A Diary From Dixie by Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut.

April 29th.—A grand smash, the news from New Orleans fatal to us. Met Mr. Weston. He wanted to know where he could find a place of safety for two hundred negroes. I looked into his face to see if he were in earnest; then to see if he were sane. There was a certain set of two hundred negroes that had grown to be a nuisance. Apparently all the white men of the family had felt bound to stay at home to take care of them. There are people who still believe negroes property—like Noah’s neighbors, who insisted that the Deluge would only be a little shower after all.

These negroes, however, were Plowden Weston’s, a totally different part of speech. He gave field-rifles to one company and forty thousand dollars to another. He is away with our army at Corinth. So I said: “You may rely upon Mr. Chesnut, who will assist you to his uttermost in finding a home for these people. Nothing belonging to that patriotic gentleman shall come to grief if we have to take charge of them on our own place.” Mr. Chesnut did get a place for them, as I said he would.

Had to go to the Governor’s or they would think we had hoisted the black flag. Heard there we are going to be beaten as Cortez beat the Mexicans—by superior arms. Mexican bows and arrows made a poor showing in the face of Spanish accoutrements. Our enemies have such superior weapons of war, we hardly any but what we capture from them in the fray. The Saxons and the Normans were in the same plight.

War seems a game of chess, but we have an unequal number of pawns to begin with. We have knights, kings, queens, bishops, and castles enough. But our skilful generals, whenever they can not arrange the board to suit them exactly, burn up everything and march away. We want them to save the country. They seem to think their whole duty is to destroy ships and save the army.

Mr. Robert Barnwell wrote that he had to hang his head for South Carolina. We had not furnished our quota of the new levy, five thousand men. To-day Colonel Chesnut published his statement to show that we have sent thirteen thousand, instead of the mere number required of us; so Mr. Barnwell can hold up his head again.

April 27th.—New Orleans gone¹ and with it the Confederacy. That Mississippi ruins us if lost. The Confederacy has been done to death by the politicians. What wonder we are lost.

The soldiers have done their duty. All honor to the army. Statesmen as busy as bees about their own places, or their personal honor, too busy to see the enemy at a distance. With a microscope they were examining their own interests, or their own wrongs, forgetting the interests of the people they represented. They were concocting newspaper paragraphs to injure the government. No matter how vital it may be, nothing can be kept from the enemy. They must publish themselves, night and day, what they are doing, or the omniscient Buncombe will forget them.

This fall of New Orleans means utter ruin to the private fortunes of the Prestons. Mr. Preston came from New Orleans so satisfied with Mansfield Lovell and the tremendous steam-rams he saw there. While in New Orleans Burnside offered Mr. Preston five hundred thousand dollars, a debt due to him from Burnside, and he refused to take it. He said the money was safer in Burnside’s hands than his. And so it may prove, so ugly is the outlook now. Burnside is wide awake; he is not a man to be caught napping.

Mary Preston was saying she had asked the Hamptons how they relished the idea of being paupers. If the country is saved none of us will care for that sort of thing. Philosophical and patriotic, Mr. Chesnut came in, saying: “Conrad has been telegraphed from New Orleans that the great iron-clad Louisiana went down at the first shot.” Mr. Chesnut and Mary Preston walked off, first to the bulletin-board and then to the Prestons’.

______

¹ New Orleans had been seized by the Confederates at the outbreak of the war. Steps to capture it were soon taken by the Federals and on April 18, 1862, the mortar flotilla, under Farragut, opened fire on its protecting forts. Making little impression on them, Farragut ran boldly past the forts and destroyed the Confederate fleet, comprising 13 gunboats and two ironclads. On April 27th he took formal possession of the city.

April 26th.—Doleful dumps, alarm-bells ringing. Telegrams say the mortar fleet has passed the forts at New Orleans. Down into the very depths of despair are we.

April 23d.—On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged seventeen; consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was thirty-nine. I saw a wedding to-day from my window, which opens on Trinity Church. Nanna Shand married a Doctor Wilson. Then, a beautiful bevy of girls rushed into my room. Such a flutter and a chatter. Well, thank Heaven for a wedding. It is a charming relief from the dismal litany of our daily song.

A letter to-day from our octogenarian at Mulberry. His nephew, Jack Deas, had two horses shot under him; the old Colonel has his growl, “That’s enough for glory, and no hurt after all.” He ends, however, with his never-failing refrain: We can’t fight all the world; two and two only make four; it can’t make a thousand; numbers will not lie. He says he has lost half a million already in railroad bonds, bank stock, Western notes of hand, not to speak of negroes to be freed, and lands to be confiscated, for he takes the gloomiest views of all things.

