Wigfall, Chesnut, Miles, Manning, took it rowing about the harbor in small boats from fort to fort under the enemy’s guns, with bombs bursting in air.
And then the boys and men who worked those guns so faithfully at the forts—they took it, too, in their own way.
Old Colonel Beaufort Watts told me this story and many more of the jeunesse dorée under fire. They took the fire easily, as they do most things. They had cotton bag bomb-proofs at Fort Moultrie, and when Anderson’s shot knocked them about some one called out “Cotton is falling.” Then down went the kitchen chimney, loaves of bread flew out, and they cheered gaily, shouting, “Bread-stuffs are rising.”
Willie Preston fired the shot which broke Anderson’s flag-staff. Mrs. Hampton from Columbia telegraphed him, “Well done, Willie!” She is his grandmother, the wife, or widow, of General Hampton, of the Revolution, and the mildest, sweetest, gentlest of old ladies. This shows how the war spirit is waking us all up.
Colonel Miles (who won his spurs in a boat, so William Gilmore Simms[34] said) gave us this characteristic anecdote. They met a negro out in the bay rowing toward the city with some plantation supplies, etc. “Are you not afraid of Colonel Anderson’s cannon?” he was asked. “No, sar, Mars Anderson ain’t daresn’t hit me; he know Marster wouldn’t ’low it.”
I have been sitting idly to-day looking out upon this beautiful lawn, wondering if this can be the same world I was in a few days ago. After the smoke and the din of the battle, a calm.
April 22d.—Arranging my photograph book. On the first page, Colonel Watts. Here goes a sketch of his life; romantic enough, surely: Beaufort Watts; bluest blood; gentleman to the tips of his fingers; chivalry incarnate. He was placed in charge of a large amount of money, in bank bills. The money belonged to the State and he was to deposit it in the bank. On the way he was obliged to stay over one night. He put the roll on a table at his bedside, locked himself in, and slept the sleep of the righteous. Lo, next day when he awaked, the money was gone. Well! all who knew him believed him innocent, of course. He searched and they searched, high and low, but to no purpose. The money had vanished. It was a damaging story, in spite of his previous character, and a cloud rested on him.
Years afterward the house in which he had taken that disastrous sleep was pulled down. In the wall, behind the wainscot, was found his pile of money. How the rats got it through so narrow a crack it seemed hard to realize. Like the hole mentioned by Mercutio, it was not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but it did for Beaufort Watts until the money was found. Suppose that house had been burned, or the rats had gnawed up the bills past recognition?
People in power understood how this proud man suffered those many years in silence. Many men looked askance at him. The country tried to repair the work of blasting the man’s character. He was made Secretary of Legation to Russia, and was afterward our Consul at Santa Fé de Bogota. When he was too old to wander far afield, they made him Secretary to all the Governors of South Carolina in regular succession.
I knew him more than twenty years ago as Secretary to the Governor. He was a made-up old battered dandy, the soul of honor. His eccentricities were all humored. Misfortune had made him sacred. He stood hat in hand before ladies and bowed as I suppose Sir Charles Grandison might have done. It was hard not to laugh at the purple and green shades of his overblack hair. He came at one time to show me the sword presented to Colonel Shelton for killing the only Indian who was killed in the Seminole war. We bagged Osceola and Micanopy under a flag of truce—that is, they were snared, not shot on the wing.