We met Mrs. Hampton Gibbes at the door—another Virginia woman as good as gold. They told us Mrs. Davis was delightfully situated at Raleigh; North Carolinians so loyal, so hospitable; she had not been allowed to eat a meal at the hotel. “How different from Columbia,” said Doctor Gibbes, looking at Mrs. Gibson, who has no doubt been left to take all of her meals at his house. “Oh, no!” cried Mary, “you do Columbia injustice. Mrs. Chesnut used to tell us that she was never once turned over to the tender mercies of the Congaree cuisine, and at McMahan’s it is fruit, flowers, invitations to dinner every day.”
After we came away, “Why did you not back me up?” I was asked. “Why did you let them slander Columbia?” “It was awfully awkward,” I said, “but you see it would have been worse to let Doctor Gibbes and Mrs. Gibson see how different it was with other people.”
Took a moonlight walk after tea at the Halcott Greens’. All the company did honor to the beautiful night by walking home with me.
Uncle Hamilton Boykin is here, staying at the de Saussures’. He says, “Manassas was play to Williamsburg,” and he was at both battles. He lead a part of Stuart’s cavalry in the charge at Williamsburg, riding a hundred yards ahead of his company.
Toombs is ready for another revolution, and curses freely everything Confederate from the President down to a horse boy. He thinks there is a conspiracy against him in the army. Why? Heavens and earth—why?
June 2d.—A battle[81] is said to be raging round Richmond. I am at the Prestons’. James Chesnut has gone to Richmond suddenly on business of the Military Department. It is always his luck to arrive in the nick of time and be present at a great battle.
Wade Hampton shot in the foot, and Johnston Pettigrew killed. A telegram says Lee and Davis were both on the field: the enemy being repulsed. Telegraph operator said: “Madam, our men are fighting.” “Of course they are. What else is there for them to do now but fight?” “But, madam, the news is encouraging.” Each army is burying its dead: that looks like a drawn battle. We haunt the bulletin-board.
Back to McMahan’s. Mem Cohen is ill. Her daughter, Isabel, warns me not to mention the battle raging around Richmond. Young Cohen is in it. Mrs. Preston, anxious and unhappy about her sons. John is with General Huger at Richmond; Willie in the swamps on the coast with his company. Mem tells me her cousin, Edwin de Leon, is sent by Mr. Davis on a mission to England.
Rev. Robert Barnwell has returned to the hospital. Oh, that we had given our thousand dollars to the hospital and not to the gunboat! “Stonewall Jackson’s movements,” the Herald says, “do us no harm; it is bringing out volunteers in great numbers.” And a Philadelphia paper abused us so fervently I felt all the blood in me rush to my head with rage.
June 3d.—Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines in Charleston to blow the Yankees up; pretty name they have, those machines. My horses, the overseer says, are too poor to send over. There was corn enough on the place for two years, they said, in January; now, in June, they write that it will not last until the new crop comes in. Somebody is having a good time on the plantation, if it be not my poor horses.