While few, I think, perceived it clearly at that early day, yet in the spring of ’2 the fortunes of the Confederacy were declining. Many of our wisest men were already doubtful of the issue even where belief in the justice of our cause never wavered. Looking back upon the prophecies of ultimate defeat that were uttered in those days, by men accustomed to sound the security of governments, I am thrilled at the flood of patriotic feeling on which our men and women were borne to continue in arms against such overwhelming forces and conditions as were brought against them. For months before that first Congress adjourned, from every part of our federated States, eager petitioning, complaints and ominous news reached us. Gold, that universal talisman, was scarce, and Confederate currency began to be looked upon with a doubtful eye. So far-seeing a man as Judge John A. Campbell, writing to Mrs. Campbell from New Orleans early in April, 1862, said: “In the event of the restoration of Northern rule, Confederate money may be worthless. I proceed on that assumption. It will certainly depreciate more and more. Hence, your expenditures should be Confederate money, and, in any event, the bank-notes of Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana are preferable to Confederate bills. If the war should last another year, the embarrassments of everyone will be increased tenfold!”
Within a few months the face of our capital had changed. McClellan’s ever-swelling army in the peninsula became more and more menacing. The shadow of coming battles fell over the city, and timid ones hastened away to points that promised more security. Some went to the mountain resorts “to escape the hot term” in Richmond, but many of the wives and daughters of non-householders, even among those known to possess a cool courage, moved on to the Carolinas or returned to their native States. As the close of the Congressional session drew near, there was a continual round of good-byes and hand-shakings, and even an attempt now and then at a gaiety which no one actually felt.
Our markets grew suddenly poor, and following quickly upon the heels of a seeming prosperity, a stringency in every department of life in the city was felt. The cost of living was doubled, and if, indeed, any epicures remained, they were glad to put aside their fastidiousness. Within a year our vermicelli, when we had it at all, would have warranted an anglicising of its first two syllables, and our rice, beans, and peas, as well as our store of grains and meal, began to discover a lively interest in their war-time surroundings. We heard tales of a sudden demand for green persimmons, since a soldier, feeding upon one of these, could feel his stomach draw up and at once forget that he was “hawngry.” I remember hearing the story of a certain superficial lady who spoke disdainfully, in the hearing of Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, of a barrel of sorghum which some friend had sent her from a distance. Full of contempt, she ordered the offending gift to be taken away. “Horrid stuff!” she said.
“Horrid?” asked Mrs. Pryor, gently. “Why! in these days, with our country in peril, I am grateful when I am able to get a pitcher of sorghum, and I teach my children to thank God for it!”
Our mail, from many quarters, was now become a Pandora’s box, from which escaped, as we opened it, myriad apprehensions, dissatisfactions or distresses. “Pray,” wrote a friend from New Orleans, “when you see the President, beg him to give some attention to the disloyal element in the cities, and particularly in this city, which is filled with strangers who appear and disappear in the most mysterious manner, go to private boardinghouses, examine the defenses, etc., etc.”
“I am thus far on my way home,” wrote William L. Yancey, from the same city, in a letter dated March 14, 1862, “having left Havana on the 26th ultimo on a small schooner, and arrived at Sabine Pass on the 6th. Two of Lincoln’s vessels had been anchored in the channel of that harbour for a week and only left twenty-four hours before my arrival.... This city is almost in a state of revolution,” he added. “Fifteen hundred of its wealthiest and most respectable citizens and good Southerners have organised an association and resolved to assume executive and judicial functions to arrest, try, imprison, banish or hang!... There is undoubtedly a deep-seated feeling of wrong done them and of anxiety for the city’s safety at the bottom of all this, and this association should not be treated as a mere lawless mob. Their success, however, would be the knell of our cause in England, and perhaps on the Continent. I am doing all I can to throw oil on the troubled waters, and I hope with some effect.”
Shortly after his arrival in Richmond, Mr. Yancey, whom my husband greatly admired, spent a morning in our chamber—space was too costly at this time to admit of our having a private parlour—in conference with Mr. Clay, and a more hopeless and unhappy statesman I never saw. The people in England, he declared, were for, but Parliament opposed to us, and his mission, therefore, had been fruitless. Every action and each word he uttered demonstrated that he knew and felt the ultimate downfall of the Confederacy.
By a singular coincidence, almost under the same circumstances but some months later, a similar conference took place in our rooms, but Mr. Lamar was now the returned diplomat. But recently home from an unfinished mission to Russia, our long-time friend talked, as had Mr. Yancey, with a conviction that our cause was hopeless. Mr. Lamar had proceeded only so far as London and Paris, when, observing the drift of public feeling abroad, he took ship again, arriving, as did many of our returned foreign emissaries, on the top of a friendly wave. The sea was peculiarly inimical to the cause of the Confederate States, sinking many of the merchant ships we succeeded in sending through the blockading fleets that beset our coast, and wrecking our ambassadors wherever it could grapple them, even on our very shores.
By the time Congress closed in the spring of ’2, the news from the Tennessee Valley was distracting. The enemy had succeeded in reaching our home, and Huntsville was now become the headquarters of General O. M. Mitchell. If that gentleman had taken delight in anything besides the vigorous exercise of an unwelcome authority, he might have found there an ideal spot for the prosecution of his astronomical researches. The span that rests upon the opposite apices of Monte Sano and Lookout Mountain is one of gorgeous beauty. Upon a clear night the planets glow benignly upon the valley, the little stars laugh and leap and go shooting down great distances in a manner unparalleled in more northerly latitudes. Though generally loyal to the cause of the Confederacy, the people of Huntsville were not indisposed to look upon the author-soldier with considerate eyes, had that General adopted a humane course toward them. Unfortunately, his career in our valley from beginning to end was that of a martinet bent upon the subjugation of the old and helpless and the very young, our youths and strong men being away in the field.
The accounts that reached us by letter and by eyewitnesses of the scenes in the Clay home were alarming. Everything belonging to the Clays, it was rumoured, was to be confiscated. “Judge Scruggs told Stanley,” wrote mother, “that the Clays are to be stript of all.” Father’s negroes, and most of our own, were conducting themselves in an insolent manner, taking to the mountains when there was work to be done, or wandering in the train of straggling Union soldiers, but returning when hungry to feed upon their master’s rapidly diminishing stores. In some instances, relying upon the protection of the soldiers, the negroes of the town would take possession of the home of an absent master, revelling in an opportunity to sleep in his bed or to eat from the family silver and china.