The War-Time Journal of
a Georgia
Girl, 1864-1865:
Electronic Edition.
Eliza Frances Andrews, b. 1840
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Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library
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First edition, 1997.
ca. 800K
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997.
Call number 973.78 A56 (Wilson Annex, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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digitization project, Documenting the American
South.
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Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition,
1998
LC Subject Headings:
Andrews, Eliza Frances, b. 1840 -- Diaries.
Girls -- Georgia -- Wilkes County -- Diaries.
Women -- Georgia -- Wilkes County -- Diaries.
Upper class -- Georgia -- Wilkes County -- History -- 19th
century.
Wilkes County (Ga.) -- Biography.
Georgia -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal
narratives.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal
narratives, Confederate.
1997-10-18, Natalia Smith, project editor, finished
TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
1997-10-01, Teresa Church
finished TEI/SGML encoding
1997-05-10,
Claire LaForce
finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.
THE WAR-TIME JOURNAL OF
A GEORGIA GIRL
1864-1865
BY
ELIZA FRANCES ANDREWS
ILLUSTRATED FROM
CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Published September, 1908
To edit oneself after the
lapse of nearly half a century
is like taking an appeal from Philip drunk to Philip
sober. The changes of thought and feeling between the
middle of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
century are so great that the impulsive young
person who penned the following record and the white-haired
woman who edits it, are no more the same than
were Philip drunk with the wine of youth and passion
and Philip sobered by the lessons of age and experience.
The author's lot was cast amid the tempest and
fury of war, and if her utterances are sometimes out
of accord with the spirit of our own happier time, it
is because she belonged to an era which, though
but of yesterday, as men count the ages of history, is
separated from our own by a social and intellectual
chasm as broad almost as the lapse of a thousand
years. In the lifetime of a single generation the people
of the South have been called upon to pass through
changes that the rest of the world has taken centuries
to accomplish. The distance between the armor-clad
knight at Acre and the "embattled farmers" at Lexington
is hardly greater than that between the feudal
aristocracy which dominated Southern sentiment in
1860, and the commercial plutocracy that rules over
the destinies of the nation to-day.
Never was there an aristocracy so compact, so
united, so powerful. Out of a population of some
9,000,000 whites that peopled the Southern States,
according to the census of 1850, only about 300,000
were actual slaveholders. Less than 3,000 of these -
men owning, say, over 100 negroes each, constituted
the great planter class, who, with a small proportion
of professional and business men affiliated with them
in culture and sympathies, dominated Southern sentiment
and for years dictated the policy of the nation.
The more prominent families all over the country
knew each other by reputation, if not by actual contact,
and to be a member of the privileged few in one community
was an ex-officio title to membership in all.
To use a modern phrase, we were intensely "class
conscious" and this brought about a solidarity of
feeling and sentiment almost comparable to that created
by family ties. Narrow and provincial we may
have been, in some respects, but take it all in all, it is
doubtful whether the world has ever produced a state
of society more rich in all the resources for a thoroughly
wholesome, happy, and joyous life than existed
among the privileged "4,000" under the peculiar
civilization of the Old South - a civilization which has
served its purpose in the evolution of the race and
passed away forever. So completely has it vanished
that the very language in which we used to express
ourselves is becoming obsolete. Many of our household
words, among them a name scarcely less dear
than "mother," are a dead language. Others have a
strangely archaic sound to modern ears. When the
diary was written, women were still regarded as "females,"
and it was even permissible to have a "female
acquaintance," or a "male friend," when distinction
of sex was necessary, without being relegated forthwith
to the ranks of the ignobile vulgus. The words
"lady" and "gentleman" had not yet been brought
into disrepute, and strangest of all, to modern ears,
the word "rebel," now so bitterly resented as casting
a stigma on the Southern cause, is used throughout
the diary as a term of pride and affectionate endearment.
It is for the sake of the light it throws on the inner
life of this unique society at the period of its dissolution
- a period so momentous in the history of our
country - that this contemporaneous record from the
pen of a young woman in private life, is given to the
public. The uncompromising attitude of the writer's
father against secession removed him, of course, from
all participation in the political and official life of the
Confederacy, and so this volume can lay claim to none
of the dignity which attaches to the utterances of one
narrating events "quorum párs magna fui." But for
this reason its testimony will, perhaps, be of more
value to the student of social conditions than if it dealt
with matters pertaining more exclusively to the domain
of history. The experiences recounted are such as
might have come at that time, to any woman of good
family and social position; the feelings, beliefs, and
prejudices expressed reflect the general sentiment of
the Southern people of that generation, and this is my
apology for offering them to the public. As an informal
contemporaneous record, written with absolutely
no thought of ever meeting other eyes than those
of the author, the present volume can claim at least the
merit of that unpremeditated realism which is more
valuable as a picture of life than detailed statistics of
battles and sieges. The chief object of the writer in
keeping a diary was to cultivate ease of style by daily
exercise in rapid composition, and, incidentally, to
preserve a record of personal experiences for her own
convenience. This practice was kept up with more or
less regularity for about ten years, but the bulk of the
matter so produced was destroyed at various times in
those periodical fits of disgust and self-abasement that
come to every keeper of an honest diary in saner
moments. The present volume was rescued from a
similar fate by the intercession of a relative, who suggested
that the period dealt with was one of such
transcendent interest, embracing the last months of
the war and the equally stormy times immediately following,
that the record of it ought to be preserved
along with our other war relics, as a family heirloom.
So little importance did the writer attach to the document
even then, that the only revision made in changing
it from a personal to a family history, was to tear
out bodily whole paragraphs, and even pages, that
were considered too personal for other eyes than her
own. In this way the manuscript was mutilated, in
some places, beyond recovery. The frequent hiatuses
caused by these elisions are marked in the body of the
work by the usual signs of ellipsis.
The original manuscript was written in an old day-book
fished out of some forgotten corner during the
war, when writing paper was as scarce as banknotes,
and almost as dear, if measured in Confederate money.
The pale, home-made ink, never too distinct, at best, is
faded after nearly fifty years, to a light ocher, but
little darker than the age-yellowed paper on which it
was inscribed. Space was economized and paper
saved by writing between the closely-ruled lines, and
in a hand so small and cramped as to be often illegible,
without the aid of a lens. The manuscript suffered
many vicissitudes, the sheets having been torn from
the covers and crumpled into the smallest possible space
for better concealment in times of emergency.
As a discourager of self-conceit there is nothing like
an old diary, and I suppose no one ever knows what
a full-blown idiot he or she is capable of being, who
has not kept such a living record against himself. This
being the case, the gray-haired editor may be pardoned
a natural averseness to the publication of anything
that would too emphatically "write me down an ass"
- to borrow from our friend Dogberry - though I
fear that in some of the matter retained in the
interest of truth, I have come perilously near to that
alternative.
But while the "blue line" has been freely used, as
was indispensable in an intimate private chronicle of
this sort, it has not been allowed to interfere in any
way with the fidelity of the narrative. Matter strictly
personal to the writer - tiresome reflections, silly flirtations,
and the like - has been omitted, and thoughtless
criticisms and other expressions that might wound the
feelings of persons now living, have been left out or
toned down. Connectives, or other words are supplied
where necessary for clearness; where more particular
information is called for, it is given in parentheses,
or in the explanatory notes at the heads of the
chapters. Even the natural temptation to correct an
occasional lapse into local barbarisms, such as "like"
for "as," "don't" for "doesn't," or the still more
unpardonable offense of applying the terms "male"
and "female" to objects of their respective genders,
has been resisted for fear of altering the spirit of the
narrative by too much tampering with the letter. For
the same reason certain palpable errors and misstatements,
unless of sufficient importance to warrant a
note, have been left unchanged - for instance, the
absurd classing of B. F. Butler with General Sherman
as a degenerate West Pointer, or the confusion between
fuit Ilium and ubi Troja fuit that resulted in
the misquotation on page 190. For my "small Latin,"
I have no excuse to offer except that I had never been
a school teacher then, and could enjoy the bliss of ignorance
without a blush. As to the implied reflection
on West Point, I am not sure whether I knew any
better at the time, or not. Probably I did, as I lived
in a well-informed circle, but my excited brain was so
occupied at the moment with thoughts of the general
depravity of those dreadful Yankees, that there was
not room for another idea in it.
Throughout the work none but real names are employed,
with the single exception noted on page 105.
In extenuation of this gentleman's bibulous propensities,
it must be remembered that such practices were
much more common in those days than now, and were
regarded much more leniently. In fact, I have been
both surprised and shocked in reading over this story
of a bygone generation, to see how prevalent was the
use of wines. and other alcoholic liquors, and how
lightly an occasional over-indulgence was regarded.
In this respect there can be no doubt that the world
has changed greatly for the better. When "gentlemen,"
as we were not afraid to call our men guests
in those days, were staying in the house, it was a common
courtesy to place a bottle of wine, or brandy, or
both, with the proper adjuncts, in the room of each
guest, so that he might help himself to a "night-cap"
on going to bed, or an "eye-opener" before getting
up in the morning. It must also be taken into account
that at this particular time men everywhere were
ruined, desperate, their occupation gone, their future
without hope, the present without resources, so that
they were ready to catch at any means for diverting
their thoughts from the ruin that enveloped them.
The same may be said of the thoughtless gayety among
the young people during the dark days preceding the
close; it was a case of "eat, drink, and be merry, for
to-morrow we die."
In the desire to avoid as far as possible any unnecessary
tampering with the original manuscript, passages
expressive of the animosities of the time, which the
author would be glad to blot out forever, have been
allowed to stand unaltered - not as representing the
present feeling of the writer or her people, but because
they do represent our feelings forty years ago, and to
suppress them entirely, would be to falsify the record.
While recognizing the bad taste of many of these
utterances, which "Philip sober" would now be the
first to repudiate, it must be remembered that he has
no right to speak for "Philip drunk," or to read his
own present feelings into the mind of his predecessor.
The diary was written in a time of storm and tempest,
of bitter hatreds and fierce animosities, and its pages
are so saturated with the spirit of the time, that to
attempt to banish it would be like giving the play of
Hamlet without the title-role. It does not pretend to
give the calm reflections of a philosopher looking back
dispassionately upon the storms of his youth, but the
passionate utterances of stormy youth itself. It is in
no sense a history, but a mere series of crude pen-sketches,
faulty, inaccurate, and out of perspective, it
may be, but still a true picture of things as the writer
saw them. It makes no claim to impartiality; on the
contrary, the author frankly admits that it is violently
and often absurdly partisan - and it could not well
have been otherwise under the circumstances. Coming
from a heart ablaze with the passionate resentment
of a people smarting under the humiliation
of defeat, it was inevitable that along with the just
indignation at wrongs which ought never to have been
committed, there should have crept in many intemperate
and indiscriminate denunciations of acts which
the writer did not understand, to say nothing of sophomorical
vaporings calculated now only to excite a smile.
Such expressions, however, are not to be taken seriously
at the present day, but are rather to be regarded
as a sort of fossil curiosities that have the same value
in throwing light on the psychology of the period to
which they belong as the relics preserved in our
geological museums have in illustrating the physical
life of the past. Revolutions never take place when
people are cool-headed or in a serene frame of mind,
and it would be as dishonest as it is foolish to deny
that such bitternesses ever existed. The better way
is to cast them behind us and thank the powers of the
universe that they exist no longer. I cannot better
express this feeling than in the words of an old Confederate
soldier at Petersburg, Va., where he had gone
with a number of his comrades who had been attending
the great reunion at Richmond, to visit the scene of
their last struggles under "Marse Robert." They
were standing looking down into the Crater, that awful
pit of death, lined now with daisies and buttercups,
and fragrant with the breath of spring. Tall pines,
whose lusty young roots had fed on the hearts of dead
men, were waving softly overhead, and nature everywhere
had covered up the scars of war with the mantle
of smiling peace. I paused, too, to watch them, and
we all stood there awed into silence, till at last an old
battle-scarred hero from one of the wiregrass counties
way down in Georgia, suddenly raised his hands to
heaven, and said in a voice that trembled with emotion:
"Thar's three hundred dead Yankees buried
here under our feet. I helped to put 'em thar, but so
help me God, I hope the like 'll never be done in this
country again. Slavery's gone and the war's over
now, thank God for both! We are all brothers once
more, and I can feel for them layin' down thar just
the same as fur our own."
That is the sentiment of the new South and of the
few of us who survive from the old. We look back
with loving memory upon our past, as we look upon
the grave of the beloved dead whom we mourn but
would not recall. We glorify the men and the memories
of those days and would have the coming generations
draw inspiration from them. We teach the children
of the South to honor and revere the civilization
of their fathers, which we believe has perished not
because it was evil or vicious in itself, but because, like
a good and useful man who has lived out his allotted
time and gone the way of all the earth, it too has
served its turn and must now lie in the grave of the
dead past. The Old South, with its stately feudal
régime, was not the monstrosity that some would have
us believe, but merely a case of belated survival, like
those giant sequoias of the Pacific slope that have
lingered on from age to age, and are now left standing
alone in a changed world. Like every civilization that
has yet been known since the primitive patriarchal
stage, it was framed in the interest of a ruling class;
and as has always been, and always will be the case
until mankind shall have become wise enough to evolve
a civilization based on the interests of all, it was
doomed to pass away whenever changed conditions
transferred to another class the economic advantage
that is the basis of all power. It had outlived its day
of usefulness and was an anachronism in the end of
the nineteenth century - the last representative of an
economic system that had served the purposes of the
race since the days when man first emerged from his
prehuman state until the rise of the modern industrial
system made wage slavery a more efficient agent of
production than chattel slavery.
It is as unfair to lay all the onus of that institution
on the Southern States of America as it would be to
charge the Roman Catholic Church with the odium of
all the religious persecutions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The spirit of intolerance was
in the air; everybody persecuted that got the chance
even the saints of Plymouth Rock, and the Catholics
did the lion's share only because there were more of
them to do it, and they had more power than our
Protestant forefathers.
In like manner, the spirit of chattel slavery was in
the race, possibly from its prehuman stage, and
through all the hundreds of thousands of years that it
has been painfully traveling from that humble beginning
toward the still far-off goal of the superhuman,
not one branch of it has ever awakened to a sense of
the moral obliquity of the practice till its industrial
condition had reached a stage in which that system
was less profitable than wage slavery. Then, as the
ethical sentiments are prone to follow closely the line
of economic necessity, the conscience of those nations
which had adopted the new industrialism began to
awaken to a perception of the immorality of chattel
slavery. Our Southern States, being still in the agricultural
stage, on account of our practical monopoly of
the world's chief textile staple, were the last of the
great civilized nations to find chattel slavery less
profitable than wage slavery, and hence the "great
moral crusade" of the North against the perverse and
unregenerate South. It was a pure case of economic
determinism, which means that our great moral conflict
reduces itself, in the last analysis, to a question
of dollars and cents, though the real issue was so
obscured by other considerations that we of the South
honestly believe to this day that we were fighting for
States Rights, while the North is equally honest in
the conviction that it was engaged in a magnanimous
struggle to free the slave.
It is only fair to explain here that the action of the
principle of economic determinism does not imply by
any means that the people affected by it are necessarily
insincere or hypocritical. As enunicated by Karl
Marx, under the cumbrous and misleading title of "the
materialistic interpretation of history," it means simply
that the economic factor plays the same part in the
social evolution of the race that natural selection and
the survival of the fittest are supposed to play in its
physical evolution. The influence of this factor is
generally so subtle and indirect that we are totally
unconscious of it. If I may be pardoned an illustration
from my own experience, I remember perfectly
well when I myself honestly and conscientiously believed
the institution of slavery to be as just and sacred
as I now hold it to be the reverse. It was according
to the Bible, and to question it was impious and
savored of "infidelity." Most of my contemporaries
would probably give a similar experience. Not one of
us now but would look upon a return to slavery with
horror, and yet not one of us probably is conscious of
ever having been influenced by the economic factor!
The truth of the matter is that the transition from
chattel to wage slavery was the next step forward in
the evolution of the race, just as the transition from
wage slavery to free and independent labor will be the
next. Some of us, who see our own economic advantage
more or less clearly in this transformation,
and others who do not see it so clearly as they see the
evils of the present system, are working for the change
with the zeal of religious enthusiasts, while the capitalists
and their retainers are fighting against it with
the desperation of the old Southern slaveholder against
the abolitionist. But here, in justice to the Southerner,
the comparison must end. He fought a losing
battle, but he fought it honestly and bravely, in the
open - not by secret fraud and cunning. His cause
was doomed from the first by a law as inexorable as
the one pronounced by the fates against Troy, but he
fought with a valor and heroism that have made a
lost cause forever glorious. He saw the civil fabric
his fathers had reared go down in a mighty cataclysm
of blood and fire, a tragedy for all the ages - but better
so than to have perished by slow decay through ages
of sloth and rottenness, as so many other great civilizations
of history have done, leaving only a debased and
degenerate race behind them. It was a mediæval civilization,
out of accord with the modern tenor of our
time, and it had to go; but if it stood for some outworn
customs that should rightly be sent to the dust
heap, it stood for some things, also, that the world can
ill afford to lose. It stood for gentle courtesy, for
knightly honor, for generous hospitality; it stood for
fair and honest dealing of man with man in the common
business of life, for lofty scorn of cunning greed
and ill-gotten gain through fraud and deception of
our fellowmen - lessons which the founders of our
New South would do well to lay to heart.
