A Diary From Dixie Part 17

Maria Lewis was sitting with us on Mrs. Huger's steps, and Smith Lee was lauding Virginia people as usual. As Lee would say, there "hove in sight" Frank Parker, riding one of the finest of General Bragg's horses; by his side Buck on Fairfax, the most beautiful horse in Richmond, his brown coat looking like satin, his proud neck arched, moving slowly, gracefully, calmly, no fidgets, aristocratic in his bearing to the tips of his bridle-reins. There sat Buck tall and fair, managing her horse with infinite ease, her English riding-habit showing plainly the exquisite proportions of her figure. "Supremely lovely," said Smith Lee. "Look at them both," said I proudly; "can you match those two in Virginia?" "Three cheers for South Carolina!" was the answer of Lee, the gallant Virginia sailor.

304

XVII. CAMDEN, S. C.

May 8,1864 - June 1,1864 CAMDEN, S. C., May 8, 1864. - My friends crowded around me so in those last days in Richmond, I forgot the affairs of this nation utterly; though I did show faith in my Confederate country by buying poor Bones's (my English maid's) Confederate bonds. I gave her gold thimbles, bracelets; whatever was gold and would sell in New York or London, I gave.

My friends in Richmond grieved that I had to leave them - not half so much, however, as I did that I must come away. Those last weeks were so pleasant. No battle, no murder, no sudden death, all went merry as a marriage bell. Clever, cordial, kind, brave friends rallied around me.

Maggie Howell and I went down the river to see an exchange of prisoners. Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan, Mrs. Ould. We picked up Judge Ould and Buck Allan at Curl's Neck. I had seen no genuine Yankees before; prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or Irish. Among our men coming ash.o.r.e was an officer, who had charge of some letters for a friend of mine whose fianc had died; I gave him her address. One other man showed me some wonderfully ingenious things he had made while a prisoner. One said they gave him rations for a week; he always devoured them in three days, he could not help it; and then he had to bear the inevitable agony of those four remaining days! Many were wounded, * * *

305 some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. We had supper - or some nondescript meal - with ice-cream on board. The band played Home, Sweet Home.

One man tapped another on the shoulder: "Well, how do you feel, old fellow?" "Never was so near crying in my life - for very comfort."

Governor c.u.mmings, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah, was among the returned prisoners. He had been in prison two years. His wife was with him. He was a striking-looking person, huge in size, and with snow-white hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee barbarity or starvation about him.

That evening, as we walked up to Mrs. Davis's carriage, which was waiting for us at the landing, Dr. Garnett with Maggie Howell, Major Hall with me, suddenly I heard her scream, and some one stepped back in the dark and said in a whisper. "Little Joe! he has killed himself!" I felt reeling, faint, bewildered. A chattering woman clutched my arm: "Mrs. Davis's son? Impossible. Whom did you say? Was he an interesting child? How old was he?" The shock was terrible, and unnerved as I was I cried, "For G.o.d's sake take her away!"

Then Maggie and I drove two long miles in silence except for Maggie's hysterical sobs. She was wild with terror. The news was broken to her in that abrupt way at the carriage door so that at first she thought it had all happened there, and that poor little Joe was in the carriage.

Mr. Burton Harrison met us at the door of the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Semmes and Mrs. Barksdale were there, too. Every window and door of the house seemed wide open, and the wind was blowing the curtains. It was lighted, even in the third story. As I sat in the drawing-room, I could hear the tramp of Mr. Davis's step as he walked up and down the room above. Not another sound. The whole house as silent as death. It was then twelve o'clock; so I went home and waked General Chesnut, who had gone * * *

306 to bed. We went immediately back to the President's, found Mrs. Semmes still there, but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the family ought to be in the house.

Mrs. Semmes said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by his brother, and he called out to her in great distress: "Mrs. Semmes, I have said all the prayers I know how, but G.o.d will not wake Joe."

Poor little Joe, the good child of the family, was so gentle and affectionate. He used to run in to say his prayers at his father's knee. Now he was laid out somewhere above us, crushed and killed. Mrs. Semmes, describing the accident, said he fell from the high north piazza upon a brick pavement. Before I left the house I saw him lying there, white and beautiful as an angel, covered with flowers; Catherine, his nurse, flat on the floor by his side, was weeping and wailing as only an Irishwoman can.

