A sister of Mrs. Lincoln is here. She brings the freshest scandals from Yankeeland. She says she rode with Lovejoy. A friend of hers commands a black regiment. Two Southern horrors—a black regiment and Lovejoy.

March 31st.—Met Preston Hampton. Constance Cary was with me. She showed her regard for him by taking his overcoat and leaving him in a drenching rain. What boyish nonsense he talked; said he was in love with Miss Dabney now, that his love was so hot within him that he was waterproof, the rain sizzed and smoked off. It did not so much as dampen his ardor or his clothes.

April 1st.—Mrs. Davis is utterly depressed. She said the fall of Richmond must come; she would send her children to me and Mrs. Preston. We begged her to come to us also. My husband is as depressed as I ever knew him to be. He has felt the death of that angel mother of his keenly, and now he takes his country’s woes to heart.

April 11th.—Drove with Mrs. Davis and all her infant family; wonderfully clever and precocious children, with unbroken wills. At one time there was a sudden uprising of the nursery contingent. They laughed, fought, and screamed. Bedlam broke loose. Mrs. Davis scolded, laughed, and cried. She asked me if my husband would speak to the President about the plan in South Carolina, which everybody said suited him. “No, Mrs. Davis,” said I. “That is what I told Mr. Davis,” said she. “Colonel Chesnut rides so high a horse. Now Browne is so much more practical. He goes forth to be general of conscripts in Georgia. His wife will stay at the Cobbs’s.”

Mrs. Ould gave me a luncheon on Saturday. I felt that this was my last sad farewell to Richmond and the people there I love so well. Mrs. Davis sent her carriage for me, and we went to the Oulds’ together. Such good things were served—oranges, guava jelly, etc. The Examiner says Mr. Ould, when he goes to Fortress Monroe, replenishes his larder; why not? The Examiner has taken another fling at the President, as, “haughty and austere with his friends, affable, kind, subservient to his enemies.” I wonder if the Yankees would indorse that certificate. Both sides abuse him. He can not please anybody, it seems. No doubt he is right.

My husband is now brigadier-general and is sent to South Carolina to organize and take command of the reserve troops. C. C. Clay and L. Q. C. Lamar are both spoken of to fill the vacancy made among Mr. Davis’s aides by this promotion.

To-day, Captain Smith Lee spent the morning here and gave a review of past Washington gossip. I am having such a busy, happy life, with so many friends, and my friends are so clever, so charming. But the change to that weary, dreary Camden! Mary Preston said: “I do think Mrs. Chesnut deserves to be canonized; she agrees to go back to Camden.” The Prestons gave me a farewell dinner; my twenty-fourth wedding day, and the very pleasantest day I have spent in Richmond.

Maria Lewis was sitting with us on Mrs. Huger’s steps, and Smith Lee was lauding Virginia people as usual. As Lee would say, there “hove in sight” Frank Parker, riding one of the finest of General Bragg’s horses; by his side Buck on Fairfax, the most beautiful horse in Richmond, his brown coat looking like satin, his proud neck arched, moving slowly, gracefully, calmly, no fidgets, aristocratic in his bearing to the tips of his bridle-reins. There sat Buck tall and fair, managing her horse with infinite ease, her English riding-habit showing plainly the exquisite proportions of her figure. “Supremely lovely,” said Smith Lee. “Look at them both,” said I proudly; “can you match those two in Virginia?” “Three cheers for South Carolina!” was the answer of Lee, the gallant Virginia sailor.

XVII
CAMDEN, S. C.
May 8, 1864-June 1, 1864

Camden, S. C., May 8, 1864.—My friends crowded around me so in those last days in Richmond, I forgot the affairs of this nation utterly; though I did show faith in my Confederate country by buying poor Bones’s (my English maid’s) Confederate bonds. I gave her gold thimbles, bracelets; whatever was gold and would sell in New York or London, I gave.

My friends in Richmond grieved that I had to leave them—not half so much, however, as I did that I must come away. Those last weeks were so pleasant. No battle, no murder, no sudden death, all went merry as a marriage bell. Clever, cordial, kind, brave friends rallied around me.

Maggie Howell and I went down the river to see an exchange of prisoners. Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan, Mrs. Ould. We picked up Judge Ould and Buck Allan at Curl’s Neck. I had seen no genuine Yankees before; prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or Irish. Among our men coming ashore was an officer, who had charge of some letters for a friend of mine whose fiancé had died; I gave him her address. One other man showed me some wonderfully ingenious things he had made while a prisoner. One said they gave him rations for a week; he always devoured them in three days, he could not help it; and then he had to bear the inevitable agony of those four remaining days! Many were wounded, some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. We had supper—or some nondescript meal—with ice-cream on board. The band played Home, Sweet Home.

One man tapped another on the shoulder: “Well, how do you feel, old fellow?” “Never was so near crying in my life—for very comfort.”

Governor Cummings, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah, was among the returned prisoners. He had been in prison two years. His wife was with him. He was a striking-looking person, huge in size, and with snow-white hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee barbarity or starvation about him.

That evening, as we walked up to Mrs. Davis’s carriage, which was waiting for us at the landing, Dr. Garnett with Maggie Howell, Major Hall with me, suddenly I heard her scream, and some one stepped back in the dark and said in a whisper. “Little Joe! he has killed himself!” I felt reeling, faint, bewildered. A chattering woman clutched my arm: “Mrs. Davis’s son? Impossible. Whom did you say? Was he an interesting child? How old was he?” The shock was terrible, and unnerved as I was I cried, “For God’s sake take her away!”

Then Maggie and I drove two long miles in silence except for Maggie’s hysterical sobs. She was wild with terror. The news was broken to her in that abrupt way at the carriage door so that at first she thought it had all happened there, and that poor little Joe was in the carriage.

Mr. Burton Harrison met us at the door of the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Semmes and Mrs. Barksdale were there, too. Every window and door of the house seemed wide open, and the wind was blowing the curtains. It was lighted, even in the third story. As I sat in the drawing-room, I could hear the tramp of Mr. Davis’s step as he walked up and down the room above. Not another sound. The whole house as silent as death. It was then twelve o’clock; so I went home and waked General Chesnut, who had gone to bed. We went immediately back to the President’s, found Mrs. Semmes still there, but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the family ought to be in the house.

Mrs. Semmes said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by his brother, and he called out to her in great distress: “Mrs. Semmes, I have said all the prayers I know how, but God will not wake Joe.”

Poor little Joe, the good child of the family, was so gentle and affectionate. He used to run in to say his prayers at his father’s knee. Now he was laid out somewhere above us, crushed and killed. Mrs. Semmes, describing the accident, said he fell from the high north piazza upon a brick pavement. Before I left the house I saw him lying there, white and beautiful as an angel, covered with flowers; Catherine, his nurse, flat on the floor by his side, was weeping and wailing as only an Irishwoman can.

