My father had a body-servant, Simon, who could imitate his master"s voice perfectly. He would sometimes call out from the yard after my father had mounted his horse: "d.i.c.k, bring me my overcoat. I see you there, sir, hurry up." When d.i.c.k hastened out, overcoat in hand, and only Simon was visible, after several obsequious "Yes, marster; just as marster pleases," my mother had always to step out and prevent a fight. d.i.c.k never forgave her laughing.
Once in Sumter, when my father was very busy preparing a law case, the mob in the street annoyed him, and he grumbled about it as Simon was making up his fire. Suddenly he heard, as it were, himself speaking, "the Hon. S. D. Miller - Lawyer Miller," as the colored gentleman announced himself in the dark - appeal to the gentlemen * * *
226 outside to go away and leave a lawyer in peace to prepare his case for the next day. My father said he could have sworn the sound was that of his own voice. The crowd dispersed, but some noisy negroes came along, and upon them Simon rushed with the sulky whip, slashing around in the dark, calling himself "Lawyer Miller," who was determined to have peace.
Simon returned, complaining that "them n.i.g.g.e.rs run so he never got in a hundred yards of one of them."
At Portland, we met a man who said: "Is it not strange that in this poor, devoted land of ours, there are some men who are making money by blockade-running, cheating our embarra.s.sed government, and skulking the fight?"
Montgomery, July 30th. - Coming on here from Portland there was no stateroom for me. My mother alone had one. My aunt and I sat nodding in armchairs, for the doors and sofas were covered with sleepers, too. On the floor that night, so hot that even a little covering of clothes could not be borne, lay a motley crew. Black, white, and yellow disported themselves in promiscuous array. Children and their nurses, bared to the view, were wrapped in the profoundest slumber. No caste prejudices were here. Neither Garrison, John Brown, nor Gerrit Smith ever dreamed of equality more untrammeled. A crow-black, enormously fat negro man waddled in every now and then to look after the lamps. The atmosphere of that cabin was stifling, and the sight of those figures on the floor did not make it more tolerable. So we soon escaped and sat out near the guards.
The next day was the very hottest I have ever known. One supreme consolation was the watermelons, the very finest, and the ice. A very handsome woman, whom I did not know, rehea.r.s.ed all our disasters in the field. And then, as if she held me responsible, she faced me furiously, "And where are our big men?" "Whom do you mean?" "I * * *
227 mean our leaders, the men we have a right to look to to save us. They got us into this sc.r.a.pe. Let them get us out of it. Where are our big men?" I sympathized with her and understood her, but I answered lightly, "I do not know the exact size you want them."
Here in Montgomery, we have been so hospitably received. Ye G.o.ds! how those women talked! and all at the same time! They put me under the care of General d.i.c.k Taylor"s brother-in-law, a Mr. Gordon, who married one of the Beranges. A very pleasant arrangement it was for me. He was kind and attentive and vastly agreeable with his New Orleans anecdotes. On the first of last January all his servants left him but four. To these faithful few he gave free papers at once, that they might lose naught by loyalty should the Confederates come into authority once more. He paid high wages and things worked smoothly for some weeks. One day his wife saw some Yankee officers" cards on a table, and said to her maid, "I did not know any of these people had called?"
"Oh, Missis!" the maid replied, "they come to see me, and I have been waiting to tell you. It is too hard! I can not do it! I can not dance with those nice gentlemen at night at our Union b.a.l.l.s and then come here and be your servant the next day. I can"t!" "So," said Mr. Gordon, "freedom must be followed by fraternity and equality." One by one the faithful few slipped away and the family were left to their own devices. Why not?
When General d.i.c.k Taylor"s place was sacked his negroes moved down to Algiers, a village near New Orleans. An old woman came to Mr. Gordon to say that these negroes wanted him to get word to "Mars d.i.c.k" that they were dying of disease and starvation; thirty had died that day. d.i.c.k Taylor"s help being out of the question, Mr. Gordon applied to a Federal officer. He found this one not a philanthropist, but a cynic, who said: "All right; it is working out as I expected. Improve negroes and Indians * * *
228 off the continent. Their strong men we put in the army. The rest will disappear."