Immense crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic, but some shoving and pus.h.i.+ng rudely. There were thousands of children, and each child had a green bough or a bunch of flowers to throw on little Joe's grave, which was already a ma.s.s of white flowers, crosses, and evergreens. The morning I came away from Mrs. Davis's, early as it was, I met a little child with a handful of snow drops. "Put these on little Joe," she said; "I knew him so well," and then she turned and fled without another word. I did not know who she was then or now.

As I walked home I met Mr. Reagan, then Wade Hampton. But I could see nothing but little Joe and his brokenhearted mother. And Mr. Davis's step still sounded in my ears as he walked that floor the livelong night.

General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond. Great numbers of people were to go up by rail to see it. Miss Turner McFarland writes: "They did go, but they came back faster than they went. They found the army drawn up in battle array." Many of the brave * * *

307 and gay spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight, the only flight they know, and their bodies are left dead upon the battle-field. Poor old Edward Johnston is wounded again, and a prisoner. Jones's brigade broke first; he was wounded the day before.

At Wilmington we met General Whiting. He sent us to the station in his carriage, and bestowed upon us a bottle of brandy, which had run the blockade. They say Beauregard has taken his sword from Whiting. Never! I will not believe it. At the capture of Fort Sumter they said Whiting was the brains, Beauregard only the hand. Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou fallen! That they should even say such a thing!

My husband and Mr. Covey got out at Florence to procure for Mrs. Miles a cup of coffee. They were slow about it and they got left. I did not mind this so very much, for I remembered that we were to remain all day at Kingsville, and that my husband could overtake me there by the next train. My maid belonged to the Prestons. She was only traveling home with me, and would go straight on to Columbia. So without fear I stepped off at Kingsville. My old Confederate silk, like most Confederate dresses, had seen better days, and I noticed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous "one-hoss stray," it had gone to pieces suddenly, and all over. It was literally in strips. I became painfully aware of my forlorn aspect when I asked the telegraph man the way to the hotel, and he was by no means respectful to me. I was, indeed, alone - an old and not too respectable-looking woman. It was my first appearance in the character, and I laughed aloud.

A very haughty and highly painted dame greeted me at the hotel. "No room," said she. "Who are you?" I gave my name. "Try something else," said she. "Mrs. Chesnut don't travel round by herself with no servants and no nothing." I looked down. There I was, dirty, tired, tattered, and torn. "Where do you come from?" said she.

308 "My home is in Camden." "Come, now, I know everybody in Camden." I sat down meekly on a bench in the piazza, that was free to all wayfarers.

"Which Mrs. Chesnut?" said she (sharply). "I know both." "I am now the only one. And now what is the matter with you? Do you take me for a spy? I know you perfectly well. I went to school with you at Miss Henrietta de Leon's, and my name was Mary Miller." "The Lord sakes alive! and to think you are her! Now I see. Dear! dear me! Heaven sakes, woman, but you are broke!" "And tore," I added, holding up my dress. "But I had had no idea it was so difficult to effect an entry into a railroad wayside hotel." I picked up a long strip of my old black dress, torn off by a man's spur as I pa.s.sed him getting off the train.

It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chesnut, who was the good genius of the place. It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest - the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here-with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter.

Inside, are creature comforts of all kinds - green peas, strawberries, asparagus, spring lamb, spring chicken, fresh eggs, rich, yellow b.u.t.ter, clean white linen for one's beds, dazzling white damask for one's table. It is such a contrast to Richmond, where I wish I were.

Fighting is going on. Hampton is frantic, for his laggard new regiments fall in slowly; no fault of the soldiers; they are as disgusted as he is. Bragg, Bragg, the head of the War Office, can not organize in time.

John Boykin has died in a Yankee prison. He had on a heavy flannel s.h.i.+rt when lying in an open platform car on the way to a cold prison on the lakes. A Federal soldier wanted John's s.h.i.+rt. Prisoners have no rights; so John had to strip off and hand his s.h.i.+rt to him. That caused * * *

309 his death. In two days he was dead of pneumonia - may be frozen to death. One man said: "They are taking us there to freeze." But then their men will find our hot sun in August and July as deadly as our men find their cold Decembers. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they say. Napoleon's soldiers found out all that in the Russian campaign.