Immense crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic, but some shoving and pushing rudely. There were thousands of children, and each child had a green bough or a bunch of flowers to throw on little Joe’s grave, which was already a mass of white flowers, crosses, and evergreens. The morning I came away from Mrs. Davis’s, early as it was, I met a little child with a handful of snow drops. “Put these on little Joe,” she said; “I knew him so well,” and then she turned and fled without another word. I did not know who she was then or now.

As I walked home I met Mr. Reagan, then Wade Hampton. But I could see nothing but little Joe and his broken-hearted mother. And Mr. Davis’s step still sounded in my ears as he walked that floor the livelong night.

General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond. Great numbers of people were to go up by rail to see it. Miss Turner McFarland writes: “They did go, but they came back faster than they went. They found the army drawn up in battle array.” Many of the brave and gay spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight, the only flight they know, and their bodies are left dead upon the battle-field. Poor old Edward Johnston is wounded again, and a prisoner. Jones’s brigade broke first; he was wounded the day before.

At Wilmington we met General Whiting. He sent us to the station in his carriage, and bestowed upon us a bottle of brandy, which had run the blockade. They say Beauregard has taken his sword from Whiting. Never! I will not believe it. At the capture of Fort Sumter they said Whiting was the brains, Beauregard only the hand. Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou fallen! That they should even say such a thing!

My husband and Mr. Covey got out at Florence to procure for Mrs. Miles a cup of coffee. They were slow about it and they got left. I did not mind this so very much, for I remembered that we were to remain all day at Kingsville, and that my husband could overtake me there by the next train. My maid belonged to the Prestons. She was only traveling home with me, and would go straight on to Columbia. So without fear I stepped off at Kingsville. My old Confederate silk, like most Confederate dresses, had seen better days, and I noticed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous “one-hoss shay,” it had gone to pieces suddenly, and all over. It was literally in strips. I became painfully aware of my forlorn aspect when I asked the telegraph man the way to the hotel, and he was by no means respectful to me. I was, indeed, alone—an old and not too respectable-looking woman. It was my first appearance in the character, and I laughed aloud.

A very haughty and highly painted dame greeted me at the hotel. “No room,” said she. “Who are you?” I gave my name. “Try something else,” said she. “Mrs. Chesnut don’t travel round by herself with no servants and no nothing.” I looked down. There I was, dirty, tired, tattered, and torn. “Where do you come from?” said she. “My home is in Camden.” “Come, now, I know everybody in Camden.” I sat down meekly on a bench in the piazza, that was free to all wayfarers.

“Which Mrs. Chesnut?” said she (sharply). “I know both.” “I am now the only one. And now what is the matter with you? Do you take me for a spy? I know you perfectly well. I went to school with you at Miss Henrietta de Leon’s, and my name was Mary Miller.” “The Lord sakes alive! and to think you are her! Now I see. Dear! dear me! Heaven sakes, woman, but you are broke!” “And tore,” I added, holding up my dress. “But I had had no idea it was so difficult to effect an entry into a railroad wayside hotel.” I picked up a long strip of my old black dress, torn off by a man’s spur as I passed him getting off the train.

It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chesnut, who was the good genius of the place. It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest—the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here—with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter.

Inside, are creature comforts of all kinds—green peas, strawberries, asparagus, spring lamb, spring chicken, fresh eggs, rich, yellow butter, clean white linen for one’s beds, dazzling white damask for one’s table. It is such a contrast to Richmond, where I wish I were.

Fighting is going on. Hampton is frantic, for his laggard new regiments fall in slowly; no fault of the soldiers; they are as disgusted as he is. Bragg, Bragg, the head of the War Office, can not organize in time.

John Boykin has died in a Yankee prison. He had on a heavy flannel shirt when lying in an open platform car on the way to a cold prison on the lakes. A Federal soldier wanted John’s shirt. Prisoners have no rights; so John had to strip off and hand his shirt to him. That caused his death. In two days he was dead of pneumonia—may be frozen to death. One man said: “They are taking us there to freeze.” But then their men will find our hot sun in August and July as deadly as our men find their cold Decembers. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they say. Napoleon’s soldiers found out all that in the Russian campaign.

Have brought my houseless, homeless friends, refugees here, to luxuriate in Mulberry’s plenty. I can but remember the lavish kindness of the Virginia people when I was there and in a similar condition. The Virginia people do the rarest acts of hospitality and never seem to know it is not in the ordinary course of events.

The President’s man, Stephen, bringing his master’s Arabian to Mulberry for safe-keeping, said: “Why, Missis, your niggers down here are well off. I call this Mulberry place heaven, with plenty to eat, little to do, warm house to sleep in, a good church.”

John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment. The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering. The Secretary of War authorizes General Chesnut to reorganize the men who have been hitherto detailed for special duty, and also those who have been exempt. He says General Chesnut originated the plan and organized the corps of clerks which saved Richmond in the Dahlgren raid.

May 27th.—In all this beautiful sunshine, in the stillness and shade of these long hours on this piazza, all comes back to me about little Joe; it haunts me—that scene in Richmond where all seemed confusion, madness, a bad dream! Here I see that funeral procession as it wound among those tall white monuments, up that hillside, the James River tumbling about below over rocks and around islands; the dominant figure, that poor, old, gray-haired man, standing bareheaded, straight as an arrow, clear against the sky by the open grave of his son. She, the bereft mother, stood back, in her heavy black wrappings, and her tall figure drooped. The flowers, the children, the procession as it moved, comes and goes, but those two dark, sorrow-stricken figures stand; they are before me now!

That night, with no sound but the heavy tramp of his feet overhead, the curtains flapping in the wind, the gas flaring, I was numb, stupid, half-dead with grief and terror. Then came Catherine’s Irish howl. Cheap, was that. Where was she when it all happened? Her place was to have been with the child. Who saw him fall? Whom will they kill next of that devoted household?

Read to-day the list of killed and wounded.[115] One long column was not enough for South Carolina’s dead. I see Mr. Federal Secretary Stanton says he can reenforce Suwarrow Grant at his leisure whenever he calls for more. He has just sent him 25,000 veterans. Old Lincoln says, in his quaint backwoods way, “Keep a-peggin’.” Now we can only peg out. What have we left of men, etc., to meet these “reenforcements as often as reenforcements are called for?” Our fighting men have all gone to the front; only old men and little boys are at home now.

It is impossible to sleep here, because it is so solemn and still. The moonlight shines in my window sad and white, and the soft south wind, literally comes over a bank of violets, lilacs, roses, with orange-blossoms and magnolia flowers.

Mrs. Chesnut was only a year younger than her husband. He is ninety-two or three. She was deaf; but he retains his senses wonderfully for his great age. I have always been an early riser. Formerly I often saw him sauntering slowly down the broad passage from his room to hers, in a flowing flannel dressing-gown when it was winter. In the spring he was apt to be in shirt-sleeves, with suspenders hanging down his back. He had always a large hair-brush in his hand.