And now I have just a word to say on a personal
matter - a solemn amende to make to the memory of
my dear father, to whose unflinching devotion to the
Union these pages will bear ample testimony. While
I have never been able to bring myself to repent of
having sided with my own people, I have repented in
sackcloth and ashes for the perverse and rebellious
spirit so often manifested against him. How it
was that the influence of such a parent, whom we all
loved and honored, should have failed to convert his
own children to his way of thinking, I do not myself
understand, unless it was the contagion of the general
enthusiasm around us. Youth is impulsive, and prone
to run with the crowd. We caught the infection of
the war spirit in the air and never stopped to reason
or to think. And then, there were our soldier boys.
With my three brothers in the army, and that glorious
record of Lee and his men in Virginia, how was it
possible not to throw oneself heart and soul into the
cause for which they were fighting so gallantly? And
when the bitter end came, it is not to be wondered at
if our resentment against those who had brought all
these humiliations and disasters upon us should flame
up fiercer than ever. In the expression of these feelings
we sometimes forgot the respect due to our
father's opinions and brought on scenes that were not
conducive to the peace of the family. These lapses
were generally followed by fits of repentance on the
part of the offender, but as they led to no permanent
amendment of our ways, I am afraid, that first and
last, we made the old gentleman's life a burden to
him. In looking back over the sufferings and disappointments
of those dreadful years the most pathetic
figure that presents itself to my memory is that of my
dear old father, standing unmoved by all the clamor
of the times and the waywardness of his children, in
his devotion to the great republic that his father had
fought for at Yorktown. I can see now, what I could
not realize then, that the Union men in the South - the
honest ones, I mean, like my father - sacrificed even
more for their cause than we of the other side did for
ours. These men are not to be confounded with the
scalawags and traitors who joined the carpet-baggers
in plundering their country. They were gentlemen, and
most of them slaveholders, who stood by the Union,
not because they were in any sense Northern sympathizers,
but because they saw in division death for the
South, and believed that in saving her to the Union
they were saving her to herself. They suffered not
only the material losses of the war, but the odium their
opinions excited; and worst of all, the blank disillusionment
that must have come to them when they saw
their beloved Union restored only to bring about the
riot and shame of Reconstruction. My father died
before the horrors of that period had passed away;
before the strife and hatred he so bitterly deplored
had begun to subside; before he could have the satisfaction
of seeing his grandson fighting under the old
flag that his father had followed and that his sons had
repudiated. Which of us was right? which was
wrong? I am no Daniel come to judgment, and happily,
there is in my mind no reason to brand either side
as wrong. In the clearer understanding that we now
have of the laws of historical evolution, we know that
both were right, for both were struggling blindly and
unconsciously in the grasp of economic tendencies
they did not understand, towards a consummation they
could not foresee. Both were helpless instruments of
those forces that were hurrying our nation forward
another step in its evolutionary progress, and whatever
of praise or blame may attach to either side for their
methods of carrying on the struggle, the result belongs
to neither; it was simply the working out of that
natural law of economic determinism which lies at the
root of all the great struggles of history.
And now that we have learned wisdom through
suffering; now that we have seen how much more can
be accomplished by peaceful coöperation under the safe
guidance of natural laws, than by wasteful violence,
we are prepared to take our part intelligently in the
next great forward movement of the race - a movement
having for its object not merely a closer union
of kindred states, but that grander union dreamed of
by the poet, which is to find its consummation in
"The parliament of man, the federation of the world."
EXPLANATORY NOTE. - At
the time of this narrative, the
writer's eldest sister, Mrs. Troup Butler, was living alone
with her two little children on a plantation in Southwest
Georgia, between Albany and Thomasville. Besides our
father, who was sixty-two when the war began, and a
little brother who was only twelve when it closed, we
had no male relations out of the army, and she lived there
with no other protector, for a good part of the time, than
the negroes themselves. There were not over a hundred
of them on the place, and though they were faithful, and
nobody ever thought of being afraid on their account, it
was lonely for her to be there among them with no other
white person than the overseer, and so the writer and a
younger sister, Metta, were usually sent to be her companions
during the winter. The summers she spent with
us at the old home.
But in the fall of 1864, while Sherman's army was
lying around Atlanta like a pent-up torrent ready to burst
forth at any moment, my father was afraid to let us get
out of his sight, and we all stood waiting in our defenseless
homes till we could see what course the destroying
flood would take. Happily for us it passed by without
engulfing the little town of Washington, where our home
was situated, and after it had swept over the capital of
the State, reaching Milledgeville November 23d, rolled
on toward Savannah, where the sound of merry Christmas
bells was hushed by the roar of its angry waters.
Meanwhile the people in our part of Georgia had had
time to get their breath once more, and began to look
about for some way of bridging the gap of ruin and desolation
that stretched through the entire length of our
State. The Georgia Railroad, running from Atlanta to
Augusta, had been destroyed to the north of us, and the
Central of Georgia, from Macon to Savannah, was intact
for only sixteen miles; that part of the track connecting
the former city with the little station of Gordon having
lain beyond the path of the invaders. By taking advantage
of this fragment, and of some twelve miles of track
that had been laid from Camack, a station on the uninjured
part of the Georgia railroad, to Mayfield, on what
is now known as the Macon branch of the Georgia, the
distance across country could be shortened by twenty-five
miles, and the wagon road between these two points at
once became a great national thoroughfare.
By the middle of December, communication, though
subject to many difficulties and discomforts, was so well
established that my father concluded it would be practicable
for us to make the journey to our sister. We were
eager to go, and would be safer, he thought, when once
across the line, than at home. Sherman had industriously
spread the impression that his next move would be on
either Charleston or Augusta, and in the latter event, our
home would be in the line of danger. Southwest Georgia
was at that time a "Land of Goshen" and a "city of
refuge" to harassed Confederates. Thus far it had never
been seriously threatened by the enemy, and was supposed
to be the last spot in the Confederacy on which he would
ever set foot - and this, in the end, proved to be not far
from the truth.
So then, after careful consultation with my oldest
brother, Fred, at that time commandant of the Georgia
camp of instruction for conscripts, in Macon, we set out
under the protection of a reliable man whom my brother
detailed to take care of us. It may seem strange to
modern readers that two young women should have been
sent off on such a journey with no companion of their
own sex, but the exigencies of the times did away with
many conventions. Then, too, the exquisite courtesy and
deference of the Southern men of that day toward
women made the chaperon a person of secondary importance
among us. It was the "male protector" who
was indispensable. I have known matrons of forty
wait for weeks on the movements of some male acquaintance
rather than take the railroad journey of fifty miles
from our village to Augusta, alone; and when I was sent
off to boarding school, I remember, the great desideratum
was to find some man who would pilot me safely through
the awful difficulties of a railroad journey of 200 miles.
Women, young or old, were intrusted to the care of any
man known to their family as a gentleman, with a confidence
as beautiful as the loyalty that inspired it. Under
no other social régime, probably, have young girls been
allowed such liberty of intercourse with the other sex as
were those of the Old South - a liberty which the notable
absence of scandals and divorces in that society goes
far to justify.
Dec. 24, 1864, Saturday. - Here we are in Macon
at last, and this is the first chance I have had at
my journal since we left home last Monday. Father
went with us to Barnett, and then turned us over to
Fred, who had come up from Augusta to meet us and
travel with us as far as Mayfield. At Camack, where
we changed cars, we found the train literally crammed
with people going on the same journey with ourselves.
Since the destruction of the Georgia, the Macon &
Western, and the Central railroads by Sherman's
army, the whole tide of travel between the eastern and
western portions of our poor little Confederacy flows
across the country from Mayfield to Gordon. Mett
and I, with two other ladies, whom we found on the
train at Camack, were the first to venture across the
gap - 65 miles of bad roads and worse conveyances,
through a country devastated by the most cruel and
wicked invasion of modern times.
As we entered the crowded car, two young officers
gave up their seats to us and saw that we were made
comfortable while Fred was out looking after the
baggage. Near us sat a handsome middle-aged gentleman
in the uniform of a colonel, with a pretty young
girl beside him, whom we at once spotted as his bride.
They were surrounded by a number of officers, and
the bride greatly amused us, in the snatches of their
conversation we overheard, by her extreme bookishness.
She was clearly just out of school. The only
other lady on the car was closely occupied with the
care of her husband, a wounded Confederate officer,
whom we afterwards learned was Maj. Bonham, of
South Carolina.
It is only eleven miles from Camack to Mayfield,
but the road was so bad and the train so heavy that
we were nearly two hours in making the distance.
Some of the seats were without backs and some without
bottoms, and the roadbed so uneven that in places
the car tilted from side to side as if it was going to
upset and spill us all out. We ate dinner on the cars
- that is, Fred ate, while Metta and I were watching
the people. The weather was very hot, and I sweltered
like a steam engine under the overload of clothing I
had put on to save room in my trunk. At three o'clock
in the afternoon we reached Mayfield, a solitary shanty
at the present terminus of the R. R. Fred had sent
Mr. Belisle, one of his men, ahead to engage a conveyance,
and he met us with a little spring wagon,
which he said would take us on to Sparta that night
for forty dollars. It had no top, but was the choice
of all the vehicles there, for it had springs, of which
none of the others could boast. There was the mail
hack, which had the advantage of a cover, but could
not carry our trunks, and really looked as if it were too
decrepit to bear the weight of the mail bags. We
mounted our little wagon, and the others were soon all
filled so full that they looked like delegations from the
old woman that lived in a shoe, and crowds of pedestrians,
unable to find a sticking place on tongue or
axle, plodded along on foot. The colonel and his
wife were about to get into a rough old plantation
wagon, already overloaded, but Fred said she was too
pretty to ride in such a rattle-trap, and offered her a
seat in ours, which was gladly accepted. We also
made room for Dr. Shine, one of the officers of their
party, who, we afterwards found out, was a friend of
Belle Randolph.
About a mile from Mayfield we stopped at a forlorn
country tavern, where Fred turned us over to Mr.
Belisle, and went in to spend the night there, so as to
return to Augusta by the next train. I felt rather
desolate after his departure, but we soon got into
conversation with the colonel and his bride, the gentlemen
who were following on foot joined in, and we
sang rebel songs and became very sociable together.
We had not gone far when big drops of rain began
to fall from an angry black cloud that had been gradually
creeping upon us from the northwest. The bride
raised a little fancy silk parasol that made the rest
of us laugh, while Metta and I took off our hats and
began to draw on shawls and hoods, and a young
captain, who was plodding on foot behind us, hastened
to offer his overcoat. When we found that he had a
wounded arm, disabled by a Yankee bullet, we tried
to make room for him in the wagon, but it was impossible
to squeeze another person into it. Ralph, the
driver, had been turned afoot to make room for Dr.
Shine, and was walking ahead to act as guide in the
darkness.
Just after nightfall we came to a public house five
miles from Sparta, where the old man lives from
whom our wagons were hired, and we stopped to pay
our fare and get supper, if anybody wanted it. He
is said to be fabulously rich, and owns all the land for
miles around, but he don't live like it. He is palsied
and bed-ridden, but so eager after money that guests
are led to his bedside to pay their reckoning into his
own hands. Mett and I staid in the wagon and sent
Mr. Belisle to settle for us, but the gentlemen of our
party who went in, said it was dreadful to see how his
trembling old fingers would clutch at the bills they paid
him, and the suspicious looks he would cast around to
make sure he was not being cheated. They could talk
of nothing else for some time after they came out.
We stopped at this place nearly an hour, while the
horses were being changed and the drivers getting their
supper. There was a fine grove around the house, but
the wind made a dismal howling among the branches,
and ominous mutterings of distant thunder added to
our uneasiness. Large fires were burning in front of
the stables and threw a weird glare upon the groups of
tired soldiers gathered round them, smoking their pipes
and cooking their scanty rations, and the flashing uniforms
of Confederate officers, hurrying in and out,
added to the liveliness of the scene. Many of them
came to our wagon to see if they could do anything for
us, and their presence, brave fellows, gave me a comfortable
feeling of safety and protection. Dr. Shine
brought us a toddy, and the colonel and the captain
would have smothered us under overcoats and army
blankets if we had let them.
towards Sparta, which seemed to recede as we advanced.
Dr. Shine, who was driving, didn't know
the road, and had to guide the horses by Ralph's direction
as he walked ahead and sung out: "Now, pull to
de right!" "Now, go straight ahead!" "Take
keer, marster, dar's a bad hole ter yo' lef'," and so on,
till all at once the long-threatened rain began to pour
down, and everything was in confusion. Somebody
cried out in the darkness; "Confound Sparta! will we
never get there?" and Ralph made us all laugh again
with his answer:
"Yessir, yessir, we's right in de subjues er de town
now." And sure enough, the next turn in the road
revealed the lights of the village glimmering before
us. We drove directly to Mr. William Simpson's,
and when Metta and I had gotten out, the wagon went
on with its other passengers to the hotel. We met
with such a hearty reception from Belle and her mother
that for the moment all our troubles were forgotten.
A big, cheerful fire was blazing in the sitting-room,
and as I sank into a soft easy chair, I felt my first
sensation of fatigue.
Next morning the sky was overcast, everything outside
was wet and dripping and a cold wind had sprung
up that rattled the naked boughs of a great elm, heavy
with raindrops, against our window. As soon as the
houseboy had kindled a fire, Mrs. Simpson's maid
came to help us dress, and brought a toddy of fine old
peach brandy, sweetened with white sugar. I made
Mett take a big swig of it to strengthen her for the
journey, as she seemed very weak; but not being accustomed
to the use of spirits, it upset her so that she
couldn't walk across the floor. I was frightened
nearly out of my wits, but she soon recovered and felt
much benefited by her unintentional spree, at which
we had a good laugh.
We had a royal breakfast, and while we were eating
it, Mr. Belisle, who had spent the night at the hotel,
drove up with a four-mule wagon, in which he had
engaged places for us and our trunks to Milledgeville,
at seventy-five dollars apiece. It was a common plantation
wagon, without cover or springs, and I saw Mr.
Simpson shake his head ominously as we jingled off to
take up more passengers at the hotel. There were
several other conveyances of the same sort, already
overloaded, waiting in front of the door, and a number
of travelers standing on the sidewalk rushed forward
to secure places in ours as soon as we halted. The
first to climb in was a poor sick soldier, of whom no
pay was demanded. Next came a captain of Texas
Rangers, then a young lieutenant in a shabby uniform
that had evidently seen very hard service, and after him
our handsome young captain of the night before. He
grumbled a little at the looks of the conveyance, but
on finding we were going to ride in it, dashed off to
secure a seat for himself. While we sat waiting
there, I overheard a conversation between a countryman
and a nervous traveler that was not calculated to
relieve my mind. In answer to some inquiry about
the chances for hiring a conveyance at Milledgeville,
I heard the countryman say:
"Milledgeville's like hell; you kin get thar easy
enough, but gittin' out agin would beat the Devil himself."
I didn't hear the traveler's next remark, but it must
have been something about Metta and me, for I heard
the countryman answer:
"Ef them ladies ever gits to Gordon, they'll be good
walkers. Sherman's done licked that country clean;
d - n me ef you kin hire so much as a nigger an' a
wheelbarrer."
I was so uneasy that I asked Mr. Belisle to go and
question the man further, because I knew that after
her long attack of typhoid fever, last summer, Metta
couldn't stand hardships as well as I could. When
the captain heard me he spoke up immediately and said:
"Don't give yourselves the slightest uneasiness,
young ladies; I'll see that you get safe to Gordon, if
you will trust to me."
He spoke with an air of authority that was reassuring,
and when he sprang down from the wagon and
joined a group of officers on the sidewalk, I knew that
something was in the wind. After a whispered consultation
among them, and a good deal of running
back and forth, he came to us and said that they had
decided to "press" the wagon in case of necessity, to
take the party to Gordon, and all being now ready,
we moved out of Sparta. We soon became very
sociable with our new companions, though not one of
us knew the other even by name. Mett and I saw
that they were all dying with curiosity about us and
enjoyed keeping them mystified. The captain said he
was from Baltimore, and it was a sufficient introduction
when we found that he knew the Elzeys and the
Irwins, and that handsome Ed Carey I met in Montgomery
last winter, who used to be always telling me
how much I reminded him of his cousin "Connie."