Joe Johnston can sulk. As he is sent West, he says, "They may give Lee the army Joe Johnston trained." Lee is reaping where he sowed, he thinks, but then he was backing straight through Richmond when they stopped his retreating.
229
XIV. RICHMOND, VA.
August 10, 1863 - September 7. 1863 RICHMOND, Va., August 10, 1863. - To-day I had letter from my sister, who wrote to inquire about her old playmate, friend, and lover, Boykin McCaa. It is nearly twenty years since each was married; each now has children nearly grown. "To tell the truth," she writes "in these last dreadful years, with David in Florida, where I can not often hear from him, and everything dismal, anxious, and disquieting, I had almost forgotten Boykin"s existence, but he came here last night; he stood by my bedside and spoke to me kindly and affectionately, as if we had just parted. I said, holding out my hand, "Boykin, you are very pale" He answered, "I have come to tell you good by," and then seized both my hands. His own hands were as cold and hard as ice; they froze the marrow of my bones. I screamed again and again until my whole household came rushing in, and then came the negroes from the yard, all wakened by my piercing shrieks. This may have been a dream, but it haunts me.
"Some one sent me an old paper with an account of his wounds and his recovery, but I know he is dead." "Stop!" said my husband at this point, and then he read from that day"s Examiner these words: "Captain Burwell Boykin McCaa found dead upon the battle-field leading a cavalry charge at the head of his company. He was shot through the head."
The famous colonel of the Fourth Texas, by name John * * *
230 Bell Hood,1 is here - him we call Sam, because his cla.s.smates at West Point did so - for what cause is not known. John Darby asked if he might bring his hero to us; bragged of him extensively; said he had won his three stars, etc., under Stonewall"s eye, and that he was promoted by Stonewall"s request. When Hood came with his sad Quixote face, the face of an old Crusader, who believed in his cause, his cross, and his crown, we were not prepared for such a man as a beau-ideal of the wild Texans. He is tall, thin, and shy; has blue eyes and light hair; a tawny beard, and a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of his face, the whole appearance that of awkward strength. Some one said that his great reserve of manner he carried only into the society of ladies. Major Venable added that he had often heard of the light of battle shining in a man"s eyes. He had seen it once - when he carried to Hood orders from Lee, and found in the hottest of the fight that the man was transfigured. The fierce light of Hood"s eyes I can never forget.
Hood came to ask us to a picnic next day at Drury"s Bluff.2 The naval heroes were to receive us and then we were to drive out to the Texan camp. We accused John Darby of having instigated this unlooked-for festivity. We were to have bands of music and dances, with turkeys, chickens, and buffalo tongues to eat. Next morning, just as my foot was on the carriage-step, the girls standing behind ready to follow me with Johnny and the Infant Samuel (Captain Shannon by proper name), up rode John Darby in red-hot haste, threw his bridle to one of the men who was holding the horses, and came toward us rapidly, clanking his cavalry spurs with a despairing sound as he 1. Hood was a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point.
2. Drury"s Bluff lies eight miles south of Richmond on the James River. Here, on May 16, 1864, the Confederates under Beauregard repulsed the Federals under Butler.
230a ANOTHER GROUP OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS.
WADE HAMPTON. ROBERT TOOMBS. JOHN C. PRESTON. JOHN H. MORGAN. JOSEPH B. KERSHAW. JAMES CHESNUT, JR.
231 cried: "Stop! it"s all up. We are ordered back to the Rappahannock. The brigade is marching through Richmond now." So we unpacked and unloaded, dismissed the hacks and sat down with a sigh.
"Suppose we go and see them pa.s.s the turnpike," some one said. The suggestion was hailed with delight, and off we marched. Johnny and the Infant were in citizens" clothes, and the Straggler - as Hood calls John Darby, since the Prestons have been in Richmond - was all plaided and plumed in his surgeon"s array. He never bated an inch of bullion or a feather; he was courting and he stalked ahead with Mary Preston, Buck, and Johnny. The Infant and myself, both stout and scant of breath, lagged last. They called back to us, as the Infant came toddling along, "Hurry up or we will leave you."
