Diary of Margaret Junkin Preston: January 23, 1864

Wrote a letter which I mean to try to get through the lines to Julia. Weather mild and fine.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 176

Diary of Margaret Junkin Preston: January 27, 1864

Had the Ruffners, Cousin R. Taylor's family, Dr. Madison, Mr. Norton, and two or three others to tea this evening; the first company invited to tea, I believe, since the war began. Had an agreeable evening. Weather beautiful and mild as May.  . . . Had a pleasant ride on horseback with Mr. P. this evening.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 176

Diary of Margaret Junkin Preston: February 3, 1864

Have been making some notes for Dr. Dabney lately, relative to Jackson; find my eyes a great barrier in the way of my doing it properly.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 176

Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Wednesday, July 27, 1864

It is quite warm. Nothing of importance. One month ago today I was taken sick with the intermittent fever, at Kenesaw mountain.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 207

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Major Henry Lee Higginson, September 17, 1863

Centreville, Va., Sept. 28, 1863.

My Dear Henry, — I have heard from E. all sorts of pleasant tidings of you and ——. I did not, of course, expect to hear from you again, though I should like to hear from some one just how you are in body, and just when you expect to be in saddle again. I saw —— and ——, a few days ago, and heard rather bad accounts of you — something about inflammation. . . .

Did I tell you that I hoped to get a leave of absence sometime about November 1st, and meant therein to come home, — and that's not all, but meant also to be married? I don't believe I did tell you, for the plan, though inchoate, was not in shape to bear telling. Now I think it will; of course, I do not expect to get my leave, but I think I shall ask for it; Halleck is such a splendid old veteran that I expect he will refuse. I shall ask for twenty days, and shall try to be married in the first five (one of the first five, Henry; it only takes one day) and I want you to be married on one of the other five. E. and I would so much like to be at your wedding, old fellow.  . . . Of course, in these times, weddings are what they should be, quiet, simple, and sacred.  . . . My plan for the winter is headquarters at Fairfax Court House, with E. for Commander-in-Chief. She is not such a veteran as Halleck, but I think she can manage men better, in the field or anywhere else.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 307-8

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Tuesday, December 10, 1861

A little warm rain last night: cloudy and threatening rain in morning; turned off bright and clear. Had a good drill after evening parade. Moved into a good room in a pretty cottage house owned by J. H. Phillips, a drygoods dealer, who has left with the Rebels. His store was burned by McCook's men because he was a persecutor of Union men. Captain Sperry and Lieutenant Kennedy are my co-tenants. We shall take good care of the premises and try to leave them in as good condition as we find them.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 157

Brigadier-General John Sedgwick to his Sister, January 26, 1862

Washington, D. C., January 26, 1862.

My dear sister:

I am still in Washington, engaged on the court, but hope to conclude in the course of a few days.

Your letter of the 15th was received yesterday, having been detained in camp, waiting for me. I cannot give you much encouragement about coming home. I did not think I would have any difficulty in getting a few days when I was ready to go. The General is very pleasant, and I am sure would grant me a few days if he could without granting to hundreds of others that are constantly beseeching him. I have excellent health, weigh over two hundred — how much, I am ashamed to say. Everything forebodes an early move, but the roads will prevent any for a few days. Nothing has been heard of Burnside's expedition yet. It is supposed he has gone into Pamlico Sound, will capture Roanoke Island, take Newbern and then Goldsborough, and then down the coast to Beaufort. If he succeeds in all this, it will be a happy thing.

If this war is ever terminated I intend now to leave the service and live a quiet and, I hope, a happy life at my old home.

Ever your affectionate brother,

J. S.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, Volume 2, p. 36-7

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: September 1, 1861

The press and congressional critics are opening their batteries on the Secretary of War, for incompetency. He is not to blame. A month ago, Capt. Lee, son of the general, and a good engineer, was sent to the coast of North Carolina to inspect the defenses. His report was well executed; and the recommendations therein attended to with all possible expedition. It is now asserted that the garrison was deficient in ammunition. This was not the case. The position was simply not tenable under the fire of the U. S. ships of war.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 77

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: September 7, 1863

Major Edward Johnston did not get into the Confederacy until after the first battle of Manassas. For some cause, before he could evade that potentate, Seward rang his little bell and sent him to a prison in the harbor of New York. I forget whether he was exchanged or escaped of his own motion. The next thing I heard of my antebellum friend he had defeated Milroy in Western Virginia. There were so many Johnstons that for this victory they named him Alleghany Johnston.