Just beyond Sparta we were halted by one of the
natives, who, instead of paying forty dollars for his
passage to the agent at the hotel, like the rest of us,
had walked ahead and made a private bargain with
Uncle Grief, the driver, for ten dollars. This
"Yankee trick" raised a laugh among our impecunious
Rebs, and the lieutenant, who was just out of a
Northern prison, and very short of funds, thanked
him for the lesson and declared he meant to profit by
it the next chance he got. The newcomer proved to
be a very amusing character, and we nicknamed him
"Sam Weller," on account of his shrewdness and
rough-and-ready wit. He was dressed in a coarse
home-made suit, but was evidently something of a
dandy, as his shirt-front sported a broad cotton rude
edged with home-made cotton lace. He was a rebel
soldier, he said: "Went in at the fust pop and been
a-fightin' ever since, till the Yankees caught me here,
home on furlough, and wouldn't turn me loose till I
had took their infernal oath - beg your pardon, ladies
- the jig's pretty nigh up anyway, so I don't reckon
it'll make much diff'rence."
He told awful tales about the things Sherman's
robbers had done; it made my blood boil to hear them,
and when the captain asked him if some of the rascals
didn't get caught themselves sometimes - stragglers
and the like - he answered with a wink that said more
than words:
"Yes; our folks took lots of prisoners; more'n'll
ever be heard of agin."
"What became of them?" asked the lieutenant.
"Sent 'em to Macon, double quick," was the laconic
reply. "Got 'em thar in less'n half an hour."
"How did they manage it?" continued the lieutenant,
in a tone that showed he understood Sam's
metaphor.
"Just took 'em out in the woods and lost 'em," he
replied, in his jerky, laconic way. "Ever heerd o'
losin' men, lady?" he added, turning to me, with an
air of grim waggery that made my flesh creep - for
after all, even Yankees are human beings, though they
don't always behave like it.
"Yes," I said, "I had heard of it, but thought it a
horrible thing."
"I don't b'lieve in losin' 'em, neither, as a gener'l
thing," he went on. "I don't think it's right principul,
and I wouldn't lose one myself, but when I see
what they have done to these people round here, I
can't blame 'em for losin' every devil of 'em they kin
git their hands on."
"What was the process of losing?" asked the captain.
"Did they manage the business with fire-arms?"
"Sometimes, when they was in a hurry," Mr.
Weller explained, with that horrible, grim irony of
his, "the guns would go off an' shoot 'em, in spite of
all that our folks could do. But most giner'ly they
took the grapevine road in the fust patch of woods
they come to, an' soon as ever they got sight of a tree
with a grape vine on it, it's cur'ous how skeered their
hosses would git. You couldn't keep 'em from runnin'
away, no matter what you done, an' they never
run fur before their heads was caught in a grape
vine and they would stand thar, dancin' on nothin' till
they died. Did you ever hear of anybody dancin' on
nothin' before, lady?" - turning to me.
I said he ought to be ashamed to tell it; even a
Yankee was entitled to protection when a prisoner
of war.
"But these fellows wasn't regular prisoners of
war, lady," said the sick soldier; "they were thieves
and houseburners," - and I couldn't but feel there was
something in that view of it. *
About three miles from Sparta we struck the
"Burnt Country," as it is well named by the natives,
and then I could better understand the wrath and
desperation of these poor people. I almost felt as if
I should like to hang a Yankee myself. There was
hardly a fence left standing all the way from Sparta
to Gordon. The fields were trampled down and the
road was lined with carcasses of horses, hogs, and
cattle that the invaders, unable either to consume or
to carry away with them, had wantonly shot down
to starve out the people and prevent them from making
their crops. The stench in some places was unbearable;
every few hundred yards we had to hold
our noses or stop them with the cologne Mrs. Elzey
had given us, and it proved a great boon. The dwellings
that were standing all showed signs of pillage,
and on every plantation we saw the charred remains
of the gin-house and packing-screw, while here and
there, lone chimney-stacks, "Sherman's Sentinels,"
told of homes laid in ashes. The infamous wretches!
I couldn't wonder now that these poor people should
Page 33
want to put a rope round the neck of every red-handed
"devil of them" they could lay their hands on. Hay
ricks and fodder stacks were demolished, corn cribs
were empty, and every bale of cotton that could be
found was burnt by the savages. I saw no grain of
any sort, except little patches they had spilled when
feeding their horses and which there was not even a
chicken left in the country to eat. A bag of oats
might have lain anywhere along the road without
danger from the beasts of the field, though I cannot
say it would have been safe from the assaults of
hungry man. Crowds of soldiers were tramping over
the road in both directions; it was like traveling
through the streets of a populous town all day. They
were mostly on foot, and I saw numbers seated on
the roadside greedily eating raw turnips, meat skins,
parched corn - anything they could find, even picking
up the loose grains that Sherman's horses had left. I
felt tempted to stop and empty the contents of our
provision baskets into their laps, but the dreadful accounts
that were given of the state of the country
before us, made prudence get the better of our generosity.
The roads themselves were in a better condition
than might have been expected, and we traveled at a
pretty fair rate, our four mules being strong and in
good working order. When we had made about half
the distance to Milledgeville it began to rain, so the
gentlemen cut down saplings which they fitted in the
form of bows across the body of the wagon, and
stretching the lieutenant's army blanket over it, made
a very effectual shelter. Our next halt was near a
dilapidated old house where there was a fine well of
water. The Yankees had left it, I suppose, because
they couldn't carry it away. Here we came up with
a wagon on which were mounted some of the people
we had seen on the cars the day before. They
stopped to exchange experiences, offered us a toddy,
and brought us water in a beautiful calabash gourd
with a handle full three feet long. We admired it so
much that one of them laughingly proposed to "capture"
it for us, but we told them we didn't care to
imitate Sherman's manners. A mile or two further
on we were hailed by a queer-looking object sitting on
a log in the corner of a half-burnt fence. It was
wrapped up in a big white blanket that left nothing
else visible except a round, red face and a huge pair
of feet. Before anybody could decide whether the
apparition was a ghost from the lower regions or an
escaped lunatic from the state asylum in his nightgown,
Sam Weller jumped up, exclaiming:
"Galvanized, galvanized! Stop, driver, a galvanized
Yankee!"*
As soon as Uncle Grief
had brought his mules to a
halt, the strange figure shuffled up to the side of the
wagon and began to plead piteously, in broken Dutch,
to be taken in. He was shaking with a common ague
fit, and though we couldn't help feeling sorry for him,
he looked so comical as he stood there with his blanket
drawn round him like a winding sheet and his little
red Dutch face peering out at us with such an expression
of exaggerated and needless terror, that it was
hard to repress a smile. The captain was about to order
Uncle Grief to drive on without taking any further
notice of him, but Sam Weller assured us that the
country people would certainly hang him if they should
catch him away from his command. They were too
exasperated to make any distinction between a "galvanized"
and any other sort of a Yankee - and to tell
the truth, I think, myself, if there is any difference
at all, it is in favor of those who remain true to their
own cause. The kind-hearted lieutenant took his
part, Mett and I seconded him, and the poor creature
was allowed to climb into our wagon, where he curled
himself up on a pile of fodder beside our sick soldier,
who didn't seem to relish the companionship very
much, though he said nothing. But Sam Weller
couldn't let him rest, and immediately began to berate
him for his imprudence in straggling off from his
command at the risk of getting himself hanged, and
to entertain him with enlivening descriptions of the
art of "dancin' on nothin'" and the various methods
of getting "lost." All at once he came to a sudden
stop in his tirade, and asked,
"Nein, ich cot no more ash den thaler," quaked
Hans.
Then, pulling a fat roll of change bills out of his
pocket, he ("Sam") handed them to the Dutchman,
saying:
"Well, here's shin-plasters enough to cover you
better than that there blanket, if you want them."
Hans grabbed the money, which was increased by
small contributions from the rest of us - not that we
thought his enlistment in the Confederate army
counted for anything, but we felt sorry for him, because
he was "sick and a stranger." After all, what
can these ignorant foreigners be expected to know or
care about our quarrel?
Soon after this we came to a pretty, clear stream,
where Uncle Grief stopped to water his horses and we
decided to eat our dinner. Those of our companions
who had anything to eat at all, were provided only
with army rations, so Mett and I shared with them
the good things we had brought from home. We
offered some to Hans, and this started Sam off again:
"Now, Wappy, see that!" he cried. "The rebel
ladies feed you; remember that the next time you go
to burn a house down, or steal a rebel lady's watch!
I say," he shouted, putting his lips to Hans's ear, as
the Dutchman seemed not to understand, "remember
how the rebel ladies fed you, when you turn Yank
agin and go to drivin' women out-o'-doors and stealin'
their clothes."
Fortunately for "Wappy's" peace of mind he
didn't know enough English to take in the long list of
Yankee misdeeds that Sam continued to recount for
his benefit, although he assured us that he could "unterstant
vat man say to him besser als he could dalk
himselbst." The captain suspected him of putting on,
and laughed at Metta and me for wasting sympathy
on him, but the lieutenant shared our feelings, and I
liked him for it.
Just before reaching Milledgeville, Sam Weller got
down to walk to his home, which he said was about
two miles back from the highway. "Come, Wappy,"
he said, as he was climbing down, "if you will go home
with me, I will take care of you and put you in a
horspittle where you won't be in no danger of gittin'
lost. Can you valk doo milsh?"
Hans replied in the affirmative, and scrambled down
with a deal of groaning and quaking. Sam and the
lieutenant assisted him with much real gentleness, and
when he was on the ground, he tried to make a speech
thanking the "laties unt shentlemansh," but it was in
such bad English that we couldn't understand.
"Now, don't lose the poor wretch," I said to Mr.
Weller, as they moved off together.
"No, no, miss, I won't do that," he answered in a
tone of such evident sincerity that I felt Hans was
safe in the care of this strange, contradictory being,
who could talk so like a savage, and yet be capable of
such real kindness.
Before crossing the Oconee at Milledgeville we ascended
an immense hill, from which there was a fine
view of the town, with Gov. Brown's fortifications in
the foreground and the river rolling at our feet. The
Yankees had burnt the bridge, so we had to cross on a
ferry. There was a long train of vehicles ahead of
us, and it was nearly an hour before our turn came,
so we had ample time to look about us. On our left
was a field where 30,000 Yankees had camped hardly
three weeks before. It was strewn with the débris
they had left behind, and the poor people of the neighborhood
were wandering over it, seeking for anything
they could find to eat, even picking up grains of corn
that were scattered around where the Yankees had
fed their horses. We were told that a great many
valuables were found there at first, - plunder that the
invaders had left behind, but the place had been picked
over so often by this time that little now remained
except tufts of loose cotton, piles of half-rotted grain,
and the carcasses of slaughtered animals, which raised
a horrible stench. Some men were plowing in one
part of the field, making ready for next year's crop.
At the Milledgeville Hotel, we came to a dead halt.
Crowds of uniformed men were pacing restlessly up
and down the galleries like caged animals in a menagerie.
As soon as our wagon drew up there was a
general rush for it, but our gentlemen kept possession
and told Mett and me to sit still and hold it while
they went in to see what were the chances for accommodation.
After a hurried consultation with the other
gentlemen of our party, they all collected round our
wagon and informed us that they had "pressed" it
into service to take us to Gordon, and we were to go
on to Scotsborough that night. When all the baggage
was in, the vehicle was so heavily loaded that not only
the servants had to walk, but the gentlemen of the
party could only ride by turns, one or two at a time.
Our sick soldier was left at the hospital, and the
bride's big trunks, that I wouldn't have believed all the
women in the Confederacy had clothes enough to fill,
were piled up in front to protect us against the wind.
Uncle Grief looked the embodiment of his name while
these preparations were going on, but a tip of ten
dollars from each of us, and the promise of a letter
to his master relieving him from all blame, quickly
overcame his scruples.
Night closed in soon after we left Milledgeville, and
it began to rain in earnest. Then we lost the road,
and as if that were not enough, the bride dropped
her parasol and we had to stop there in the rain to look
for it. A new silk parasol that cost four or five hundred
dollars was too precious to lose. The colonel and
the captain went back half a mile to get a torch, and
after all, found the parasol lying right under her feet
in the body of the wagon. About nine o'clock we
reached Scotsborough, the little American "Cranford,"
where the Butlers used to have their summer home. Like
Mrs. Gaskell's delightful little borough, it is inhabited
chiefly by aristocratic widows and old maids, who
rarely had their quiet lives disturbed by any event
more exciting than a church fair, till Sherman's army
Marched through and gave them such a shaking up
that it will give them something to talk about the rest
of their days. Dr. Shine and the Texas captain had
gone ahead of the wagon and made arrangements for
our accommodation. The night was very dismal, and
when we drew up in front of the little inn, and saw
a big lightwood fire blazing in the parlor chimney, I
thought I had never seen anything so bright and comfortable
before. When Mrs. Palmer, the landlady,
learned who Metta and I were, she fairly hugged us
off our feet, and declared that Mrs. Troup Butler's
sisters were welcome to her house and everything in
it, and then she bustled off with her daughter Jenny
to make ready their own chamber for our use. She
could not give us any supper because the Yankees had
taken all her provisions, but she brought out a jar of
pickles that had been hidden up the chimney, and
gave us the use of her dining table and dishes - such
of them as the Yankees had left - to spread our lunch
on. While Charles and Crockett, the servants of Dr.
Shine and the colonel, were unpacking our baskets in
the dining-room, all our party assembled in the little
parlor, the colonel was made master of ceremonies,
and a general introduction took place. The Texas
captain gave his name as Jarman; the shabby lieutenant
in the war-worn uniform - all honor to it - was
Mr. Foster, of Florence, Ala.; the Baltimorean was
Capt. Mackall, cousin of the commandant at Macon,
and the colonel himself had been a member of the
Confederate Congress, but resigned to go into the
army, the only place for a brave man in these times.
So we all knew each other at last and had a good laugh
together over the secret curiosity that had been devouring
each of us about our traveling companions,
for the last twenty-four hours. Presently Crockett
announced supper, and we went into the dining-room.
We had some real coffee, a luxury we owed the bride,
but there was only one spoon to all the company, so
she arranged that she should pour out the coffee, I
should stir each cup, and Mett pass them to the
guests, with the assurance that the cup was made
sweeter "by the magic of three pair of fair hands."
Then Mrs. Palmer's jar of pickles was brought out
and presented with a little tableau scene she had made
up beforehand, even coaching me as to the pretty
speeches I was to make. I felt very silly, but I hoped
the others were too hungry to notice.
Supper over, we returned to the parlor, and I never
spent a more delightful evening. Riding along in the
wagon, we had amused ourselves by making up impromptu
couplets to "The Confederate Toast," and
now that we were comfortably housed, I thanked
Capt. Jarman and Dr. Shine for their efforts, in a
pair of impromptu verses to the same air. This
started up a rivalry in verse-making, each one trying
to outdo the other in the absurdity of their composition,
and some of them were very funny. When we
broke up for the night, there were more theatricals
planned by the bride, who disposed a white scarf
round her head, placed Metta and me, one on each
side of her, so as to make a sort of tableau vivant on
the order of a "Three Graces," or a "Faith, Hope,
and Charity" group, and backed slowly out of the
room, bowing and singing, "Good Night." She
really was so pretty and girlish that she could carry
off anything with grace, but I hadn't that excuse, and
never felt so foolish in my life.
Mrs. Palmer's chamber, in which Metta and I were
to sleep, was a shed room of not very inviting aspect,
but the poor woman had done her best for us, and
we were too tired to be critical. When I had put my
clothes off and started to get into bed, I found there
was but one sheet, and that looked as if half of Sherman's
army might have slept in it. Mett was too dead
sleepy to care; "Shut your eyes and go it blind," she
said, and suiting the action to the word, tumbled into
bed without looking, and was asleep almost by the
time she had touched the pillow. I tried to follow
her example, but it was no use. The weather had
begun to turn very cold, and the scanty supply of bedclothes
the Yankees had left Mrs. Palmer was not
enough to keep me warm. Then it began to rain in
torrents, and presently I felt a cold shower bath descending
on me through the leaky roof. Metta's side
of the bed was comparatively dry, and she waked up
just enough to pull the cotton bedquilt that was our
only covering, over her head, and then went stolidly
to sleep again. Meanwhile the storm increased till it
was terrible. The rain seemed to come down in a
solid sheet, and I thought the old house would be torn
from its foundations by the fierce wind that swept
over it. The solitary pine knot that had been our
only light went out and left us in total darkness, but
I was getting so drenched where I lay that I was
obliged to move, so I groped my way to an old lounge
that stood in a somewhat sheltered corner by the fireplace,
and covered myself with the clothing I had
taken off. The lounge was so narrow that I couldn't
turn over without causing my cover to fall over on the
floor, so I lay stiff as a corpse all night, catching little
uneasy snatches of sleep between the wildest bursts of
the storm. Early in the morning Mrs. Palmer and
Jenny came in with bowls and pans to put under the
leaks. There were so many that we were quite
shingled over, as we lay in bed, with a tin roof of pots
and pans, and they made such a rattling as the water
pattered into them, that neither of us could sleep any
more for laughing. The colonel had given us instructions
over night to be ready for an early start, so when
another pine knot had been lighted on the hearth, we
made haste to dress, before it burned out.