Have brought my houseless, homeless friends, refugees here, to luxuriate in Mulberry's plenty. I can but remember the lavish kindness of the Virginia people when I was there and in a similar condition. The Virginia people do the rarest acts of hospitality and never seem to know it is not in the ordinary course of events.

The President's man, Stephen, bringing his master's Arabian to Mulberry for safe-keeping, said: "Why, Missis, your n.i.g.g.e.rs down here are well off. I call this Mulberry place heaven, with plenty to eat, little to do, warm house to sleep in, a good church."

John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment. The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering. The Secretary of War authorizes General Chesnut to reorganize the men who have been hitherto detailed for special duty, and also those who have been exempt. He says General Chesnut originated the plan and organized the corps of clerks which saved Richmond in the Dahlgren raid.

May 27th. - In all this beautiful suns.h.i.+ne, in the stillness and shade of these long hours on this piazza, all comes back to me about little Joe; it haunts me - that scene in Richmond where all seemed confusion, madness, a bad dream! Here I see that funeral procession as it wound among those tall white monuments, up that hillside, the James River tumbling about below over rocks and around islands; the dominant figure, that poor, old, gray-haired man, standing bareheaded, straight as an arrow, clear against the sky by the open grave of his son. She, the bereft * * *

310 mother, stood back, in her heavy black wrappings, and her tall figure drooped. The flowers, the children, the procession as it moved, comes and goes, but those two dark, sorrow-stricken figures stand; they are before me now!

That night, with no sound but the heavy tramp of his feet overhead, the curtains flapping in the wind, the gas flaring, I was numb, stupid, half-dead with grief and terror. Then came Catherine's Irish howl. Cheap, was that. Where was she when it all happened? Her place was to have been with the child. Who saw him fall? Whom will they kill next of that devoted household?

Read to-day the list of killed and wounded.1 One long column was not enough for South Carolina's dead. I see Mr. Federal Secretary Stanton says he can reenforce Suwarrow Grant at his leisure whenever he calls for more. He has just sent him 25,000 veterans. Old Lincoln says, in his quaint backwoods way, "Keep a-peggin'." Now we can only peg out. What have we left of men, etc., to meet these "reenforcements as often as reenforcements are called for?" Our fighting men have all gone to the front; only old men and little boys are at home now.

It is impossible to sleep here, because it is so solemn and still. The moonlight s.h.i.+nes in my window sad and white, and the soft south wind, literally comes over a bank of violets, lilacs, roses, with orange-blossoms and magnolia flowers.

Mrs. Chesnut was only a year younger than her husband. He is ninety-two or three. She was deaf; but he retains his senses wonderfully for his great age. I have always been an early riser. Formerly I often saw him sauntering slowly down the broad pa.s.sage from his room to hers, in a flowing flannel dressing-gown when it was winter In 1. During the month of May, 1864, important battles had been fought in Virginia, including that of the Wilderness on May 6th-7th, and the series later in that month around Spottsylvania Court House.

310a MRS. JAMES CHESNUT, SR.

From a Portrait in Oil by Gilbert Stuart.

311 the spring he was apt to be in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, with suspenders hanging down his back. He had always a large hair-brush in his hand.

He would take his stand on the rug before the fire in her room, brus.h.i.+ng scant locks which were fleecy white. Her maid would be doing hers, which were dead-leaf brown, not a white hair in her head. He had the voice of a stentor, and there he stood roaring his morning compliments. The people who occupied the room above said he fairly shook the window gla.s.ses. This pleasant morning greeting ceremony was never omitted.

Her voice was "soft and low" (the oft-quoted). Philadelphia seems to have lost the art of sending forth such voices now. Mrs. Binney, old Mrs. Chesnut's sister, came among us with the same softly modulated, womanly, musical voice. Her clever and beautiful daughters were criard. Judge Han said: "Philadelphia women scream like macaws." This morning as I pa.s.sed Mrs. Chesnut's room, the door stood wide open, and I heard a pitiful sound. The old man was kneeling by her empty bedside sobbing bitterly. I fled down the middle walk, anywhere out of reach of what was never meant for me to hear.

June 1st. - We have been to Bloomsbury again and hear that William Kirkland has been wounded. A scene occurred then, Mary weeping bitterly and Aunt B. frantic as to Tanny's danger. I proposed to make arrangements for Mary to go on at once. The Judge took me aside, frowning angrily. "You are unwise to talk in that way. She can neither take her infant nor leave it. The cars are closed by order of the government to all but soldiers."

