 17. Camden, South Carolina, May 8, 1864 to June 1, 1864. Camden, South Carolina, 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 boneses, my English maids, confederate bonds. I gave her gold dimbles, 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, Mallories, Mrs. Buck Allen, Mrs. Old. We picked up Judge Old and Buck Allen at Curle'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 fiance 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 someone 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. Sims 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 is silent as death. It was then twelve o'clock so I went home and waked General Chestnut who had gone to bed. We went immediately back to the presidents, found Mrs. Sims still there but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the family ought to be in the house. Mrs. Sims said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by his brother and he called out to her in great distress. Mrs. Sims, 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. Sims, 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 Irish woman can. Amidst crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic but some shoving and pushing rudely. There were thousands of children and each child had a green bow 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 snowdrops. Put these own 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 to the floor the live long night. Generally 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 battlefield. 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 captor 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 Hof Shea, 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. Chestnut, 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. Chestnut, 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 affect an entry into a railroad, wayside hotel. I picked up a long strip of my old black dress torn off by a man spur as I passed him getting off the train. It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chestnut, 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 opoponax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the blessed 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, cannot 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, maybe 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 December's. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they say. Napoleon 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 safekeeping, said, Why, Mrs., 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 Chestnut to reorganize the men who have been hitherto detailed for special duty and also those who have been exempt. He says General Chestnut 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 bare-headed, 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 today the list of killed and wounded. Footnote. During the month of May, 1864, important battles had been fought in Virginia, including that of the Wilderness on May 6th through 7th and the series later in that month around Spotsylvania Courthouse. In footnote. One long column was not enough for South Carolina's dead. I see Mr. Federal Secretary Stanton says he can reinforce Suvaro Grant at his leisure whenever he calls for more. He has just sent him 25,000 veterans. Old Lincoln says, in his quaint backwards way, keep a pegging. Now we can only peg out. What have we left of men, et cetera, to meet these reinforcements as often as reinforcements are called for? Our fighting men have all gone through 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. Chestnut 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 stintor, 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. Benny, old Mrs. Chestnut's sister, came among us with the same softly modulated, womanly, musical voice. Her clever and beautiful daughters were creard. Judge Hand said, Philadelphia women scream like macaws. This morning as I passed Mrs. Chestnut'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 Bee 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 bodyguard 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 in 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, eight hundred dollars. 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 schoolbooks for her boys. She is in great distress on the subject. When Long Street's corps passed through Greenville there was great enthusiasm. Hankerchiefs were waved, bouquets and flowers were thrown the troops. Her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw their schoolbooks. End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18, Part 1 of A Diary from Dixie. This Looper Fox recording is in the public domain. Read by Laurie Ann Walden. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 18, Columbia, South Carolina, July 6, 1864 to January 17, 1865. Part 1. Columbia, South Carolina, July 6, 1864. At the Preston's Mary was laughing at Mrs. Lyons' 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 a 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. Chestnut 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 route at Stunning Creek. Footnote. The battle of Stunning Creek in Virginia was fought on June 28 through 29, 1864. End footnote. He claims that citizens, militia, and lame soldiers kept the bridge at Staunton and gallantly repulsed Wilson's Raiders. At Mrs. Ess's last night, she came up saying, in New Orleans, four people never met together without dancing. Edmund Rhett, turn 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 these 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 25. Now we are in a cottage rented from Dr. Chisholm. Hood is a full general. Johnston has been removed and superseded. Footnote. General Johnston in 1863 had been appointed to command the Army of the Tennessee with headquarters at Dalton, Georgia. He was to oppose the advance of Sherman's army toward Atlanta. In May 1864 he fought unsuccessful battles at Rosaca and elsewhere, and in July was compelled to retreat across the Chattahoochee River. Fault was found with him because of his continual retreating. There were tremendous odds against him. On July 17th he was superseded by Hood. In Footnote. Early is threatening Washington City. Sims, of whom we have been so proud, risked the Alabama in a sort of dual of ships. He has lowered the flag of the famous Alabama to the Cure Sarge. Forgive who may, I cannot. Footnote. Raphael Sims was a native of Maryland and had served in the Mexican War. The Alabama was built for the Confederate States at Birkenhead, England, and with an English crew and English equipment was commanded by Sims. In 1863 and 1864 the Alabama destroyed much federal shipping. On June 19, 1864 she was sunk by the federal ship Cure Sarge in a battle off Sherburg. Claims against England for damages were made by the United States, and as a result the Geneva Arbitration Court was created. Claims amounting to $15,500,000 were finally awarded. This case has much importance in the history of international law. In Footnote. 