Mrs. Preston and I speak in whispers, but Mrs. McCord scorns whispers, and speaks out. She says: “There are our soldiers. Since the world began there never were better, but God does not deign to send us a general worthy of them. I do not mean drill-sergeants or military old maids, who will not fight until everything is just so. The real ammunition of our war is faith in ourselves and enthusiasm in our cause. West Point sits down on enthusiasm, laughs it to scorn. It wants discipline. And now comes a new danger, these blockade-runners. They are filling their pockets and they gibe and sneer at the fools who fight. Don’t you see this Stonewall, how he fires the soldiers’ hearts; he will be our leader, maybe after all. They say he does not care how many are killed. His business is to save the country, not the army. He fights to win, God bless him, and he wins. If they do not want to be killed, they can stay at home. They say he leaves the sick and wounded to be cared for by those whose business it is to do so. His business is war. They say he wants to hoist the black flag, have a short, sharp, decisive war and end it. He is a Christian soldier.”
June 5th.—Beauregard retreating and his rear-guard cut off. If Beauregard’s veterans will not stand, why should we expect our newly levied reserves to do it? The Yankee general who is besieging Savannah announces his orders are “to take Savannah in two weeks’ time, and then proceed to erase Charleston from the face of the earth.”
Albert Luryea was killed in the battle of June 1st. Last summer when a bomb fell in the very thick of his company he picked it up and threw it into the water. Think of that, those of ye who love life! The company sent the bomb to his father. Inscribed on it were the words, “Albert Luryea, bravest where all are brave.” Isaac Hayne did the same thing at Fort Moultrie. This race has brains enough, but they are not active-minded like those old Revolutionary characters, the Middletons, Lowndeses, Rutledges, Marions, Sumters. They have come direct from active-minded fore-fathers, or they would not have been here; but, with two or three generations of gentlemen planters, how changed has the blood become! Of late, all the active-minded men who have sprung to the front in our government were immediate descendants of Scotch, or Scotch-Irish—Calhoun, McDuffie, Cheves, and Petigru, who Huguenotted his name, but could not tie up his Irish. Our planters are nice fellows, but slow to move; impulsive but hard to keep moving. They are wonderful for a spurt, but with all their strength, they like to rest.
June 6th.—Paul Hayne, the poet, has taken rooms here. My husband came and offered to buy me a pair of horses. He says I need more exercise in the open air. “Come, now, are you providing me with the means of a rapid retreat?” said I. “I am pretty badly equipped for marching.”
Mrs. Rose Greenhow is in Richmond. One-half of the ungrateful Confederates say Seward sent her. My husband says the Confederacy owes her a debt it can never pay. She warned them at Manassas, and so they got Joe Johnston and his Paladins to appear upon the stage in the very nick of time. In Washington they said Lord Napier left her a legacy to the British Legation, which accepted the gift, unlike the British nation, who would not accept Emma Hamilton and her daughter, Horatia, though they were willed to the nation by Lord Nelson.
Mem Cohen, fresh from the hospital where she went with a beautiful Jewish friend. Rachel, as we will call her (be it her name or no), was put to feed a very weak patient. Mem noticed what a handsome fellow he was and how quiet and clean. She fancied by those tokens that he was a gentleman. In performance of her duties, the lovely young nurse leaned kindly over him and held the cup to his lips. When that ceremony was over and she had wiped his mouth, to her horror she felt a pair of by no means weak arms around her neck and a kiss upon her lips, which she thought strong, indeed. She did not say a word; she made no complaint. She slipped away from the hospital, and hereafter in her hospital work will minister at long range, no matter how weak and weary, sick and sore, the patient may be. “And,” said Mem, “I thought he was a gentleman.” “Well, a gentleman is a man, after all, and she ought not to have put those red lips of hers so near.”
June 7th.—Cheves McCord’s battery on the coast has three guns and one hundred men. If this battery should be captured John’s Island and James Island would be open to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly.
Wade Hampton writes to his wife that Chickahominy was not as decided a victory as he could have wished. Fort Pillow and Memphis[82] have been given up. Next! and next!
June 9th.—When we read of the battles in India, in Italy, in the Crimea, what did we care? Only an interesting topic, like any other, to look for in the paper. Now you hear of a battle with a thrill and a shudder. It has come home to us; half the people that we know in the world are under the enemy’s guns. A telegram reaches you, and you leave it on your lap. You are pale with fright. You handle it, or you dread to touch it, as you would a rattlesnake; worse, worse, a snake could only strike you. How many, many will this scrap of paper tell you have gone to their death?
When you meet people, sad and sorrowful is the greeting; they press your hand; tears stand in their eyes or roll down their cheeks, as they happen to possess more or less self-control. They have brother, father, or sons as the case may be, in battle. And now this thing seems never to stop. We have no breathing time given us. It can not be so at the North, for the papers say gentlemen do not go into the ranks there, but are officers, or clerks of departments. Then we see so many members of foreign regiments among our prisoners—Germans, Irish, Scotch. The proportion of trouble is awfully against us. Every company on the field, rank and file, is filled with our nearest and dearest, who are common soldiers.