April 21st.—Have been ill. One day I dined at Mrs. Preston’s, pâté de foie gras and partridge prepared for me as I like them. I had been awfully depressed for days and could not sleep at night for anxiety, but I did not know that I was bodily ill. Mrs. Preston came home with me. She said emphatically: “Molly, if your mistress is worse in the night send for me instantly.” I thought it very odd. I could not breathe if I attempted to lie down, and very soon I lost my voice. Molly raced out and sent Lawrence for Doctor Trezevant. She said I had the croup. The doctor said, “congestion of the lungs.”

So here I am, stranded, laid by the heels. Battle after battle has occurred, disaster after disaster. Every morning’s paper is enough to kill a well woman and age a strong and hearty one.

To-day, the waters of this stagnant pool were wildly stirred. The President telegraphed for my husband to come on to Richmond, and offered him a place on his staff. I was a joyful woman. It was a way opened by Providence from this Slough of Despond, this Council whose counsel no one takes. I wrote to Mr. Davis, “With thanks, and begging your pardon, how I would like to go.” Mrs. Preston agrees with me, Mr. Chesnut ought to go. Through Mr. Chesnut the President might hear many things to the advantage of our State, etc.

Letter from Quinton Washington. That was the best tonic yet. He writes so cheerfully. We have fifty thousand men on the Peninsula and McClellan eighty thousand. We expect that much disparity of numbers. We can stand that.

April 15th.—Mrs. Middleton: “How did you settle Molly’s little difficulty with Mrs. McMahan, that ‘piece of her mind’ that Molly gave our landlady?” “Oh, paid our way out of it, of course, and I apologized for Molly!”

Gladden, the hero of the Palmettos in Mexico, is killed. Shiloh has been a dreadful blow to us. Last winter Stephen, my brother, had it in his power to do such a nice thing for Colonel Gladden. In the dark he heard his name, also that he had to walk twenty-five miles in Alabama mud or go on an ammunition wagon. So he introduced himself as a South Carolinian to Colonel Gladden, whom he knew only by reputation as colonel of the Palmetto regiment in the Mexican war. And they drove him in his carriage comfortably to where he wanted to go—a night drive of fifty miles for Stephen, for he had the return trip, too. I would rather live in Siberia, worse still, in Sahara, than live in a country surrendered to Yankees.

The Carolinian says the conscription bill passed by Congress is fatal to our liberties as a people. Let us be a people “certain and sure,” as poor Tom B. said, and then talk of rebelling against our home government.

Sat up all night. Read Eothen straight through, our old Wiley and Putnam edition that we bought in London in 1845. How could I sleep? The power they are bringing to bear against our country is tremendous. Its weight may be irresistible—I dare not think of that, however.

April 15th.—Trescott is too clever ever to be a bore; that was proved to-day, for he stayed two hours; as usual, Mr. Chesnut said “four.” Trescott was very surly; calls himself ex-Secretary of State of the United States; now, nothing in particular of South Carolina or the Confederate States. Then he yawned, “What a bore this war is. I wish it was ended, one way or another.” He speaks of going across the border and taking service in Mexico. “Rubbish, not much Mexico for you,” I answered. Another patriot came then and averred, “I will take my family back to town, that we may all surrender together. I gave it up early in the spring.” Trescott made a face behind backs, and said: “Lache!”

The enemy have flanked Beauregard at Nashville. There is grief enough for Albert Sidney Johnston now; we begin to see what we have lost. We were pushing them into the river when General Johnston was wounded. Beauregard was lying in his tent, at the rear, in a green sickness— melancholy—but no matter what the name of the malady. He was too slow to move, and lost all the advantage gained by our dead hero.¹ Without him there is no head to our Western army. Pulaski has fallen. What more is there to fall?

______

¹ The battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in Tennessee, eighty-eight miles east of Memphis, had been fought on April 6 and 7, 1862. The Federals were commanded by General Grant who, on the second day, was reenforced by General Buell. The Confederates were commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston on the first day, when Johnston was killed, and on the second day by General Beauregard.

April 14th.—Our Fair is in full blast. We keep a restaurant. Our waitresses are Mary and Buck Preston, Isabella Martin, and Grace Elmore.

April 2d.—Dr. Trezevant, attending Mr. Chesnut, who was ill, came and found his patient gone; he could not stand the news of that last battle. He got up and dressed, weak as he was, and went forth to hear what he could for himself. The doctor was angry with me for permitting this, and more angry with him for such folly. I made him listen to the distinction between feminine folly and virulent vagaries and nonsense. He said: “He will certainly be salivated after all that calomel out in this damp weather.”

To-day, the ladies in their landaus were bitterly attacked by the morning paper for lolling back in their silks and satins, with tall footmen in livery, driving up and down the streets while the poor soldiers’ wives were on the sidewalks. It is the old story of rich and poor! My little barouche is not here, nor has James Chesnut any of his horses here, but then I drive every day with Mrs. McCord and Mrs. Preston, either of whose turnouts fills the bill. The Governor’s carriage, horses, servants, etc., are splendid— just what they should be. Why not?