“They loaded up our old family carriage with bacon and sweet potatoes, and drove it away,—and that hurt me worse than all.
“They took our last potatoes. Three or four had just been roasted for the children: ‘Damn the children!’ they said; and they ate the potatoes.
“Out of forty hogs, they left us six. We had twenty-one head of cattle, and they left us five. The officers were very kind to us, and if we could have had them with us all the time, we should have saved a good deal of stuff. One Yankee lieutenant was with us a good deal, and he was just like a brother to me. He reprimanded the soldiers who spoke saucily to us, telling them to remember that they had mothers and sisters at home. He wanted me to put out a white flag, because my husband is a Northern man. But I said, ‘I’ll see this house torn to pieces first, for I’m as good a Rebel as any of them!’ He took three wagon-loads of corn from us: I thought that was mighty hard, if he cared anything for me.” It was he, however, who left her the fifty bushels, which nobody took.
“The soldiers were full of fun and mischief. Says one, ‘I’m going to the smoke-house, to sweeten my mouth with molasses, and then I’m coming in to kiss these dumb perty girls.’ They emptied out the molasses, then walked through it, and tracked it all over the house. They dressed up their horses in women’s clothes. They tore up our dresses and tied them to their horses’ tails. They dressed up the negroes that followed them. They strung cow-bells all around their horses and cattle. They killed chickens and brought them into the house on their bayonets, all dripping.
“Two came into the house drunk, and ordered the old cook to get them some dinner. She told them we had nothing left. ‘Go and kill a weasel!’ said they. She boiled them some eggs. They took one, and peeled it, and gave it to my little boy. ‘Here, eat that!’ said one. ‘But I’ve a good mind to blow your brains out, for you’re a d——d little Rebel.’ This man was from Connecticut, a native of the same town my husband came from. It would have been curious if they had met, and found that they were old acquaintances!
“Some behaved very well. One was handling the fancy things on the what-not, when another said, ‘It won’t help crush the Rebellion to break them.’ ‘I ain’t going to break them,’ he said, and he didn’t.
“My husband had moved up a large quantity of crockery and glass-ware from his store in Charleston, for safety. The Yankees smashed it all. They wouldn’t stop for keys, but broke open every drawer and closet. There wasn’t a lock left in the neighborhood.
“For three nights we never lay down at all. I just sat one side of the fireplace and another young lady the other, thinking what had happened during the day, and wondering what dreadful things would come next.
“She had helped me bury three boxes of silver in the cellar. The soldiers were all around them, and afterwards I found one of the boxes sticking out; but they didn’t find them. When they asked me for my silver I thought I’d lie once, and I told them I had none. ‘It’s a lie,’ says one. Then the old cook’s son spoke up, ‘Take the word of a slave; she’s nothing buried.’ On that they stopped looking.
“Some of the officers had colored girls with them. One stopped over night with his miss at the house of one of our neighbors. When they came down stairs in the morning, she was dressed up magnificently in Mrs. J——’s best clothes. They ordered breakfast; while they were eating, the last of the army passed on, and they were left behind. ‘Captain,’ says she, ‘aint ye wery wentur’some?’