Major Wilder Dwight: February 16, 1862

Cantonment Hicks, February 16, 1862, near Frederick.

I sent you a howl last Wednesday; but, now that I find there was a plentiful lack of fighting at Roanoke Island, and an equal abundance of running away, I care little about it. Its effect, though, is grand. Still more important is the news from the Mississippi and Tennessee. That “idolatrous devotion to the old Union,” which the Richmond Despatch so feelingly regrets, we shall hear more from soon.

We are approaching consummations in many directions, I opine. At times, I almost fear a sudden collapse, and very little fighting after all. Still, I think this can hardly be. It is not to be desired, I think, because of the weak-kneed settlement that would come. I see no good way out of our present difficulties, except through an overwhelming military superiority established by battles and defeats. Subjugation, the thing that they fear, is the thing I desire.

I hope that father begins to revive his faith in McClellan under the apparent culmination of his plans and combinations. But, unluckily, we are a people without faith in men or in principles, I fear; and that is the most hopeless sign in our condition.

To-day, we have the wintriest morning of the year. Bright sunshine, however, makes it cheerful; and I look upon it as the last effort of winter. This is not a climate in which winter lingers to chill the lap of spring, and we are all ready for a spring.

This evening I shall go into church to the pretty Episcopal Church in Frederick.

Our cook, Tony, came in this morning, in great glee, to report that his pigeon had laid two eggs (and Sunday she lays two). He has several pets, — puppies, kittens, chickens, and doves.

Hurrah for the Union and McClellan!

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 197-8

Major Charles Fessenden Morse: Notes From A Journal

NOTES PROM A JOURNAL.

When we first came to this place, General Slocum received a telegram from headquarters which said that if we needed any scouting or important secret service done, we had better use a certain John Douglas, who was very faithful and efficient. The General told me he wanted me to take charge of everything in the scouting department, and that I had better see Douglas as soon as possible. At this point, it is very necessary to depend on scouts and citizens, as our force is very small and we are entirely without cavalry, so I sent for Douglas and he came to see me the next morning.

I was very much struck by his appearance; he was the first man who came up at all to my idea of what a scout should be like. He is a man about fifty years old, I should think, medium size and a little bent over, but with a very tough, hard looking frame; his striking features, though, are his eyes; they are jet black and piercing in their expression, with a restless, eager look, as if he was always expecting to see the rifle of an enemy sticking out from behind a tree or bush; his eyebrows are also black, but his hair has turned gray with age. His walk was very peculiar, and was exactly like that described of Leather-stocking in the “Deerslayer,” a sort of gait which, without seeming to be much exertion, was equal to what we call a dog trot. He made me think of all the old backwoods heroes I had ever read of, from Daniel Boone down.

I found that he had papers from Rosecrans, Burnside, Dupont and several others, all testifying to his marked ability and energy, and his entire knowledge of every part of Tennessee and northern Georgia, and Alabama. I talked with him some time and found that he was very intelligent and well informed.

A few days after my first interview with Douglas, I received a telegram from Murfreesboro stating that they had certain information that a band of six or eight hundred guerrillas were in the neighborhood of McMinnville. I sent for Douglas and told him I wanted to know the truth of the story. He didn't stay five minutes after I had told him the rumor; this was about seven o'clock in the evening. The next afternoon, about three o'clock, he made his appearance and said the story was true; since he left me, he had ridden nearly seventy miles to within three or four miles of the guerrilla camp. The next day we were told by some citizens that this cavalry was supported by infantry, and that it was the advance of a portion of Bragg's army. We didn't believe this at all; still I was anxious to find out just what the force was. I sent Douglas out again, telling him to find out every particular before he came back. He was gone two days, and on his return, he said he had spent several hours inside the enemy's camp; his information proved that we had nothing at all to fear from them except depredations. I asked him how he got inside their lines; he said that the picket he passed was a very green-looking countryman; that when he approached, he was ordered to halt; he rode up to the picket and said he was a bearer of dispatches to the commanding officer. “Who is the commanding officer?” said the sentinel. “That is nothing to do with your instructions, and you will get into difficulty if you don't let me pass.” The sentinel passed him, and he went inside and talked with the men and officers and saw the commanders. There was nothing remarkable in this, but a man discovered as a spy by these guerrillas would be hung or have his throat cut five minutes after he was caught.

The pay Douglas gets as chief of scouts of this vicinity is only three dollars per day, very small compensation for the risk. He has told me a number of stories of the sufferings of East Tennesseeans; they are equal to any of Brownlow's; he says there is no exaggeration in the latter's statements.

