Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: September 20, 1864

Bright and pleasant.

An order has been given to impress all the supplies (wheat and meat) in the State, and Gen. Kemper has been instructed to lend military aid if necessary. This is right, so that speculation may be suppressed. But, then, Commissary-General Northrop says it is all for the army, and the people—non-producers—may starve, for what he cares. If this unfeeling and despotic policy be adopted by the government, it will strangle the Confederacy—strangle it with red-tape.

I learned, to-day, that Gen. Preston, Superintendent of the Bureau of Conscription, resigned upon seeing Gen. Bragg's and the President's indorsements on the bureau papers; but the Secretary and the President persuaded him to recall the resignation. He is very rich.

A practical railroad man bas sent to the Secretary a simple plan, by which twenty-five men with crowbars can keep Sherman's communications cut.

There is a rumor that Sherman has invited Vice-President Stephens, Senator H. V. Johnson, and Gov. Brown to a meeting with him, to confer on terms of peace—i.e. the return of Georgia to the Union. The government has called for a list of all the Georgians who have sailed from our ports this summer.

A letter from Hon. R. W. Barnwell shows that he is opposed to any conference with the enemy on terms of peace, except unconditional independence. He thinks Hood hardly competent to command the army, but approves the removal of Johnston. He thinks Sherman will go on to Augusta, etc.

The raid toward Gordonsville is now represented as a small affair, and to have returned as it came, after burning some mills, bridges, etc.

I saw a letter, to-day, written to the President by L. P. Walker, first Secretary of War, full of praise. It was dated in August, before the fall of Atlanta, and warmly congratulated him upon the removal of Gen. Johnston.

Gov. Bonham sent a telegram to the Secretary of War, to-day, from Columbia, asking if the President would not soon pass through that city; if such were his intentions, he would remain there, being very anxious to see him.

Beauregard is at Wilmington, while the whole country is calling for his appointment to the command of the army in Georgia. Unless some great success crowns our arms before Congress reassembles, the President will be assailed with great bitterness, and the consequences may be fatal.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 287-8

Commissioners of the State of South Carolina to James Buchanan, December 28, 1860

Washington, 28th December, 1860.

Sir: We have the honor to transmit to you a copy of the full powers from the Convention of the People of South Carolina, under which we are “authorized and empowered to treat with the Government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, light houses and other real estate, with their appurtenances, within the limits of South Carolina, and also for an apportionment of the public debt and for a division of all other property held by the Government of the United States as agent of the confederated States, of which South Carolina was recently a member; and generally to negotiate as to all other measures and arrangements proper to be made and adopted in the existing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this commonwealth and the Government at Washington.”

In the execution of this trust, it is our duty to furnish you, as we now do, with an official copy of the Ordinance of Secession, by which the State of South Carolina has resumed the powers she delegated to the Government of the United States and has declared her perfect sovereignty and independence.

It would also have been our duty to have informed you that we were ready to negotiate with you upon all such questions as are necessarily raised by the adoption of this ordinance, and that we were prepared to enter upon this negotiation with the earnest desire to avoid all unnecessary and hostile collision, and so to inaugurate our new relations as to secure mutual respect, general advantage and a future of good will and harmony beneficial to all the parties concerned.

But the events of the last twenty-four hours render such an assurance impossible. We came here the representatives of an authority which could, at any time within the past sixty days, have taken possession of the forts in Charleston harbor, but which, upon pledges given in a manner that, we cannot doubt, determined to trust to your honor rather than to its own power. Since our arrival here an officer of the United States, acting, as we are assured, not only without but against your orders, has dismantled one fort and occupied another, thus altering, to a most important extent, the condition of affairs under which we came.

Until these circumstances are explained in a manner which relieves us of all doubt as to the spirit in which these negotiations shall be conducted, we are forced to suspend all discussion as to any arrangements by which our mutual interests might be amicably adjusted.

And, in conclusion, we would urge upon you the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston. Under present circumstances, they are a standing menace which renders negotiation impossible, and, as our recent experience shews, threatens speedily to bring to a bloody issue questions which ought to be settled with temperance and judgment.

We have the honor, Sir, to be,

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servants,

R. W. BARNWELL,

J. H. ADAMS,

JAMES L. ORR,

Commissioners.

To the President

of the United States.

