CHARLESTON, S. C. — I have just come from Mulberry, where the snow was a foot
deep — winter at last after months of apparently May or June weather. Even the
climate, like everything else, is upside down. But after that den of dirt and
horror, Montgomery Hall, how white the sheets looked, luxurious bed linen once
more, delicious fresh cream with my coffee! I breakfasted in bed. Dueling was
rife in Camden. William M. Shannon challenged Leitner. Rochelle Blair was
Shannon's second and Artemus Goodwyn was Leitner's. My husband was riding hard
all day to stop the foolish people. Mr. Chesnut finally arranged the
difficulty. There was a court of honor and no duel. Mr. Leitner had struck Mr.
Shannon at a negro trial. That's the way the row began. Everybody knows of it.
We suggested that Judge Withers should arrest the belligerents. Dr. Boykin and
Joe Kershaw1 aided Mr. Chesnut to put an end to the useless risk of
life. John Chesnut is a pretty soft-hearted slave-owner. He had two negroes
arrested for selling whisky to his people on his plantation, and buying stolen
corn from them. The culprits in jail sent for him. He found them (this snowy weather)
lying in the cold on a bare floor, and he thought that punishment enough; they
having had weeks of it. But they were not satisfied to be allowed to evade
justice and slip away. They begged of him (and got) five dollars to buy shoes
to run away in. I said: “Why, this is flat compounding a felony.” And Johnny
put his hands in the armholes of his waistcoat and stalked majestically before
me, saying, “Woman, what do you know about law?”
Mrs. Reynolds stopped the carriage one day to tell me Kitty
Boykin was to be married to Savage Heyward. He has only ten children already.
These people take the old Hebrew pride in the number of children they have.
This is the true colonizing spirit. There is no danger of crowding here and
inhabitants are wanted. Old Colonel Chesnut2 said one day: “Wife,
you must feel that you have not been useless in your day and generation. You
have now twenty-seven great-grandchildren.”
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1 Joseph B. Kershaw, a native of Camden, S. C,
who became famous in connection with "The Kershaw Brigade" and its
brilliant record at Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, Spottsylvania, and
elsewhere throughout the war.
2 Colonel Chesnut, the author's father-in-law,
was born about 1760. He was a prominent South Carolina planter and a
public-spirited man. The family had originally settled in Virginia, where the
farm had been overrun by the French and Indians at the time of Braddock's
campaign, the head of the family being killed at Fort Duquesne. Colonel
Chesnut, of Mulberry, had been educated at Princeton, and his wife was a
Philadelphia woman. In the final chapter of this Diary, the author gives a
charming sketch of Colonel Chesnut.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 21-2
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