21 September 1861

"Poor Cousin Betsey Witherspoon* was murdered! She did not die peacefully, as we supposed, in her bed. Murdered by her own people. Her negroes.
I remember when Dr Keitt was murdered by his negroes. Mr Miles met me and told the dreadful story.
'Very awkward, this sort of thing. There goes Keitt, in the house always declaiming about the "beneficent institution." How now?'
Horrible beyond words.
Her household negroes were so insolent, so pampered and insubordinate, that she lived alone and at home. She knew, she said, that none of her children would have the patience she had with these people who had been indulged and spoiled by her until they were like spoiled children. Simply intolerable.
Mr Chesnut and David Williams have gone over at once." ...

24 September 1861

"Hitherto I have never thought of being afraid of negroes. I had never injured any of them. Why should they want to hurt me? Two-thirds of my religion consists in trying to be good to negroes because they are so in my power, and it would be so easy to be the other thing. Somehow today I feel that the ground is cut away from under my feet. Why should they treat me any better than they have done Cousin Betsey Witherspoon?"

*Elizabeth Boykin "Betsey" Witherspoon was the widow of John Dick Witherspoon, a wealthy planter, lawyer, and state legislator of Darlington District, South Carolina. She was a first cousin of Mary Boykin Chesnut's mother, as well as mother-in-law of a niece of M.B.C.'s husband James Chesnut, Jr.

19 September 1861, 'Mulberry,' South Carolina

"The high and disinterested conduct our enemies seem to expect of us is involuntary and unconscious praise.
They pay us the compliment to look for from us—a degree of virtue they were never able to practice themselves. A word of our crowning misdemeanor, holding in slavery still those Africans they brought here from Africa or sold to us when they found they did not pay. They gradually slided (or slid?) them off down here. Freed them prospectively, giving themselves years to get rid of them in a remunerative way. We want to spread them, too—west and south—or northwest, where the climate would free them or kill them, improve them out of the world as they do Indians. If they had been forced to keep them in New England, I daresay they would have shared the Indians' fate. For they are wise in their generation, these Yankee children of light. Those pernicious Africans!
Result of the conversation between Mr C and Uncle John—both ci-devant Union men. Now utterly for states rights."

August 1861, in transit

"Coming home, the following conversation....
'Suppose the women and children secede?'
'Knit your stocking. We have had enough for today.'
Aside: 'She was trying to imitate Thackeray.'
'But you know, our women all speak in that low, plaintive way because they are always excusing themselves for something they never did.'
'And the Yankee women are loud and shrill because they fight it out—fair field and no favor—and when incompatibility comes in, they go out for divorce. And they talk as if money only bought black women in slave countries. Women are bought and sold everywhere.'"

29 August 1861, women as suspects

"Our party of matrons had their shot at those saints and martyrs and patriots, the imprisoned Greenhow and Phillips.
Those poor souls are guarded night and day. It is a hideous tale, what they tell of their suffering.
Mrs Lee punned upon the odd expression 'Ladies of their age being confined.'
These old Washington habitués say Mrs Greenhow had herself confined and persecuted, that we might trust her the more. She sees we distrust her after all. The Manassas men swear she was our good angel.
And the Washington women say: up to the highest bidder, always. And they have the money on us.
Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. False hair is taken off and searched for papers. Pistols are sought for [under] 'cotillions renversés.' Bustles are 'suspect.' All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn. So they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs but arms are looked for under hoops. And sad to say, found. Then women are used as detectives and searchers to see that no men come over in petticoats.
So the poor creatures coming this way are humiliated to the deepest degree. I think these times make all women feel their humiliation in the affairs of the world. . . . Women can only stay at home, and every paper reminds us that women are to be violated, ravished, and all manner of humiliation.
To men—glory, honor, praise, and power—if they are patriots.
To women—daughters of Eve—punishment comes still in some shape, do what they will."

27 August 1861, Rose O'Neal Greenhow

"A jury of matrons, so to speak, sat here on Mrs Greenhow.* They say Mrs Phillips and Mrs Gwin have been arrested also.

Rose O'Neal Greenhow
(c. 1815-1864), pictured with her daughter

No doubt Mrs Greenhow furnished Beauregard with the latest news of the Federal movements—and so made the Manassas fiasco a possibility. She sent us the enemy's plans. Everything she said proved true, numbers, route, &c&c."