He had an odd habit of falling into a state of incessant winking as soon as he became the least startled or agitated. In such times he seemed persistently to be winking one eye at you. He meant nothing by it, and in point of fact did not know himself that he was doing it. In Mexico he had been wounded in the eye, and the nerve vibrates independently of his will. During the winter of 1862 and 1863 he was on crutches. After a while he hobbled down Franklin Street with us, we proud to accommodate our pace to that of the wounded general. His ankle continued stiff; so when he sat down another chair had to be put before him. On this he stretched out his stiff leg, straight as a ramrod. At that time he was our only wounded knight, and the girls waited on him and made life pleasant for him.

One night I listened to two love-tales at once, in a distracted state of mind between the two. William Porcher Miles, in a perfectly modulated voice, in cadenced accents and low tones, was narrating the happy end of his affair. He had been engaged to sweet little Bettie Bierne, and I gave him my congratulations with all my heart. It was a capital match, suitable in every way, good for her, and good for him. I was deeply interested in Mr. Miles's story, but there was din and discord on the other hand; old Edward, our pet general, sat diagonally across the room with one leg straight out like a poker, wrapped in red carpet leggings, as red as a turkey-cock in the face. His head is strangely shaped, like a cone or an old-fashioned beehive; or, as Buck said, there are three tiers of it; it is like a pope's tiara.

There he sat, with a loud voice and a thousand winks, making love to Mary P. I make no excuse for listening. It was impossible not to hear him. I tried not to lose a word of Mr. Miles's idyl as the despair of the veteran was thundered into my other ear. I lent an ear to each conversationalist. Mary can not altogether control her voice, and her shrill screams of negation, “No, no, never,” etc., utterly failed to suppress her wounded lover's obstreperous asseverations of his undying affection for her.

Buck said afterward: “We heard every word of it on our side of the room, even when Mamie shrieked to him that he was talking too loud. Now, Mamie,” said we afterward, “do you think it was kind to tell him he was forty if he was a day?”

Strange to say, the pet general, Edward, rehabilitated his love in a day; at least two days after he was heard to say that he was “paying attentions now to his cousin, John Preston's second daughter; her name, Sally, but they called her Buck—Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston, a lovely girl.” And with her he now drove, rode, and hobbled on his crutches, sent her his photograph, and in due time cannonaded her, from the same spot where he had courted Mary, with proposals to marry him.

Buck was never so decided in her “Nos” as Mary. (“Not so loud, at least” — thus in amendment, says Buck, who always reads what I have written, and makes comments of assent or dissent.) So again he began to thunder in a woman's ears his tender passion. As they rode down Franklin Street, Buck says she knows the people on the sidewalk heard snatches of the conversation, though she rode as rapidly as she could, and she begged him not to talk so loud. Finally, they dashed up to our door as if they had been running a race. Unfortunate in love, but fortunate in war, our general is now winning new laurels with Ewell in the Valley or with the Army of the Potomac.

I think I have told how Miles, still “so gently o'er me leaning,” told of his successful love while General Edward Johnston roared unto anguish and disappointment over his failures. Mr. Miles spoke of sweet little Bettie Bierne as if she had been a French girl, just from a convent, kept far from the haunts of men wholly for him. One would think to hear him that Bettie had never cast those innocent blue eyes of hers on a man until he came along.

Now, since I first knew Miss Bierne in 1857, when Pat Calhoun was to the fore, she has been followed by a tale of men as long as a Highland chief's. Every summer at the Springs, their father appeared in the ballroom a little before twelve and chased the three beautiful Biernes home before him in spite of all entreaties, and he was said to frown away their too numerous admirers at all hours of the day.

