Allen G. says Johnston was a failure. Now he will wait and see what Hood can do before he pronounces judgment on him. He liked his address to his army. It was grand and inspiring, but every one knows a general has not time to write these things himself. Mr. Kelly, from New Orleans, says Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith have quarreled. One would think we had a big enough quarrel on hand for one while already. The Yankees are enough and to spare. General Lovell says, “Joe Brown, with his Georgians at his back, who importuned our government to remove Joe Johnston, they are scared now, and wish they had not.”
In our democratic Republic, if one rises to be its head, whomever he displeases takes a Turkish revenge and defiles the tombs of his father and mother; hints that his father was a horse-thief and his mother no better than she should be; his sisters barmaids and worse, his brothers Yankee turncoats and traitors. All this is hurled at Lincoln or Jeff Davis indiscriminately.
August 2d.—Sherman again. Artillery parked and a line of battle formed before Atlanta. When we asked Brewster what Sam meant to do at Atlanta he answered, “Oh—oh, like the man who went, he says he means to stay there!” Hope he may, that’s all.
Spent to-day with Mrs. McCord at her hospital. She is dedicating her grief for her son, sanctifying it, one might say, by giving up her soul and body, her days and nights, to the wounded soldiers at her hospital. Every moment of her time is surrendered to their needs.
To-day General Taliaferro dined with us. He served with Hood at the second battle of Manassas and at Fredericksburg, where Hood won his major-general’s spurs. On the battle-field, Hood, he said, “has military inspiration.” We were thankful for that word. All now depends on that army at Atlanta. If that fails us, the game is up.
August 3d.—Yesterday was such a lucky day for my housekeeping in our hired house. Oh, ye kind Columbia folk! Mrs. Alex Taylor, née Hayne, sent me a huge bowl of yellow butter and a basket to match of every vegetable in season. Mrs. Preston’s man came with mushrooms freshly cut and Mrs. Tom Taylor’s with fine melons.
Sent Smith and Johnson (my house servant and a carpenter from home, respectively) to the Commissary’s with our wagon for supplies. They made a mistake, so they said, and went to the depot instead, and stayed there all day. I needed a servant sadly in many ways all day long, but I hope Smith and Johnson had a good time. I did not lose patience until Harriet came in an omnibus because I had neither servants nor horse to send to the station for her.
Stephen Elliott is wounded, and his wife and father have gone to him. Six hundred of his men were destroyed in a mine; and part of his brigade taken prisoners: Stoneman and his raiders have been captured. This last fact gives a slightly different hue to our horizon of unmitigated misery.
General L—— told us of an unpleasant scene at the President’s last winter. He called there to see Mrs. McLean. Mrs. Davis was in the room and he did not speak to her. He did not intend to be rude; it was merely an oversight. And so he called again and tried to apologize, to remedy his blunder, but the President was inexorable, and would not receive his overtures of peace and good-will. General L—— is a New York man. Talk of the savagery of slavery, heavens! How perfect are our men’s manners down here, how suave, how polished are they. Fancy one of them forgetting to speak to Mrs. Davis in her own drawing-room.
August 6th.—Archer came, a classmate of my husband’s at Princeton; they called him Sally Archer then, he was so girlish and pretty. No trace of feminine beauty about this grim soldier now. He has a hard face, black-bearded and sallow, with the saddest black eyes. His hands are small, white, and well-shaped; his manners quiet. He is abstracted and weary-looking, his mind and body having been deadened by long imprisonment. He seemed glad to be here, and James Chesnut was charmed. “Dear Sally Archer,” he calls him cheerily, and the other responds in a far-off, faded kind of way.