refugee days in georgia
our stay in macon, where it had been my intention to remain but a few weeks, lengthened into months; for, upon his arrival in richmond, senator clay found the conditions such as to render my joining him, if not impracticable, at least inadvisable. the evils of a year agone had multiplied tenfold. food was growing scarcer; the city’s capacity was tested to the uttermost, and lodgings difficult to obtain. the price of board for my husband alone now amounted to more than his income. feeling in legislative circles was tense, the times engendering a troublesome discontent and strife among eager and anxious politicians. complaints from the army poured in. our soldiers were suffering the harshest deprivations. wearing apparel was scarce. many of our men marched in ragged and weather-stained garments and tattered shoes, and even these were luxuries that threatened soon to be unattainable. our treasury was terribly depleted, and our food supply for the army was diminishing at a lamentable rate.
“you will be surprised to know,” wrote general tracy from vicksburg, in march, 1863, “that in this garrisoned town, upon which the hopes of a whole people are set, and which is liable at any time to be cut off from its interior lines of communication, there is not now subsistence for one week. the meat ration has already been virtually discontinued, the quality being such that the men utterly refuse to eat it, though the contract 194continues to be worth between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars per diem.”
“a general gloom prevails here because of the scarcity and high price of food,” ran a letter from my husband, written in the same month from richmond. “our soldiers are on half rations of meat, one-quarter pound of salt, and one-half pound of fresh meat, without vegetables, or fruit, or coffee or sugar! don’t mention this, as it will do harm to let it get abroad. really there is serious apprehension of having to disband part of the army for want of food. in this city the poor clerks and subaltern military officers are threatened with starvation, as they cannot get board on their pay. god only knows what is to become of us, if we do not soon drive the enemy from tennessee and kentucky and get food from their granaries.... i dined with the president yesterday at six p. m., en famille, on beef soup, beef stew, meat pie, potatoes, coffee and bread. i approved his simple fare and expressed the wish that the army in the field had more to eat and that out of the field less!”
the receipt of this news stirred me to the core. spring was in its freshest beauty in macon. its gardens glowed with brilliant blossoms. a thousand fragrant odours mingled in the air; the voices of myriad birds sang about the foliaged avenues. i thought aunt comer’s home a terrestrial paradise. the contrast between the comfort in this pretty city of lower georgia, a city of beautiful homes and plentiful tables, and our poverty-stricken capital and meagre starving camps, was terrible to picture. i wrote impulsively (and, alas! impotently) in reply to my husband’s letter:
“why does not the president or some proper authority order on from here and other wealthy towns, and immediately at that, the thousands of provisions that fill the land? monopolists and misers hold enough meat and grain in their clutches to feed our army and lincoln’s! 195put down the screws and make them release it! talk of disbanding an army at a time like this? no! empty the coffers and graneries and meat houses of every civilian in the land first!”
many an eager and impatient hour my sister and i spent in those months of waiting for the call from our husbands to join them in the capital. her sprightly wit and unfailing courage made her a most enjoyable companion, and a great favourite with all who knew her. “give my love to your sunbeam of a sister,” secretary mallory wrote me during those dark days. “if not one of the lost pleiads, at least she is a heavenly body!” and when i quoted this to dear “lushe” lamar, he answered from the fulness of his heart: “mallory’s compliments grow languid in their impotence to do justice to that beautiful embodiment of bright thoughts and ideal graces, your sister, celeste.” i found her all this and more in that spring we spent together in macon, as we daily sat and planned and compared our news of the battle-fields, or discussed the movements of the army. we did a prodigious amount of sewing and knitting for our absent husbands, to whom we sent packages of home-made wearing apparel by whomsoever we could find to carry them. i remember one such which gave us considerable anxiety; for, proving too large to impose upon general alf. colquitt, who had undertaken to deliver another to senator clay, we sent the bundle by express. the robe which general colquitt carried was soon in the hands of its future wearer, but not so the express package, which contained a pair of much-needed boots for colonel clay. it lingered provokingly along the road until we were filled with apprehension for its safety.
“won’t it break us if all those things are stolen?” i wrote my husband. “a thousand dollars would not buy them now!” and i said truly, for the prices of the commonest materials were enormous. “men’s boots 196here are from sixty to eighty dollars,” wrote mr. clay from richmond; and in macon all goods were a hundred per cent. higher than they had been in huntsville. ordinary fifteen-cent muslin now sold in georgia at two and a half dollars per yard, and “sold like hot-cakes” at that. my sister and i bought what we could and made our husbands’ shirts—knitting the heavier ones—and hemmed their handkerchiefs; and we rose to such a proficiency with the needle that we did not hesitate to undertake the manufacture of vests and trousers of washable stuffs. i made a pair of the last-named for my husband’s little god-son, joe davis, and sent them to richmond by colonel lamar; but i think the dear child did not live to don them. he died tragically at the executive home within a year, the waves of the war quickly obscuring from the world about the remembrance of the sweet baby face.