He told me of one young lady who lived with her mother near Knoxville, whose brothers and father were strong Unionists. They had hidden away among the mountains. He described her as a very refined, well educated young woman. One day, a party of guerrillas came to her house and took her and her mother out in the woods and tied them to a tree; they then asked them to tell where their men relations were hidden; they refused to tell them; these brutes gave them each a terrible whipping, but they still refused to give them any information. These chivalric gentlemen then put nooses round their necks, untied them and threatened them with instant hanging if they didn't tell what they required. The young girl told them they might be able to torture her more than she could bear, but before she would say one word that would compromise her father or brothers, she would bite off her tongue and spit it in their rebel faces.

They raised them off the ground three times, nearly killing them. Afterwards, this same girl became a spy for our cavalry and led them on several successful expeditions. Douglas was on one of them, and said that during a fight that occurred, she insisted on staying under the heaviest of the fire. She used sometimes to go inside the rebel lines and act as nurse in one of the rebel hospitals; after she had got all the information that she could, she would return inside our lines and tell what she had found out.

Yesterday there was very near being a terrible accident on the railroad, about fifty miles from here, in amongst the mountains. Some infernal guerrillas put a species of torpedo underneath a rail, just before the passenger train from Nashville was due. Fortunately a locomotive came along just before it and set the machine off; the explosion was tremendous; the engine and tender were blown to pieces; railroad ties and rails were blown as high as the tops of trees; the engineer was thrown twenty or thirty feet and severely injured. If it had not been for this locomotive, probably hundreds of men would have been killed and wounded, as the cars go crowded with officers and soldiers. The perpetrator of this outrage, of course, could not be discovered, but a man living near by seemed to be implicated, and his house and barn were burnt.

They are very summary in dealing with guerrillas in this country when they catch them. There is one despatch from General Crook to Rosecrans on record to this effect: that he (Crook) fell in with a party of guerrillas, twenty in number; that in the fight, twelve of them were killed and the rest were taken prisoners. He regrets to state that on the march to camp, the eight were so unfortunate as to fall off a log and break their necks.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 152-6

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: July 9, 1862

Lee has turned the tide, and I shall not be surprised if we have a long career of successes. Bragg, and Kirby Smith, and Loring are in motion at last, and Tennessee and Kentucky, and perhaps Missouri, will rise again in "Rebellion."

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 142

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 4, 1865

Home again at Bloomsbury. From Chester to Winnsboro we did not see one living thing, man, woman, or animal, except poor William trudging home after his sad disaster. The blooming of the gardens had a funereal effect.

Nature is so luxuriant here, she soon covers the ravages of savages. No frost has occurred since the seventh of March, which accounts for the wonderful advance in vegetation. This seems providential to these starving people. In this climate so much that is edible can be grown in two months.

At Winnsboro we stayed at Mr. Robertson's. There we left the wagon train. Only Mr. Brisbane, one of the general's couriers, came with us on escort duty. The Robertsons were very kind and hospitable, brimful of Yankee anecdotes. To my amazement the young people of Winnsboro had a May-day celebration amid the smoking ruins. Irrepressible is youth.

The fidelity of the negroes is the principal topic. There seems to be not a single case of a negro who betrayed his master, and yet they showed a natural and exultant joy at being free. After we left Winnsboro negroes were seen in the fields plowing and hoeing corn, just as in antebellum times. The fields in that respect looked quite cheerful. We did not pass in the line of Sherman's savages, and so saw some houses standing.

Mary Kirkland has had experience with the Yankees. She has been pronounced the most beautiful woman on this side of the Atlantic, and has been spoiled accordingly in all society. When the Yankees came, Monroe, their negro manservant, told her to stand up and hold two of her children in her arms, with the other two pressed as close against her knees as they could get. Mammy Selina and Lizzie then stood grimly on each side of their young missis and her children. For four mortal hours the soldiers surged through the rooms of the house. Sometimes Mary and her children were roughly jostled against the wall, but Mammy and Lizzie were stanch supporters. The Yankee soldiers taunted the negro women for their foolishness in standing by their cruel slave-owners, and taunted Mary with being glad of the protection of her poor ill-used slaves. Monroe meanwhile had one leg bandaged and pretended to be lame, so that he might not be enlisted as a soldier, and kept making pathetic appeals to Mary.

“Don't answer them back, Miss Mary,” said he. “Let ’em say what dey want to; don't answer 'em back. Don't give ’em any chance to say you are impudent to ’em.”

One man said to her: “Why do you shrink from us and avoid us so? We did not come here to fight for negroes; we hate them. At Port Royal I saw a beautiful white woman driving in a wagon with a coal-black negro man. If she had been anything to me I would have shot her through the heart.” “Oh, oh!” said Lizzie, “that's the way you talk in here. I'll remember that when you begin outside to beg me to run away with you.”

