Mrs. Davis's
drawing-room last night was brilliant, and she was in great force. Outside a
mob called for the President. He did speak — an old war-horse, who scents the
battle-fields from afar. His enthusiasm was contagious. They called for Colonel
Chesnut, and he gave them a capital speech, too. As public speakers say
sometimes, “It was the proudest moment of my life.” I did not hear a great deal
of it, for always, when anything happens of any moment, my heart beats up in my
ears, but the distinguished Carolinians who crowded round told me how good a
speech he made. I was dazed. There goes the Dead March for some poor soul.
To-day, the
President told us at dinner that Mr. Chesnut's eulogy of Bartow in the Congress
was highly praised. Men liked it. Two eminently satisfactory speeches in
twenty-four hours is doing pretty well. And now I could be happy, but this
Cabinet of ours are in such bitter quarrels among themselves — everybody
abusing everybody.
Last night, while
those splendid descriptions of the battle were being given to the crowd below
from our windows, I said: “Then, why do we not go on to Washington?” “You mean
why did they not; the opportunity is lost.” Mr. Barnwell said to me: “Silence,
we want to listen to the speaker,” and Mr. Hunter smiled compassionately, “Don't
ask awkward questions.”
Kirby Smith came
down on the turnpike in the very nick of time. Still, the heroes who fought all
day and held the Yankees in check deserve credit beyond words, or it would all
have been over before the Joe Johnston contingent came. It is another case of
the eleventh-hour scrape; the eleventh-hour men claim all the credit, and they
who bore the heat and brunt and burden of the day do not like that.
Everybody said at
first, “Pshaw! There will be no war." Those who foresaw evil were called
ravens, ill-foreboders. Now the same sanguine people all cry, “The war is over”
— the very same who were packing to leave Richmond a few days ago. Many were
ready to move on at a moment's warning, when the good news came. There are such
owls everywhere.
But, to revert to
the other kind, the sage and circumspect, those who say very little, but that
little shows they think the war barely begun. Mr. Rives and Mr. Seddon have
just called. Arnoldus Van der Horst came to see me at the same time. He said
there was no great show of victory on our side until two o'clock, but when we
began to win, we did it in double-quick time. I mean, of course, the battle
last Sunday.
Arnold Harris told
Mr. Wigfall the news from Washington last Sunday. For hours the telegrams
reported at rapid intervals, “Great victory,” " Defeating them at all
points.” The couriers began to come in on horseback, and at last, after two or
three o'clock, there was a sudden cessation of all news. About nine messengers
with bulletins came on foot or on horseback — wounded, weary, draggled,
footsore, panic-stricken — spreading in their path on every hand terror and
dismay. That was our opportunity. Wigfall can see nothing that could have
stopped us, and when they explain why we did not go to Washington I understand
it all less than ever. Yet here we will dilly-dally, and Congress orate, and
generals parade, until they in the North get up an army three times as large as
McDowell's, which we have just defeated.
Trescott says, this
says this victory will be our ruin. It
lulls us into a Fool’s Paradise of conceit at our superior valor, and the shameful
farce of their flight will wake every inch of their manhood. It was the very
fillip they needed. There are a quieter sort here who know their Yankees well.
They say if the thing begins to pay—government contracts, and all that—we will
never hear the end of it, at least, until they get their pay in some way out of
us. They will not lose money by us. Of that we may be sure. Trust Yankee
shrewdness and vim for that.
There seems to be a
battle raging at Bethel, but no mortal here can be got to think of anything but
Manassas. Mrs. McLean says she does not see that it was such a great victory,
and if it be so great, how can one defeat hurt a nation like the North.
John Waties fought
the whole battle over for me. Now I understand it. Before this nobody would
take the time to tell the thing consecutively, rationally, and in order. Mr.
Venable said he did not see a braver thing done than the cool performance of a
Columbia negro. He carried his master a bucket of ham and rice, which he had
cooked for him, and he cried: “You must be so tired and hungry, marster; make
haste and eat.” This was in the thickest of the fight, under the heaviest of
the enemy's guns.
The Federal
Congressmen had been making a picnic of it: their luggage was all ticketed to
Richmond. Cameron has issued a proclamation. They are making ready to come
after us on a magnificent scale. They acknowledge us at last foemen worthy of
their steel. The Lord help us, since England and France won't, or don't. If we
could only get a friend outside and open a port.
One of these men
told me he had seen a Yankee prisoner, who asked him “what sort of a diggins
Richmond was for trade.” He was tired of the old concern, and would like to
take the oath and settle here. They brought us handcuffs found in the debacle
of the Yankee army. For whom were they? Jeff Davis, no doubt, and the
ringleaders. “Tell that to the marines.'” We have outgrown the handcuff business
on this side of the water.
Dr. Gibbes says he
was at a country house near Manassas, when a Federal soldier, who had lost his
way, came in exhausted. He asked for brandy, which the lady of the house gave
him. Upon second thought, he declined it. She brought it to him so promptly he
said he thought it might be poisoned; his mind was; she was enraged, and said: “Sir,
I am a Virginia woman. Do you think I could be as base as that? Here, Bill,
Tom, disarm this man. He is our prisoner.” The negroes came running, and the man
surrendered without more ado.