Mrs. Palmer had contrived to spread us a scanty
breakfast of hot waffles, fresh sausages, and parched
wheat coffee. But the bride, as is the way of brides,
was so long in getting ready that it was nearly ten
o'clock before we started on our journey. It had
stopped raining by this time, but the weather was so
cold and cloudy that I found my two suits of clothing
very comfortable. A bitter wind was blowing, and
on all sides were to be seen shattered boughs and
uprooted trees, effects of the past night's storm. The
gentlemen had had all the baggage placed in front, and
the floor of the wagon covered with fodder, where we
could sit and find some protection from the wind. I
should have felt tolerably comfortable if I had not
seen that Metta was feeling ill, though she kept up
her spirits and did not complain. She said she had
a headache, and I noticed that her face was covered
with ugly red splotches, which I supposed were caused
by the wind chapping her skin. We put our shawls
over our heads, but the wind played such antics with
them that they were not much protection. The bride,
instead of crouching down with us, mounted on top
of a big trunk, the coldest place she could find, and
cheered us with the comforting announcement that
she was going to have pneumonia. It was beautiful
to see how the big, handsome colonel devoted himself
to her, and I half suspect that was at the bottom of
her pneumonia scare - at least we heard no more of it.
I offered her some of our brandy, and the doctor
made her a toddy, but she couldn't drink it because
it was grape and not peach. Everybody seemed disposed
to be silent and out of sorts at first, except Metta
and me, who had not yet had adventures enough to
surfeit us, and we kept on talking till we got the rest
of them into a good humor. We made the gentlemen
tell us what their various professions were before the
war, and were delighted to learn that our dear colonel
was a lawyer. We told him that our father was a
judge, and that we loved lawyers better than anybody
else except soldiers, whereupon he laughed and advised
the other gentlemen, who were all unmarried,
to take to the law. I said that about lawyers for the
doctor's benefit, because he looked all the time as if he
were afraid one of us was going to fall in love with
him. I laughed and told Mett that it was she that
scared him, with her hair all cropped off from fever,
and that dreadful splotched complexion. He heaped
coals of fire on my head soon after, when I was cowering
down in the body of the wagon, nearly dead with
cold, by inviting me to get out and warm myself by
taking a walk. My feet were so cold that they felt
like lifeless clods and I could hardly stand on them
when I first stepped to the ground, but a brisk walk
of two miles warmed me up so pleasantly that I was
sorry when a succession of mud holes forced me to
get back into the wagon.
About noon we struck the Milledgeville & Gordon
R.R., near a station which the Yankees had burnt,
and a mill near by they had destroyed also, out of
pure malice, to keep the poor people of the country
from getting their corn ground. There were several
crossroads at the burnt mill and we took the wrong
one, and got into somebody's cornfield, where we
found a little crib whose remoteness seemed to have
protected it from the greed of the invaders. We were
about to "press" a few ears for our hungry mules,
when we spied the owner coming across the fields and
waited for him. The captain asked if he would sell
us a little provender for our mules, but he gave such a
pitiful account of the plight in which Sherman had left
him that we felt as mean as a lot of thieving Yankees
ourselves, for having thought of disturbing his property.
He was very polite, and walked nearly a mile
in the biting wind to put us back in the right road.
Three miles from Gordon we came to Commissioners'
Creek, of which we had heard awful accounts all along
the road. It was particularly bad just at this time on
account of the heavy rain, and had overflowed the
swamp for nearly two miles. Porters with heavy
packs on their backs were wading through the sloughs,
and soldiers were paddling along with their legs bare
and their breeches tied up in a bundle on their
shoulders. They were literal sans culottes. Some
one who had just come from the other side advised us
to unload the wagon and make two trips of it, as it
was doubtful whether the mules could pull through
with such a heavy load. The Yankees had thrown
dead cattle in the ford, so that we had to drive about
at random in the mud and water, to avoid these uncanny
obstructions. Our gentlemen, however, concluded
that we had not time to make two trips, so
they all piled into the wagon at once and trusted to
Providence for the result. We came near upsetting
twice, and the water was so deep in places that we
had to stand on top of the trunks to keep our feet dry.
Safely over the swamp, we dined on the scraps left
in our baskets, which afforded but a scanty meal. The
cold and wind had increased so that we could hardly
keep our seats, but the roads improved somewhat as
we advanced, and the aspect of the country was beautiful
in spite of all that the vandalism of war had done
to disfigure its fair face. Every few hundred yards
we crossed beautiful, clear streams with luxuriant
swamps along their borders, gay with shining evergreens
and bright winter berries. But when we struck
the Central R.R. at Gordon, the desolation was more
complete than anything we had yet seen. There was
nothing left of the poor little village but ruins, charred
and black as Yankee hearts. The pretty little dépot
presented only a shapeless pile of bricks capped by a
crumpled mass of tin that had once covered the roof.
The R.R. track was torn up and the iron twisted into
every conceivable shape. Some of it was wrapped
round the trunks of trees, as if the cruel invaders, not
satisfied with doing all the injury they could to their
fellowmen, must spend their malice on the innocent
trees of the forest, whose only fault was that they
grew on Southern soil. Many fine young saplings
were killed in this way, but the quickest and most
effective method of destruction was to lay the iron
across piles of burning cross-ties, and while heated
in the flames it was bent and warped so as to be entirely
spoiled. A large force is now at work repairing
the road; as the repairs advance a little every day, the
place for meeting the train is constantly changing and
not always easy to find. We floundered around in
the swamps a long time and at last found our train
in the midst of a big swamp, with crowds of people
waiting around on little knolls and islands till the
cars should be opened. Each group had its own fire,
and tents were improvised out of shawls and blankets
so that the scene looked like a gypsy camp. Here we
met again all the people we had seen on the train at
Camack, besides a great many others. Judge Baker
and the Bonhams arrived a few minutes behind us,
after having met with all sorts of disasters at
Commissioners' Creek, which they crossed at a
worse ford than the one we had taken. We found a
dry place near the remains of a half-burned fence
where Charles and Crockett soon had a rousing fire
and we sat round it, talking over our adventures till
the car was ready for us. There was a great scramble
to get aboard, and we were all crowded into a little
car not much bigger than an ordinary omnibus. Mett
and I were again indebted to the kindness of soldier
boys for a seat. We had about the best one in the
car, which is not saying much, with the people jostling
and pressing against us from the crowded aisle, but
as we had only 16 miles to go, we thought we could
stand it with a good grace. Metta's indisposition had
been increasing all day and she was now so ill that I
was seriously uneasy, but all I could do was to place
her next to the window, where she would not be so
much disturbed by the crowd. We steamed along
smoothly enough for an hour or two, until just at
nightfall, when within two miles of Macon, the train
suddenly stopped and we were told that we should
have to spend the night there or walk to town. The
bridge over Walnut Creek, which had been damaged
by Stoneman's raiders last summer, was so weakened
by the storm of the night before that it threatened
to give way, and it was impossible to run the train
across. We were all in despair. Metta was really
ill and the rest of us worn out with fatigue and loss
of sleep, besides being half famished. Our provisions
were completely exhausted; the fine grape brandy
mother had put in the basket was all gone - looted, I
suppose, by the servants - and we had no other medicine.
A good many of the men decided to walk,
among them our lieutenant, who was on his way home,
just out of a Yankee prison, and eager to spend Christmas
with his family. The dear, good-hearted fellow
seemed loath to leave us in that plight, and offered to
stay and see us through, if I wanted him, but I couldn't
impose on his kindness to that extent. Besides, we
still had the captain and the colonel, and all the rest
of them, and I knew we would never lack for attention
or protection as long as there was a Confederate
uniform in sight. Capt. Jarman and Dr. Shine joined
the walkers, too, in the vain hope of sending an engine,
or even a hand-car for us, but all their representations
to Gen. Cobb and the R.R. authorities were fruitless;
nothing could be done till morning, and a rumor got
out among us from somewhere that even then there
would be nothing for it but to walk and get our baggage
moved as best we might. For the first time my
spirits gave way, and as Metta was too ill to notice
what I was doing, I hid my face in my hands and took
a good cry. Then the captain came over and did his
best to cheer me up by talking about other things. He
showed me photographs of his sisters, nice, stylish-looking
girls, as one would expect the sisters of such
a man to be, and I quite fell in love with one of them,
who had followed him to a Yankee prison and died
there of typhoid fever, contracted while nursing him.
As soon as it became known that Metta was sick, we
were overwhelmed with kindness from all the other
passengers, but there was not much that anybody
could do, and rest, the chief thing she needed, was
out of the question. At supper time the conductor
brought in some hardtack that he had on board to feed
the workmen, and distributed it among us. I was so
hungry that I tried to eat it, but soon gave up, and
my jawbones are sore yet from the effort. But the
provisions that we had shared with our companions
on the journey proved to be bread cast on the waters
that did not wait many days to be returned. I had
hardly taken my first bite of hardtack when Judge
Baker invited Metta and me to share a nice cold
supper with him; the bride offered us the only thing
she had left - some real coffee, which the colonel had
boiled at a fire kindled on the ground outside - and two
ladies, strangers to us, who had got aboard at Gordon,
sent us each a paper package containing a dainty little
lunch of cold chicken and buttered biscuit. But Metta
was too ill to eat. She had a high fever, and we both
spent a miserable, sleepless night.
At last day began to break, cold, clear, and frosty,
and with it came travelers who had walked out from
Macon bringing confirmation of the report that no
arrangements would be made for carrying passengers
and their baggage to the city. This news made us
desperate. The men on board swore that the train
should not move till some provision was made for
getting us to our destination. This made the Gordon
passengers furious. They said there were several
women among them who had walked out from the
city (two of them with babies in their arms), and the
train should go on time, come what would. Our men
said there were ladies in the car, too; we had paid our
fare to Macon, and they intended to see that we got
there. Each party had a show of right on its side,
but possession is nine points of the law, and this advantage
we determined not to forego. The Gordon
passengers began to crowd in on us till we could hardly
breathe, and Capt. Mackall, in no gentle terms, ordered
them out. High words passed, swords and
pistols were drawn on both sides, and a general fight
seemed about to take place. Mett and I were frightened
out of our wits at the first alarm and threw our
arms about each other. I kept quiet till I saw the
shooting about to begin, and then, my nerves all unstrung
by what I had suffered during the night, I
tuned up and began to cry like a baby. It was well I
did, for my tears brought the men to their senses.
Judge Baker and Col. Scott interfered, reminding
them that ladies were present, and then arms were laid
aside and profuse apologies made for having frightened
us. Both parties then turned their indignation
against the railroad officials, and somebody was making
a bluster about pitching the conductor into the
creek, when he appeared on the scene and appeased
all parties by announcing that a locomotive and car
would be sent out to meet the passengers for Macon
on the other side of the creek and take us to the
city. In the meantime, we were tantalized by hearing
the whistles of the different trains with which
we wished to connect, as they rolled out of the
dépot in Macon.
It was eight o'clock before our transfer, consisting
of an engine and a single box-car, arrived at the other
end of the trestle, and as they had to be unloaded of
their freight before we could get aboard, it was nearly
ten when we reached Macon. But as soon as they were
heard approaching, we were so glad to get out of the
prison where we had spent such an uncomfortable
night that we immediately put on our wraps and began
to cross the tottering trestle on foot. It was 80 feet
high and half a mile long, over a swamp through
which flowed Walnut Creek, now swollen to a torrent.
Part of the flooring of the bridge was washed down
stream and our only foothold was a narrow plank,
hardly wider than my two hands. Capt. Mackall
charged himself with my parcels, and Mr. Belisle was
left to look after the trunks. Strong-headed men
walked along the sleepers on either side, to steady any
one that might become dizzy. Just behind Metta, who
followed the captain and me, hobbled a wounded
soldier on crutches, and behind him came Maj. Bonham,
borne on the back of a stout negro porter. Last
of all came porters with the trunks, and it is a miracle
to me how they contrived to carry such heavy loads
over that dizzy, tottering height.
Once across the bridge we disposed ourselves wherever
we could find a firm spot - a dry one was out of
the question. When Metta drew off her veil and
gloves, I was terrified at the looks of her hands and
face. We were both afraid she had contracted some
awful disease in that dirty car, but the captain laughed
and said he knew all about army diseases, and thought
it was nothing but measles. When we got to Macon,
Dr. Shine further relieved my mind by assuring me
it was a mild case, and said she needed only a few days'
rest.
We reached the dépot just ten minutes after the
South-Western train had gone out, so we went to the
Lanier House, and I at once sent Mr. Belisle for
Brother Troup, only to learn that he had gone on the
very train we had missed, to spend Christmas at his
plantation.
It was delightful to get into clean, comfortable
quarters at the Lanier House. Metta got into bed
and went right off to sleep, and I lay down for awhile,
but was so often disturbed by friendly messages and
inquiries that I got up and dressed for dinner. I put
on my pretty flowered merino that had been freshened
up with black silk ruchings that completely hid the
worn places, and the waist made over with Elizabethan
sleeves, so that it looked almost like a new dress, besides
being very becoming, as the big sleeves helped out
my figure by their fullness. I frizzed my hair and put
on the head-dress of black velvet ribbon and gold
braid that Cousin Sallie Farley gave me. I think I
must have looked nice, because I heard several people
inquiring who I was when I went into the dining-room.
I had hardly put in the last pin when a servant
came to announce that Mr. Charles Day, Mary's
father, had called. He was the only person in the
drawing-room when I entered and made a very singular,
not to say, striking appearance, with his snow-white
hair framing features of such a peculiar dark
complexion that he made me think of some antique
piece of wood-carving. The impression was strengthened
by a certain stiffness of manner that is generally
to be noticed in all men of Northern birth and education.
Not long after, Harry Day called. He said
that Mary * was in Savannah, cut off by
Sherman so
that they could get no news of her. He didn't
even know whether mother's invitation had reached
her.
Gussie and Mary Lou
Lamar followed the Days,
and I was kept so busy receiving callers and answering
inquiries about Mett that I didn't have time to find out
how tired and sleepy I was till I went to bed. Judge
Vason happened to be at the hotel when we arrived,
and insisted that we should pack up and go with him
to Albany next day and stay at his house till we were
both well rid of the measles - for it stands to reason
that I shall take it after nursing Metta. He said that
it had just been through his family from A to Z, so
there was no danger of our communicating it to anybody
there. Then Mrs. Edward Johnston came and
proposed taking us to her house, and on Dr. Shine's
advice I decided to accept this invitation, as it would
hardly be prudent for Metta to travel in her present
condition, and we could not get proper attention for
her at the hotel. I could not even get a chambermaid
without going the whole length of the corridor
to ring the bell and waiting there till somebody came
to answer it.
The colonel and his party
left on the one o'clock train
that night for Columbus, where they expect to take
the boat for Apalachicola. After taking leave of them
I went to bed, and if ever any mortal did hard sleeping,
I did that night. Next day Mr. Johnston called in his
carriage and brought us to his beautiful home on Mulberry
St., where we are lodged like princesses, in a
bright, sunny room that makes me think of old Chaucer's
lines that I have heard Cousin Liza quote so
often:
"This is the port of rest from troublous toile,
The world's sweet inne from paine and wearisome turmoile."
[NOTE. - Several pages
are torn from the manuscript here. -
AUTHOR.]
EXPLANATORY NOTE. -
During the period embraced in
this chapter the great black tide of destruction that had
swept over Georgia turned its course northward from
Savannah to break a few weeks later (Feb. 17) in a cataract
of blood and fire on the city of Columbia. At the
same time the great tragedy of Andersonville was going
on under our eyes; and farther off, in Old Virginia, Lee
and his immortals were struggling in the toils of the
net that was drawing them on to the tragedy of Appomattox.
To put forward a trivial narrative of everyday
life at a time when mighty events like these were
taking place would seem little less than an impertinence,
did we not know that it is the ripple mark left on the sand
that shows where the tide came in, and the simple undergrowth
of the forest gives a character to the landscape
without which the most carefully-drawn picture
would be incomplete.