This new engagement was confided to me as a profound secret. Of course, I did not mention it, even to my own household. Next day little Alston, Morgan's adjutant, and George Deas called. As Colonel Deas removed his gloves, he said: “Oh! the Miles and Bierne sensation — have you heard of it?” “No, what is the row about?” “They are engaged to be married; that's all.” “Who told you?” “Miles himself, as we walked down Franklin Street, this afternoon.” “And did he not beg you not to mention it, as Bettie did not wish it spoken of?” “God bless my soul, so he did. And I forgot that part entirely.”

Colonel Alston begged the stout Carolinian not to take his inadvertent breach of faith too much to heart. Miss Bettie's engagement had caused him a dreadful night. A young man, who was his intimate friend, came to his room in the depths of despair and handed him a letter from Miss Bierne, which was the cause of all his woe. Not knowing that she was already betrothed to Miles, he had proposed to her in an eloquent letter. In her reply, she positively stated that she was engaged to Mr. Miles, and instead of thanking her for putting him at once out of his misery, he considered the reason she gave as trebly aggravating the agony of the love-letter and the refusal. “Too late!” he yelled, “by Jingo!” So much for a secret.

Miss Bierne and I became fast friends. Our friendship was based on a mutual admiration for the honorable member from South Carolina. Colonel and Mrs. Myers and Colonel and Mrs. Chesnut were the only friends of Mr. Miles who were invited to the wedding. At the church door the sexton demanded our credentials. No one but those whose names he held in his hand were allowed to enter. Not twenty people were present — a mere handful grouped about the altar in that large church.

We were among the first to arrive. Then came a faint flutter and Mrs. Parkman (the bride's sister, swathed in weeds for her young husband, who had been killed within a year of her marriage) came rapidly up the aisle alone. She dropped upon her knees in the front pew, and there remained, motionless, during the whole ceremony, a mass of black crape, and a dead weight on my heart. She has had experience of war. A cannonade around Richmond interrupted her marriage service — a sinister omen — and in a year thereafter her bridegroom was stiff and stark — dead upon the field of battle.

While the wedding-march turned our thoughts from her and thrilled us with sympathy, the bride advanced in white satin and point d'Alençon. Mrs. Myers whispered that it was Mrs. Parkman's wedding-dress that the bride had on. She remembered the exquisite lace, and she shuddered with superstitious forebodings.

All had been going on delightfully in-doors, but a sharp shower cleared the church porch of the curious; and, as the water splashed, we wondered how we were to assemble ourselves at Mrs. McFarland's. All the horses in Richmond had been impressed for some sudden cavalry necessity a few days before. I ran between Mr. McFarland and Senator Semmes with my pretty Paris rose-colored silk turned over my head to save it, and when we arrived at the hospitable mansion of the McFarlands, Mr. McFarland took me straight into the drawing-room, man-like, forgetting that my ruffled plumes needed a good smoothing and preening.

Mrs. Lee sent for me. She was staying at Mrs. Caskie's. I was taken directly to her room, where she was lying on the bed. She said, before I had taken my seat: “You know there is a fight going on now at Brandy Station?”¹ “Yes, we are anxious. John Chesnut's company is there, too.” She spoke sadly, but quietly. “My son, Roony, is wounded; his brother has gone for him. They will soon be here and we shall know all about it unless Roony's wife takes him to her grandfather. Poor lame mother, I am useless to my children.” Mrs. Caskie said: “You need not be alarmed. The General said in his telegram that it was not a severe wound. You know even Yankees believe General Lee.”

That day, Mrs. Lee gave me a likeness of the General in a photograph taken soon after the Mexican War. She likes it so much better than the later ones. He certainly was a handsome man then, handsomer even than now. I shall prize it for Mrs. Lee's sake, too. She said old Mrs. Chesnut and her aunt, Nellie Custis (Mrs. Lewis) were very intimate during Washington's Administration in Philadelphia. I told her Mrs. Chesnut, senior, was the historical member of our family; she had so much to tell of Revolutionary times. She was one of the “white-robed choir” of little maidens who scattered flowers before Washington at Trenton Bridge, which everybody who writes a life of Washington asks her to give an account of.

