March 7th.—Shopping, and paid $30 for a pair of gloves; $50 for a pair of slippers; $24 for six spools of thread; $32 for five miserable, shabby little pocket handkerchiefs. When I came home found Mrs. Webb. At her hospital there was a man who had been taken prisoner by Dahlgren’s party. He saw the negro hanged who had misled them, unintentionally, in all probability. He saw Dahlgren give a part of his bridle to hang him. Details are melancholy, as Emerson says. This Dahlgren had also lost a leg.
Constance Cary, in words too fine for the occasion, described the homely scene at my house; how I prepared sandwiches for my husband; and broke, with trembling hand, the last bottle of anything to drink in the house, a bottle I destined to go with the sandwiches. She called it a Hector and Andromache performance.
March 5th.—Tom Fergurson walked home with me. He told me of Colonel Dahlgren’s[1] death and the horrid memoranda found in his pocket. He came with secret orders to destroy this devoted city, hang the President and his Cabinet, and burn the town! Fitzhugh Lee was proud that the Ninth Virginia captured him.
Found Mrs. Semmes covering her lettuces and radishes as calmly as if Yankee raiders were a myth. While “Beast” Butler holds Fortress Monroe he will make things lively for us. On the alert must we be now.
[1] Colonel Ulric Dahlgren was a son of the noted Admiral, John H. Dahlgren, who, in July, 1863, had been placed in command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and conducted the naval operations against Charleston, between July 10 and September 7, 1863. Colonel Dahlgren distinguished himself at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. The raid in which he lost his life on March 4, 1864, was planned by himself and General Kilpatrick.
March 4th.—The enemy has been reenforced and is on us again. Met Wade Hampton, who told me my husband was to join him with some volunteer troops; so I hurried home. Such a cavalcade rode up to luncheon! Captain Smith Lee and Preston Hampton, the handsomest, the oldest and the youngest of the party. This was at the Prestons’. Smith Lee walked home with me; alarm-bells ringing; horsemen galloping; wagons rattling. Dr. H. stopped us to say “Beast” Butler was on us with sixteen thousand men. How scared the Doctor looked! And, after all, it was only a notice to the militia to turn out and drill.
March 3d.—Betty, the handsome, and Constance, the witty, came; the former too prudish to read Lost and Saved, by Mrs. Norton, after she had heard the plot. Conny was making a bonnet for me. Just as she was leaving the house, her friendly labors over, my husband entered, and quickly ordered his horse. “It is so near dinner,” I began. “But I am going with the President. I am on duty. He goes to inspect the fortifications. The enemy, once more, are within a few miles of Richmond.” Then we prepared a luncheon for him. Constance Cary remained with me.
After she left I sat down to Romola, and I was absorbed in it. How hardened we grow to war and war’s alarms! The enemy’s cannon or our own are thundering in my ears, and I was dreadfully afraid some infatuated and frightened friend would come in to cheer, to comfort, and interrupt me. Am I the same poor soul who fell on her knees and prayed, and wept, and fainted, as the first gun boomed from Fort Sumter? Once more we have repulsed the enemy. But it is humiliating, indeed, that he can come and threaten us at our very gates whenever he so pleases. If a forlorn negro had not led them astray (and they hanged him for it) on Tuesday night, unmolested, they would have walked into Richmond. Surely there is horrid neglect or mismanagement somewhere.
February 26th.—We went to see Mrs. Breckinridge, who is here with her husband. Then we paid our respects to Mrs. Lee. Her room was like an industrial school: everybody so busy. Her daughters were all there plying their needles, with several other ladies. Mrs. Lee showed us a beautiful sword, recently sent to the General by some Marylanders, now in Paris. On the blade was engraved, “Aide toi et Dieu t’aidera.” When we came out someone said, “Did you see how the Lees spend their time? What a rebuke to the taffy parties!”
Another maimed hero is engaged to be married. Sally Hampton has accepted John Haskell. There is a story that he reported for duty after his arm was shot off; suppose in the fury of the battle he did not feel the pain.
