12 June 1865, South Carolina, the bushwhackers

"I have been ill since I wrote last. Serena's letter.* They have been visited by bushwhackers, the roughs that always follow in the wake of an army.

My sister Kate they forced back against the wall. She had Katie, the baby, in her arms, and Miller, the brave boy, clung to his mother, though he could do no more. They tried to force brandy down her throat. They knocked Mary down with the butt end of a pistol, and Serena they struck with an open hand, leaving the mark on her cheek for weeks. When they struck Mary, Serena seized the captain's arm. 'Do you let your men do that?' And she showed Mary's bleeding head. 'No, no,' he said, 'that's too bad. You keep all together, and I will get them away for tonight, and then you go off at once.' Which they did that night to the Kings—the next day to Greenville. It was too much. It made me ill."

*Serena Miller Williams was a niece of Mary Boykin Chesnut, daughter of MBC's younger sister Catherine "Kate" Miller and David Rogerson Williams II. In June 1865, Serena was sixteen years old.

June 1865, in the aftermath

Ruins of Millwood Plantation, Columbia, South Carolina
(family home of Wade Hampton II, father of Gen. Wade Hampton III)
destroyed by fire during Sherman's occupation in February 1865

"New York Herald today quotes General Sherman, who says, 'Columbia was burnt by Hampton's sheer stupidity.' But then, who burnt everything before they got to Columbia and after the Sherman army left it? We came down, for three days' travel, on a road laid bare by Sherman's torches. There were nothing but smoking ruins left in Sherman's track. That I saw with my own eyes–no living thing left, no house left for man or beast. They who burnt the countryside for a belt of forty miles—did they not burn the town? Hampton's stupidity is an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hung at once—not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. 'Stanton,' the Herald says, 'has all the papers in his hands to convict him.'
The Yankees here say: 'The black man must go—as the red man has gone. This is a white man's country.'
The negroes want to run with the hare but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their profession to us but declare that they are to be paid in lands and mules for having been slaves—by those blessed Yankees.
'They were so faithful to us—why should the Yankees reward them?'
'It would be by way of punishing the rebels only.'"

7 May 1865, 'Mulberry,' South Carolina

"Mrs Bartow drove with me to our house at Mulberry. On one side of the house every window was broken, every bell torn down, every piece of furniture destroyed, every door smashed in. The other side intact.
Maria Whitaker and her mother, who had been left in charge, explained this odd state of things.
'They were busy as beavers. They were working like regular carpenters, destroying everything, when the general came in. He said it was a shame, and he stopped them. Said it was a sin to destroy a fine old house like that whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not have done it for the world. It was wanton mischief.' He told Maria soldiers at such times were so excited, so wild and unruly.
They carried off sacks of our books. Unfortunately there were a pile of empty sacks lying in the garret. Our books, our papers, our letters, were strewed along the Charleston road. Somebody said they found some of them as far away as Vance's Ferry.
This was Potter's raid.* Sherman took only our horses. Potter's raid, which was after Johnston's surrender, ruined us finally, burning our mills and gins and a hundred bales of cotton. Indeed nothing is left now but the bare land and debts made for the support of these hundreds of negroes during the war."

*A Federal expeditionary force under Brig. Gen. Edward E. Potter spent three weeks in April 1865 destroying Confederate supplies and railroad lines around Camden, South Carolina.

2 May 1865, Camden, South Carolina

"Camden. From the roadside near Blackstock.

Since we left Chester—solitude. Nothing but tall blackened chimneys to show that any man has ever trod this road before us.

This is Sherman's track. It is hard not to curse him.

I wept incessantly at first. 'The roses of these gardens are already hiding the ruins,' said Mr C. 'Nature is a wonderful renovator.' He tried to say something.

Then I shut my eyes and made a vow. If we are a crushed people, crushed by aught, I have vowed never to be a whimpering pining slave."

7 April 1865, Richmond falls

Richmond, Virginia
April 1865

"Richmond has fallen—and I have no heart to write about it. Grant broke through our lines. Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville.

They are too many for us.

Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives.

Blue-black is our horizon."