I told him of the woman who, when the conductor said she could not go, cried at the top of her voice, "Soldiers, I want to go to Richmond to nurse my wounded husband." In a moment twenty men made themselves her body-guard, and she went on unmolested. The Judge said I talked nonsense. I said I would go on in my carriage if * * *

312 need be. Besides, there would be no difficulty in getting Mary a "permit."

He answered hotly that in no case would he let her go, and that I had better not go back into the house. We were on the piazza and my carriage at the door. I took it and crossed over to see Mary Boykin. She was weeping, too, so washed away with tears one would hardly know her. "So many killed. My son and my husband - I do not hear a word from them."

Gave to-day for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, and sixty pounds of sugar, $800.

Beauregard is a gentleman and was a genius as long as Whiting did his engineering for him. Our Creole general is not quite so clever as he thinks himself.

Mary Ford writes for school-books for her boys. She is in great distress on the subject. When Longstreet's corps pa.s.sed through Greenville there was great enthusiasm; handkerchiefs were waved, bouquets and flowers were thrown the troops; her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw their school-books.

313

XVIII. COLUMBIA, S. C.

July 6,1864 - January 17,1865 COLUMBIA, S. C., July 6, 1864. - At the Prestons' Mary was laughing at Mrs. Lyons's complaint - the person from whom we rented rooms in Richmond. She spoke of Molly and Lawrence's deceitfulness. They went about the house quiet as mice while we were at home; or Lawrence sat at the door and sprang to his feet whenever we pa.s.sed. But when we were out, they sang, laughed, shouted, and danced. If any of the Lyons family pa.s.sed him. Lawrence kept his seat, with his hat on, too. Mrs. Chesnut had said: "Oh!" so meekly to the whole tirade, and added, "I will see about it."

Colonel Urquhart and Edmund Rhett dined here; charming men both - no brag, no detraction. Talk is never pleasant where there is either. Our n.o.ble Georgian dined here. He says Hampton was the hero of the Yankee rout at Stony Creek.1 He claims that citizens, militia, and lame soldiers kept the bridge at Staunton and gallantly repulsed Wilson's raiders.

At Mrs. S.'s last night. She came up, saying, "In New Orleans four people never met together without dancing." Edmund Rhett turned to me: "You shall be pressed into service." "No, I belong to the reserve corps- 1. The battle of Stony Creek in Virginia was fought on June 28-29, 1864.

314 too old to volunteer or to be drafted as a conscript." But I had to go.

My partner in the dance showed his English descent; he took his pleasure sadly. "Oh, Mr. Rhett, at his pleasure, can be a most agreeable companion!" said someone. "I never happened to meet him," said I, "when he pleased to be otherwise." With a hot, draggled, old alpaca dress, and those clod-hopping shoes, to tumble slowly and gracefully through the mazes of a July dance was too much for me. "What depresses you so?" he anxiously inquired. "Our carnival of death." What a blunder to bring us all together here!-a reunion of consumptives to dance and sing until one can almost hear the death-rattle!

July 25th. - Now we are in a cottage rented from Doctor Chisolm. Hood is a full general. Johnston1 has been removed and superseded. Early is threatening Was.h.i.+ngton City. Semmes, of whom we have been so proud, risked the Alabama in a sort of duel of s.h.i.+ps. He has lowered the flag of the famous Alabama to the Kearsarge.2 Forgive who may! I can not. We moved into this house on the 20th of 1. General Johnston in 1863 had been appointed to command the Army of the Tennessee, with headquarters at Dalton, Georgia. He was to oppose the advance of Sherman's army toward Atlanta. In May, 1864, he fought unsuccessful battles at Resaca and elsewhere, and in July was compelled to retreat across the Chattahoochee River. Fault was found with him because of his continual retreating. There were tremendous odds against him. On July 17th he was superseded by Hood.

2. Raphael Semmes was a native of Maryland and had served in the Mexican War. The Alabama was built for the Confederate States at Birkenhead, England, and with an English crew and English equipment was commanded by Semmes. In 1863 and 1864 the Alabama destroyed much Federal s.h.i.+pping. On June 19, 1864, she was sunk by the Federal s.h.i.+p Kearsarge in a battle off Cherbourg. Claims against England for damages were made by the United States, and as a result the Geneva Arbitration Court was created. Claims amounting to $15,500,000 were finally awarded. This case has much importance in the history of international law.

