Thursday, 16th—Early this morning cannonading was begun in front of the Fifteenth Corps, followed by some lively skirmishing, and the rebels were routed from their works and driven across the Congaree river. The Fifteenth Corps then marched up along the south bank of the river above the city of Columbia, to the forks, where the Saluda and Broad rivers form the Congaree, and crossed the Saluda on the pontoons. In the meantime our regiment was behind on train guard and did not come into action. We moved forward and with our corps went into camp for the night on the south bank of the Congaree, just opposite Columbia, the state capital.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Nashville, Thursday, Feb. 16. Cleared up and the day closed very beautifully. Harness and saddles, etc. drawn. Captain Hood reported ready to go, and sure enough, a little after dusk the word came to move early in the morning, report at Chattanooga Depot for transportation. All hands are packing up, getting ready for the morrow. I wrote a letter to T. L. Visited smallpox hospital again to-day. Found poor Dan in bed yet. Our fears are many in regard to him. He is apt to get discouraged. Griff and Dave have gone with his knapsack to the Soldiers’ Home to keep it there until he comes out. R. Randolph has been taken with the same disease. I must now close and retire to rest for to-morrow’s work.
February 16, 1865, 7 a.m.
The Johnnies shelled our bivouac all night, but hurt no one, but induced us to extinguish our fires, and killed one of the 48th Illinois. We could hear their cars whistling all night. They had large fires near town. We can see the steeples of the city plainly this morning. Many think the Rebels have left. If not I look for a hard battle to-day. There is no firing this morning yet, and our skirmish line is advancing. I can see it a mile ahead of us. Can see the State House now, and a large portion of the city. We can shell it from here.
Nine a.m.—The enemy opened the three guns on us again that he used last night, but the skirmish line deployed along the river silenced them.
Ten a.m.—The sun has shown himself, dispelled the fog, and we find we have an excellent view of the city. From our position it looks much like Peoria from the left bank of the river. The Congaree here is larger than the Illinois. Our batteries have got in position well down on the river bank, and some of them are bursting shell over the city. Our division moves down to take a closer view in a few minutes. The skirmishers are shooting quite lively across the river. You know our muskets carry up well at 800 yards. ‘Tis a beautiful morning and view.
Twelve m.—The 2d Division leading, we pushed for the Rebel works at 9. Johnnies had mostly retired across the river. Our pontoon train running by a Rebel battery made some fun. They were furiously shelled and stood quite a heavy fire of musketry. Casualties, one mule killed, and the seat torn out of a small darkey’s pants. We now lay on the river side opposite the town. A number of our guns are practicing on the State House and other prominent buildings, and the Rebels are not answering a shot, though we can see a number of cavalry riding through the town. Hazen is laying the pontoons above the junction of the Saluda and Broad rivers where we will cross. Yesterday when the 40th Illinois charged the Rebels out of one of their numerous barricades a “Forty” boy and a Johnnie had a real scuffling fight. Forty downed the Rebel and choked him until he surrendered. Some 26th boys captured a Rebel colonel after we crossed the Congaree creek. He was quite drunk and rode up to the boys who were straggling ahead of the skirmish line, and asked them what they were waiting for, and why they did not come along.
8 p.m.—Crossed the Saluda, since dark, and stay here for the night on the bank of Broad river.
16th. Cleared up the snow from the ground in the morning. Boys came in from picket. How bright the war prospect looks. Hope to see home by July 4th, ’65.
February 16th.—Cloudy; rained yesterday and last night. We have no important news from South Carolina, except the falling back toward Columbia of our troops; I suppose before superior numbers. Branchville is evacuated.
The roads will not admit of much movement in the field for some days. But pretty heavy cannonading is heard down the river. Congress did nothing yesterday; it is supposed, however, that the bill recruiting negro troops will pass—I fear when it is too late. Meantime the President is as busy as a bee making appointments and promotions, and many meritorious men are offended, supposing themselves to be overslaughed or neglected.
The published letter taking leave of Mr. Secretary Seddon rasps Congress severely, and is full of professions of esteem, etc. for the retiring Secretary. The members of Congress reply with acrimony.
The quartermaster at Charlotte, N. C., dispatches the Secretary of War that he has there some millions in specie, government funds, besides specie of the banks for safe keeping. He also desires the removal of the “Foreign Legion” there, paroled prisoners taken from the enemy and enlisting in our service. They are committing robberies, etc.
I saw Gen. Lee at the department again this morning. He seems vigorous, his face quite red, and very cheerful. He was in gray uniform, with a blue cloth cape over his shoulders.
Exchange of prisoners has been resumed, and many of our men are returning from captivity. Gen. Grant has the matter under his control.
Gen. Pillow has been appointed commander of prisons in place of Gen. Winder, deceased.
Only 4 ⅝ pounds bacon were issued as meat ration to detailed men this mouth.
I learn that some 2000 of our men, confined at Point Lookout, Md., as prisoners of war, during the last two months, offered to take the oath of allegiance, which was refused, because it would reduce the number to exchange.
By the last flag of truce boat a negro slave returned. His master took the oath, the slave refused. He says “Massa had no principles.”
Lincolnton, N. C, February 16, 1865.—A change has come o’er the spirit of my dream. Dear old quire of yellow, coarse, Confederate home-made 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 up-stairs 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 any one else. So I agreed to go to Mulberry or the Hermitage plantation, and sent Lawrence down with a wagon-load of my valuables.
Then a Miss Patterson called—a refugee from Tennessee. She had been in a country overrun by Yankee invaders, and she 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-routes place. And yet I can go to Charlotte, am half-way 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. Chesnut 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 battle-field, 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 corps of generals without troops, here in this house, as they spread out their maps on my table where lay this quire 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 in those last battles around Richmond and Petersburg[1] if you want to break your heart.
I took French leave of Columbia—slipped away without a word to anybody. Isaac Hayne and Mr. Chesnut 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 wan’ travel ‘roun’ wid Missis some time—stid uh Molly goin’ all de 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 want 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 broken-hearted and an exile. And in such a place! We have bare floors, and for a feather-bed, pine table, and two chairs I pay $30 a day. Such sheets! But fortunately I have some of my own. At the door, before I was well out of the back, 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 Clenman in Little Dorrit. She said his clothes were too fine for a nigger. “His airs, indeed.” Poor Lawrence was humble and silent. He said at last, “Miss Mary, send me back to Mars Jeems.” 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 airs.” So Lawrence fled before the storm, but not before he had begged me to go back. He said, “if Mars Jeems 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. Miss 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.
[1] Battles at Hatchen’s Run, in Virginia, had been fought on February 5, 6, and 7, 1865.
