A Confederate Girl's Diary

by Sarah Morgan Dawson

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Evening.

I have learned more. He has not yet left; part of the mystery is unraveled, only I have neither patience nor desire to seek for more. These women—! Hush! to slander is too much like them; be yourself.

My sweet little lisper informed a select circle of friends the other night, when questioned, that the individual had not called on me, and, what was more, would not do so. "Pray, how do you happen to be so intimately acquainted with the affairs of two who are strangers to you?" asked a lady present. She declined saying how she had obtained her information, only asserting that it was so. "In fact, you cannot expect any Confederate gentleman to call at the house of Judge Morgan, a professed Unionist," she continued. So that is the story she told to keep him from seeing me. She has told him that we had turned Yankees! All her arts would not grieve me as much as one word against Brother. My wrongs I can forget; but one word of contempt for Brother I never forgive! White with passion I said to my informant, "Will you inform the young lady that her visit will never be returned, that she is requested not to repeat hers, and that I decline knowing any one who dares cast the slightest reflection on the name of one who has been both father and brother to me!" This evening I was at a house where she was announced. Miriam and I bade our hostess good-evening and left without speaking to her. Anybody but Brother! No one shall utter his name before me save with respect and regard.

This young woman's father is a Captain in the Yankee navy, and her brother is a Captain in the Yankee army, while three other brothers are in the Confederate. Like herself, I have three brothers fighting for the South; unlike her, the only brother who avows himself a Unionist has too much regard for his family to take up arms against his own flesh and blood.

Tuesday, October 6th.

I hope this will be the last occasion on which I shall refer to the topic to which this unfortunate book seems to have been devoted. But it gives me a grim pleasure to add a link to the broken chain of the curious story, now and then. Maybe some day the missing links will be supplied me, and then I can read the little humdrum romance of What might have been, or What I'm glad never was, as easily as Marie tells her rosary.

Well! the prisoners have gone at last, to my unspeakable satisfaction. Day before yesterday they left. Now I can go out as I please, without fear of meeting him face to face. How odd that I should feel like a culprit! But that is in accordance with my usual judgment and consistency. Friday, I had a severe fright. Coming up Camp Street with Ada, after a ramble on Canal, we met two Confederates. Everywhere that morning we had met gray coats, but none that I recognized. Still, without looking, I saw through my eyelids, as it were, two hands timidly touch two gray caps, as though the question "May I?" had not yet been answered. In vain I endeavored to meet their eyes, or give the faintest token of greeting. I was too frightened and embarrassed to speak, and only by a desperate effort succeeded in bending my head in a doubtful bow, that would have disgraced a dairy maid, after we had passed. Then, disgusted with myself, I endeavored to be comforted with the idea that they had perhaps mistaken me for some one else; that having known me at a time when I was unable to walk, they could have no idea of my height and figure, or walk. So I reasoned, turning down a side street. Lo! at a respectable distance they were following! We had occasion to go into a daguerreau salon. While standing in the light, two gray uniforms, watching us from the dark recess at the door, attracted my attention. Pointing them out to Ada, I hurried her past them downstairs to the street. Faster and faster we walked, until at the corner I turned to look. There they were again, sauntering leisurely along. We turned into another street, mingled in the crowd, and finally lost sight of them. That fright lasted me an hour or two. Whose purse have I stolen, that I am afraid to look these men in the face?

But what has this to do with what I meant to tell? How loosely and disconnectedly my ideas run out with the ink from my pen! I meant to say how sorry I am for my dear little lisper that she failed in her efforts to conquer the "Hero"; and here I have drifted off in a page of trash that does not concern her in the least. Well! she did not succeed, and whatever she told him was told in vain, as far as she was concerned. He was not to be caught! What an extraordinary man! Dozens fighting for the preference, and he in real, or pretended ignorance.

I must do him the justice to say he is the most guileless, as well as the most honest of mortals. He told the mother of a rich and pretty daughter what he thought of me; that my superior did not exist on earth, and my equal he had never met. Ha! ha! this pathetic story makes me laugh in spite of myself. Is it excess of innocence, or just a rôle he adopted? Stop! His idle word is as good as an oath. He could not pretend to what he did not believe. He told her of his earnest and sincere admiration—words! words! hurry on! She asked how it was then—? Here he confessed, with a mixture of pride and penitence, that he had written me letters which absolutely required answers, and to which I had never deigned to reply by even a word. That, mortified beyond measure at my silent contempt, he had tried every means of ascertaining the cause of my coldness, but I had never vouchsafed an answer, but had left him to feel the full force of my harsh treatment without one word of explanation. That when he was paroled, he had hoped that I would see him to tell him wherein he had forfeited my esteem; but I had not invited him to call, and mortified and repulsed as he had been, it was impossible for him to call without my permission.... Did my little lisper change the message when the little midshipman told her it had been intercepted because too friendly? I know she met this martyred Lion frequently after that and had many opportunities of telling him the simple truth, but she evidently did not.