Mrs. Ould and Mrs. Davis came home with me. Lawrence had a basket of delicious cherries. “If there were only some ice,” said I. Respectfully Lawrence answered, and also firmly: “Give me money and you shall have ice.” By the underground telegraph he had heard of an ice-house over the river, though its fame was suppressed by certain Sybarites, as they wanted it all. In a wonderfully short time we had mint-juleps and sherry-cobblers.

Altogether it has been a pleasant day, and as I sat alone I was laughing lightly now and then at the memory of some funny story. Suddenly, a violent ring; and a regular sheaf of telegrams were handed me. I could not have drawn away in more consternation if the sheets had been a nest of rattlesnakes. First, Frank Hampton was killed at Brandy Station. Wade Hampton telegraphed Mr. Chesnut to see Robert Barnwell, and make the necessary arrangements to recover the body. Mr. Chesnut is still at Wilmington. I sent for Preston Johnston, and my neighbor, Colonel Patton, offered to see that everything proper was done. That afternoon I walked out alone. Willie Mountford had shown me where the body, all that was left of Frank Hampton, was to be laid in the Capitol. Mrs. Petticola joined me after a while, and then Mrs. Singleton.

Preston Hampton and Peter Trezevant, with myself and Mrs. Singleton, formed the sad procession which followed the coffin. There was a company of soldiers drawn up in front of the State House porch. Mrs. Singleton said we had better go in and look at him before the coffin was finally closed. How I wish I had not looked. I remember him so well in all the pride of his magnificent manhood. He died of a saber-cut across the face and head, and was utterly disfigured. Mrs. Singleton seemed convulsed with grief. In all my life I had never seen such bitter weeping. She had her own troubles, but I did not know of them. We sat for a long time on the great steps of the State House. Everybody had gone and we were alone.

We talked of it all — how we had gone to Charleston to see Rachel in Adrienne Lecouvreur, and how, as I stood waiting in the passage near the drawing-room, I had met Frank Hampton bringing his beautiful bride from the steamer. They had just landed. Afterward at Mrs. Singleton's place in the country we had all spent a delightful week together. And now, only a few years have passed, but nearly all that pleasant company are dead, and our world, the only world we cared for, literally kicked to pieces. And she cried, “We are two lone women, stranded here.” Rev. Robert Barnwell was in a desperate condition, and Mary Barnwell, her daughter, was expecting her confinement every day.

Here now, later, let me add that it was not until I got back to Carolina that I heard of Robert Barnwell's death, with scarcely a day's interval between it and that of Mary and her new-born baby. Husband, wife, and child were buried at the same time in the same grave in Columbia. And now, Mrs. Singleton has three orphan grandchildren. What a woful year it has been to her.

Robert Barnwell had insisted upon being sent to the hospital at Staunton. On account of his wife's situation the doctor also had advised it. He was carried off on a mattress. His brave wife tried to prevent it, and said: “It is only fever.” And she nursed him to the last. She tried to say goodby cheerfully, and called after him: “As soon as my trouble is over I will come to you at Staunton.” At the hospital they said it was typhoid fever. He died the second day after he got there. Poor Mary fainted when she heard the ambulance drive away with him. Then she crept into a low trundle-bed kept for the children in her mother's room. She never left that bed again. When the message came from Staunton that fever was the matter with Robert and nothing more, Mrs. Singleton says she will never forget the expression in Mary's eyes as she turned and looked at her. “Robert will get well,” she said, “it is all right.” Her face was radiant, blazing with light. That night the baby was born, and Mrs. Singleton got a telegram that Robert was dead. She did not tell Mary, standing, as she did, at the window while she read it. She was at the same time looking for Robert's body, which might come any moment. As for Mary's life being in danger, she had never thought of such a thing. She was thinking only of Robert. Then a servant touched her and said: “Look at Mrs. Barnwell.” She ran to the bedside, and the doctor, who had come in, said, “It is all over; she is dead.” Not in anger, not in wrath, came the angel of death that day. He came to set Mary free from a world grown too hard to bear.

