Columbia documents for the years 1813 thru 1865

Columbia, SC - 15 January 1813

Another mail, and still no letter! I hear, too, rumours of a gale off Cape Hatteras the beginning of the month! The state of my mind is dreadful.

Columbia, SC - 19 January 1813

To-morrow will be three weeks since, in obedience to your wishes, Theodosia left me. It is three weeks, and not yet one line from her. My mind is tortured.

Columbia, SC - 27 April 1833

I am in principle opposed to all Banks, and of course to that over which you preside.

Columbia, SC - 12 July 1833

I observe the Jackson administration, to conciliate Pennsylvania, have appointed W. J. Duane to the treasury

Columbia, SC - 1 May 1834

The talking will go on in Congress till nothing is done and the members and the public become weary.

Columbia, SC - 9 December 1836

I have had a pretty full conversation with him on the rail road, and have got him to assent to go to Knoxville, on the condition you will go, as one of the proxies.

Columbia, SC - 29 April 1837

I enter upon my 79th Year, next October. By the time Mr Van Buren's first period has expired, I shall be superannuated.

Columbia, SC - 14 May 1837

My friend the Governor of this State, a man of no brilliant talents, of no acquirement, but a great worldly tact and resource, and extremely popular, will not be here for some days.

Columbia, SC - 24 May 1837

the strange infatuation of Mr Calhoun as to the presidency must be counteracted.

Columbia, SC - 1 July 1837

Webster is a dexterous debater, but he has no judgement, no energy, or boldness of character.

Columbia, SC - 20 September 1837

The whole delegation of S. Carolina, save Calhoun and his relative Pickens, voted against the Sub treasury bill.

Columbia - 0 December 1837

I find the resolution of the company is to purchase and complete the Hamburgh road, to unite with the Athens and to unite finally with the Georgia state road

Columbia, SC - 16 December 1837

Very many think as I do, that a sound general currency will not take place among us unless by returning into the beaten road we have unwisely quitted.

Columbia, SC - 14 August 1838

I wish to state why I penned the communication I have lately sent. You need not write to me in reply, but reflect on my suggestions.

Columbia, SC - 1 October 1838

Why not take Woodbury's place under Clay? Then the national bank will be your Bank

Columbia, TN - 23 February 1842

You have truly stated the question at issue to be that we must increase the duties or curtail expenditures, and have abundantly demonstrated that the latter is not only the true policy, but that it is practicable without injury

Columbia, SC - 6 November 1844

I enclose back the letter and have only to say that I have enquired from all quarters to ascertain as near as possible what was the popular vote in this State in favour of Polk &c.

Columbia, SC - 17 December 1860

With a sincere desire to prevent a collision of force, I have thought proper to address you directly and truthfully on points of deep and immediate interest.

Columbia, SC - 20 February 1862

Fort Donelson has fallen, but no men fell with it. It is prisoners for them that we can not spare, or prisoners for us that we may not be able to feed

Columbia, SC - 21 February 1862

Toombs is out on a rampage and swears he will not accept a seat in the Confederate Senate given in the insulting way his was by the Georgia Legislature

Columbia, SC - 22 February 1862

What a beautiful day for our Confederate President to be inaugurated! God speed him; God keep him; God save him!

Columbia, SC - 23 February 1862

John Cochran and some other prisoners had asked to walk over the grounds, visit the Hampton Gardens, and some friends in Columbia.

Columbia, SC - 24 February 1862

Congress and the newspapers render one desperate, ready to cut one's own throat. They represent everything in our country as deplorable.

Columbia, SC - 25 February 1862

They have taken at Nashville more men than we had at Manassas; there was bad handling of troops, we poor women think, or this would not be.

Columbia, SC - 5 March 1862

Mary Preston went back to Mulberry with me from Columbia. She found a man there tall enough to take her in to dinner Tom Boykin, who is six feet four, the same height as her father.

Columbia, SC - 7 March 1862

We called to see Mary McDuffie. She asked Mary Preston what Doctor Boykin had said of her husband as we came along in the train. She heard it was something very complimentary.

Columbia, SC - 10 March 1862

I write daily for my own diversion. These memoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am.

Columbia, SC - 11 March 1862

Cotton is five cents a pound and labor of no value at all ; it commands no price whatever. People gladly hire out their negroes to have them fed and clothed, which latter can not be done.

Columbia, SC - 12 March 1862

In the naval battle the other day we had twenty-five guns in all. The enemy had fifty-four in the Cumberland, forty- four in the St. Lawrence, besides a fleet of gunboats, filled with rifled cannon.

Columbia, SC - 13 March 1862

Mr. Chesnut fretting and fuming. From the poor old blind bishop downward everybody is besetting him to let off students, theological and other, from going into the army.

Columbia, SC - 14 March 1862

There are no negro sexual relations half so shocking as Mormonism. And yet the United States Government makes no bones of receiving Mormons into its sacred heart.

Columbia, SC - 15 March 1862

When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren Nelson, propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature.

Columbia, SC - 17 March 1862

I am nearly forty, and they do my understanding the credit to suppose I can be made to believe they admire my mature charms. They think they fool me into thinking that they believe me charming.

Columbia, SC - 18 March 1862

Mr. Chesnut's negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says one man can not do it. The whole country must agree to it.

Columbia, SC - 19 March 1862

He who runs may read. Conscription means that we are in a tight place. This war was a volunteer business.

Columbia, SC - 20 March 1862

The Merrimac is now called the Virginia. I think these changes of names so confusing and so senseless.

