Disunion Feed

"I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms at four, the orders are, he shall be fired upon. I count four, St. Michael's bells chime out and I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before. [...] The women were wild there on the housetop. Prayers came from the women and imprecations from the men. And then a shell would light up the scene."

Chesnut's husband, James Chesnut Jr., had rowed out to Sumter that night carrying the ultimatum; she waited in a Charleston house and then went up to the roof. Two passages joined with [...]. Important caveat: "A Diary from Dixie" is the 1905 edition of a manuscript Chesnut substantially rewrote in the 1880s from her 1861 journals — it is a revised memoir built on a contemporaneous diary, not the raw 1861 text. Read it as testimony shaped after the fact.

Read it in the original — Diary entry, Apr 12, 1861 ↗

Next post: Atlas and Argus, Apr 13, 1861 →

"The first gun of Civil War is heard, whose reverberations are yet to echo through the world. The signal is given of events of which no man can tell the end. A fearful responsibility is due to those who have brought this crisis upon the country. [...] It is a Civil War that opens—a war whose successes are without glory, whose noblest deeds are without honor; for they are won in fratricidal conflict, and their cost is fraternal blood. [...] The deed of separation is sealed in the first blood shed in this conflict."

The news reaches Albany. A Democratic paper that had opposed coercion all winter does not celebrate and does not rally — it records the sound and refuses the consolation that a victory could be worth having. Three passages joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Atlas and Argus, Apr 13, 1861 ↗