On the other hand, the mighty drama that was being
enacted around us reflected itself in the minutest details
of life, even our sports and amusements being colored
by it, as the record of the diary will show. The
present chapter opens with allusions to an expedition
sent out by Sherman from Savannah under Gen. Kilpatrick,
having for its object the destruction of the Stockade
at Andersonville, and release of the prisoners to
wreak their vengeance on the people whom they believed
to be responsible for their sufferings. The success of
this movement was frustrated only by the incessant rains
of that stormy winter, which flooded the intervening
country so that it was impossible for even the best
equipped cavalry to pass, and thus averted what might
have been the greatest tragedy of the war.
It is not my purpose to dwell upon public events in
these pages, nor to revive the dark memories of Andersonville,
but a few words concerning it are necessary to
a clear understanding of the allusions made to it in this
part of the record, and to a just appreciation of the
position of the Southern people in regard to that deplorable
episode of the war. Owing to the policy of the
Federal Government in refusing to exchange prisoners,
and to the ruin and devastation of war, which made it
impossible for the Confederate government to provide
adequately for its own soldiers, even with the patriotic
aid of our women, the condition of our prisons was anything
but satisfactory, both from lack of supplies and
from the unavoidable over-crowding caused by the failure
of all efforts to effect an exchange. Mr. Tanner,
ex-Commander of the G. A. R., who is the last person in
the world whom one would think of citing as a witness for
the South, bears this unconscious testimony to the force of
circumstances that made it impossible for our government
to remedy that unhappy situation:
"It is true that more prisoners died in Northern prisons than
Union prisoners died in Southern prisons. The explanation of
this is extremely simple. The Southern prisoners came North
worn and emaciated - half starved. They had reached this condition
because of their scant rations. They came from a mild
climate to a rigorous Northern climate, and, although we
gave them shelter and plenty to eat, they could not stand the
change."
This argument, intended as a defense of the North,
is a boomerang whose force as a weapon for the other
side it is unnecessary to point out. Whether the conditions
at Andersonville might have been ameliorated by
the personal efforts of those in charge, I do not know.
I never met Capt. Wirz, but I do know that had he
been an angel from heaven, he could not have changed
the pitiful tale of suffering from privation and hunger
unless he had possessed the power to repeat the miracle
of the loaves and fishes. I do know, too, that the
sufferings of the prisoners were viewed with the deepest
compassion by the people of the neighborhood, as the
diary will show, and they would gladly have relieved
them if they had been able. In the fall of 1864, when
it was feared that Sherman would send a raid to free
the prisoners and turn them loose upon the defenseless
country, a band of several thousand were shipped round
by rail to Camp Lawton, near Millen, to get them out
of his way. Later, when he had passed on, after destroying
the railroads, these men were marched back overland
to Andersonville, and the planters who lived along the
road had hampers filled with such provisions as could be
hastily gotten together and placed before them. Among
those who did this were my sister, Mrs. Troup Butler,
and her neighbors, the Bacons, so frequently mentioned in
this part of the diary. My sister says that she had every
drop of milk and crabber in her dairy brought out and
given to the poor fellows, and she begged the officer to
let them wait till she could have what food she could
spare cooked for them. This, however, being impossible,
she had potatoes and turnips and whatever else could be
eaten raw, hastily collected by the servants and strewn in
the road before them. I have before me, as I write, a
very kind letter from an old Union soldier, in which he
says that he was one of the men fed on this occasion,
and he adds: "I still feel thankful for the help we got
that day." He gives his name as S. S. Andrews, Co. K,
64th Ohio Vols., and his present address as Tularosa,
Mexico.
But it is hardly to be expected that men half-crazed by
suffering and for the most part ignorant of their own
government's responsibility in the matter, should discriminate
very closely in apportioning the blame for their
terrible condition. Accustomed to the bountiful provision
made for its soldiers by the richest nation in the
world, they naturally enough could not see the tragic
humor of their belief, when suddenly reduced to Confederate
army rations, that they were the victims of a
deliberate plot to starve them to death!
Another difficulty with which the officers in charge of
the stockade had to contend was the lack of a sufficient
force to guard so large a body of prisoners. At one time
there were over 35,000 of them at Andersonville alone -
a number exceeding Lee's entire force at the close of
the siege of Petersburg. The men actually available for
guarding this great army, were never more than 1,200 or
1,500, and these were drawn from the State Reserves,
consisting of boys under eighteen and invalided or superannuated
men unfit for active service. At almost any
time during the year 1864-1865, if the prisoners had
realized the weakness of their guard, they could, by a
concerted assault, have overpowered them. At the time
of Kilpatrick's projected raid, their numbers had been
reduced to about 7,500, by distributing the excess to other
points and by the humane action of the Confederate authorities
in releasing, without equivalent, 15,000 sick and
wounded, and actually forcing them, as a free gift, upon
the unwilling hospitality of their own government.
But even allowing for this diminution, the consequences
of turning loose so large a body of men, naturally
incensed and made desperate by suffering, to incite
the negroes and ravage the country, while there were only
women and children and old men left on the plantations
to meet their fury, can hardly be imagined, even by those
who have seen the invasion of an organized army. The
consternation of my father, when he found that he had
sent us into the jaws of this danger instead of the security
and rest he had counted on, cannot be described. Happily,
the danger was over before he knew of its existence,
but communication was so slow and uncertain in those
days that a long correspondence at cross purposes ensued
before his mind was set at rest.
It may seem strange to the modern reader that in the
midst of such tremendous happenings we could find it in
our hearts to go about the common business of life;
to laugh and dance and be merry in spite of the crumbling
of the social fabric about us. But so it has always been;
so it was "in the days of Noe," and so, we are told,
will it be "in the end of the world." Youth will have
its innings, and never was social life in the old South
more full of charm than when tottering to its fall. South-west
Georgia, being the richest agricultural section of
the State, and remote from the scene of military operations,
was a favorite resort at that time for refugees
from all parts of the seceded States, and the society
of every little country town was as cosmopolitan as that
of our largest cities had been before the war. The dearth
of men available for social functions that was so conspicuous
in other parts of the Confederacy remote from
the seat of war, did not exist here, because the importance
of so rich an agricultural region as a source of food
supply for our armies, and the quartering of such large
bodies of prisoners at Andersonville and Millen, necessitated
the presence of a large number of officers connected
with the commissary and quartermaster's departments.
These were, for the most part, men who, on
account of age, or chronic infirmity, or injuries received
in battle, were unfit for service in the field. There were
large hospitals, too, in all the towns and villages to which
disabled soldiers from the front were sent as fast as
they were able to bear the transportation, in order to
relieve the congestion in the neighborhood of the armies.
Those whose wounds debarred them from further service,
and whose homes were in possession of the enemy,
were received into private houses and cared for by the
women of the South till the end of the war.
My sister's white family at the time of our arrival
consisted of herself and two little children, Tom and
Julia, and Mr. Butler's invalid sister, Mrs. Julia Meals, a
pious widow of ample means which it was her chief ambition
in life to spend in doing good. The household was
afterwards increased by the arrival of Mrs. Julia Butler
(also called in the diary, Mrs. Green Butler) the widow
of Mr. Greenlee Butler, who had died not long before
in the army. He was the elder and only brother of my
sister's husband. Col. Maxwell, of Gopher Hill, was an
uncle of my brother-in-law, the owner of several large
plantations, where he was fond of practicing the old-time
Southern hospitality. The "Cousin Bolling" so frequently
mentioned, was Dr. Bolling A. Pope, a stepson
of my mother's youngest sister, Mrs. Alexander Pope,
of Washington, Ga., the "Aunt Cornelia" spoken of in a
later chapter. He was in Berlin when the war began,
where he had spent several years preparing himself as a
specialist in diseases of the eye and ear, but returned
when hostilities began, and was assigned to duty as a
surgeon. The Tallassee Plantation to which reference
is made, was an estate owned by my father near Albany,
Ga., where the family were in the habit of spending the
winters, until he sold it and transferred his principal
planting interests to the Yazoo Delta in Mississippi.
Mt. Enon was a little log church where services were
held by a refugee Baptist minister, and, being the only
place of worship in the neighborhood, was attended by
people of all denominations. The different homes and
families mentioned were those of well-known planters
in that section, or of refugee friends who had temporarily
taken up their abode there.
Jan. 1st, 1865. Sunday. Pine Bluff. - A beautiful
clear day, but none of us went to church. Sister was
afraid of the bad roads, Metta, Mrs. Meals, Julia and
I all sick. I think I am taking measles.
Jan. 1, Wednesday. - I am just getting well of
measles, and a rough time I had of it. Measles is no such
small affair after all, especially when aggravated by
perpetual alarms of Yankee raiders. For the last week
we have lived in a state of incessant fear. All sorts of
rumors come up the road and down it, and we never
know what to believe. Mett and I have received repeated
letters from home urging our immediate return,
but of course it was impossible to travel while I was sick
in bed, and even now I am not strong enough to undertake
that terrible journey across the burnt country
again. While I was ill, home was the one thought
that haunted my brain, and if I ever do get back, I
hope I will have sense enough to stay there. I don't
think I ever suffered so much before in all my life, and
dread of the Yankees raised my fever to such a pitch
that I got no rest by night or day. I used to feel very
brave about Yankees, but since I have passed over
Sherman's track and seen what devastation they
make, I am so afraid of them that I believe I should
drop down dead if one of the wretches should come
into my presence. I would rather face them anywhere
than here in South-West Georgia, for the horrors of
the stockade have so enraged them that they will have
no mercy on this country, though they have brought it
all on themselves, the cruel monsters, by refusing to
exchange prisoners. But it is horrible, and a blot on
the fair name of our Confederacy. Mr. Robert Bacon
says he has accurate information that on the first of
December, 1864, there were 13,010 graves at Anderson.
It is a dreadful record. I shuddered as I passed
the place on the cars, with its tall gibbet full of horrible
suggestiveness before the gate, and its seething
mass of humanity inside, like a swarm of blue flies
crawling over a grave. It is said that the prisoners
have organized their own code of laws among themselves,
and have established courts of justice before
which they try offenders, and that they sometimes
condemn one of their number to death. It is horrible
to think of, but what can we poor Confederates do?
The Yankees won't exchange prisoners, and our own
soldiers in the field don't fare much better than these
poor creatures. Everybody is sorry for them, and
wouldn't keep them here a day if the government at
Washington didn't force them on us. And yet they
lay all the blame on us. Gen. Sherman told Mr. Cuyler
that he did not intend to leave so much as a blade
of grass in South-West Georgia, and Dr. Janes told
sister that he (Sherman) said he would be obliged to
send a formidable raid here in order to satisfy the
clamors of his army, though he himself, the fiend
Sherman, dreaded it on account of the horrors that
would be committed. What Sherman dreads must
indeed be fearful. They say his soldiers have sworn
that they will spare neither man, woman nor child in
all South-West Georgia. It is only a question of
time, I suppose, when all this will be done. It begins
to look as if the Yankees can do whatever they please
and go wherever they wish - except to heaven; I do
fervently pray the good Lord will give us rest from
them there.
While I was at my worst, Mrs. Lawton came out
with her brother-in-law, Mr. George Lawton, and Dr.
Richardson, Medical Director of Bragg's army, to
make sister a visit. The doctor came into my room
and prescribed for me and did me more good by his
cheerful talk than by his prescription. He told me
not to think about the Yankees, and said that he would
come and carry me away himself before I should fall
into their hands. His medicine nearly killed me. It
was a big dose of opium and whisky, that drove me
stark crazy, but when I came to myself I felt much
better. Dr. Janes was my regular physician and had
the merit of not giving much medicine, but he frightened
me horribly with his rumors about Yankee
raiders. We are safe from them for the present, at
any rate, I hope; the swamps of the Altamaha are so
flooded that it would take an army of Tritons to get
over them now.
All this while that I have been sick, Metta has been
going about enjoying herself famously. There is a
party at Mr. Callaway's from Americus, which makes
the neighborhood very gay. Everybody has called,
but I had to stay shut up in my room and miss all the
fun.... Brother Troup has come down from Macon
on a short furlough, bringing with him a Maj. Higgins
from Mississippi, who is much nicer than his name.
He is a cousin of Dr. Richardson. The rest of the
family were out visiting all the morning, leaving me
with Mrs. Meals, who entertained me by reading aloud
from Hannah More. As my eyes are still too weak
from measles for me to read much myself, I was glad
to be edified by Hannah More, rather than be left to
my own dull company. The others came back at
three, and then, just as we were sitting down to
dinner, the Mallarys called and spent the rest of the
day. We ate no supper, but went to bed on an eggnog
at midnight.
Jan. 12, Thursday. - The rest of them out visiting
again all the morning, leaving me to enjoy life with
Mrs. Meals and Hannah More. The Edwin Bacons
and Merrill Callaway and his bride were invited to
spend the evening with us and I found it rather dull.
I am just sick enough to be a bore to myself and everybody
else. Merrill has married Katy Furlow, of
Americus, and she says that soon after my journey
home last spring she met my young Charlestonian, and
that he went into raptures over me, and said he never
was so delighted with anybody in his life, so it seems
the attraction was mutual. I have a letter from Tolie;
she is living in Montgomery, supremely happy, of
course, as a bride should be. She was sadly disappointed
at my absence from the wedding. The city
is very gay, she says, and everybody inquiring about
me and wanting me to come. If I wasn't afraid the
Yankees might cut me off from home and sister, too,
I would pick up and go now. Yankee, Yankee, is the
one detestable word always ringing in Southern ears.
If all the words of hatred in every language under
heaven were lumped together into one huge epithet of
detestation, they could not tell how I hate Yankees.
They thwart all my plans, murder my friends, and
make my life miserable.
Jan. 13th, Friday. - Col. Blake, a refugee from
Mississippi, and his sister-in-law, Miss Connor, dined
with us. While the gentlemen lingered over their
wine after dinner, we ladies sat in the parlor making
cigarettes for them. The evening was spent at cards,
which bored me not a little, for I hate cards; they are
good for nothing but to entertain stupid visitors with,
and Col. Blake and Miss Connor do not belong in that
category. Mett says she don't like the old colonel because
he is too pompous, but that amuses me, - and
then, he is such a gentleman.
The newspapers bring accounts of terrible floods all
over the country. Three bridges are washed away on
the Montgomery & West Point R.R., so that settles
the question of going to Montgomery for the present.
Our fears about the Yankees are quieted, too, there
being none this side of the Altamaha, and the swamps
impassable.
Jan. 14th, Saturday. - Brother Troup and Maj.
Higgins left for Macon, and sister drove to Albany
with them. She expects to stay there till Monday and
then bring Mrs. Sims out with her. We miss Maj.
Higgins very much; he was good company, in spite of
that horrible name. Jim Chiles called after dinner,
with his usual budget of news, and after him came
Albert Bacon to offer us the use of his father's carriage
while sister has hers in Albany.
Father keeps on writing for us to come home.
Brother Troup says he can send us across the country
from Macon in a government wagon, with Mr. Forline
for an escort, if the rains will ever cease; but we can't
go now on account of the bad roads and the floods up
the country. Bridges are washed away in every direction,
and the water courses impassable.
Jan. 15th, Sunday. - Went to church at Mt. Enon
with Albert Bacon, and saw everybody. It was pleasant
to meet old friends, but I could not help thinking
of poor Annie Chiles's grave at the church door. One
missing in a quiet country neighborhood like this
makes a great gap. This was the Sunday for Dr. Hillyer
to preach to the negroes and administer the communion
to them. They kept awake and looked very
much edified while the singing was going on, but most
of them slept through the sermon. The women were
decked out in all their Sunday finery and looked so
picturesque and happy. It is a pity that this glorious
old plantation life should ever have to come to an end.
Albert Bacon dined with us and we spent the afternoon
planning for a picnic at Mrs. Henry Bacon's lake
on Tuesday or Wednesday. The dear old lake! I
want to see it again before its shores are desecrated by
Yankee feet.
I wish sister would hurry home, on account of the
servants. We can't take control over them, and they
won't do anything except just what they please. As
soon as she had gone, Mr. Ballou, the overseer, took
himself off and only returned late this evening. Harriet,
Mrs. Green Butler's maid, is the most trifling of
the lot, but I can stand anything from her because she
refused to go off with the Yankees when Mrs. Butler
had her in Marietta last summer. Her mother went,
and tried to persuade Harriet to go, too, but she
said: "I loves Miss Julia a heap better'n I do
you," and remained faithful. Sister keeps her here
because Mrs. Butler is a refugee and without a home
herself.