314a MRS. CHESNUT'S HOME IN COLUMBIA IN THE LAST YEAR OF THE WAR.

Here Mrs. Chesnut entertained Jefferson Davis.

315 July. My husband was telegraphed to go to Charleston. General Jones sent for him. A part of his command is on the coast.

The girls were at my house. Everything was in the utmost confusion. We were lying on a pile of mattresses in one of the front rooms while the servants were reducing things to order in the rear. All the papers are down on the President for this change of commanders except the Georgia papers. Indeed, Governor Brown's constant complaints, I dare say, caused it - these and the rage of the Georgia people as Johnston backed down on them.

Isabella soon came. She said she saw the Preston sisters pa.s.s her house, and as they turned the corner there was a loud and bitter cry. It seemed to come from the Hampton house. Both girls began to run at full speed. "What is the master?" asked Mrs. Martin. "Mother, listen; that sounded like the cry of a broken heart," said Isabella; "something has gone terribly wrong at the Prestons'."

Mrs. Martin is deaf, however, so she heard nothing and thought Isabella fanciful. Isabella hurried over there, and learned that they had come to tell Mrs. Preston that Willie was killed - Willie! his mother's darling. No country ever had a braver soldier, a truer gentleman, to lay down his life in her cause.

July 26th. - Isabella went with me to the bulletin-board. Mrs. D. (with the white linen as usual pasted on her chin) asked me to read aloud what was there written. As I slowly read on, I heard a suppressed giggle from Isabella. I know her way of laughing at everything, and tried to enunciate more distinctly - to read more slowly, and louder, with more precision. As I finished and turned round, I found myself closely packed in by a crowd of Confederate soldiers eager to hear the news. They took off their caps, thanked me for reading all that was on the boards, and made way for me, cap in hand, as I hastily returned to the carriage, which was waiting for us. Isabella proposed, "Call out to * * *

316 them to give three cheers for Jeff Davis and his generals." "You forget, my child, that we are on our way to a funeral."

Found my new house already open hospitably to all comers. My husband had arrived. He was seated at a pine table, on which someone had put a coa.r.s.e, red table-cover, and by the light of one tallow candle was affably entertaining Edward Barnwell, Isaac Hayne, and Uncle Hamilton. He had given them no tea, however. After I had remedied that oversight, we adjourned to the moonlighted piazza. By tallow-candle-light and the light of the moon, we made out that wonderful smile of Teddy's, which identifies him as Gerald Grey.

We have laughed so at broken hearts - the broken hearts of the foolish love stories. But Buck, now, is breaking her heart for her brother Willie. Hearts do break in silence, without a word or a sigh. Mrs. Means and Mary Barnwell made no moan - simply turned their faces to the wall and died. How many more that we know nothing of!

When I remember all the true-hearted, the light-hearted the gay and gallant boys who have come laughing, singing and dancing in my way in the three years now past; how I have looked into their brave young eyes and helped then as I could in every way and then saw them no more forever how they lie stark and cold, dead upon the battle-field, or moldering away in hospitals or prisons, which is worse-I think if I consider the long array of those bright youth and loyal men who have gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break, too. Is anything worth it - this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we pay for war?

Allen G. says Johnston was a failure. Now he will wait and see what Hood can do before he p.r.o.nounces judgment on him. He liked his address to his army. It was grand and inspiring, but every one knows a general has not time to write these things himself. Mr. Kelly, from New Orleans, * * *

317 says d.i.c.k Taylor and Kirby Smith have quarreled. One would think we had a big enough quarrel on hand for one while already. The Yankees are enough and to spare. General Lovell says, "Joe Brown, with his Georgians at his back, who importuned our government to remove Joe Johnston, they are scared now, and wish they had not."

In our democratic Republic, if one rises to be its head, whomever he displeases takes a Turkish revenge and defiles the tombs of his father and mother; hints that his father was a horse-thief and his mother no better than she should be; his sisters barmaids and worse, his brothers Yankee turncoats and traitors. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff Davis indiscriminately.