*Rose O'Neal Greenhow led the Washington spy ring that passed Union secrets to the Confederates before Bull Run. On 23 August 1861, Pinkerton agents searched Mrs Greenhow's Washington home, placed her under house arrest, and detained several of her associates, including Eugenia Levy Phillips. The news of Mary Bell Gwin's arrest was false.

23 August 1861, Richmond

"Have been with Mrs Randolph to all the hospitals.
I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all. Thinking—yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gillands was the worst. Long rows of ill men on cots. Ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment—dinner tables, eating, drinking, wounds being dressed—all horrors, to be taken in at one glance. That long tobacco house!...
Then we went to the St Charles. Horrors upon horrors again—want of organization. Long rows of them dead, dying. Awful smell, awful sights.
A boy from home had sent for me. He was lying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions while we stood there.
I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad. I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into the carriage at the door at the hospital.
Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. First of all we had given our provisions to our Carolinians at Miss Sally Tompkins's. There they were, nice and clean and merry as grigs.
As we drove home, we brought the doctor with us, I was so upset.
He said: 'Look at that Georgia regiment marching there. Look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them—making an estimate. There is $16,000—sixteen thousand dollars worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases.'
We saw among the wounded at the Federal hospital a negro soldier. He was with the others, on equal terms—and a sister was nursing him."

August 1861, the toll of disease

"General Walker (Shot-Pouch) fears [Union General George B.] McClellan will take advantage of our army being prostrated by disease to attack us. One good of Bull Run: it has made them make haste cautiously.
In [General William H. C.] Whiting's command 400 out of 1700 are unfit for service."

August 1861, the subject of slavery

"A General Wool* says, 'This war is an attempt to extend the area of slavery.'
Can that be, when not one-third of our volunteer army are slave-owners—and not one-third of that third who does not dislike slavery as much as Mrs Stowe or Greeley?** And few have found their hatred or love of it as remunerative an investment."

*War of 1812 veteran U.S. Brigadier General John Ellis Wool, quoted from a speech in New York, 15 August 1861.
**Harriet Beecher Stowe was author of the 1852 bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, Horace Greeley editor of the New York Tribune. 

18 August 1861, the subject of desertion

"Two Yankee officers who fought or figured at Manassas have since deserted and come over to us.
I can understand how deserters should be detestable, come they from East or West, North or South.
They, the deserters, are going into our army. General Walker* said, 'If I had a brother killed at Manassas, I could shoot down these two man at sight.'
Mr [Robert Woodward] Barnwell gave that little twittering, nervous laugh of his.
'And then you'd be hanged.'
'Never. Twenty thousand Georgians are here. They would create a counter-revolution before they would permit a hair of my head to be touched.'
Mr Barnwell repeated his offensive little laugh.
'Then you would be hanged. You ought to be hanged if you commit murder.'

This he fired off at regular intervals, and Shot-Pouch Walker literally raved.
'No, no. My Georgians would know the reason why, &c&c.'
Mr Barnwell grew very quiet but continued his fatuous smile and to the last stuck to his original proposition.
'You'd be hanged.'
This made me wretched. Mr Barnwell was right, but why would he say it anymore?
I was so uncomfortable—as soon as silence prevailed, I left the table. I made a good deal of commotion in leaving the table, on purpose—dropped things to be picked up: fan, handkerchief—all to divert them from their madness or folly. And a man is always in such a faze about his dignity—what is due his own self-respect, &c&c&c, and so contemptuous of feminine folly!"

*Brigadier General William Henry Talbot Walker of Georgia received extensive gunshot wounds in both the Seminole and Mexican wars. Each time, doctors held out no hope of recovery. He was subsequently given the nickname "Shot-Pouch."

August 1861, George Mason on slavery

"General and Mrs Cooper came to see us. She is Mrs Smith Lee's sister, Senator Mason's sister.
'Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother'—&c. They were talking of old George Mason, in Virginia a name to conjure with.
George Mason violently opposed the extension of slavery. He was a thorough aristocrat and gave as his reason for refusing the blessing of slaves to the new states—southwest and northwest—that vulgar new people were unworthy of so sacred a right as that of holding slaves. It was not an institution intended for such people as they were.
Mrs Lee said, 'After all—what good does it do my sons? They are Light Horse Harry Lee's grandsons—and George Mason's. I do not see that it helps them at all.'
When Mrs Lee and the Coopers had gone, what a rolling of eyes and uplifting of hands...."