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 has Johnston back 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 talla candle was affably entertaining Edward Barnwell, Isaac Hain, and Uncle Hamilton. He had given them no tea, however. After I had remedied that oversight we adjourned to the moon-lighted Piazza. By talla candle-light and the light of the moon we made out that wonderful smile of Teddy's which identifies him as Gerald Gray. 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 battlefield, 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? Alan 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 the army. It was grand and inspiring, but everyone 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 improtuned 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, hence 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 traders. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff Davis indiscriminately. August 2nd. Sherman again. Artillery parked in 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 today 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. Today, General Tolliver dined with us. He served with Hood at the 2nd Battle of Manassas and at Fredericksburg, where Hood won his major general's spurs. On the battlefield, 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 3rd. Yesterday was such a lucky day for my housekeeping in our hired house. Oh ye kind Columbia folk. Mrs. Alex Taylor, nay, Hain, 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 commissaries 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 Elliot 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. McClane. 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 goodwill. 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 6. Archer came, a classmate of my husbands 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 Blank. 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, and accomplished soldier, as brave as Caesar 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. Today 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 is going as New Orleans went. Footnote. The Battle of Mobile Bay, one under Farragut, was fought on August 5, 1864. End footnote. 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 chulori, or a set of dandy Miss Nancy's. 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 22nd and 24th. But Brewster of Hood's staff says not 3,000 at the utmost. Footnote. On July 22nd, Hood made a sortie from Atlanta, but after a battle was obliged to return. End footnote. Now here are two people, strictly truthful, who tell things so differently. In this war people see the same thing 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 hardy full general because when he had command of an army he was always in pertaining 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 today 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 in good 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 cast 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 contumaly no matter how the people at large rate this disrespectful general. August 19th began my regular attendance on the wayside hospital. Today 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 insurgents 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 accept the long-haired one armed hero who cried at the top of his voice. Oh, you all want to be kept in the 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 gentleman. Isabella asked whose remains were in the box. Dr. Gibbs replied, In that box lies the body of a young man whose family antedates the bourbons of France. He was the last Count de Chois-soul and he has died for the South. Let his memory be held in perpetual remembrance by all who love the South. August 22nd. Hope I may never know a raid except from hearsay. Mrs. Eugie 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, decibel 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 writing a high horse. Her fiancee, 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, an 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. Farrow was forty. Mrs. Potiphar, you goose, and she was fifty. That solves the riddle 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 solves and cheering words came from the authors of whom he spoke. August twenty-third. 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 has been retaken. Two thousand prisoners have been captured at Petersburg, and a Yankee raid on Macon has come to grief. Footnote. General Forrest made his raid on Memphis in August of this year. In footnote. At Mrs. Izards met a clever Mrs. Calhoun. Mrs. Calhoun is a violent partisan 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 Johnson has been sent to Atlanta against his will. An 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. Footnote. General McPherson was killed before Atlanta during the sortie made by Hood on July 22nd. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of West Point, and under Sherman commanded the army of the Tennessee. In footnote. 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 proved 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 Suaro. He has worse odds than anyone 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 Val Embrosa. 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 finks is 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 2nd. The battle has been raging at Atlanta and our fate hanging in the balance. Footnote. After the battle Atlanta was taken possession of and partly burned by the Federals. End footnote. 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. Red Dumas, matred arm. 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 six hundred dollars to be paid for in installments, 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. Elah. September 21st. Went with Mrs. Red 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 to 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 deaths. 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. Footnote. During the summer and autumn of 1864 several important battles had occurred. In addition to the engagements by Sherman's army farther south, there had occurred in Virginia the battle of Cold Harbor in the early part of June, those before Petersburg in the latter part of June and during July and August, the battle of Winchester on September 19th during Sheridan's Shenandoah campaign, and the battle of Cedar Creek on October 19th. In footnote. September 24th. These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like blows upon a dead body. Since Elantafell I have felt as if all were dead within me forever. Captain Ogden of General Chestnut Staff dined here today. 