Finally poor Aunt Betsy, Mary's mother, fainted from pure fright and exhaustion. Mary put down her baby and sprang to her mother, who was lying limp in a chair, and fiercely called out, “Leave this room, you wretches! Do you mean to kill my mother? She is ill; I must put her to bed.” Without a word they all slunk out ashamed. “If I had only tried that hours ago,” she now said. Outside they remarked that she was “an insolent rebel huzzy, who thinks herself too good to speak to a soldier of the United States,” and one of them said: “Let us go in and break her mouth.” But the better ones held the more outrageous back. Monroe slipped in again and said: “Missy, for God's sake, when dey come in be sociable with 'em. Dey will kill you.”

“Then let me die.”

The negro soldiers were far worse than the white ones.

Mrs. Bartow drove with me to Mulberry. On one side of the house we found every window had been broken, every bell torn down, every piece of furniture destroyed, and every door smashed in. But the other side was intact. Maria Whitaker and her mother, who had been left in charge, explained this odd state of things. The Yankees were busy as beavers, working like regular carpenters, destroying everything when their general came in and stopped them, He told them it was a sin to destroy a fine old house like that, whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not have had it done for the world. It was wanton mischief. He explained to Maria that soldiers at such times were excited, wild, and unruly. They carried off sacks full of our books, since unfortunately they found a pile of empty sacks in the garret. Our books, our letters, our papers were afterward strewn along the Charleston road. Somebody found things of ours as far away as Vance's Ferry.

This was Potter's raid.¹ Sherman took only our horses. Potter's raid came after Johnston's surrender, and ruined us finally, burning our mills and gins and a hundred bales of cotton. Indeed, nothing is left to us now but the bare land, and the debts contracted for the support of hundreds of negroes during the war.

[A]. H. Boykin was at home at the time to look after his own interests, and he, with John de Saussure, has saved the cotton on their estates, with the mules and farming utensils and plenty of cotton as capital to begin on again. The negroes would be a good riddance. A hired man would be a good deal cheaper than a man whose father and mother, wife and twelve children have to be fed, clothed, housed, and nursed, their taxes paid, and their doctor's bills, all for his half-done, slovenly, lazy work. For years we have thought negroes a nuisance that did not pay. They pretend exuberant loyalty to us now. Only one man of Mr. Chest nut's left the plantation with the Yankees.

When the Yankees found the Western troops were not at Camden, but down below Swift Creek, like sensible folk they came up the other way, and while we waited at Chester for marching orders we were quickly ruined after the surrender. With our cotton saved, and cotton at a dollar a pound, we might be in comparatively easy circumstances. But now it is the devil to pay, and no pitch hot. Well, all this was to be.

Godard Bailey, editor, whose prejudices are all against us, described the raids to me in this wise: They were regularly organized. First came squads who demanded arms and whisky. Then came the rascals who hunted for silver, ransacked the ladies' wardrobes and scared women and children into fits — at least those who could be scared. Some of these women could not be scared. Then came some smiling, suave, well-dressed officers, who " regretted it all so much." Outside the gate officers, men, and bummers divided even, share and share alike, the piles of plunder.

When we crossed the river coming home, the ferry man at Chesnut's Ferry asked for his fee. Among us all we could not muster the small silver coin he demanded. There was poverty for you. Nor did a stiver appear among us until Molly was hauled home from Columbia, where she was waging war with Sheriff Dent's family. As soon as her foot touched her native heath, she sent to hunt up the cattle. Many of our cows were found in the swamp; like Marion's men they had escaped the enemy. Molly sells butter for us now on shares.

Old Cuffey, head gardener at Mulberry, and Yellow Abram, his assistant, have gone on in the even tenor of their way. Men may come and men may go, but they dig on forever. And they say they mean to “as long as old master is alive.” We have green peas, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, new potatoes, and strawberries in abundance — enough for ourselves and plenty to give away to refugees. It is early in May and yet two months since frost. Surely the wind was tempered to the shorn lamb in our case.

Johnny went over to see Hampton. His cavalry are ordered to reassemble on the 20th — a little farce to let themselves down easily; they know it is all over. Johnny, smiling serenely, said, “The thing is up and forever.”

Godard Bailey has presence of mind. Anne Sabb left a gold card-case, which was a terrible oversight, among the cards on the drawing-room table. When the Yankee raiders saw it their eyes glistened. Godard whispered to her: “Let them have that gilt thing and slip away and hide the silver.” “No!” shouted a Yank, “you don't fool me that way; here's your old brass thing; don't you stir; fork over that silver.'” And so they deposited the gold card-case in Godard's hands, and stole plated spoons and forks, which had been left out because they were plated. Mrs. Beach says two officers slept at her house. Each had a pillow-case crammed with silver and jewelry—" spoils of war,” they called it.