At the turnpike we stood on the sidewalk and saw ten thousand men march by. We had seen nothing like this before. Hitherto we had seen only regiments marching spick and span in their fresh, smart clothes, just from home and on their way to the army. Such rags and tags as we saw now. Nothing was like anything else. Most garments and arms were such as had been taken from the enemy. Such shoes as they had on. "Oh, our brave boys!" moaned Buck. Such tin pans and pots as were tied to their waists, with bread or bacon stuck on the ends of their bayonets. Anything that could be spiked was bayoneted and held aloft.
They did not seem to mind their shabby condition; they laughed, shouted, and cheered as they marched by. Not a disrespectful or light word was spoken, but they went for the men who were huddled behind us, and who seemed to be trying to make themselves as small as possible in order to escape observation.
Hood and his staff finally came galloping up, dismounted, and joined us. Mary Preston gave him a bouquet. Thereupon he unwrapped a Bible, which he carried in his * * *
232 pocket. He said his mother had given it to him. He pressed a flower in it. Mary Preston suggested that he had not worn or used it at all, being fresh, new, and beautifully kept. Every word of this the Texans heard as they marched by, almost touching us. They laughed and joked and made their own rough comments.
September 7th. - Major Edward Johnston did not get into the Confederacy until after the first battle of Mana.s.sas. For some cause, before he could evade that potentate, Seward rang his little bell and sent him to a prison in the harbor of New York. I forget whether he was exchanged or escaped of his own motion. The next thing I heard of my antebellum friend he had defeated Milroy in Western Virginia. There were so many Johnstons that for this victory they named him Alleghany Johnston.
He had an odd habit of falling into a state of incessant winking as soon as he became the least startled or agitated. In such times he seemed persistently to be winking one eye at you. He meant nothing by it, and in point of fact did not know himself that he was doing it. In Mexico he had been wounded in the eye, and the nerve vibrates independently of his will. During the winter of 1862 and 1863 he was on crutches. After a while he hobbled down Franklin Street with us, we proud to accommodate our pace to that of the wounded general. His ankle continued stiff; so when he sat down another chair had to be put before him. On this he stretched out his stiff leg, straight as a ramrod. At that time he was our only wounded knight, and the girls waited on him and made life pleasant for him.
One night I listened to two love-tales at once, in a distracted state of mind between the two. William Porcher Miles, in a perfectly modulated voice, in cadenced accents and low tones, was narrating the happy end of his affair. He had been engaged to sweet little Bettie Bierne, and I gave him my congratulations with all my heart. It was a capital match, suitable in every way, good for her, and * * *
233 good for him. I was deeply interested in Mr. Miles"s story, but there was din and discord on the other hand; old Edward, our pet general, sat diagonally across the room with one leg straight out like a poker, wrapped in red carpet leggings, as red as a turkey-c.o.c.k in the face. His head is strangely shaped, like a cone or an old-fashioned beehive; or, as Buck said, there are three tiers of it; it is like a pope"s tiara.
There he sat, with a loud voice and a thousand winks, making love to Mary P. I make no excuse for listening. It was impossible not to hear him. I tried not to lose a word of Mr. Miles"s idyl as the despair of the veteran was thundered into my other ear. I lent an ear to each conversationalist. Mary can not altogether control her voice, and her shrill screams of negation, "No, no, never," etc., utterly failed to suppress her wounded lover"s obstreperous a.s.severations of his undying affection for her.
Buck said afterward: "We heard every word of it on our side of the room, even when Mamie shrieked to him that he was talking too loud. Now, Mamie," said we afterward, "do you think it was kind to tell him he was forty if he was a day?"
Strange to say, the pet general, Edward, rehabilitated his love in a day; at least two days after he was heard to say that he was "paying attentions now to his cousin, John Preston"s second daughter; her name, Sally, but they called her Buck - Sally Buchanan Campbell Preston, a lovely girl." And with her he now drove, rode, and hobbled on his crutches, sent her his photograph, and in due time cannonaded her, from the same spot where he had courted Mary, with proposals to marry him.
