Glimpses of Our Beleaguered South Land  
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 179coming 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 180the 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 181took 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. 182Everything 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.
A dozen times a day, and at unreasonable hours, if the invading soldiery saw fit, they entered the houses of the citizens in what was often merely a pretended search for some concealed Confederate, or to demand food or drink or horses. They were constantly on the lookout for the possible visits, to their families, of the distinguished citizens in temporary banishment from Huntsville. The presence of General Pope Walker being suspected (though no longer Secretary of War, he would have been a desirable prize to take, since he had issued orders for the firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter), for months the home of our friend ex-Governor Chapman, in which the family of General Walker had taken refuge, was searched daily, the vigilants being so scrupulous in their investigations that even the leaves of a dictionary were parted, lest the wily late Secretary should spirit himself away between its covers.[25]
“The enemy came demanding food or horses,” wrote 183mother, “taking all they could of breadstuffs, meat stock, and all the able-bodied negroes, whether willing or not. Our men hid, but they took the horses and mules, and promised to return in a week and take everything!”
Alas, poor little mother! Those were but the beginning of bitterer days and yet sterner deprivations! For months the only hope of our beleagured neighbours in Huntsville lay in the prayed-for advance of General Bragg, though their prayers, too, were interdicted when made in the church; and, upon the investment of the town, our pastor, Doctor Bannister,[26] was quickly instructed as to the limited petitions with which he might address his God on behalf of his people.
In the meanwhile, the courage of our citizens was kept alive by General Roddy, who lay over the crest of Monte Sano. The forays of his men were a perpetual worry to the Federals in the valley. So audacious, indeed, did they become that the Federal general razed the houses on “The Hill” and threw up breastworks, behind which he built a stout fort, the better to resist the possible attacks from the mountain side by brave General Roddy and his merry men.
During General Mitchell’s investment of Huntsville he was accompanied by his daughters, who, in the ransacking of our home, fell heiresses to certain coveted and “confiscated” articles of my own, but the possession of which could scarcely have been an unmixed pleasure. I heard of my losses first through a letter written late in August. “Mr. Hammond,” began the epistle, “says in Atlanta he saw a lady just from Nashville who told him that Miss Mitchell rode out in your green habit on your mare! This part of the story,” continued my witty sister, “may be true, but there is another: that the other Miss Mitchell 184rode in my habit on my mare! I’m glad I had no mare, and am sorry for poor ‘Jenny Lind’!”
Months afterward I heard (and any who asks may still hear the story in the town, for it has become one of Huntsville’s war-time annals) an account of Miss Mitchell’s outings in my now celebrated green habit. Her path, it seems, as she trotted my pretty mare about the streets, was not strewn with roses; for, though absent from our beloved little city, I was not forgotten. One day the horsewoman, passing proudly on her way, saw, looking over the garden gate of a pretty cottage, the laughing face of sweet Alice Spence, a right loyal admirer of my undeserving self. Alice looked up at the passing apparition, and, full of daring, half mischievously, half indignantly, cried out after it, “Hey! Git off ’Ginie Clay’s mare! Git—off—’Ginie Clay’s ma—are!”
At the sound of these words Miss Mitchell galloped away in great anger. While Alice was still regaling her mother with a jubilant account of her championship of my property, a proof reached her of General Mitchell’s implacability. That afternoon her brother was ordered into arrest, and for months thereafter was kept in custody as a guarantee for his sister’s good behaviour!
When, later, Mr. Clay and I were enabled to visit Huntsville (the Federals having been beaten back for a time), I heard of an amusing encounter which took place at the home of the Spences between Mrs. Spence and John A. Logan. A swarthy stripling in appearance, the young officer stood carelessly about, whilst several soldiers of his command were engaged in a search of the premises. As Mrs. Spence entered the room in which the officer stood, she eyed him with genuine curiosity.
“Whose boy are you?” she asked at last. Her daughter, who was beside her, caught her mother’s arm in alarm.
“Why, ma!” she gasped. “That’s General Logan!”
185“General Logan!” repeated her mother, contemptuously. “I tell you he’s nothing of the kind! He’s black!”
It was already early summer when we left the troubled capital, where everyone was keyed to a high pitch of excitement by the man?uvrings of the enemy, now so near that the reverberating sound of distant cannon was plainly audible. Our way was southward. Though withdrawing, as I supposed, for a change of scene during the Congressional recess only, in reality my refugee days had now begun; for, notwithstanding I made several later stays of varying duration at Richmond, the greater part of the two succeeding years was spent at the homes of hospitable kin far away from that centre of anxiety and deprivation. Upon leaving Richmond, in May of ’2, Senator Clay and I, stopping en route at the home of my uncle, Buxton Williams, in Warrenton, North Carolina, proceeded by easy stages to Augusta, Macon and Columbus, where many of our kinfolks and friends resided, and to which cities I often returned, when, from t............