He would take his stand on the rug before the fire in her room, brushing scant locks which were fleecy white. Her maid would be doing hers, which were dead-leaf brown, not a white hair in her head. He had the voice of a stentor, and there he stood roaring his morning compliments. The people who occupied the room above said he fairly shook the window glasses. This pleasant morning greeting ceremony was never omitted.

Her voice was “soft and low” (the oft-quoted). Philadelphia seems to have lost the art of sending forth such voices now. Mrs. Binney, old Mrs. Chesnut’s sister, came among us with the same softly modulated, womanly, musical voice. Her clever and beautiful daughters were criard. Judge Han said: “Philadelphia women scream like macaws.” This morning as I passed Mrs. Chesnut’s room, the door stood wide open, and I heard a pitiful sound. The old man was kneeling by her empty bedside sobbing bitterly. I fled down the middle walk, anywhere out of reach of what was never meant for me to hear.

June 1st.—We have been to Bloomsbury again and hear that William Kirkland has been wounded. A scene occurred then, Mary weeping bitterly and Aunt B. frantic as to Tanny’s danger. I proposed to make arrangements for Mary to go on at once. The Judge took me aside, frowning angrily. “You are unwise to talk in that way. She can neither take her infant nor leave it. The cars are closed by order of the government to all but soldiers.”

I told him of the woman who, when the conductor said she could not go, cried at the top of her voice, “Soldiers, I want to go to Richmond to nurse my wounded husband.” In a moment twenty men made themselves her body-guard, and she went on unmolested. The Judge said I talked nonsense. I said I would go on in my carriage if need be. Besides, there would be no difficulty in getting Mary a “permit.”

He answered hotly that in no case would he let her go, and that I had better not go back into the house. We were on the piazza and my carriage at the door. I took it and crossed over to see Mary Boykin. She was weeping, too, so washed away with tears one would hardly know her. “So many killed. My son and my husband—I do not hear a word from them.”

Gave to-day for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, and sixty pounds of sugar, $800.

Beauregard is a gentleman and was a genius as long as Whiting did his engineering for him. Our Creole general is not quite so clever as he thinks himself.

Mary Ford writes for school-books for her boys. She is in great distress on the subject. When Longstreet’s corps passed through Greenville there was great enthusiasm; handkerchiefs were waved, bouquets and flowers were thrown the troops; her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw their school-books.

XVIII
COLUMBIA, S. C.
July 6, 1864-January 17, 1865

Columbia, S, C., July 6, 1864.—At the Prestons’ Mary was laughing at Mrs. Lyons’s complaint—the person from whom we rented rooms in Richmond. She spoke of Molly and Lawrence’s deceitfulness. They went about the house quiet as mice while we were at home; or Lawrence sat at the door and sprang to his feet whenever we passed. But when we were out, they sang, laughed, shouted, and danced. If any of the Lyons family passed him, Lawrence kept his seat, with his hat on, too. Mrs. Chesnut had said: “Oh!” so meekly to the whole tirade, and added, “I will see about it.”

Colonel Urquhart and Edmund Rhett dined here; charming men both—no brag, no detraction. Talk is never pleasant where there is either. Our noble Georgian dined here. He says Hampton was the hero of the Yankee rout at Stony Creek.[116] He claims that citizens, militia, and lame soldiers kept the bridge at Staunton and gallantly repulsed Wilson’s raiders.

At Mrs. S.’s last night. She came up, saying, “In New Orleans four people never met together without dancing.” Edmund Rhett turned to me: “You shall be pressed into service.” “No, I belong to the reserve corps—too old to volunteer or to be drafted as a conscript.” But I had to go.

My partner in the dance showed his English descent; he took his pleasure sadly. “Oh, Mr. Rhett, at his pleasure, can be a most agreeable companion!” said someone. “I never happened to meet him,” said I, “when he pleased to be otherwise.” With a hot, draggled, old alpaca dress, and those clod-hopping shoes, to tumble slowly and gracefully through the mazes of a July dance was too much for me. “What depresses you so?” he anxiously inquired. “Our carnival of death.” What a blunder to bring us all together here!—a reunion of consumptives to dance and sing until one can almost hear the death-rattle!

July 25th.—Now we are in a cottage rented from Doctor Chisolm. Hood is a full general. Johnston[117] has been removed and superseded. Early is threatening Washington City. Semmes, of whom we have been so proud, risked the Alabama in a sort of duel of ships. He has lowered the flag of the famous Alabama to the Kearsarge.[118] Forgive who may! I can not. We moved into this house on the 20th of July. My husband was telegraphed to go to Charleston. General Jones sent for him. A part of his command is on the coast.

The girls were at my house. Everything was in the utmost confusion. We were lying on a pile of mattresses in one of the front rooms while the servants were reducing things to order in the rear. All the papers are down on the President for this change of commanders except the Georgia papers. Indeed, Governor Brown’s constant complaints, I dare say, caused it—these and the rage of the Georgia people as Johnston backed down on them.

Isabella soon came. She said she saw the Preston sisters pass her house, and as they turned the corner there was a loud and bitter cry. It seemed to come from the Hampton house. Both girls began to run at full speed. “What is the matter?” asked Mrs. Martin. “Mother, listen; that sounded like the cry of a broken heart,” said Isabella; “something has gone terribly wrong at the Prestons’.”

Mrs. Martin is deaf, however, so she heard nothing and thought Isabella fanciful. Isabella hurried over there, and learned that they had come to tell Mrs. Preston that Willie was killed—Willie! his mother’s darling. No country ever had a braver soldier, a truer gentleman, to lay down his life in her cause.

July 26th.—Isabella went with me to the bulletin-board. Mrs. D. (with the white linen as usual pasted on her chin) asked me to read aloud what was there written. As I slowly read on, I heard a suppressed giggle from Isabella. I know her way of laughing at everything, and tried to enunciate more distinctly—to read more slowly, and louder, with more precision. As I finished and turned round, I found myself closely packed in by a crowd of Confederate soldiers eager to hear the news. They took off their caps, thanked me for reading all that was on the boards, and made way for me, cap in hand, as I hastily returned to the carriage, which was waiting for us. Isabella proposed, “Call out to them to give three cheers for Jeff Davis and his generals.” “You forget, my child, that we are on our way to a funeral.”

Found my new house already open hospitably to all comers. My husband had arrived. He was seated at a pine table, on which someone had put a coarse, red table-cover, and by the light of one tallow candle was affably entertaining Edward Barnwell, Isaac Hayne, and Uncle Hamilton. He had given them no tea, however. After I had remedied that oversight, we adjourned to the moonlighted piazza. By tallow-candle-light and the light of the moon, we made out that wonderful smile of Teddy’s, which identifies him as Gerald Grey.