During Stoneman's raid² I burned some personal papers. Molly constantly said to me, “Missis, listen to de guns. Burn up everything. Mrs. Lyons says they are sure to come, and they'll put in their newspapers whatever you write here, every day.” The guns did sound very near, and when Mrs. Davis rode up and told me that if Mr. Davis left Richmond I must go with her, I confess I lost my head. So I burned a part of my journal but rewrote it afterward from memory — my implacable enemy that lets me forget none of the things I would. I am weak with dates. I do not always worry to look at the calendar and write them down. Besides I have not always a calendar at hand.

_______________

1 The battle of Brandy Station, Va., occurred June 9, 1863.

2 George S. Stoneman, a graduate of West Point, was now a Major-General, and Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac. His raid toward Richmond in 1863 was a memorable incident of the war. After the war, he became Governor of California.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 232-9

Diary of Mary Brockenbrough Newton: June 18, 1862

Our guard in full force to-day. It is so absurd to see the great fellows on their horses, armed from head to foot, with their faces turned towards us, standing at our yard-gate, guarding women and children, occasionally riding about on the gravel-walks, plucking roses, with which they decorate their horses' heads. A poor woman came to-day in a buggy, in pursuit of corn. She had been robbed by the enemy of every grain. This is the case with many others, particularly with soldiers' wives. I asked an officer to-day, what had become of General Stuart? He said he was a “smart fellow,” and he “guessed” he had returned to Richmond, but he “ought to have paid a visit to his father-in-law, General Cooke, commanding the United States cavalry not many miles distant.”

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 145

Diary of Margaret Junkin Preston: January 1, 1864

New Year's Day, 1864: How times flies! though his wings are heavy. Had hardly gotten used to '63, when here is '64 upon me. A bright beautiful day, after ten days' rain and snow.  . . . Roads and streets terribly muddy; scarcely attempt going out. Most of the servants back again. Excessively cold.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 176

Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Tuesday, July 26, 1864

It is very warm. Still lying on my old cot. The hospital is one of the hardest places that I have found since I have been in the service; but when a soldier gets sick, he has to go there so that he can be taken care of. I have been in the United States service three years now, and this is the first time for me in the hospital. I hope that it may be the last time.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 207

In The Review Queue: Confederate Cavalryman Versus Union Cavalryman, Eastern Theater 1861-65

Confederate Cavalryman Versus Union

Cavalryman: Eastern Theater 1861-65

by Ron Field, Illustrated by Peter Dennis

This gripping study offers key insights into the tactics, leadership, combat performance, and subsequent reputations of Union and Confederate mounted units fighting in three pivotal cavalry actions of the Civil War - Second Bull Run/Manassas (1862), Buckland Mills (1863), and Tom's Brook (1864). During the intense, sprawling conflict that was the Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces fielded substantial numbers of cavalry, which carried out the crucial tasks of reconnaissance, raiding, and conveying messages. The perception was that cavalry's effectiveness on the battlefield would be drastically reduced in this age of improved mass infantry firepower. This book demonstrates how cavalry's lethal combination of mobility and dismounted firepower meant it was still very much a force to be reckoned with in battle. It also charts the swing in the qualitative difference of the cavalry forces fielded by the two sides as the war progressed, as the enormous initial superiority enjoyed by Confederate cavalry was gradually eroded, through the Union's outstanding improvements in training and tactics, and the bold and enterprising leadership of men such as Philip Sheridan.

Featuring full-color artwork, specially drawn maps, and archive illustrations.

About the Author

Ron Field is an internationally acknowledged expert on U.S. military history. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1982, he taught History at Piedmont High School in California from 1982 to 1983, and was then Head of History at the Cotswold School in Bourton-on-the-Water, UK, until his retirement in 2007. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, based in Washington, DC, and was awarded its Emerson Writing Award in 2013. The author lives in Gloucestershire, UK.

ISBN 978-1472807311, Osprey Publishing, © 2015, Paperback, 80 pages, Photographs, Maps & Illustrations, Orders of Battle, Select Bibliography, Index. $18.95.  To purchase a copy of this book click HERE.

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to John M. Forbes, September 17, 1863

Centreville, Sept. 17, '63.

