February 24th.– Congress and the newspapers render one desperate, ready to cut one’s own throat. They represent everything in our country as deplorable. Then comes some one back from our gay and gallant army at the front. The spirit of our army keeps us up after all. Letters from the army revive one. They come [...]
February 23d.–While Mr. Chesnut was in town I was at the Prestons. John Cochran and some other prisoners had asked to walk over the grounds, visit the Hampton Gardens, and some friends in Columbia. After the dreadful state of the public mind at the escape of one of the prisoners, General Preston was obliged to [...]
February 22d.–What a beautiful day for our Confederate President to be inaugurated! God speed him; God keep him; God save him! John Chesnut’s letter was quite what we needed. In spirit it is all that one could ask. He says, “Our late reverses are acting finely with the army of the Potomac. A few more [...]
February 21st.–A crowd collected here last night and there was a serenade. I am like Mrs. Nickleby, who never saw a horse coming full speed but she thought the Cheerybles had sent post-haste to take Nicholas into co-partnership. So I got up and dressed, late as it was. I felt sure England had sought our [...]
COLUMBIA, S. C, February 20, 1862.–Had an appetite for my dainty breakfast. Always breakfast in bed now. But then, my Mercury contained such bad news. That is an appetizing style of matutinal newspaper. Fort Donelson ¹ has fallen, but no men fell with it. It is prisoners for them that we can not spare, or [...]
September 19th.–A painful piece of news came to us yesterday–our cousin, Mrs. Witherspoon, of Society Hill, was found dead in her bed. She was quite well the night before. Killed, people say, by family sorrows. She was a proud and high-strung woman. Nothing shabby in word, thought, or deed ever came nigh her. She was [...]
CAMDEN, S. C, September 9, 1861.–Home again at Mulberry, the fever in full possession of me. My sister, Kate, is my ideal woman, the most agreeable person I know in the world, with her soft, low, and sweet voice, her graceful, gracious ways, and her glorious gray eyes, that I looked into so often as [...]
September 2d.–Mr. Miles says he is not going anywhere at all, not even home. He is to sit here permanently–chairman of a committee to overhaul camps, commissariats, etc., etc. We exchanged our ideas of Mr. Mason, in which we agreed perfectly. In the first place, he has a noble presence–really a handsome man; is a [...]
September 1st.–North Carolina writes for arms for her soldiers. Have we any to send? No. Brewster, the plainspoken, says, “The President is ill, and our affairs are in the hands of noodles. All the generals away with the army; nobody here; General Lee in Western Virginia. Reading the third Psalm. The devil is sick, the [...]
August 31st.–Congress adjourns to-day. Jeff Davis ill. We go home on Monday if I am able to travel. Already I feel the dread stillness and torpor of our Sahara of a Sand Hill creeping into my veins. It chills the marrow of my bones. I am reveling in the noise of city life. I know [...]
August 29th.–No more feminine gossip, but the licensed slanderer, the mighty Russell, of the Times. He says the battle of the 21st was fought at long range: 500 yards apart were the combatants. The Confederates were steadily retreating when some commotion in the wagon train frightened the “Yanks,” and they made tracks. In good English, [...]
August 27th.–Theodore Barker and James Lowndes came; the latter has been wretchedly treated. A man said, “All that I wish on earth is to be at peace and on my own plantation,” to which Mr. Lowndes replied quietly, “I wish I had a plantation to be on, but just now I can’t see how any [...]
August 26th.–The Terror has full swing at the North now. All the papers favorable to us have been suppressed. How long would our mob stand a Yankee paper here? But newspapers against our government, such as the Examiner and the Mercury flourish like green bay-trees. A man up to the elbows in finance said to-day: [...]
August 25th.–Mr. Barnwell says democracies lead to untruthfulness. To be always electioneering is to be always false; so both we and the Yankees are unreliable as regards our own exploits. “How about empires? Were there ever more stupendous lies than the Emperor Napoleon’s?” Mr. Barnwell went on: “People dare not tell the truth in a [...]
August 24th.–Daniel, of The Examiner, was at the President’s. Wilmot de Saussure wondered if a fellow did not feel a little queer, paying his respects in person at the house of a man whom he abused daily in his newspaper. A fiasco: an aide engaged to two young ladies in the same house. The ladies [...]
August 23d.–A brother of Doctor Garnett has come fresh and straight from Cambridge, Mass., and says (or is said to have said, with all the difference there is between the two), that “recruiting up there is dead.” He came by Cincinnati and Pittsburg and says all the way through it was so sad, mournful, and [...]
August 18th.–Found it quite exciting to have a spy drinking his tea with us–perhaps because I knew his profession. I did not like his face. He is said to have a scheme by which Washington will fall into our hands like an overripe peach. Mr. Barnwell urges Mr. Chesnut to remain in the Senate. There [...]
August 17th.–Captain Shannon, of the Kirkwood Rangers, called and stayed three hours. Has not been under fire yet, but is keen to see or to hear the flashing of the guns; proud of himself, proud of his company, but proudest of all that he has no end of the bluest blood of the low country [...]
August 16th.–Mr. Barnwell says, Fame is an article usually home made; you must create your own puffs or superintend their manufacture. And you must see that the newspapers print your own military reports. No one else will give you half the credit you take to yourself. No one will look after your fine name before [...]
August 15th.–Mrs. Randolph came. With her were the Freelands, Rose and Maria. The men rave over Mrs. Randolph’s beauty; called her a magnificent specimen of the finest type of dark-eyed, rich, and glowing Southern woman-kind. Clear brunette she is, with the reddest lips, the whitest teeth, and glorious eyes; there is no other word for [...]
August 14th.–Last night there was a crowd of men to see us and they were so markedly critical. I made a futile effort to record their sayings, but sleep and heat overcame me. To-day I can not remember a word. One of Mr. Mason’s stories relates to our sources of trustworthy information. A man of [...]
August 13th.–Hon. Robert Barnwell says, “The Mercury’s influence began this opposition to Jeff Davis before he had time to do wrong. They were offended, not with him so much as with the man who was put into what they considered Barnwell Rhett’s rightful place. The latter had howled nullification and secession so long that when [...]
August 8th.–To-day I saw a sword captured at Manassas. The man who brought the sword, in the early part of the fray, was taken prisoner by the Yankees. They stripped him, possessed themselves of his sleeve-buttons, and were in the act of depriving him of his boots when the rout began and the play was [...]
Tuesday.–The North requires 600,000 men to invade us. Truly we are a formidable power! The Herald says it is useless to move with a man less than that. England has made it all up with them, or rather, she will not break with them. Jerome Napoleon is in Washington and not our friend. Doctor Gibbes [...]
August 5th.–A heavy, heavy heart. Another missive from Jordan, querulous and fault-finding; things are all wrong–Beauregard’s Jordan had been crossed, not the stream “in Canaan’s fair and happy land, where our possessions lie.” They seem to feel that the war is over here, except the President and Mr. Barnwell; above all that foreboding friend of [...]