We have laughed so at broken hearts—the broken hearts of the foolish love stories. But Buck, now, is breaking her heart for her brother Willie. Hearts do break in silence, without a word or a sigh. Mrs. Means and Mary Barnwell made no moan—simply turned their faces to the wall and died. How many more that we know nothing of!

When I remember all the true-hearted, the light-hearted, the gay and gallant boys who have come laughing, singing, and dancing in my way in the three years now past; how I have looked into their brave young eyes and helped them as I could in every way and then saw them no more forever; how they lie stark and cold, dead upon the battle-field, or moldering away in hospitals or prisons, which is worse—I think if I consider the long array of those bright youths and loyal men who have gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break, too. Is anything worth it—this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we pay for war?

Allen G. says Johnston was a failure. Now he will wait and see what Hood can do before he pronounces judgment on him. He liked his address to his army. It was grand and inspiring, but every one knows a general has not time to write these things himself. Mr. Kelly, from New Orleans, says Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith have quarreled. One would think we had a big enough quarrel on hand for one while already. The Yankees are enough and to spare. General Lovell says, “Joe Brown, with his Georgians at his back, who importuned our government to remove Joe Johnston, they are scared now, and wish they had not.”

In our democratic Republic, if one rises to be its head, whomever he displeases takes a Turkish revenge and defiles the tombs of his father and mother; hints that his father was a horse-thief and his mother no better than she should be; his sisters barmaids and worse, his brothers Yankee turncoats and traitors. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff Davis indiscriminately.

August 2d.—Sherman again. Artillery parked and a line of battle formed before Atlanta. When we asked Brewster what Sam meant to do at Atlanta he answered, “Oh—oh, like the man who went, he says he means to stay there!” Hope he may, that’s all.

Spent to-day with Mrs. McCord at her hospital. She is dedicating her grief for her son, sanctifying it, one might say, by giving up her soul and body, her days and nights, to the wounded soldiers at her hospital. Every moment of her time is surrendered to their needs.

To-day General Taliaferro dined with us. He served with Hood at the second battle of Manassas and at Fredericksburg, where Hood won his major-general’s spurs. On the battle-field, Hood, he said, “has military inspiration.” We were thankful for that word. All now depends on that army at Atlanta. If that fails us, the game is up.

August 3d.—Yesterday was such a lucky day for my housekeeping in our hired house. Oh, ye kind Columbia folk! Mrs. Alex Taylor, née Hayne, sent me a huge bowl of yellow butter and a basket to match of every vegetable in season. Mrs. Preston’s man came with mushrooms freshly cut and Mrs. Tom Taylor’s with fine melons.

Sent Smith and Johnson (my house servant and a carpenter from home, respectively) to the Commissary’s with our wagon for supplies. They made a mistake, so they said, and went to the depot instead, and stayed there all day. I needed a servant sadly in many ways all day long, but I hope Smith and Johnson had a good time. I did not lose patience until Harriet came in an omnibus because I had neither servants nor horse to send to the station for her.

Stephen Elliott is wounded, and his wife and father have gone to him. Six hundred of his men were destroyed in a mine; and part of his brigade taken prisoners: Stoneman and his raiders have been captured. This last fact gives a slightly different hue to our horizon of unmitigated misery.

General L—— told us of an unpleasant scene at the President’s last winter. He called there to see Mrs. McLean. Mrs. Davis was in the room and he did not speak to her. He did not intend to be rude; it was merely an oversight. And so he called again and tried to apologize, to remedy his blunder, but the President was inexorable, and would not receive his overtures of peace and good-will. General L—— is a New York man. Talk of the savagery of slavery, heavens! How perfect are our men’s manners down here, how suave, how polished are they. Fancy one of them forgetting to speak to Mrs. Davis in her own drawing-room.

August 6th.—Archer came, a classmate of my husband’s at Princeton; they called him Sally Archer then, he was so girlish and pretty. No trace of feminine beauty about this grim soldier now. He has a hard face, black-bearded and sallow, with the saddest black eyes. His hands are small, white, and well-shaped; his manners quiet. He is abstracted and weary-looking, his mind and body having been deadened by long imprisonment. He seemed glad to be here, and James Chesnut was charmed. “Dear Sally Archer,” he calls him cheerily, and the other responds in a far-off, faded kind of way.

Hood and Archer were given the two Texas regiments at the beginning of the war. They were colonels and Wigfall was their general. Archer’s comments on Hood are: “He does not compare intellectually with General Johnston, who is decidedly a man of culture and literary attainments, with much experience in military matters. Hood, however, has youth and energy to help counterbalance all this. He has a simple-minded directness of purpose always. He is awfully shy, and he has suffered terribly, but then he has had consolations—such a rapid rise in his profession, and then his luck to be engaged to the beautiful Miss ——.”

They tried Archer again and again on the heated controversy of the day, but he stuck to his text. Joe Johnston is a fine military critic, a capital writer, an accomplished soldier, as brave as Cæsar in his own person, but cautious to a fault in manipulating an army. Hood has all the dash and fire of a reckless young soldier, and his Texans would follow him to the death. Too much caution might be followed easily by too much headlong rush. That is where the swing-back of the pendulum might ruin us.

August 10th.—To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops are ordered to look after the mountain passes beyond Greenville on the North Carolina and Tennessee quarter.

Misery upon misery. Mobile[119] is going as New Orleans went. Those Western men have not held their towns as we held and hold Charleston, or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a “frill-shirt, silk-stocking chivalry,” or “a set of dandy Miss Nancys.” They fight desperately in their bloody street brawls, but we bear privation and discipline best.

August 14th.—We have conflicting testimony. Young Wade Hampton, of Joe Johnston’s staff, says Hood lost 12,000 men in the battles of the 22d[120] and 24th, but Brewster, of Hood’s staff, says not three thousand at the utmost. Now here are two people strictly truthful, who tell things so differently. In this war people see the same things so oddly one does not know what to believe.

Brewster says when he was in Richmond Mr. Davis said Johnston would have to be removed and Sherman blocked. He could not make Hardee full general because, when he had command of an army he was always importuning the War Department for a general-in-chief to be sent there over him. Polk would not do, brave soldier and patriot as he was. He was a good soldier, and would do his best for his country, and do his duty under whomever was put over him by those in authority. Mr. Davis did not once intimate to him who it was that he intended to promote to the head of the Western Army.

Brewster said to-day that this “blow at Joe Johnston, cutting off his head, ruins the schemes of the enemies of the government. Wigfall asked me to go at once, and get Hood to decline to take this command, for it will destroy him if he accepts it. He will have to fight under Jeff Davis’s orders; no one can do that now and not lose caste in the Western Army. Joe Johnston does not exactly say that Jeff Davis betrays his plans to the enemy, but he says he dares not let the President know his plans, as there is a spy in the War Office who invariably warns the Yankees in time. Consulting the government on military movements is played out. That’s Wigfall’s way of talking. Now,” added Brewster, “I blame the President for keeping a man at the head of his armies who treats the government with open scorn and contumely, no matter how the people at large rate this disrespectful general.”