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 Hain, Edward Barnwell, Bacon, Ogden, Richardson, Miles are the peaked men of the agreeable world. October first. Mary Canty 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 blonde lace, and the dress, tulle and blonde lace, with diamonds and pearls. The bride walked up the aisle on her father's arm. Mrs. Preston owned Dr. Darby's. I think it was the handsomest wedding party I ever saw. John Darby had brought his wedding uniform home with him from England, and it did all honour to his perfect figure. I forget the name of his London Taylor. The best, of course. Well, said Isabella, it would be hard for any man to live up to those clothes. Footnote. After the war Dr. Darby became Professor of Surgery in the University of the City of New York. He had served as Medical Director in the Army of the Confederate States, and as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the University of South Carolina, had also served with distinction in European wars. In footnote. And now to the amazement of us all, Captain Chestnut, Johnny, who knows everything, has rushed into a flirtation with Buck such as Never Was. He drives her every day, and those wild, runaway, sorrow cults 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 McClain 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 Chestnut drove off with the President's aides, and Mr. Davis sat out on our Piazza. There was nobody with him but myself. Some little boy strolling by called out, come here and look. There is a man on Mrs. Chestnut'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 McClane 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, et cetera. 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 his 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 eighteenth. 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 Chestnut 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 Chestnut came back disheartened. He complains that such a life as I lead gives him no time to think. October twenty-eighth. Burton Harrison writes to General Preston that supreme anxiety reigns in Richmond. O 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. O 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-makers, 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, an outward bound to face the foe. Saw at the Lawrence's not only Lizzie Hamilton, a perfect little beauty, but the very table the first Declaration of Independence was written upon. These Lawrence's are grandchildren of Henry Lawrence of the First Revolution. Alas, we have yet to make good our second Declaration of Independence, Southern Independence, from Yankee meddling and Yankee rule. Who had his written to ask them to send General Chestnut out to command one of his brigades? In whose place? If Albert Sidney Johnson had lived, poor old General Lee has no backing. Stone Wall 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 seem 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 Tilly Tudlam, since Mr. Davis' 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 is 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. Traders once, traders 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, is 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 cannot feed them. Strictly between us, things look very anxious here. November 6th. Sally Hampton went to Richmond with the Reverend 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 consenation. 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 battlefield, 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 commissaries I spent five hundred today 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 terribene lamps. Terribene is a preparation of turpentine. When the chimney of the lamp cracks, as crack it will, we plaster up the piece 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 best deal. We are at sea, and our boat has sprung a leak. November seventeenth. Although Sherman took Atlanta, he does not mean to stay there, be at heaven or hell. Footnote. General Sherman had started from Chattanooga for his march across Georgia on May 6, 1864. He had won the battles of Dalton, Risaka, and New Hope Church in May, the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in June, the battles of Peachtree Creek and Atlanta in July, and had formally occupied Atlanta on September 2. On November sixteenth he started his march from Atlanta to the sea and entered Savannah on December twenty-third. Early in eighteen sixty-five he moved his army northward through the Carolinas, and on April twenty-six received the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston. In footnote. 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 shift. 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 in her bow. Ogden took me into a pew, and my husband sat a far 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 a la Joshua than meek Christianity. End of chapter eighteen, part two. Chapter eighteen, part three of A Diary from Dixie. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Laurie Ann Walden. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter eighteen, Columbia, South Carolina, part three. November twenty-fifth. 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, know 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 someone over the head with a shovel. Today, for the first time in my life, I know how that madwoman 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 today under date of Richmond, Virginia, 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 choir 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 dine at Mrs. McCords. She is as strong accordial for broken spirits and failing heart as one could wish. How her strength contrasts with our weakness. Like Dr. 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 Kusawachi, Yankees are landing in great force. Our troops down there are a 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 2nd. 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 Granville 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, oh, Mrs., ain't lady's business to look so much into 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. Today General Chestnut was in Charleston on his way from Augusta to Savannah by rail. The telegraph is still working between Charleston and Savannah. Granville certainly is burned. There was fighting down there today. 