april had arrived when, journeying from macon to richmond, i had my first real experience of war-time travel. by this time people were hurrying from place to place in every direction, some to seek refuge, and some to find or to bring back their dead. the country beyond the georgia boundary was alert, apprehending the approach of the steadily advancing federals. throughout the spring the feeling had been rife that a crucial period was approaching. my husband wrote cautioning me to prepare to meet it. “during the months of april and may,” he said, in a letter dated march 22d, “the result of the war will be decided by at least four of the greatest battles the world has ever witnessed, near charleston or savannah, fredericksburg, murfreesboro, and vicksburg or port hudson. if they triumph on the mississippi, the war will continue for years; if they fail there, i cannot think it will last longer than lincoln’s administration, or till march of 1865.[29] i 197regard events there as the most important, because the northwest will not aid the war much longer if the mississippi is not opened to their trade. the result of the grand battle to come off at the first opportunity between bragg and rosecrans will determine our movements during the recess of congress, and, it may be, our destiny for life. if we whip the enemy, our home will again be open to us; if he whips us, it will fall under his dominion for many months to come, and nothing will be left to us that he can use or destroy.” almost as mr. clay wrote, huntsville was again invested by federal soldiery, and we could not, if we had wished, have returned to it.
when my sister and i departed from georgia, passenger-cars generally were impressed for the use of soldiers, sick or wounded, or for those who were hurrying to the front. i heard of instances in which travellers, unable to find room in the regular cars, and eager to get to some given point, begged for the privilege of squeezing into the car in which express packages were carried.
having held ourselves for some months in readiness for the journey, we had kept informed as to the presence of possible escorts in macon. once we planned to travel under the protection of captain harry flash, a poet who had won some distinction for his affecting lines on the death of general zollicoffer, and his stirring verses on the confederate flag. it fell to our lot, however, to travel with two poets, who in days to come were to be known to a wider world. they were sidney and clifford lanier, young soldiers, then, on their way to virginia. sidney’s sweetheart lived in the town, and the brothers had stopped at macon to make their adieux. upon learning of the objective destination of the young men, my sister and i held out the bribe to them, if they would undertake to escort us, of a fine luncheon en route; “broiled partridges, sho’ nuf’ sugar and sho’ nuf butter, and spring chickens, ‘quality size,’” to which allurements, 198i am glad to say, the youthful poets succumbed with grace and gallantry, and we began our journey.
the aisles of the cars were crowded. at many stations, as we came through north carolina, women entered the car with baskets of “big blues,” the luscious native huckleberries, with full, deep bloom upon them; these and other tempting edibles were brought aboard at almost every station along the way. when our pleasant party separated at lynchburg, and the youths sat alone in their tents, they recalled in pages truly characteristic the memories of that long journey, in which, like tired children, they had sometimes fallen asleep, clifford’s head upon my sister’s shoulder, and sid’s upon mine.
“i will wait no longer,” wrote clifford,[30] from the camp near suffolk (virginia), on april 17th, “but at once, and without cérémonie, write the little love-letter i have promised, disarming (if men, as some one says of flowers, ‘be jealous things’) the jealousy of your lieges, by addressing it to my two dear friends and quondam fellow-travellers. what a transition is this—from the spring and peace of macon, to this muddy and war-distracted country! going to sleep in the moonlight and soft air of italy, i seem to have waked imbedded in lapland snow. yet, as i would not be an antony, with a genius bold, and confident in egypt, but a trembler and white-livered, in presence of octavius at rome, i summon all my heroism, doff that which became me when environed by flowers, poetry, music and blooming maidens, and don shield and mail (that’s figurative for kersey), prepared to resist ruder shocks than those of love’s arrows. par parenthese, how the yankees would suffer, if we could do our devoirs as bravely and as heartily in the heat and dust and smoke of battle, as in the charmed air of ladies!
199“enough about us. i wonder what this will find our friends doing? my dear mrs. celeste? embroidering the senatorial laticlave or musing on sweet macon, sweeter huntsville? mrs. virginia? in whatever mood or occupation, it is agreed you have this advantage of us: you carry your sunshine with you; we men, being but opaque and lunatic bodies, can give light only by reflection. imagine, then, in what ‘cimmerian darkness’ we revolve here. if you would throw a ray through this darkness, show us one glimpse of the blue sky through all this battle-smoke, write to us, directing care general french, franklin, virginia. i shall regard, most affectionately, the carrier who brings such intelligence from that office to these headquarters. the huge shell that has just shrieked across the intervening distance from the enemy’s trenches to our pickets, and exploding, is not yet done reverberating, reminds me that i might tell you a little of our situation here.