August 1861, Sally Louisa Tompkins

"Went to Miss Sally Tompkins's hospital.* There I was rebuked. I deserved it.
Me: 'Are there any Carolinians here?'
Miss T: 'I never ask where the sick and wounded come from.'"

Sally Louisa Tompkins
(1833-1916)

*After the Battle of First Bull Run, Sally Louisa Tompkins outfitted an old Richmond house as a hospital at her own expense. When the government took over private hospitals, she was allowed to maintain hers. Jefferson Davis commissioned her a captain, making Tompkins the only woman known to hold military rank in the Confederacy.

5 August 1861, Richmond

"Dr Gibbes is a bird of evil omen. Today he tells me eight of our men have died at the Charlottesville hospital. It seems sickness is more redoubtable in an army than the enemy's guns. There are 1100 there hors de combat, and virulent typhoid fever along with them. They want money, clothes, nurses.
So I am writing—right and left the letters fly, calling for help from the sister societies at home. The good and patriotic women at home are easily stirred to this work."

July 1861

"The [New York Daily] Tribune soothes the Yankee self-conceit, which has received a shock—the national vanity, you know—by saying we had 100,000 men on the field at Manassas. We had about 15,000 effective men in all.
And then the Tribune tries to inflame and envenom them against us by telling lies as to our treatment of prisoners.
They say when they come against us next, it will be in overwhelming force."

July 1861, the treatment of prisoners

"The Northern papers say we hung and quartered a Zouave—cut him in 4 pieces—and that we tie prisoners to a tree and bayonet them. In other words, we are savages. It ought to teach us not to credit what our papers say of them. It is so absurd an imagination of evil.
We are absolutely treating their prisoners as well as our own men. It is complained of here. I am going to the hospitals here for the enemy's sick and wounded to see for myself."

July 1861, Robert E. Lee

"This is how I saw Robert E. Lee for the first time. I had heard of him, strange to say, in this wise. Though his family, who then lived at Arlington, called to see me in Washington (I thought because of Mrs Chesnut's intimacy with Nelly Custis in the old Philadelphia days—and Mrs Lee was Nelly Custis's niece), I had not known the head of the Lee family. He was somewhere with the army then.
Last summer at the White Sulphur, Roony Lee* and his wife, that sweet little Charlotte Wickham, was there, and I spoke of Roony with great praise.
Mrs Izard said: 'Don't waste your admiration on him. Wait will you see his father. He is the nearest to a perfect man I ever saw.' 'How?' 'Every way—handsome, clever, agreeable, highbred, &c&c&c.'
Mrs Stanard came for Mrs Preston and me, to drive to the camp. She was in an open carriage. A man riding a beautiful horse joined us. He wore a hat with somehow a military look to it. He sat his horse gracefully, and he was so distinguished at all points that I very much regretted not catching the name as Mrs Stanard gave it to us. He, however, heard ours and bowed as gracefully as he rode, and the few remarks he made to each of us showed he knew all about us.

Robert Edward Lee
(1807-1870)

... To all this light chat did we seriously incline because the man and horse and everything about him was so fine looking. Perfection—no fault to be found if you hunted for one. As he left us, I said, 'Who is it?' eagerly.
'You did not know? Why, it is Robert E. Lee, son of Light Horse Harry Lee, the first man in Virginia'—raising her voice as she enumerated his glories."

*William Henry Fitzhugh "Roony" Lee was the second son of Robert E. Lee.

24 July 1861, Richmond

"Here Mr Chesnut opened my door—and walked in. Of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. I had to ask no questions. He gave me an account of the battle as he saw it.... Told what regiments he was sent to bring up. 

Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
(1824-1863)

He took orders to Colonel Jackson—whose regiment stood so stock-still under fire they were called a stone wall.* Also, they called Beauregard 'Engine' and Johnston 'Marlboro' (s'en va—en guerre.) Mr C rode with Lay's cavalry after the retreating enemy, in the pursuit, they following them until midnight. There then came such a rain—rain such as only known in semitropical lands."

*For this stand, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, a former West Pointer and instructor at Virginia Military Institute, received a promotion to brigadier general as well as his enduring nickname: "Stonewall."

