This terrible battle of the ships—Monitor, Merrimac, etc. All hands on board the Cumberland went down. She fought gallantly and fired a round as she sank. The Congress ran up a white flag. She fired on our boats as they went up to take off her wounded. She was burned. The worst of it is that all this will arouse them to more furious exertions to destroy us. They hated us so before, but how now?
In Columbia I do not know a half-dozen men who would not gaily step into Jeff Davis’s shoes with a firm conviction that they would do better in every respect than he does. The monstrous conceit, the fatuous ignorance of these critics! It is pleasant to hear Mrs. McCord on this subject, when they begin to shake their heads and tell us what Jeff Davis ought to do.
March 12th.—In the naval battle the other day we had twenty-five guns in all. The enemy had fifty-four in the Cumberland, forty-four in the St. Lawrence, besides a fleet of gunboats, filled with rifled cannon. Why not? They can have as many as they please. “No pent-up Utica contracts their powers”; the whole boundless world being theirs to recruit in. Ours is only this one little spot of ground—the blockade, or stockade, which hems us in with only the sky open to us, and for all that, how tender-footed and cautious they are as they draw near.
An anonymous letter purports to answer Colonel Chesnut’s address to South Carolinians now in the army of the Potomac. The man says, “All that bosh is no good.” He knows lots of people whose fathers were notorious Tories in our war for independence and made fortunes by selling their country. Their sons have the best places, and they are cowards and traitors still. Names are given, of course.
Floyd and Pillow[72] are suspended from their commands because of Fort Donelson. The people of Tennessee demand a like fate for Albert Sidney Johnston. They say he is stupid. Can human folly go further than this Tennessee madness?
I did Mrs. Blank a kindness. I told the women when her name came up that she was childless now, but that she had lost three children. I hated to leave her all alone. Women have such a contempt for a childless wife. Now, they will be all sympathy and goodness. I took away her “reproach among women.”
March 13th.—Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From the poor old blind bishop downward everybody is besetting him to let off students, theological and other, from going into the army. One comfort is that the boys will go. Mr. Chesnut answers: “Wait until you have saved your country before you make preachers and scholars. When you have a country, there will be no lack of divines, students, scholars to adorn and purify it.” He says he is a one-idea man. That idea is to get every possible man into the ranks.
Professor Le Conte[73] is an able auxiliary. He has undertaken to supervise and carry on the powder-making enterprise—the very first attempted in the Confederacy, and Mr. Chesnut is proud of it. It is a brilliant success, thanks to Le Conte.
Mr. Chesnut receives anonymous letters urging him to arrest the Judge as seditious. They say he is a dangerous and disaffected person. His abuse of Jeff Davis and the Council is rabid. Mr. Chesnut laughs and throws the letters into the fire. “Disaffected to Jeff Davis,” says he; “disaffected to the Council, that don’t count. He knows what he is about; he would not injure his country for the world.”
Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. These negro women have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves—the “impropers” can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us—such men as Legree and his women.