Floride Cantey heard an old negro say to his master: “When you all had de power you was good to me, and I 'll protect you now. No niggers nor Yankees shall tech you. If you want anything call for Sambo. I mean, call for Mr. Samuel; dat my name now.”

_______________

¹ The reference appears to. be to General Edward E. Potter, a native of New York City, who died in 1889. General Potter entered the Federal service early in the war. He recruited a regiment of North Carolina troops and engaged in operations in North and South Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 384-9

Captain Francis H. Wigfall: December 5, 1864

At Mrs. Overton's,

Six Miles from Nashville,

On Columbia Turnpike,

Dec. 5th, 1864.

I wrote you a short note from the other side of Franklin the morning after the battle. I have not written oftener because I have been unwilling to trust letters to the mail, as I suppose communication has been interrupted between Macon and Augusta. We left Florence, Alabama, on the 21st of November; we reached Columbia and after remaining in front of the place two or three days it was evacuated by the enemy who then took position on the north bank of Duck River, immediately opposite the town. There was some artillery firing and sharp shooting across the river and it was in this on the 28th that Col. Beckham was wounded. I have not heard from him since the morning of the 1st, when he was doing well, but the wound is so severe (the skull fractured) that I fear he will not recover. In fact the surgeon said there was a bare possibility of his surviving. His loss will be very severely felt. It is hard enough to be killed at all, but to be killed in such an insignificant affair makes it doubly bad.

The fight at Franklin was very severe — while it lasted, and though our loss was heavy, everybody is in the finest humor — and ready for the fight again whenever Gen. “John B.” gives the word. Col. Cofer, Provost Marshall Gen. of the Army, told me the other day that he had taken particular pains to find out by enquiring the feelings of the men and that the morale of the army was very much improved by the fight, and that the men would go into the next with double vim and impetuosity.

Our men fought with the utmost determinal and if we had had three hours more of daylight I feel as confident as possible that we should have been to-day in Nashville. The Yankees are now in their works around the city and our main line is at one point only twelve hundred yards from theirs. We have captured three engines and about twenty cars and I hope before long to hear the shriek of the locomotive once more. The country we have marched through for the past fifty miles is one of the gardens of the world. The lands are very fertile, the plantations well improved and the people before the war were in the possession of every comfort and luxury. The destruction, too, caused by the Yankees, is not to be compared to that in other sections occupied by them. There has been no part of the Confederacy that I have seen which has been in their possession and has suffered so little.

Our Army, in leaving Tennessee, on both occasions previously, passed to the East of this portion of the state, so that an Army has never before marched over it. The Yankees too have held it a long time and I imagine considered it permanently in their possession. We reached this place on the night of the 2nd. There are several young ladies from Nashville here who are very pretty and agreeable and the most intense Southerners. The enemy was forced from his position north of Duck River by a flank movement which placed the whole army except, two Divisions, near his communications. He fell back to Franklin that night and the next day, the 30th November, was the battle of Franklin.

SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 211-3

Captain Francis H. Wigfall: December 8, 1864

Dec. 8th. I have heard this morning of poor Beckham's death. What a cruel, hard thing is war! The individual suffering, however, is the public gain. Over the road, on which moved Cheatham's Corps, was hung, just at the Tennessee State line, an inscription in these words: “Tennessee, A grave, or a free home.” A good many graves have been already filled — but better we should all meet that fate than fail to gain the prize we struggle for. As he passed over the line, Gen. Hood received a formal welcome into the state from Governor Harris, who has been with us since we took up the line of march for Tennessee. If we can gain Nashville, what a glorious termination it will be for the campaign. Even if we fail in this, for I fear the fortifications are too strong, and hold the enemy in his lines round the city, it will be one of the grandest achievements an army has ever performed. Think of it! Starting from Lovejoy's thirty miles beyond Atlanta on the 18th Sept., here we are on the 8th Dec. in front of Nashville with the enemy cooped up in his works and the fruits of two years hard marching and fighting lost to him. . . .

SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 213-4

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: January 10, 1865

You do the Anabasis business when you want to get out of the enemy's country, and the Thermopylae business when they want to get into your country. But we retreated in our own country and we gave up our mountain passes without a blow. But never mind the Greeks; if we had only our own Game Cock, Sumter, our own Swamp Fox, Marion. Marion's men or Sumter's, or the equivalent of them, now lie under the sod, in Virginia or Tennessee.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 341

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: January 7, 1865

Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last of his men not gone, as Louis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied.

Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the dentist. Her teeth are of the whitest and most regular, simply perfection. She fancied it was better to have a dentist look in her mouth before returning to the mountains. For that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money. “Why, has this money any value at all?” she asked. Little enough in all truth, sad to say.

Brewster was here and stayed till midnight. Said he must see General Chesnut. He had business with him. His “me and General Hood” is no longer comic. He described Sherman's march of destruction and desolation. “Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide, upon which there is no living thing to be seen,” said Brewster before he departed.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 340-1

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: December 2, 1864

Isabella and I put on bonnets and shawls and went deliberately out for news. We determined to seek until we found. Met a man who was so ugly, I could not forget him or his sobriquet; he was awfully in love with me once. He did not know me, but blushed hotly when Isabella told him who I was. He had forgotten me, I hope, or else I am changed by age and care past all recognition. He gave us the encouraging information that Grahamville had been burned to the ground.

When the call for horses was made, Mrs. McCord sent in her fine bays. She comes now with a pair of mules, and looks too long and significantly at my ponies. If I were not so much afraid of her, I would hint that those mules would be of far more use in camp than my ponies. But they will seize the ponies, no doubt.

In all my life before, the stables were far off from the house and I had nothing to do with them. Now my ponies are kept under an open shed next to the back piazza. Here I sit with my work, or my desk, or my book, basking in our Southern sun, and I watch Nat feed, curry, and rub down the horses, and then he cleans their stables as thoroughly as Smith does my drawing-room. I see their beds of straw comfortably laid. Nat says, “Ow, Missis, ain't lady's business to look so much in de stables.” I care nothing for his grumbling, and I have never had horses in better condition. Poor ponies, you deserve every attention, and enough to eat. Grass does not grow under your feet. By night and day you are on the trot.

To-day General Chesnut was in Charleston on his way from Augusta to Savannah by rail. The telegraph is still working between Charleston and Savannah. Grahamville certainly is burned. There was fighting down there to-day. I came home with enough to think about, Heaven knows! And then all day long we compounded a pound cake in honor of Mrs. Cuthbert, who has things so nice at home. The cake was a success, but was it worth all that trouble?

As my party were driving off to the concert, an omnibus rattled up. Enter Captain Leland, of General Chesnut's staff, of as imposing a presence as a field-marshal, handsome and gray-haired. He was here on some military errand and brought me a letter. He said the Yankees had been repulsed, and that down in those swamps we could give a good account of ourselves if our government would send men enough. With a sufficient army to meet them down “there, they could be annihilated.” “Where are the men to come from?” asked Mamie, wildly. “General Hood has gone off to Tennessee. Even if he does defeat Thomas there, what difference would that make here?”

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 336-7

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 28, 1862

There must soon be collisions in the West on a large scale; but the system of lying, in vogue among the Yankees, most effectually defeats all attempts at reliable computation of numbers. They say we have 150,000 men in Tennessee and Kentucky, whereas we have not 60,000. Their own numbers they represent to be not exceeding 50,000, but I suspect they have three times that number. The shadows of events are crowding thickly upon us, and the events will speak for themselves — and that speedily.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 107

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 30, 1862

Some of the mysterious letter-carriers, who have just returned from their jaunt into Tennessee, are applying again for passports to Baltimore, Washington, etc. I refuse them, though they are recommended by Gen. Winder's men; but they will obtain what they want from the Secretary himself, or his Assistant Secretary.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 107-8

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 31, 1862

What if these men (they have passports) should be going to Washington to report the result of their reconnoissances in Tennessee? The Tennessee River is high, and we have no casemated batteries, or batteries of any sort, on it above Fort Henry.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 108

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 22, 1862

Some of the letter-carriers' passports from Mr. Benjamin, which have the countenance of Gen. Winder, are now going into Tennessee. What is this for? We shall see.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 106

General Joseph E. Johnston to Senator Louis T. Wigfall, February 14, 1863

knoxville, Tenn.,

Feb. 14th, 1863.

My dear Wigfall:

I have several times taken the liberty of asking you by telegraph to try to get R. A. Howard made Brig. Genl., Schleicher made a Capt. of Engineers and the McLean, of Bull Run, in whom you and Mr. Clay were so much interested, put into the Qr. Mrs. dept. As these things were all for the benefit of the military service, in which you take as much interest as any soldier or citizen of the Confederacy, it is unnecessary for me to apologize. Let me now ask you to consider the services of the Army of Tennessee. Our principal officers and the most intelligent of our friends in Nashville estimate the loss of the enemy in the battle of Murfreesboro' at not less than 20,000 — the force which inflicted that loss could not have been much more than 30,000. More effective fighting is not to be found in the history of modern battles. The enemy fell back to a very strong position, where he received reinforcements, on account of which our army abandoned the ground; the general being urged to do so by those under him of high rank. This Army of Tennessee has had a hard time of it and a thankless one. My object now is to persuade that in the neighborhood of Murfreesboro' it was well commanded and fought most gallantly, inflicting upon the enemy more harm in proportion to its members, if my memory is not at fault, than any army of modern times. So if you thank any troops for fighting well, these, it seems to me, should be included. I desired Gen. Harris, of Missouri, to say so to you. I am especially interested in this matter because the thanks of Congress would have a good effect upon the troops who feel that others have received the compliment for far less marching and fighting. Bragg has commanded admirably in Tennessee and made the best use of his troops of all arms.

