March 13th [1863]. I have been sick, and am nervous, mentally and physically. I am enjoying though to-day my first quiet moments for a long time. Ginnie and I are alone, as in our own home. Mrs. Norton and all have gone to Greenville to pass the day with the Ogdens. We told Mary we would come another time. Mrs. Norton wanted us to go; the more the merrier, she said, but Ginnie was sick, a good excuse, for poor Ginnie loves quiet better than anything now.
Indeed we have not been alone together for days. The Ogdens, the Harrisons, the Waughs, the Randolphs, Mrs. Callender, Mrs. Roselius, and ever so many other people have been here and sat by my bed and talked and talked and talked. I have not that sort of tact which enables one to dismiss friends pleasantly—no matter how I feel, I must bear it, and Ginnie is like me. We have been very, very gloomy and unwell, yet never alone. When outside friends go home, Mrs. Norton reads in her dreadful style these hateful newspapers aloud. She knows we hate them, “But people ought to take interest,” she says; “That is not her way”—“She don’t know how people can do so,” and she goes on until we are most distracted. Every advertisement, every negro arrest is drawled out and stumbled over. She sits in her room, has the door opened between us and begins before we are dressed in the morning. It is a mania with her and we are dying under it. The carts passing in front of our room (also cars) make it impossible for us to hear clearly, which she takes as a great affront. She asks all sorts of questions as to what we think the Federals will do, and if we are not true prophets in the least as well as greatest matters, throws it up to us. I get very, very tired of this sort of life, and my heart aches to see its effect on Ginnie. I would go to Greenville to our friends there, but when people are so kind and affectionate as they all are, one seems ungrateful not to make some effort to be agreeable and lively. Another reason too, we cannot leave Mrs. Norton for any length of time without quarreling with her. She really means to give us no offence; she is kinder to us than to others, and as she would insist on knowing why we left her house, we could not tell her without a blow up. I hate the eclat of a quarrel; I hate a quarrel itself, and more than all I remember many times when the old lady repressed her naturally high temper, out of kindness and respect to us. She is, only, very unlike ourselves—not one sentiment or taste have we in common, and our constant effort to accommodate ourselves to her is killing us by inches. I will take poor Ginnie and go for another visit to Greenville soon. The Randolphs, the Harrisons and Ogdens all beg us constantly; we see them almost every day. There has been a falling out between the Harrisons and the Ogdens—it distresses me—they are both kind, good and honorable families—we being the confidants of both sides see that misunderstandings and servants’ tales have separated them. Once we succeeded in making peace between them, but now the falling out has reached the gentlemen of each house; I do not hope for any favorable adjustment of things.
Mrs. Roselius and Mary Waugh—to our room—Mary just from a sick-bed, too. Sat till the cars bringing Mrs. Norton back. She spent a pleasant day and regretted we were not well enough to go. The girls sent us much love and pressing invitations. The Randolphs and Harrisons live across the street either way from Judge Ogden’s, so Mrs. Norton made the most of her time and paid visits all around. She says everything looks green and lovely and rather lonely. The Yankee tents and flags, uniforms and band playings being missed in a pictorial way, if in no other. The pleasure of going to Greenville is destroyed, in a measure, by the disagreements among the two families. We, Ginnie and I, do not scruple to give them advice and to tell them that they are both wrong. I tell them that I expect to lose the friendship of both sides, but they say they appreciate our feelings perfectly. Mary Harrison and Judge Ogden met here a few days ago— the Judge sat in the parlor and Mary came to our room—we did not know which side to be the most with. Mary was as nervous as possible; thinks Judge O—— has grossly insulted her father. We know he never meant to insult anybody in his life, being the most amiable man of our acquaintance, and the one most easily imposed upon. He is indeed a proverb of kindness and patience. Jule Ogden and Mary Harrison, too, met here— bowed distantly—and had to go down the steps together, and to take the three o’clock car together, and ride all the way home together; get out at the same station together; all without speaking. It is very silly, and both sides are ashamed. I think the position of Kentucky in this war laid the ground-work of the whole affair. This State has been freely discussed here and freely blamed, and the Harrisons resent all that is said against her. They have indeed a morbid sensitiveness and love for their old home, and they cannot help feeling that people mean to be personal, when they speak of her. This state of things induced a suspicious, almost resentful tone of feeling which has exaggerated and returned unmeant wrongs, and in this way quite a catalogue of offences have been recorded on both sides and the old feeling wholly undermined. I feel sorry to see a large family of young people leave a loved home for any other, especially in this country, where State pride and love is so predominant. There can never be any National feeling in this country—men are willing to sacrifice and die for Native State, and they are prone to think it the home and birthplace of every perfection. People, even in transmigratory America, can not be transplanted without injury. Even if a root is secured in a strange soil, many a delicate tendril is wounded and lost that would have blossomed sweetly in the old.