SOURCE: The Correspondence Between the Commissioners of the State of So. Ca. to the Government at Washington and the President of the United States, p. 3-4

James Buchanan to the Congress of the United States, January 8, 1861

Washington City, January 8, 1861.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

At the opening of your present session I called your attention to the dangers which threatened the existence of the Union. I expressed my opinion freely concerning the original causes of those dangers, and recommended such measures as I believed would have the effect of tranquilizing the country and saving it from the peril in which it had been needlessly and most unfortunately involved. Those opinions and recommendations I do not propose now to repeat. My own convictions upon the whole subject remain unchanged.

The fact that a great calamity was impending over the nation was even at that time acknowledged by every intelligent citizen. It had already made itself felt throughout the length and breadth of the land. The necessary consequences of the alarm thus produced were most deplorable. The imports fell off with a rapidity never known before, except in time of war, in the history of our foreign commerce; the Treasury was unexpectedly left without the means which it had reasonably counted upon to meet the public engagements; trade was paralyzed; manufactures were stopped; the best public securities suddenly sunk in the market; every species of property depreciated more or less, and thousands of poor men who depended upon their daily labor for their daily bread were turned out of employment.

I deeply regret that I am not able to give you any information upon the state of the Union which is more satisfactory than what I was then obliged to communicate. On the contrary, matters are still worse at present than they then were. When Congress met, a stronge hope pervaded the whole public mind that some amicable adjustment of the subject would speedily be made by the representatives of the States and of the people which might restore peace between the conflicting sections of the country. That hope has been diminished by every hour of delay, and as the prospect of a bloodless settlement fades away the public distress becomes more and more aggravated. As evidence of this it is only necessary to say that the Treasury notes authorized by the act of 17th of December last were advertised according to the law and that no responsible bidder offered to take any considerable sum at par at a lower rate of interest than 12 per cent. From these facts it appears that in a government organized like ours domestic strife, or even a well-grounded fear of civil hostilities, is more destructive to our public and private interests than the most formidable foreign war.

In my annual message I expressed the conviction, which I have long deliberately held, and which recent reflection has only tended to deepen and confirm, that no State has a right by its own act to secede from the Union or throw off its federal obligations at pleasure. I also declared my opinion to be that even if that right existed and should be exercised by any State of the Confederacy the executive department of this Government had no authority under the Constitution to recognize its validity by acknowledging the independence of such State. This left me no alternative, as the chief executive officer under the Constitution of the United States, but to collect the public revenues and to protect the public property so far as this might be practicable under existing laws. This is still my purpose. My province is to execute and not to make the laws. It belongs to Congress exclusively to repeal, to modify, or to enlarge their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur. I possess no dispensing power.

I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress. But the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions and against those who assail the property of the Federal Government is clear and undeniable.

But the dangerous and hostile attitude of the States toward each other has already far transcended and cast in the shade the ordinary executive duties already provided for by law, and has assumed such vast and alarming proportions as to place the subject entirely above and beyond Executive control. The fact can not be disguised that we are in the midst of a great revolution. In all its various bearings, therefore, I commend the question to Congress as the only human tribunal under Providence possessing the power to meet the existing emergency. To them exclusively belongs the power to declare war or to authorize the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution, and they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might lead to war and to secure peace and union to this distracted country. On them, and on them alone, rests the responsibility.

The Union is a sacred trust left by our Revolutionary fathers to their descendants, and never did any other people inherit so rich a legacy. It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in war. The national flag has floated in glory over every sea. Under its shadow American citizens have found protection and respect in all lands beneath the sun. If we descend to considerations of purely material interest, when in the history of all time has a confederacy been bound together by such strong ties of mutual interest? Each portion of it is dependent on all and all upon each portion for prosperity and domestic security. Free trade throughout the whole supplies the wants of one portion from the productions of another and scatters wealth everywhere. The great planting and farming States require the aid of the commercial and navigating States to send their productions to domestic and foreign markets and to furnish the naval power to render their transportation secure against all hostile attacks.