Jan. 16, Monday. - Sister has come back, bringing
dear little Mrs. Sims with her. Metta and I are to
spend next week in Albany with Mrs. Sims, if we are
not all water-bound in the meantime, at Pine Bluff.
The floods are subsiding up the country, but the
waters are raging down here. Flint River is out of
its banks, the low grounds are overflowed, and the
backwater has formed a lake between the negro
quarter and the house, that reaches to within a few
yards of the door. So much the better for us, as Kilpatrick
and his raiders can never make their way
through all these floods.
Sister is greatly troubled about a difficulty two of
her negroes, Jimboy and Alfred, have gotten into.
They are implicated with some others who are accused
of stealing leather and attacking a white man. Alfred
is a great, big, horrid-looking creature, more like an
orang-outang than a man, though they say he is one
of the most peaceable and humble negroes on the
plantation, and Jimboy has never been known to get
into any mischief before. I hope there is some mistake,
though the negroes are getting very unruly since
the Yankees are so near.
Jan. 17, Tuesday. - The river still rising and all the
water-courses so high that I am afraid the stage won't
be able to pass between Albany and Thomasville, and
we sha'n't get our mail. There is always something
the matter to keep us from getting the mail at that
little Gum Pond postoffice. Mrs. Sims is water-bound
with us, and it is funny to hear her and Mrs. Meals,
one a red-hot Episcopalian, the other a red-hot Baptist,
trying to convert each other. If the weather is
any sign, Providence would seem to favor the Baptists
just now.
Mrs. Sims almost made me cry with her account of
poor Mary Millen - her brother dead, their property
destroyed; it is the same sad story over again that we
hear so much of. This dreadful war is bringing ruin
upon so many happy homes.
Jan. 19, Thursday. - I suffered a great disappointment
to-day. Mrs. Stokes Walton gave a big dining
- everybody in the neighborhood, almost everybody
in the county that is anybody was invited. I expected
to wear that beautiful new dress that ran the blockade
and I have had so few opportunities of showing. All
my preparations were made, even the bows of ribbon
pinned on my undersleeves, but I was awakened at
daylight by the pattering of rain on the roof, and
knew that the fun was up for me. It was out of the
question for one just up from an attack of measles to
risk a ride of twelve miles in such a pouring rain, so
I had to content myself to stay at home with the two
old ladies and be edified with disquisitions on the
Apostolic Succession and Baptism by Immersion.
They are both good enough to be translated, and I
can't see why the dear little souls should be so disturbed
about each other's belief. Once, when Mrs.
Meals left the room for some purpose, Mrs. Sims
whispered to me confidentially: "There is so little
gentility among these dissenters - that is one reason
why I hate to see her among them." I could hardly
keep from laughing out, but that is what a good deal
of our religious differences amount to. I confess to
a strong prejudice myself, in favor of the old church
in which I was brought up; still I don't think there
ought to be any distinction of classes or races in religion.
We all have too little "gentility" in the sight
of God for that. I only wish I stood as well in the
recording Angel's book as many a poor negro that I
know.
About noon a cavalryman stopped at the door and
asked for dinner. As we eat late, and the man was
in too big a hurry to wait, sister sent him a cold lunch
out in the entry. It was raining very hard, and the
poor fellow was thoroughly drenched, so after he had
eaten, sister invited him to come into the parlor and
dry himself. It came out, in the course of conversation,
that he was from our own part of Georgia, and
knew a number of good old Wilkes County families.
He was on his way to the Altamaha, he said, and
promised to do his best to keep the raiders from getting
to us.
Jan. 21, Saturday. Albany, Ga. - I never in all my
life knew such furious rains as we had last night; it
seemed as if the heavens themselves were falling upon
us. In addition to the uproar among the elements,
my slumbers were disturbed by frightful dreams about
Garnett. Twice during the night I dreamed that he
was dead and in a state of corruption, and I couldn't
get anybody to bury him. Col. Avery and Capt.
Mackall were somehow mixed up in the horrid vision,
trying to help me, but powerless to do so. In the
morning, when we waked, I found that Metta also
had dreamed of Garnett's death. I am not superstitious,
but I can't help feeling more anxious than usual
to hear news of my darling brother.
The rain held up about dinner time and Mrs. Sims
determined to return to Albany, in spite of high waters
and the threatening aspect of the sky. We went five
miles out of our way to find a place where we could
ford Wright's Creek, and even there the water was
almost swimming. Mett and I were frightened out
of our wits, but Mrs. Sims told us to shut our eyes
and trust to Providence, - and Providence and Uncle
Aby between them brought us through in safety. At
some places in the woods, sheets of water full half a
mile wide and from one to two feet deep were running
across the road, on their way to swell the flood in
Flint River. Sister sent a negro before us on a mule
to see if the water-courses were passable. We had
several bad scares, but reached town in safety a little
after dark.
the night and continued all day. If "the stars in
their courses fought against Sisera," it looks as if
the heavens were doing as much for us against Kilpatrick
and his raiders. There was no service at St.
Paul's, so Mrs. Sims kept Metta and me in the line of
duty by reading aloud High Church books to us. They
were very dull, so I didn't hurt myself listening. After
dinner we read the Church service and sang hymns
until relieved by a call from our old friend, Capt.
Hobbs.
Jan. 24, Tuesday. - Mr. and Mrs. Welsh spent the
evening with us. Jim Chiles came last night and sat
until the chickens crowed for day. Although I like
Jimmy and enjoy his budget of news, I would enjoy
his visits more if he knew when to go away. I never
was so tired and sleepy in my life, and cold, too, for
we had let the fire go out as a hint. When at last we
went to our room I nearly died laughing at the way
Metta had maneuvered to save time. She had loosened
every button and string that she could get at without
being seen, while sitting in the parlor, and had
now only to give herself a good shake and she was
ready for bed.
We spent the morning making calls with Mrs. Sims,
and found among the refugees from South Carolina
a charming old lady, Mrs. Brisbane. Though past
fifty, she is prettier than many a woman of half her
years, and her manners would grace a court. Her
father was an artist of note, and she showed us some
beautiful pictures painted by him. After dinner we
enjoyed some Florida oranges sent by Clinton Spenser,
and they tasted very good, in the absence of West
India fruit.
Jan. 25, Wednesday. - Dined at Judge Vason's,
where there was a large company. He is very hospitable
and his house is always full of people. Albert
Bacon came in from Gum Pond and called in the afternoon,
bringing letters, and the letters brought permission
to remain in South-West Georgia as long as we
please, the panic about Kilpatrick having died out.
I would like to be at home now, if the journey were
not such a hard one. Garnett and Mrs. Elzey are
both there, and Mary Day is constantly expected. I
have not seen Garnett for nearly three years. He has
resigned his position on Gen. Gardiner's staff, and is
going to take command of a battalion of "galvanized
Yankees," with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. I
don't like the scheme. I have no faith in Yankees of
any sort, especially these miserable turncoats that are
ready to sell themselves to either side. There isn't
gold enough in existence to galvanize one of them
into a respectable Confederate.
Jan. 27, Friday. - Mett and I were busy returning
calls all the morning, and Mrs. Sims, always in a
hurry, sent us up to dress for Mrs. Westmoreland's
party as soon as we had swallowed our dinner, so we
were ready by dusk and had to sit waiting with our
precious finery on until our escorts came for us at nine
o'clock. Mrs. Sims is one of these fidgety little bodies
that is always in a rush about everything. She gallops
through the responses in church so fast that she
always comes out long ahead of everybody else, and
even eats so fast that Metta and I nearly choke ourselves
trying to keep up with her. We hardly ever
get enough, as we are ashamed to sit at table too long
after she has finished. I tried one day, when I was
very hungry, to keep up with her in eating a waffle,
but before I had got mine well buttered, hers was
gone. She is such a nice housekeeper, too, and has
such awfully good things that it is tantalizing not to be
able to take time to enjoy them.
The party was delightful. Albany is so full of
charming refugees and Confederate officers and their
families that there is always plenty of good company,
whatever else may be lacking. I danced three sets
with Joe Godfrey, but I don't like the square dances
very much. The Prince Imperial is too slow and
stately, and so complicated that the men never know
what to do with themselves. Even the Lancers are
tame in comparison with a waltz or a galop. I love
the galop and the Deux Temps better than any. We
kept it up till two o'clock in the morning, and then
walked home.
While going our rounds in the morning, we found
a very important person in Peter Louis, a paroled
Yankee prisoner, in the employ of Capt. Bonham.
The captain keeps him out of the stockade, feeds and
clothes him, and in return, reaps the benefit of his
skill. Peter is a French Yankee, * a
shoemaker by
trade, and makes as beautiful shoes as I ever saw
imported from France. My heart quite softened towards
him when I saw his handiwork, and little Mrs.
Sims was so overcome that she gave him a huge slice
of her Confederate fruit cake. I talked French with
him, which pleased him greatly, and Mett and I engaged
him to make us each a pair of shoes. I will
feel like a lady once more, with good shoes on my feet.
I expect the poor Yank is glad to get away from Anderson
on any terms. Although matters have improved
somewhat with the cool weather, the tales that
are told of the condition of things there last summer
are appalling. Mrs. Brisbane heard all about it from
Father Hamilton, a Roman Catholic priest from
Macon, who has been working like a good Samaritan
in those dens of filth and misery. It is a shame to
us Protestants that we have let a Roman Catholic get
so far ahead of us in this work of charity and mercy.
Mrs. Brisbane says Father Hamilton told her that
during the summer the wretched prisoners burrowed
in the ground like moles to protect themselves from
the sun. It was not safe to give them material to
build shanties as they might use it for clubs to overcome
the guard. These underground huts, he said,
were alive with vermin and stank like charnel houses.
Many of the prisoners were stark naked, having not
so much as a shirt to their backs. He told a pitiful
story of a Pole who had no garment but a shirt, and
to make it cover him the better, he put his legs into
the sleeves and tied the tail round his neck. The
others guyed him so on his appearance, and the poor
wretch was so disheartened by suffering, that one day
he deliberately stepped over the deadline and stood
there till the guard was forced to shoot him. But
what I can't understand is that a Pole, of all people
in the world, should come over here and try to take
away our liberty when his own country is in the hands
of oppressors. One would think that the Poles, of
all nations in the world, ought to sympathize with a
people fighting for their liberties. Father Hamilton
said that at one time the prisoners died at the rate
of 150 a day, and he saw some of them die on the
ground without a rag to lie on or a garment to cover
them. Dysentery was the most fatal disease, and as
they lay on the ground in their own excrements, the
smell was so horrible that the good father says he was
often obliged to rush from their presence to get a
breath of pure air. It is dreadful. My heart aches
for the poor wretches, Yankees though they are, and
I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution
to fall upon us for letting such things happen. If the
Yankees ever should come to South-West Georgia,
and go to Anderson and see the graves there, God
have mercy on the land! And yet, what can we do?
The Yankees themselves are really more to blame than
we, for they won't exchange these prisoners, and our
poor, hard-pressed Confederacy has not the means to
provide for them, when our own soldiers are starving
in the field. Oh, what a horrible thing war is when
stripped of all its "pomp and circumstance"!
Jan. 28, Saturday. - We left Albany at an early
hour. Albert Bacon rode out home in the carriage
with us, and I did the best I could for him by pretending
to be too sleepy to talk and so leaving him free to
devote himself to Mett. Fortunately, the roads have
improved since last Saturday, and we were not so
long on the way. We found sister busy with preparations
for Julia's birthday party, which came off in
the afternoon. All the children in the neighborhood
were invited and most of the grown people, too. The
youngsters were turned loose in the backyard to play
King's Base, Miley Bright, &c., and before we knew it,
we grown people found ourselves as deep in the fun
as the children. In the midst of it all a servant came
up on horseback with a letter for sister. It proved to
be a note from Capt. Hines bespeaking her hospitality
for Gen. Sam Jones and staff, and of course she
couldn't refuse, though the house was crowded to
overflowing already. She had hardly finished reading
when a whole cavalcade of horses and government
wagons came rattling up to the door, and the general
and one of his aides helped two ladies and their children
to alight from an ambulance in which they were
traveling. When they saw what a party we had on
hand, they seemed a little embarrassed, but sister
laughed away their fears, and sent the children out to
join the others in the backyard and left the ladies, who
were introduced as Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Creighton,
with their escorts, in the parlor, while she went out
to give orders about supper and make arrangements
for their accommodation. Mrs. Meals, Metta, and I
hustled out of our rooms and doubled up with sister
and the children. Everybody was stowed away somewhere,
when, just before bedtime, two more aides,
Capt. Warwick, of Richmond, and Capt. Frazer, of
Charleston, rode up and were invited to come in,
though the house was so crowded that sister had not
even a pallet on the floor to offer them. All she could
do was to give them some pillows and tell them they
were welcome to stay in the parlor if they could make
themselves comfortable there. People are used to
putting up with any sort of accommodations these
times and they seemed very glad of the shelter. They
said it was a great deal better than camping out in the
wagons, as they had been doing, and with the help of
the parlor rugs and their overcoats and army blankets,
they could make themselves very comfortable. They
were regular thoroughbreds, we could see, and Capt.
Frazer one of the handsomest men I ever laid my
eyes on - a great, big, splendid, fair-haired giant,
that might have been a Viking leader if he had lived
a thousand years ago.
Sister has been so put out by Mr. Ballou that I don't
see how she could keep her temper well enough to be
polite to anybody. He has packed up and taken himself
off, leaving her without an overseer, after giving
but one day's notice, and she has the whole responsibility
of the plantation and all these negroes on her
hands. It was disgraceful for him to treat her so,
and Brother Troup off at the war, too.
Jan. 29, Sunday. - Breakfast early so as to let our
general and staff proceed on their way, as they said
they wanted to make an early start. Gen. Jones has
recently been appointed commandant of the Department
of South Georgia and Florida, with headquarters
at Tallahassee. It was nearly eleven o'clock
before they got off. Mr. Robert Bacon says he met
them on their way, and they told him they were so
pleased with their entertainment at sister's that they
wished they could have staid a day or two longer. I
had a good long talk with the two young captains before
they left and they were just as nice as they could
be. We found that we had a number of common
friends, and Capt. Warwick knows quite well the Miss
Lou Randolph in Richmond that Garnett writes so
much about, and Rosalie Beirne,* too.
Just before bedtime we
were startled by heavy steps
and a loud knocking at the front door. Having no
white man within three miles, even an overseer,
we were a little startled, but mustered courage, sister,
Mett, and I, followed by two or three of the negroes,
to go to the door. Instead of a stray Yankee, or a
squad of deserters, we confronted a smart young Confederate
officer in such a fine new uniform that the
sight of it nearly took our breath away. He said he
was going to the Cochran plantation, but got lost in
the pond back of our house and had come in to inquire
his way. Sister invited him into the sitting-room,
and he sat there talking with us till one of the servants
could saddle a mule and go with him to show him the
road. Sister said she felt mean for not inviting him
to spend the night, but she was too tired and worried
to entertain another guest now, if the fate of the Confederacy
depended on it. His uniform was too fresh
and new anyway to look very heroic.
Jan. 31, Tuesday. - Sister and I spent the morning
making calls. At the tithing agent's office, where she
stopped to see about her taxes, we saw a battalion of
Wheeler's cavalry, which is to be encamped in our
neighborhood for several weeks. Their business is to
gather up and take care of broken-down horses, so as
to fit them for use again in baggage trains and the
like. At the postoffice a letter was given me, which
I opened and read, thinking it was for me. It began
"Dear Ideal" and was signed "Yours forever." I
thought at first that Capt. Hobbs or Albert Bacon was
playing a joke on me, but on making inquiry at the
office, I learned that there is a cracker girl named
Fanny Andrews living down somewhere near Gum
Pond, for whom, no doubt, the letter was intended;
so I remailed it to her.
As we were sitting in the parlor after supper, there
was another lumbering noise of heavy feet on the
front steps, but it was caused by a very different sort
of visitor from the one we had Sunday night. A
poor, cadaverous fellow came limping into the room,
and said he was a wounded soldier, looking for work
as an overseer. He gave his name as Etheridge, and
I suspect, from his manner, that he is some poor fellow
who has seen better days. Sister engaged him on the
spot, for one month, as an experiment, though she is
afraid he will not be equal to the work.
Feb. 2, Thursday. - We spent the evening at Maj.
Edwin Bacon's, rehearsing for tableaux and theatricals,
and I never enjoyed an evening more. We had
no end of fun, and a splendid supper, with ice cream
and sherbet and cake made of real white sugar. I
like the programme, too, and my part in it, though I
made some of the others mad by my flat refusal to
make myself ridiculous by taking the part of the peri
in a scene from Lalla Rookh. Imagine poor little
ugly me setting up for a pert! Wouldn't people laugh!
