A:"' >:.£
C DELEON
THE LIBR ARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
GIFT OF
Mrs. Arlthur Jory
OF THE 60
BELLES
BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE 60's
By T. C. DE LEON
In the land where we were dreaming.
DANIEL LUCAS
. ... And with them Time Slept, as he sleeps upon the silent face Of a dark dial in a sunless place.
THOMAS HOOD
Illustrated with One Hundred and Sixty-six Portraits
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright 1907 by T. C. DeLEON
Copyright 1909 by G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
Belles Beaux
and Brains of the 60's.
TO HIS
COUNTRYWOMEN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE MYTHIC "LINE/'
WHO, IN TIME OF NEED, HAVE EVER PROVED THEMSELVES
WORTHY DAUGHTERS OF BRAVE SIRES,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR
478
IN PLACE OF PREFACE
My publishers ask for my preface. What readers I reach will thank me for having forgotten it.
It has been said that ua book without a preface is a salad without salt." Possibly: but a salad that carried with each plate a recipe for its every ingredient and condiment, might fail of digestion. The literary kitchen is not always appetizing, however dainty its perfected products may appear.
The preface is that defunct bore of Greek drama Chorus exhumed to interrupt the action. The book that needs that is apt to prove a pretty bad one; for the preface tells why a book is written and at what it aims. The latter is indubitably to instruct or entertain, and to sell. Should these motors be reversed?
The volume that does neither of these, without its own advice, will needs gather dust upon the trade shelves.
Decades ago when I wrote what James R. Randall named "the prose epic of the bloody Confederate drama" (Four Years in Rebel Capitals), Mr. E. L. Godkin began his Nation review of it with the words: "A participant's views are always the most interesting." Now I am hoping that he wore Cassandra's headgear.
In that book's preparation, thousands of names, incidents and deductions came up, which were not wholly consonant to its plan and scope. These, I have always felt, would group themselves some day; and most of my time for five years past has been given to arranging them into proper sequence and in boring thousands of old friends, for facts, dates, names — and especially for portraits, miniatures, photo graphs and tintypes of the blockaded-art epoch.
IN PLACE OF PREFACE
To these friends, one and all, a cordial acknowledgment is due for the invaluable aid given me. To list one tithe of them would be to print another volume. Suffice it to say that the faces and the facts are theirs. The comments, the statement and deductions, all my own.
Did I write a volume of preface, it would condense itself thus : I have written honestly and without fear, or favor, of people and events: and with as little of prejudice as is given to humanity.
Death and his precursor, Hymen, have been busy in very recent days, among notable people and dear old friends; causing halt for recasting many pages already typed.
"If this be treason, make the most of it!" If it be preface, forgive the solecism.
T. C. De LEON Mobile, May 1st, 1909.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AUTHOR Frontispiece
Page
Lieut.-Col. R. E. Lee, U. S. A. 1852 10
Mrs W. H. Caskie (Mary Ambler) 11
Colonel John S. Mosby 12
Page McCarty 13
Hon. James M. Mason 17
Secretary George W. Randolph 21
Mrs. Evelyn Cabell Robinson, of Colleton 24
Captain Philip Haxall 25
Mrs Alfred L. Rives, of Castle Hill : 29
Misses Mathilde and Rosine Slidell 54
T. C. De Leon and Col. J. S. Saunders 37
Colonel John Forsyth 40
Colonel W. R. Smedberg, U. S. A 44
Jefferson Davis 47
Mrs. Emmet Siebels (Anne Goldthwaite) 51
Mrs. Jos. Hodgson (Florence Holt) -. 52
Mrs. E. A. Banks (Eliza Pickett) 53
Mrs. S. S. Marks (Laura Snodgrass) 54
Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard 57
White House at Richmond 58
Captain I. L. Lyons, 10th La. Reg't 61
Gen. Fitz Lee 63
Mrs. Jefferson Davis 66
Mde. M. De W. Stoess (Margaret Howell) 68
Chevalier C. De W. Stoess 70
Jefferson Davis, Jr 71
"Winnie" (Varina Anne) Davis 72
Mrs J. A. Hayes 73
Jefferson Davis (In clothes worn when captured) 75
Hon. S. R. Mallory (Sec. C. S. Navy) 85
Mrs. T. S. Kennedy (Ruby Mallory) 87
Hon. J. P. Benjamin (Sec. of State).... 92
Gov. T. H. Watts (Attorney-General) 94
Alexander H. Stephens 100
Miss Mattie Quid 103
Judge J. A. Campbell 107
Mrs. Samuel Cooper 109
Mrs. Nicholas Dawson (Jennie Cooper) 110
Mrs. T. J. Semmes (From a portrait by Healy) 113
Col. Joseph C. Ives 117
Cora Semmes Ives 118
Mrs. Clara Semmes Fitz-Gerald (From a portrait by Sully) ... .119
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Mrs. Wilcox Brown (Turner Macfarland) 124
Mrs. David Gregg Mclntosh (Jennie Pegram) 126
Mrs. Robert E. Lee, Jr. (Charlotte Haxall) 128
Mrs. Dabney J. Carr (Anna Mead Deane) 131
Mrs. Thomas R. Price (Lizzie Triplett) 138
Mrs. William M. Farrington (Florence Topp) 142
Mrs. John W. Rutherford (Betty Vance) 143
Mrs. James Fontaine Heustis (Rachel Lyons) 144
Mrs. Albert Ritchie (Lizzie Cabell) 146
Mrs. Phil Haxall (Mary Triplett) 148
Mrs. Caskie Cabell (Nannie Enders) and Lillie Bailey 150
Mrs. Howard Crittenden (Lou Fisher) 154
Mrs. Robert Camp (Anne Fisher) 155
Col. Robert Alston, Adjt.-Gen. Morgan's Cavalry 157
General Wade Hampton 161
Mrs. Charles Thompson Haskell 162
Captain William Thompson Haskell 163
Captain Joseph Cheves Haskell i64
Mrs. Edwin S. Gaillard (Mary Gibson) 167
Mrs. John Pegram (Hetty Gary) 168
Captain Henry Robinson 174
Mrs. Philip Phillips 176
Mrs. Charles A. Larendon (Laure V. Beauregard) 179
Mrs. Henry Strachey LeVert and daughter "Diddie" 183
Admiral Franklin Buchanan (Commander of the Mcrrimac ) ..184
Mrs. William Becker (Mrs. Laura Forsyth) 185
Mrs. Mary Ketchum Irwin (From an amateur play) 189
Gen. John Chesnut 193
Mrs. James W. Conner (Sallie Enders) 195
Lt.-Col. John Cheves Haskell 196
Commodore Barron, C. S. N 199
Mrs. W. B. Meyers (Mattie Paul) 202
John R. Thompson 204
Mrs. John Cabell Early (Mary Washington Cabell) 207
Mrs. Edward L. Coffey (Lucy Haxall) 209
Mrs. Otho G. Kean (Sallie Grattan) 211
Mrs. Robert F. Jennings (Lillie Booker) 214
Mrs. Charles T. Palmer (Alice Winslow Cabell) 216
Robert A. Dobbin 220
Mrs. Leigh R. Page (Page Waller) 222
John Randolph (Sir Anthony Absolute) 225
Captain L. M. Tucker (Jack Absolute) 226
Mrs. Thomas Pember (Phoebe Levy) 229
Mrs. John Moncure Robinson (Champe Comvay) 231
Mrs. Samuel Robinson (Lizzie Peyton Giles) 233
Hon. Beverley Tucker ("The Suspect") 235
John Randolph Tucker (Jurist Teacher & Wit) 238
Mrs. John Lee Logan (Gertrude Tucker) 239
Mrs. Anna Logan 240
Col. George Wythe Munford (Sec. of Commonwealth) 242
Col. Frederick G. Skinner (1st Virginia) 247
Col. Skinner (Miniature owned by Lafayette) 249
Mrs. Isobel Greene Peckham (London Exhibition Portrait) ..250 Mrs. T. Tileston Greene (Elise Skinner) 251
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Major Livingston Mims 255
Captain Innes Randolph 259
Major Wm. B. Myers 263
Major William Caskie ..267
Major J. W. Pegram 270
Virginia Mourning Her Dead (Sir Moses Ezekiel) 275
Chevalier Moses Ezekiel 281
The Burial of Latane
Misses Page Waller, Virginia Pegram, Mattie Paul. Lizzie Giles. Mattie Waller, Annie Gibson and Imogene Warwick. 284
Page McCarty, William D. Washington, Wm. B. Myers 291
Mrs. G. T. Beauregard (Laure Villere) 293
Gen. G. T. Beauregard 296
Hilary Cenas 298
Laure Beauregard Larendon 300
George Mason of Gunston Hall 301
Mrs. Sydney Smith Lee (Anna Maria Mason) 303
Henry A. Wise 306
Mrs. William C. Mayo (Margaretta Wise) 307
Captain John S. Wise 308
Mrs. Henry A. Wise. Jr. (Hallie Haxall) 312
Thomas W. Symington 318
Charles S. Hill, G. Thomas Cox and E. H. Cummins 321
Gen. J. C. Breckinridge 324
Gen. Sterling Price 325
Col. Heros Von Borcke (Stuart's Chief of Staff) 332
Col. Jos. Adolph Chalaron (Louisiana Artillery) 336
Major-General John B. Gordon 340
Colonel Edward Owen (New York Camp U. C. V.) 343
Admiral Raphael Semmes (Taken in 1873) 345
Mrs. Charles R. Palmer (Kathrina Wright) 347
Jefferson Davis Howell (Youngest brother of Mrs. Davis) ....349
Lieut. Samuel Barron 350
Daniel Decatur Emmett 356
Capt. R. T. ("Trav") Daniel "360
James R. Randall (Author of "My Maryland") 363
Lieut. Sydney Smith Lee, Jr., C. S. N 367
Rt. Rev. Richard Hooker Wilmer (War Bishop of Mobile) ... .374
J. Henley Smith (of Mosby's Cavalry) 377
Mrs. Fannie A. Beers 383'
Mrs. Arthur F. Hopkins 385
Emily Virginia Mason in her 92nd year 388
Mrs. L. M. Wilson (Augusta Evans in 1867) 392
Lieut. H. H. Marmaduke, C. S. N 397
Captain James Frazer 403
Madam Von Rorque (Carrie Holbrook) 409
Hon. Edwin De Leon (C. S. Commissioner abroad) 411
Mrs. George H. Butler (Josephine Chestney) 414
Gen. Robert E. Lee 418
Mildred Lee (Youngest daughter of Gen. Lee) 419
Maj.-Gen. W. H. F. ("Rooney") Lee 421
Mrs. Robert E. Lee (Mary Randolph Custis) 423
Agnes Lee (Third daughter of Gen. Lee) 426
Gens. R. E. and G. W. C. Lee 428
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
The Recumbent Lee at Lexington (By Valentine) 429
Admiral Sydney Smith Lee (Son of "Light Horse Harry") ....431
Captain R. E. Lee, Jr. (Youngest son of Gen. R. E. Lee) 432
Anne Carter Lee and Mary Custis Lee (Only granddaughters
of Gen. Lee) 433
Robert Carter Lee (Youngest son of Admiral Lee) 434
Mrs. W. H. F. Lee (Mary Tabb Boiling), R. E. Lee, Jr., Dr.
Boiling Lee 436
Captain Henry Carter Lee, C. S. Cavalry (4th son of Admiral
Lee) 438
Captain Daniel Murray Lee (5th son of Admiral Lee) 439
Mrs. Daniel Murray Lee (Nannie Ficklen) 440
General Scott Shipp, V. M. 1 442
Captain Collier H. Minge (Commanding Battery) 443
Gaylord B. Clark (Cadet at New Market) 445
Rt. Rev. Thomas Frank Gailor (Bishop of Tennessee) 449
Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith (Commander Trans-Mississippi
Department 451
Lieut. Gen. Joseph Wheeler 455
Lieut. Wilton Randolph 459
Lieut. S. S. Lee, 3d (U. S. Marine Corps) 462
CONTENTS
CHAP. I. IN OLD VIRGINIA
The ante bcllum exclusive — "Befo' th' wah." Like ness to Carolinians — Southern pride and its origin — Colonial cousins and wives — The Code Duello — Chivalry's lessons — Two-bottle men and New England tippling — Herital gentry: no "middle class." Slave owners and their methods — Loyal to the "pa-aty." Old leaders vs. new — Covenanters and Cavalier — Real origin of Civil War — Prejudice and principle — The amalgamate American.
II. LORDS OF THE SOIL AND ITS LADIES . . 20
Old-time entertaining on great estates — Large families — Matchmaking and a web of consanguin ity — The early Randolphs — Family seats and country life — Hunting and the first American Fox- club — Racing stables — The Custis family and early Arlington — Mt. Vernon and its owners — Fitzhughs of Chatham — Sir John Page's line — Richmond and the Byrds — The Blands — Then woman ruled the time — How heredity rode to war — Education and womanhood — Mothers of a line of gentlemen — What their daughters did later.
CHAP. III. AT THE "OLD WRECK" 33
Washington yesterday and today — Social changes greater than the civic — Leaders in Senate and Salon — Southern dominance — The Pnghs, Marcys, Casses-^Mrs. John R. Thompscn — The ante bellum winter-*The belles we left — Home and visiting sets — Mesdames Crittenden and Clay — Resident society leaders — Rumors of wars — The Lobby and the hotel folk — Entertaining in the storm — The Buchanan nap broken — Peace Con gress fiasco — Gen. Scott and Lincoln — The Inau guration — Off for Dixie — Leavetaking and proph ecies.
CHAP. IV. A NEW NATION'S NURSERY ....
Off for Montgomery — Excited ignorance — How "the Cradle" rocked— Replica of Washington's •worst — Davis interested in Lincoln — How he stood with the people— The rush for place- Congress,. Cabinet and Lobby — Society and gov- ernment-^A bevy of old-time belles— Old families xi
CONTENTS
CHAP. IV. — Continued
and weddings — Gambling and drinking — Status for leaders — The fall of Sumter — Action replaces sus pense — Virginia secedes — The capital to move — Pensacola review — Beauregard or Bragg?
CHAP. V. THE FIRST "ON TO RICHMOND" ... 58
From Chimborazo to Hollywood — Society's ague at the advent — Peeping through barred blinds — Best blood in the ranks — Hospitality melt? reti cence-brilliant women and brainy men — Gay and "quiet old" sets — Charity's varieties — The White House and early frost-^-Mrs. Davis melts it — Mr. Davis at home — "The dweller on the threshold."
CHAP. VI. WHITE HOUSE FOLK 66
Social Frost clears — White House sociality — Levees and their uses — The President's "home hour." — Mrs. Davis' tact and methods — The Kemp-Howell family — Miss Maggie Howell — The Davis children — Winnie and her living memory — The next generation — Mr. Davis as Richmond saw him — His ease of access — Rare conversa tionalist — In the bitter aftermath — A silly slander — Southern feeling then and now — The Davis descent and branches — The family today — The chief's rise.
CHAP. VII. CABINET TIMBER 83
Its fiber — Toombs and his successors — The S. R. Mallory household — Mother and Daughter — Brilliant career of "Little Ruby" — Mrs. Bishop and Andy Johnson — The Bedouin cabinet — War De partment kaleidoscope — Seddon. Randolph, Bragg, Campbell — Breckinridge comes to stay — The money men — "Cheap money" in 1862 — The post- office — The Randolph household — Benjamin, the Pooh Bah — His chameleon "foreign policy" — His family — Attorney-Generals Thos. H. Watts and George Davis.
CHAP. VIII. SOME VICE-REGENCIES 99
Society and officials — Alex. Hamilton Stephens — South Carolina and the presidency — The "Hamp ton Roads conference" with Lincoln — Reticence and deaths — Judge Robert Quid's family — Mattie Quid's beauty and wit — Judge John A. Campbell — Descent and education — "Union men" — Mrs. Campbell and her brilliant daughters — Adjutant- General Cooper — The Mason blood — Frank Wheaton's wedding: his descendants — Miss Jennie Cooper: her children of the fourth generation.
CONTENTS
CHAP. IX. THE SUB-CABINET
The "Tom" Semmes ' household — How he was elected Senator — Admiral Semmes at that day — Maggie Mitchell and "the Old Rag" — A notable Mess — Pierre Soule and the Spanish duel — Mrs. Semmes' own family — The Dimitris — Its famous head — Notable descent — The young folks in Rich mond- — The Ives household — Old Washington toasts — A peer's gracious tribute — Mrs. Clara Fitz gerald — The family today — The A. C. Myers family — The uniform chosen — The beautiful mother and daughters — The Twiggs sword.
112
CHAP. X. IN RICHMOND'S FOURTH CENTURY . . . 123
The old elect — Young Richmond — The Macfarland home and its bevy — The Pegram household — Its descendants today — The Haxalls of biblical num ber — The four brothers and their children — Memories of a private hospital — The James Lyons home at "Laburnum." Peter Lyons and the Deane sisters — The Allen homes — The patron of Edgar Poe — Claremont and its owner — Others of the old set.
CHAP. XI. THE TYRANNY OF THE TEENS . . ,136
Old-fashioned chaperonage — In Richmond: Virgo victrix! Washington retrospect — Unmated tyrants — One bride's views — Changed social conditions -"The prettiest woman in the world!" — Two Tennessee beauties — A South Carolina rival — Their representatives of the present.
CHAP. XII. A BOUQUET OF BUDS
The "three Graces junior" — Misses Triplett, Cabell and Conway — A famous duel — The Triplett- Ross alliance — The Enders' home in Richmond — The mother of the motherless — A pair of camp angels — Miss Lizzie Peyton Giles and Miss Jose phine Chestney come to Dixie — The Richmond Giles sisters — The Freelands and Lewises — The Wigfall family— "The Three Fishers": Lucy, Mary and Anne.
146
CHAP. XIII. SOME AT THE BRIDAL AND SOME AT-
Transitions from joy to woe — The Miles-Bierne wedding — A shortened honeymoon — Pearls and crape at St. Pauls — The Porcher Miles family — Miss Macfarland's fate and following — Some
157
CONTENTS
CHAP. XIII. — Continued
Carolinians — Hampton and his boys — A Roman Matron — The seven spears of the Haskells — Gaillard and Gibson families — Miss Hettie Gary — The gallant Pegrams — Orange blossoms and yew.
CHAP. XIV. THE AMERICAN SALON 170
Imitations of French models — Washington refuses the fad — New York in Cooper-Barlow-Sherwood days — Mrs. Frank Leslie's attempts — Quaker Citydom — The Boker-Schaumberg regime — Bos ton dodges contagion — Busy Chicago's material — The Palmer-Stone-Chetlain-Smith set — Cincinnati in society and literature — The Saturday Night Club — The middle West non-salonic — Baltimore too cosy to imitate — Washington in the Blair- Sartiges-Dahlgren days — The Slidells — The girls and the Wilkes incident — Mrs. Phillips and Ben Butler — Washington receptions — Her ben mots — The Phillips family, then and now.
CHAP. XV. IN FAR MOBILE 181
Deshas and Murray Smiths — Vanderbilt-Marl- borough — Madame Le Vert' salon — Notables and freaks — Wives of John T. Raymond and Theodore Hamilton — One Mr. Lillian Russell — Kossuth — Admiral Buchanan — John Forsyth and General Forrest — Novel love lay — Queer Harry Maury— The mondaine's sunset — The Huger family — The Fearns and Walkers — The beautiful carnival queen — The Nortons and Buckners — De Vendel Chauldrons — The noted Ketchums — Tennessee's Erwin sisters — Two fair young matrons — The Ledyards.