I feel sorry for the Harrisons; they came to Louisiana just before the war commenced, leaving a large circle of friends and acquaintances in Kentucky. They have led a lonely prison life here since the city was captured, while their relatives and friends in the old State have been enjoying themselves. Mary Harrison’s eyes filled with tears when she told me of the welcome Kirby Smith had had at her aunt’s house not long ago. John Morgan, their pet hero, is an old acquaintance, as other Confederate heroes. They warmly espouse the Southern cause. They don’t meet any heroes here, poor girls, and never a soldier to whom they can say, “God speed you!” They were intimates and relatives of Henry Clay and other intellectual people at home, and consequently feel much cut off here as regards society. Having come here at an unfortunate time, their beautiful home on the railroad is regarded by them as a prison—ugly and hateful in their eyes. We, Ginnie and myself, are both border State people, and have the position of old Maryland to regret, too. We can see much to justify the conduct of the poor border States, and I must confess that the people who have flocked to take the oath to the United States, as they of this city have done, have no right to pass such sweeping censures as Maryland and Kentucky receive every day. Said Mrs. Brewer to me the other evening, “Ah, do you not feel glad that you are out of your native State? How shamefully she has behaved.” She did not mean to be rude. Her husband is a Marylander and was present. His father and mother were driven off of their farm near Annapolis, as it was needed for a Federal camp. He has lost a son and a nephew in the Southern service. I told Mrs. Brewer that I thought the men of the border States who had fought for Southern rights, were the real heroes of the war. Others fight for all they have in the world—these men lose all. Their States not seceding, they are exiles in purse and home. They have not even the common feeling of State pride to support them in the burden-bearing heat of this war. I was told by a young gentleman—an Adam’s cavalry man—from near Natchez, that he had seen many of the Maryland boys while serving in Virginia. “They are real exiles,” said he; “noble, splendid-looking fellows.” Poor old Maryland! I wish no Yankee had ever moved within your border; not that I hate them so bitterly, but it is too wretched a thing to have a divided population.
Between North and South this war is sectional; in the unhappy border States alone, it is civil. People never know how they act until tried. Two years ago the people here could not have been made to believe that they, under any circumstances, would take an oath to the repudiated authority of the United States. After the first blood was shed in this war, blood which “flecked the streets of Baltimore,” after the resistance to the first Federal troops, was disarmed and put down, an outcry went up in New Orleans against Maryland. “She had yielded! She was pusillanimous! She was willing to see her Southern sisters overrun and oppressed! She was mean, contemptible!”