Stanton is entirely right on the black prisoner question, and I think will yet keep the President straight: Governor Andrew had a conversation on the subject with the President and does not think him so shaky as William Russel found him. I believe Mr. Lincoln has a way of stating to himself and to others, as strongly as may be, the arguments against the course he really has in his mind to adopt — many women are made so.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 306

Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes to Lucy Webb Hayes, Sunday, December 8, 1861

Camp Union, December 8, 1861.

Dearest: — It is Sunday — inspection day. Visited all quarters and hospital. All in improving condition. Tell Dr. Joe we have had five bright warm lovely days and a fair prospect for as many more. Roads improving; telegraph wire here, and will be in working order tomorrow or day after.

Have the daily Commercial mailed to me here from the office for one month. If it comes as often as twice a week, I will renew the subscription, otherwise not.

A trunk full of nice doings, socks, mittens, small looking-glasses, needle doings, etc., etc., came up from Gauley among our baggage. Nothing to show who from or who to. I assumed that it was an instalment from Cleveland for the Twenty-third and Dr. McCurdy disposes of it accordingly. . . .

I am feeling anxious about you. Write often all about yourself. Love to the dear boys and all. Ever so much for yourself.

Affectionately,

R.

Mrs. Hayes.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 157

Brigadier-General John Sedgwick to his Sister, January 15, 1862

Alexandria, Virginia,

January 15, 1862.

My dear sister:

General Burnside has sailed with his expedition, but to what point is still unknown to the many. When the expedition was first started the intention was to have it operate with the army here on the Potomac; but it has since been increased to three times the size it was originally intended to be. The general impression seems to be that it is to land to operate against Norfolk, or near by on the North Carolina coast. We shall probably know before you receive this. Did I ever tell you that Mr. Heine, Kate Sedgwick's husband, is close by? He is a Captain of volunteers, and attached to the staff of General Heintzelman as topographical engineer. I see him quite frequently. He is a very pleasant and agreeable gentleman. The weather is such now, and has been for several days past, that no move could be made, if one was in contemplation. Several inches of snow on the ground, and still raining and sleeting. I can only guess for myself that no great move will be made from here till the army in front is partly broken by the expeditions already sent or that are to sail. It is too hazardous to undertake to move such large bodies of comparatively undisciplined men against almost equal numbers in a fortified position. Another Bull Run, and Washington is gone. They are doing nothing in Congress except scrambling after contracts, and other things of less importance.

I mean to come home for a few days, and as soon as I can, but General McClellan does not want to allow any one to go. Answer immediately.

Your affectionate brother,

J. S.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General, Volume 2, p. 35-6

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 29, 1861

We have intelligence from the North that immense preparations are being made for our destruction; and some of our people begin to say, that inasmuch as we did not follow up the victory at Manassas, it was worse than a barren one, having only exasperated the enemy, and stimulated the Abolitionists to renewed efforts. I suppose these critics would have us forbear to injure the invader, for fear of maddening him. They are making this war; we must make it terrible. With them war is a new thing, and they will not cease from it till the novelty wears off, and all their fighting men are sated with blood and bullets. It must run its course, like the measles. We must both bleed them and deplete their pockets.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 76

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 30, 1861

Gen. Floyd has had a fight in the West, and defeated an Ohio regiment. I trust they were of the Puritan stock, and not the descendants of Virginians.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 76

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 31, 1861

We have bad news to-day. My wife and children are the bearers of it. They returned to the city with the tidings that all the women and children were ordered to leave Newbern. The enemy have attacked and taken Fort Hatteras, making many prisoners, and threaten Newbern next. This is the second time my family have been compelled to fly. But they are well.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 76

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: August 10, 1863

RICHMOND, Va. — To-day I had a letter from my sister, who wrote to inquire about her old playmate, friend, and lover, Boykin McCaa. It is nearly twenty years since each was married; each now has children nearly grown. “To tell the truth,” she writes, “in these last dreadful years, with David in Florida, where I can not often hear from him, and everything dismal, anxious, and disquieting, I had almost forgotten Boykin's existence, but he came here last night; he stood by my bedside and spoke to me kindly and affectionately, as if we had just parted. I said, holding out my hand, ‘Boykin, you are very pale.’ He answered, ‘I have come to tell you goodby,’ and then seized both my hands. His own hands were as cold and hard as ice; they froze the marrow of my bones. I screamed again and again until my whole household came rushing in, and then came the negroes from the yard, all wakened by my piercing shrieks. This may have been a dream, but it haunts me.