CHAP. XVI. IN THE TWIN STATES 193
Charleston, the sedate — A city of history and precedent — Moultrie to Sumter — Beauregard's beaux in silk hats and sashes — The Sumter hurrah- Mrs. Sue King's salon failure — Mrs. Daisy Breaux Gummere — A "little brown Crum, Mr. Roosevelt"! — Richmond's realities — The Semmes, Pegrams, Lyons and other homes — The Levee a la "Old Wreck" — Beauties, plain folk and place-hunters — Mrs. Robert Stanard's receptions — Soule. Barren. Lamar, Preston and the rest — The Le Vert par allel deflected.
CHAP. XVII. THE MOSAIC CLUB 201
The "quiet set" — The Mosaic's sponsors— The Grattans, Gays, Wallers and their "boys" — Organi zation? — A specimen programme — Misses Eva Cabell and Mattie Paul in music— The Myers-Paul
CONTENTS
CHAP. XVII.— Continued
marriage — Descendants in Boston and Brooklyn — Rare Ran Tucker — John R. Thompson, Esten Cook and Jeb Stuart — Miss Cabell's marriage — The Cabell seats — The ''little Cabell girls" and their families — John Pegram, Washington and Myers as whistlers — The "Grasshopper" and the "Good old Rebel" — Miss Lucy Haxall yesterday and today — An epigram.
CHAP. XVIII. WITH SOCK AND BUSKIN .... 213
How women worked — Not in the Village of Dumdrudge — Mesdames Semmes, Randolph and other "managers" — Notable audiences — The great charades — All society in the cast — The Macmurdo sisters — The "men creatures" — Mrs. Semmes en artiste — "One touch of nature" — Jeb Stuart's s\vOrd on the Altar — Spectacular pilgrimage — Beantiful Lelia Powers and Sam Shannon at "Lammermoor" — Burton Harrison woos Rebecca at the well — This writer in chains — Vicarious larder.
CHAP. XIX. "RIVALS" AND FOLLOWERS .... 224
Imitation's flattery — New nets for Charity's dollar —Mrs. Ives' great play — Hood's automatic epigram — Randolph as Sir Anthony, Tucker as Jack Ward's Bob Acres — Mrs. Clay and Miss Cary— "Bombastes Furioso" — Mrs. Ives as Dis- taffina — Mrs. Randolph's charades — Miss Chestney and Mrs. Pember in double hit — Fitz Lee as Uncle Toby — A wondrous picture gallery — Mrs. Fanny Giles Towne's "Artist's Studio" — Mrs. Tardy shows "Paradise and the Peri" — Beautiful Addie Deane.
CHAP. XX. PICTURESQUE PEOPLE 234
The old Tucker name — Immense connection — "Bev," of Washington days — The Randolph- Tucker descent — The Tuckers of the '60's — Xotable trio of brothers — The Lincoln murder charge — Bev . Tucker spits Andy Johnson — The Arab family — John Randolph Tucker and his family — The Logan line, old and new — The Mun- fords in war and peace.
CHAP. XXI. MORE of THE PICTURESQUE .... 244
The Cary-Fairfax families — Saxon strain of the "Fair Hair" — Virginian and Maryland branches —The Vaucluse — Fairfaxes — Miss Constance Cary and Clarence: sailor, scholar and lawyer — The Burton Harrisons — The Maryland Carys — John
CONTENTS
CHAP. XXL— Continued
Bonne and his many — The ward of Lafayette takes the sword — Lineage of the Skinners — A de voted daughter and her children — Last woman who saw Wilkes Booth — The Spotswood-Eastin- Gayle families — Livingston Mims, wit and vivucr — Major Banks and his comrade — Mrs. Em. Mims Thompson's personality.
CHAP. XXII. WITH LAUGH AND SONG AND SATIRE . 257
How they starved and sang — By Campfire and Hospital and from Prison — Innes Randolph, facile princeps — His line and descendants — Gen. Felix Agnus and the Canteen story — The Lathams, Gray and Woodie — Page McCarthy's lemon- flavored wit — Will Myers, epigramatist — A Beau- regard "poem" — Governor "Zeb" Vance.
CHAP. XXIII. MORE WITS AND WAGS .... 260
Tom August's quips — Hippo and the chondria- — Willie Caskie in pun and poem — Wm. M. Burwell, of "De Bow's" as satirist — George Bagby and "Confederate Mother Goose" — Jimmy Pegram in "silence and fun" — From camp, hospital and prison pen — Forts Delaware and Warren send shots — Tom Roche's "Egypt Dying" — Teackle Wallis and "The War Christian" — Guffaws from "Solitary John" — Even in Vicksburg — "The kernel and the shell" — The mule menu.
CHAP. XXIV. ART AND ARTISTS IN DIXIE . . . 275
War as an art-promotor — No method in conser vation — Incident pictures — Washington's work — Vivid Jack Elder and his best art — "Scout's prize." the "Crater," etc. — John R. Key in later expositions — Chapman at Charleston — Gait's work and death — Ezekiel's rise and recent work — "Homer" and "Virginia Mourning Her Dead" — . Willie Caskie's great little men — WTill Myers in art — Famine of art supplies — An artistic substitute law.
CHAP. XXV. A VANISHING PICTURE 285
The Romance of its origin — The artist as he was — Stuart's Pamunkey raid — Latane's death — The Brockenborough and Newton families — The Negro question — Before meddled with — The burial by women — Poetry and painting embalm the story — How the canvas disappeared — Why Wash ington began to paint — His notable models — Pub lic reception of the work — The artist's secretive-
CONTENTS
CHAP. XXVI. SOME HISTORY BUILDERS .... 293
A Louisiana epitaph — Origin of the Toutant- Beauregards — Wales and the Crusades — Descent on both sides — The Dukes de Reggio — Education and graduation — The first marriage — The Villere- Olivier family — The Deslondes marriage — The four famed sisters — The first wife and her children —The Beauregards today — The "Doucettes" — A recognition of Lee — The endless Mason line — George, of Gunston Hall and his kith and kin — John Thompson Mason and descendants — Armi- stead and his line — Miss Emily and her sisters — James M. Mason, John Y. Mason and the Roy Masons — Mrs. Webb and the others — General Hartley's fears.
CHAP. XXVII. MORE HISTORIC HOUSES .... 305
The Wise folk — Many a John and more descend ants — The later branches — Henry A. Wise in four generations — Tully R. Wise branch — The individ uality of the Wises — The Craney Island branch — Virginia and New England — The Dabney clan — Colonel "Tom" and Augustin's great descent — Rare "V" Dabney — His high life and what it left — His brothers and sisters — The Chamberlayne branch — The Bagby family of then and now.
CHAP. XXVIII. OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS ... 317
Peculiar "Foreigners" — Help from outside the Chinese Wall— The border states — Maryland regulars — "Old Brad" Johnson, Elzey, Snowden Andrews, Winder and the rest — The Symingtons, Brogdens, Howards and others — The first com mission — Washington's soldiers — The National Rifles — Smedberg, Hill and Cummins — Tom Cox — Kyd Douglas, the link — Albert Sidney John ston Breckinridge and the Kentucky elite. Buckner. Morgan, Duke and their "boys"— Ster ling Price and Cockrell— Captain A. C. Danner— The Marmadukes and Kennerleys — Missouri's fighting phalanx — Riding with teeth.
CHAP. XXIX. FROM OVER SEAS 329
Franco-Latin Americans — Le vrai Creole — Cop- pens brothers and their Zouaves — A reckless fighting lot— Bob Wheat and the Tigers— Chasseur s-a-pied — Henri St. Paul and his ways — Count Camille de Polignac— Baron Herns von Borcke — His desperate wound — British volunteers
CONTENTS
CHAP. XXIX.— Continued
— Frank Dawson, stowaway — Hon. Francis Law- ley — Vizitelly — "Lord" Cavendish and Colonel Gordon — The consuls — Col. Chalaron and his brothers.
CHAP. XXX. BY LAND AND SEA 339
Gordon and the ''Raccoon Roughs" — The man of Sharpsburg — His later career — The Owen broth ers, of the W. A. — Their Northern descent and their work — ''The Viking of the South" — His kinfolk. 'fore and after — Soldiers, jurists and great women — Old Zach's grandson — Mrs. Davis' naval brothers — A noble death — Barrens, father and son — The Brooke gun and its results — Frank lin Buchanan: Hampton Roads and Mobile Bay.
CHAP. XXXI. "DIXIE" AND HER NEXT OF KIN . 354
The moot as to national songs — "Dixie's" origin long uncertain — "Bonnie Blue Flag" in no doubt — Claimants and Myths — Mr. Tannenbaurn testifies — General Alexander's views on "Dixie"- Date and author of the song proved by Col. T. A. Brown — Daniel's wartime doubt — "My Maryland" as poem and anthem — How Randall wrote it — A glance at the Confederate poet — His career and death — The memorial to him.
CHAP. XXXII. THE Pious AND THE SPORTY . . 366
Greed and Creed — Sir Walter Raleigh — Religious zeal in the Colony — The moral plane in war Richmond — Compared with Paris — Gambling and drinking — The "sports" of yesterday — Sunny Johnny Worsham — Temptations and the tempted — Why no greater excess — How piety tempered sport — Churches and pastors of Richmond — War Bishop McGill — The preachers and their pulpits — Bishop Wilmer and "Pap" Thomas at Mobile — First severance of Church and State — An inchoate bishop — Thomas Underwood Dudley — His life- work and descendants — The Jewish rabbis and their people in the war.
CHAP. XXXIII. HOSPITALS AND WOMEN'S WORK . 380
The highest religion — Canonization per se — Hos pital inception and growth — Grandam and gay girl— Fanny A. Beers — "Soldiers' Rest" and its nurses — Mrs. Caroline Mayo — Chimborazo. Rob inson's, and state hospitals — Mrs. Arthur F. Hopkins — A soldier and altruist — Anne Toulmin Hunter and her work — Mrs. Martha Flournoy
CONTENTS XXXIII. -Continued
Carter and her monument — Her descendants — Kmily Virginia Mason — "Aunt Sally" Tompkins — Mrs. Henri Weber and Andy Johnson — Augusta Kvans Wilson — Few out of many.
(1iiM>. XXXIV. TIN-: ('HUSH OK TIN-: " TONDA" . WM
What whipped the South? — Our leaders seemed to know — Needs grow dire Starvation parties and the toilettes— "Dancing on the grave's edge!" — What the boys wanted — The Marmadukes — Penury at the capital and plenty at the ports - Jimmy Clark goes to breakfast — Jo. Johnston's tribute to Lee — The Refugee days — La Grange and its notables — A duel and a ring — Where they are today.
CHAP. XXXV. ROMANCE AND PKRIL OF "Tin-: Bun1." 407
^•Mrs. Greenhow and her tragedy — Frank l)u Harry and his burial at sca-^Mrs. May brick as a babe — The remains of the family — The crush tightens — "Runners" decrease — My last order to Wil mington — Scaling up the rivers — Perilous "run in" at New Orleans — The 'Conda coils inland — Women blockade breakers — The "Potomac Ferry" — The noted Cary cousins-*Miss Josephine Chestney — Her ride with Henley Smith The hitter's recent death Destroying the small ironclads-^Miss llowell to Mr. Mallory — Changed times explained to General Lee.
CHAP. XXXVI. IN FAMK'S OWN HALL .... 4lS
The great by birth— Typical American — Trans ferred poem — Young people and Robert Lee — Of many sides— In Washington as a witness — The bronze and the centennial — Marse Robert and his boys — Richelieu's secret — Lee's talisman — As a Union man — His unique personality — After Appomattox — The fruit of struggle — Again a private citi/en -Great foreign offers — "Men who saved the Union."
(•HAP. XXXVII. FROM KNIGHTHOOD'S PALMY DAYS 430
Before the Conquest — Lees in the Crusades — Launcclot of Hastings and Lionel with the Lion- hearted. Richard Lee of Shropshire — Honors to the Colonial line — Six sons all famed — Rill of Rights and Signers—Henry Lee, of Westmore land — Light Horse Harry and his sons — Robert's youth and training — In war and peace — The
CONTENTS
CHAP. XXXVII.— Continued
General's children — Nine sons and nephews in the war — The elder son of Light Horse Harry — Gen eral Custis Lee — The second Maria Mason — Fitz Lee and his five brothers — The families of this day.
CHAP. XXXVIII. YOUNG VETERANS AND OLD BOYS 441
The "Cornseed battle of the war" — Cadets of the V. M. I. trounce out Sigel — A gallant fight and fun after it — Eight left dead — Wounded boys and stripling heroes — Minge, Wise and Gaylord Clark —What the senior captain wrote — Fun under fire — Henry Grady's "New South" — Embalming memories — The U. C. V. — Its origin and work — Is the war over?-£Daughters of the Confederacy — What they are and how they do — The Sons of Veterans — A stalwart Tennessee Prelate — Spon sors and reunions — How some old boys see them — The Kirby Smith family — Record and descent.
CHAP. XXXIX. AFTERMATH 454
Over one's shoulder — Memories that will not (and should not) die — Resurrection of dead issues — Why we failed — Had Lincoln lived — Reconstruc tion's folly and her legacies — What Booth really "killed" — Carpet Baggers, Ku Klux and their spawn — The "unsent message" — The legacy letter —True sentiment in both sections today — How the talkers and writers "mix up" — The colored brother's philosophy — Mr. Champ Clark and the timec — Few omissions — The real coming together —"Taps!"
Belles, Beaux and Brains of the Sixties
CHAPTER I
IN OLD VIRGINIA
"V/^OUR ante-bellum Virginian was a rare old exclusive. Jl His home was his altar and his family his fetich. He scarcely would have challenged the country postmaster, who refused him credit for a postage stamp, the latter not being his social equal, but he doubtless would have chastised him.
Before he was leavened by war and contact with the greater world the old Virginian may have been a trifle narrow. Friction against his fellows broadened him rarely, but at a cost that lost the world a type.
In his earliest form he was much like his contemporaneous South Carolinian, whom he " cottoned to'7 more cordially than to his other neighbors. Each, it was claimed by the en vious, thought the sun rose behind his own proper east and set behind his western boundary line.
At this day, thanks to education away from home, travel and observation, both 'are citizens of a common country, - properly prideful of the past, though really living in the present.
The strong red " Island Mastiff" blood of primogeniture still flows in the veins of both, but the planter's or professional life has left it perhaps less bubbling than when its ancestors came to these shores.
There was at one«time much popular clamor, rather needless
10 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
perhaps, about the overweening pride of the old Southerners.
It was based on manner, in the main; the manner had reason able origin.
The pride of the South had excuse in her record from Time. The Virginian and Caro linian especially were of direct descent from the " rufflers " of Hastings and Templestowe,of AgincourtandRochelle. They were kindred, too, in more than pride and sentiment, for the same English strain flowed in the veins of both, separating them from the Puritan English of the North, and warmed with the Huguenot flush and the dash of the Hibernian. The Washingtons, Lees, Taylors and Prestons. the
LIEUT. COL. R. E. LEE, U.S.A., 1852. J
Elands, Lewises, Byrds,
Fairfaxes, Balls, Carters and Carys ("No mongrels, boy!" said Richelieu), had wedded " across the border/' and both States had equal pride in their progress. Changed little by travel an I new surroundings the Maryes, Maurys, Flournoys and Bondu- rants, the Micous, Latanes, Moncures and Maupins, were still French. They were as earnest in endeavor for the new land as later were the d'Iberville, de Bienville and Boisbriant planters of the Lilies in La Louisiane. The Egglestons, McGuires, Archers and Mayos proved fealty to new adherence on young soil, as had the knight of the Shamrock in the Crusades in France and in the Papal Guard. One and all, with the Cabells, Burwells, Amblers, and others living in
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
11
history and song, later proved their loyalty to Virginia, as to the king they served so well across the seas.
"All Virginians are cousins/' say outsiders. Marriages, cross marriages, intermarriages, mesh State pride in a tangle of consanguinity that no " Heraldry Harvey" might read. But every drop of that blood, English, Irish or French, throbs but for one spot of earth — Virginia. From the days of Smith and Jamestown, through those of Williamsburg as colony capital and seat of the oldest university, through the war that made the Colony a State and flooded her best names with a noonshine of glory, through the war that made her Richmond capital the goal of ambitious hate — through each and all the Old Dominion has been true to duty and to country. But blood is thicker than water, and she has been true to herself.
The ante-bellum Virginian was a great horseman. He rode to hounds as a matter of religion and was knight and courtier under gleam of my ladye's eyes. He was even more at home in the saddle than in the ballroom, and his love of horse aided other traits and circumstance to evolve later those terri fying " Black Horse" squad rons which made the names of Stuart, two Lees, Turner ,?v
Ashby, John Mosby and their MRS. w. H. CASKIE (MAKY AMBLER) like as famous and feared as was that of the Black Douglas on the Scottish border.
The Virginian was proud, but not arrogant; genial, but quick to offense. So he would pop over an antagonist from
12 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
a sense of duty much as he did a turkey, or a "pa-at ridge, " from a sense of pleasure.
Much has been written as to his duelling habit in old times.
The Virginian was no more addicted to that popular pas time than were his brethren of the South. From the Revo lution to and through the Civil l» War personal honor was the
religion of the Southern gentle man and the " Code " his creed. This was herital. The Eng lish, French and Spanish who sired the incoming populations of all the colonies wore swords for other purposes than orna ment. Often they had carved their fortunes with them and, COLONEL JOHN s. MOSEY on occasion, had found them
handy to carve each other.
The courts were in their infancy in most sections and were wholly adult in few. Custom, too, had made a man what stern old Cedric the Saxon called "niddering," had he taken judical court-plaster for his bruised reputation: accepted money valuation for his wounded honor. The hand of a man affronted went naturally to his left hip for the hilt that hung ready for it. So, the duello of form, legalized by custom into more than written law, passed from the " meeting" of etiquette for a trodden foot or a chance brusquerie to the combat to the death for a grave and real wrong.
Just how distinct those gradations were would take much time to tell, nor would they interest those who persist that duels are a relic of barbarism. Yet they are a relic of chivalry as well.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 13
He who would go about the world today with a metal pot upon his head, his family tree painted on his plate-covered breast and, with a pointed pole in his hand, "To ride abroad redressing human wrong/' would be regarded as worse than a mild lunatic. Yet men and women still flush over the sentiment that made Launcelot and the Lion's Heart, Sydney and Alexander Hamilton, immortal. Tempora mutantur!
A wild outcry echoed through the land when one gallant youth fell dead in his tracks and another, maimed for his miserable remnant of life in that Richmond duel that ushered in a new era and made even a challenge a felony in Virginia.
Duelling was born in the McCarty blood. One of that poor boy's forebears had killed his own first cousin (a Mason) "in fair and honorable combat." But the duel personal was a child of the first trial by jury. We are all things of heredity .
As in duelling so have there been gross exaggera tions of the old Virginian's thirst. Great are the mis comprehensions of the 1 ' gentlemanly dissipations ' ' of those days. The "two- bottle man" of a century syne was probably not more thirsty than the famil iar bibber of this day. He drank differently, how ever, and with far differ-
PAGE MCCARTY
ent surroundings. He
made the glass the excuse for and the promoter of hospitality, sociality and good-fellowship. He never took a public pledge for its infraction in private, and he bade his fellow to stretch
14 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES
his legs beneath his private mahogany and sip Burgundy and rare Madeira, instead of leading him into the vulgar public bar to "hist in" doctored poison at "two for twenty-five.'1
Though the two-bottler sometimes succumbed, and slid gradually from his chair under the table, he may still have been "as good a man" as any millionaire clubman of the present who lurches from his club to his Brougham in the small hours of any metropolis today.