Another Federal was
drinking at the well. A negro girl said: “You go in and see Missis.” The man
went in and she followed, crying triumphantly: “Look here, Missis, I got a
prisoner, too!” This lady sent in her two prisoners, and Beauregard
complimented her on her pluck and patriotism, and her presence of mind. These
negroes were rewarded by their owners.
Now if slavery is
as disagreeable to negroes as we think it, why don't they all march over the
border where they would be received with open-arms? It all amazes me. I am
always studying these creatures. They are to me inscrutable in their way and
past finding out. Our negroes were not ripe for John Brown.
This is how I saw
Robert E. Lee for the first time: though his family, then living at Arlington,
called to see me while I was in Washington (I thought because of old Colonel
Chesnut's intimacy with Nellie Custis in the old Philadelphia days, Mrs. Lee
being Nelly Custis's niece), I had not known the head of the Lee family. He was
somewhere with the army then.
Last summer at the
White Sulphur were Roony Lee and his wife, that sweet little Charlotte Wickam,
and I spoke of Roony with great praise. Mrs. Izard said: “Don't waste your
admiration on him; wait till you see his father. He is the nearest to a perfect
man I ever saw.” “How?” “In every way — handsome, clever, agreeable, high-bred.”
Now, Mrs. Stanard
came for Mrs. Preston and me to drive to the camp in an open carriage. A man
riding a beautiful horse joined us. He wore a hat with something of a military
look to it, sat his horse gracefully, and was so distinguished at all points
that I very much regretted not catching his name as Mrs. Stanard gave it to us.
He, however, heard ours, and bowed as gracefully as he rode, and the few
remarks he made to each of us showed he knew all about us.
But Mrs. Stanard
was in ecstasies of pleasurable excitement. I felt that she had bagged a big
fish, for just then they abounded in Richmond. Mrs. Stanard accused him of
being ambitious, etc. He remonstrated and said his tastes were “of the
simplest.” He only wanted “a Virginia
farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken — not one fried
chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken.”
To all this light
chat did we seriously incline, because the man and horse and everything about
him were so fine-looking; perfection, in fact; no fault to be found if you
hunted for it. As he left us, I said eagerly, “Who is he?” “You did not know!
Why, it was Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, the first man in
Virginia,” raising her voice as she enumerated his glories. All the same, I
like Smith Lee better, and I like his looks, too. I know Smith Lee well. Can
anybody say they know his brother? I doubt it. He looks so cold, quiet, and
grand.
Kirby Smith is our
Blücher; he came on the
field in the nick of time, as Blucher at Waterloo, and now we are as the
British, who do not remember Blücher. It is all Wellington. So every individual
man I see fought and won the battle. From Kershaw up and down, all the
eleventh-hour men won the battle; turned the tide. The Marylanders — Elzey
& Co. — one never hears of — as little as one hears of Blücher in the
English stories of Waterloo. Mr. Venable was praising Hugh Garden and Kershaw's
regiment generally. This was delightful. They are my friends and neighbors at home.
I showed him Mary Stark's letter, and we agreed with her. At the bottom of our
hearts we believe every Confederate soldier to be a hero, sans peur et sans
reproche.
Hope for the best
to-day. Things must be on a pleasanter footing all over the world. Met the
President in the corridor. He took me by both hands. “Have you breakfasted?”
said he. “Come in and breakfast with me?” Alas! I had had my breakfast.
At the public
dining-room, where I had taken my breakfast with Mr. Chesnut, Mrs. Davis came
to him, while we were at table. She said she had been to our rooms. She wanted
Wigfall hunted up. Mr. Davis thought Chesnut would be apt to know his
whereabouts. I ran to Mrs. Wigfall's room, who told me she was sure he could be
found with his regiment in camp, but Mr. Chesnut had not to go to the camp, for
Wigfall came to his wife's room while I was there. Mr. Davis and Wigfall would
be friends, if— if—
The Northern papers
say we hung and quartered a Zouave; cut him into four pieces; and that we tie
prisoners to a tree and bayonet them. In other words, we are savages. It ought
to teach us not to credit what our papers say of them. It is so absurd an
imagination of evil. We are absolutely treating their prisoners as well as our
own men: we are complained of for it here. I am going to the hospitals for the
enemy's sick and wounded in order to see for myself.
Why did we not
follow the flying foe across the Potomac? That is the question of the hour in
the drawing-room with those of us who are not contending as to “who took
Rickett's Battery?” Allen Green, for one, took it. Allen told us that, finding
a portmanteau with nice clean shirts, he was so hot and dusty he stepped behind
a tree and put on a clean Yankee shirt, and was more comfortable.
The New York
Tribune soothes the Yankee self-conceit, which has received a shock, by saying
we had 100,000 men on the field at Manassas; we had about 15,000 effective men
in all. And then, the Tribune tries to inflame and envenom them against us by
telling lies as to our treatment of prisoners. They say when they come against
us next it will be in overwhelming force. I long to see Russell's letter to the
London Times about Bull Run and Manassas. It will be rich and rare. In
Washington, it is crimination and recrimination. Well, let them abuse one
another to their hearts' content.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin
Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary
From Dixie, p. 90-6
