Mrs. Frank Hampton knows already what civil war means. Her brother was in the New York Seventh Regiment, so roughly received in Baltimore. Frank will be in the opposite camp.
Good stories there may be and to spare for Russell, the man of the London Times, who has come over here to find out our weakness and our strength and to tell all the rest of the world about us.
IV
CAMDEN, S. C.
April 20, 1861-April 23, 1861
Camden, S. C., April 20, 1861.—Home again at Mulberry. In those last days of my stay in Charleston I did not find time to write a word.
And so we took Fort Sumter, nous autres; we—Mrs. Frank Hampton, and others—in the passageway of the Mills House between the reception-room and the drawing-room, for there we held a sofa against all comers. All the agreeable people South seemed to have flocked to Charleston at the first gun. That was after we had found out that bombarding did not kill anybody. Before that, we wept and prayed and took our tea in groups in our rooms, away from the haunts of men.
Captain Ingraham and his kind also took Fort Sumter—from the Battery with field-glasses and figures made with their sticks in the sand to show what ought to be done.