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 Chestnut's staff, of as imposing a presence as a field-martial, 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 3rd. We drank tea at Mrs. McCord's. She had her troubles, too. The night before a country cousin claimed her hospitality, one who Thane Wood 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, twelve dollars. Tickets to concert, ten dollars. Toothbrush, ten dollars. Total, thirty-two dollars. December fourteenth. 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. Flortation 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 in a want of any other excitement. Flattery, Battle Door 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, excessive moan. 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 B. were killed bringing up their men. One of Mr. Chestnut's sins, thrown in his teeth by the legislature of South Carolina, was that he procured the promotion of gist, state's rights gist, by his influence in Richmond. What of 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 McAllister has fallen. Goodbye, Savannah. Our governor announces himself a follower of Joe Brown of Georgia, another famous Joe. December 19th. The deep waters are closing over us, and we are in this house, like the outsiders at the time of the flood. We care for none of these things. We eat, drink, laugh, dance, and lightness of heart. Dr. Trezevant came to tell me the dismal news. How he piled on the agony. Desolation, mismanagement, despair. General Young, with the flower of Hampton's cavalry, is in Columbia. Horses cannot be found to mount them. Neither the governor of Georgia nor the governor of South Carolina is moving hand or foot. They have given up. The Yankees claim another victory for Thomas. Footnote. Reference is here made to the battle between Hood and Thomas at Nashville, the result of which was the breaking up of Hood's army as a fighting force. End footnote. Hope it may prove like most of their victories, brag and bluster. Can't say why. Maybe I am benumbed, but I do not feel so intensely miserable. December 27th. Oh, why did we go to Camden? The very dismalest Christmas overtook us there. Miss Rhett went with us. A brilliant woman and very agreeable. The world, you know, is composed, said she. Of men, women, and Rhett's. See, Lady Montague. Now we feel that if we are to lose our Negroes we would as soon see Sherman freedom as the Confederate government. Freeing Negroes is the last Confederate government craze. We are little too slow about it, that is all. Sold fifteen bales of cotton and took a sad farewell look at Mulberry. It is a magnificent old country seat, with old oaks, green lawns and all. So I took that last farewell of Mulberry, once so hated, now so beloved. January 7th. Sherman is at Hardyville and Hood in Tennessee. The last of his men, not gone, as Lewis Wigfall so cheerfully prophesied. Serena went for a half hour today to the dentist. Her teeth are of the whitest and most regular, simply perfection. She fancied it was better to have a dentist look in her mouth before returning to the mountains. For that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money. Why, has this money any value at all? she asked. Little enough in all truth, sad to say. Brewster was here and stayed till midnight. Said he must see General Chestnut. He had business with him. His, me and General Hood, is no longer comic. He described Sherman's march of destruction and desolation. Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide upon which there is no living thing to be seen. Said Brewster before he departed. January 10th. You do the anabasis business when you want to get out of the enemy's country and the thermopoly business when they want to get into your country. But we retreated in our own country and we gave up our mountain passes without a blow. But never mind the Greeks if we had only our own Gamecock Sumter, our own Swampbox Marion. Marion's men or Sumters or the equivalent of them now lie under the sod in Virginia or Tennessee. January 14th. Yesterday I broke down, gave way to abject terror under the news of Sherman's advance with no news of my husband. Today while wrapped up on the sofa, too dismal even for moaning, there was a loud knock. Shaw's own and all, just as I was, I rushed to the door to find a telegram from my husband. All well, be at home Tuesday. It was dated from Adam's run. I felt as light-hearted as if the war were over. Then I looked at the date in the place, Adam's run. It ends as it began, in a run, Bull's run, from which their first sprightly running astounded the world, and now Adam's run. But if we must run, who are left to run? From Bull's run they ran full-handed, but we have fought until maimed soldiers, women, and children are all that remain to run. Today Kershaw's brigade, or what is left of it, passed through. What shouts greeted it and what bold shouts of thanks it returned. It was all a very encouraging noise, absolutely comforting. Some true men are left, after all. January 16th. My husband is at home once more, for how long I do not know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place. The drilling and the marching go on outside. It rains a flood with fresh it after fresh it. The forces of nature are befriending us, for our enemies have to make their way through swamps. A month ago my husband wrote me a letter which I promptly suppressed, after showing it to Mrs. McCord. He warned us to make ready, for the end had come. Our resources were exhausted, and the means of resistance could not be found. We could not bring ourselves to believe it, and now he thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the fresh it, which have no time to subside so constant is the rain, and the negroes utterly apathetic, would they be so if they saw us triumphant? If we had but an army to seize the opportunity we might do something, but there are no troops, that is the real trouble. Today Mrs. McCord exchanged sixteen thousand dollars in confederate bills for three hundred dollars in gold. Sixteen thousand for three hundred. January 17th. The bazaar for the benefit of the hospitals opens now. Sherman marches constantly. All the railroads are smashed, and if I laugh at any mortal thing, it is that I may not weep. Generals are as plenty as blackberries, but none are in command. The peace commissioner, Blair, came. They say he gave Mr. Davis the kiss of peace. And we send Stevens, Campbell, all who have believed in this thing, to negotiate for peace. No hope, no good. Who dares hope? The repressed excitement in church, a great railroad character was called out. He soon returned and whispered something to Joe Johnston, and they went out together. Somehow the whisper moved around to us that Sherman was at Branchville. Grantus Patience, Good Lord, was prayed aloud. Not Ulysses Grant, Good Lord, murmured Teddy profanely. Hood came yesterday. He