Buck was never so decided in her "Nos" as Mary. ("Not so loud, at least" - thus in amendment, says Buck, who always reads what I have written, and makes comments of a.s.sent or dissent.) So again he began to thunder in a woman"s ears his tender pa.s.sion. As they rode down * * *
234 Franklin Street, Buck says she knows the people on the sidewalk heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of the conversation, though she rode as rapidly as she could, and she begged him not to talk so loud. Finally, they dashed up to our door as if they had been running a race. Unfortunate in love, but fortunate in war, our general is now winning new laurels with Ewell in the Valley or with the Army of the Potomac.
I think I have told how Miles, still "so gently o"er me leaning," told of his successful love while General Edward Johnston roared unto anguish and disappointment over his failures. Mr. Miles spoke of sweet little Bettie Bierne as if she had been a French girl, just from a convent, kept far from the haunts of men wholly for him. One would think to hear him that Bettie had never cast those innocent blue eyes of hers on a man until he came along.
Now, since I first knew Miss Bierne in 1857, when Pat Calhoun was to the fore, she has been followed by a tale of men as long as a Highland chief"s. Every summer at the Springs, their father appeared in the ballroom a little before twelve and chased the three beautiful Biernes home before him in spite of all entreaties, and he was said to frown away their too numerous admirers at all hours of the day.
This new engagement was confided to me as a profound secret. Of course, I did not mention it, even to my own household. Next day little Alston, Morgan"s adjutant, and George Deas called. As Colonel Deas removed his gloves, he said: "Oh! the Miles and Bierne sensation - have you heard of it," "No, what is the row about?" "They are engaged to be married; that"s all." "Who told you?" "Miles himself, as we walked down Franklin Street, this afternoon." "And did he not beg you not to mention it, as Bettie did not wish it spoken of?" "G.o.d bless my soul, so he did. And I forgot that part entirely."
Colonel Alston begged the stout Carolinian not to take * * *
235 his inadvertent breach of faith too much to heart. Miss Bettie"s engagement had caused him a dreadful night. A young man, who was his intimate friend, came to his room in the depths of despair and handed him a letter from Miss Bierne, which was the cause of all his woe. Not knowing that she was already betrothed to Miles, he had proposed to her in an eloquent letter. In her reply, she positively stated that she was engaged to Mr. Miles, and instead of thanking her for putting him at once out of his misery, he considered the reason she gave as trebly aggravating the agony of the love-letter and the refusal. "Too late!" he yelled, "by Jingo!" So much for a secret.
Miss Bierne and I became fast friends. Our friendship was based on a mutual admiration for the honorable member from South Carolina. Colonel and Mrs. Myers and Colonel and Mrs. Chesnut were the only friends of Mr. Miles who were invited to the wedding. At the church door the s.e.xton demanded our credentials. No one but those whose names he held in his hand were allowed to enter. Not twenty people were present - a mere handful grouped about the altar in that large church.
We were among the first to arrive. Then came a faint flutter and Mrs. Parkman (the bride"s sister, swathed in weeds for her young husband, who had been killed within a year of her marriage) came rapidly up the aisle alone. She dropped upon her knees in the front pew, and there remained, motionless, during the whole ceremony, a ma.s.s of black crepe, and a dead weight on my heart. She has had experience of war. A cannonade around Richmond interrupted her marriage service - a sinister omen - and in a year thereafter her bridegroom was stiff and stark - dead upon the field of battle.
While the wedding-march turned our thoughts from her and thrilled us with sympathy, the bride advanced in white satin and point d"Alenon. Mrs. Myers whispered that it was Mrs. Parkman"s wedding-dress that the bride had on.
236 She remembered the exquisite lace, and she shuddered with superst.i.tious forebodings.
All had been going on delightfully in-doors, but a sharp shower cleared the church porch of the curious; and, as the water splashed, we wondered how we were to a.s.semble ourselves at Mrs. McFarland"s. All the horses in Richmond had been impressed for some sudden cavalry necessity a few days before. I ran between Mr. McFarland and Senator Semmes with my pretty Paris rose-colored silk turned over my head to save it, and when we arrived at the hospitable mansion of the McFarlands, Mr. McFarland took me straight into the drawing-room, man-like, forgetting that my ruffled plumes needed a good smoothing and preening.