The South has never cavilled at the taste of her New England cousins, who drank and relished " Rumblullion," or "Will Devil," donated to the main land from the British sailors' "Rumbowling." This the traveler Josselyn calls in his writings: "That cursed liquor, Rhum, Rumbullion, or the Devil!"
This favorite drink of old time tavern and post house, is fully described in local chronicle, and embalmed in Miss Alice Earle's "Stage and Tavern Days." She states that this word did not signify Rum, but was the Gipsy adjective, "strong, or strenuous." Its components were rum or strong liquor; ale, or wine, egg and sugar, and this was the great New England tipple of Colonial days.
"Rumfstian" was another brain food made from 1| pints of gin, yelks of 12 eggs, orange peel, nutmeg, spices and sugar. To these was added a quart of strong beer, and a pint of sherry, or other wine!!
And yet the Southerner was called a "two-bottle man!"
It has not been plainly demonstrated that polo, pinochle and draw poker have generated truer-hearted and more con servative men than did the tournaments for Love and Beauty, or the games of brag for "a bale ante and a nigger better."
Doubtless much fustian has been written about "the good old times/' and still no proof is shown that the so-called progress of today has bettered them in all regards — if any. Methods and manners change with invention and snr-
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 15
rounding, but the men and women they are used by are constant quantities. Only he whom Victor Hugo dared call "Vieux Philosophe" can truly differentiate the result of custom upon character.
In common with her sister planting states of the South the Old Dominion had no real middle class or even the sub stitute for it. Her planter, especially when he boasted direct colonial descent, was a closer counterpart of the landed gentry of the motherland than any other American. He was veritable lord of the soil: its judge, governor and dictator as well as its owner. The great "Virginia Plantations" of Elizabethan days had been subdivided into many and minor ones, all held literally, no less than legally, by these herital ''English gentry."
The only other actual class was that of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, holding scarce closer relation to their masters, in any social or moral regard, than did those assis tants in Scriptural days. His negro slaves the country gentleman held as
"Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse"
They were regarded more tenderly than his beasts of toil or pleasure, but as impossible of even hinted future equality.
The Southern owner of a blood-horse, or a bench pointer would scarcely cut off the feed, or scar and disfigure either by cruel or even careless treatment. The black chattel was merely a valuable asset. Never noted as a shrewd dealer, the Southern plantation owner was not so blind an idiot as to depreciate the worth of probably his most valuable pos session. It were as logical to suppose that he might upon occasion have sown his cotton or tobacco fields with rock salt or burned his fences for winter fuel.
Thus only dementia or inborn ferocity could have caused modes of procedure ascribed to them by some too swift
16 3ELLES, BEAUX AND BEAMS OF THE SIXTIES
delineators of what they did not comprehend when seen or what more generally they "saw" from hearsay.
Fact often failed the purpose and fancy was drawn on to aid it. A twice told tale in point is that when Mrs. Stowe made her revision of her book she generalized her description of Southern cruelty and merely detailed it in but one character of her " Uncle Tom's Cabin." That detailed brutality was all committed by her Yankee overseer.
As lords of the soil the old Virginians lorded it easily, holding high their heads but never hardening their hearts. They were the gentry; below them a gap hard to measure in these days. Therein drudged the petty traders, the few white mechanics and laborers. The shopkeeper class, as I have noted, was an unknown quantity in the Virginian human equation.
In politics, then, as later in the war, the Virginian was an ultra. Whatever the "pa-aty" did was right, or at least right enough to uphold. This trait made him perhaps quite as useful a citizen in the main as had he wasted time and effort in trying to think for himself.
"There were giants in those days" nursing by the Mother of Presidents for their probable successors. These had brought the state to the fore in the teething struggles of the hobbledehoy nation; the men who "yaller dogged" at their heels were safe from being traded in droves, or from being sold at a cut price on the hoof. Men as well as measures were different in those days.
The soil that had given the first "Rebel" president, and three more in succession, had ever nurtured men who stood forth first for right through all the troublous councils of the Burgesses, the Revolution and the Union. The Hunters, Marshalls, Masons, Bococks, had stood side by side with Calhoun, McDuffie, Hampton, of the neighbor State, and Troup, Lamar, Yancy, Soule," Davis and the men who made Secessia.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAIhS OF THE SIXTIES
17
'
The Virginian was the cavalier class as compared with the colder Covenanter types of the Puritan and the Knicker bocker. There can be no question that the supposititious line of Mason and Dixon separated two people as dissimilar in thought and feeling, in habit and in need, as were the Saxons and the knights of the descent of Rollo the Norman.
Sift the innumerable theories of the cause of the war between the states and the whole residuum is the one of race. The Dred Scott de cision, the crusades of the abolitionists, the contention of territorial slavery that killed Douglas and made Lin coln, these, one and all, were integers.
That much abused pos sibility, "the future Macau- lay/' will doubtless deduce
that, had slavery not existed — and been transferred by rigor of climate alone from New England to the South — there still would have been division between the two wholly differing people that held the Union together by a tenuous thread of sentimental obligation, frayed and weakening each year. Absolute diversity of character and of habits of life, inborn sentiments and sectional prejudices growing more bitter each decade, simply from want of mutual comprehension, must have resulted in separation. The forcible separation of atoms means heat which in the human ones means blood-letting.
The vibration of preponderant power alone might have
HON. JAMES M. MASON
18 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
stayed the torrent a while. Nullification on the one hand and the secession of Massachusetts on the other were symp toms of the body politic that showed fever.
However variant in tastes, habits and interests, Louisiana and South Carolina might have legislated for Maine and Michigan, Texas and Virginia for Pennsylvania and Wiscon sin, had either understood the other. There was the rub.
The aristocratic Southerner looked down upon the crude young Westerner. He despised the keen, money-getting Yankee. He had the same contempt for the personality of these men as he had for their vocations. In return the Massachusetts man and the middle Western pioneer had equal contempt for the trans-Potomac upstart he pictured to himself. Prejudice in each did the grossest injustice to the other, and the masses on either side, mimetic as the monkey, took their tone from molders of opinion. It was mutual ignorance, converting into mutual hatred. Thus, to borrow from our axiomatic statesman, a condition, not a theory, confronted every effort of the thinkers to adjust a balance that had no standard for its scale.
No Southern thinker really believed that the South At lantic aristocrat, or the blue blood Creole of the Gulf, was practically a better man than the earnest, if eager, denizen of the Eastern mart states, or of the prairie lands of the new West. No Northern politician, not a fanatic or a trickster, be lieved that men descended from the highest grades of almost identical stock were the slave-driving tyrants or the weak- kneed dawdlers popularly caricatured.
Yet all history proves that indurated error is quite as strong, while far more obdurate, as principle. There was but one way out of this centuried error; it was by the arbitrament of blood.
The war had to come. The North and South had to seek homogeneity, and they could be taught thorough under-
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 19
standing of each other only in the hideous clash that both felt was but deferred.
It was well that it came when it did, and for double reason. Delayed, it had been only a bloodier and costlier tug. Re sulting sanity and mutual respect had brought interdepen dence at greater delay to that only foundation for the sturdy and respected nationalism of today — amalgamated Amer icanism.
But this is a social record-, not a tract on politico-economics. The facts were there; their results are seen of all men. His tory, as ever, has repeated itself, and, as the wars of the Roses left the Saxon and the Norman only Englishmen, the Creole and the Yankee, the Carolinian and the Hoosier hold today one Nation, with one aim, one flag and one pride. Each has its memories and its glories; each feels the other's useful ness and respects him for it. Common interest is the one cement that holds the late dissevered parts in a concreted whole. So, disguised with hate and baptized with blood as it was, the war has proved itself a blessing. The cost was infinite; so are the results it purchased.
CHAPTER II
LORDS OF THE SOIL AND ITS LADIES
THAT pleasantry of courtesy, "This house and all it con tains is yours/' came nearer realization in Old Virginia than anywhere on the globe.
Her lords of the soil lorded it with expansive bonhomie and generous hand. Their broad acres and fat larders were shared with friends and strangers, and each was made to feel that he was a donor rather than a recipient.
The acme of entertainment is when the host sets forth for his guest the very best he has and then honestly enjoys it with him. Hospitality is like mercy as described by Portia:
"It blesses him that gives and him that takes."
And this the host of the rare Old Dominion knew and prac ticed.
To marriage and the church, in convertible ratio, their owners also devoted themselves. In almost every family we read of vestrymen who were made quite as useful as orna mental. They gave their time, means and enthusiasm to the advancement of the church and seemingly were as eager to be in the vestry as in the house of burgesses. There were members of almost all the notable families in the minis try, and, unlike the mother country, the selections were not always from the younger sons, but often from the heads of houses, who gave a living, instead of trying to make one. Bishop Meade's book is practically a roster of the well- descended who worked in and for the transplanted church, and his list includes almost every name that was, or now is, noted in Virginia.
20
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 21
Connubiality seems to have walked hand in hand with piety in the early colony. The sons and daughters of the great landed proprietors married early and devoted most of their time and all of their care to the direction of their own families' education, to their making suitable alliances and arranging proper settlements.
And these great family connections ramified into a meshed and interwoven con sanguinity that held the in terest of neighborhoods, and through them of all the Do minion, bound to common aspiration and to common interest. The unification of newer and less directly de scended states has been a political or material advance; that of the Mother Virginia has been, time out of mind, one of pride and heredita ment. Kentucky, Alabama,
the later states owe their
SECRETARY GEORGE W. RANDOLPH
many
of
Tennessee and best blood to the colonial families of the James town era. The Taylors, Raouls, Breckinridges, Maurys and Tylers, noted and useful in the upbuilding and pub- licism of the younger federated sisters, sprang from the lords of "the sacred soil."
It is hard to overestimate the influence of a great and strongly seated family connected with a dozen similar ones and all holding one common point of view and action. Take, as instance, the Randolphs. Their influence in their state has been direct and collateral.
William Randolph came over in 1674 and settled on vast
22 BELLES, BEAUX AND BE AIMS OF THE SIXTIES
estates for which he had obtained patents, those on Turkey Island alone, where he made the family seat, reaching some 75,000 acres. He married Mary, daughter of Henry and Catherine Isham, of Bermuda Hundred, just across the James. Their seven sons and three daughters married into most of the families then founding social dynasties. William, of Turkey Island, married Miss Beverly, of Gloucester; Thomas, of Tuckahoe, Miss Flemming; Isham, of Dungeness, Miss Rojers, an English heiress; Richard, of Curls', Miss Boiling, a direct descendant of Pocahontas; and Sir John Randolph, the sixth son, Miss Beverly, the sister of William's wife; the last brother, Edward, wedding another English heiress. Two of the three sisters chose Reverend Yates's brothers, the third marrying William Stith. She became the mother of Reverend Dr. Stith who was the his torian of Virginia and later president of William and Mary College. He married Miss Judith Randolph, of Tuckahoe, and his sister became the wife of Commissary Dawson. Another Stith sister married Rev. Mr. Keith, of Fauquier and was the ancestor of the famous John Marshall, Chief Justice. Still another sister married Anthony Walke, of Norfolk, and was mother of the Rev. Anthony Walke. Thus it will be seen that the family connection was as strong in the church as in the state. There was a Bishop Randolph in the close of the eighteenth century who was archdeacon of Jersey, then Bishop of Oxford and later of London. Thomas Ran dolph, the poet of England, was own uncle to Randolph of Turkey Island, and the colonist head of the great family himself had the poetic vein. All of the latter's sons, as noted above, made themselves name and position. William, the elder, was member of the council and treasurer of the colony ; Isham was member of the house of burgesses, in 1740, from Goochland, and adjutant-general of the colony. Richard was, in the same year as •his brother, member of burgesses,
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF TEE SIXTIES 23
from Henrico; and succeeded him as treasurer. Sir John was speaker of burgesses and attorney-general.
A grandson, William, was clerk of the burgesses and suc ceeded his uncle as attorney-general. Peyton Randolph, son of Sir John, was speaker of the burgesses and became president of the first congress, held at Philadelphia.
The holding of high trusts descended steadily. Thomas Mann Randolph was a member of the Virginia convention of 1776 from Goochland; Beverly was a member of the assembly from Cumberland during the Revolution, and later governor of that state. Robert, son of Peter; Richard, grandson of Peter, and David Meade Randolph, grandson of the second Richard, of Curls', were all noted cavalry officers of the Revolution; David Meade was marshal of Virginia; and the famous congressman, John Randolph, of Roanoke, grandson of the first Richard, was also minister to Russia. His father was John Randolph, of Roanoke, who married the beauty, Frances Bland, daughter of Theodoric Bland, and thus a granddaughter of the Boilings. Her second husband was the first St. George Tucker; and thus she became the mother of another famous line.
Later members of the family were Edmund Randolph, secretary of state of the United States and governor of Virginia, and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., member of con gress, of the legislature of Virginia, and governor of the state.
Nowhere does history show a more noted descent nor one that better upheld its traditions or better proved the training bestowed upon the early families. This one held seats that were household words and of which some names still exist, the owners, from their numbers, being distinguished by their home affixes. On the James river stood Tuckahoe, Dunge- ness, Chattsworth, Wilton, Varina, Curls', Bremo, Turkey Island. As the race descended, so did the fame of the succeed ing seats, as those of the Blands of Westover, the Harrisons
24 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
of the James, the Cabells of Buckingham and Nelson, and others still existent or renewed as family memorials.
Next to entertaining his guest the old-timer took to sport with keenest zest. Fox hunting came first in the love of all, and every manor home had its stud and its pack, blood stock
of the best the old country could produce and hounds of lineage and high degree. The youth — and for the mat-
• ter of that, the maid — who
could not ride "anything that jumped" was recreant to race and custom, as was the knight who declined the tilt or the lady of the lists who wrore no colors.
It is odd, therefore, that the first fox-hunting clubs were not formed at the South. The Glouster Hunt Club, of
MRS. EVEL™ CABELL ROBINSON, Pennsylvania, was doubtless
OF COLLETON the parent one of the Union.
It was founded in 1776, a
great and social affair, for the chase and entertaining. Others may have arisen, but the second notable club was the Baltimore Hounds, founded in 1818; the parent of later organizations in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Among these, today, are the Elkridge Fox Club, with Mr. E. A. Jackson as president, and W. Ross Whistler, secretary, and two hundred and forty members; the Green Spring Valley, seated in the most pictur esque and fashionable of Baltimore outlyings, eighteen years ago, to hunt the wild fox exclusively, with its two hundred mem bers. The present vigorous heir of former attempt in the dis trict is the Chevy Chase Hunt, founded on Thanksgiving day of
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES ' 25
twenty years syne. Its leading spirits are Messrs Clarence Moore, M.F.H., and Gist Blair, and its suburban club house is perhaps the seat of most diverse hospitality in the land. Virginia now has four admirably organized and equipped clubs: the Deep Run, of Richmond, the Warrenton, the Cheswick (near Charlottesville) and the Piedmont, of Lynch- burg. The Deep Run was organized just seventeen years ago, by Mr. S. H. Han cock and his sister-in-law, Miss Maude Blacker. They are English folk: and the lady one of the best riders and thorough horsewomen in the country. Her father, when he had reached eighty- six, rode as straight to hounds as a youth and never missed a meet. Organized with only twenty-three mem bers, it now has over two hundred and fifty. Notable men and some of the most charming women of the whole state follow its hounds: among its presidents and offi cers having been Philip Hax- all, Joseph Bryan, Major Otway S. Allen, P. S. A.
Brine, and Dr. Jos. A. White, its longtime president and leading spirit. Among the ladies I recall Mrs. Thos. Nel son Carter, Mrs. Allen Potts (who was Gertrude Rives and had no cross-country superior), Mrs. Andrew Christian, Misses Skelton, Palmer, Sophie White, and the famous and
CAPTAIN PHILIP HAXALL
26 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
beautiful Langhorne sisters, who seem to have been born to the saddle.
Shooting followed close in sport, for game was everywhere in those early clearings, big game and little. Crack shots laid the foundation of the marksmanship that won the colony wars, the Revolution and the War of 1812. Racing, too, was legitimate descendant of the hunt. The turf of the old days was led by Virginia stables and took its tone from Vir ginia gentlemen, the Randolphs, Doswells, Johnstons and many more familiar to younger ears.
Most familiar to them, likewise, are two ancient seats inter woven with the history and the courtliness of all our country, Arlington and Mount Vernon, literally household words today.
The first Custis we note is John, in 1640. He had six sons and one daughter. She married Colonel Argal Yeardley, son of Governor Yeardley. Her brothers in Virginia were John, William and Joseph; Thomas, in Baltimore (Ireland); Robert, in Rotterdam, and Edmund, in London. John, the eldest, took the family lead. He was what this day would have called a " hustler," a great salt maker, a trader, a churchman and a vestryman. In 1676, during Bacon's rebellion, he was appointed major-general. He was a favorite of Lord Arlington in Charles the Second's time, and after him was named the estate he received with his first wife. His second wife was Miss Scarborough, who bore him one son, named for him. The descendants of that son and of his uncle, William Custis, peopled the Eastern Shore with the Custis family and made the historical possibility of Washington's marriage. His son John, the fourth so named, returned from education in England, received from his grandfather the Ar lington estate and married the daughter of Colonel Daniel Parke. It was the latter's son whose widow married George Washington. Daniel Parke's wife was a Miss Evelyn; their daughter married John.Custis, of Arlington, who was the first
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 27
noted Virginia ancestor of George Washington Parke Custis, whose grandmother was Mrs. Washington. The wife of Wash ington Custis was the daughter of William Fitzhugh, of Chat ham ; and his sister married Colonel Overton, of Westmoreland. These bits of brief biography antedate the later Arlington and the beautiful capital to which it is adjunct.
The owner of Mount Vernon was Lawrence Washington, elder brother to the general. He married the second daughter of William Fairfax, of Belvoir near Mount Vernon, whose mother was a Gary. This was the first of the five marriages between those notable families, which occurred within the course of a few years. The Carys, of Maryland, Virginia and Florida, all descend from that stock.
The Fairfax family dates back to the coming of the Con queror, it being of Saxon stock and the name meaning "Fair Hair." The Herberts of both states also intermarried with the Carys and Fairfaxes.
Thomas was the first Lord Fairfax. His son Ferdinand was famed in the Parliamentary army, and his son Thomas was the celebrated Lord Fairfax who resigned the command of the army to Cromwell. William Fairfax had a fine seat at Belvoir, near Mount Vernon, and was father of the Rev. Brian Fairfax, as well as of Mrs. Washington. The second had two sons, Brian, a noted scholar and poet; his brother Henry was the fourth Lord Fairfax. Thomas, the son of this Lord Fairfax, succeeded to the title and married the daughter of Lord Colepepper. Their son Thomas was the first American Lord Fairfax. The Rev. Brian Fairfax, of the Episcopal church at Alexandria, was the first native lord of the name. The present Lord Fairfax is of Maryland birth and is first cousin to the Carys, who will figure later in this record.
The Fitzhughs, interesting in themselves and closely allied to the Washingtons, Lees and Herberts, were lords of
28 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
fine manors. William Fitzhugh, of Chatham, divided 60,000 acres between his five sons. His wife was a Miss Tucker and his sons owned Eagle Nest and Ford, in King George, and Belleaire and Boscobel, in Stafford. They married also into the Mason and McCarty families. They were the parent stock of the widespread Fitzhughs, of Maryland, New York, Virginia and the newer states.
Another noted name is that of the Pages. The progeni tor was Sir John, of Williamsburg. His son Matthew wedded Mary Mann, of Timber Neck Bay, and left an immense estate to his son Mann, who built beautiful Rosewell. His son Mann married Judith Wormley, and later Judith Carter. The sole daughter of the first marriage wedded Thomas Mann Ran dolph, of Tuckahoe. Three sons came of the Carter alliance: Mann Page, of Rosewell, who married Alice Grymes, of Middle sex ; John Page, of North End, who married Jane Byrd, of West- over, and Robert, of Hanover, who married Miss Sarah Walker.