“Better,” said the papers and the people, “better had the proud city of Baltimore been razed to the ground than to have become what she is,” I said so, too; at least, I felt so then and I feel so now— I would rather there should be no Baltimore—so long in my memory a sacred spot—now polluted by traitor’s feet; a Baltimore not true to the “Old Line’s fame.” I used to love to think how much of that dear soil was once the birthright of the Croxalls—my mother’s family, and how many thousands of dearest memories cluster about that splendid domain—Portland Manor—that once was ours. It lies not far away from Annapolis, now a Federal resting place. Our dear old home, our dear old Maryland! I did not know until this revolution how much I loved either. Ah, well, here are we, two lonely-hearted women living in Louisiana, not bearing transplanting much better than the Harrisons, though we went through it much earlier when mere children. We are sadder than they—we can not, in our unprotected state, live in our own house. By the by, I will record it here. That house and garden of ours is confiscated, they tell me. If so, Mr. Randolph must move out of it and let the Yankees move in. It only nearly escaped being made a hospital. I am glad we did not take the oath, though. The border State people have been very true in this respect. “Pride or Conscience?” I ask myself. Mrs. Brewer, who made that remark about Maryland, took the oath, and when a Federal tried to turn her out of her house she said she was a Union woman. The papers and people, who cried out, “Better had Baltimore been destroyed,” took quite another tone when New Orleans fell. Then it was, “We are a conquered people and we must not provoke our invaders.” When Marshall Kane, of Baltimore, was lodged in Fort McHenry and poor Thomas thrown in irons, my heart, it seemed, shed tears of blood; people said, “The pusillanimous Marylanders.” Since that day Mayor Monroe has been dragged to Fort Jackson in almost a dying condition, and the brave Mumford, who tore down the first Federal flag raised in the city, has been hung, and no man’s hand was lifted to help him. Indeed there has been more individual and collective resistance in Baltimore than in this city which has suffered more provocation. Yet people even yet will not make allowance for others who yield to bitter circumstance, even as they do Maryland, after the seizure and imprisonment of her Legislature, which would have carried the State out of the Union, sent other members to the Federal Congress. I felt this a great disgrace to her, but then New Orleans this winter has shown me how such movements can be made. Haus and Flanders, of this city, to represent Louisiana; men nobody had heard of till this commotion. Had poor old Maryland had her ex-Governor Lowe, instead of the serpent Hicks as her ruler, she would have been in the field as early as her sister Virginia. Together they would have taken sides after their peace commissions had failed. Old Virginia was for a long time distrusted here. “She should have been one of the first to have gone out,” people said, but now that she is the battle field, bleeding, dismantled and torn, she is loved. For my part, I never blamed her. I respected her dalliance, her love of the Union, and her earnest efforts toward mediation, but when the last failed, I knew she was right to sever her old bonds, and stand by her Southern sisters, and I knew dear old Maryland was wrong. I made some concession in my arraigning thoughts, because of her geographical position. The broad Potomac divided her from her friends and the severing Chesapeake brought the iron monsters to her very door and she had no time to think and prepare. I will do the people here the justice to say that her position has been considered. She has been much sympathized with and pitied, and “Maryland, my Maryland” has been sung with real and earnest pathos by thousands of Southern lips. They thought she was true, that she would come with us some day when her chains were taken off; they knew that she had helped us and that many a Maryland mother had a son to mourn, who lay beyond the wide Potomac. After Lee’s advance, and the battle of Antietam [Sharpsburg], this feeling changed. Lee was certainly unsupported. It was a great blow to me. “They should have risen en masse,” we said. Lee only remained three days, however, and men cannot leave homes unprotected so suddenly and on such short notice. Had he seized Baltimore; had he stayed long enough to offer protection to those he invited, I believe many would have joined him. The young and ardent were already on the field and the others required safeguards for their families. I wish Lee had never gone to Maryland. It was pleasant to dream of her relief in my own way. What sort of a journal is this, I wonder!
Mrs. Norton met a Confederate soldier in the cars the other day; they fell into converse and he promised to come to see us all, as he is on parole and is allowed the freedom of the city, but without his uniform. This creates an unpleasant excitement here; unpleasant to Federals, I mean—our officers we hear are much sought after and are in danger of forming bad habits from too much toast-drinking. Mrs. Norton’s soldier appointed a day and hour and Mr. Randolph, Mary Harrison, and Mrs. Dameron waited here a long time for his lordship, but he did not make his appearance. I was sick in bed and Ginnie was gloomy, sick and nervous—so I did not regret the disappointment for ourselves.
Mrs. Pinkard has had a message from the Federal authorities that she must either lodge General Sherman, give up her house, or pay rent for it. Cool and insolent! Colonel French lived in it and gave it up after Mrs. Pinkard’s return with reluctance. She had taken the oath and there was no excuse. “Would you have me turn Mrs. French into the street?” said he when first applied to. Why the last change, I cannot say.