August 19th.—Began my regular attendance on the Wayside Hospital. To-day we gave wounded men, as they stopped for an hour at the station, their breakfast. Those who are able to come to the table do so. The badly wounded remain in wards prepared for them, where their wounds are dressed by nurses and surgeons, and we take bread and butter, beef, ham, and hot coffee to them.

One man had hair as long as a woman’s, the result of a vow, he said. He had pledged himself not to cut his hair until peace was declared and our Southern country free. Four made this vow together. All were dead but himself. One was killed in Missouri, one in Virginia, and he left one at Kennesaw Mountain. This poor creature had had one arm taken off at the socket. When I remarked that he was utterly disabled and ought not to remain in the army, he answered quietly, “I am of the First Texas. If old Hood can go with one foot, I can go with one arm, eh?”

How they quarreled and wrangled among themselves—Alabama and Mississippi, all were loud for Joe Johnston, save and except the long-haired, one-armed hero, who cried at the top of his voice: “Oh! you all want to be kept in trenches and to go on retreating, eh?” “Oh, if we had had a leader, such as Stonewall, this war would have been over long ago! What we want is a leader!” shouted a cripple.

They were awfully smashed-up, objects of misery, wounded, maimed, diseased. I was really upset, and came home ill. This kind of thing unnerves me quite.

Letters from the army. Grant’s dogged stay about Richmond is very disgusting and depressing to the spirits. Wade Hampton has been put in command of the Southern cavalry.

A Wayside incident. A pine box, covered with flowers, was carefully put upon the train by some gentlemen. Isabella asked whose remains were in the box. Dr. Gibbes replied: “In that box lies the body of a young man whose family antedates the Bourbons of France. He was the last Count de Choiseul, and he has died for the South.” Let his memory be held in perpetual remembrance by all who love the South!

August 22d.—Hope I may never know a raid except from hearsay. Mrs. Huger describes the one at Athens. The proudest and most timid of women were running madly in the streets, corsets in one hand, stockings in the other—déshabillé as far as it will go. Mobile is half taken. The railroad between us and Richmond has been tapped.

Notes from a letter written by a young lady who is riding a high horse. Her fiancé, a maimed hero, has been abused. “You say to me with a sneer, ‘So you love that man.’ Yes, I do, and I thank God that I love better than all the world the man who is to be my husband. ‘Proud of him, are you?’ Yes, I am, in exact proportion to my love. You say, ‘I am selfish.’ Yes, I am selfish. He is my second self, so utterly absorbed am I in him. There is not a moment, day or night, that I do not think of him. In point of fact, I do not think of anything else.” No reply was deemed necessary by the astounded recipient of this outburst of indignation, who showed me the letter and continued to observe: “Did you ever? She seems so shy, so timid, so cold.”

Sunday Isabella took us to a chapel, Methodist, of course; her father had a hand in building it. It was not clean, but it was crowded, hot, and stuffy. An eloquent man preached with a delightful voice and wonderful fluency; nearly eloquent, and at times nearly ridiculous. He described a scene during one of his sermons when “beautiful young faces were turned up to me, radiant faces though bathed in tears, moral rainbows of emotion playing over them,” etc.

He then described his own conversion, and stripped himself naked morally. All that is very revolting to one’s innate sense of decency. He tackled the patriarchs. Adam, Noah, and so on down to Joseph, who was “a man whose modesty and purity were so transcendent they enabled him to resist the greatest temptation to which fallen man is exposed.” “Fiddlesticks! that is played out!” my neighbor whispered. “Everybody gives up now that old Mrs. Pharaoh was forty.” “Mrs. Potiphar, you goose, and she was fifty!” “That solves the riddle.” “Sh-sh!” from the devout Isabella.

At home met General Preston on the piazza. He was vastly entertaining. Gave us Darwin, Herodotus, and Livy. We understood him and were delighted, but we did not know enough to be sure when it was his own wisdom or when wise saws and cheering words came from the authors of whom he spoke.

August 23d.—All in a muddle, and yet the news, confused as it is, seems good from all quarters. There is a row in New Orleans. Memphis[121] has been retaken; 2,000 prisoners have been captured at Petersburg, and a Yankee raid on Macon has come to grief.

At Mrs. Izard’s met a clever Mrs. Calhoun. Mrs. Calhoun is a violent partizan of Dick Taylor; says Taylor does the work and Kirby Smith gets the credit for it. Mrs. Calhoun described the behavior of some acquaintance of theirs at Shreveport, one of that kind whose faith removes mountains. Her love for and confidence in the Confederate army were supreme. Why not? She knew so many of the men who composed that dauntless band. When her husband told her New Orleans had surrendered to a foe whom she despised, she did not believe a word of it. He told her to “pack up his traps, as it was time for him to leave Shreveport.” She then determined to run down to the levee and see for herself, only to find the Yankee gunboats having it all their own way. She made a painful exhibition of herself. First, she fell on her knees and prayed; then she got up and danced with rage; then she raved and dashed herself on the ground in a fit. There was patriotism run mad for you! As I did not know the poor soul, Mrs. Calhoun’s fine acting was somewhat lost on me, but the others enjoyed it.

Old Edward Johnston has been sent to Atlanta against his will, and Archer has been made major-general and, contrary to his earnest request, ordered not to his beloved Texans but to the Army of the Potomac.

Mr. C. F. Hampton deplores the untimely end of McPherson.[122] He was so kind to Mr. Hampton at Vicksburg last winter, and drank General Hampton’s health then and there. Mr. Hampton has asked Brewster, if the report of his death prove a mistake, and General McPherson is a prisoner, that every kindness and attention be shown to him. General McPherson said at his own table at Vicksburg that General Hampton was the ablest general on our side.

Grant can hold his own as well as Sherman. Lee has a heavy handful in the new Suwarrow. He has worse odds than any one else, for when Grant has ten thousand slain, he has only to order another ten thousand, and they are there, ready to step out to the front. They are like the leaves of Vallambrosa.

August 29th.—I take my hospital duty in the morning. Most persons prefer afternoon, but I dislike to give up my pleasant evenings. So I get up at five o’clock and go down in my carriage all laden with provisions. Mrs. Fisher and old Mr. Bryan generally go with me. Provisions are commonly sent by people to Mrs. Fisher’s. I am so glad to be a hospital nurse once more. I had excuses enough, but at heart I felt a coward and a skulker. I think I know how men feel who hire a substitute and shirk the fight. There must be no dodging of duty. It will not do now to send provisions and pay for nurses. Something inside of me kept calling out, “Go, you shabby creature; you can’t bear to see what those fine fellows have to bear.”