Columbia, SC - 24 March 1862

At the post-office a man saw a small boy open with a key the box of the Governor and the Council, take the contents of the box and run for his life.

Columbia, SC - 28 March 1862

One night, just before we left the Congaree House, Mr. Chesnut had forgotten to tell some all-important thing to Governor Gist, who was to leave on a public mission next day.

Columbia, SC - 2 April 1862

Dr. Trezevant, attending Mr. Chesnut, who was ill, came and found his patient gone ; he could not stand the news of that last battle.

Columbia, SC - 14 April 1862

Our Fair is in full blast. We keep a restaurant.

Columbia, SC - 15 April 1862

The enemy have flanked Beauregard at Nashville.

Columbia, SC - 15 April 1862

Gladden, the hero of the Palmettos in Mexico, is killed. Shiloh has been a dreadful blow to us.

Columbia, SC - 21 April 1862

So here I am, stranded, laid by the heels. Battle after battle has occurred, disaster after disaster. Every morning's paper is enough to kill a well woman and age a strong and hearty one.

Columbia, SC - 23 April 1862

On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged seventeen ; consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was thirty-nine.

Columbia, SC - 26 April 1862

Telegrams say the mortar fleet has passed the forts at New Orleans.

Columbia, SC - 27 April 1862

New Orleans gone and with it the Confederacy.

Columbia, SC - 29 April 1862

A grand smash, the news from New Orleans fatal to us.

Columbia, SC - 30 April 1862

The last day of this month of calamities. Lovell left the women and children to be shelled, and took the army to a safe place.

Columbia, SC - 6 May 1862

Mine is a painful, self-imposed task : but why write when I have nothing to chronicle but disaster ?

Columbia, SC - 12 May 1862

Everything in Charleston is so much more satisfactory than it is reported. Troops are in good spirits. It will take a lot of iron-clads to take that city.

Columbia, SC - 18 May 1862

Norfolk has been burned and the Merrimac sunk without striking a blow since her coup d etat in Hampton Roads.

Columbia, SC - 24 May 1862

The enemy are landing at Georgetown. With a little more audacity where could they not land? But we have given them such a scare, they are cautious.

Columbia, SC - 29 May 1862

Betsey, recalcitrant maid of the W.'s, has been sold to a telegraph man. She is as handsome as a mulatto ever gets to be, and clever in every kind of work.

Columbia, SC - 2 June 1862

A battle is said to be raging round Richmond. I am at the Prestons .

Columbia, SC - 3 June 1862

Doctor John Cheves is making infernal machines in Charleston to blow the Yankees up ; pretty name they have, those machines.

Columbia, SC - 4 June 1862

Battles occur near Richmond, with bombardment of Charleston. Beauregard is said to be fighting his way out or in.

Columbia, SC - 5 June 1862

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?

Columbia, SC - 6 June 1862

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.

Columbia, SC - 7 June 1862

If this battery should be captured John's Island and James Island would be open to the enemy, and so Charleston exposed utterly.

Columbia, SC - 9 June 1862

It has come home to us ; half the people that we know in the world are under the enemy's guns.

Columbia, SC - 10 June 1862

Governor Pickens called to see me. His wife is in great trouble, anxiety, uncertainty. Her brother and her brother-in-law are either killed or taken prisoners.

Columbia, SC - 12 June 1862

New England's Butler, best known to us as "Beast" Butler, is famous or infamous now. His amazing order to his soldiers at New Orleans and comments on it are in everybody's mouth.

Columbia, SC - 13 June 1862

Beauregard's telegram: he can not leave the army of the West. His health is bad. No doubt the sea breezes would restore him, but he can not come now.

Columbia, SC - 14 June 1862

All things are against us. Memphis gone. Mississippi fleet annihilated, and we hear it all as stolidly apathetic as if it were a story of the English war against China which happened a year or so ago.

Columbia, SC - 24 June 1862

Mr. Chesnut, having missed the Secessionville fight by half a day, was determined to see the one around Richmond. He went off with General Cooper and Wade Hampton.

Columbia, SC - 25 June 1862

I forgot to tell of Mrs. Pickens's reception for General Hampton.

Columbia, SC - 27 June 1862

Telegram from Mr. Chesnut, Safe in Richmond ; that is, if Richmond be safe, with all the power of the United States of America battering at her gates.

Columbia, SC - 28 June 1862

Victory! Victory heads every telegram now ; one reads it on the bulletin-board.

Columbia, SC - 30 June 1862

The girls went to see Lucy Trezevant. The doctor was lying still as death on a sofa with his face covered.

Columbia, SC - 1 July 1862

Edward Cheves, only son of John Cheves, killed.

Columbia, SC - 3 July 1862

If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure after all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees, it is Lincoln's proclamation freeing the negroes.

Columbia, SC - 5 July 1862

Poor Ben McCulloch another dead hero.

Columbia, SC - 8 July 1862

This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous.

Columbia, SC - 10 July 1862

My husband has come. He believes from what he heard in Richmond that we are to be recognized as a nation by the crowned heads across the water

Columbia, SC - 12 July 1862

An Englishman told me Lincoln has said that had he known such a war would follow his election he never would have set foot in Washington, nor have been inaugurated.

Columbia, SC - 13 July 1862

Halcott Green came to see us. Bragg is a stern disciplinarian, according to Halcott. He did not in the least understand citizen soldiers.

Columbia, SC - 21 July 1862

Jackson has gone into the enemy's country. Joe Johnston and Wade Hampton are to follow.