The descendants of these brothers were great in number — some of the families reaching-the u baker's dozen," and they in turn intermarried with the Carters, Burwells, Nelsons, McCartys and Byrds.
This last is a family connected with the most interesting growth of the state. To the second of the three noted in t-he records is due the foundation of the "leaguered capital" of our day. He inherited great tracts about Richmond and surrounding his princely home of Westover. Colonel Byrd, of Westover, was the author of the " Westover Papers" and prominent in all public affairs. The third, and the last of the name who owned Westover, was prominent in the Revo lution and on Washington's staff when he encamped at Win chester in the early Indian wars. The descendants of this family run in and out through the tangled skein of all early Virginian intermarriage. To attempt enumeration would produce a biographical dictionary. Even at that risk, there
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 29
is one more of the old liners peremptorily demanding notice because of the prominence in its impress upon its time.
Theodoric Bland settled at Westover in Charles City in 1654. His death seventeen years later left three sons, The odoric, Richard and John. Richard, of Berkeley, married Miss Swann, and at her death married Elizabeth, daughter of William Randolph, of Turkey Island. He had three daughters who married Henry Lee, William Beverly and Robert Montford. His sons, Richard and Theodoric, lived at Jordon's, Prince George and Causon's, City Point. The elder married Miss Poythress and left the popular twelve children; the junior married Miss Boiling, of Pocahontas, and left one son, Theodoric, and five daughters. They married into the Bannister, Ruffin, Eaton, Haynes and Randolph of Roanoke families. This Mrs. Randolph is the one who later married St. George Tucker. Her brother, Theodoric, 2d, was lieutenant of the county and clerk of the house of burgesses, and the third Theodoric was a doctor in England. He returned, however, distinguished him self in the Revolution and became an intimate and fa vorite of Washington. Im portant in the family was also Giles Bland, gallant victor of Bacon's rebellion.
All memory of these stately old homes and of the men who MRS. ALFRED L. RIVES OF CASTLE HILL made them gleams soft, but
warm, with the comeliness and courtliness of their dainty women.
Much of all that life has been reflected down the later years, through the ante-bellum country seats of wealthier
30 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
planters on the James and the Rappahannock, Westover, Brandon, Castle Hill and others, known to the borders of the Union.
At these were entertained many distinguished guests from abroad as well as from our own side of the water. Their house parties at shooting season and Christmas, their rare welcome, rarer wines and rarest hospitality, have gone sound ing down the aisles of sociality and gastronomy. Today many of the old homes have fallen into memories only.
Their home seats were replicas of those of the burgess days, where not the very houses — often scarce modernized out of that old-time grandeur and elegance that shone un impaired up to the days when the sons of Light Horse Harry, of the Montfords, Latanes — changed pumps for riding- boots and threw their swords into the number-tipped scales of war, for country and for name.
It was heredity that spurred the Ashbys and Peytons and the Carters and Harrisons to the Potomac, marched the Val ley meteor-like and held the Rappahannock, by the side of Lee and Johnston and Stonewall Jackson.
As with the men, so with the women, mothers of a line of gentlemen.
Who saw the women of the '60's at court, in camp or toiling in unaccustomed kitchen or fetid hospital, who sees them today "the favored guests at every bright and brilliant throng/' and fails to see across the mists of time the forms and faces of those who presided at bounteous board, walked the minuet or romped in real Virginia reel, in those old manor houses of yore?
Every mention of Arlington conjures up the fair widow who wedded young Washington, walking a courtly measure in "baby waist and train"; or pretty Nellie Custis queening it merrily over congressional quadrilles at Philadelphia.
When the dashing Rives sisters, the Langhorne girls, the
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 31
Johnstons and the rest, witch the hunting world with peerless 'cross country riding, and doff habit for toilette to witch again the city rout or watering-place german, we recall that the Riveses were beautiful women ever since William, the grandfather of Minister William C. Rives, built Castle Hill; we recall that Mirador is no new seat, but of "the old Vir ginia way/' which brings back the women of that Langhorne line who "danced with Washington."
One of the gravest of all the many errors cherished by the North as truth about the South, is that regarding the home education of its women. Differing as they do, in theory and practice of social life, from their more progressive — might I write aggressive? — sisters of the North, they have never been at all the pretty puppets described by overswift ig norance.
It has been accepted that the Southern girl, from pinafore to orange blossoms, was educated for a bride, but not for a wife. The theory of the uninformed has indurated by repe tition that she was l: incased in cedar and shut in a sacred gloom "; that she was held by her male kith and kin as "a toy too tender for the winds of heaven to visit too roughly," and that embroidery, twanging the guitar, plus a possible French novel and a bonbonniere, were her portion and Ultima Thule of educational variety.
The thoughtless forget in this picture the primal fact that most of these women, especially in Virginia and the Caro- linas, were English in blood and bone. Their grandams were British born; themselves often colonists. They were almost invairably of high degree and of liberal education, scholastic and domestic. So, these women of colonial and Revolutionary days educated not only their daughters, but frequently large families of sons until they were of an age for the great university at Williamsburg. No person can really believe that the daughters of such mothers could be
32 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
the dolls and playthings described by the myopic or the mendacious.
An hour spent in a library over the chronicles of the colony or in cursory reading of " Women of the Revolution" would preclude a folly which reflects only upon the intelligence of its believers.
The institution of slavery may have influenced the habits of the wealthier class of the Southerner in some sort, par ticularly in its plantation life, by excess of service. The little " nigger maid" was the appendage of every planter's daughter from the pinafore and candy stick age, and the white need never have tied her own slipper had she so willed. But the Southern girl then, as a rule, rode better and shot better than her Northern neighbor. And perhaps she danced better as well, but the taper hand that restrains the restive colt or drops the woodcock is not the one that belongs to the helpless woman.
The "Island Mastiff" strain ran in the veins of both sexes. What their early mothers had been in the colony, what their daughters were in the Revolution, that and more were the tenderest reared and most reticent women of the South, matrons and maidens, in that later struggle of the men of the same race.
Later in these pages I shall show that, as the flower of Southern youth threw down quill pen and billiard cue to take the sword, so their mothers and little sisters wrought in kitchen, sewing room and in the hideous hospital as only woman at her full stature and in her highest pride has ever wrought at trial.
CHAPTER III
AT
Washington is today confessedly the show city of this continent and is one of the most picturesque in the world. All Americans — whatever their habitat or their sympathies- are proud of the national capital.
The Washingtonian of a half century ago recalls a wholly different place, and the returning parole bearer, who rubbed the smoke of a four-year battle from his eyes as he recrossed the Potomac, beheld with wonder and amaze the changes wrought by the Federal Aladdin. What was brought about in the brief space of the war had been solidified, broadened and burnished in as many intervening decades.
Yet, great as is the superficial transformation of a pro vincial village into a cosmopolitan center, it dwindles when compared with the change in the social confirmation of this literally central city.
Ante-bellum Washington was a mixture of Arlington grandeur, Jeffersonian simplicity, Dolly-Madisonism, Fill- more primness and the gracious chill of Miss Harriet Lane. Its society was a mosaic of elegance and pomp, of recklessness and parity, of culture and crudity. Its West End arrogated— and with some show of right divine — the noblesse oblige tone of the Faubourg St. Germain, but that outlying East, from the Treasury past Duddington, to the Navy Yard, had a decided smatter of the Latin Quarter.
It was a charming society and one much sought, that of Washington of the mi-regime. It ate its terrapin, not always
33
34
BELLES, BEAUX AND BBAINS OF THE SIXTIES
with a gold spoon, but with true gusto, and lacking red devils and electrics, it sought in cab, and even horse-car, balls as truly elegant and germans as delightful and as beauty- crowned as any of the present.
Those were the days of great leadership in both political
parties, and sectional es trangement had not spread from the corridors of the Cap itol into the salons of society. This came later, with the swirl and heat of a consuming fire; but even one year previous to Beaure- gard's salute to "Old Bob'7 Anderson at Sumter, the mightiest men of the North sought eagerly the dark-eyed matrons and belles of the Southern coterie, while the Soules, Slidells, Orrs, Breck- inridges and Tuckers of coming war fame, danced stately measures with the ladies of the Hales, Sewards, Pendletons and Pughs. Then, too, the gilded youth in pumps, the personal pride of german-dancing, were most often of the Southern sort.
In toning the society of the Ws, the South had the pas. This was doubtless due to the natural sociability and pleasure love of her daughters, but in part it was because the families of congressmen and government officials could not live in their plantation homes in summer, and, having once sipped Potomac water, would not in winter.
The leaders of society were largely Southerners. Cultured, gracious, or brilliant women there were from North, East and
MISSES MATHILDE AND ROSINE SLIDELL
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 35
West. Beautiful, attractive and quite progressive girls there were who rolled their "r's" roundly, and did a few other things that their Southern sisters had perhaps shied at. But these people all belonged to the caravan. They came in December when the congressional worry began; they left for distant homes after March 4, or for watering place and seaside in the swelter of the long session. They were in the society, and of it to a certain extent, but they were not it.
So this Southern resident put his impress upon the un written laws, and ruled with the little iron hand in the No 5 gant Suede.
We of that day remember beautiful Mrs. Pugh, wife of the Ohio senator. Double-gilded youth from everywhere flut tered about her as eagerly as about her handsome and popular sister, Miss Ada Chalfant. Miss Hale, daughter of New Hampshire's senator, was a favorite with old and young, and gay, graceful and audacious Mrs. John R. Thompson, "the senior senator from New Jersey," as Mrs. Phillips dubbed her, merely shifted her regnant belleship from Princeton juniors and Dons in the autumn to Washington solons in the winter. Stately Miss Marcy was ever sought and retained the friendship of all, and the Ledyard ladies of the Lewis Cass family were as geniune and hospitable as any in the set.
These are samples from great names; there were scores of others, but they were all birds of passage, nesting elsewhere and flying South only for the season. The home people were of another type and, nursing the society in the interregnum, they kept it warm with Southern temperaments and methods.
The winter before Sumter was the most lavish and brilliant that Washington had ever known. It was also the giddiest and most feverish. That was before the day of multi-million aires and men were naught if not dollar stamped; before heiresses captured fledgling and penniless young army and navy men to build them cages on the Avenue. Women and
36 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
men themselves counted for everything even in the maziest whirl of dinner and german.
I have said there were giants. So were there beautiful " princesses" whose fairy godmothers, Birth and Breeding, had dowered them in the cradle.
What shaky old relic of that time, holding up memory's looking-glass, but fails to see Juno-like Miss Adele Cutts, then not yet the wife of the " Little Giant," Stephen A. Doug las, or petite and graceful Henrietta Magruder, Miss Marion Ramsay, later Mrs. " Brock" Cutting, of New York, with her lovely childish face and baby waist1, hiding that infinity of tact that made simplicity an art? Ah! Temptation to cata logue that time-reflected picture gallery is hard to withstand.
I have said that there were two distinct societies in the Washington of yesterday, nowise parallel, yet not always tangent. The general set included strangers in town of all shades and degrees, the congressional people and some in the departments. The resident set, salted with the diplo matic, met these on the neutral ground of card exchanging and crush receptions. But each had its own intimate and en joyed circle, a closed one, in the main, on the part of the home set. Each naturally had its leaders and ambitions. Of one "Lady Ashley," as the flippants of the day styled Mrs. John J. Crittenden, was one-time queen; again Mrs. Clem Clay, of Alabama, mounted to the box and tooled a society coach that was full loaded with pretty and ancient-named Southern belles.
Of the resident homes remembered across the years are the Freemans, Clem Hills, William T. Carrolls, Countess Ester- hazys, Emorys, Jesups, Aulicks, Gwins, Sliddels, and
" Each one bears a glass, to show me many more!"
Not too eclectic, "Us youth" who frequented the functions of both sets included young and promising army and navy men, many later major-generals and admirals like Captain
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 37
George B. McClellan, Ambrose E. Burnsicb, Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, Fitzhugh Lee, John S. Saunders and such heel-celebrants as Renwick Smedberg and Alan Ram say. Few of these dreamed then that four clicks of Time's watch would see them with stars on their straps, less legs than the average, or a memory gilded with a great deed. Civilians, later famous, were there too: George Eustis, who married philanthropist Corcoran's only child ; William Porcher Miles, the bachelor of the Lower House who designed the first Confederate flag and, better, married the charming Miss Bettie Bierne, and many another, not unloved even when unhonored and unsung. Such were the components of Capital society in the win ter of 1860-61, when dull clouds of doubt and suspense began to press low on the horizon. From East and West and North heavy, grumbling thunder rolled dis tant, but distinct. Through cumuli, black and threat ening, red flashes threatened
an early storm. Washington ^^^HB^^^E*f^0 looked at the skies to the North, paused, hesitated; then went on waltzing and
lobbying again. In society, T- c- DE LEON AND COL- J- s- it whirled around in the german; at the Capitol in Bun combe and jobs; in both, with a speed dizzier than ever before. Still the horizon darkened and a few, timid or shrewd, began to take in sail and peer ahead for a port. Even the more reckless began to look from the horizon
38 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF TEE SIXTIES
to each other's faces with unrest and suspicion.
But two classes seemed ignorant of the signs: the people who came to spend money and the sharper ones who came to make it. The former had grasped at the outer circle, and having secured an insecure grip upon its rim away they went with a fizz and a spin, giddy, delighted, devil may care. The other class held those thousand who annually came to roll logs, pull wires and juggle through bills, in congenial and paying traffic, stuffed with terrapin and washed down with dry champagne. Who shall dive into and write the secrets of that marvelous committee of ways but no means and of its impartial preying upon government and client? This Caliban of governmental spawning was holding a very witches' Sabbath in the closing days of 1860.
On with the rush! Dinners, balls, suppers followed each other as unchecked as John Gilpin. Dress, jewels and equi page cost sums undreamed of heretofore. "This may be the last of it," was the answer unspoken, but acted out to the threat of the coming storm. Madame would not fold away her Worth gown and parure of diamonds, perchance bought with somebody else's money; madamoiselle must make one more exhibit of her velvety shoulders and of killing pace in the german and time for galoshes and umbrellas were com ing fast. It would never do to miss opportunities now, for this might be "the end of the Old Wreck," as slang began to call the capital.
So the mad stream rushed on, and the old wheels, some what rusted, but unoiled, revolved as creakingly as ever. All the while that huge engine, the Lobby, pumped steadily on in the political basement.
Suddenly, a dull silence. A sullen reverberation across the Potomac. The long threatened deed had crystallized into fact. South Carolina had seceded and the first link had been rudely struck from the chain of states.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 39
There was a little start; that was all. As for the Lobby pump, its piston grows white hot and all its valves fly wide open with the work it does.
Presently faces that were never long before lengthened visibly and thoughtful men wagged solemn heads as they passed one another, or paused to take important personages by the buttonhole. More frequent knots and earnest ones now discuss the status in hotel lobbies and the corridors of the departments. Prudent non-partisans with thick slices to butter on either side keep their lips tightly closed, and hot talk, pro or con, sometimes overrides the intended whisper.
At last the sleepy administration opened its eyes. Finding that effort too late, and not liking the looks of things, it shut them again. A little later came windy declarations and some feeble attempts at temporizing; but every sane man knew that the crisis had come and that nothing could avert it.
The earthquake that had so long rumbled in premonitory throes yawned in an ugly chasm that swallowed up the petty differences on both of its sides. North and South were at last openly aligned against each other.
One throb, and the little lines of party were roughly obliter ated, while across the gulf that gaped between them men glared at each other with but one meaning in their eyes.
That solemn mummery, the Peace Congress, might have stayed temporarily the tide it was wholly powerless to dam, but the arch-seceder, Massachusetts, manipulated even that flim-flam of compromise. The weaker elements in that body were no match for the peaceful Puritan whom war might profit but could not injure. Peace was pelted from under her olive with splinters of Plymouth Rock, and New England poured upon the troubled waters oil — of vitriol.
When the Peace Commissioners from the Southern con gress at Montgomery came to Washington all felt their presence only a mockery — however respectable a one, with
40
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
such names as John Forsyth, M. J. Crawford and A. B. Roman. It was another verdict of that fatal "too late!" They came only to demand what the government had then no power to concede, even had the will not been lacking. Every line they wrote to foes and friends was waste of ink, every word they spoke a waste of breath.
Southern senators, representatives and even minor of ficials were leaving their long time seats by every train, families of years' residence were pulling down their household gods and starting on a pilgrimage to set them up — where they knew not, save that it must be in the South. Even old friends looked doubtfully at each other and rumors were rife of incursions across the Po tomac by wild-haired riders from Virginia. Even the fungi of departmental desks seemed suddenly imbued with life, rose and threw away their quills — and with them the very bread for their families— to "go South!" It was the passage out of Egypt in modern dress. A dull, vague unrest brooded over Washington, as though the city lay in the shadow of a great pall or was threatened with a plague. Then, again, when it was too late, General Scott virtually went into the cabinet.
"The General," as' he was familiarly known, practically
COLONEL JOHN FORSYTH
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 41
filled the chair that Jefferson Davis had once held. Saga cious men foresaw no result from this, and all felt that the time had arrived when they must range themselves on one side or the other. The South had spoken and she seemed to mean what she said. All Washington was at last convinced that there might be war, that there must be separation.
Into this dull, leaden suspense, that a breath might lash into a seething maelstrom of passion, suddenly dropped Abraham Lincoln, unexpectedly and alone, in a Scotch cap and a long cloak.
The new president was a man of iron. His coming thus was not the escapade it has been dreamed by some. Far less was it the result of fear for himself. He had played a great game boldly for a great stake, and he was not disposed to risk his winnings, and perhaps his life, on some chance throw of a fanatic or a madman. Could any vague forecast of the doom hovering above him have whispered its half-heard warning : ' ' Prudence ! ' '
Certain it is that he was soon in conference with General Scott and the nominal secretary, -Holt. Then unheard-of precautions were taken to safeguard the inauguration while seemingly devised to heighten its pomp and military glitter.
The night before that inauguration was a trying one to all Washington. The nervous heard a signal for bloody outbreak in every unfamiliar sound; thoughtful ones peered beyond the .mists and saw the boiling of the mad breakers, where the surge of eight incensed and uncontrolled millions hurled against the granite foundations of the established government. Selfish heads tossed upon hot pillows, for the dawn would usher in a change boding ruin to many prospects, monetary or political. Even the butterflies of fashion felt an impending something, not defined, but sug-
42 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
gestive of work instead of pleasure. So Washington arose, red-eyed, unrefreshed, expectant, on that famous fourth of March, 1861.
The ceremonial was planned to be grand and imposing beyond precedent. Visiting militia and civic organizations from every corner of North, East and West had been collect ing for days, meeting loud receptions rather labored than spontaneous. The best bands were present in force and all available cavalry and artillery of the regular army had been hastily mobilized for the double purposes of spectacle and security. Notwithstanding, the public pulse was uncertain and fluttering and the military commanders were like unto it.
All night orderlies and cavalry platoons had dashed through the streets and guard detail had marched to all points of possible danger. Day dawn saw a light battery drawn up on G street, commanding New York avenue and the Treasury; others, with guns unlimbered and ready for action, were stationed at various points of " strategic" Washington, and infantry was massed at the Long Bridge, then the only approach from Virginia. All preparation looked to quick concentration should symptoms of a riot show head. All preparations seemed more fitting for the capital of Mexico than that of these United States. An augury were they for the peace and suasion of the administration thus ushered in. Happily, they were all needless.
