our neighbor has been a long time in getting his cue how to act in the premises, but having taken his stand we hope he will maintain it.  We had intended to fulminate an article against this address, but if even the Democrat cannot endorse it, it would be a waste of ammunition and we forbear.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 17, 1862, p. 2

Review: Robert Toombs by Mark Scroggins

Robert Toombs: The Civil Wars of a
United States Senator and Confederate General

By Mark Scroggins

Civil War scholarship often falls victim to the cult of celebrity; thousands of tomes have been written about Abraham Lincoln and hundreds about Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, Stonewall Jackson and others of their like.  It’s understandable; it is what sells.  Books focusing on the less than stellar personalities of the antebellum and Civil War period are noticeably fewer.

Robert Toombs, ranks among those notables of the 19th century so often overlooked, that is until now.  Author Mark Scroggins has authored biography of the Confederacy’s first Secretary of State, and later Brigadier General.

Scroggins’ womb to tomb biography (pun intended) covers the width, depth and breadth of Robert Toombs life, the successes and the failures, beginning with his ancestry and ending at his death.  Scroggins literally follows Toombs life from Washington, Georgia to Washington D. C. and back.  Mr. Scroggins’ book details the quick rise of the sarcastic and egotistical Georgia politician from state office to United States Congressman and Senator; from Whig to Democrat; from a Unionist of the 1840’s and 1850’s to one of the South’s most fiery Secessionist; from politics, as the Confederacy’s first Secretary of State, to the battlefield as one of the Confederate Army’s most unsuccessful Brigadier Generals; and finally to his final role as an unreconstructed rebel.

Often acerbic and sarcastic, Scroggins points out Toombs could also be charming and graceful, but demonstrates his ego and fiery demeanor often won him as many enemies as it did friends, and often prevented him from rising to the level of his personal ambitions.

Scroggins’ book is well researched, but reads like a history textbook, which weighs down the forward movement of his narration.  The text of the book is set in a small font and very compact with very little “white space” on the page, which in combination with the dryness of his narrative makes for tedious reading and leaves his reader with little sense of progress.  Had Scroggins’ book been set in font size found in most hardcover books I suspect his 242 page book would lean more towards a 450 to 500 page book.  A cover price of $35 seems a little excessive for a book of its physical size, but taken with the immense scope of its contents, it is an equal value to any other book covering a like subject.

ISBN 978-0786463633, McFarland, © 2011, Paperback, 242 pages, Photographs, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $35.00.  To purchase the book click HERE.

Civilian Generals At The South

The southern civilian Generals have been very unfortunate in the present war.  There are eleven of this class, who received no military education, and who never before had a military command.  The following are their names:

Henry A. Wise, whipped in Virginia.

John B. Floyd, whipped everywhere.

Robert Toombs, never been in battle.

Richard Taylor, never been in battle.

Thos. B. Flournoy, never been in battle.

L. Pope Walker, whipped in the West.

F. K. Zollicoffer, killed in his first engagement.

Wm. Mahone, never heard of.

L. O. B. Branch,, whipped at Newbern.

Wm. H. Carroll, never on a field.

R. E. Rhodes, never on a field.

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 4

The rebels, in their Congress . . .

. . . talk largely about abandoning the defensive and assuming an offensive policy.  Hadn’t they better wait till they demonstrate their ability to maintain the defensive.  It is easy enough to say what they will do, but quite another thing to perform it.  If their brags and boastings had been made good by acts, Philadelphia and New York would have been in their possession to-day, and Toombs calling the roll of his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

A few of the defunct leaders of . . .

. . . the dead Democratic party still cleave to the flesh pots.  They think that the statu quo will be restored – that Toombs, Floyd, Hunter, Mason and the rest of the red handed conspirators will be restored to power – will be permitted to lord  it in Congress, in the Departments and at the White House, and bestow fat offices upon the cringing servile crew of Northern doughfaces.  For fear that somebody will get ahead of them or get between them and the leaders of the rebellion they are already eating dirt and defiling themselves, only anxious for fear that their abasement will not be heard of in Dixie.  Instead of office these mercenary scoundrels will be damned to eternal infamy even in Dixie and loathed by the conspirators themselves whose treason, if more wicked, is certainly no more degrading and debasing.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 1, 1862, p. 1

Postmaster General Blair on the Cause of the War

In reply to a committee, who invited among others, Hon. M. Blair, Postmaster Gen., to participate in a meeting to be held at Cooper Institute, New York, to congratulate the country on the stand taken by President Lincoln in his special message, the Secretary says, that he does not concur in the proposition that certain States have “been recently overturned and wholly subverted as members of the Federal Union,” upon which the call is based.  His reason for not doing so is because “That is, in substance, what the Confederates themselves claim.”  This declaration is seized upon with avidity by the proslavery press and distorted into a position analogous to that which they themselves occupy.  The Democrat of yesterday morning does this with great gusto.  That Mr. Blair does not wholly agree with these Democratic slave drivers is evident from the following remarks which follow the above avowal:

“There are two distinct interests in slavery, the political and property interests, held by distinct classes.  The rebellion originated with the political class.  The property class, which generally belonged to the Whig organization, had lost no property in the region where the rebellion broke out, and were prosperous.  It was the Democratic organization, which did not represent the slaveholders as a class, which hatched the rebellion.  Their defeat in the late political struggle, and in the present rebellion, extinguishes at once and forever the political interest of slavery.  The election of Mr. Lincoln put an end to the hopes of Jeff. Davis, Wise, et id omne genus, for the Presidency of the Union, and hence the rebellion.  It extinguished slavery as a power to control the Federal Government, and it was the capacity of slavery to subserve this purpose alone which has given it vitality, for morally and economically it is indefensible.  With the extension of its political power there is no motive to induce any politician to uphold it.  No man ever defended such an institution except for pay, and nothing short of the power of the Government should provide sufficient gratification or ambition to pay for such service; and therefore Mr. Toombs said, with perfect truth, that the institution could only be maintained in the Union by the possession of the Government.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, March 18, 1862, p. 2