A Diary From Dixie by Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut.

September 24th.—These stories of our defeats in the valley fall like blows upon a dead body. Since Atlanta fell I have felt as if all were dead within me forever. Captain Ogden, of General Chesnut’s staff, dined here to-day. 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 Hayne, Edward Barnwell, Bacon, Ogden, Richardson, Miles are the picked men of the agreeable world.

September 21st.—Went with Mrs. Rhett 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 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 depths.

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.[1]

[1] 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

September 19th.—My pink silk dress I have sold for $600, to be paid for in instalments, 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. Hélas!

September 2d.—The battle has been raging at Atlanta,[1] and our fate hanging in the balance. 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, read Dumas’s Maîtres d’Armes. 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?

[1] After the battle, Atlanta was taken possession of and partly burned by the Federals.

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 sphinxes 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.

August 23d.—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[1] has been retaken; 2,000 prisoners have been captured at Petersburg, and a Yankee raid on Macon has come to grief.

At Mrs. Izard’s met a clever Mrs. Calhoun. Mrs. Calhoun is a violent partizan 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 Johnston has been sent to Atlanta against his will, and 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.[2] 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 prove 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 Suwarrow. He has worse odds than any one 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 Vallambrosa.

[1] General Forrest made his raid on Memphis in August of this year.

[2] General McPherson was killed before Atlanta during the sortie made by Hood on July 22d. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of West Point, and under Sherman commanded the Army of the Tennessee.

August 22d.—Hope I may never know a raid except from hearsay. Mrs. Huger 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— déshabillé 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 riding a high horse. Her fiancé, 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, in 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. Pharaoh was forty.” “Mrs. Potiphar, you goose, and she was fifty!” “That solves the riddle.” “Sh-sh!” 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 saws and cheering words came from the authors of whom he spoke.

August 19th.—Began my regular attendance on the Wayside Hospital. To-day 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 and surgeons, 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 except the long-haired, one-armed hero, who cried at the top of his voice: “Oh! you all want to be kept in 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 gentlemen. Isabella asked whose remains were in the box. Dr. Gibbes replied: “In that box lies the body of a young man whose family antedates the Bourbons of France. He was the last Count de Choiseul, and he has died for the South.” Let his memory be held in perpetual remembrance by all who love the South!

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 22d[1] and 24th, but Brewster, of Hood’s staff, says not three thousand at the utmost. Now here are two people strictly truthful, who tell things so differently. In this war people see the same things 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 Hardee full general because, when he had command of an army he was always importuning 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 to-day 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, and get 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 caste 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 contumely, no matter how the people at large rate this disrespectful general.”

[1] On July 22d, Hood made a sortie from Atlanta, but after a battle was obliged to return.