In quiet that touched dismalness the day wore away. Studious precaution had drawn all the sweets from the elabo rate feast prepared to catch the national taste. A dull veil seemed drawn over all glamour by the certainties of the close impending future. Street crowds wore an anxious air, all hilarity seeming forced, even from the young and thought less.
Many a lowering face looked down upon the procession to
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 43
the Capitol from windows, balconies and housetops, and some of the residences along the route had shutters closed.
It was over at last. The new man had begun the new era and I was ready for my start to Dixie. South Carolina's secession had decided me to "go with my people."
Not all who did this were really convinced that leaving the Union was surest accomplishment of claims made for states' rights and Southern rights, under the Constitution. Few of them, however, regarded the time-honored federation as "the Old Wreck," as named by the hotheads and thought less. Yet almost every man of Southern birth — even when reared and educated away from his state, as I had been — felt a tug of sympathy and brotherhood at his heart-strings that was resistless by reason or experience. If these two moved him mentally, morally, it still was: "Right or wrong, my country!"
I had waited to leave for days, despite curiosity to see the end of the familiar old regime and the advent of the new man, under i equest from the Peace Commission that I should carry to Mr. Davis, at Montgomery, their report of the inaugura tion and its effect. Their despatch was to be ready for the Aquia Creek mail boat that night. So I went to dinner at Wormley's, with Wade Hampton, Jr., and a few others, to say at least au revoir and to pick up the last news and gossip for verbal despatch to the new " capital."
"Jim," as we then called that later imposing mulatto who became the famous war-time caterer, had promised us a dinner to remember en route, and a substantial lunch to solidify memory. Toward the end of the former, Wormley looked in with a face unusually grave and asked:
"Really going, gents? It's all jes' awful, an' no mistake! The General's dining in the other room now an' he looks worrit in his mind. He don't talk as usual, but he eats, does 'the General' — he eats powerful!" Those
44
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
who remember General Scott will see the snap shot. Soon we were in one of the night-liner hacks of the period; whose dusky Jehus knew Washington youth better than the directory. Jim bestowed the precious lunch tenderly upon the front seat and held the rickety cab door wide
with the air of the Lord of the Ante-chamber. Several • of the old set ran out for fare wells, among them, of course, the three remaining members of what gay society knew as "the quartet," Renwick Smedberg, Frank Du Barry and Walter H. S. Taylor. The last was killed by a sharp shooter while on engineer duty on the north side of the Potomac. Du Barry was buried at sea, in his gray uniform, as I may tell later,
ftn(J « Qld Smcd " IS nOW a
one-legged, bald old jollity of San Francisco, with a new generation or two around his board, and his bluecoat com rades giving him their highest honors in Legion and G.A.R.
"So you're really going? Sorry, but guess you had to!" "Never mind, old man, you'll be back in three months !" "Better not try it; you'll starve down there!" "Hope we won't meet, if it comes to a pinch, old boy!" were a few of the Parthian arrows flung at us as obbligato to cordial hand grip.
Then we were off. The wide level of the avenue was al most deserted under the dismal drizzle that had set in. The dim lamps of that day reflected on the wet pavement, making the gloom more dim. The inauguration ball was about to begin and a 'bus passed us, gay with the red uniforms of the
COLONEL W. B. SMEDBERG, U. 8. A.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 45
Marine Band, under Louis Weber. Were we going where a sudden turn might bring us face to face with old and dear friends, where the hiss of the Minie would sing accompani ment instead of the latest galop that Louis had composed?
Beyond, a U. S. light battery was wending arsenalward at slow trot. As our hack passed a better lighted corner its officer drew rein to speak. He was Lieutenant John S. Saunders, who had led the section at the Treasury corner that day. He spoke anything but cheerily:
"So you fellows are off! Wish I were you. But today settled it, and my resignation goes in tonight. I shan't wait for Virginia. If I have to shoot at Americans, I'll do it from the other side of the Potomac! Tell the boys down there ril be along soon. Good luck!"
He was down soon and did good enough work to embroider two stars on his red collar. From him we verified the reports that had already oozed through war office secrecy: that the cannon in the day's pageant of Peace had been shotted with canister; that the foot escort of the president, going to take his oath of office, had ball cartridge in every musket; that detectives in citizens' clothes were in every group on the pavements.
Merely needed precautions? Possibly. But so far, there had been not one overt act; the government was treating still with the "new concern" at Montgomery; the peace commissioners were still wasting breath at Washington.
CHAPTER IV
A NEW NATION'S NURSERY
THE passage through Virginia was by night. The state was apparently in deep sleep and so she remained until that memorable seventeenth of April when her convention de clared that the oldest, largest and most influential of the Southern sisterhood would cast her lot with the rest.
In the Carolinas and Georgia the hubbub began with the dawn and lasted continuously until our journey's end. The entire countryside was awake. At every station were aimless crowds, chewing tobacco, lounging in the sunshine and whit tling sticks; some dull and listless, others wildly excited over some cause they did not understand. All wanted the latest news, and all were seemingly settled on one point: "Ther'll be wah, sholy!"
Plan, direction or information as to cause and conditions, there seemed to be none. That was all left to the leaders who carried the states out of the Union, and the limit of public knowledge seemed to be that something was about to happen.
The impression left was that the South was ready to fight, also that she was unprepared for it. This was ray conclusion long before reaching the " Cradle of the Confederacy," as the Alabama capital had modestly rebaptized herself, and early information there more than confirmed it.
Though severed abruptly from her hope of becoming a Rome, the " Cradle" has a picturesque perch upon at least
46
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES
47
seven hills. As in most inland towns, "Main street/' the artery of trade and activity, runs from river bluff "up town." This, in the present instance, is a high hill a full mile from the water. Here perched the Capitol, not a particularly imposing pile, either in size or architecture, yet it dominates tHe lesser structures as it stares down the sandy street with quite a Roman rigor.
The staff upon its dome bore the flag of the New Nation, run up there shortly after the congress met, by the hands of a noted daughter of Virginia. Miss Letitia Tyler was not only a representative of proud Old Dominion blood, but was also granddaughter of an ex-president of the United States, whose eldest son, Robert Tyler, lived at the new capi tal. And that flag had been designed by Hon. Wil liam Porcher Miles, one of the brainiest of the younger statesmen of South Caro lina.
All Montgomery and her ' crowding visitors had flocked to Capitol Hill in gala attire, bells were rung and cannon boomed and the throng, head ed by Jefferson Davis and all members of the government, stood bareheaded as the fair Virginian loosed its folds to the breeze. Then a poet- priest, who later added the sword to the crozier, spoke a sol emn benediction to the people, the cause and the flag. The shout that answered him from every throat told that they meant to honor and to strive for it; if need come, to die for it.
Equidistant between river and Capitol and from each other
JEFFER60N DAVIS
48 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
stood the two hotels of which the capital could boast. Montgomery Hall, of bitter memory and like the much-sung " Raven of Zurich/' noted for uncleanliness of nest and length of bill, had been the resort of country merchants, horse and cattle men, but now the Solons of the hour dwelt therein with the possible heroes of many a field. The Exchange, with rather more pretension and decidedly more comfort, was then in the hands of a Northern firm. Political and military headquarters were there. The president and the cabinet resided there.
Montgomery seemed Washington over again, but on a smaller scale, and with the avidity and agility in pursuit of the spoils somewhat enhanced by freshness of scent.
Mr. Davis and his family would enter the long dining- room and take seats with only a stare of respectful curiosity from more recent arrivals. Even in the few weeks since I had seen him in Washington a great change had come over him. He looked worn and thinner, and the set expression on his somewhat stern face gave a grim hardness not natural to it.
On the night of my arrival, after an absent but not dis courteous recognition of the general's salutation, he sat down to an untouched supper and was at once absorbed in conversation with General Samuel Cooper. This veteran had recently resigned the adjutant-generalship of the United States army and accepted a similar post and a brigadier's commission from the Confederacy.
A card to announce my presence brought an after-dinner interview with the president, to present the "very important documents" from one of the Peace Commission martyrs at Washington. They proved, seemingly, only a prolix report of the inauguration. Mr. Davis soon threw them aside to hear my verbal account; cross-examining me upon each minor detail of the effect of the show upon the populace.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 49
He seemed especially interested in Mr. Lincoln's personal portrait and repeatedly asked if he showed any anxiety or uneasiness.
At this time the Southern chief was fifty-two years old, seemingly taller than he really was by reason of his thinness now worn to almost emaciation by mental arid physical strain. The thin lips had a straight er line and a closer com pression, the lower jaw, always firm and prominent in slope, set harder to its fellow. He had lost the sight of one eye many months previous, though that member scarcely showed the imperfection; but in the other burned a deep, steady glow. In conversation he had the habit of listening with eyes shaded by the lids, then suddenly shooting at the speaker a gleam from the stone-gray pupil which might have read his inner most thought.
Little form or ceremony hedged the incubating govern ment and perfect simplicity marked every detail of its head. To all Mr. Davis's manner was unvarying in its quiet courtesy, drawing out all one had to tell and indicating by brief answer or criticism that he had extracted the pith from what was said. At that moment he was a very idol with the people; the grand embodiment of their grand cause. They were ready to applaud any move he might make. This was the morning; how the evening differed from it we shall see.
Closer acquaintance with the new capital impressed one still more with its likeness to Washington toward the close of a short session. Many features of that likeness were salient ones that had marred and debased the aspect of the older city. Endless posts of profit and honor were to be filled, and for each and every one was a rush of almost rabid claim- mants. The skeleton of the regular army had just been articulated by congress, but its bare bones would soon have reached hyper-Falstaffian proportions had one in every score of ardent aspirants been applied as muscle and matter.
50 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
The first " Gazette" was watched with straining eyes, but naturally left aching hearts ; and disappointment here first sowed the dragon's teeth that were to spring into armed op ponents of the unappreciative appointing power.
The entire nation was new. Everything had to be done, and who so capable — they being the referees— as that swarm of worn out lobbyists and " subterraneans " who, having thoroughly exploited "the Old Wreck," now gathered to gorge upon the new " concern." By the hundreds flocked in those unclean birds, blinking bleared eyes at any chance bit, whetting foul bills to peck at carrion from the depart mental sewer.
Nightly the corridor of the Exchange Hotel was a pande monium ; its every flagstone a rostrum. Slowness of organiza tion, the weakness of congress, secession of the border states personnel of the cabinet, and especially the latest army appointments, were canvassed with heat, equalled only by ignorance. Most incomprehensible of all was the diametric opposition of men from the same neighborhoods, in their views of any subject. Often this would be a vital one of policy or of doctrine, yet these neighbors would quarrel more bitterly than would men from opposite borders of the con federation.
Two ideas, however, seemed to pervade all classes. One was that keystone dogma of secession, " Cotton is king," the other that the war — did one come — could not last over three months. The man who ventured dissent from either idea, back it by what logic he might, was looked upon as an idiot if his disloyalty was not broadly hinted at.
I could comprehend these beliefs in the local mind of the South; but that the citizens of the world now congregated at Montgomery should hold them, puzzled those who paused to query if they really meant what they said.
Socially, as removed from this seething influx, Mont-
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 51
gomery was a delightful city. Her leading families were those cotton planters and merchants, a few capitalists, and many noted professional men and a large class of railroad and steamboat managers. There was a trifle too much superiority in quarters directly connected with the state government; but that was now merged in the larger idea of nursing the national one. There had ever been much culture, more hospitality and still more ambition, both social and civic. Still, there was very much lacking of what the world ling expects of a metropolis. So it was natural that the choice as a capital should turn the whole social system somewhat topsy turvy. At the same time and possibly as a sort of escape valve for new sen sations, the townspeople grumbled loudly and long. But the society proper plumed itself afresh and put on its best smile to greet the select of the newly ar rived.
Very notable in Alabama history is the Goldthwaite family. Miss Anne, daugh ter of Judge George Gold thwaite, was one of Montgomery's most brilliant MRS EMMET SIEBELS
women. She married Em- (ANNE GOLDTHWAITE)
met Siebels, of the South Carolina line, and is still a sprightly and vivacious woman. Her sister Mary married Judge Tom Arlington. Mrs. Charles B. Ball was the beautiful Mary Siebels, what the advance of today has called "a raging, howling belle." The fresh, frank and fun-loving girls of the young set were
52 RKLLE8, BKAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
certainly creatures of beauty. They were well educated, too, those inland and rather unripe belles of the early '60's, whether home taught or from Hamner Hill. There was a spontaneity
about them that was re freshing to the taste satiated with conventionality.
Reversing Time's opera- glass upon that memory etching, many an old fellow still recalls "the girl I left behind me," at the first capital, and many another recollection survived the so ciety campaigns of Rich mond, Charleston and the West. The "Ida Rice" co- lumbiad spoke for one Montgomery beauty to the ironclads in Charleston har-
MRS. JOS. HODGSON (FLORENCE HOLT) i 11 111
bor; gallant and reckless
Ciilhoun Smith of Charleston, having so christened the gun after the well-remembered beauty who later married Henry Bethea. In a snow-thatched shebang at Munson's Hill 1 heard reminder that the war gave no more lovely a bride than when Miss Knoxie Buford wore orange blossoms for Frank Lynch, of the famed old naval stock. When Miss Alice Vivian came down from her country home she queened it with the triple royalty of Venus, Juno and Minerva. Later she married (leneral Quarles, whose social record proved him a judge of beauty. Who does not recall the hand some and vivacious Holt sisters? Miss Florence, as Mrs. Joseph Hodgson, is now one of the most popular of Mobile matrons whose equally popular daughter has just become Mrs. Julian Walters, of that city. Mrs. L. C. Jurey, of New
BKLLR8, HKAUX ANJ) BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 511
Orleans, was Miss Mary Holt and her daughter is Mrs. Richard Weight/man, so sought in the cultured circle of Washington. Miss Laura married William R. Pickett, grandson of the famed historian, and was as young, almost, at Miss Hodg son's wedding as her granddaughter, who was maid of honor, "pretty Florence" Davidson. Miss Kliza W. Pickett married Major Edwin A. Hanks, and her daughter May married Frank H. ("lark, of Mobile. Their children are now rising in the affairs and the "cloth" of their state. Mary (lindral Piekett married Samuel S. Harris, later bishop of Michigan; her sister Martha married Major Mike L. Woods, the veteran writer and scholar of Montgomery. Corinne Pickett became Mrs. Kd- ward Randolph, and Sallie, known to war bclleship as "Tookic," married Carter Randolph.
Tradition tells the wide difference wrought by war, in these two Randolph wed dings. At the first, the feminine interest was largely subordinated by the men. The war and its heroes were fresh and the uniforms were new. At the second cere monial, the interior South was literally stripped of men at all suggestive of that name. At the church, attendants, ushers uiul .'ill worn girls; MUM ,, A ,,ANKM (1,,,1/A ,,,„,,,, the groom and the aged
father of the bride being the only males present, save; the officiating priest.
A very popular girl of those days, Miss Rebecca Hails, married " Vinee" Ulmore; and Miss Mary Klmore became
54 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Mrs. Warren Reese. Then there was Miss Laura Snodgrass, later Mrs. Spencer C. Marks. The Snodgrass sisters were great belles and beauties, as any old vet of today will testify. Miss Mary married William D. Tullis, of New Orleans. Miss Clara Pollard, daughter of the railroad magnate, became
Mrs. William R. C. Cocke, her sister, Bettie, marrying Dr. Paul Lee.
And the rest? Alas! This list is not Leporello's.
She of the hundred tongues has used them all too freely in reporting the wild dissipations of Mont- jjsT" gomery in the nursery
/ days. Drinking there was
general and sometimes deep, but somehow the constant excitement of the new life proved antidote for its j bane. I recall the rare
MRS. S.C.MARKS (LAURA SNODGRASS) CaS6S When the ^bit PK)-
duced any blameworthy con duct. The stories of gambling, however, are almost wholly groundless. All the South, and especially her westerly section, has been credited with love of reckless risks on the turf and at the card table. Yet we never gambled to the million limit, un til our Northern brethren set the example, though we did play rather recklessly. I am quite ready to admit that any man who loses a five, by too much confidence in the virtue of three queens, is a gambler and should be haled from his club and punished by law — moral and statute. I know, too, that the other fellow, who wins three millions on the rise of cotton which was never planted, or pork which was never pigged, is
BELLES, BEAUX AND BKAINS OF THE SIXTIES 55
a Christian gentleman, and should have his deserved and well won villa, wife and automobile.
These Southern scamps in the Ws gambled as they fought, man to man, and with what they had in their hands. I fear I must admit that they did it often and recklessly. But that they gambled constantly at Montgomery is not founded on fact. I speak ex cathedra. I was there and chanced to be thrown in with the fastest of the fast set. There was, as I say, much drinking and much jockeying for place and favor, but the constant activity of the brain, the sus pense, the keen contest and watch upon the foe crowding down to border and port, left no room for the real gambler. It was different at Richmond, with her larger and more mixed population, but whatever their other sins, the suckling paladins and statesmen at "the Nursery" had higher stakes to play for than those they found about the green cloth.
It was easy to distinguish the politician-by-trade from the rosy and uncomfortable novices. Secession was supposed to have been the result of aggressions and corruptions, which most of these legislators would have been utterly powerless to prevent, even had they not been active participants in them. Yet wornout politicians, who had years before been promoted from servants to " sovereigns, " floated high upon the present surge and rank old Washington leaven threatened to per meate every pore of the new government.
Small wonder, then, that the action of such a congress was inadequate to the crisis.
If the time demanded anything, it was the prompt organ ization of an army, with an immediate basis of foreign credit to arm, equip and clothe it. Next to this was urgent need for a simple and readily managed machinery in the different de partments of the government. Neither of these desiderata could be secured by their few earnest promoters, from those with whom the popular will of the new nation, or the want of
56 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
that, had diluted her councils. Few indeed of the congress men dared look the realities of the issue in the face and that minority was powerless to accomplish anything practical.
This was the Provisional Government, framed closely on the Washington model, with Jefferson Davis as President, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President, and this Cabinet: Secretary of State, Robert Toombs, of Georgia; Leroy Pope Walker of War; S. R. Mallory, of Florida, of the Navy; Charles G. Memminger, of South Carolina, of the Treasury; Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, Attorney-General; John H. Reagan, of Texas, Postmaster-General. The public seemed content with the selections, in the main. The post- office and the department of justice looked to them nearly as useful as the state portfolio, at that junction; but to the war office every eye was turned and glanced askance at the man there. General Leroy Pope Walker was not widely known outside of Alabama, but those who did know him prophesied that he would soon stagger under the responsi bilities that would weigh upon him in the event of war. Many declared that he was only a man of straw, set up by Mr. Davis simply that he might exercise his own well-known love for military matters.
Want of public trust in this vital branch was not strength ened by Mr. Walker's speech after the raising of the new flag. From the balcony of the Exchange Hotel I heard him pledge the excited crowd that he would raise it over "Faneuil Hall in the city of Boston!''
Such, briefly touched upon, were conditions at Mont gomery when in early April, 1861, Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, wired that the Washington government had telegraphed the decision to resupply Fort Sumter " Peaceably if we can — forcibly, if we must!"
Deep and intense excitement held Montgomery in its grasp during those succeeding" days, when news came that Beau-
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
57
regard had fired on the fort, on April 12. Business was sus pended, all stores were closed and the people collected in groups in the streets and before the newspaper and govern ment offices. Various and strange were the specula tions as to the issue of the fight and its consequences; but the conviction came like a thunder clap, even to those most skeptical, that there was to be war!
Then, with rapid step, action distanced suspense. The swift following fall of Sumter solidified the South into a nation. Then came the adhesion of Virginia, the decision to accept her invi tation to make her soil the battle ground and her capital the South's.