Mrs. Lee sent for me. She was staying at Mrs. Caskie"s. I was taken directly to her room, where she was lying on the bed. She said, before I had taken my seat: "You know there is a fight going on now at Brandy Station?"1 "Yes, we are anxious. John Chesnut"s company is there, too." She spoke sadly, but quietly. "My son, Roony, is wounded; his brother has gone for him. They will soon be here and we shall know all about it unless Roony"s wife takes him to her grandfather. Poor lame mother, I am useless to my children." Mrs. Caskie said: "You need not be alarmed. The General said in his telegram that it was not a severe wound. You know even Yankees believe General Lee."
That day, Mrs. Lee gave me a likeness of the General in a photograph taken soon after the Mexican War. She likes it so much better than the later ones. He certainly was a handsome man then, handsomer even than now. I shall prize it for Mrs. Lee"s sake, too. She said old Mrs. Chesnut and her aunt, Nellie Custis (Mrs. Lewis) were very intimate during Washington"s Administration in Philadelphia. I told her Mrs. Chesnut, senior, was the historical member 1. The battle of Brandy Station, Va., occurred June 9, 1863.
237 of our family; she had so much to tell of Revolutionary times. She was one of the "white-robed choir" of little maidens who scattered flowers before Washington at Trenton Bridge, which everybody who writes a life of Washington asks her to give an account of.
Mrs. Ould and Mrs. Davis came home with me. Lawrence had a basket of delicious cherries. "If there were only some ice," said I. Respectfully Lawrence answered, and also firmly: "Give me money and you shall have ice." By the underground telegraph he had heard of an ice-house over the river, though its fame was suppressed by certain Sybarites, as they wanted it all. In a wonderfully short time we had mint-juleps and sherry-cobblers.
Altogether it has been a pleasant day, and as I sat alone I was laughing lightly now and then at the memory of some funny story. Suddenly, a violent ring; and a regular sheaf of telegrams were handed me. I could not have drawn away in more consternation if the sheets had been a nest of rattlesnakes. First, Frank Hampton was killed at Brandy Station. Wade Hampton telegraphed Mr. Chesnut to see Robert Barnwell, and make the necessary arrangements to recover the body. Mr. Chesnut is still at Wilmington. I sent for Preston Johnston, and my neighbor, Colonel Patton, offered to see that everything proper was done. That afternoon I walked out alone. Willie Mountford had shown me where the body, all that was left of Frank Hampton, was to be laid in the Capitol. Mrs. Petticola joined me after a while, and then Mrs. Singleton.
Preston Hampton and Peter Trezevant, with myself and Mrs. Singleton, formed the sad procession which followed the coffin. There was a company of soldiers drawn up in front of the State House porch. Mrs. Singleton said we had better go in and look at him before the coffin was finally closed. How I wish I had not looked. I remember him so well in all the pride of his magnificent manhood. He died of a saber-cut across the face and head, and was utterly * * *
238 disfigured. Mrs. Singleton seemed convulsed with grief. In all my life I had never seen such bitter weeping. She had her own troubles, but I did not know of them. We sat for a long time on the great steps of the State House. Everybody had gone and we were alone.
We talked of it all - how we had gone to Charleston to see Rachel in Adrienne Lecouvreur, and how, as I stood waiting in the pa.s.sage near the drawing-room, I had met Frank Hampton bringing his beautiful bride from the steamer. They had just landed. Afterward at Mrs. Singleton"s place in the country we had all spent a delightful week together. And now, only a few years have pa.s.sed, but nearly all that pleasant company are dead, and our world, the only world we cared for, literally kicked to pieces. And she cried, "We are two lone women, stranded here." Rev. Robert Barnwell was in a desperate condition, and Mary Barnwell, her daughter, was expecting her confinement every day.