Should the Union perish in the midst of the present excitement, we have already had a sad foretaste of the universal suffering which would result from its destruction. The calamity would be severe in every portion of the Union and would be quite as great, to say the least, in the Southern as in the Northern States. The greatest aggravation of the evil, and that which would place us in the most unfavorable light both before the world and posterity, is, as I am firmly convinced, that the secession movement has been chiefly based upon a misapprehension at the South of the sentiments of the majority in several of the Northern States. Let the question be transferred from political assemblies to the ballot box, and the people themselves would speedily redress the serious grievances which the South have suffered. But, in Heaven's name, let the trial be made before we plunge into armed conflict upon the mere assumption that there is no other alternative. Time is a great conservative power. Let us pause at this momentous point and afford the people, both North and South, an opportunity for reflection. Would that South Carolina had been convinced of this truth before her precipitate action! I therefore appeal through you to the people of the country to declare in their might that the Union must and shall be preserved by all constitutional means. I most earnestly recommend that you devote yourselves exclusively to the question how this can be accomplished in peace. All other questions, when compared to this, sink into insignificance. The present is no time for palliations. Action, prompt action, is required. A delay in Congress to prescribe or to recommend a distinct and practical proposition for conciliation may drive us to a point from which it will be almost impossible to recede.

A common ground on which conciliation and harmony can be produced is surely not unattainable. The proposition to compromise by letting the North have exclusive control of the territory above a certain line and to give Southern institutions protection below that line ought to receive universal approbation. In itself, indeed, it may not be entirely satisfactory, but when the alternative is between a reasonable concession on both sides and a destruction of the Union it is an imputation upon the patriotism of Congress to assert that its members will hesitate for a moment.

Even now the danger is upon us. In several of the States which have not yet seceded the forts, arsenals, and magazines of the United States have been seized. This is by far the most serious step which has been taken since the commencement of the troubles. This public property has long been left without garrisons and troops for its protection, because no person doubted its security under the flag of the country in any State of the Union. Besides, our small Army has scarcely been sufficient to guard our remote frontiers against Indian incursions. The seizure of this property, from all appearances, has been purely aggressive, and not in resistance to any attempt to coerce a State or States to remain in the Union.

At the beginning of these unhappy troubles I determined that no act of mine should increase the excitement in either section of the country. If the political conflict were to end in a civil war, it was my determined purpose not to commence it nor even to furnish an excuse for it by any act of this Government. My opinion remains unchanged that justice as well as sound policy requires us still to seek a peaceful solution of the questions at issue between the North and the South. Entertaining this conviction, I refrained even from sending reenforcements to Major Anderson, who commanded the forts in Charleston Harbor, until an absolute necessity for doing so should make itself apparent, lest it might unjustly be regarded as a menace of military coercion, and thus furnish, if not a provocation, at least a pretext for an outbreak on the part of South Carolina. No necessity for these reenforcements seemed to exist. I was assured by distinguished and upright gentlemen of South Carolina that no attack upon Major Anderson was intended, but that, on the contrary, it was the desire of the State authorities as much as it was my own to avoid the fatal consequences which must eventually follow a military collision.

And here I deem it proper to submit for your information copies of a communication, dated December 28, 1860, addressed to me by R. W. Barnwell, J. H. Adams, and James L. Orr, “commissioners” from South Carolina, with the accompanying documents, and copies of my answer thereto, dated December 31.

In further explanation of Major Anderson's removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, it is proper to state that after my answer to the South Carolina “commissioners” the War Department received a letter from that gallant officer, dated on the 27th of December, 1860, the day after this movement, from which the following is an extract:

I will add as my opinion that many things convinced me that the authorities of the State designed to proceed to a hostile act.

Evidently referring to the orders, dated December 11, of the late Secretary of War.

Under this impression I could not hesitate that it was my solemn duty to move my command from a fort which we could not probably have held longer than forty-eight or sixty hours to this one, where my power of resistance is increased to a very great degree.

It will be recollected that the concluding part of these orders was in the following terms:

The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or attempt to take possession of either one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.

It is said that serious apprehensions are to some extent entertained (in which I do not share) that the peace of this District may be disturbed before the 4th of March next. In any event, it will be my duty to preserve it, and this duty shall be performed.

In conclusion it may be permitted to me to remark that I have often warned my countrymen of the dangers which now surround us. This may be the last time I shall refer to the subject officially. I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

SOURCE: James Daniel Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the President, 1789-1908, Volume 5, p. 655-9

Governor Francis W. Pickens to Whilliam H. Trescot, December 22, 1860

Sir: The Hon. R. W. Barnwell, the Hon. J. H. Adams and the Hon. James L. Orr have been appointed Commissioners by the Convention to proceed immediately to Washington to present the Ordinance of Secession to the President, and to negotiate in reference to the evacuation of the forts and other matters growing out of the Act of Secession. They will probably arrive on Tuesday next. Please inform the President of this. Answer this.