I have been very busy for some time looking for something to do — to little purpose, but with much travelling. Each of the three departments assigned to me has its general and as there is no room for two, and I can't remove him appointed by the Prest. for the precise place, nothing but the post of Inspector General is left to me. I wrote to the President on the subject — trying to explain that I am virtually laid upon the shelf with the responsibility of command, but he has not replied, perhaps because he has no better place for me. I should much prefer the command of fifty men.

Very truly yours.

J. E. Johnston.

SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 123-5

General Joseph E. Johnston to Senator Louis T. Wigfall, January 26, 1863

Chattanooga, Jany. 26th, 1863.

My dear Wigfall:

I have asked the government by telegraph if any additional troops, new or old, can be furnished for Bragg's Army, but have had no reply. Will you suggest to Mr. Seddon that we are in a very critical condition in Tennessee? The enemy has fully supplied his losses, I am officially informed, while our army has received stragglers and exchanged prisoners amounting to about a third of our killed and wounded. Such being the case, if there is any truth in arithmetic, another battle must drive us still farther back. If driven across the Cumberland Mountains we can not hold East Tennessee and once in possession of that country Rosecranz may choose his point on our South Eastern or Eastern frontier from Richmond to Mobile. It is of the utmost importance therefore to reinforce Bragg. The conscription is operating very slowly. Can no mode of expediting its enforcement be adopted? I cannot draw upon Pemberton, for his force is far too small now. I proposed the bringing to him 18,000 or 20,000 troops from Arkansas, none of whom ever came. The enemy is again at Vicksburg, too, in heavier force, and doubtless with a different plan — probably to attempt to attack from below instead of from the Yazoo.

Bragg has done wonders, I think — no body of troops has done more in proportion to numbers in the same time. At Murfreesboro’ he killed, wounded and took 17,000 and within the three weeks preceding 7,500. His own loss in all that time about 9,000. My own official position does not improve on acquaintance. It is little, if any, better than being laid on the shelf. I have endeavored to explain this to the President, but he thinks it essential to have one here who can transfer troops from this department to Pemberton's and vice-versa. That would be extremely well if either department could possibly spare troops, even for a short time, but that is not the case, each having too few for immediate purposes and the distance and character of the intermediate country such as completely prevents them from aiding each other, except an occasional cavalry movement. It is an attempt to join things which cannot be united. It would require at least a month to send 10,000 men from one of the two armies to the other. Each department having its own commander and requiring—indeed having room but for one. You perceive how little occupation I can find. I can not unite the two armies — because they are too far apart, and each is required where it is. Nor can I take command of one because each has its proper commander, and yet the country may hold me responsible for any failure between North Carolina and Georgia and the Mississippi, for I am supposed to be commanding in all that country. After commanding our most important, and I may add, best army for a year, it is hard to lose that command for wounds in battle and to receive a nominal one. I must confess I cannot help repining at this position. The President, however, evidently intends that I shall hold a high position and important one; but I think he mistakes the relation between Tennessee and Mississippi.

I flatter myself that I have never been so garrulous before and won't be so again.

We rarely see Richmond papers, so I don't know what you are doing for us. My cordial regards to Mrs. Wigfall and the young ladies.

If you can help me out of my present place I shall love you more than ever. It will require diplomacy and cunning, however, and I don't think you strong in the latter.

Yours truly,

J. E. Johnston.

SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 121-3

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 2,1862

The enemy are making preparations to assail us everywhere. Roanoke Island, Norfolk, Beaufort, and Newbern; Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Pensacola, and New Orleans are all menaced by numerous fleets on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers of iron-clad floating batteries threaten to force a passage down the Mississippi, while monster armies are concentrating for the invasion of Tennessee and the Cotton States. Will Virginia escape the scourge? Not she; here is the bull's-eye of the mark they aim at.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 103

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: November 29, 1861

Gen. Sydney Johnston has command of the army in Tennessee and Kentucky. I wish it were only as strong as the wily enemy is in the habit of representing it!

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 95

John M. Forbes to Congressman Charles B. Sedgwick, June 2, 1862

June 2,1862.