I must have parts with some acting; I can't run on my
looks. The entertainment is to take place at sister's,
and all the neighborhood and a number of people from
Albany will be invited. The stage will be erected in
the wide back entry, between sister's room and the
dining-room, which will serve for dressing-rooms.
After the rehearsal came a display of costumes and
a busy devising of dresses, which interested me very
much. I do love pretty clothes, and it has been my
fate to live in these hard war times, when one can
have so little.
Feb. 4, Saturday. - We met in the schoolhouse at
Mt. Enon to rehearse our parts, but everybody seemed
out of sorts and I never spent a more disagreeable two
hours. Mett wouldn't act the peri because she had
had a quarrel with her penitent, and Miss Lou Bacon
said she couldn't take the part of Esther before Ahasuerus
unless she could wear white kid gloves, because
she had burnt one of her fingers pulling candy, and a
sore finger would spoil the looks of her hand. Think
of Esther touching the golden scepter with a pair of
modern white kid gloves on! It would be as bad as
me for a peri. Mett and Miss Lou are our beauties,
and if they fail us, the whole thing falls through.
Feb. 5, Sunday. - Went to church at Mt. Enon, and
did my best to listen to Dr. Hillyer, but there were so
many troops passing along the road that I could keep
neither thoughts nor my eyes from wandering.
Jim Chiles came home to dinner with us. He always
has so much news to tell that he is as good as the
county paper, and much more reliable. I have a letter
from Lily Legriel * asking me to make her
a visit
before I go home. She is refugeeing in Macon, and
I think I will stop a few days as I pass through.
Feb. 9, Thursday. - We are in Albany - Mett, Mrs.
Meals, and I - on our way to Americus, where I am
going to consult Cousin Bolling Pope about my eyes.
They have been troubling me ever since I had measles.
We had hardly got our hats off when Jim Chiles came
panting up the steps. He had seen the carriage pass
through town and must run round at once to see if a
sudden notion had struck us to go home. After tea
came Capt. Hobbs, the Welshes, and a Mr. Green, of
Columbus, to spend the evening. Mrs. Welsh gives
a large party next Thursday night, to which we are
invited, and she also wants me to stay over and take
part in some theatricals for the benefit of the hospitals,
but I have had enough of worrying with amateur
theatricals for the present.
Feb. to, Friday. - We had to get up very early to
catch the seven o'clock train to Americus. Jim met
us at the dépot, though there were so many of our
acquaintances on board that we had no special need
of an escort. Mr. George Lawton sat by me all the
way from Smithville to Americus, and insisted on our
paying his family a visit before leaving South-West
Georgia. I wish I could go, for he lives near father's
old Tallassee plantation where I had such happy times
in my childhood; but if we were to accept all the invitations
that come to us, we would never get back
home again. We reached Americus at ten and went
straight to Cousin Bolling's hospital. He was not
there, but Dr. Howard, his assistant, told us he was
in the village and would be at the office in a few minutes.
All along the streets, as we were making our
way from the dépot to the hospital, we could recognize
his patients going about with patches and shades and
blue spectacles over their eyes, and some of them had
blue or green veils on. We didn't care to wait at the
hospital in all that crowd of men, so we started out to
visit the shops, intending to return later and meet
Cousin Bolling. We had gone only a few steps when
we saw him coming toward us. His first words were
the announcement that he was married! I couldn't
believe him at first, and thought he was joking. Then
he insisted that we should go home with him and see
our new cousin. We felt doubtful about displaying
our patched up Confederate traveling suits before a
brand new bride from beyond the blockade, with trunk
loads of new things, but curiosity got the better of us,
and so we agreed to go home with him. He is occupying
Col. Maxwell's house while the family are on the
plantation in Lee county. When we reached the
house with Cousin Bolling, Mrs. Pope - or "Cousin
Bessie," as she says we must call her now, made us
feel easy by sending for us to come to her bedroom, as
there was no fire in the parlor, and she would not
make company of us. She was a Mrs. Ayres, before
her marriage to Cousin Bolling, a young widow from
Memphis, Tenn., and very prominent in society there.
She is quite handsome, and, having just come from
beyond the lines, her beautiful dresses were a revelation
to us dowdy Confederates, and made me feel like
a plucked peacock. Her hair was arranged in three
rolls over the top of the head, on each side of the part,
in the style called "cats, rats, and mice," on account
of the different size of the rolls, the top one being the
largest. It was very stylish. I wish my hair was
long enough to dress that way, for I am getting very
tired of frizzes; they are so much trouble, and always
will come out in wet weather. We were so much interested
that we stayed at Cousin Bolling's too long and
had to run nearly all the way back to the dépot in order
to catch our train. On the cars I met the very last man
I would have expected to see in this part of the world
- my Boston friend, Mr. Adams. He said he was on
his way to take charge of a Presbyterian church in
Eufaula, Ala. He had on a broadcloth coat and a
stovepipe hat, which are so unlike anything worn by
our Confederate men that I felt uncomfortably conspicuous
while he was with me. I am almost ashamed,
nowadays, to be seen with any man not in uniform,
though Mr. Adams, being a Northern man and a minister,
could not, of course, be expected to go into the
army. I believe he is sincere in his Southern sympathies,
but his Yankee manners and lingo "sorter riles"
me, as the darkies say, in spite of reason and common
sense. He talked religion all the way to Smithville,
and parted with some pretty sentiment about the
"sunbeam I had thrown across his path." I don't
enjoy that sort of talk from men; I like dash and flash
and fire in talk, as in action.
We reached Albany at four o'clock, and after a
little visit to Mrs. Sims, started home, where we arrived
soon after dark, without any adventure except
being nearly drowned in the ford at Wright's Creek.
Feb. 11, Saturday. - Making visits all day. It takes
a long time to return calls when people live so far
apart and every mile or two we have to go out of our
way to avoid high waters. Stokes Walton's creek
runs underground for several miles, so that when the
waters are high we leave the main road and cross
where it disappears underground. There is so much
water now that the subterranean channel can't hold it
all, so it flows below and overflows above ground,
making a two-storied stream. It is very broad and
shallow at that place, and beautifully clear. It would
be a charming place for a boating excursion because
the water is not deep enough to drown anybody if they
should fall overboard - but if the bottom should drop
out of the road, as sometimes happens in this limestone
country, where in the name of heaven would
we go to?
Sister and I spent the evening at Mrs. Robert
Bacon's. The Camps, the Edwin Bacons, Capt.
Wynne, and Mrs. Westmoreland were there. We enjoyed
ourselves so much that we didn't break up till
one o'clock Sunday morning. Mrs. Westmoreland
says she gave Capt. Sailes a letter of introduction to
me, thinking I had gone back to Washington. He
and John Garnett, one of our far-off Virginia cousins,
have been transferred there.
Feb. 12, Sunday. - Spring is already breaking in
this heavenly climate, and the weather has been lovely
to-day. The yellow jessamine buds begin to show
their golden tips, forget-me-nots are peeping from
under the wire grass, and the old cherry tree by the
dairy is full of green leaves. Spring is so beautiful; I
don't wonder the spring poet breaks loose then. Our
"piney woods" don't enjoy a very poetical reputation,
but at this season they are the most beautiful place in
the world to me.
I went over to the quarter after dinner, to the
"Praise House," to hear the negroes sing, but most
of them had gone to walk on the river bank, so I did
not get a full choir. At their "praise meetings" they
go through with all sorts of motions in connection
with their songs, but they won't give way to their
wildest gesticulations or engage in their sacred dances
before white people, for fear of being laughed at.
They didn't get out of their seats while I was there,
but whenever the "sperrit" of the song moved them
very much, would pat their feet and flap their arms
and go through with a number of motions that reminded
me of the game of "Old Dame Wiggins" that
we used to play when we were children. They call
these native airs "little speritual songs," in contradistinction
to the hymns that the preachers read to them
in church, out of a book, and seem to enjoy them a
great deal more. One of them has a quick, lively
melody, which they sing to a string of words like
these:
"Mary an' Marthy, feed my lambs,
Feed my lambs, feed my lambs;
Mary an' Marthy, feed my lambs,
Settin' on de golden altar.
I weep, I moan; what mek I moan so slow?
I won'er ef a Zion traveler have gone along befo'.
Mary an' Marthy, feed my lambs," etc.
"Paul de 'postle, feed my lambs,
Feed my lambs, feed my lambs...."
and so on, through as
many Bible names as they could
think of. Another of their "sperrituals" runs on
this wise:
"I meet my soul at de bar of God,
I heerd a mighty lumber.
Hit was my sin fell down to hell
Jes' like a clap er thunder.
Mary she come runnin' by,
Tell how she weep en' wonder.
Mary washin' up Jesus' feet,
De angel walkin' up de golden street,
Run home, believer; oh, run home, believer!
Run home, believer, run home."
Another one, sung to a
kind of chant, begins this way:
"King Jesus he tell you
Fur to fetch 'im a hoss en' a mule;
He tek up Mary behine 'im,
King Jesus he went marchin' befo'.
CHORUS. -
Christ was born on Chris'mus day;
Mary was in pain.
Christ was born on Chris'mus day,
King Jesus was his name."
The chorus to another of
their songs is:
"I knowed it was a angel,
I knowed it by de groanin'."
I mean to make a
collection of these songs some
day and keep them as a curiosity. The words are
mostly endless repetitions, with a wild jumble of misfit
Scriptural allusions, but the tunes are inspiring.
They are mostly a sort of weird chant that makes
me feel all out of myself when I hear it way in the
night, too far off to catch the words. I wish I was
musician enough to write down the melodies; they
are worth preserving.
Feb. 13,
Monday. - Letters from home. Our house
is full of company, as it always is, only more so. All
the Morgans are there, and Mary Day, and the Gairdners
from Augusta, besides a host of what one might
call transients, if father was keeping a hotel - friends,
acquaintances, and strangers whom the tide of war
has stranded in little Washington. Mrs. Gairdner's
husband was an officer in the English army at Waterloo,
and a schoolmate of Lord Byron, and her sons
are brave Confederates - which is better than anything
else. Mary Day had typhoid fever in Augusta.
She is too weak to make the journey from Mayfield
to Macon, and all non-combatants have been ordered
to leave Augusta, so mother invited her to Haywood.
Oh, that dear old home! I know it is sweeter than
ever now, with all those delightful people gathered
there. One good thing the war has done among
many evils; it has brought us into contact with so
many pleasant people we should never have known
otherwise. I know it must be charming to have all
those nice army officers around, and I do want to go
back, but it is so nice here, too, that we have decided
to stay a little longer. Father says that this is the
best place for us now that Kilpatrick's raiders are out
of the way. I wish I could be in both places at once.
They write us that little Washington has gotten to be
the great thoroughfare of the Confederacy now, since
Sherman has cut the South Carolina R.R. and the only
line of communication between Virginia and this part
of the country, from which the army draws its supplies,
is through there and Abbeville. This was the
old stage route before there were any railroads, and
our first "rebel" president traveled over it in returning
from his Southern tour nearly three-quarters of a
century ago, when he spent a night with Col. Alison
in Washington. It was a different thing being a
rebel in those days and now. I wonder the Yankees
don't remember they were rebels once, themselves.
Mrs. Meals asked me to go with her in the afternoon
to visit some of the cracker people in our neighborhood
and try to collect their children into a Sunday
school which the dear, pious little soul proposes to
open at Pine Bluff after the manner of Hannah More.
At one place, where the parents were away from home,
the children ran away from us in a fright, and hid
behind their cabin. I went after them, and capturing
one little boy, soon made friends with him, and got
him to bring the others to me. I was surprised to
find the wife of our nearest cracker neighbor, who
lives just beyond the lime sink, in a cabin that Brother
Troup wouldn't put one of his negroes into, a remarkably
handsome woman, in spite of the dirt and ignorance
in which she lives. Her features are as regular
and delicate as those of a Grecian statue, and her hair
of a rich old mahogany color that I suppose an artist
would call Titian red. It was so abundant that she could
hardly keep it tucked up on her head. She was dirty
and unkempt, and her clothing hardly met the requirements
of decency, but all that could not conceal her
uncommon beauty. I would give half I am worth for
her flashing black eyes. We found that her oldest
child is thirteen years old, and has never been inside
a church, though Mt. Enon is only three miles away.
I can't understand what makes these people live so.
The father owns 600 acres of good pine land, and if
there was anything in him, ought to make a good
living for his family.
After supper we amused ourselves getting up valentines.
Everybody in the neighborhood has agreed to
send one to Jim Chiles, so he will get a cartload of
them. I made up seven stanzas of absurd trash to
Capt. Hobbs, every one ending with a rhyme on his
name, the last being:
"Oh, how my heart bobs
At the very name of Richard Hobbs."
Feb. 16,
Thursday. - We started for Albany for
Mrs. Welsh's party, soon after breakfast, but were a
good deal delayed on the way by having to wait for
a train of forty government wagons to pass. We
found Mrs. Julia Butler at Mrs. Sims's, straight from
Washington, with letters for us, and plenty of news.
I feel anxious to get back now, since Washington is
going to be such a center of interest. If the Yanks
take Augusta, it will become the headquarters of the
department. Mrs. Butler says a train of 300 wagons
runs between there and Abbeville, and they are surveying
a railroad route. Several regiments are stationed
there and the town is alive with army officers
and government officials. How strange all this seems
for dear, quiet little Washington! It must be delightful
there, with all those nice army officers. I am
going back home as soon as I can decently change my
mind. I have been at the rear all during the war,
and now that I have a chance, I want to go to the
front. I wish I could be here and there, too, at the
same time.
We were fairly besieged with visitors till time to
dress for the party. Miss Pyncheon dined with us,
and Gardiner Montgomery is staying in the house, and
I can't tell how many other people dropped in. It
was all perfectly delightful. Capt. Hobbs and Dr.
Pyncheon offered themselves as escorts, but we had
already made engagements with Albert Bacon and
Jim Chiles. We gave Miss Pyncheon and Dr. Sloane
seats in our carriage, and we six cliqued together a
good deal during the evening, and had a fine time of it.
I never did enjoy a party more and never had less to
say about one. I had not a single adventure during
the entire evening. Metta was the belle, par excellence,
but Miss Pyncheon and I were not very far behind,
and I think I was ahead of them all in my dress.
Miss Pyncheon wore a white puffed tarleton, with
pearls and white flowers. The dress, though beautiful,
was not becoming because the one fault of her
fine, aristocratic face is want of color. A little rouge
and sepia would improve her greatly, if a nice girl
could make up her mind to use them. Mett wore
white suisse with festoon flounces, over my old blue
Florence silk skirt, the flounces, like charity, covering
a multitude of faults. She was a long way the prettiest
one in the room, though her hair is too short to be
done up stylishly. But my dress was a masterpiece
[sic!] though patched up, like everybody else's, out
of old finery that would have been cast off years ago,
but for the blockade. I wore a white barred organdy
with a black lace flounce round the bottom that completely
hid the rents made at dances in Montgomery
last winter, and a wide black lace bow and ends in
the back, to match the flounce. Handsome lace will
make almost anything look respectable, and I thank
my stars there was a good deal of it in the family
before the Yankees shut us off by their horrid blockade.
My waist was of light puffed blonde, very fluffy,
made out of the skirt I wore at Henry's wedding, and
trimmed round the neck and sleeves with ruchings
edged with narrow black lace. My hair was frizzed
in front, with a cluster of white hyacinths surmounting
the top row of curls, and a beautifully embroidered
butterfly Aunt Sallie had made for me half-hidden
among them, as if seeking its way to the flowers. My
train was very long, but I pinned it up like a tunic,
over a billowy flounced muslin petticoat, while dancing.
My toilet was very much admired, and I had a
great many compliments about it and everybody turned
to look at it as I passed, which put me in good spirits.
We danced eighteen sets, and I was on the floor every
time, besides all the round dances, and between times
there were always three or four around talking to me.
Mett says it counts a great deal more to have one
very devoted at a time, but that keeps the others away,
and I think it is much nicer to have a crowd around
you all the time. One man grows tiresome unless you
expect to marry him, and I am never going to marry
anybody. Marriage is incompatible with the career I
have marked out for myself, but I want to have all
the fun I can before I am too old.... Among others
I met my old acquaintance, Mr. Draper, who was one
of the attendants at Henry's wedding. He says I
have changed a great deal, and look just like Mett did
then. I suppose I may take this as a double-barreled
compliment, as Metta is the beauty of the family and
she was then only fifteen, while I am now twenty-four!
Oh, how time does fly, and how fast we grow old!
But there is one comfort when a woman doesn't depend
upon looks; she lasts longer.