'”Some one sent me an old paper with an account of his wounds and his recovery, but I know he is dead.” “Stop!” said my husband at this point, and then he read from that day's Examiner these words: “Captain Burwell Boykin McCaa found dead upon the battle-field leading a cavalry charge at the head of his company. He was shot through the head.”

The famous colonel of the Fourth Texas, by name John Bell Hood,¹ is here — him we call Sam, because his classmates at West Point did so — for what cause is not known. John Darby asked if he might bring his hero to us; bragged of him extensively; said he had won his three stars, etc., under Stonewall's eye, and that he was promoted by Stonewall's request. When Hood came with his sad Quixote face, the face of an old Crusader, who believed in his cause, his cross, and his crown, we were not prepared for such a man as a beau-ideal of the wild Texans. He is tall, thin, and shy; has blue eyes and light hair; a tawny beard, and a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of his face, the whole appearance that of awkward strength. Some one said that his great reserve of manner he carried only into the society of ladies. Major Venable added that he had often heard of the light of battle shining in a man's eyes. He had seen it once — when he carried to Hood orders from Lee, and found in the hottest of the fight that the man was transfigured. The fierce light of Hood's eyes I can never forget.

Hood came to ask us to a picnic next day at Drury's Bluff.² The naval heroes were to receive us and then we were to drive out to the Texan camp. We accused John Darby of having instigated this unlooked-for festivity. We were to have bands of music and dances, with turkeys, chickens, and buffalo tongues to eat. Next morning, just as my foot was on the carriage-step, the girls standing behind ready to follow me with Johnny and the Infant Samuel (Captain Shannon by proper name), up rode John Darby in red-hot haste, threw his bridle to one of the men who was holding the horses, and came toward us rapidly, clanking his cavalry spurs with a despairing sound as he cried: “Stop! it's all up. We are ordered back to the Rappahannock. The brigade is marching through Richmond now.” So we unpacked and unloaded, dismissed the hacks and sat down with a sigh.

“Suppose we go and see them pass the turnpike,” some one said. The suggestion was hailed with delight, and off we marched. Johnny and the Infant were in citizens' clothes, and the Straggler — as Hood calls John Darby, since the Prestons have been in Richmond — was all plaided and plumed in his surgeon's array. He never bated an inch of bullion or a feather; he was courting and he stalked ahead with Mary Preston, Buck, and Johnny. The Infant and myself, both stout and scant of breath, lagged last. They called back to us, as the Infant came toddling along, “Hurry up or we will leave you.”

At the turnpike we stood on the sidewalk and saw ten thousand men march by. We had seen nothing like this before. Hitherto we had seen only regiments marching spick and span in their fresh, smart clothes, just from home and on their way to the army. Such rags and tags as we saw now. Nothing was like anything else. Most garments and arms were such as had been taken from the enemy. Such shoes as they had on. “Oh, our brave boys!” moaned Buck. Such tin pans and pots as were tied to their waists, with bread or bacon stuck on the ends of their bayonets. Anything that could be spiked was bayoneted and held aloft.

They did not seem to mind their shabby condition; they laughed, shouted, and cheered as they marched by. Not a disrespectful or light word was spoken, but they went for the men who were huddled behind us, and who seemed to be trying to make themselves as small as possible in order to escape observation.

Hood and his staff finally came galloping up, dismounted, and joined us. Mary Preston gave him a bouquet. Thereupon he unwrapped a Bible, which he carried in his pocket. He said his mother had given it to him. He pressed a flower in it. Mary Preston suggested that he had not worn or used it at all, being fresh, new, and beautifully kept. Every word of this the Texans heard as they marched by, almost touching us. They laughed and joked and made their own rough comments.

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¹ Hood was a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point.

² Drury's Bluff lies eight miles south of Richmond on the James River. Here, on May 16, 1864, the Confederates under Beauregard repulsed the Federals under Butler.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 229-32