Part 19 (1/2)

Flirtation is the business of society; that is, playing at

339 love-ins in vanity, it ends in vanity It is spurred on by idleness and a want of any other excitea to self-conceit If it begins and ends in vanity, vexation of spirit supervenes soers awfully, playing with fire, but there are no hearts broken Each party in a flirtation has secured a sympathetic listener, to whom he or she can talk of himself or herself - somebody who, for the time, admires one exclusively, and, as the French say, excessiveame, and so to bed

Hood and Thoenerals excessive in proportion to nu their men up to the ene up their islature of South Carolina was that he procured the prohts” Gist, by his influence in Richmond What have these comfortable, stay-at-home patriots to say of General Gist now? ”And how couldfearful odds,” etc

So Fort McAlister has fallen! Good-by, Savannah! Our Governor announces hiia Another fa over us and we are in this house, like the outsiders at the tis We eat, drink, laugh, dance, in lightness of heart

Doctor Trezevant caony! Desolation, , with the flower of Hampton's cavalry, is in Columbia Horses can not be found to ia nor the Governor of South Carolina is iven

340 up The Yankees claim another victory for Tho and bluster Can't say why, maybe I am benumbed, but I do not feel so intensely o to Camden? The very dismalest Christmas overtook us there Miss Rhett ith us - a brilliant woreeable ”The world, you know, is composed,” said she, ”of u) Noe feel that if we are to lose our negroes, ould as soon see Sherroes is the last Confederate Government craze We are a little too slow about it; that is all

Sold fifteen bales of cotton and took a sad farewell look at Mulberry It is a reen lawns and all So I took that last farewell of Mulberry, once so hated, now so beloved

January 7th - Sherman is at Hardieville and Hood in Tennessee, the last of his fall so cheerfully prophesied

Serena went for a half-hour to-day to the dentist Her teeth are of the whitest and ular, simply perfection She fancied it was better to have a dentist look in herto the mountains For that look she paid three hundred and fifty dollars in Confederate money ”Why, has this h in all truth, sad to say

Brewster was here and stayed till ht Said he must see General Chesnut He had business with hier comic He described Sherman's march of destruction and desolation ”Sherman leaves a track fifty miles wide, upon which there 1 Reference is here made to the battle between Hood and Tho up of Hood's ar to be seen,” said Brewster before he departed

January 10th - You do the Anabasis business when you want to get out of the eneet into your country But we retreated in our own country and we gave up our mountain passes without a blow But never mind the Greeks; if we had only our own Game cock, Sumter, our oamp Fox, Marion Marion's men or Sumter's, or the equivalent of theinia or Tennessee

January 14th - Yesterday I broke down - gave way to abject terror under the news of Sherman's advance with no news of my husband To-day, while wrapped up on the sofa, too dis, there was a loud knock Shawls on and all, just as I was, I rushed to the door to find a telegram from my husband: ”All well; be at hohthearted as if the ere over Then I looked at the date and the place - Adaan - in a run -Bull's Run, fro astounded the world, and now Adam's Run But if we must run, who are left to run? Froht until maimed soldiers, women, and children are all that reade, or what is left of it, passed through What shouts greeted it and what bold shouts of thanks it returned! It was all a very encouraging noise, absolutely co Some true men are left, after all

January 16th - My husband is at ho, I do not know His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place The drilling and the o on outside It rains a flood, with freshet after freshet The forces of nature are befriending us, for our eneo my husband wroteit to Mrs McCord He

342 warned us to make ready, for the end had come Our resources were exhausted, and theourselves to believe it, and now, he thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the freshets, which have no tiroes utterly apathetic (would they be so if they saw us triumphant?), if we had but an ar; but there are no troops; that is the real trouble

To-day Mrs McCord exchanged 16,000 in Confederate bills for 300 in gold - sixteen thousand for three hundred

January 17th - The Bazaar for the benefit of the hospitals opens now Sherman marches constantly All the railroads are s it is that I may not weep Generals are as plenty as blackberries, but none are in comave Mr Davis the kiss of peace And we send Stephens, Caotiate for peace No hope, no good Who dares hope?