My Dear Mr. Sedgwick, — I see I forgot the 21stly, as the old parsons used to say, of my sermon; my amen to your emancipation speech.

If you have such a devilish poor set in Congress that they are afraid to pass your bill, for freeing such slaves as come to our aid, you had better give up trying for any emancipation bill until Parson Brownlow, General Rodgers, and other pro-slavery border state men have cultivated the manliness of Congress up to the Tennessee standard! Why, I hear that the border state Unionists everywhere are in advance of Congress, and go for strangling the rebellion through its vitals, not pinching the ends of its toes! Rather than take anything worse than your bill, I would trust to old Abe's being pushed up to the use of the military powers of emancipation. What infernal nonsense is your present law, making freedom the reward of those who serve the enemy, while their masters only promise them hanging and burning if they serve us.

You carry on the war in such a manner that either slaves or other loyal men in the border and rebel States have one plain road to safety open; namely, to help the rebels. You reward the slaves with freedom for such help: you offer them no reward, except the chance of being shot by us and hanged by their masters, if they come into our lines! . . .

Your lame confiscation bill will be no terror to the rebels, but rather an indication of the mildness with which you will treat them hereafter, and the many exceptions you will make if you pass any confiscation acts.

I only wonder with such a policy that any Union men show their heads! All your efforts seem to be to make rebellion cheap and easy, and loyalty hard and dangerous.

In great haste, I bide yours,

J. M. Forbes

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 315-6

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 13, 1861

The President sent to the department an interesting letter from Mr. Zollicoffer, in Tennessee, relating to the exposed condition of the country, and its capacities for defense.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 72

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: June 14, 1862

All things are against us. Memphis gone. Mississippi fleet annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly apathetic as if it were a story of the English war against China which happened a year or so ago.

The sons of Mrs. John Julius Pringle have come. They were left at school in the North. A young Huger is with them. They seem to have had adventures enough. Walked, waded, rowed in boats, if boats they could find; swam rivers when boats there were none; brave lads are they. One can but admire their pluck and energy. Mrs. Fisher, of Philadelphia, nee Middleton, gave them money to make the attempt to get home.

Stuart's cavalry have rushed through McClellan's lines and burned five of his transports. Jackson has been reenforced by 16,000 men, and they hope the enemy will be drawn from around Richmond, and the valley be the seat of war.

John Chesnut is in Whiting's brigade, which has been sent to Stonewall. Mem's son is with the Boykin Rangers; Company A, No. 1, we call it. And she has persistently wept ever since she heard the news. It is no child's play, she says, when you are with Stonewall. He doesn't play at soldiering. He doesn't take care of his men at all. He only goes to kill the Yankees.

Wade Hampton is here, shot in the foot, but he knows no more about France than he does of the man in the moon. Wet blanket he is just how. Johnston badly wounded. Lee is King of Spades. They are all once more digging for dear life. Unless we can reenforce Stonewall, the game is up. Our chiefs contrive to dampen and destroy the enthusiasm of all who go near them. So much entrenching and falling back destroys the morale of any army. This everlasting retreating, it kills the hearts of the men. Then we are scant of powder.

James Chesnut is awfully proud of Le Conte's powder manufactory here. Le Conte knows how to do it. James Chesnut provides him the means to carry out his plans.

Colonel Venable doesn't mince matters: “If we do not deal a blow, a blow that will be felt, it will be soon all up with us. The Southwest will be lost to us. We can not afford to shilly-shally much longer.”

Thousands are enlisting on the other side in New Orleans. Butler holds out inducements. To be sure, they are principally foreigners who want to escape starvation. Tennessee we may count on as gone, since we abandoned her at Corinth, Fort Pillow, and Memphis. A man must be sent there, or it is all gone now.

“You call a spade by that name, it seems, and not an agricultural implement?” “They call Mars Robert ‘Old Spade Lee.’ He keeps them digging so.” “General Lee is a noble Virginian. Respect something in this world. Caesar — call him Old Spade Caesar? As a soldier, he was as much above suspicion, as he required his wife to be, as Caesar's wife, you know. If I remember Caesar's Commentaries, he owns up to a lot of entrenching. You let Mars Robert alone. He knows what he is about.”