is staying at the Prestons with Jack. They sent for us. What a heartfelt greeting he gave us. He can stand well enough without his crutch, but he does very slow walking. How plainly he spoke out dreadful words about my defeat and discomforture, my army destroyed, my losses, et cetera, et cetera. He said he had nobody to blame but himself. A telegram from Beauregard today to my husband. He does not know whether Sherman intends to advance on Branchville, Charleston, or Columbia. Isabella said, Maybe you attempted the impossible and began one of her merriest stories. Jack Preston touched me on the arm and we slipped out. He did not hear a word she was saying. He has forgotten us all. Did you notice how he stared in the fire and the lured spots which came out on his face and the drops of perspiration that stood on his forehead? Yes. He is going over some bitter scene. He sees Willie Preston with his heart shot away. He sees the panic at Nashville and the dead on the battlefield at Franklin. That agony on his face comes again and again, said Tenderhearted Jack. I can't keep him out of those absent fits. Governor McGrath and General Wynder talk of preparations for a defense of Columbia. If Beauregard can't stop Sherman down there, what have we got here to do it with? Can we check or impede his march? Can any one? Last night General Hampton came in. I am sure he would do something to save us if he were put in supreme command here. Hampton says Joe Johnston is equal, if not superior, to Lee as a commanding officer. My silver is in a box and has been delivered for safekeeping to Isaac McLaughlin, who is really my beau-ideal of a grateful negro. I mean to trust him. My husband cares for none of these things now and lets me do as I please. Tom Archer died almost as soon as he got to Richmond. Prison takes the life out of men. He was only half alive when here. He had a strange, pallid look and such a vacant stare until you roused him. Poor, pretty, sally Archer. That is the end of you. Footnote. Under last date entry, January 17th, the author chronicles events of later occurrence. It was her not infrequent custom to jot down happenings in dateless lines or paragraphs. Mr. Blair visited President Davis January 12th. Stevens, Hunter, and Campbell were appointed peace commissioners January 28th. In footnote. End of Chapter 18, Part 3. Chapter 19, Part 1, of Adary from Dixie. This Looper Fox recording is in the public domain. Read by Laurie Ann Walden. Adary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 19, Lincolnton, North Carolina, February 16, 1865, to March 15, 1865, Part 1. Lincolnton, North Carolina, February 16, 1865. A change has come or the spirit of my dream. Dear old choir of yellow coarse confederate homemade paper, here you are again. An age of anxiety and suffering has passed over my head since last I wrote and wept over your forlorn pages. My ideas of those last days are confused. The Martins left Columbia the Friday before I did, and Mammy, the Negro woman who had nursed them, refused to go with them. That daunted me. Then Mrs. McCord, who was to send her girls with me, changed her mind. She sent them upstairs in her house and actually took away the staircase. That was her plan. Then I met Mr. Christopher Hampton, arranging to take off his sisters. They were flitting but were to go only as far as Yorkville. He said it was time to move on. Sherman was at Orangeburg, barely a day's journey from Columbia, and had left a track as bare and blackened as a fire leaves on the prairies. So my time had come, too. My husband urged me to go home. He said Camden would be safe enough. They had no spite against that old town as they have against Charleston and Columbia. Molly, weeping and wailing, came in while we were at table. Wiping her red-hot face with the cook's grimy apron, she said I ought to go among our own black people on the plantation. They would take care of me better than anyone else. So I agreed to go to Mulberry, or the Hermitage Plantation, and sent Lawrence down with a wagonload of my valuables. Then a Miss Patterson called, a refugee from Tennessee. She had been in a country overrun by Yankee invaders, and she had described so graphically all the horrors to be endured by those subjected to fire and sword, rapine and plunder, that I was fairly scared and determined to come here. This is a thoroughly out of all root's place. And yet I can go to Charlotte and halfway to Kate at Flat Rock, and there is no Federal Army between me and Richmond. As soon as my mind was finally made up, we telegraphed to Lawrence, who had barely got to Camden in the wagon when the telegram was handed to him. So he took the train and came back. Mr. Chestnut sent him with us to take care of the party. We thought that if the Negroes were ever so loyal to us, they could not protect me from an army bent upon sweeping us from the face of the earth. And if they tried to do so, so much the worse would it be for the poor things with their Yankee friends. I then left them to shift for themselves as they are accustomed to do, and I took the same liberty. My husband does not care a fig for the property question, and never did. Perhaps if he had ever known poverty it would be different. He talked beautifully about it as he always does about everything. I have told him often that if at Heaven's gate St. Peter would listen to him a while and let him tell his own story he would get in and the angels might give him a crown extra. Now he says he has only one care, that I should be safe and not so harassed with dread. And then there is his blind old father. A man, said he, can always die like a patriot and a gentleman with no fuss and take it coolly. It is hard not to envy those who are out of all this, their difficulties ended. Those who have met death gloriously on the battlefield, their doubts all solved. One can but do his best and leave the result to a higher power. After New Orleans, those vain, passionate, impatient little creoles were forever committing suicide, driven to it by despair and beast butler. As we read these things Mrs. Davis said, if they want to die why not first kill beast butler, rid the world of their foe and be saved the trouble of murdering themselves. That practical way of removing their intolerable burden did not occur to them. I repeated this suggestive anecdote to our core of generals without troops here in the house as they spread out their maps on my table where lay this choir of paper from which I write. Every man jack of them had a safe plan to stop Sherman, if. Even Beauregard and Lee were expected, but Grant had double-teamed on Lee. Lee could not save his own. How could he come to save us? Read the list of the dead and those last battles around Richmond and Petersburg if you want to break your