Repressed excitereat railroad character was called out He soon returned and whispered soether Somehow the whisper moved around to us that Sherood Lord,” was prayed aloud ”Not Ulysses Grant, good Lord,”at the Prestons' with Jack They sent for us What a heartfelt greeting he gave us He can stand well enough without his crutch, but he does very sloalking How plainly he spoke out dreadful words about ”my defeat and discomfiture; my army destroyed, my losses,” etc, etc He said he had nobody to blaard to-day to my husband He does not knohether Sherman intends to advance on Branchville, Charleston, or Columbia

343 Isabella said: ”Maybe you attean one of her merriest stories Jack Preston touched me on the ar He has forgotten us all Did you notice how he stared in the fire? And the lurid spots which came out in his face and the drops of perspiration that stood on his forehead?” ”Yes He is going over some bitter scene; he sees Willie Preston with his heart shot away He sees the panic at Nashville and the dead on the battlefield at Franklin” ”That agony on his face coain,” said tender-hearted Jack ”I can't keep him out of those absent fits”

Governor McGrath and General Winder talk of preparations for a defense of Coluard can't stop Sherot here to do it with? Can we cheek or iht General Ha to save us if he were put in supreme command here Hampton says Joe Johnston is equal, if not superior, to Lee as a co officer

My silver is in a box and has been delivered for safe keeping to Isaac McLaughlin, who is really ro I s now, and lets me do as I please

Toot to Richmond Prison takes the life out of e, pallid look and such a vacant stare until you roused him Poor pretty Sally Archer: that is the end of you1 1 Under last date entry, January 17th, the author chronicles events of later occurrence; it was her not infrequent custoraphs Mr Blair visited President Davis January 12th; Stephens, Hunter and Campbell were appointed Peace Commissioners, January 28th

344

XIX LINCOLNTON, N C

February 16,1865 - March 15,1865 Lincolnton, NC, February 16, 1865 - A change has come o'er the spirit of my dream Dear old quire of yellow, coarse, Confederate hoe of anxiety and suffering has passed over es

My ideas of those last days are confused The Martins left Coluro woo with theirls with ed her mind She sent them up-stairs in her house and actually took away the staircase; that was her plan

Then Ito take off his sisters They were flitting, but were to go only as far as Yorkville He said it was ti, barely a day's journey from Columbia, and had left a track as bare and blackened as a fire leaves on the prairies

So o hoainst that old town, as they have against Charleston and Colu, ca her red-hot face with the cook's gri our own black people on the plantation; they would take care of o to Mulberry or

345 the Heron-load of ee from Tennessee She had been in a country overrun by Yankee invaders, and she described so graphically all the horrors to be endured by those subjected to fire and sword, rapine and plunder, that I was fairly scared, and deterhly out-of-all-routes place And yet I can go to Charlotte, am half-way to Kate at Flat Rock, and there is no Federal army between me and Richraphed to Lawrence, who had barely got to Caram was handed to him; so he took the train and came back Mr Chesnut sent hiht that if the negroes were ever so loyal to us, they could not protectus from the face of the earth, and if they tried to do so so s with their Yankee friends I then left them to shi+ft for themselves, as they are accustomed to do, and I took the sa for the property question, and never did Perhaps, if he had ever known poverty, it would be different He talked beautifully about it, as he always does about everything I have told hiate St Peter would listen to hiet in, and the angels ive him a crown extra

Now he says he has only one care - that I should be safe, and not so harassed with dread; and then there is his blind old father ”A entleman, with no fuss, and take it coolly It is hard not to envy those who are out of all this, their difficulties ended - those who have loriously on the battle-field, their doubts all solved One can but do his best and leave the result to a higher power”

346 After New Orleans, those vain, passionate, i suicide, driven to it by despair and ”Beast” Butler As we read these things, Mrs Davis said: ”If they want to die, why not first kill 'Beast' Butler, rid the world of their foe and be saved the trouble oftheir intolerable burden did not occur to theenerals without troops, here in this house, as they spread out their maps on my table where lay this quire of paper from which I write Every man Jack of theard and Lee were expected, but Grant had double-teamed on Lee Lee could not save his own - how could he come to save us? Read the list of the dead in those last battles around Rich1 if you want to break your heart

I took French leave of Columbia - slipped aithout a word to anybody Isaac Hayne and Mr Chesnut came down to the Charlotte depot with me Ellen,to co at it

”I wan' travel 'roun' wid Missis sooin' all de tilier than she was old, sharply rebukedat the carfor a last feords with me She said rudely: ”Stand aside, sir! I want air!” With his hat off, and his grand air, my husband bowed politely, and said: ”In oneimportant to say to my wife”

She talked aloud and introduced herself to every ht on February 5, 6, and 7, 1865

347 clai his protection She had never traveled alone before in all her life Old age and ugliness are protective in some cases She was ardently patriotic for a while Then she was joined by her friend, a et out of this Froleaned she had been for years in the Treasury Department They were about to cross the lines The whole idea was to get away from the trouble to come down here They were Yankees, but were they not spies?