Diary of Gideon Welles: Monday, May 29, 1865

[W]e took a morning ride, Mrs. Welles being able to go with us, and drove about the place. Returning to the wharf, we took a tug, visited the Pawnee, and then went to Sumter, Moultrie, Fort Johnston, etc. The day was beautiful and all enjoyed it.

There was both sadness and gratification in witnessing the devastation of the city and the deplorable condition of this seat of the Rebellion. No place has suffered more or deserved to have suffered more. Here was the seat of Southern aristocracy. The better blood — the superior class, as they considered themselves — here held sway and dictated the policy, not only of Charleston but of South Carolina, and ultimately of the whole South. The power of association and of exclusiveness has here been exemplified and the consequences that follow from the beginning of evil. Not that the aristocracy had more vigorous intellects, greater ability, for they had not, yet their wealth, their ancestry, the usage of the community gave them control.

Mr. Calhoun, the leading genius and master mind of the State, was not one of the élite, the first families, but was used, nursed, and favored by them, and they by him. He acknowledged their supremacy and deferred to them; they recognized his talents and gave him position. He pandered to their pride; they fostered his ambition.

Rhett, one of the proudest of the nobility, had the ambition of Calhoun without his ability, yet he was not destitute of a certain degree of smartness, which stimulated his aspirations. More than any one else, perhaps, has he contributed to precipitating this Rebellion and brought these terrible calamities on his State and country. The gentlemanly, elegant, but brilliantly feeble intellects of his class had the vanity to believe they could rule, or establish a Southern empire. Their young men had read Scott's novels, and considered themselves to be knights and barons bold, sons of chivalry and romance, born to fight and to rule. Cotton they knew to be king, and slavery created cotton. They used these to combine other weak minds at the South, and had weak and willing tools to pander to them in certain partisans at the North.

The results of their theory and the fruits of their labors are to be seen in this ruined city and this distressed people. Luxury, refinement, happiness have fled from Charleston; poverty is enthroned there. Having sown error, she has reaped sorrow. She has been, and is, punished. I rejoice that it is so.

On Monday evening we left for Savannah, but, a storm coming on, the Santiago put into Port Royal, having lost sight of our consort. It had been our intention to stop at this place on our return, but, being here, we concluded to finish our work, and accordingly went up to Beaufort. Returning, we visited Hilton Head and Fort Welles on invitation from General Gillmore.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 312-3

Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, April 7, 1865

We have word that Sheridan has had a battle with a part of Lee's army, has captured six Rebel generals and several thousand prisoners. His dispatch intimates the almost certain capture of Lee.

In the closing up of this Rebellion, General Grant has proved himself a man of military talent. Those who have doubted and hesitated must concede him some capacity as a general. Though slow and utterly destitute of genius, his final demonstrations and movements have been masterly. The persistency which he has exhibited is as much to be admired as any quality in his character. He is, however, too regardless of the lives of his men.

It is desirable that Lee should be captured. He, more than any one else, has the confidence of the Rebels, and can, if he escapes, and is weak enough to try and continue hostilities, rally for a time a brigand force in the interior. I can hardly suppose he would do this, but he has shown weakness, and his infidelity to the country which educated, and employed, and paid him shows gross ingratitude. His true course would be to desert the country he has betrayed, and never return.

Memo. This Rebellion which has convulsed the nation for four years, threatened the Union, and caused such sacrifice of blood and treasure may be traced in a great degree to the diseased imagination of certain South Carolina gentlemen, who some thirty and forty years since studied Scott's novels, and fancied themselves cavaliers, imbued with chivalry, a superior class, not born to labor but to command, brave beyond mankind generally, more intellectual, more generous, more hospitable, more liberal than others. Such of their countrymen as did not own slaves, and who labored with their own hands, who depended on their own exertions for a livelihood, who were mechanics, traders, and tillers of the soil, were, in their estimate, inferiors who would not fight, were religious and would not gamble, moral and would not countenance duelling, were serious and minded their own business, economical and thrifty, which was denounced as mean and miserly. Hence the chivalrous Carolinian affected to, and actually did finally, hold the Yankee in contempt. The women caught the infection. They were to be patriotic, Revolutionary matrons and maidens. They admired the bold, dashing, swaggering, licentious, boasting, chivalrous slave-master who told them he wanted to fight the Yankee but could not kick and insult him into a quarrel. And they disdained and despised the pious, peddling, plodding, persevering Yankee who would not drink, and swear, and fight duels.

The speeches and letters of James Hamilton and his associates from 1825 forward will be found impregnated with the romance and poetry of Scott, and they came ultimately to believe themselves a superior and better race, knights of blood and spirit.