heart. Footnote. Battles at Hatchens Run in Virginia had been fought on February 5, 6 and 7, 1865. End of footnote. I took French leave of Columbia, slipped away without a word to anybody. Isaac Hain and Mr. Chestnut came down to the Charlotte Depot with me. Ellen, my maid, left her husband and only child, but she was willing to come and indeed was very cheerful in her way of looking at it. I won't travel round with Mrs. some time, instead of Molly going all the time. A woman, fifty years old at least, and uglier than she was old, sharply rebuked my husband for standing at the car window for a last few words with me. She said rudely, Stand aside, sir, I won't air. With his hat off and his grand air my husband bowed politely and said, In one moment, madam, I have something important to say to my wife. She talked aloud and introduced herself to every man claiming his protection. She had never traveled alone before in all her life. Old age and ugliness are protective in some cases. She was ardently patriotic for a while. Then she was joined by her friend, a man as crazy as herself to get out of this. From their talk I gleaned she had been for years in the Treasury Department. They were about to cross the lines. The whole idea was to get away from the trouble to come down here. They were Yankees, but were they not spies? Here I am, brokenhearted and in exile. And in such a place we have bare floors and for a feather bed, pine table, and two chairs I pay thirty dollars a day. Such sheets. But fortunately I have some of my own. At the door, before I was well out of the hack, the woman of the house packed Lawrence back, neck and heels. She would not have him at any price. She treated him as Mr. F's aunt did Glenman in Little Dorot. She said his clothes were too fine for a nigger. His heirs, indeed. Poor Lawrence was humble and silent. He said at last, Miss Mary, send me back to Ma's jeans. I began to look for a pencil to write a note to my husband, but in the flurry could not find one. Here is one, said Lawrence, producing one with a gold case. Go away, she shouted. I want no niggers here with gold pencils and heirs. So Lawrence fled before the storm, but not before he had begged me to go back. He said, if Ma's jeans knew how you was treated he'd never be willing for you to stay here. The Martins had seen my, to them, well-known traveling case as the hack trotted up Main Street, and they arrived at this juncture out of breath. We embraced and wept. I kept my room. The Fants are refugees here, too. They are Virginians and have been in exile since the Second Battle of Manassas. Poor things they seem to have been everywhere and seen and suffered everything. They even tried to go back to their own house, but found one chimney only standing alone. Even that had been taken possession of by a Yankee, who had written his name upon it. The day I left home I had packed a box of flour, sugar, rice, and coffee, but my husband would not let me bring it. He said I was coming to a land of plenty, unexplored North Carolina, where the foot of the Yankee marauder was unknown, and in Columbia they would need food. Now I have written for that box and many other things to be sent me by Lawrence, or I shall starve. The Middletons have come. How joyously I sprang to my feet to greet them. Mrs. Ben Rutledge described the hubbub in Columbia. Everybody was flying in every direction like a flock of swallows. She heard the enemy's guns booming in the distance. The train no longer runs from Charlotte to Columbia. Ms. Middleton possesses her soul in peace. She is as cool, clever, rational, and entertaining as ever, and we talked for hours. Mrs. Reed was in a state of despair. I can well understand that sinking of mind and body during the first days as the abject misery of it all closes in upon you. I remember my suicidal tendencies when I first came here. February eighteenth. Here I am, thank God, settled at the McLean's in a clean, comfortable room, airy and cozy. With a grateful heart I stir up my own bright wood fire. My bill for four days at this splendid hotel here was two hundred and forty dollars, with twenty-five dollars additional for fire. But once more my lines have fallen in pleasant places. As we came up on the train from Charlotte a soldier took out of his pocket a filthy rag. If it had lain in the gutter for months it could not have looked worse. He unwrapped the thing carefully and took out two biscuits of the species known as hard-tech. Then he gallantly handed me one, and with an ingratiating smile asked me to take some. Then he explained saying, Please take these two, swap with me. Give me something softer that I can eat. I am very weak still. Immediately for his benefit my basket of luncheon was emptied. But as for his biscuit I would not choose any. Isabella asked, But what did you say to him when he poked them under your nose? And I replied, I held up both hands saying, I would not take from you anything that is yours, far from it. I would not touch them for worlds. A tremendous day's work, and I helped with a will, our window-glass was all to be washed. Then the brass and irons were to be polished. After we rubbed them bright, how pretty they were. Presently Ellen would have none of me. She was scrubbing the floor. You go, that's a good missus, and stay to miss Isabella's till the floor dry. I am very docile now, and I obeyed orders. February 19th. The fans say all the trouble at the hotel came from our servants bragging. They represented us as millionaires, and the Middleton ninservants smoked cigars. Mrs. Reeds averred that he had never done anything in his life but stand behind his master at table with a silver waiter in his hand. We were charged accordingly, but perhaps the landlady did not get the best of us after all, for we paid her in Confederate money. Now that they won't take Confederate money in the shops here, how are we to live? Miss Middleton says quartermaster's families are all clad in good gray cloth, but the soldiers go naked. Well, we are like the families of whom the novels always say they are poor but honest. Poor? Well, my beggars are we, for I do not know where my next meal is to come from. Called on Mrs. Ben Rutledge today, she is lovely, exquisitely refined. Her mother, Mrs. Middleton, came in. You are not looking well, dear? Anything the matter? No, but, Mama, I have not eaten a mouthful today. The children can eat mush. I can't. I drank my tea, however. She does not understand taking favors and blushing violently refused to let me have Ellen make her some biscuit. I went home and sent her some biscuit all the same. February 22. Isabella has been reading my diaries. How we laugh because my sage divinations all come to naught. My famous insight into character is utter folly. The diaries were