“Tell us of the women folk at New Orleans; how did they take the fall of the city?” “They are an excitable race,” the man from that city said. As my informant was standing on the levee a daintily dressed lady picked her way, parasol in hand, toward him. She accosted him with great politeness, and her face was as placid and unmoved as in antebellum days. Her first question was: “Will you be so kind as to tell me what is the last general order?” “No order that I know of, madam; General Disorder prevails now.” “Ah! I see; and why are those persons flying and yelling so noisily and racing in the streets in that unseemly way?” “They are looking for a shell to burst over their heads at any moment.” “Ah!” Then, with a courtesy of dignity and grace, she waved her parasol and departed, but stopped to arrange that parasol at a proper angle to protect her face from the sun. There was no vulgar haste in her movements. She tripped away as gracefully as she came. My informant had failed to discompose her by his fearful revelations. That was the one self-possessed soul then in New Orleans.

Another woman drew near, so overheated and out of breath, she had barely time to say she had run miles of squares in her crazy terror and bewilderment, when a sudden shower came up. In a second she was cool and calm. She forgot all the questions she came to ask. '”My bonnet, I must save it at any sacrifice,” she said, and so turned her dress over her head, and went off, forgetting her country's trouble and screaming for a cab.

Went to see Mrs. Burroughs at the old de Saussure house. She has such a sweet face, such soft, kind, beautiful, dark-gray eyes. Such eyes are a poem. No wonder she had a long love-story. We sat in the piazza at twelve o'clock of a June day, the glorious Southern sun shining its very hottest. But we were in a dense shade — magnolias in full bloom, ivy, vines of I know not what, and roses in profusion closed us in. It was a living wall of everything beautiful and sweet. In all this flower-garden of a Columbia, that is the most delicious corner I have been in yet.

Got from the Prestons' French library, Fanny, with a brilliant preface by Jules Janier. Now, then, I have come to the worst. There can be no worse book than Fanny. The lover is jealous of the husband. The woman is for the polyandry rule of life. She cheats both and refuses to break with either. But to criticize it one must be as shameless as the book itself. Of course, it is clever to the last degree, or it would be kicked into the gutter. It is not nastier or coarser than Mrs. Stowe, but then it is not written in the interests of philanthropy.

We had an unexpected dinner-party to-day. First, Wade Hampton came and his wife. Then Mr. and Mrs. Rose. I remember that the late Colonel Hampton once said to me, a thing I thought odd at the time, “Mrs. James Rose” (and I forget now who was the other) “are the only two people on this side of the water who know how to give a state dinner.” Mr. and Mrs. James Rose: if anybody wishes to describe old Carolina at its best, let them try their hands at painting these two people.

Wade Hampton still limps a little, but he is rapidly recovering. Here is what he said, and he has fought so well that he is listened to: “If we mean to play at war, as we play a game of chess, West Point tactics prevailing, we are sure to lose the game. They have every advantage. They can lose pawns ad infinitum, to the end of time and never feel it. We will be throwing away all that we had hoped so much from — Southern hot-headed dash, reckless gallantry, spirit of adventure, readiness to lead forlorn hopes.”

Mrs. Rose is Miss Sarah Parker's aunt. Somehow it came out when I was not in the room, but those girls tell me everything. It seems Miss Sarah said: “The reason I can not bear Mrs. Chesnut is that she laughs at everything and at everybody.” If she saw me now she would give me credit for some pretty hearty crying as well as laughing. It was a mortifying thing to hear about one's self, all the same.

General Preston came in and announced that Mr. Chesnut was in town. He had just seen Mr. Alfred Huger, who came up on the Charleston train with him. Then Mrs. McCord came and offered to take me back to Mrs. McMahan's to look him up. I found my room locked up. Lawrence said his master had gone to look for me at the Prestons'.

Mrs. McCord proposed we should further seek for my errant husband. At the door, we met Governor Pickens, who showed us telegrams from the President of the most important nature. The Governor added, “And I have one from Jeems Chesnut, but I hear he has followed it so closely, coming on its heels, as it were, that I need not show you that one.”

“You don't look interested at the sound of your husband's name?” said he. “Is that his name?” asked I. “I supposed it was James.” “My advice to you is to find him, for Mrs. Pickens says he was last seen in the company of two very handsome women, and now you may call him any name you please.”

We soon met. The two beautiful dames Governor Pickens threw in my teeth were some ladies from Rafton Creek, almost neighbors, who live near Camden.

By way of pleasant remark to Wade Hampton: “Oh, General! The next battle will give you a chance to be major-general.” “I was very foolish to give up my Legion,” he answered gloomily. “Promotion don't really annoy many people.” Mary Gibson says her father writes to them, that they may go back. He thinks now that the Confederates can hold Richmond. Gloria in excelsis!

Another personal defeat. Little Kate said: “Oh, Cousin Mary, why don't you cultivate heart? They say at Kirkwood that you had better let your brains alone a while and cultivate heart.” She had evidently caught up a phrase and repeated it again and again for my benefit. So that is the way they talk of me! The only good of loving any one with your whole heart is to give that person the power to hurt you.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 186-91