(Signed)

F. W. Pickens.

"Hon. W. H. Trescot."

SOURCE: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 142

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 Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 13, 1861

RICHMOND, Va. — Now we feel safe and comfortable. We can not be flanked. Mr. Preston met us at Warrenton. Mr. Chesnut doubtless had too many spies to receive from Washington, galloping in with the exact numbers of the enemy done up in their back hair.

Wade Hampton is here; Doctor Nott also — Nott and Glyddon known to fame. Everybody is here, en route for the army, or staying for the meeting of Congress.

Lamar is out on crutches. His father-in-law, once known only as the humorist Longstreet,¹ author of Georgia Scenes, now a staid Methodist, who has outgrown the follies of his youth, bore him off to-day. They say Judge Longstreet has lost the keen sense of fun that illuminated his life in days of yore. Mrs. Lamar and her daughter were here.

The President met us cordially, but he laughed at our sudden retreat, with baggage lost, etc. He tried to keep us from going; said it was a dangerous experiment. Dare say he knows more about the situation of things than he chooses to tell us.

To-day in the drawing-room, saw a vivandière in the flesh. She was in the uniform of her regiment, but wore Turkish pantaloons. She frisked about in her hat and feathers; did not uncover her head as a man would have done; played the piano; and sang war-songs. She had no drum, but she gave us rataplan. She was followed at every step by a mob of admiring soldiers and boys.

Yesterday, as we left the cars, we had a glimpse of war. It was the saddest sight: the memory of it is hard to shake off — sick soldiers, not wounded ones. There were quite two hundred (they said) lying about as best they might on the platform. Robert Barnwell² was there doing all he could. Their pale, ghastly faces! So here is one of the horrors of war we had not reckoned on. There were many good men and women with Robert Barnwell, rendering all the service possible in the circumstances.

Just now I happened to look up and saw Mr. Chesnut with a smile on his face watching me from the passageway. I flew across the room, and as I got half-way saw Mrs. Davis touch him on the shoulder. She said he was to go at once into Mr. Davis's room, where General Lee and General Cooper were. After he left us, Mrs. Davis told me General Beauregard had sent Mr. Chesnut here on some army business.

_______________

¹ Augustus Baldwin Longstreet had great distinction in the South as a lawyer, clergyman, teacher, journalist, and author, and was successively president of five different colleges. His Georgia Scenes, a series of humorous papers, enjoyed great popularity for many years.

² Rev. Robert Barnwell, nephew of Hon. Robert Barnwell, established in Richmond a hospital for South Carolinians.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 82-3

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 6, 1861

FAUQUIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, Va.. – Mr. Brewster came here with us. The cars were jammed with soldiers to the muzzle. They were very polite and considerate, and we had an agreeable journey, in spite of heat, dust, and crowd. Rev. Robert Barnwell was with us. He means to organize a hospital for sick and wounded. There was not an inch of standing-room even; so dusty, so close, but everybody in tip-top spirits.

Mr. Preston and Mr. Chesnut met us at Warrenton. Saw across the lawn, but did not speak to them, some of Judge Campbell's family. There they wander disconsolate, just outside the gates of their Paradise: a resigned Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States; resigned, and for a cause that he is hardly more than half in sympathy with, Judge Campbell’s is one of the hardest cases.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 77