lying on the hearth ready to be burned, but she told me to hold on to them, think of them a while, and don't be rash. Afterward, when Isabella and I were taking a walk, General Joseph E. Jotson joined us. He explained to us all of Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's mistakes. We had nothing to say. How could we say anything? He said he was very angry when he was ordered to take command again. He might well have been in a genuine rage. This own-and-off procedure would be enough to bewilder the coolest head. Mrs. Jotson knows how to be a partisan of Joe Jotson and still not make his enemies uncomfortable. She can be pleasant and agreeable, as she was, to my face. A letter from my husband, who is it, Charlotte? He came near being taken a prisoner in Columbia, for he was asleep the morning of the seventeenth when the Yankees blew up the railroad depot. That woke him, of course, and he found everybody had left Columbia and the town was surrendered by the mayor, Colonel Goodwin. Hampton and his command had been gone several hours. Isaac Hain came away with General Chesnut. There was no fire in the town when they left. They overtook Hampton's command at Meeks Mill. That night, from the hills where they encamped, they saw the fire and knew the Yankees were burning the town as we had every reason to expect they would. Molly was left in charge of everything of mine, including Mrs. Preston's cow, which I was keeping, and Sally Goodwin's furniture. Charleston and Wilmington have surrendered. I have no further use for a newspaper. I never want to see another one as long as I live. Wade Hampton has been made a Lieutenant General, too late. If he had been made one and given command in South Carolina six months ago, I believe he would have saved us. Shame, disgrace, beggary, all have come at once and are hard to bear, the grand smash. Rain, rain outside, and not but drowning floods of tears inside. I could not bear it, so I rushed down in that rainstorm to the Martins. Reverend Mr. Martin met me at the door. Madam, said he, Columbia is burned to the ground. I bowed my head and sobbed aloud. Stop that, he said, trying to speak cheerfully. Come here, wife, said he to Mrs. Martin. This woman cries with her whole heart just as she laughs. But in spite of his words, his voice broke down, and he was hardly calmer than myself. February 23rd. I want to get to Kate. I am so utterly heartbroken. I hope John Chestnut and General Chestnut may at least get into the same army. We seem scattered over the face of the earth. Isabella sits there calmly reading. I have quieted down after the day's rampage. May our Heavenly Father look down on us and have pity. They say I was the last refugee from Columbia who was allowed to enter by the door of the cars. The government took possession, then, and women could only be smuggled in by the windows. Stout ones stuck and had to be pushed, pulled, and hauled in by main force. Dear Mrs. Izard, with all her dignity, was subjected to this rough treatment. She was found almost too much for the size of the car windows. February 25th. The Pfeifers, who live opposite us here, are descendants of those Pfeifers who came south with Mr. Chestnut's ancestors after the Fort Duquesne disaster. They have now, therefore, been driven out of their Eden, the Valley of Virginia, a second time. The present Pfeifer is the great man, the rich man, par excellence of Lincolnton. They say that with something very near to tears in his eyes he heard of our latest defeats. It is only a question of time with us now, he said. The raiders will come, you know. In Washington, before I knew any of them, except by sight, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Emery, and Mrs. Johnston were always together, inseparable friends, and the trio were pointed out to me as the cleverest women in the United States. Now that I do know them all well, I think the world was right in his estimate of them. Met a Mr. Anchrum of serenely cheerful aspect, happy and hopeful. All right now, said he, Sherman sure to be thrashed, Joe Johnson is in command. Dr. Darby says, when the oft mentioned Joseph, the malcontent, gave up his command to hood, he remarked with a smile, I hope you will be able to stop Sherman, it was more than I could do. General Johnson is not of Mr. Anchrum's way of thinking as to his own powers, for he stayed here several days after he was ordered to the front. He must have known he could do no good, and I am of his opinion. When the wagon in which I was to travel to Flat Rock drove up to the door, covered with a tent-like white cloth, and my embarrassment for an opening in the conversation, I asked the driver's name. He showed great hesitation in giving it, but at last said, my name is Sherman, adding, and now I see by your face that you won't go with me, my name is against me these times. Here he grinned and remarked, but you would leave Lincolnton. That name was the last drop in my cup, but I gave him Mrs. Glover's reason for staying here. General Johnson had told her this might be the safest place after all. He thinks the Yankees are making straight for Richmond and General Lee's rear and will go by Camden and Lancaster, leaving Lincolnton on their west flank. The Maclean's are kind people. They ask no rent for their rooms, only twenty dollars a week for firewood. Twenty dollars, and such dollars, mere waste paper. Mrs. Monroe took up my photograph book in which I have a picture of all the Yankee generals. I want to see the men who are to be our masters, said she. Not mine, I answered. Thank God, come what may. This was a free fight. We had as much right to fight to get out as they had to fight to keep us in. If they tried to play the masters anywhere upon the habitable globe will I go, never to see a Yankee, and if I die on the way, so much the better. Then I sat down and wrote to my husband in language much worse than anything I can put in this book. As I wrote, I was blinded by tears of rage. Indeed, I nearly wept myself away. February 26. Mrs. Monroe offered me religious books, which I declined, being already provided with the lamentations of Jeremiah, the Psalms of David, the denunciations of Hosea, and above all, the patient wail of Job. Job is my comforter now. I should be so thankful to know life would never be any worse with me. My husband is well and has been ordered to join the great retreater. I am bodily comfortable, if somewhat dingily lodged, and I daily part with my remit for food. We find no one who will exchange eatables for confederate money, so we are devouring our clothes. Opportunities for social enjoyment are not wanting. Miss Middleton and Isabella often drink a cup of tea with me. One might search the whole world and not find two cleverer or more agreeable women. Miss