“the reticence of our general forbids all knowledge of his plans and ultimate designs. i can only say that our army, embracing three divisions, closely invests suffolk on three sides, its water and railroad communications into norfolk being still complete, except that general french, having possession of one bank of the river, is working hard to get into position guns of sufficient calibre to destroy their gunboats. that, in the meantime, large foraging parties and immense wagontrains have been sent out for provisions. so that this of forage may be the grand design after all, and instead of living that we may fight, are fighting that we may live, the latter being a very desperate situation, but the more laudable endeavour of the two, perilling our lives, not only for the vitality of our principles as patriots, but for the very sustenance of our lives as men, seeking corn and bacon as well as the ‘bubble reputation at the cannon’s mouth.’ but i began a love-letter; i fear i am 200ending most unetherially. starting to wing a flight across the sea, icarus-like, my wings have proved to be of wax, melting with a too near approach to the sun, and i find myself floundering, and clearing my nose and eyes and mouth of the enveloping salt water. being not even a swimmer, i escape drowning by ending (icarus found nereids and yellow-haired nymphs to assist him), with much love to your husbands, and an infinite quantity to yourselves,
yours,
“cliff lanier.”
“god bless you both. write to us!” said sid., our dear orpheus of the south. “have you ever, my two good friends, wandered, in an all-night’s dream, through exquisite flowery mosses, through labyrinthine grottoes, ‘full of all sparkling and sparry loveliness,’ over mountains of unknown height, by abysses of unfathomable depth, all beneath skies of an infinite brightness caused by no sun; strangest of all, wandered about in wonder, as if you had lived an eternity in the familiar contemplation of such things?
“and when, at morning, you have waked from such a dream and gone about your commonplace round of life, have you never stopped suddenly to gaze at the sun and exclaimed to yourself, ‘what a singular thing it is up there; and these houses, bless me, what funny institutions, not at all like my grottoes and bowers, in which i have lived for all eternity; and those men and women walking about there, uttering strange gibberish, and cramming horrid messes of stuff in their mouths, what dear, odd creatures! what does it all mean, anyhow, and who did it, and how is one to act, under the circumstances?’ ...
“if you have dreamed, thought and felt so, you can realise the imbecile stare with which i gaze on all this life that goes on around me here. macon was my twoweeks’ 201dream. i wake from that into petersburg, an indefinitely long, real life....
“sid lanier.”
of the after months of ’3, the story of my life is one of continuous change. i migrated between richmond and our kin at petersburg, paying an occasional visit to warrenton, north carolina, so long as the roads were open, or sometimes visiting our friends, the mcdaniels, at danville; sometimes, accompanied by our sister, i made a visit to the nearby camps, or to the multiplying colonies of the sick and wounded. he was a fortunate soldier in those terrible days, who fell into the hands of private nurses. patients in the hospitals suffered, even for necessary medicines. sugar was sold at fifty confederate dollars a pound. vegetables and small fruits were exceedingly scarce. my visits to the hospital wards were by no means so constant as those of many of my friends, yet i remember one poor little arkansas boy in whom i became interested, and went frequently to see, wending my way to his cot through endless wards, where an army of sick men lay, minus an arm, or leg, or with bandaged heads that told of fearful encounters. the drip—drip of the water upon their wounds to prevent the development of a greater evil is one of the most horrible remembrances i carry of those days. i went through the aisles of the sick one morning, to see my little patient, a lad of seventeen, not more. above the pillow his hat was hung, and a sheet was drawn over the cot—and the tale was told.
in richmond, miss emily mason (sister of john y. and james m. mason), and mrs. general lee were indefatigable in their hospital work; and mrs. phoebe pember, sister of mrs. philip phillips, was a prominent member of a regularly organised hospital committee, who, afterward, recorded her experiences in an interesting volume, reflecting 202the gay as well as the grave scenes through which she had passed; for, happily, in the experiences of these self-sacrificing nurses there was often a mingling of the comical with the serious which had its part in relieving the nerve-tension of our noble women. on every side the inevitable was plainly creeping toward us. the turmoil in the governmental body augmented constantly. the more patriotic recognised that only in increased taxation lay the prolonging of our national life; but, at the mention of such measure, protests poured in from many sides. our poor, wearied citizens could ill sustain a further drain upon them. to the credit of my sex, however, we never complained. no roman matron, no spartan mother, ever thrilled more to the task of supporting her warriors, than did we women of the south land! to the end we held it to be a proud privilege to sacrifice where by so doing we might hold up the hands of our heroes in field or forum.
“i pity those who have no country to love or to fight for!” wrote mrs. yulee, the “madonna of the wickliffe sisters,” from her home in florida. “it is this very country of yours and mine that induces me to write this letter. i want you to use your influence (you have much) to induce those law-makers to come up to our necessities. tax! tax! tax our people to half we have, if necessary, but let the world know we are paying! ten victories will not give the yankees such a blow as this fact. now, mrs. clay, god has given you many friends. stir them up to their duty!... bragg’s defeat fills us all with gloom, yet we are not discouraged. i have never felt a doubt of my country, but dark and painful trials are yet before us, perhaps!”
alas! alas!