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 25, 1861

CHARLESTON, S. C. — We have come back to South Carolina from the Montgomery Congress, stopping over at Mulberry. We came with R. M. T. Hunter and Mr. Barnwell. Mr. Barnwell has excellent reasons for keeping cotton at home, but I forget what they are. Generally, people take what he says, also Mr. Hunter's wisdom, as unanswerable. Not so Mr. Chesnut, who growls at both, much as he likes them. We also had Tom Lang and his wife, and Doctor Boykin. Surely there never was a more congenial party. The younger men had been in the South Carolina College while Mr. Barnwell was President. Their love and respect for him were immeasurable and he benignly received it, smiling behind those spectacles. Met John Darby at Atlanta and told him he was Surgeon of the Hampton Legion, which delighted him. He had had adventures. With only a few moments on the platform to interchange confidences, he said he had remained a little too long in the Medical College in Philadelphia, where he was some kind of a professor, and they had been within an ace of hanging him as a Southern spy. “Rope was ready,” he sniggered. At Atlanta when he unguardedly said he was fresh from Philadelphia, he barely escaped lynching, being taken for a Northern spy. “Lively life I am having among you, on both sides,” he said, hurrying away. And I moaned, “Here was John Darby like to have been killed by both sides, and no time to tell me the curious coincidences.” What marvelous experiences a little war begins to produce.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 57-8

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: February 25, 1861

Find every one working very hard here. As I dozed on the sofa last night, could hear the scratch, scratch of my husband's pen as he wrote at the table until midnight.

After church to-day, Captain Ingraham called. He left me so uncomfortable. He dared to express regrets that he had to leave the United States Navy. He had been stationed in the Mediterranean, where he liked to be, and expected to be these two years, and to take those lovely daughters of his to Florence. Then came Abraham Lincoln, and rampant black Republicanism, and he must lay down his life for South Carolina. He, however, does not make any moan. He says we lack everything necessary in naval gear to retake Fort Sumter. Of course, he only expects the navy to take it. He is a fish out of water here. He is one of the finest sea-captains; so I suppose they will soon give him a ship and send him back to his own element.

At dinner Judge ____ was loudly abusive of Congress. He said: “They have trampled the Constitution underfoot. They have provided President Davis with a house.” He was disgusted with the folly of parading the President at the inauguration in a coach drawn by four white horses. Then some one said Mrs. Fitzpatrick was the only lady who sat with the Congress. After the inaugural she poked Jeff Davis in the back with her parasol that he might turn and speak to her. “I am sure that was democratic enough,” said some one.

Governor Moore came in with the latest news — a telegram from Governor Pickens to the President, “that a war steamer is lying off the Charleston bar laden with reenforcements for Fort Sumter, and what must we do?” Answer: '”Use your own discretion!” There is faith for you, after all is said and done. It is believed there is still some discretion left in South Carolina fit for use.

Everybody who comes here wants an office, and the many who, of course, are disappointed raise a cry of corruption against the few who are successful. I thought we had left all that in Washington. Nobody is willing to be out of sight, and all will take office.

“Constitution” Browne says he is going to Washington for twenty-four hours. I mean to send by him to Mary Garnett for a bonnet ribbon. If they take him up as a traitor, he may cause a civil war. War is now our dread. Mr. Chesnut told him not to make himself a bone of contention.

Everybody means to go into the army. If Sumter is attacked, then Jeff Davis's troubles will begin. The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us — anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees. All right, but every man objects to any despot but himself.

Mr. Chesnut, in high spirits, dines to-day with the Louisiana delegation. Breakfasted with “Constitution” Browne, who is appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and so does not go to Washington. There was at table the man who advertised for a wife, with the wife so obtained. She was not pretty. We dine at Mr. Pollard's and go to a ball afterward at Judge Bibb's. The New York Herald says Lincoln stood before Washington's picture at his inauguration, which was taken by the country as a good sign. We are always frantic for a good sign. Let us pray that a Casar or a Napoleon may be sent us. That would be our best sign of success. But they still say, “No war.” Peace let it be, kind Heaven!

Dr. De Leon called, fresh from Washington, and says General Scott is using all his power and influence to prevent officers from the South resigning their commissions, among other things promising that they shall never be sent against us in case of war. Captain Ingraham, in his short, curt way, said: “That will never do. If they take their government's pay they must do its fighting”

A brilliant dinner at the Pollards's. Mr. Barnwell¹ took me down. Came home and found the Judge and Governor Moore waiting to go with me to the Bibbs's. And they say it is dull in Montgomery! Clayton, fresh from Washington, was at the party and told us “there was to be peace.”

_______________

¹ Robert Woodward Barnwell, of South Carolina, a graduate of Harvard, twice a member of Congress and afterward United States Senator. In 1860, after the passage of the Ordinance of Secession, he was one of the Commissioners who went to Washington to treat with the National Government for its property within the State. He was a member of the Convention at Montgomery and gave the casting vote which made Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 8-10