Here now, later, let me add that it was not until I got back to Carolina that I heard of Robert Barnwell"s death, with scarcely a day"s interval between it and that of Mary and her new-born baby. Husband, wife, and child were buried at the same time in the same grave in Columbia. And now, Mrs. Singleton has three orphan grandchildren. What a woful year it has been to her.
Robert Barnwell had insisted upon being sent to the hospital at Staunton. On account of his wife"s situation the doctor also had advised it. He was carried off on a mattress. His brave wife tried to prevent it, and said: "It is only fever." And she nursed him to the last. She tried to say good-by cheerfully, and called after him: "As soon as my trouble is over I will come to you at Staunton." At the hospital they said it was typhoid fever. He died the second day after he got there. Poor Mary fainted when she heard the ambulance drive away with him. Then she crept into a low trundle-bed kept for the children in her mother"s room.
239 She never left that bed again. When the message came from Staunton that fever was the matter with Robert and nothing more, Mrs. Singleton says she will never forget the expression in Mary"s eyes as she turned and looked at her. "Robert will get well," she said, "it is all right." Her face was radiant, blazing with light. That night the baby was born, and Mrs. Singleton got a telegram that Robert was dead. She did not tell Mary, standing, as she did, at the window while she read it. She was at the same time looking for Robert"s body, which might come any moment. As for Mary"s life being in danger, she had never thought of such a thing. She was thinking only of Robert. Then a servant touched her and said: "Look at Mrs. Barnwell." She ran to the bedside, and the doctor, who had come in, said, "It is all over; she is dead." Not in anger, not in wrath, came the angel of death that day. He came to set Mary free from a world grown too hard to bear.
During Stoneman"s raid1 I burned some personal papers. Molly constantly said to me, "Missis, listen to de guns. Burn up everything. Mrs. Lyons says they are sure to come, and they"ll put in their newspapers whatever you write here, every day." The guns did sound very near, and when Mrs. Davis rode up and told me that if Mr. Davis left Richmond I must go with her, I confess I lost my head. So I burned a part of my journal but rewrote it afterward from memory - my implacable enemy that lets me forget none of the things I would. I am weak with dates. I do not always worry to look at the calendar and write them down. Besides I have not always a calendar at hand.
1. George S. Stoneman, a graduate of West Point, was now a Major-General, and Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac. His raid toward Richmond in 1863 was a memorable incident of the war. After the war, he became Governor of California.
240
XV. CAMDEN, S. C.
September 10, 1863 - November 5, 1863 CAMDEN, S. C., September 10,1863.-It is a comfort to turn from small political jealousies to our grand battles - to Lee and Kirby Smith after Council and Convention squabbles. Lee has proved to be all that my husband prophesied of him when he was so unpopular and when Joe Johnston was the great G.o.d of war. The very sound of the word convention or council is wearisome. Not that I am quite ready for Richmond yet. We must look after home and plantation affairs, which we have sadly neglected. Heaven help my husband through the deep waters.
The wedding of Miss Aiken, daughter of Governor Aiken, the largest slave-owner in South Carolina; Julia Rutledge, one of the bridesmaids; the place Flat Rock. We could not for a while imagine what Julia would do for a dress. My sister Kate remembered some muslin she had in the house for curtains, bought before the war, and laid aside as not needed now. The stuff was white and thin, a little coa.r.s.e, but then we covered it with no end of beautiful lace. It made a charming dress, and how altogether lovely Julia looked in it! The night of the wedding it stormed as if the world were coming to an end - wind, rain, thunder, and lightning in an unlimited supply around the mountain cottage.
The bride had a d.u.c.h.esse dressing-table, muslin and lace; not one of the shifts of honest, war-driven poverty, * * *
241 but a millionaire"s attempt at appearing economical, in the idea that that style was in better taste as placing the family more on the same plane with their less comfortable compatriots. A candle was left too near this light drapery and it took fire. Outside was lightning enough to fire the world; inside, the bridal chamber was ablaze, and there was wind enough to blow the house down the mountainside.
The English maid behaved heroically, and, with the aid of Mrs. Aiken"s and Mrs. Mat Singleton"s servants, put the fire out without disturbing the marriage ceremony, then being performed below. Everything in the bridal chamber was burned up except the bed, and that was a ma.s.s of cinders, soot, and flakes of charred and blackened wood.
