Chattanooga, Sunday, April 23. Cold night but warm midday. Wrote my usual letters, read, etc. Grazing in the afternoon took up most of the time. No danger of ennui at present. Health very good.
April 2015
April 23d.—My silver wedding-day, and I am sure the unhappiest day of my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher Hampton. Portman told of Miss Kate Hampton, who is perhaps the most thoroughly ladylike person in the world. When he told her that Lee had surrendered she started up from her seat and said, “That is a lie.” “Well, Miss Hampton, I tell the tale as it was told me. I can do no more.”
No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry has been destroyed by a corps commanded by General Logan. Some one asked coolly, “Will General Chesnut be shot as a soldier, or hung as a senator?” “I am not of sufficient consequence,” answered he. “They will stop short of brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States Senate weeks before there was any secession. So I can not be hung as a senator. But after all it is only a choice between drumhead court martial, short shrift, and a lingering death at home from starvation.”
These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask they wear does not show a ripple of change; they are sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to keep for a week or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they had been garden peas.
Mrs. Huger was in church in Richmond when the news of the surrender came. Worshipers were in the midst of the communion service. Mr. McFarland was called out to send away the gold from his bank. Mr. Minnegerode’s English grew confused. Then the President was summoned, and distress of mind showed itself in every face. The night before one of General Lee’s aides, Walter Taylor, was married, and was off to the wars immediately after the ceremony.
One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked down hill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis’s grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted plantations, sacked villages. “You seem resolute to look the worst in the face,” said General Chesnut, wearily. “Yes, poverty, with no future and no hope.” “But no slaves, thank God!” cried Buck. “We would be the scorn of the world if the world thought of us at all. You see, we are exiles and paupers.” “Pile on the agony.” “How does our famous captain, the great Lee, bear the Yankees’ galling chain?” I asked. “He knows how to possess his soul in patience,” answered my husband. “If there were no such word as subjugation, no debts, no poverty, no negro mobs backed by Yankees; if all things were well, you would shiver and feel benumbed,” he went on, pointing at me in an oratorical attitude. “Your sentence is pronounced—Camden for life.”
Mrs. Lyon’s Diary.
Bull’s Gap, Sunday, April 23, 1865.—We have sent all the things to the cars. Stayed all day under a borrowed fly to a tent. Captain King invited us to take tea with him. He lives in a part of the depot. We will take the cars here for Knoxville.
Sunday, April 23.— All are yet in doubt as to the rumors afloat. One gentleman is so confident that Governor Brown had sold the state, that he would not be at all surprised if an order was to come by the next train to have all the men put under arrest.
April 23rd, 1865.-1 ought to be ashamed of myself and yet I am afraid I am not. For the first time in all my life I have laid hands in violence upon a negro.
It happened in this way. We were sitting last night in the back parlor, the two tallow candles did little more than to make the darkness visible, but it was moon-light outside. Since we have been in the enemy’s lines, we feel suspicious of all unusual sounds at night and often we have discovered listeners, under the windows or the servants, employed about the house, have “toted news” to the camp at Centreville. So when footsteps were heard approaching, I looked out and saw some twenty or more half-grown negro boys and girls. When they reached the house they began to sing, to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” these words:
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,
We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,
We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,
As we go marching on.”
In the corner of the dining-room stood a new carriage whip, purchased that day by Jordan, who considered himself a judge of carriage whips. His mistress had given him money that morning to buy it and this is what he said when he brought it in, “Miss Patsy, here’s de whup, its a rale sure nuf whale-bone whup and de lash is twisted silk.”
I seized it as I passed through the dining room to get out in the yard. The negroes were evidently expecting to make us angry but they had not counted on the reception they received. I rushed in their midst and, laying the whip about me with all the strength I could muster, I soon had the whole crowd flying toward the Quarter, screaming as they went. One of them screeching loudly, “She dun outen my eye,” another, “Oh, Lordy—Mammy ain’t nuver laid it on me lak
I would have followed up the victory but behind the magnolia tree a dark figure was visible and I did not know how many more there might be. It was over so quickly that no one realized what was taking place until the screams broke on the air. It amused the family to think for nineteen years I had lived on the plantation and never before had I struck a negro.
Saturday, 22d—It is quite pleasant today. I went out with a team after a load of lumber for our company. We pulled down an old, vacant barn. No property is being burned and destroyed in this state, and only vacant buildings are torn down to get lumber with which to build “ranches.” There is a large amount of land lying idle around here. The field where we have our camp has not been farmed for two or three years. But there are some fine wheat fields here and the wheat is just heading out. We have a fine camp; all of the tents are raised now, and our brigade has shade trees set in rows throughout our camp. There being no trees, we went to the timber and cut down small bushy pine trees for the purpose, setting them in the ground. Our camp looked so fine that the staff artist of Harper’s Weekly took a picture of it for the paper.