August 2d. - Sherman again. Artillery parked and a line of battle formed before Atlanta. When we asked Brewster what Sam meant to do at Atlanta he answered, "Oh - oh, like the man who went, he says he means to stay there!" Hope he may, that's all.

Spent to-day with Mrs. McCord at her hospital. She is dedicating her grief for her son, sanctifying it, one might say, by giving up her soul and body, her days and nights, to the wounded soldiers at her hospital. Every moment of her time is surrendered to their needs.

To-day General Taliaferro dined with us. He served with Hood at the second battle of Mana.s.sas and at Fredericksburg, where Hood won his major-general's spurs. On the battle-field, Hood, he said, "has military inspiration." We were thankful for that word. All now depends on that army at Atlanta. If that fails us, the game is up.

August 3d. - Yesterday was such a lucky day for my housekeeping in our hired house. Oh, ye kind Columbia folk! Mrs. Alex Taylor, ne Hayne, sent me a huge bowl of yellow b.u.t.ter and a basket to match of every vegetable in season. Mrs. Preston's man came with mushrooms freshly cut and Mrs. Tom Taylor's with fine melons.

Sent Smith and Johnson (my house servant and a * * *

318 carpenter from home, respectively) to the Commissary's with our wagon for supplies. They made a mistake, so they said, and went to the depot instead, and stayed there all day. I needed a servant sadly in many ways all day long, but I hope Smith and Johnson had a good time. I did not lose patience until Harriet came in an omnibus because I had neither servants nor horse to send to the station for her.

Stephen Elliott is wounded, and his wife and father have gone to him. Six hundred of his men were destroyed in a mine; and part of his brigade taken prisoners: Stoneman and his raiders have been captured. This last fact gives a slightly different hue to our horizon of unmitigated misery.

General L - told us of an unpleasant scene at the President's last winter. He called there to see Mrs. McLean. Mrs. Davis was in the room and he did not speak to her. He did not intend to be rude; it was merely an oversight. And so he called again and tried to apologize, to remedy his blunder, but the President was inexorable, and would not receive his overtures of peace and good-will. General L - is a New York man. Talk of the savagery of slavery, heavens! How perfect are our men's manners down here, how suave, how polished are they. Fancy one of them forgetting to speak to Mrs. Davis in her own drawing-room.

August 6th. - Archer came, a cla.s.smate of my husband's at Princeton; they called him Sally Archer then, he was so girlish and pretty. No trace of feminine beauty about this grim soldier now. He has a hard face, black-bearded and sallow, with the saddest black eyes. His hands are small, white, and well-shaped; his manners quiet. He is abstracted and weary-looking, his mind and body having been deadened by long imprisonment. He seemed glad to be here, and James Chesnut was charmed. "Dear Sally Archer," he calls him cheerily, and the other responds in a far-off, faded kind of way.

319 Hood and Archer were given the two Texas regiments at the beginning of the war. They were colonels and Wigfall was their general. Archer's comments on Hood are: "He does not compare intellectually with General Johnston, who is decidedly a man of culture and literary attainments, with much experience in military matters. Hood, however, has youth and energy to help counterbalance all this. He has a simple-minded directness of purpose always. He is awfully shy, and he has suffered terribly, but then he has had consolations - such a rapid rise in his profession, and then his luck to be engaged to the beautiful Miss - ."

They tried Archer again and again on the heated controversy of the day, but he stuck to his text. Joe Johnston is a fine military critic, a capital writer, an accomplished soldier, as brave as Csar in his own person, but cautious to a fault in manipulating an army. Hood has all the dash end fire of a reckless young soldier, and his Texans would follow him to the death. Too much caution might be followed easily by too much headlong rush. That is where the swing-back of the pendulum might ruin us.

August 10th. - To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops are ordered to look after the mountain pa.s.ses beyond Greenville on the North Carolina and Tennessee quarter.

Misery upon misery. Mobile1 is going as New Orleans went. Those Western men have not held their towns as we held and hold Charleston, or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a "frill-s.h.i.+rt, silk-stocking chivalry," or "a set of dandy Miss Nancys." They fight desperately in their b.l.o.o.d.y street brawls, but we bear privation and discipline best.

August 14th. - We have conflicting testimony. Young 1. The battle of Mobile Bay, won under Farragut, was fought on August 5, 1864.