At Kingsville I caught a glimpse of our army. Longstreet"s corps was going West. G.o.d bless the gallant fellows! Not one man was intoxicated; not one rude word did I hear. It was a strange sight - one part of it. There were miles, apparently, of platform cars, soldiers rolled in their blankets, lying in rows, heads all covered, fast asleep. In their gray blankets, packed in regular order, they looked like swathed mummies. One man near where I sat was writing on his knee. He used his cap for a desk and he was seated on a rail. I watched him, wondering to whom that letter was to go - home, no doubt. Sore hearts for him there.
A feeling of awful depression laid hold of me. All these fine fellows were going to kill or be killed. Why? And a phrase got to beating about my head like an old song, "The Unreturning Brave." When a knot of boyish, laughing, young creatures pa.s.sed me, a queer thrill of sympathy shook me. Ah, I know how your home-folks feel, poor children! Once, last winter, persons came to us in Camden with such strange stories of Captain - , Morgan"s man; stories of his father, too; turf tales and murder, or, at least, how he killed people. He had been a tremendous favorite with my husband, who brought him in once, leading him * * *
242 by the hand. Afterward he said to me, "With these girls in the house we must be more cautious." I agreed to be coldly polite to - . "After all," I said, "I barely know him."
When he called afterward in Richmond I was very glad to see him, utterly forgetting that he was under a ban. We had a long, confidential talk. He told me of his wife and children; of his army career, and told Morgan stories. He grew more and more cordial and so did I. He thanked me for the kind reception given him in that house; told me I was a true friend of his, and related to me a sc.r.a.pe he was in which, if divulged, would ruin him, although he was innocent; but time would clear all things. He begged me not to repeat anything he had told me of his affairs, not even to Colonel Chesnut; which I promised promptly, and then he went away. I sat poking the fire thinking what a curiously interesting creature he was, this famous Captain - , when the folding-doors slowly opened and Colonel Chesnut appeared. He had come home two hours ago from the War Office with a headache, and had been lying on the sofa behind that folding-door listening for mortal hours.
"So, this is your style of being "coldly polite," " he said. Fancy my feelings. "Indeed, I had forgotten all about what they had said of him. The lies they told of him never once crossed my mind. He is a great deal cleverer, and, I dare say, just as good as those who malign him."
Mattie Reedy (I knew her as a handsome girl in Washington several years ago) got tired of hearing Federals abusing John Morgan. One day they were worse than ever in their abuse and she grew restive. By way of putting a mark against the name of so rude a girl, the Yankee officer said, "What is your name?" "Write "Mattie Reedy" now, but by the grace of G.o.d one day I hope to call myself the wife of John Morgan." She did not know Morgan, but Morgan eventually heard the story; a good joke it was * * *
243 said to be. But he made it a point to find her out; and, as she was as pretty as she was patriotic, by the grace of G.o.d, she is now Mrs. Morgan! These timid Southern women under the guns can be brave enough.
Aunt Charlotte has told a story of my dear mother. They were up at Shelby, Ala., a white man"s country, where negroes are not wanted. The ladies had with them several negroes belonging to my uncle at whose house they were staying in the owner"s absence. One negro man who had married and dwelt in a cabin was for some cause particularly obnoxious to the neighborhood. My aunt and my mother, old-fashioned ladies, shrinking from everything outside their own door, knew nothing of all this. They occupied rooms on opposite sides of an open pa.s.sage-way. Underneath, the house was open and unfinished. Suddenly, one night, my aunt heard a terrible noise - apparently as of a man running for his life, pursued by men and dogs, shouting, hallowing, barking. She had only time to lock herself in. Utterly cut off from her sister, she sat down, dumb with terror, when there began loud knocking at the door, with men swearing, dogs tearing round, sniffing, racing in and out of the pa.s.sage and barking underneath the house like mad. Aunt Charlotte was sure she heard the panting of a negro as he ran into the house a few minutes before. What could have become of him? Where could he have hidden? The men shook the doors and windows, loudly threatening vengeance. My aunt pitied her feeble sister, cut off in the room across the pa.s.sage. This fright might kill her!