22nd. Went to town in the morning to market. Will Hudson came out. We boys got together and had a jolly time. Floy and George came out. Good visit. Chester came home. Walked with Will to the river, too late for train. A lame stiff neck. Spent a part of evening at Minnie’s. Saw the Hudson family. F. Henderson and Will Keep. Hurrah!
Chattanooga, Saturday, April 22. The weather has taken an unaccountable cold turn, fire is comfortable all day. Drilled an hour on the gun this mornng. Lieutenant Jenawein appeared in camp this morning direct from the old 15th Army Corps. He left them at Goldsboro, N. C. He has been acting as ordnance officer for the artillery of the Corps. Looks well with his first lieutenant straps on. He is now our ranking lieutenant.
George Hill who left us three weeks ago, a mere skeleton, on sick furlough, has returned fat and plump. What a place Wisconsin must be. War news is very uncertain. Johnston’s army and Mobile are still in the ”bag,” but I guess they’ll soon come out of it.
Saturday, 22d April.
To see a whole city draped in mourning is certainly an imposing spectacle, and becomes almost grand when it is considered as an expression of universal affliction. So it is, in one sense. For the more violently “Secesh” the inmates, the more thankful they are for Lincoln’s death, the more profusely the houses are decked with the emblems of woe. They all look to me like “not sorry for him, but dreadfully grieved to be forced to this demonstration.” So all things have indeed assumed a funereal aspect. Men who have hated Lincoln with all their souls, under terror of confiscation and imprisonment which they understand is the alternative, tie black crape from every practicable knob and point to save their homes. Last evening the B——s were all in tears, preparing their mourning. What sensibility! What patriotism! a stranger would have exclaimed. But Bella’s first remark was: “Is it not horrible? This vile, vile old crape! Think of hanging it out when —” Tears of rage finished the sentence. One would have thought pity for the murdered man had very little to do with it.
Coming back in the cars, I had a rencontre that makes me gnash my teeth yet. It was after dark, and I was the only lady in a car crowded with gentlemen. I placed little Miriam on my lap to make room for some of them, when a great, dark man, all in black, entered, and took the seat and my left hand at the same instant, saying, “Good-evening, Miss Sarah.” Frightened beyond measure to recognize Captain Todd[1] of the Yankee army in my interlocutor, I, however, preserved a quiet exterior, and without the slightest demonstration answered, as though replying to an internal question. “Mr. Todd.” “It is a long while since we met,” he ventured. “Four years,” I returned mechanically. “You have been well?” “My health has been bad.” “I have been ill myself”; and determined to break the ice he diverged with “Baton Rouge has changed sadly.” “I hope I shall never see it again. We have suffered too much to recall home with any pleasure.” “I understand you have suffered severely,” he said, glancing at my black dress. “We have yet one left in the army, though,” I could not help saying. He, too, had a brother there, he said.
He pulled the check-string as we reached the house, adding, “This is it,” and absurdly correcting himself with “Where do you live?” — “211. I thank you. Good-evening”; the last with emphasis as he prepared to follow. He returned the salutation, and I hurriedly regained the house. Monsieur stood over the way. A look through the blinds showed him returning to his domicile, several doors below.
I returned to my own painful reflections. The Mr. Todd who was my “sweetheart” when I was twelve and he twenty-four, who was my brother’s friend, and daily at our home, was put away from among our acquaintance at the beginning of the war. This one, I should not know. Cords of candy and mountains of bouquets bestowed in childish days will not make my country’s enemy my friend now that I am a woman.
April 22d.—This yellow Confederate quire of paper, my journal, blotted by entries, has been buried three days with the silver sugar-dish, teapot, milk-jug, and a few spoons and forks that follow my fortunes as I wander. With these valuables was Hood’s silver cup, which was partly crushed when he was wounded at Chickamauga.
It has been a wild three days, with aides galloping around with messages, Yankees hanging over us like a sword of Damocles. We have been in queer straits. We sat up at Mrs. Bedon’s dressed, without once going to bed for forty-eight hours, and we were aweary.
Colonel Cadwallader Jones came with a despatch, a sealed secret despatch. It was for General Chesnut. I opened it. Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, has been killed, murdered, and Seward wounded! Why? By whom? It is simply maddening, all this.
I sent off messenger after messenger for General Chesnut. I have not the faintest idea where he is, but I know this foul murder will bring upon us worse miseries. Mary Darby says, “But they murdered him themselves. No Confederates are in Washington.” “But if they see fit to accuse us of instigating it?” “Who murdered him? Who knows?” “See if they don’t take vengeance on us, now that we are ruined and can not repel them any longer.”
The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last President put to death in the capital, though he is the first.
Buck never submits to be bored. The bores came to tea at Mrs. Bedon’s, and then sat and talked, so prosy, so wearisome was the discourse, so endless it seemed, that we envied Buck, who was mooning on the piazza. She rarely speaks now.