There was a grand parade and review of all the troops at Pensacola, by the President, aided by Generals Bragg and Beauregard. It left the country guessing as to which of the two would be commander-in-chief .
Immediately after it Mr. Davis moved his headquarters to Richmond: the government was boxed up and followed him, and the nursery of the New Nation was noiselessly de serted by its now growing occupant.
GENERAL P. G. T. BEAUREGARD
CHAPTER V
. THE FIRST "ON TO RICHMOND!"
THE new capital of the Confederacy presented a very different appearance from Montgomery. The approach to the city of new hope was promising in its picturesqueness.
Threading the narrow span of high trestles, perched spin dle-legged above the James, Richmond spread in pretty panorama. Green and tree- bordered, the May sun gild ing white homes and tall spires, it receded to high red hills beyond the later famous heights of Chimborazo to the right and that historic City of the Silent, Hollywood,
far away to left. Central gleamed the venerable seat of lawmaking.
Where looms the Capitol, antique and pure,
The great "First Rebel" points the storied past. Around him grouped Virginia's great of yore,
With Ston&waWs statue, greatest and the last — had not then slipped from my pen. The statue of John Marshall, long delayed and missed, had not been placed to inspire Randolph's quaintly vigorous lines, beginning:
58
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 59
" We're glad to see you, John Marshall, my boy, Along with the other old codgers"
Social Richmond was desiccated Virginia selectness, and only enforced acceptance of the war incursion could have rubbed the down from the peach. But for that, the lovely " village on the Jeems" had been of far slower growth into the cosmopolitan city of today.
At that day family first, with the concomitants of polish, education and "manner," were the sole "open sesame" to which the doors of the good old city would swing wide.
The learned professions were about the sole exceptions. "Law, physic, the church," and, as heretofore seen, the last especially, were permitted to condone the "new families."
Trade, progressive spirit and self-made personality were excluded from the plane of the elect, as though germiniferous. The "sacred soil" and the sacred social circle were paralleled in the minds of their possessors.
As his first introduction has shown, the Virginian of yester day, particularly when he boasted high colonial descent, was still the nearest counterpart to the landed gentry of the motherland of any American soever. He combined many noble traits with the same old pride that so dominated them all.
In the country districts habit and condescension often overrode class barriers, but in the city, where class some times jostled privilege, the line of demarcation was so strongly drawn that its overstepping was dangerous.
When the news came that patriotism dictated the aban donment of inland Montgomery for border Richmond, a surprise that was not all pleasurable thrilled to the finger-tips of Richmond society. Its exponents felt much as the Ro man patricians might have felt at impending advent of the leading families of the Goths. Her sacred fanes might pos-
GO BELLES, BE AUK AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
sibly be desecrated by profane touch, her Vestal Virgins viewed by vulgar eyes.
At first blush of the new invasion it is assumable that older Richmond was ready to bolt the front door and lock the shut ters. Younger Richmond perhaps was curious enough to peep between them. But the Commonwealth was heart and soul in the cause and the newcomers were of it. So, grad ually, the first repulsion grew to sufferance, then that gave place to cordiality. There was still a lingering reserve in some quarters and a sense of an undefined something that might happen at any moment. But on the surface were urbanity and ease that are innate to the better Virginian. This was vindicated in most instances by the real worth and, frequently, the high grade of the social leaders of the influx.
It must be recalled that the very best elements of the old South began the war and went first to the front. In the army and, in degree, in every branch of the government were men of birth and breeding, women of culture, grace and so cial prestige. These soon segregated themselves from the dross of the incoming tide, and to them the jealous doors swung on spontaneous hinges. Later a common cause, common ambition and common sorrow drew all classes into a sympathy and contact that showed the best in each and all.
In the coarse butternut of the private soldier moved men of lineage as high, of attainment as fine, of social habit as elegant, as that under society's behest. Officer and man met on terms of perfect equality, off duty. The private of today might be the general of tomorrow, and the younger leaders in Richmond realized the fact, and early learned to judge their new beaux rather for themselves than for their rank marks.
All Virginia had long been noted throughout the South for a hospitality equal to her pride and for its lavish expression: and Richmond was concentrated Virginia.
This went out to all, -only slightly differentiating, perhaps,
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
61
those veritable corps d' elites from distant states: as the Louisianians.
These picked companies of peace comprised the "dearest and the best/7 the very flower of the highbred, or wealthy youth. Company F of Richmond, was one example, the Mobile Cadets another, in which many a man had refused proffered commission to "stay with the fellows," until merit and the demands of the service literally forced him upward. For such men as these the brightest eyes in all the land grew brighter, but Louisiana held her own.
In these early days of the war no section of the South had yet felt the strain upon its resources, and the entertain ments at the new capital of the Confederacy were as ele gant and as lavish as ever before. Later the gradual pressure upon pocket, as well as upon brain and heart, told first on the leaguered capital, but that wore away only the surface, leaving the social gold with all its pris tine polish. Even when the " starvation parties" had re placed the lavish balls of gone yesterdays, as courtly nothings were spoken, and as cordial healths pledged in the substituted green tum bler of yellow "Jeems" river water, as had ever bub bled on the lip with congenial champagne. For these indeed were descendants of the Golden Horseshoe Knights; of the Huguenots of the Carolinas; of the Bienville-led Creoles; often of the oriole-crested followers of
CAPTAIN I. L. LYONS, 10TH LA. REG'T.
62 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Lord Baltimore. And they proved in later days -
" The kindliest of the kindly band Who rarely hated ease'"
Later, when the crucial test had come, they proved them selves
" Those sons of noble sires, Whose foes had found enchanted ground But not one knight asleep!"
And the fair women whom they toasted, fought for and loved proved themselves worthy of all three. So, while the fortunes and the larders lasted, the entertainments in Rich mond were generous; when the direst constriction of the blockade crushed, the elegance remained, over the crust and the yellow water.
The thought of no habitue of Richmond society of that day can recur to it without being peopled with bright memories of men and women, since famous in the history and society of the Union. Whatever his tastes, business shadowed or pleasure tinted, they doubtless bear borrowed coloring from an era of storm and stress that left its impress deep on all natures, at a moment when most receptive by absorption in a common effort to one great end. The fate of a nation hung in the balance, but the hearts of its integers were hopeful, buoyant and sometimes giddy.
Dinners, dances, receptions and constant visiting followed the earlier arrival of the new government and its Joseph- coated following. There were drives and picnics for the young and, for aught I know to the contrary, much flirtation. The dizzy whirled in recurrent germans, and the buzz of the society bee was heard by the pinkest-tinted ears.
But besides the regular society routine at the capital, much like that in many another city, there was other so ciality, quieter, but nowise less attractive to the incoming.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 63
There were sewing circles, at which the assistants enjoyed the talk of brainy and refined women and cultured men; there music, improvisation and even dancing filled intervals of busy work.
As Dickens made his Madame Defarge "knit shrouds," before the greedy knife of the Terror, the sewing circles of Richmond stitched love and hope and sentiment into the rough seams and hems of nondescript garments they sent to the camps by bales. No lint was scraped for wounds to come that was not saturated with pity and tenderness; and the amateur cooks kneaded their hearts into the short piecrust and not always heavy biscuits for " those dear boys."
There were many, and some really excellent ama teur concerts, charades and tableaux, by the most mod est and sometimes most ambitious amateurs, all for the same good end. And through all of them passed the procession of stately forms and bright faces. On the joggling board of im provised stage, voices that had rung sonorous in the van of battle lisped the sug- r ared nothings of society comedy to Chloes, who later GENERAL FITZ LEE
gave the key to society in (IN 1863)
many a post-bellum city. Comic recitations were made by men who have since held listening senates, and verses were penned by women who have now impressed their names on the literature of a time.
Most of this was naturally in the entr'acte of war's red
64 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
drama, in the days of winter's enforced truce, from roads belt-deep in mire or frozen impassable. There were nights when hard-riding Fitz Lee was pressed to pose in a tableaux, or dashing " Jeb" Stuart took minor part in a small comedy, to brighten the eyes nearest but not the dearest, for that cause alone.
Of course the storm center of general society was about the presidential household and its actions.
In that dwelling the most weighty and eventful matters of the government had birth and were matured, and there the tireless worker, to himself the Confederacy incarnate, devoted all the days and most of the midnights, planning, considering, changing. The executive officers were else where, but at that day Mr. Davis carried the government in his own brain, and that never slept.
His wildest admirer has never claimed that Jefferson Davis was a saint; his vilest vituperator has never proved him a devil. History shows no man who has faced such fierce and sweeping blasts of indictment, calumny and malice and so long stood erect: a mark inviting scrutiny, but not shrinking beneath it. It is simple truth that his name is today mentioned with respect, or praise, in the capital of every civilized country on the globe, save one, and there the cause of silence or of old-time iteration is more political than judical.
I am not planting seed for the future Macaulay, but it may be noted here that this absolute self-reliance was one cause of failure; he failed because he could not make the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. The non sequitur is often more logical than the epigram. When Sir Boyle Roche said: "No man can be in two places at once, barrin' he's a bird!" he was probably ignorant that he was double-barreled- talking nonsense and philosophy. He did not know that he was laying down a rule of procedure which, persistently
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 65
deviated from, must result in disaster. That disaster fol lowed was not Mr. Davis's fault. In an article of the North American Review, a dozen years ago, I showed that he was not only the president, but that he shouldered the respon sibility for every member of his cabinet. He was the head almost of every distinct bureau, in each department of the government.
A tremendous national convulsion demanded that the executive should plan, distribute and order done the work in the various departments. Mr. Davis did this. He did not stop there; he attempted to do the work.
But it was not on governmental grounds that social Rich mond felt uneasy as to the Davis family in these early days. There was no tinge of personality toward the inmates of the White House; only a nervousness as to that nebulous dweller on the threshold of legislative necessity. There was an undefined dread that the official head would be followed by a nameless, yet most distasteful, surrounding of politics and place seekers.
CHAPTER VI
WHITE HOUSE FOLK
FORTUNATELY, it chanced that Mrs. Varina Howell Davis was a woman of too much sound sense, tact and experience in great social affairs not to smile to herself at this rather
provincial iciness.
She put her native wit and all her fund of diplomatic resource to work; social cold storage rapidly raised its tem perature and soon all about the Executive Mansion was broad sunshine, in which even the ultra exclusives early be gan to uncoil.
In her proper person, and not as the president's wife, Mrs. Davis was at home — in formally and to everybody who chose to call — on all even ings of the week. On these occasions only tea and talk were proffered to her guests ; but the latter seemed to evolve a finer aroma than the former, even before the blockade proclaimed its "substitute law."
It was her husband's invariable custom to give one hour of each day to unbending from the strain of public duty in the midst of his family circle. At these informal evenings
v
MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 67
the early caller was almost sure to meet the man of the hour; to shake his courteously proffered hand; to hear the voice upon the vibrations of which hung the fate of The Cause.
State dinners, save in very rare necessities as in case of some important foreign visitors, were not given, and the only other function was the fortnightly levee, after the Washington model. To these flocked "the world and his wife," in what holiday attire they possessed, in the earlier days marked by the dainty toilettes of really elegant women, the butternut of the private soldier, and the stars and yellow sashes of many a general, already world-famous.
The levee was social jambalaya, but it was also novelty. It proved appetizing enough to tickle the dieted palate of Richmond's exclusiveness.
Besides their novelty, these levees had their uses as an amalgamating medium, a social 'Change whereon the pro vincial bear met the city bull, nor found him deadly of horn. Most of all, they proved the ease with which the wife of the president of the Confederacy could hold her title of "The First Lady in the Land." She was politician and diplo matist in one, where necessity demanded, but long personal knowledge of her had already convinced the writer that Varina Howell Davis preferred the straight road to the tor tuous bypath. She was naturally a frank though not a. blunt woman, and her bent was to kindliness and charity. Sharp tongue she had, when set that way and the need came to use it ; and her wide knowledge of people and things some times made that use dangerous to offenders. Mrs. Davis had a sense of humor painfully acute, and the unfitness of things provoked laughter with her rather than rage. That the silly tales of her sowing dissension in the cabinet and being behind the too frequent changes in the heads of the government are false, there seems small reason to doubt.
Surely, in social matters she moved steadily and not slowly,
68
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
from at least coolness to the warm friendship of the best women of conservative Richmond and to the respect and admiration of all.
The Kemp-Howell family was of British stock: Scotch, Irish, English, Welch and Quaker in descent. Mrs. Davis's
father was William Burr Howell, a native of Trenton, N. J. He was son of Gov ernor Richard Howell of that state; an ex-naval officer who had distinguished him self in the War of 1812.
Mrs. Davis's mother was Margaret Louise Kemp, a Vir ginian, born on her father's broad acres, over which the decisive charges of Bull Run were later made. The grand father Kemp was a Dublin Irishman of means, a gradu ate of Trinity College and a close friend of Robert Emmett. This brought him into polit ical trouble and he was banished for alleged treason that seems never to have passed the stage of intent. The refugee sat down in Virginia, farming near Manassas, but later removing to Natchez, Miss., after a duel with a Virginian, which was fatal to the latter; although, at that day and date, such trivialities were merely post and not propter hoc. Margaret Louise Kemp was a small child, at the date of this migration. Later, the New Jersey Howell, touring in the South, met and won her, and himself became a Mississippian.
This pair became the parents of six children, all rioted in the Ws. 'These were Varina, later Mrs. Davis; Margaret
MRS. M. DE W. STOESS (MARGARET HOWELL)
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 69
Graham Howell, Jane Kemp Howell, and three brothers, Beckett, William Francis and Jefferson Davis Howell.
The third sister married William G. Waller, of Lynchburg, during the war, at St. Paul's Church, Richmond. She left a son and a daughter; the former dead, but the latter, Miss Elizabeth Tyler Waller, still residing in Savannah, Ga. Of the brothers, only one married. William Francis wedded the daughter of Rev. Dr. Leacock of Christ Church, New Orleans. This couple left three daughters, still living in the Cresent City, and two now married. These were the " little Howell girls/' sometimes confounded in errant chronicle with Miss Maggie Howell and her sister, Jane Kemp, who was not very much in Richmond.
With Mrs. Davis, in matters social, moved her sister. Miss Margaret Howell was scarcely more than a debutante, but her adaptability replaced experience and she knew human nature by what surgery calls "the first intention." Her sense of humor was quite as keen and even more dominant than her elder's. Less restrained, she bubbled into ban mot and epigram that went from court to camp. Sometimes these were caustic enough to sting momentarily, but their aptitude and humor salved the prick of their point. It was stated that her comment did more to calm the tumult of " Pawnee Sunday" than all else. I am not posing as Miss Maggie Howell's Boswell, even in recalling the pleasant hours when we were "out together"; but the memory of all Richmond would indorse her naming as quite the most original and one of the most brilliant women in that bright and unique society. I recall that mention of her sallies one evening at Gustavus Myers's dinner table caused Mr. Benjamin to remark:
"Were this yesterday and did we live in Paris, she would be adeStael!"
The young lady will be met again in these pages, and probably with the same spice of pleasure she gave in sudden
70
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
rencontres in those days. That she will do this unwittingly is proved by her recent epigrammatic statement to the writer: "Had I known that my biscuits would be vended in public, — - -^ I should have kept my yeast
in the pantry!"
Miss HowelFs friends of yore will read with pleasure that she is still living. After the war she went abroad and married, in England, the Chev alier Charles William de Wechmar Stoess, then Bava rian consul at Liverpool. Her husband died some years ago, leaving her with a son and daughter nearly grown. These are the whole of life to the widow and the trio made one of the happiest and most united families in Victoria, B. C. For a time they lived in Spokane, after Mr. Stoess' death. The son, Philip, is a mining engineer in Seattle, and his sister, Christine, paints well, and plays the violin.
Apart from distinction of parentage the little children of the White House had individuality of their own which made them notable to its habitues. They were three only when the move from Montgomery was made. One was killed in Richmond, and two others, the " Children of the Confederacy," were born at the new capital.
Mr. Davis, as noted, had been married twice. The second marriage was childless for years. Then, just as the father was called to the secretaryship of war by President Pierce, a son was born. Samuel Emory Davis survived but three years. He died in 1854!
CHEVALIER C. DE W. STOESS
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES
71
A daughter came next, Margaret Howell Davis, named for her grandmother, and now the sole survivor of the family of six.
Jefferson Davis, Jr., was born in Jaunary, 1858, being the only son who reached adult age. He died of yellow fever at Memphis, in 1878, when within three months of his ma jority.
Joseph Evan Davis, the next son, was born in April, 1859, His was the tragedy that shadowed the White House beyond all else that brought sorrow through its portals. This second boy, gentle and lovable, fell from the balusters into the back court of the home and was almost instantly killed. The heart of a whole people went out to the stricken parents, and the sorrowing sympathy of Richmond was as real as universal; the little people had become familiar pets. But, as in the case of the first-born, the emp- — ^
ty cradle was filled.
William Howell Davis was born in the White House in the first year of its occu pancy. But three years old when his elder brother was killed, he lived to reach nearer to manhood than any of the boys save Jeff. He had perhaps the gentlest ways of any of the children; and they centered in him, as he gained in years, the love of mother and sisters that was beyond words. But JEFFERSON DAVIS, JR.
"BillieV death was almost as sudden as Joe's had been years before. He was seized with diphtheria at Nat chez and died there in October, 1874. He was the
72
BELLES, BEAUX AND tiKAINS OF THE SIXTIES
elder of the " Children of the Confederacy." The cradle of lit tle Joe had been filled by the other and more widely known one. "Winnie" (Varina Anne) Davis was born on the 27th of
June, 1864, and her coming was accepted by the hopeful as a bright augury amid the gloom that shadowed her father's fortunes. Too famil iar to the later generation to demand word of descrip tion, "The Daughter of the Confederacy," formally so named and adopted by the united camps of the Veterans, ended her promising career by sudden illness at Narragansett Pier, September 18, 1898.
In their latest trial it was not the heart of a section, but of a re-united nation, that went out to the aged widow and the stricken sister. Time had softened war-born asperities, and only the weakest and most brutal cherished the misbegotten falsities they bred. Men who had howled to "Hang Jeff Davis!" through the North had mellowed under second thought. It was genuine and heart-born warmth from every quarter that met the bereaved.
Again Time has worked his miracle. Today "Winnie" Davis lives again in the universal love of the South and the tender respect of the North.
She, like her brothers, had inherent traits, and strong ones. In her they had longer to develop into visible result. But the little fellows showed them early, and in "Billie" they were of sweet and tender promise. In Jeff they took ex-
'WINNIE77 DAVIS
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 73
pression and told strong truths at an age when those of most children are dumb.
Early in her Richmond life Mrs. Davis selected as teacher for her children the eldest of the daughters of Judge Raleigh T. Daniel, Misses Augusta, Lizzie and Charlotte. Highly educated and of studious bent, yet genial and popular socially, this lady became as devoted to her charge as she was fitted for it. After the lapse of years her memory of the Davis house hold, great and small, is as reminiscent as it is loyal and tender.
Margaret Howell Davis was her grandmother's namesake. She was more like her father than her mother.
In 1876 " Little Maggie," married Joel Addison Hayes, now of Colorado Springs. There she is refusing to grow old, al though surrounded by a grown family and grandchildren.
The eldest son, named for his grandfather, died in infancy. Varina Howell Davis Hayes is now the wife of Dr. Gerald Bertram Webb. The second daughter, Lucy White, is two years younger. The eldest son of this family is Jefferson Hayes Davis, having taken his grandfather's surname.
The youngest child is " Bil ly" — William Davis Hayes.