22 July 1861, First Bull Run

"Mrs Davis came in so softly that I did not know she was here until she leaned over me and said–
'A great battle has been fought–Jeff Davis lead the center,* Joe Johnston the right wing, Beauregard the left wing of the army. Your husband is all right. Wade Hampton is wounded. Colonel Johnson of the Legion is killed–so are Colonel Bee and Colonel Bartow. Kirby Smith is wounded or killed.'
I had no heart to speak. She went on in that desperate calm way to which people betake themselves when under greatest excitement. 'Bartow was rallying his men, leading them into the hottest of the fight–died gallantly, at the head of his regiment.

The Battle of First Bull Run,
fought near Manassas, Virginia, 21 July 1861,
the first major battle of the American Civil War

'The president telegraphs me only that "it is a great victory." General Cooper has all the other telegrams.' Still I said nothing. I was stunned. Then I was so grateful those nearest and dearest to me were safe still.
Then she began in the same concentrated voice to read from a paper she held in her hand.
'Dead and dying cover the field. Sherman's battery taken, Lynchburg regiment cut to pieces. Three hundred of the Legion wounded.'
They got me up. Times were too wild with excitement to stay in bed."

*On 24 July 1861 Mary Chesnut noted, regarding First Bull Run:
"The president took all the credit to himself for the victory—said the wounded roused and shouted for Jeff Davis and the men rallied at the sight of him and rushed on and routed the enemy. The truth is, Jeff Davis was not two miles from the battlefield, but he is greedy for military fame."

16 July 1861, Richmond

"As far as I can make out, Beauregard sent Mr Chestnut to the president to gain permission for the forces of Johnston and Beauregard to join and, united, to push the enemy if possible over the Potomac.
Now every day we grow weaker and they stronger, so we had better give a telling blow at once."

29 June 1861, Richmond

"Read Soulouque, the Haitian man.* It has a wonderful interest just now. Slavery has to go, of course—and joy go with it. These Yankees may kill us and lay waste the land for a while, but conquer us? Never!"

*Faustin Elie Soulouque took part as a slave in the Haitian revolt against the French in 1803. He became president of Haiti in 1847 and crowned himself emperor two years later. Several biographies of Soulouque were published in Paris during the 1850s.

28 June 1861, Jefferson Davis

"In Mrs [Jefferson] Davis's drawing room last night, the president took a seat beside me on the sofa where I sat. He talked for nearly an hour. He laughed at our faith in our own powers. We are like the British. We think every Southerner equal to three Yankees at least. We will have to be equivalent to a dozen now. After his experience of the fighting qualities of Southerners in Mexico, he believes that we will do all that can be done by pluck and muscle, endurance, and dogged courage—dash and red-hot patriotism, &c. 

Jefferson Finis Davis
(c. 1808-1889)
President of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865

And yet his tone was not sanguine. There was a sad refrain running through it all. For one thing, either way, he thinks it will be a long war. That floored me at once. It has been too long for me already. Then said: before the end came, we would have many a bitter experience. He said only fools doubted the courage of the Yankees or their willingness to fight when they saw fit. And now we have stung their pride—we have roused them till they will fight like devils."

27 June 1861, Richmond

"Soldiers everywhere. They seem to be in the air—certainly filled all space....
It had a lively effect. To show they were wide awake and sympathizing enthusiastically, every woman from every window of every house we passed waved a handkerchief, if she had one. This fluttering of white flags from every side never ceased, from Camden to Richmond. Another new symptom—parties of girls came to every station simply to look at the troops passing. They always stood (the girls, I mean) in solid phalanx, and as the sun was generally in their eyes, they made faces. Mary Hammy* never tired of laughing at this peculiarity of her sister patriots."

*"Mary Hammy" was Mary Chesnut's nickname for her first cousin Mary Whitaker Boykin, daughter of Alexander Hamilton Boykin (hence the "Hammy").

June 1861, 'Sandy Hill,' South Carolina

"As I said, this yard is a negro village—for whom taxes are paid—and doctors' bills. They earn their daily bread and their large families' food and clothes and house rent by 'waiting in the house.'
They rapidly increase and never diminish in numbers. Maria's three children in two years bear witness to their powers that way and is a suggestive fact.
And her free husband—'as good as white, but not quite,' as [slave] Rachel says. 'No wonder Jeems Whitaker deserted her—and lef' ole Missis to support her.'"