Capt. Hobbs has got his valentine, and everybody
is laughing about it. They were all so sure it came
from me that Dr. Conolly and the captain put their
heads together and wrote a reply that they were going
to send me, but I threw them off the track so completely,
that they are now convinced that it came from
Merrill Callaway. Even Albert Bacon is fooled, and
it is he that told me all Capt. Hobbs and the others
said about it, and of their having suspected me. I
pretended a great deal of curiosity and asked what
sort of poetry it was. Mr. Bacon then repeated some
of my own ridiculous rhymes to me. "It is a capital
thing," he said, shaking with laughter, "only a little
hard on Hobbs."
"It is just like Merrill," said I; "but I am sorry
the captain found out I didn't send it before mailing
his reply." I am going to tell them better in a few
days and let them see how royally they have been
fooled.
Pyncheon out to Pine Bluff with us, but Mrs. Butler
had the only vacant seat in the carriage. I felt stupid
and sleepy all day, for it was after four o'clock in the
morning when I got home from the party and went
to bed. I took a walk with the children after dinner,
to the lime sink back of the newground. The sink is
half full of water from an overflowed cypress pond
just this side of Mt. Enon. The water runs in a clear
stream down a little declivity - something very uncommon
in this flat country - in finding its way to the
sink, and makes a lovely little waterfall. There is a subterranean
outlet from the sink, for it never overflows
except in times of unusually heavy rain. It makes a
diminutive lake, which is full of small fish, and the
banks are bordered with willow oaks and tall shrubs
aglow with yellow jessamine. An old man was
seated on the bank fishing, as we approached, making
a very pretty picture.
Feb. 21, Tuesday. - A letter from Mecca Joyner,
saying she is coming to make me ha visit, and I must
meet her in Albany on Wednesday. Just as I had
finished reading it a buggy drove up with Flora Maxwell
and Capt. Rust, from Gopher Hill. Flora has a
great reputation for beauty, but I think her even more
fascinating and elegant than beautiful. Capt. Rust is
an exile from Delaware, and a very nice old gentleman,
whom the Maxwells think a great deal of. He
was banished for helping Southern prisoners to escape
across the lines. He tells me that he sometimes had
as many as fourteen rebels concealed in his house at
one time.
Albert Bacon called after tea and told us all about
the Hobbs poetry, and teased me a good deal at first
by pretending that Capt. Hobbs was very angry. He
says everybody is talking about it and asking for
copies. I had no idea of making such a stir by my
little joke. Metta and I were invited to spend this
week at Stokes Walton's, but company at home prevented.
We are going to have a picnic at the Henry
Bacons' lake on Thursday, and the week after we
expect to begin our journey home in good earnest.
Sister is going to visit Brother Troup in Macon at
the same time, and a large party from Albany will
go that far with us. I have so much company and
so much running about to do that I can't find time for
anything else. I have scribbled this off while waiting
for breakfast.
Feb. 22, Wednesday. - I went to Albany and
brought Mecca Joyner and Jim Chiles home with me.
I took dinner with Mrs. Sims and met several friends,
whom I invited to our picnic. Sister had a large company
to spend the evening, and they stayed so late
that I grew very sleepy. I am all upset, anyway, for
letters from home have come advising us to stay here
for the present, where there is plenty to eat, and less
danger from Yankees now, than almost anywhere
else. It must be perversity, for when I thought I had
to go home I wanted to stay here, and now that father
wants me to stay, I am wild to go. I have written
him that he had better order me back home, for then
I would not care so much about going. Now that
the Yanks have passed by Augusta and are making
their way to Columbia and Charleston, I hope they
will give Georgia a rest.
Feb. 23, Thursday. - The picnic was stupid. It
must be that I am getting tired of seeing the same
faces so often. Albert Bacon and Jim Chiles came
home with us, and we enjoyed the evening. Capt.
Rust is a dear old fellow, and Miss Connor and Maj.
Camp added a little variety. Capt. Rust and Mr.
Bacon proposed a ride across country for the morning,
but there is not a riding habit in the family, nor a
piece of cloth big enough to make one. I ruined mine
in those fox hunts at Chunnenuggee Ridge last fall.
Flora is a famous horsewoman, and I know she must
be a good rider, for her every movement is grace
itself. She is one of those people that gains upon you
on acquaintance. She is so out of the commonplace.
There is something stately and a little cold about her
that reminds me of a beautiful lily, and yet there
is a fascination about her that attracts everybody.
All the men that come near her go wild over
her, and I don't wonder. If I could write a novel, I
would make her the heroine. She seems to stand on
a higher plane than we common mortals, without intending
or knowing it. Her simplicity and straightforwardness
are her greatest charm.
Feb. 26, Sunday. - Flora and the captain have returned
to Gopher Hill, whither Metta, Mecca, and I
are invited to follow on Friday, when sister goes up
to Macon. Jimmy Callaway and his father have just
come from Washington with such glowing accounts
of the excitement and gayety there that I am distracted
to go back home. If father don't write for
us to come soon, I think we will go to Chunnenuggee
by way of Eufaula and the Chattahoochee, and if
Thomas's raiders catch us over in Alabama, father
will wish he had let us come home.
After dinner I took Mecca over to the Praise House
to hear the negroes sing. I wish I was an artist so
that I could draw a picture of the scene. Alfred, one
of the chief singers, is a gigantic creature, more like
an ape than a man. I have seen pictures of African
savages in books of travel that were just like him. His
hands and feet are so huge that it looks as if their
weight would crush the heads of the little piccaninnies
when he pats them; yet, with all this strength, they
say he is a great coward, and one of the most docile
negroes on the plantation. The women, when they
get excited with the singing, shut their eyes and rock
themselves back and forth, clapping their hands, and
in the intervals, when not moved by the "sperrit,"
occupy themselves hunting for lice in their children's
heads. Old Bob and Jim are the preachers, and very
good old darkies they are, in spite of their religion.
But the chief personages on the plantation are old
Granny Mimey, old Uncle Wally, and Uncle Setley,
who are all superannuated and privileged characters.
I tell sister that Uncle Wally has nothing to do, and
Uncle Setley to help him. The latter is very deaf,
and half crazy, but harmless. I am a special favorite
of Uncle Wally's. We have a chat every morning
when he passes through the back yard on his way to
the cowpen. The other day he said to me: "You is
de putties lady ever I seed; you looks jes' lack one er
dese heer alablastered dolls."
We walked to the bluff on the river bank, after
leaving the quarter, and sat there a long time talking.
Spring is here in earnest. The yellow jessamines are
bursting into bloom, and the air is fragrant with the
wild crab apples.
March 1, Wednesday. - The weather has been so
bad that we are thrown upon our own resources for
amusement. Metta and Mecca play cards and backgammon
most of the time, and Albert Bacon comes
almost every day on some pretense or other. One
very dark night when he was here, we told ghost
stories till we frightened ourselves half to death, and
had to beg him to stay all night to keep the bogies off.
Mett and I take long tramps in the afternoons through
mist and mud, but Mec does not like to walk. The
lime sink is particularly attractive just now. The
little stream that feeds it is swollen by the rains, and
dashes along with a great noise. It is so full of little
fish that one can catch them in the hand, and the swans
go there to feed on them. The whole wood is fragrant
with yellow jessamines and carpeted with
flowers.
Another letter from home that makes me more
eager than ever to return. Gen. Elzey and staff are
at our house, and the town is full of people that I
want to see.
March 2, Thursday. - We left Pine Bluff at eleven
o'clock and reached the Blue Spring in time for lunch.
Albert Bacon and Jimmy Chiles were there to meet us.
Hang a petticoat on a bean pole and carry it where
you will, Jimmy will follow. The river is so high
that its muddy waters have backed up into the spring
and destroyed its beauty, but we enjoyed the glorious
flowers that bloom around it, and saw some brilliant
birds of a kind that were new to me. Mr. Bacon said
he would kill one and give me to trim my hat.
March 3, Friday. Gopher Hill. - Up at daybreak,
and on the train, ready to leave Albany. Albert and
Jimmy were there, of course, besides a number of
Albany people who had come to see us off - a great
compliment at that heathenish hour. We got off at
Wooten's Station, only twelve miles from Albany.
Flora and Capt. Rust were there to meet us with
conveyances for Gopher Hill. It is worth the journey
from Pine Bluff to Gopher Hill just to travel over
the road between there and Wooten's. It runs nearly
all the way through swamps alive with the beauty
and fragrance of spring. We passed through Starkesville
and crossed Muckolee Creek at the very spot
where I had such an adventurous night in my childhood,
traveling in the old stage coach that used to run
between Macon and Albany. The swamps were overflowed
then and we had to cross the creek in a canoe,
and Cousin Bolling held me in his lap to keep me from
falling out. On the other side of the creek, towards
Gopher Hill, we came to an old Indian clearing where
are some magnificent willow oaks that I recognized
distinctly, though it is fourteen years since then.
Gopher Hill is seven miles from the station. It is
like most plantation houses in this part of the world,
where they are used only for camping a few weeks in
winter - or were, before the war - a big, one-storied
log cabin, or rather, a combination of cabins spread
out over a full half acre of ground, and even then
with hardly room enough to accommodate the army
of guests the family gather about them when they
go to the country. On each side of the avenue leading
to the house is a small lake, and about two miles back
in the plantation, a large one on which Flora has a
row-boat. She has a beautiful pony named Fleet, that
is the counterpart of our own dear little Dixie. Col.
Maxwell has a great many fine horses and all sorts of
conveyances, which are at the service of his guests.
He is one of the most aristocratic-looking old gentlemen
I ever saw. In manners, appearance, and disposition,
he is strikingly like Brother Troup, except that
the colonel is very large and commanding, while
Brother Troup is small and dapper. He is very handsome
- next to Bishop Elliot, one of the finest specimens
of Southern manhood I ever saw. It is one of
the cases where blood will tell, for he has the best of
Georgia in his veins, or to go back further, the best
in old Scotland itself. Though over sixty years old,
he has never been out of the State, and is as full of
whims and prejudices as the traditional old country
squire that we read about in English novels. His
present wife, Flora's stepmother, is much younger
than he, very gay and witty, and escapes all worry
by taking a humorous view of him and his crotchets.
He and Flora idolize each other, and she is the only
person that can do anything with him, and not always
even she, when he once gets his head fast set.
We had dinner at two o'clock, and afterwards went
to a country school about two miles away, to hear
the boys and girls declaim. The schoolmaster made
so many facetious remarks about the ladies, that I
asked Flora if he was a widower - he seemed too silly
to be anything else - but she says he has a wife living;
poor thing. We met Gen. Graves * at the
schoolhouse
and he rode back with us. We took to the
woods and jumped our horses over every log we came
to, just to see what he would do.
March 4,
Saturday. - ... I had just finished writing
some letters when Gen. Graves and Mr. Baldwin **
were announced and I went to the parlor. The general
is consumedly in love with Flora, and Mr. Baldwin
equally so with his bottle, but is nice-looking, and
when not too far gone, quite agreeable. It is amusing
to see good old Capt. Rust watching over him and
trying to keep temptation out of his way. He stole
the bottle out of his bedroom the first chance he could
find, but not until the poor fellow had got more of it
than was good for him. The weather cleared up
after dinner and we went to Coney Lake, where the
boat is - Flora and I on horseback, the rest in buggies
and carriages. It is a beautiful place. Great avenues
of cypress extend into the shallow waters near the
shore, where we could float about in shady canals and
gather the curious wild plants that grow there. Huge
water lilies with stems like ropes and leaves as big as
palm-leaf fans, float about in shady canals and
great lotus plants, with their curious funnel-shaped
pods and umbrella-like leaves, line the shores and
shallows. The lake is so deep in the center that it
has never been fathomed, being connected, probably,
with a lime sink or an underground stream; but its
waters are clear as crystal, and where they are shallow
enough to show the bottom, all kinds of curious
aquatic plants can be seen growing there in the wildest
luxuriance. I took my first row with Mr. Baldwin,
and wished myself back on shore before we had made
twenty strokes. He was just far enough gone to be
reckless, and frightened me nearly out of my wits by
rocking the boat till the gunwales dipped in the
water, and then tried to pacify me with maudlin talk
about swimming ashore with me if it should capsize.
I picked up a paddle and tried to row the boat myself,
and then he got interested in teaching me, and finally
we came safe to land. I went out again with Capt.
Rust, and enjoyed the last trip more than any. We
were followed by an alligator, and Capt. Rust gathered
for me some of the curious plants that were floating
on the water. It was late when we started back to
the house, and the ride was glorious. Flora and I
amused ourselves by going through the woods and
making our horses jump the highest logs we could
find. Fleet was so full of spirit that I could hardly
hold him in.
March 5, Sunday. - One of the loveliest days I ever
saw. We went to a little Methodist church in Starkesville,
for the pleasure of the drive.
After dinner we walked to the Bubbling Spring,
and killed a big snake on the way. The spring is
down in a gully, and is simply the mouth of a small
underground stream that comes to the surface there.
It throws up a kind of black sand that rises on the
water like smoke from the stack of a steam engine.
The water under ground makes strange sounds, like
voices wailing and groaning. Just below the spring
is a little natural bridge, the most romantic spot I
have seen in the neighborhood. The rocks that
border the stream are covered with ferns and brilliant
green mosses and liverworts. Palmettoes and bright
flowering plants grow in the crevices, and the whole
place is shaded by magnolias, willow oaks and myrtles,
bound together by gigantic smilax and jessamine vines.
At several places there are openings in the ground
through which one can peep and see rapid water flowing
under our feet. This whole country is riddled
with underground streams. At Palmyra, not far
from Albany, there is a mill turned by one. The
stream was discovered by a man digging a well, to
which an accident happened not uncommon in this
country - the bottom dropped out. A calf that fell
into the well and was supposed to be drowned, turned
up a few days after, sound and safe. His tracks led
to an opening through which issued water covered
with foam. A great roaring was heard, which
further exploration showed to come from a fine subterranean
waterfall.
March 6, Monday. - After breakfast, we all piled
into a big plantation wagon and went to see Prairie
Pond, a great sheet of water covering over 200 acres.
It has formed there since Col. Maxwell bought the
Gopher Hill plantation. He says that when he first
came here there was not a patch of standing water
as big as his hand on all the acres now covered by
Prairie Pond, and the great skeletons of dead forest
trees still standing in the outer edges of the lake show
that the encroachment of the water is still going on.
Some years after he came to Gopher Hill, he says, a
blue spring on the other side of the plantation, that
formed the outlet of an underground stream, became
choked up from some cause, so the waters had no
escape, and Prairie Pond began to form and has been
slowly increasing ever since. Near the lake we came
to two remarkable lime sinks. They are both very
deep, and as round as drinking cups. One of them is
covered with a green scum about an inch thick, composed
of scaly plants, like lichens. Underneath this
scum the water is clear as crystal. The stones all
around are full of fossil shells, and we found some
beautiful crystallized limestone that sparkled like
diamonds.
We had to leave our wagon several hundred yards
from the border of the pond and make our explorations
on foot, for want of a wagon road. In returning
we took the wrong direction and went a mile or
two out of our way, getting very wet feet, and I tore
my dress so that I looked like a ragamuffin into the
bargain. When at last we reached home, the servants
told us that Mr. and Mrs. Warren, with Gen. Graves,
Mr. Baldwin, and Clint Spenser and Joe Godfrey
from Albany, had come over to dinner, and not finding
anybody at home, had set out in search of us. We
girls scurried to our rooms and had just made ourselves
respectable when Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Spenser,
having tired of their wild-goose chase, came back to
the house. Mecca and I got into the double buggy
with them and started out to hunt up the rest of the
party. After dinner, we went to Coney Lake again.
I went in the buggy with Joe Godfrey. He and Mr.
Baldwin each invited me to take a row. I didn't go
with Mr. Baldwin.
March 8, Wednesday. - I went up to Americus yesterday,
with Flora and Capt. Rust, to see Cousin
Bolling about my eyes, expecting to return to Gopher
Hill on the afternoon train, but Cousin Bessie insisted
that we should stay to dinner, and her
attempt to have it served early was so unsuccessful
that Capt. Rust and I got to the station just in time
to see the train moving off without us. Flora had
another engagement, that caused her to decline Mrs.
Pope's invitation, so she made the train, but the captain
and I had nothing for it but to spend the night
in Americus and kill the night as best we could. I
was repaid for the annoyance of getting left by the
favorable report Cousin Bolling gave of my eyes. He
says it is nothing but the effects of measles that ails
them, and they are almost well. I occupied Flora's
room that night. Cousin Bessie lent me one of her
fine embroidered linen nightgowns, and I was so overpowered
at having on a decent piece of underclothing
after the coarse Macon Mills homespun I have
been wearing for the last two years, that I could
hardly go to sleep. I stood before the glass and
looked at myself after I was undressed just to see
how nice it was to have on a respectable undergarment
once more. I can stand patched-up dresses, and even