The cursing and shouting continued unabated. A man"s voice, in harshest accents, made itself heard above all: "Leave my house, you rascals!" said the voice. "If you are not gone in two seconds, I"ll shoot!" There was a dead silence except for the noise of the dogs. Quickly the men slipped away. Once out of gunshot, they began to call their dogs. After it was all over my aunt crept across the * * *
244 pa.s.sage. "Sister, what man was it scared them away?" My mother laughed aloud in her triumph. "I am the man," she said.
"But where is John?" Out crept John from a corner of the room, where my mother had thrown some rubbish over him. "Lawd bless you, Miss Mary opened de do" for me and dey was right behind runnin" me - " Aunt says mother was awfully proud of her prowess. And she showed some moral courage, too!
At the President"s in Richmond once, General Lee was there, and Constance and Hetty Cary came in; also Miss Sanders and others. Constance Cary1 was telling some war anecdotes, among them, one of an attempt to get up a supper the night before at some high and mighty F. F. V."s house, and of how several gentlefolks went into the kitchen to prepare something to eat by the light of one forlorn candle. One of the men in the party, not being of a useful temperament, turned up a tub and sat down upon it. Custis Lee, wishing also to rest, found nothing upon which to sit but a gridiron.
One remembrance I kept of the evening at the President"s: General Lee bowing over the beautiful Miss Cary"s hands in the pa.s.sage outside. Miss - rose to have her part in the picture, and asked Mr. Davis to walk with her into the adjoining drawing-room. He seemed surprised, but rose stiffly, and, with a scowling brow, was led off. As they pa.s.sed where Mrs. Davis sat, Miss - , with all sail set, looked back and said: "Don"t be jealous, Mrs. Davis; I have an important communication to make to the President." Mrs. Davis"s amus.e.m.e.nt resulted in a significant "Now! Did you ever?"
During Stoneman"s raid, on a Sunday I was in Mrs.
1. Miss Constance Cary afterward married Burton Harrison and settled in New York where she became prominent socially and achieved reputation as a novelist.
245 Randolph"s pew. The battle of Chancellorsville was also raging. The rattling of ammunition wagons, the tramp of soldiers, the everlasting slamming of those iron gates of the Capitol Square just opposite the church, made it hard to attend to the service.
Then began a scene calculated to make the stoutest heart quail. The s.e.xton would walk quietly up the aisle to deliver messages to worshipers whose relatives had been brought in wounded, dying, or dead. Pale-faced people would then follow him out. Finally, the Rev. Mr. Minnegerode bent across the chancel-rail to the s.e.xton for a few minutes, whispered with the s.e.xton, and then disappeared. The a.s.sistant clergyman resumed the communion which Mr. Minnegerode had been administering. At the church door stood Mrs. Minnegerode, as tragically wretched and as wild-looking as ever Mrs. Siddons was. She managed to say to her husband, "Your son is at the station, dead!" When these agonized parents reached the station, however, it proved to be some one else"s son who was dead - but a son all the same. Pale and wan came Mr. Minnegerode back to his place within the altar rails. After the sacred communion was over, some one asked him what it all meant, and he said: "Oh, it was not my son who was killed, but it came so near it aches me yet!"
At home I found L. Q. Washington, who stayed to dinner. I saw that he and my husband were intently preoccupied by some event which they did not see fit to communicate to me. Immediately after dinner my husband lent Mr. Washington one of his horses and they rode off together. I betook myself to my kind neighbors, the Pattons, for information. There I found Colonel Patton had gone, too. Mrs. Patton, however, knew all about the trouble. She said there was a raiding party within forty miles of us and no troops were in Richmond! They asked me to stay to tea - those kind ladies - and in some way we might learn what was going on. After tea we went out to the Capitol * * *
246 Square, Lawrence and three men-servants going along to protect us. They seemed to be mustering in citizens by the thousands. Company after company was being formed; then battalions, and then regiments. It was a wonderful sight to us, peering through the iron railing, watching them fall into ranks.