10 June 1861

"Mr Binney* has written a letter. It is in the Intelligencer. He offers Lincoln life and fortune; all that he has is put at Lincoln's disposal to conquer us.
Queer. We only want to separate from them, and they put such an inordinate value on us, they are willing to risk all—life and limb and all their money—to keep us, they love us so.
Mr Chesnut is accused of firing the first shot. And his cousin, the Reverend ex-West Pointer, writes in a martial fury.
They confounded the best shot made on the island the day of the picnic, with the first shot at Fort Sumter.
That is claimed by Capt. James.** Others say it was one of the Gibbses.
Anderson fired the train which blew up the Union when he slipped into Fort Sumter that night when we expected to talk it over."

*Horace Binney, Philadelphia lawyer and brother-in-law of Mrs James Chestnut, Sr, supported Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and helped give the measure the legitimacy it badly needed. 
**Capt. George S. James, commanding a mortar battery on James Island, did indeed fire the signal shot at 4:30 a.m. that opened the bombardment.

27 May 1861

"They look for a fight in Norfolk. Beauregard is there. I think if I were a man I'd be there, too.
Also, Harper's Ferry is to be attacked."

20 May 1861, James Chesnut, Jr

James Chesnut, Jr
(1815-1885)

"Oh, Mr Chesnut's three crazes: Maryland to be made seat of war, old Morrow's idea of buying up steamers abroad for our coast defenses, and last of all, make as much cotton and send it to England as a bank to draw on. The very cotton we have now, if sent across the water, could be a gold mine to us."

13 May 1861

"Saw for the first time the demoralization produced by the hopes of freedom. My mother's butler (whom I taught to read, sitting on his knife board) continued to keep from speaking to us. He was as efficient as ever in his proper place, but he did not come behind scenes as usual and have a friendly chat. He held himself aloof, so grand and stately we had to send him a 'tip' through his wife, Hetty, mother's maid. She showed no signs of disaffection—came to my beside next morning with everything that was nice for breakfast. She had let me sleep till midday. She embraced me over and over again."

9 May 1861

"Have made the acquaintance of a clever woman, too—Mrs McLean, née Sumner, daughter of the general, not the senator. They say he avoids matrimony.
'Slavery is the sum of all evil,' he says. So he will not reduce a woman to slavery. There is no slave, after all, like a wife."

13 April 1861, Charleston

"Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Laurence sits at our door, as sleepy and as respectful and as profoundly indifferent. So are they all. They carry it too far. You could not tell that they hear even the awful row that is going on in the bay, though it is dinning in their ears night and day. And people talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. And they make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?"

12 April 1861, Charleston, the bombardment of Fort Sumter

"I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms—at four—the orders are—he shall be fired upon.
I count four—St Michael chimes. I begin to hope. At half-past four, the heavy booming of a cannon.
I sprang out of bed. And on my knees—prostrate—I prayed as I never prayed before.
There was a sound of stir all over the house—pattering of feet in the corridor—all seemed hurrying one way. I put on my double gown and a shawl and went, too. It was to the housetop.

The shells were bursting. In the dark I heard a man say "waste of ammunition."
I knew my husband was rowing about in a boat somewhere in that dark bay. And that the shells were roofing it over—bursting toward the fort. If Anderson was obstinate—he was to order the forts on our side to open fire. Certainly fire had begun. The regular roar of the cannon—there it was. And who could tell what each volley accomplished of death and destruction.
The women were wild, there on the housetop. Prayers from the women and imprecations from the men, and then a shell would light up the scene. Tonight, they say, the forces are to attempt to land....
We watched up there—everybody wondered. Fort Sumter did not fire a shot."

7 April 1861, Charleston

"Today at dinner there was no allusion to things as they stand in Charleston Harbor....In addition to our usual quartet (Judge Withers, Langdon Cheves, and Trescot) our two governors dined with us, Means and Manning.
These men all talked so delightfully. For once in my life I listened.
That over, business began. In earnest, Governor Means rummaged a sword and red sash from somewhere and brought it for Colonel Chesnut, who has gone to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter."

18 March 1861

"God forgive us but ours is a monstrous system and wrong and iniquity. Perhaps the rest of the world is as bad—this only I see. Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think."

18 Feb 1861, Charleston

"Very few understood the consequences of that quiet move of Major Anderson."*

*From Wikipedia:
On December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson of the U.S. Army surreptitiously moved his small command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress controlling the entrance of Charleston Harbor.

28 May 1850

"...I am not the hearty lover of slavery that this latitude requires."