September 15th.—I am glad I did not beg to go with father and the girls. Old Point Comfort is a most interesting place. Fortress Monroe, with its moat is not like anything I ever saw before, the general commanding is an old friend of Grandpa’s and he lets us look over the fort and see so many things. The officers’ quarters are inside the fort, the men are drilled nearby and they have a splendid band.
We are stopping at the Hygeia Hotel, the ball-room is very large and every night the band plays and the enormous room is filled with dancers. There are no children here, so we do not dance but sit quietly by Mother and Grandma and look on.
Professor DeBow, of DeBow’s Review is here. Grandpa says he is a very brilliant man. Last night at supper-table the conversation turned on abolitionism. The people here do not avoid it as we do in Florida. Professor DeBow said, “The entire North is saturated with this unfortunate ‘ism; here and there you find a nugget of pure gold, which cannot be contaminated but they are few. I see in the future, as an outgrowth of this movement a disregard for the sanctity of the marriage relation, a setting aside of the command to honor thy father and thy mother” while the Golden Rule sinks into oblivion. Even the field of Poesy is invaded by this spirit, a late poem from the pen of one of the North’s favorite poets reads like this:
‘Dusky daughters of a down-trod race,’ etc.
“Take my word for it, there is trouble ahead—God grant that our united efforts may avert it.”
I have tried to write this word for word just as the great man spoke it.
Susan Bradford was 11 years old when this 1857 entry was made. The Bradford family has been in North Carolina for the summer. While Susan’s father and several other family members have gone to New York City, Niagra, and Saratoga, Susan, her mother and grandmother visit a resort at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. There they meet J. D. B. De Bow of De Bow’s Review.
Diary entries from before 1860 are included when the content is relevant to the issues that led to or framed the American Civil War. — MpG 5/22/2020