Only a war could wipe out this arrogance and folly, which had by party and sectional instrumentalities been disseminated through a large portion of the South. Face to face in battle and in field with these slandered Yankees, they learned their own weakness and misconception of the Yankee character. Without self-assumption of superiority, the Yankee was proved to be as brave, as generous, as humane, as chivalric as the vaunting and superficial Carolinian to say the least. Their ideal, however, in Scott's pages of "Marmion," "Ivanhoe," etc., no more belonged to the Sunny South than to other sections less arrogant and presuming but more industrious and frugal.

On the other hand, the Yankees, and the North generally, underestimated the energy and enduring qualities of the Southern people who were slave-owners. It was believed they were effeminate idlers, living on the toil and labor of others, who themselves could endure no hardship such as is indispensable to soldiers in the field. It was also believed that a civil war would, inevitably, lead to servile insurrection, and that the slave-owners would have their hands full to keep the slaves in subjection after hostilities commenced. Experience has corrected these misconceptions in each section.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 276-8

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Wednesday, July 16, 1862

Camp Green Meadows. — A warm, beautiful day. The men busy building shades (bowers or arbors) over their streets and tents, cleaning out the springs, and arranging troughs for watering horses, washing, and bathing. The water is excellent and abundant.

I read “Waverley,” finishing it. The affection of Flora McIvor for her brother and its return is touching; they were orphans. And oh, this is the anniversary of the death of my dear sister Fanny — six years ago! I have thought of her today as I read Scott's fine description, but till now it did not occur to me that this was the sad day. Time has softened the pain. How she would have suffered during this agonizing war! Perhaps it was best — but what a loss!

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 304

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Tuesday Morning, March 18, 1862

A. M., very cold but looks as if the storm was at an end and bright weather come again. P. M., a lovely day. Rode with Avery on the Logan Road three miles to Evans' and Cook's. Drilled the regiment. Adjutant Avery drilled skirmish drill. P. M., drilled sergeants in bayonet exercise, and regiment in marching and squares. Spent the evening jollying with the doctors and reading Scott.

A queer prisoner brought in from New River by Richmond. Richmond, a resolute Union citizen was taken a prisoner at his house by three Rebels — two dragoons and a bushwhacker. One of the dragoons took Richmond up behind him and off they went. On the way they told Richmond that he would have to —— —— ——. Thereupon Richmond on the first opportunity drew his pocket-knife slyly from his pocket, caught the dragoon before him by his hair behind and cut his throat and stabbed him. Both fell from the horse together. Richmond cut the strap holding the dragoon's rifle; took it and killed a second. The third escaped, and Richmond ran to our camp.

Jesse Reese brought in as a spy by Richmond, says he is a tailor; was going to Greenbrier to collect money due him. Says he married when he was about fifty; they got married because they were both orphans and alone in the world!

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Dr. J. T. Webb, in a letter, of March 12, to his sister (Mrs. Hayes), tells the story of Richmond's feat in the following graphic recital: Click Here.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 211

Fitz-Greene Halleck to Mrs. Rush, November 21, 1861

Guilford, Conn., Nov. 21, 1861.

My DEar Mrs. Rush: I am very grateful for your continued kind remembrance of me, and for the courtesy of your promise to like my next war-song, notwithstanding the rejection of my last as one of the unlucky twelve hundred, and I think it my bounden duty, while generously declining to put your good-nature to so severe a test, to tell you frankly a melancholy truth. Sir Walter Scott once said to a clerical friend of his: “I am afraid that I am fast losing my memory, for I listened attentively to your yesterday's sermon, and to-day I have forgotten every word of it.” So in my case, I owe a like compliment to the poetry of Mrs. Browning and Mr. Tennyson; I have read many of them over and over, and have been told that they are all exceedingly beautiful, and yet I have not at this moment a single line of them by heart! I am certain, therefore, that you, whose endurance of my intoning of remembered rhymes won for you of old the reputation of being the most lady-like of listeners, will agree with me in admitting that my memory is gone, and that I cannot conscientiously hereafter ask others to remember my rhymes while confessing my inability to remember theirs. Moreover, sadly and seriously, is this Southern, this sin-born war of ours, worthy of a poet's consecration? a poet, whose art, whose attribute it is to make the dead on fields of battle, alike the victors and the vanquished, look beautiful in the sunbeams of his song. On the contrary, it is but a mutiny, a monster mutiny, whose ringleaders are a dozen crime-worn politicians, determined to keep themselves in power, and will sooner or later find its Nemesis in the blood and tears of a servile insurrection.

If, however (to end my letter cheerfully), the recent entrapping of my old acquaintance, John Slidell, should bring us a war with England, a foe “worthy of our steel” and stanzas, I will make the attempt you so flatteringly request; and, as Homer won his laurels by singing the wrath of Achilles for the loss of his sweetheart, I will strive to win mine by singing the wrath of John Bull for the captivity of John Slidell.

SOURCE: James Grant Wilson, The life and letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, 523-5