Middleton is brilliant and accomplished. She must have been a hard student all her life. She knows everybody worth knowing, and she has been everywhere. Then she is so high-bred, high-hearted, pure and true. She is so clean-minded. She could not harbor a wrong thought. She is utterly unselfish, a devoted daughter and sister. She is one among the many large-brained women a kind providence has thrown in my way, such as Mrs. McCord, daughter of Judge Chevis, Mary Preston Darby, Mrs. Emery, granddaughter of Old Franklin, the American wise man, and Mrs. Jefferson Davis. How I love to praise my friends. As a ray of artificial sunshine, Mrs. Monroe sent me an examiner. Daniel thinks we are at the last gasp, and now England and France are bound to step in. England must know if the United States of America are triumphant they will tackle her next, and France must wonder if she will not have to give up Mexico. My faith fails me. It is all too late. No help for us now from God or man. Thomas, Daniel says, was now to ravage Georgia. But Sherman, from all accounts, has done that work once for all. There will be no aftermath. They say no living thing is found in Sherman's track. Only chimneys, like telegraph poles, to carry the news of Sherman's army backward. And all that tropical downpour, Mrs. Monroe sent me overshoes and an umbrella with a message, come over. I went, for it would be as well to drown in the streets as to hang myself at home to my own bed post. At Mrs. Monroe's I met a Miss McDaniel. Her father, for seven years, was the Methodist preacher at our Negro Church. The Negro Church is in a grove just opposite Mulberry House. She says her father has so often described that final establishment and its beautiful lawn, live oaks, etc. Now, I dare say, there stand at Mulberry only Sherman's sentinels, stacks of chimneys. We have made up our minds for the worst. Mulberry House is no doubt raised to the ground. Miss McDaniel was inclined to praise us. She said, As a general rule, the Episcopal minister went to the family mansion, and the Methodist missionary preached to the Negroes, and died with the overseer at his house. But at Mulberry, her father always stayed at the house, and the family were so kind and attentive to him. It was rather pleasant to hear one's family so spoken of among strangers. So, well equipped to brave the weather, armed Kappa P, so to speak, I continued my prowl farther afield and brought up at the Middletons. I may have surprised them, for at such an inclement season, they hardly expected a visitor. Never, however, did a lonely old woman receive such a warm and hearty welcome. Now we know the worst. Are we growing hardened? We avoid all illusion to Columbia. We never speak of home, and we begin to deride the certain poverty that lies ahead. How it pours. Could I live many days in solitary confinement? Things are beginning to be unbearable, but I must sit down and be satisfied. My husband is safe so far. Let me be thankful it is no worse with me. But there is the gnawing pain all the same. What is the good of being here at all? Our world has simply gone to destruction. And across the way the fair Lydia languishes. She has not even my resources against onwe. She has no Isabella, no Miss Middleton, to as brilliant women as any in Christendom. Oh, how does she stand it? I mean to go to church if it rains cats and dogs. My feet are wet two or three times a day. We never take cold. Our hearts are too hot within us for that. A carriage was driven up to the door as I was riding. I began to tie on my bonnet and said to myself in the glass, Oh, you lucky woman. I was all in a tremble so great was my haste to be out of this. Mrs. Glover had the carriage. She came for me to go and hear Mr. Martin preach. He lifts our spirits from this dull earth. He takes us up to heaven. That I will not deny. Still he cannot hold my attention. My heart wanders and my mind strays back to South Carolina. Oh, Vandal Sherman, what are you at there, hard-hearted wretch that you are? A letter from General Chestnut, who writes from Camp near Charlotte under date of February twenty-eight. I thank you a thousand thousand times for your kind letters. They are now my only earthly comfort, except the hope that all is not yet lost. We have been driven like a wild herd from our country. And it is not from a want of spirit in the people or soldiers, nor from want of energy and competency in our commanders. The restoration of Joe Johnston, it is hoped, will redown to the advantage of our cause and the re-establishment of our fortunes. I am still in not very agreeable circumstances, for the last four days completely water-bound. I am informed that a detachment of Yankees were sent from Liberty Hill to Camden with a view to destroying all the houses, mills, and provisions about that place. No particulars have reached me. You know I expected the worst that could be done, and I am fully prepared for any report which may be made. It would be a happiness beyond expression to see you, even for an hour. I have heard nothing from my poor old father. A fear I shall never see him again. Such is the fate of war. I do not complain. I have deliberately chosen my lot, and am prepared for any fate that awaits me. My care is for you, and I trust still in the good cause of my country and the justice and mercy of God. It was a lively, rushing young set that South Carolina put to the fore. They knew it was a time of imminent danger, and that the fight would be ten to one. They expected to win by activity, energy, and enthusiasm. Then came the wet blanket, the croakers. Now these are posing, wrapping Caesar's mantle about their heads to fall with dignity. Those gallant youths who dashed so gaily to the front lie mostly in bloody graves. Well for them, maybe. There are worse things than honorable graves. Weary some thoughts. Late in life we are to begin anew and have laborious, difficult days ahead. We have contradictory testimony. Governor Aiken has passed through saying Sherman left Columbia as he found it, and was last heard from at Chirac. Dr. Chisholm walked home with me. He says that is the last version of the story. Now my husband wrote that he himself saw the fires which burned up Columbia. The first night his camp was near enough to the town for that. They say Sherman has burned Lancaster, that Sherman nightmare, that ghoul, that hyena. But I do not believe it. He takes his time. There are none to molest him. He does things leisurely and deliberately. What stop to do so needless a thing as burn Lancaster Courthouse, the jail and the tavern? As I remember it, that description covers Lancaster. A raiding party, they say, did for Camden. No train from Charlotte yesterday. Rumor says Sherman is in Charlotte. End of chapter nineteen, part one.