" Little Maggie's" family have given two to the fourth generation of the living Davis descendants. Mrs. Varina Hayes Webb has a three-
! , , , , , , MRS. J. A. HAYES
year-old daughter, who bears
the name of Margaret Varina Hayes. Her boy, whom Mrs.
Davis never saw, was born on December 17, 1906.
Mrs. Davis's brothers were rarely in Richmond. Beckett
74 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAMS OF THE SIXTIES
and Jeff Davis Howell were both in the navy. Both died years ago and both will recur in these pages.
Such, in brief and imperfect retrospect, was the family about which most interest centered in the new Richmond. The greater portion of it was about Mr. Davis personally. Knowing him since my boyhood, intimate in his household then and in his office later, Senator and Secretary Davis ever seemed to me the grave, self-contained worker, rarely asking aid and never advice. His memory was marvelous, especially for names and faces. His grasp on a subject was as rapid as his decision was tenacious. He was of a nature slow to admire, but as loyal to friendship as he was inveterate on occasion. Being human, he was liable to error in either regard.
In private life, and notably in his own home, Mr. Davis was polished, affable and often cordial. He was easy of approach and patient to the woes of constituents and sub ordinates. He was a thoughtful, sound, and at times a free talker, and, strangely enough, he permitted others to express as well as to hold, their opinions. Thus Jefferson Davis appeared to the thinker in Richmond, thus he appears to this writer today. Such he is likely to appear to the future Macaulay.
This is no place to discuss the actions of the publicist or the motives whence they sprang. Neither does the time of which I write warrant introduction of the freshly mooted matter of his treatment after capture.
Philosophy, when she really comes to teach by example, will settle these for all time. So will she prick that poor in vention of malicious mendacity that makes the simple capture of a great fugitive a farce incredible.
I truly believe that no man who is competent to compre hend the character of the Confederate chief, judged solely by its visible results, credits that silly figment of imagination.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 75
No man who knows aught of human nature could believe Jefferson Davis capable of attempting denial of a fact, by a subsequent masquerade. Yet the portrait of him, in the clothes in which he was cap tured, is a certified and proved reproduction in every detail. That, without speech, confounds the patient and persistent liars.
The South resented the treatment of her most rep resentative man just after the war, but it is doubtful whether much tenderness mingled with her wrath.
Gradually respect for the dead chiefs great traits passes into mellowed feeling, and the sentiment of the vast majority of Southerners is doubtless voiced by an un known poet's Suggestion for JEFFERSON DAVIS IN SUIT HE WORE AT his statue : THE TIME OF CAPTURE
Write on its base: " We loved him!" All these years, Since that torn flag was folded, we've been true;
The love that bound us now revealed in tearsf Like webs, unseen till heavy with the dew.
It is so singular a fact that almost universal ignorance exists as to the lineage of the Confederate president. I have never been able to find an accurate published statement of either; and have at great pains, been able to present this brief summary:
Jefferson Davis, youngest of the ten children of Samuel
76 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Davis and Jane Cook, was born in Christian county, Ky., on June 3rd, 1808. His ancestors were colonial and revolu tionary; of sterling Welsh stock and "good people in the colony/' though nowise of the gentry, or notable in its pre- revolutionary events. Their famous descendant had a con tempt for genealogy; even his wife's biography of him giving but most meagre mention.
In earlier half of the eighteenth century, three Welsh brothers started for Pennsylvania, as settlers. One is be lieved to have been drowned on the voyage. At all events, he never reappears in anything I have been able to trace. The other two, Samuel and Evan, the youngest, settled near Philadelphia, presumably to farm, as they took up lands. Samuel is said to have removed to Virginia, but trace of him is lost, save in some old land transfer records. Evan Davis, grandfather of the President, drifted to Georgia, and there married a widow Williams, whose maiden name had been Emory. One son came to this couple, who was named Samuel, and was a youth in his teens at the outbreak of the Revolution. His half brothers, Williams, were in the rebel army, and the mother sent Samuel to their camp with cloth ing and home comforts. He caught the war fever, ran away, fought well and later raised a company and went to assist in lifting the seige of Savannah. Soon after the war, he married Miss Jane Cook, of Georgia; presumably his distant kins woman, and doubtless connected with the later noted Hardins, of Kentucky. When he already had a grown family, he moved to Kentucky and established himself on a tobacco farm.
The eldest child of Samuel Davis and Jane Cook, was Joseph Emory Davis, born in Georgia but a lawyer and planter, residing at the "Hurricane" Plantation. Warren county, Mississippi. He married Miss Eliza van Benthysen. He was a great stay and aid to his father and, after his death,
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 77
became its head and parent, rather than guardian, of the younger children. Little Jeff was devoted to him, and the later statesman never forgot to express his love and admira tion of his elder. Joseph Davis rose to great influence and regard in his state and section; and acquired wealth.
Joseph Davis had a family of nine children, of whom six were daughters. These all died childless, except Mary, though Florida and Caroline also married. Mary married Dr. Mitchell and left one son and one daughter. The son, Cap tain Joseph Davis Mitchell, never married. His sister, Mary Elizabeth, married W. D. Earner and has two children, Wil liam D. and Mary Lucy, now Mrs. J. G. Kelly.
The next brother was a doctor and planter: Dr. Benjamin Davis, of St. Francisville, La. He married Miss Aurelia Smith of that parish and died at an advanced age, after a quiet, respected and useful life. This couple died childless.
Samuel Davis, Jr. was the next in age. He was a planter and resided near Vicksburg, Miss. His wife was Miss Lucy Throckmorton and their only living child is Mrs. Helen Keary of Rapides Parish, La. There were four sons: Benjamin, Joseph, Samuel and Robert; the eldest of whom left six children at Boise City, Idaho. Robert, Samuel, Pauline and Ellen still live there.
Isaac Davis, the fourth son, was also a planter and resided' at Canton, Miss. He married Miss Susan Guertly, and left one son, General Joseph E. Davis, of the Confederate army; and two granddaughters.
The fifth brother and youngest child was Jefferson Davis, the president.
Anna Davis, the eldest daughter, married Luther Smith of West Feliciana, and had a family of six, two of whom were daughters: Joseph, Luther, Gordon, Jedediah, Lucy and Amanda. She married Mr. Robert Smith and left one daugh ter, Anna Davis Smith.
78 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Amanda, her next sister, married Mr. Bradford, of Madison Parish, La. Her living children are Jeff Davis Bradford, an engineer now stationed at Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor; Elizabeth Bradford White, widowed and residing at New Orleans in winter and Kentucky in summer, and Mrs. Lucy Bradford Mitchell, widow of Dr. C. R. Mitchell, of Vicksburg, Miss. Seven of this family died: David, Benjamin, Mary, Sarah, Anna, Laura, and a second David, born after the the death of his brother so named.
Lucinda Davis, the next sister, married Mr. William Stamps, of Woodville, Miss. Her three sons and two daughters all died and her grandchildren are Mrs. Edgar Farrar and Mrs. Mary Bateson, of New York, and Mrs. William Anderson; Hugh, Richard and Isaac Alexander, and one great grand child, Miss Josie Alexander.
Matilda, the fourth sister, died in childhood; and the youngest and next in age to the later president, was his boy hood's companion and delight, "Little Polly.'' She was Mary Ellen Davis, who married — without changing her name —Robert Davis of South Carolina; and left one daughter still living: Mrs. Mary Ellen Davis Anderson, of Ocean Springs, Miss.
It is another coincidence in the parallels of the lives of the two great leaders in the Civil War, that the Christian county birthplace of Jefferson Davis was in the adjoining one to Hardin county, in which Abraham Lincoln saw the light: a few miles only separating the spots and only eight months the arrival of those famous stars in the great dramas of poli tics and war. Strange it is, too, that the two young men saw their first glimpses of war in the Black Hawk War; Davis as a lieutenant in the United States army, and Lincoln as the cap tain of a company of volunteers he had raised and proffered, but which was never in actual conflict.
It might be an odd study for the psychologist to query
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 79
whether some innate characteristics of both men, acting upon circumstance — or acted upon by it — may not have led to similar aspirations : and whether they were not shadowed out in the strange, yet unmistakable, likeness in their faces. Looking at their portraits in manhood's prime, it needs no Lavater to read that similar early surroundings, education and pursuits might have softened the coarser lines of the one or hardened the more delicate tone of the other, into absolute similarity. And it is not least curious that the same causes drove the parents of one to the North and of the other to the South from similar points and at no long interval.
In 1811, when his youngest born was but three years old, Samuel Davis decided that Kentucky was not yielding him the returns hoped for when he left Georgia. He proposed to locate in Louisiana; but, finding the climate unhealthful for a young family, he decided upon Mississippi, and bought there his final family home. This was named " Poplar Grove " —from its splendid growth of those stately trees — was a pic turesque and extensive site about a mile and a half from Woodville, in Wilkinson county, Miss. There most of the younger family were reared, the daughters were married and some of their children reared by their venerable grandmother, Mrs. Jane Cook Davis. Of these, was Ellen Mary, who never changed her name; and her early orphaned child and name sake, Mrs. Anderson, today recalls the delight of her life at the " Poplars."
It was with this sister " Polly," that the five-year-old Jefferson first went to school, at a log house a half mile away. Two years later, when not seven years old (in 1815) he was sent on a ride through virgin forests of nearly 900 miles, to attend the St. Thomas Academy at Washington Co., Ky. In three jears more he was at Jefferson College, Adams county, Miss.; and in 1821, when but thirteen years old, was sent to Transylvania College, Lexington, Ky. He was an earnest
80 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
and intelligent pupil ; but gave little promise of the brilliance, acumen and erudition that illustrated his later career.
After their father's death, his brother, Joseph Davis, be came the real head of the family; and it was he who gave special attention to the rearing of the youngest, and who directed his education. And by that time, Joseph Emory Davis had become a power in the law and politics of his sec tion. So, in 1824, he obtained through Congressman Rankin, a West Point cadetship for his 16-year-old brother.
At the academy, the youth was esteemed as a careful, studious and dignified cadet, rather than an ambitious and dashing one; yet he missed no branch of useful acquirement and came out a fine rider, swordsman and tactician, as well as a courteous and dignified officer. He graduated 25 in a class of 33; going into the brevet lieutenancy in the Twenty-first Infantry, then under Colonel Zachary Taylor: afterwards general and president.
This was in 1828, and before his majority. At the Point, his intimates were Joseph E. Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Prof. Alex. Dallas Bache, Albert Sydney Johnston and others, with whom he held lifelong friendships, or — in rare cases — undying enmities.
Lieutenant Davis served with credit at Fort Crawford, in what is now Illinois; then at the lead mines near Galena, and at Fort Winnebago, in Wisconsin. He made his first cam paign against the Indians in the closing of the Black Hawk War, in 1831-33.
Then, when service needs created more cavalry, the First Dragoons was organized and its adjutant was Jefferson Davis, now promoted to first lieutenant, in 1834. But he held the post only a few months; resigning in June of the next year.
For some reason, never explained, "Old Zach" Taylor had taken a strong dislike to his subaltern; but the latter was deeply and seriously in- love with the fair young daughter
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF TEE SIXTIES 81
of his chief, Miss Knox Taylor. To the surprise of every one — and none more than her sire — Miss Taylor married the young soldier almost immediately on his resignation. Her father never forgave her; and he never saw her again. She went as a bride to the home of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Anna Davis at West Feliciana, La. Three months later, she was buried there, after a brief illness, and the shock broke down completely the health of the young husband, already under mined by hard frontier service.
On his recovery, Mr. Davis made a tour of the West Indies ; thence paid a long visit to his old friends in Washington and made many new and useful ones, who were loyal to him until the end. Then he settled in Mississippi; by his brother's advice becoming a planter in Warren county, but devoting really more attention to reading law and managing local politics. The latter proved the more congenial and success ful. He was elected to the legislature in 1842; was elector for Polk and Dallas, two years later; and gained high repute as a debater, in a tilt with the famous Sergeant S. Prentiss. In February, 1845, he married Miss Varina Banks Howell.
In the autumn after his marriage, Mr. Davis was elected to congress by a handsome majority; promptly taking a prominent stand and gaining quick recognition for vigor and eloquence in championing the ultra pro-slavery and states' rights wing of the Democracy. Hearing his maiden speech in the house, John C. Calhoun said:
" Keep a watch on that young man : he will be heard from ! "
In 1846, the Mexican War caused his resignation, to accept command of the regiment of Mississippi Rifles, soon attached to General Taylor's Army of the Rio Grande. There it gave such good account of itself and its commander as to warrant special mention in orders, for Monterey ; and Davis' splendid charge at Buena Vista — in which he was severely wounded— brought another flattering report to Washington, whether,
82 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
or not, his first father-in-law's personal feelings had changed. In the session of 1847, Mr. Davis first took his seat as senator of the United States; having been appointed by Gov. Albert Gallatin Brown to succeed Hon. Jesse Speight, who died that year. The next session of the legislature elected him to fill the unexpired term. In 1851, he resigned to accept the nomination for governor of Mississippi, when he was de feated by that arch-manipulator, Henry S. Foote, who ran on the Union ticket. But he remained a power in politics and was especially active in the election of President Pierce, who made him secretary of war, in March, 1853. At the close of his term in the cabinet, he was again elected to the senate and again became the leader of the ultra Southern party. It was at this time that he made his famous Faneuil Hall speech on the rights of the states and the powers of the central government. Then, in January of 1861, Jefferson Davis made his farewell speech in the senate, withdrew from that body and went to Mississippi to carry his home people into the incubating Confederacy.
CHAPTER VII
CABINET TIMBER
THE head of the cabinet was, in constructive sense, Secre tary of State Robert Toombs, of Georgia, but popular belief said it was really Mr. Benjamin, voicing Mr. Davis's views. Burly, rough, emphatic in his own opinions as his chief him self, the Georgian was a brainy and experienced politician and a born disputant. What he was not in remotest degree was a diplomat, and the early wonder grew why Mr. Davis had selected an ingrained aggressor, one whose method was to force a point rather than go around it, for the most delicate and possibly the most vital of all cabinet procedure. Mr. Toombs was, moreover, very strong in his prejudices, and they doubtless swayed his judgment, so it was asserted that he was unstable of tenet. Disputatious as Sydney Smith's missionary, who " disagreed with the cannibal that ate him," the secretary was not always of the same mind. A govern mental wag once said: "Bob Toombs disagrees with himself between meals!"
Vigorous, able and well posted he certainly was, but per haps his weakest point as a minister was his hyper-Southern under judging of the men opposed to him in the North, men with whom he should have been familiar from long and close contact in the public service. At the moment of his selection the foreign policy of the Confederacy was unborn. The busy bureaux were those of war, finance and subsistence. Mr. Toombs had nothing to do but talk politics, tell stories
83
84 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
and say some very clever things. Profane enough to have delighted Sterne's "Army in Flanders/' he larded his jokes with things not in the church service, but they were usually to the point. In Montgomery I recall one retort, not new, but too characteristic to omit. A man of influence and loaded with recommendations applied to him on the street for a clerkship in his department. The secretary demurred; the man of influence insisted. Jerking off his well-worn Washington hat, the official held it up; pointed into it as he roared :
"Blankety blank, sir! There is the State Department of the Confederacy, by blankety blank! Jump in, sir!"
When the secretary resigned, avowedly to take a brigade in the field, there was little surprise among the initiated. There were however, varied rumors of ruptures between him and the President and other of his associates in council. None of these were probable, for General Toombs was rest less under thwart of impracticable views, and he was doubt less sincere in preference for active service.
Secretary Toombs was succeeded, in July, 1861, by Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter. No Virginian of the older activ ities had been more prominent than he, and his experience bad been earned in service as state legislator, congressman and United States senator. His unfinished term in the upper house would have ended, had he retained it, about the time when General Grant was arranging to accept the parole of Robert Lee. Mr. Hunter held the portfolio of state but a few months, resigning to take up the more con genial duties of Confederate senator from Virginia. In Feb ruary, 1862, his place was temporarily filled by Mr. Benjamin, who was already becoming the Pooh-Bah of the cabinet.
The social side of the cabinet was scarcely affected by Mr. Toombs's withdrawal. His only daughter, Miss Sallie Toombs, had long before married Dudley M. Du Bose, and
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
85
had given up Washington belleship for domesticity. She died shortly after the war, in Virginia, leaving a son and daughter, Toombs Du Bose, of Athens, Ga., and Camille, Mrs. Henry Galley of Washington, Ga. An older daughter, Lula, had married Felix Alexander, but had died in 1855, leaving no children.
The Mallory household was an interesting one to all sorts of people, and from many aspects. General curiosity pre vailed as to the naval future of the Confederacy, and that centered in the man who was to control at least its details.
Mr. Mallory was known to all as a tried publicist, who had headed the then infant effort of floating the starry flag tri umphantly in long service as senator. Personally, he was little known on his arrival in Richmond ; but his quick per ception, decided cultivation, and especially his wit, ge nial nature and frank court esy, soon placed him high in the estimate of even the sever est critics of men in position.
In two things Mr. Mallory took genuine pleasure: good cheer and a good joke. He was gourmet, while no whit gourmand, and one had but to note the twinkle in his eye and the placid curve of his full lips to know that the Irish blood in him had taken no yellow tinge from American rush. The color of his humor was not scarlet, but his quaint turning of an idea was often more effective than an epigram had been. The two salient sides of character noted were concreted in
STEPHEN R. MALLORY
(SECRETARY OF THE NAVY)
86 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
a brief love song he dedicated to "Gumbo File," the ambrosia of the Creole and the dietetic delight of the earnest Northern pilgrim. Brief, with a touch of genuine poetry, and as full flavored with humor as its delicate godmother potage with the bay leaf, the poem took at once. The press reprinted it; young ladies clipped it — often with but part conception of its quality— and it was sung frequently, and notably by Mrs. Mallory's brothers, Stephen and James Moreno. We may meet Mr. Mallory later, in his aspect as maker and manager of a navy on which opinions varied, as they did on all things governmental. But as a host there were no two views of the jovial secretary.
The Mallory home was not a very gay one, and there were no grown children to add the whirligig to its quiet, hospitable round. But the instincts of both husband and wife — for Mrs. Mallory's descent was pure Spanish — combined to make the crosser of their threshold at home immediately. There were rounds of informal droppings-in, where the intellect, wit and cultivation of the nervous and varied population could be found. Mr. Mallory brewed a punch as good as his stories and mots, and Mrs. Mallory knew tricks of Southern salads and of daube a la Creole that made many Northern eyes wink and mouths water. And almost always the little daugh ter of the house was allowed to sit out the stay of guests and often to aid in their entertainment.
Mrs. Mallory's long Washington experience as a senator's wife had quite Americanized her manner, but her pure Spanish taste lingered in the lady who had been Senorita Angela Sil- veria Moreno. Her family has many and influential rami fications in the Creole South, and notable members of it will be encountered by the patient one who follows these pages. The most familiar descendant was the late Senator S. R. Mal lory, who filled his father's old chair in representing Florida until his death in 1907. "
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES 87
Little Ruby Mallory was about seven years old when the move to Richmond was made. She was one of the most in telligent and precocious children I ever knew, but there was nothing uncanny or irritant in her exceptional outstripping of her years. The darling of parents so informed, so careful, she absorbed and understood unusual things, and her mag netism was wonderful even at that age. Her natural elocution was the talk of Richmond and prophecies were freely haz arded that she would surely be a great actress some day. What she really did become, while still in her teens, was the facile queen of young society, in her native Pensacola, and her belleship continued until her marriage with Dr. T. S. Ken nedy, of New Orleans. There the young wife had wider field for her tact, cleverness and inborn power to lead, all tem pered and fused into general popularity by the warmth of a true woman's heart. She was long at the head of a gay and brilliant circle, but it is not of record that she ever wil fully misused her power or hurt the pride or the feelings of an associate, though she was absolutely fearless, a consist ent hater of shams and prompt to spur to the rescue of a friend in distress.