Mrs. Izard was staying with me last night, and as I slipped away I begged Molly to keep everything dead still and not let Mrs. Izard be disturbed until I got home. About ten I drove up and there was a row to wake the dead. Molly’s eldest daughter, who nurses her baby sister, let the baby fall, and, regardless of Mrs. Izard, as I was away, Molly was giving the nurse a switching in the yard, accompanied by howls and yells worthy of a Comanche! The small nurse welcomed my advent, no doubt, for in two seconds peace was restored. Mrs. Izard said she sympathized with the baby’s mother; so I forgave the uproar.

I have excellent servants; no matter for their shortcomings behind my back. They save me all thought as to household matters, and they are so kind, attentive, and quiet. They must know what is at hand if Sherman is not hindered from coming here—“Freedom! my masters!” But these sphinxes give no sign, unless it be increased diligence and absolute silence, as certain in their action and as noiseless as a law of nature, at any rate when we are in the house.

That fearful hospital haunts me all day long, and is worse at night. So much suffering, such loathsome wounds, such distortion, with stumps of limbs not half cured, exhibited to all. Then, when I was so tired yesterday, Molly was looking more like an enraged lioness than anything else, roaring that her baby’s neck was broken, and howling cries of vengeance. The poor little careless nurse’s dark face had an ashen tinge of gray terror. She was crouching near the ground like an animal trying to hide, and her mother striking at her as she rolled away. All this was my welcome as I entered the gate. It takes these half-Africans but a moment to go back to their naked savage animal nature. Mrs. Izard is a charming person. She tried so to make me forget it all and rest.

September 2d.—The battle has been raging at Atlanta,[123] and our fate hanging in the balance. Atlanta, indeed, is gone. Well, that agony is over. Like David, when the child was dead, I will get up from my knees, will wash my face and comb my hair. No hope; we will try to have no fear.

At the Prestons’ I found them drawn up in line of battle every moment looking for the Doctor on his way to Richmond. Now, to drown thought, for our day is done, read Dumas’s Maîtres d’Armes. Russia ought to sympathize with us. We are not as barbarous as this, even if Mrs. Stowe’s word be taken. Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world. See Russell’s India—Bull Run Russell’s. They say General Morgan has been killed. We are hard as stones; we sit unmoved and hear any bad news chance may bring. Are we stupefied?

September 19th.—My pink silk dress I have sold for $600, to be paid for in instalments, two hundred a month for three months. And I sell my eggs and butter from home for two hundred dollars a month. Does it not sound well—four hundred dollars a month regularly. But in what? In Confederate money. Hélas!

September 21st.—Went with Mrs. Rhett to hear Dr. Palmer. I did not know before how utterly hopeless was our situation. This man is so eloquent, it was hard to listen and not give way. Despair was his word, and martyrdom. He offered us nothing more in this world than the martyr’s crown. He is not for slavery, he says; he is for freedom, and the freedom to govern our own country as we see fit. He is against foreign interference in our State matters. That is what Mr. Palmer went to war for, it appears. Every day shows that slavery is doomed the world over; for that he thanked God. He spoke of our agony, and then came the cry, “Help us, O God! Vain is the help of man.” And so we came away shaken to the depths.

The end has come. No doubt of the fact. Our army has so moved as to uncover Macon and Augusta. We are going to be wiped off the face of the earth. What is there to prevent Sherman taking General Lee in the rear? We have but two armies, and Sherman is between them now.[124]

September 24th.—These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like blows upon a dead body. Since Atlanta fell I have felt as if all were dead within me forever. Captain Ogden, of General Chesnut’s staff, dined here to-day. Had ever brigadier, with little or no brigade, so magnificent a staff? The reserves, as somebody said, have been secured only by robbing the cradle and the grave—the men too old, the boys too young. Isaac Hayne, Edward Barnwell, Bacon, Ogden, Richardson, Miles are the picked men of the agreeable world.

October 1st.—Mary Cantey Preston’s wedding day has come and gone and Mary is Mrs. John Darby now. Maggie Howell dressed the bride’s hair beautifully, they said, but it was all covered by her veil, which was of blond-lace, and the dress tulle and blond-lace, with diamonds and pearls. The bride walked up the aisle on her father’s arm, Mrs. Preston on Dr. Darby’s. I think it was the handsomest wedding party I ever saw. John Darby[125] had brought his wedding uniform home with him from England, and it did all honor to his perfect figure. I forget the name of his London tailor—the best, of course! “Well,” said Isabella, “it would be hard for any man to live up to those clothes.”

And now, to the amazement of us all, Captain Chesnut (Johnny) who knows everything, has rushed into a flirtation with Buck such as never was. He drives her every day, and those wild, runaway, sorrel colts terrify my soul as they go tearing, pitching, and darting from side to side of the street. And my lady enjoys it. When he leaves her, he kisses her hand, bowing so low to do it unseen that we see it all.

Saturday.—The President will be with us here in Columbia next Tuesday, so Colonel McLean brings us word. I have begun at once to prepare to receive him in my small house. His apartments have been decorated as well as Confederate stringency would permit. The possibilities were not great, but I did what I could for our honored chief; besides I like the man—he has been so kind to me, and his wife is one of the few to whom I can never be grateful enough for her generous appreciation and attention.

I went out to the gate to greet the President, who met me most cordially; kissed me, in fact. Custis Lee and Governor Lubbock were at his back.

Immediately after breakfast (the Presidential party arrived a little before daylight) General Chesnut drove off with the President’s aides, and Mr. Davis sat out on our piazza. There was nobody with him but myself. Some little boys strolling by called out, “Come here and look; there is a man on Mrs. Chesnut’s porch who looks just like Jeff Davis on postage-stamps.” People began to gather at once on the street. Mr. Davis then went in.

Mrs. McCord sent a magnificent bouquet—I thought, of course, for the President; but she gave me such a scolding afterward. She did not know he was there; I, in my mistake about the bouquet, thought she knew, and so did not send her word.

The President was watching me prepare a mint julep for Custis Lee when Colonel McLean came to inform us that a great crowd had gathered and that they were coming to ask the President to speak to them at one o’clock. An immense crowd it was—men, women, and children. The crowd overflowed the house, the President’s hand was nearly shaken off. I went to the rear, my head intent on the dinner to be prepared for him, with only a Confederate commissariat. But the patriotic public had come to the rescue. I had been gathering what I could of eatables for a month, and now I found that nearly everybody in Columbia was sending me whatever they had that they thought nice enough for the President’s dinner. We had the sixty-year-old Madeira from Mulberry, and the beautiful old china, etc. Mrs. Preston sent a boned turkey stuffed with truffles, stuffed tomatoes, and stuffed peppers. Each made a dish as pretty as it was appetizing.

A mob of small boys only came to pay their respects to the President. He seemed to know how to meet that odd delegation.