A Lincolnton recollection, 1865

"One day Isabella [Martin] and I met Mr Clarke from Columbia, and from him I derived my first real idea of the ruin this war had brought—or Sherman, rather. Mr Clarke all unshaven and shorn was brandishing a chair, holding it aloft, like a banner, by its one remaining rung. 'This is all I have left of my Columbia house and all my earthly possessions!' Mr Clarke was one of the rich men of Columbia."

27 March 1865, Chester, South Carolina

"Lee and Johnston have each fought a drawn battle.* Only a few more dead bodies stiff and stark on an unknown battlefield. For we do not so much as know where these drawn battles took place.
One can never exaggerate the horrors of war on one's own soil. You understand the agony, strive as you will to speak, the agony of heart—mind—body.
'A few more men killed.' A few more women weeping their eyes out, and nothing whatever decided by it more than we knew before the battle."

*On 25 March 1865, Robert E. Lee's troops suffered heavy losses in storming and then abandoning Fort Stedman, east of Petersburg, Virginia. A few days earlier, Joseph E. Johnston also sustained many losses when he unsuccessfully attacked one of Sherman's columns at Bentonville, North Carolina. 

5 March 1865, Columbia in ruins

The Burning of Columbia, South Carolina, 1865,
by William Waud for Harper's Weekly

"Columbia is but dust and ashes—burned to the ground. Men, women, and children left there, houseless, homeless, without one particle of food—picking up the corn left by Sherman's horses in their picket ground and parching it to stay their hunger."

16 February 1865, Lincolnton, North Carolina, "those last days"

"My ideas of those last days are confused.
The Martins left Columbia the Friday before I did. And their mammy, the negro woman who had nursed them, refused to go with them. That daunted me. Then Mrs McCord, who was to send her girls with me, changed her mind. She sent them upstairs in her house—and actually took away the staircase—that was her plan.
Then I met Mr Christopher Hampton arranging to take off his sisters. They were flitting—but only as far as Yorkville. He said it was time to move on. Sherman at Orangeburg was barely a day's journey from Columbia, and that he left a track as bare and blackened as a fire in the prairies.
So my time had come, too. My husband urged me to go home. He said Camden would be safe enough. They had no spite to that old town—as they have to Charleston and Columbia. Molly, weeping and wailing, came in while we were at table, wiping her red-hot face with her cook's grimy apron. She said I ought to go among our own black people on the plantation. They would take care of me better than anyone else. So I agreed to go to Mulberry or the Hermitage plantation and sent Laurence with a wagon load of my valuables.
Then a Miss Patterson called—a refugee from Tennessee. She had been in a country overrun by Yankee invaders—and she described so graphically all the horrors to be endured by those subjected to fire and sword and rapine and plunder that I was fairly scared and determined to come here. This is a thoroughly out-of-all-routes place. And yet I can go to Charlotte. I am halfway to Kate at Flat Rock. And there is no Federal army between me and Richmond."

January 1865, Columbia, South Carolina

"Yesterday I broke down—gave way to abject terror. The news of Sherman's advance—and no news of my husband. Today—wrapped up on the sofa—too dismal for moaning, even. There was a loud knock. Shawls and all, I rushed to the door. Telegram from my husband.
'All well—be at home on Tuesday.' It was dated from Adams Run.*
I felt as lighthearted as if the war were over.
Then I looked at the date—Adams Run. It ends as it began. Bulls Run—from which their first sprightly running astounded the world. Now if we run—who are to run? They ran full-handed. We have fought until maimed soldiers and women and children are all that is left to run."

*A point on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad about fifty miles west of Charleston.

21 September 1864

"The end has come. No doubt of the fact. Our army has so moved as to uncover Macon and Augusta.
We are going to be wiped off the face of the earth.
What is there to prevent Sherman taking General Lee in the rear? We have but two armies. And Sherman is between them now."

September 1864, Atlanta falls

Atlanta, Georgia, Union Depot,
destroyed by Sherman's troops, September 1864

"The battle is raging at Atlanta—our fate hanging in the balance.
Atlanta gone. Well—that agony is over. Like David when the child was dead. I will get up from my knees, will wash my face and comb my hair. No hope. We will try to have no fear."