General Breckinridge once asked, “What’s the name of the fellow who has gone to Europe for Hood’s leg?” “Dr. Darby.” “Suppose it is shipwrecked?” “No matter; half a dozen are ordered.” Mrs. Preston raised her hands: “No wonder the General says they talk of him as if he were a centipede; his leg is in everybody’s mouth.”
February 24th.—Friends came to make taffy and stayed the livelong day. They played cards. One man, a soldier, had only two teeth left in front and they lapped across each other. On account of the condition of his mouth, he had maintained a dignified sobriety of aspect, though he told some funny stories. Finally a story was too much for him, and he grinned from ear to ear. Maggie gazed, and then called out as the negro fiddlers call out dancing figures, “Forward two and cross over!” Fancy our faces. The hero of the two teeth, relapsing into a decorous arrangement of mouth, said: “Cavalry are the eyes of an army, they bring the news; the artillery are the boys to make a noise; but the infantry do the fighting, and a general or so gets all the glory.”
February 23d.—At the President’s, where General Lee breakfasted, a man named Phelan told General Lee all he ought to do; planned a campaign for him. General Lee smiled blandly the while, though he did permit himself a mild sneer at the wise civilians in Congress who refrained from trying the battle-field in person, but from afar dictated the movements of armies. My husband said that, to his amazement, General Lee came into his room at the Executive Office to “pay his respects and have a talk.” “Dear me! Goodness gracious!” said I. “That was a compliment from the head of the army, the very first man in the world, we Confederates think.”
February 20th.—Mrs. Preston was offended by the story of Buck’s performance at the Ive’s. General Breckinridge told her “it was the most beautifully unconscious act he ever saw.” The General was leaning against the wall, Buck standing guard by him “on her two feet.” The crowd surged that way, and she held out her arm to protect him from the rush. After they had all passed she handed him his crutches, and they, too, moved slowly away. Mrs. Davis said: “Any woman in Richmond would have done the same joyfully, but few could do it so gracefully. Buck is made so conspicuous by her beauty, whatever she does can not fail to attract attention.”
Johnny stayed at home only one day; then went to his plantation, got several thousand Confederate dollars, and in the afternoon drove out with Mrs. K ——. At the Bee Store he spent a thousand of his money; bought us gloves and linen. Well, one can do without gloves, but linen is next to life itself.
Yesterday the President walked home from church with me. He said he was so glad to see my husband at church; had never seen him there before; remarked on how well he looked, etc. I replied that he looked so well “because you have never before seen him in the part of ‘the right man in the right place.'” My husband has no fancy for being planted in pews, but he is utterly Christian in his creed.
February 17th.—Found everything in Main Street twenty per cent dearer. They say it is due to the new currency bill.
I asked my husband: “Is General Johnston ordered to reenforce Polk? They said he did not understand the order.” “After five days’ delay,” he replied. “They say Sherman is marching to Mobile.[1] When they once get inside of our armies what is to molest them, unless it be women with broomsticks?” General Johnston writes that “the Governor of Georgia refuses him provisions and the use of his roads.” The Governor of Georgia writes: “The roads are open to him and in capital condition. I have furnished him abundantly with provisions from time to time, as he desired them.” I suppose both of these letters are placed away side by side in our archives.
[1] General Polk, commanding about 24,000 men scattered throughout Mississippi and Alabama, found it impossible to check the advance of Sherman at the head of some 40,000, and moved from Meridian south to protect Mobile. February 16, 1864, Sherman took possession of Meridian.
February 16th.—Saw in Mrs. Howell’s room the little negro Mrs. Davis rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian. The child is an orphan. He was dressed up in little Joe’s clothes and happy as a lord. He was very anxious to show me his wounds and bruises, but I fled. There are some things in life too sickening, and cruelty is one of them.
Somebody said: “People who knew General Hood before the war said there was nothing in him. As for losing his property by the war, some say he never had any, and that West Point is a pauper’s school, after all. He has only military glory, and that he has gained since the war began.”
“Now,” said Burton Harrison, “only military glory! I like that! The glory and the fame he has gained during the war—that is Hood. What was Napoleon before Toulon? Hood has the impassive dignity of an Indian chief. He has always a little court around him of devoted friends. Wigfall, himself, has said he could not get within Hood’s lines.”