Then the President’s party had to go, and we bade them an affectionate farewell. Custis Lee and I had spent much time gossiping on the back porch. While I was concocting dainties for the dessert, he sat on the banister with a cigar in his mouth. He spoke very candidly, telling me many a hard truth for the Confederacy, and about the bad time which was at hand.

October 18th.—Ten pleasant days I owe to my sister. Kate has descended upon me unexpectedly from the mountains of Flat Rock. We are true sisters; she understands me without words, and she is the cleverest, sweetest woman I know, so graceful and gracious in manner, so good and unselfish in character, but, best of all, she is so agreeable. Any time or place would be charming with Kate for a companion. General Chesnut was in Camden; but I could not wait. I gave the beautiful bride, Mrs. Darby, a dinner, which was simply perfection. I was satisfied for once in my life with my own table, and I know pleasanter guests were never seated around any table whatsoever.

My house is always crowded. After all, what a number of pleasant people we have been thrown in with by war’s catastrophes. I call such society glorious. It is the wind-up, but the old life as it begins to die will die royally. General Chesnut came back disheartened. He complains that such a life as I lead gives him no time to think.

October 28th.—Burton Harrison writes to General Preston that supreme anxiety reigns in Richmond.

Oh, for one single port! If the Alabama had had in the whole wide world a port to take her prizes to and where she could be refitted, I believe she would have borne us through. Oh, for one single port by which we could get at the outside world and refit our whole Confederacy! If we could have hired regiments from Europe, or even have imported ammunition and food for our soldiers!

“Some days must be dark and dreary.” At the mantua-maker’s, however, I saw an instance of faith in our future: a bride’s paraphernalia, and the radiant bride herself, the bridegroom expectant and elect now within twenty miles of Chattanooga and outward bound to face the foe.

Saw at the Laurens’s not only Lizzie Hamilton, a perfect little beauty, but the very table the first Declaration of Independence was written upon. These Laurenses are grandchildren of Henry Laurens, of the first Revolution. Alas! we have yet to make good our second declaration of independence—Southern independence—from Yankee meddling and Yankee rule. Hood has written to ask them to send General Chesnut out to command one of his brigades. In whose place?

If Albert Sidney Johnston had lived! Poor old General Lee has no backing. Stonewall would have saved us from Antietam. Sherman will now catch General Lee by the rear, while Grant holds him by the head, and while Hood and Thomas are performing an Indian war-dance on the frontier. Hood means to cut his way to Lee; see if he doesn’t. The “Yanks” have had a struggle for it. More than once we seemed to have been too much for them. We have been so near to success it aches one to think of it. So runs the table-talk.

Next to our house, which Isabella calls “Tillytudlem,” since Mr. Davis’s visit, is a common of green grass and very level, beyond which comes a belt of pine-trees. On this open space, within forty paces of us, a regiment of foreign deserters has camped. They have taken the oath of allegiance to our government, and are now being drilled and disciplined into form before being sent to our army. They are mostly Germans, with some Irish, however. Their close proximity keeps me miserable. Traitors once, traitors forever.

Jordan has always been held responsible for all the foolish proclamations, and, indeed, for whatever Beauregard reported or proclaimed. Now he has left that mighty chief, and, lo, here comes from Beauregard the silliest and most boastful of his military bulletins. He brags of Shiloh; that was not the way the story was told to us.

A letter from Mrs. Davis, who says: “Thank you, a thousand times, my dear friend, for your more than maternal kindness to my dear child.” That is what she calls her sister, Maggie Howell. “As to Mr. Davis, he thinks the best ham, the best Madeira, the best coffee, the best hostess in the world, rendered Columbia delightful to him when he passed through. We are in a sad and anxious state here just now. The dead come in; but the living do not go out so fast. However, we hope all things and trust in God as the only one able to resolve the opposite state of feeling into a triumphant, happy whole. I had a surprise of an unusually gratifying nature a few days since. I found I could not keep my horses, so I sold them. The next day they were returned to me with a handsome anonymous note to the effect that they had been bought by a few friends for me. But I fear I can not feed them. Strictly between us, things look very anxious here.”

November 6th.—Sally Hampton went to Richmond with the Rev. Mr. Martin. She arrived there on Wednesday. On Thursday her father, Wade Hampton, fought a great battle, but just did not win it—a victory narrowly missed. Darkness supervened and impenetrable woods prevented that longed-for consummation. Preston Hampton rode recklessly into the hottest fire. His father sent his brother, Wade, to bring him back. Wade saw him reel in the saddle and galloped up to him, General Hampton following. As young Wade reached him, Preston fell from his horse, and the one brother, stooping to raise the other, was himself shot down. Preston recognized his father, but died without speaking a word. Young Wade, though wounded, held his brother’s head up. Tom Taylor and others hurried up. The General took his dead son in his arms, kissed him, and handed his body to Tom Taylor and his friends, bade them take care of Wade, and then rode back to his post. At the head of his troops in the thickest of the fray he directed the fight for the rest of the day. Until night he did not know young Wade’s fate; that boy might be dead, too! Now, he says, no son of his must be in his command. When Wade recovers, he must join some other division. The agony of such a day, and the anxiety and the duties of the battle-field—it is all more than a mere man can bear.

Another letter from Mrs. Davis. She says: “I was dreadfully shocked at Preston Hampton’s fate—his untimely fate. I know nothing more touching in history than General Hampton’s situation at the supremest moment of his misery, when he sent one son to save the other and saw both fall; and could not know for some moments whether both were not killed.”

A thousand dollars have slipped through my fingers already this week. At the Commissary’s I spent five hundred to-day for candles, sugar, and a lamp, etc. Tallow candles are bad enough, but of them there seems to be an end, too. Now we are restricted to smoky, terrabine lamps—terrabine is a preparation of turpentine. When the chimney of the lamp cracks, as crack it will, we plaster up the place with paper, thick old letter-paper, preferring the highly glazed kind. In the hunt for paper queer old letters come to light.

Sherman, in Atlanta, has left Thomas to take care of Hood. Hood has thirty thousand men, Thomas forty thousand, and as many more to be had as he wants; he has only to ring the bell and call for them. Grant can get all that he wants, both for himself and for Thomas. All the world is open to them, while we are shut up in a bastile. We are at sea, and our boat has sprung a leak.

November 17th.—Although Sherman[126] took Atlanta, he does not mean to stay there, be it heaven or hell. Fire and the sword are for us here; that is the word. And now I must begin my Columbia life anew and alone. It will be a short shrift.

Captain Ogden came to dinner on Sunday and in the afternoon asked me to go with him to the Presbyterian Church and hear Mr. Palmer. We went, and I felt very youthful, as the country people say; like a girl and her beau. Ogden took me into a pew and my husband sat afar off. What a sermon! The preacher stirred my blood. My very flesh crept and tingled. A red-hot glow of patriotism passed through me. Such a sermon must strengthen the hearts and the hands of many people. There was more exhortation to fight and die, à la Joshua, than meek Christianity.

November 25th.—Sherman is thundering at Augusta’s very doors. My General was on the wing, somber, and full of care. The girls are merry enough; the staff, who fairly live here, no better. Cassandra, with a black shawl over her head, is chased by the gay crew from sofa to sofa, for she avoids them, being full of miserable anxiety. There is nothing but distraction and confusion. All things tend to the preparation for the departure of the troops. It rains all the time, such rains as I never saw before; incessant torrents. These men come in and out in the red mud and slush of Columbia streets. Things seem dismal and wretched to me to the last degree, but the staff, the girls, and the youngsters do not see it.

Mrs. S. (born in Connecticut) came, and she was radiant. She did not come to see me, but my nieces. She says exultingly that “Sherman will open a way out at last, and I will go at once to Europe or go North to my relatives there.” How she derided our misery and “mocked when our fear cometh.” I dare say she takes me for a fool. I sat there dumb, although she was in my own house. I have heard of a woman so enraged that she struck some one over the head with a shovel. To-day, for the first time in my life, I know how that mad woman felt. I could have given Mrs. S. the benefit of shovel and tongs both.

That splendid fellow, Preston Hampton; “home they brought their warrior, dead,” and wrapped in that very Legion flag he had borne so often in battle with his own hands.

A letter from Mrs. Davis to-day, under date of Richmond, Va., November 20, 1864. She says: “Affairs West are looking so critical now that, before you receive this, you and I will be in the depths or else triumphant. I confess I do not sniff success in every passing breeze, but I am so tired, hoping, fearing, and being disappointed, that I have made up my mind not to be disconsolate, even though thieves break through and steal. Some people expect another attack upon Richmond shortly, but I think the avalanche will not slide until the spring breaks up its winter quarters. I have a blind kind of prognostics of victory for us, but somehow I am not cheered. The temper of Congress is less vicious, but more concerted in its hostile action.” Mrs. Davis is a woman that my heart aches for in the troubles ahead.

My journal, a quire of Confederate paper, lies wide open on my desk in the corner of my drawing-room. Everybody reads it who chooses. Buck comes regularly to see what I have written last, and makes faces when it does not suit her. Isabella still calls me Cassandra, and puts her hands to her ears when I begin to wail. Well, Cassandra only records what she hears; she does not vouch for it. For really, one nowadays never feels certain of anything.

November 28th.—We dined at Mrs. McCord’s. She is as strong a cordial for broken spirits and failing heart as one could wish. How her strength contrasts with our weakness. Like Doctor Palmer, she strings one up to bear bravely the worst. She has the intellect of a man and the perseverance and endurance of a woman.

We have lost nearly all of our men, and we have no money, and it looks as if we had taught the Yankees how to fight since Manassas. Our best and bravest are under the sod; we shall have to wait till another generation grows up. Here we stand, despair in our hearts (“Oh, Cassandra, don’t!” shouts Isabella), with our houses burning or about to be, over our heads.

The North have just got things ship-shape; a splendid army, perfectly disciplined, with new levies coming in day and night. Their gentry do not go into the ranks. They hardly know there is a war up there.

December 1st.—At Coosawhatchie Yankees are landing in great force. Our troops down there are raw militia, old men and boys never under fire before; some college cadets, in all a mere handful. The cradle and the grave have been robbed by us, they say. Sherman goes to Savannah and not to Augusta.

December 2d.—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?”

December 3d.—We drank tea at Mrs. McCord’s; she had her troubles, too. The night before a country cousin claimed her hospitality, one who fain would take the train at five this morning. A little after midnight Mrs. McCord was startled out of her first sleep by loud ringing of bells; an alarm at night may mean so much just now. In an instant she was on her feet. She found her guest, who thought it was daylight, and wanted to go. Mrs. McCord forcibly demonstrated how foolish it was to get up five hours too soon. Mrs. McCord, once more in her own warm bed, had fallen happily to sleep. She was waked by feeling two ice-cold hands pass cautiously over her face and person. It was pitch dark. Even Mrs. McCord gave a scream in her fright. She found it was only the irrepressible guest up and at her again. So, though it was only three o’clock, in order to quiet this perturbed spirit she rose and at five drove her to the station, where she had to wait some hours. But Mrs. McCord said, “anything for peace at home.” The restless people who will not let others rest!

December 5th.—Miss Olivia Middleton and Mr. Frederick Blake are to be married. We Confederates have invented the sit-up-all-night for the wedding night: Isabella calls it the wake, not the wedding, of the parties married. The ceremony will be performed early in the evening; the whole company will then sit up until five o’clock, at which hour the bridal couple take the train for Combahee. Hope Sherman will not be so inconsiderate as to cut short the honeymoon.

In tripped Brewster, with his hat on his head, both hands extended, and his greeting, “Well, here we are!” He was travel-stained, disheveled, grimy with dirt. The prophet would have to send him many times to bathe in Jordan before he could be pronounced clean.

Hood will not turn and pursue Sherman. Thomas is at his heels with forty thousand men, and can have as many more as he wants for the asking. Between Thomas and Sherman Hood would be crushed. So he was pushing—I do not remember where or what. I know there was no comfort in anything he said.

Serena’s account of money spent: Paper and envelopes, $12.00; tickets to concert, $10.00; tooth-brush, $10.00; total, $32.00.

December 14th.—And now the young ones are in bed and I am wide awake. It is an odd thing; in all my life how many persons have I seen in love? Not a half-dozen. And I am a tolerably close observer, a faithful watcher have I been from my youth upward of men and manners. Society has been for me only an enlarged field for character study.

Flirtation is the business of society; that is, playing at love-making. It begins in vanity, it ends in vanity. It is spurred on by idleness and a want of any other excitement. Flattery, battledore and shuttlecock, how in this game flattery is dashed backward and forward. It is so soothing to self-conceit. If it begins and ends in vanity, vexation of spirit supervenes sometimes. They do occasionally burn their fingers awfully, playing with fire, but there are no hearts broken. Each party in a flirtation has secured a sympathetic listener, to whom he or she can talk of himself or herself—somebody who, for the time, admires one exclusively, and, as the French say, excessivement. It is a pleasant, but very foolish game, and so to bed.

Hood and Thomas have had a fearful fight, with carnage and loss of generals excessive in proportion to numbers. That means they were leading and urging their men up to the enemy. I know how Bartow and Barnard Bee were killed bringing up their men. One of Mr. Chesnut’s sins thrown in his teeth by the Legislature of South Carolina was that he procured the promotion of Gist, “State Rights” Gist, by his influence in Richmond. What have these comfortable, stay-at-home patriots to say of General Gist now? “And how could man die better than facing fearful odds,” etc.

So Fort McAlister has fallen! Good-by, Savannah! Our Governor announces himself a follower of Joe Brown, of Georgia. Another famous Joe.