With examples of this trait New Orleans drawing-rooms were rife. One of them I recall. Miss Lee was visiting the
MRS. T. S. KENNEDY
(RUBY MALLORY)
88 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
city about carnival time. There was one especially fine function among the many in honor of the great General's daughter. When its main motif was satisfied the ladies sat over coffee and — I had almost written cigarettes for — salted almonds! Miss Lee drew off a quaint old ring, an heirloom from the centuries, and probably worn by Martha Washing ton. It was eagerly seized and passed around, amid cho rused "How sweet!" and "Lovely!" and "So nice!'7 Then family pride flared up, and one mondaine showed a ring left by a triply great-ed grandmother, who had flirted with Bien- ville. Another trumped that centuried trick with the Court of Charles the Bold, another still, straight from the Crusades. Miss Lee sat smiling but slightly flushed. Mrs. Kennedy noted the awkward situation of discounting the guest's social ad vance. Slowly drawing off a magnificent but most palpably latest style ring, she said demurely.
"Here is a trifle of mine, ladies. That ring was presented by Solomon to the Queen of Sheba!"
Then family pride went to roost again.
Mr. Mallory's eldest daughter, Margaret, had married early in life Mr. Bishop, of Bridgeport, Conn., and her quieter life left her less in public view than her little sister. This, and the early maturity of the latter constantly made an absurd " Buttercupping " of the two, and many bright sayirfgs of the younger were ascribed to the senior. Some grave actions of the latter have been ascribed to Mrs. Kennedy while still a child. Mrs. Bishop called on Andrew Johnson to protest against her father' s unjust imprisonment and demand his release. Later I heard the statement, which has apparently misguided some, that this visit was made the president "by little Ruby Mallory!" At the date of its making she was just twelve years old.
In 1901 a lecture engagement called me to New Orleans. Looking to her for much* of the pleasure of the visit, I wrote
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 89
her. The letter arrived just as the fiat incomprehensible had gone forth, and I met a sorrow, deep and universal, for her untimely death. Very vividly came back memories of that delightful, if not gay, Richmond home in which the Reaper had meantime been so busy.
The pleasantest houses of the " official set" were not always those of the cabinet. That body is somewhat Arabian. A secretary would fold his official tent, and steal away sandal- shod and in silence; sometimes, as one wag put it, " Ungloved, unborrowed and — unhung." But even were these changes explicable to the tyro in cabinet-making, this is not the proper place to seek their cause or their results. The retiring officials were rarely beaux or their families belles .
The most kaleidoscopic department was the war office. The first and provisional secretary was promptly replaced, on the regular formation of the government, but not before that Montgomery speech, in which he pledged to carry the new flag to Boston and plant it on Faneuil Hall. Leroy Pope Walker was scarcely permitted to "tote" it to the James. He was at that day the most prominent of four well-known Alabama brothers of whom the two least noted were the most popular. Hon. Percy Walker was perhaps the least so. A speech made to him by the learned and eccentric Judge Edmund Dargan was long-lived in the Gulf State.. Returning with him from the convention in Montgomery, the old jurist noted that his junior was gloomy and wroth. Asked the cause, Walker cried:
"Why, judge, they threatened to hang me in effigy!"
The old man shifted his invariable quid, solemnly peered over his glasses and drawled: "Which party did, Percy?"
John J. Walker and " Billy" were not publicists, but stead fast comrades and good soldiers. The latter was a "high roller, of the strictest sect."
Several successive shakes of the kaleidoscope, and the
90 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
peephole showed the " rearrangement" of Hon. James A. Seddon, with his thin, grave face and monkish skull-cap; General George Wythe Randolph, self-contained, decisive and ordained not to stay; General Braxton Bragg and Judge John A. Campbell, both as ad interim time-fillers; Mr. Ben jamin temporarily acting as a "stop-gap," and General John C. Breckinridge finally withdrawn from more congenial field service to aid Mr. Davis's real control of that most vital de partment of the government.
Next in importance if not actual twin with the war office was the Confederate treasury. This was given into the trust of the Mother of Secession, its conduct being reposed in the hands of Hon. C. G. Memminger and George A. Trenholm, of South Carolina. This is not the place to consider its re sults. Later I may show what was claimed as the crucial error of Confederate finance, and how the non-acceptance of some foreign concessions and proffers left the South the first essayist in a "cheap" money experiment, and "demonetized" the true and potent "white money" — cotton. These may come under review later. Here it need only be noted that neither of these officials added much to the general social aspects of the capital. Courtly and cultured families in Richmond needed houses and chefs to make them notable.
Grim, grave and steadfast General John H. Reagan held the post-office portfolio with the same tenacity and quite the same satisfaction to his chief as did Mr. Mallory his secre taryship. Loyal, blunt and outspoken, he was the tried friend of Mr. Davis through good report and ill, and the latter trusted in his honesty even as he possibly overrated his judgment. To his recent death, which swept away the one remaining vestige of the Richmond cabinet, General Reagan was the quick and ardent champion of his dead chief, against every assault on plan or performance. Neither was the department of letters -conducive to added sociality; but the
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 91
head and family of the assistant postmaster-general were so in large measure, as will be seen.
Good men and true, doubtless, were all of these, but they scarcely counted in the sociality of the war, save one. Gen eral Randolph was a charming host, hospitable, frank and cultured. His wife was one of the most charming women of her day, graces of person, mind and heart blending in her to form a resistless personality. She had been Miss Mary Eliza beth Adams, of Mississippi, and had first married Mr. Pope, of Mobile. When still a brilliant young widow she married the noted Virginian. She was the soul of hospitality and an accomplished entertainer, so hers early became the most popular of official homes. She had the knack of making young and old, simple and high-placed alike, feel ownership. Mrs. Randolph was assisted by her niece, Miss Jennie Pollard; and the philosophic youth of war-time, knowing a good thing when they saw it, flocked to Mrs. Randolph's house as it had been a shrine curative of the blue devils. There reception, dance and theatricals followed in quick succession. In the last named the hostess promoted this writer to a post that has enabled him to rebuild from the debris of recollection a gilded structure, if it have some resemblance to the sand- projected palaces of Soliman the Magnificent.
One ubiquitous and most acceptable social factor of the official circle \vas that polished and smooth brevet bachelor; Hon. Judah P. Benjamin, attorney-general with the plus sign. There was no circle, official or otherwise, that missed his soft, purring presence, or had not regretted so doing. He was always expected, almost always found time to respond, and was invariably compensating. He moved into and through the most elegant or the simplest assemblage on natural rubber tires and well-oiled bearings, a smile of recognition for the mere acquaintance, a reminiscent word for the inti mate, and a general diffusion of placid bonhomie. A Hebrew
BELLES, BEAUX AND BE AINU OF THE SIXTIES
of Hebrews, for the map of the Holy City* was traced all over his small, refined face, the attorney-general was of the highest type of his race. Small and rotund, he was yet of easy grace in manner ; and his soft voice was not only pleasant of sound, but always carried something worth hearing. That
he was a great and success ful lawyer all knew, and that he was an omnivorous de- vourer of books and of wonderful assimilative ca pacity. Astute and best informed, he was greatly regarded by Mr. Davis as an adviser. With his conduct of foreign affairs we may differ later, perhaps. He may have missed silver-lined opportunities in the over reach for impossible, golden ones. He may have de ceived himself and the peo-
JUDAH P. BENJAMIN ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ optimistic
utterances as to intervention by the Powers, and he may have played the Confederates' pawn abroad in a fool's "gambit." But socially the man was delightful and many- sided, and as popular with the young as with the older set about him. After the war Mr. Benjamin repeated the tri umph of Disraeli, and by the same force of personality and brain. He achieved, alone and as the best known represent ative of a lost and a disaster-strewn Cause, the quickest advance to a barrister ever known to the most conservative legal system of the planet.
Hebrew in blood, English in tenacity of grasp and purpose, *The Arabs call Jerusalem "El Khuds" (the Holy City).
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 93
Mr. Benjamin was French in taste, jusque au bout des angles. So were his family, and they never visited Richmond. In deed, in a knowledge of him extending to a decade before the war I recall but one visit made by them to this side of the water. Mrs. Benjamin had been Mile, de St. Martin and she lived with her two grown daughters, permanently in Paris where the girls married. But the secretary's brother-in-law, Jules cle St. Martin, was awhile in Richmond and later quite a toast in Baltimore society. Very small, faultlessly groomed and well equipped by travel and association, this gentleman was very much of a man. He was suave and decided and an expert in the code, as I chanced to learn.
The second Confederate attorney-general was a noted Alabamian, though of Virginia-Georgia descent. His father, Thomas Hughes Watts, of Fauquier county, Va., married in 1818, Miss Prudence Hill, of Clarke county, Ga., and immedi ately moved to Butler county, Ala., then the wild and lonely home of the Creek Indians. There in the next year, was born his son, Thomas Hill Watts.
In a log-hut school house with a puncheon floor, that re ceived light and air through crevices of its sides and roof, the youth got its first education. Thence, at fifteen years he went to Airy Mount, in Dallas, and equipped for the Uni versity of Virginia, where he graduated with distinction in- 1840. The next year he began practice of law in his home, and in 1847 removed from Greenville to Montgomery.
Prior to the war he was an extensive plantation and slave owner, and he was a staunch supporter of Harrison against Van Buren, when a mere youth. Then, for three terms he was in the legislature. In later years, he was both repre sentative and senator from the Montgomery districts. In 1848, he was a Taylor elector at large; and eight years later Know Nothing candidate for congress, but was defeated by a narrow margin.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
In the hot triangle of 1860, he labored for the Bell-Everett success. Vigorous in opposition, the election of Lincoln determined him to "go with his people."
With William L. Yancey, he represented Montgomery county in the Secession convention of January 7th, 1861;
and, as chairman of its ju diciary committee, did much toward taking his state out of the Union.
Showing his faith, as did many an "original Union man" the lawyer changed Chitty for Hardee, raised the 17th Alabama Infantry and became its colonel. While commanding it at Corinth, Mr. Davis chose Colonel Watts to succeed Mr. Ben jamin as law chief of the permanent cabinet. He pre ferred the field to the office, but he accepted the duty offered. In the following year, against his earnest protest, he was chosen governor of Alabama and held the office from 1863 to 1865 — the most trying epoch of the war.
Post-bellum, Governor Watts returned to law practice; but, largely through assisting friends, soon found himself in debt for over $100,000. Of white integrity and indomitable cour age he bent every energy and every mastery of his profession to lifting the load; paying the debt in full before he died in 1892. Governor Watts was twice married: first, in 1842, to Miss Eliza B. Allen, who died in 1873, leaving six children. The second marriage was to the widow of J. F. Jackson, after two years of widowerhood; and she died in 1887,
GOV. THOMAS II. WATTS
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 95
The six children of Thos. Hill Watts and Eliza B. Allen were: Florence S., Kate P., John W., Thomas H., Jr., Alice and Minnie G. Watts.
The first married Col. Daniel S. Troy and left this family of five: Thos. W. Troy, married at Macon, Ga., and now resident in Honduras, C. A.; Florence Troy married Charles E. Hails, residing at Montgomery; Mary Troy, unmarried and residing at Philadelphia; Daniel W. Troy married Janie B. Watts and resides at Montgomery. Robert E. Troy married a Cuban lady named Trigi and lives at Honduras, C. A.
Kate P. Watts, the second daughter of the governor, mar ried Robert M. Collins and left a family of six children: Robert M. Collins, a bachelor, of Montgomery; Lida B. Col lins, living unmarried at Washington City; William H. Collins, of Montgomery, unmarried; James Collins, single, of Wash ington, D. C.; Florence Collins married Albert J. Pickett, and residing at Montgomery; as does her sister, Miss Catherine Collins.
Hon. John W. Watts, is today a leading member of the Montgomery bar and has a family of seven living children: Miss Gabriella Watts and Marion A. Watts, residing at Mont gomery; Marghereta, who married Gaston Scott, also resides there, as do Sophia W., Annie Campbell and Flournoy S., all single and residing in Montgomery. John W. Watts, Jr., lives in Jacksonville, Fla., and is a bachelor.
Mrs. Johnness B. Watts (widow of Thos. Hill Watts, Jr.) has five children: John W. Watts, who married Miss Reid and lives in Birmingham; Ed. S. Watts, who married Miss Norwood and lives in Montgomery, as does his brother, Hugh K., who married Miss Pitcher; Troy Watts, a bachelor, and Janie B. Troy, wife of Daniel W. Troy.
The youngest sister, Alice B. Watts, married Hon. Alex ander Troy, . resides in Montgomery with her son, Gaston; Alexander Troy having married Miss Thames, of New York.
06 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Even the most intense Virginian monopolizer will not hold that there are not families of Scriptural length in other states.
The third and last attorney-general of the Confederacy— the one who was the last of the cabinet to leave the flying president, in Georgia; and who survived him and the Cause until 1896 — was another example of the force of Welsh blood in the arteries of the short-lived young government. In common with Jefferson Davis, G. T. Beauregard, and the President's brother-in-law, Robert Davis, the attorney- general was of good Welsh stock in paternal descent. On his mother's side he was English.
George Davis was born at Wilmington, N. C., his father being Thomas F. Davis, a well-respected citizen of that old city.
The young man was educated carefully and graduated, entering on the practice of law in his native town, when only twenty-one. He promptly made his way both in his pro fession and in politics, as an old-line Whig; gaining the con fidence of all classes, and the respect of his political opponents. Yet, in a long life, he never sought a political office. He was a prominent member of the convention that took his state out of the Union, in 1861 and was elected senator from North Carolina to the provisional congress. Re-elected in 1862, he was serving his term when selected by the President to fill the seat in his cabinet, vacated by the election of Gov ernor Watts to the head of Alabama's affairs. Conscientious, prudent and an excellent lawyer, he held the confidence of his chief until the very last gasp of the moribund government; accompanying the cabinet party in the evacuation of Rich mond, with Breckinridge, Mallory, Benjamin and Clement C. Clay.
It was on his advice that the President acceded to the re quest of General Breckinridge, that the silver -bullion should be saved capture by pro rata distribution among the soldiers
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 07
of the escort. And, parenthetically, there was no wilder one of all the wild "yarns" of that rumoriferous moment, than that which placed the "Confederate treasure" high up in the millions. Including the security fund deposited in the treasury by the Richmond bank — and later returned to them by the government as private property — the gross amount of the bullion brought from Richmond by Treasurer Tren- holm was not the quarter of a million. After the distribution to the soldiers and when the pressure of pursuit forced dis persion of the presidential party, Attorney-General Davis and the treasurer became custodians of the "treasure wagon," moving it toward Augusta.
Nominally for this participancy, but really in punishment for steadfast adherence to his cause, Mr. George Davis was later arrested as a "state prisoner" and held in durance at Fort Hamilton, New York.
After his release (on parole not to leave the State of North Carolina), the ex-official resumed the practice of his profes sion; prospering in it and regaining in part the losses from his adherence to public duty. He was general counsel for the several lines that consolidated in the Atlantic Coast Line; and then for that system. Then, in 1878, he was offered the chief-justiceship of his state, but was forced to decline for business reasons. His death, in his native city, in 1896', brought regret and sorrow to his whole state and section.
Judge Davis was twice married: first to Miss Adelaide Polk, of Holly Springs, Miss. Of this union came six children, of whom only two survive, the eldest Hon. Junius Davis, of Wilmington, and Meeta Alexander, who is now Mrs. George Rountree, of Wilmington, and has a family of four.
Junius Davis has himself illustrated the old Welsh name and "has done the state some service." He is a prominent citizen and lawyer, with a fine practice, in which he has his son as partner, and he finds leisure for literature and general
98 BELLES, BE AUK AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
study, being president of the State Historical and Literary Society. He has, like his father, been twice married: first, to Miss Mary Orme Walker, who died leaving eight children. His present wife is Mary W. Cowan, and they have three children.
The children of George Davis who died were Mary Eliza, Isabel Eagles, Emily Polk and Louis Poisson. The second Isabel, became Mrs. Spencer P. Shotter, now of Savannah, and has one child living. Emily Polk, the next sister, married John E. Crow, of Petersburg, Va., and left five childern to her husband, now of Wilmington.
The second wife of Hon. George Davis was of historic Virginia family, Miss Monimia Fairfax, of Richmond. Her two daughters are Mary Fairfax (now Mrs. M. F. H. Gouver- neur, of Wilmington, and the mother of three children) ; and Cary Monimia (now Mrs. Donald Mac Rae, of Wilmington, and also the mother of three children).
These Davises have never seemed a self-illustrative family, but they have plainly borne their parts in the private and public life of their Southland.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME VICE-REGENCIES
THE homely saying that "it takes all sorts of people to make a world" finds especial verity at most national capitals. Naturally, its greater proof might be sought in the central city of a nascent republic, striving for life amidst the scat tered members of an old one, and that one hated where not despised, by most members of its successor.
The flotsam and jetsam that had washed from Washington to Montgomery followed the hegira to Richmond. Echo from the "Cradle of the Confederacy" had penetrated to the banks of the James and, as has been stated, sent cold chills of apprehension down the sensitive Virginian spine. These soon wore away, but they early differentiated the personality of the leaders as the "official set."
The sobriquet included one and all engaged in making, or marring the young government. Early and better elements of this hodge-podge came to the top, by reason of better mind and better manners. The fittest not only survived the governmental evolution, but were so appreciated as to be much sought by the best home element, indeed to become an integral part of it.
Little may this change or its suddenness be wondered at on even casual glance at some components of the "official set."
Next to the actual and active head of the Confederacy
99
100
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
and his household, the vice-president ranked by virtue of his office. He had done so by other virtues, inherent and confessed.
Hon. Alexander H. Stephens was a tried and respected politician, far and away from both sides of the not then
clearly-marked line of Messrs. Mason and Dixon. He was idolized in the Cracker State, and the repeated expressions of her faith that had sent him to congress had begotten trust in the South and some fear in the North. Had the small South Carolina clique at Montgomery, headed by Lawrence M. Keitt, William W. Boyce and others, de feated the selection of Jeffer son Davis for the presidency, their choice had probably been Hon. Ho well Cobb, of Georgia. Possibly the North would have welcomed this substitution and been saved a tough fighter by it. Later, had Colonel Louis T. Wigf all's reported comment to Gen eral Chesnut that "Jeff Davis ought to be hung in Rich mond," resulted in a real and premature appletree, the North would have relished the vice-presidential succession very little.
Naturally, both suggestions were of "the stuff that dreams are made of." There was never more reality in the Mont gomery than in the Richmond proposition, but they are noted to record the Northern view of the Sage of Liberty Hall. As in the South, Mr. Stephens was regarded as a keen, incisive
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 101
thinker, and essentially as a conservative. The North pre ferred Mr. Davis, not understanding him remotely. It re garded him as a "fire-eater," denied him statesmanship or even judgment, and asserted that he would overleap himself in his mad and blind rushes.
At the outset both sides to the war had an indurated belief, in popular circles, in its brevity. Each side believed it would whip the other in ninety days.
Having no family, Mr. Stephens did not keep house in Richmond, but lived with those congenial friends, Judge and Mrs. Semmes. Nowise fond of general society, from which ill-health would have debarred him, he was ever a delightful addition to any circle. Quick to grasp, thoroughly informed and with quaint sub-acid in his dry humor, his talk was equally educating and entertaining. Not so quick and bitter —less " rifled," so to speak — he continually reminded me of Randolph of Roanoke. After the war he retired to Liberty Hall and preserved a reticence truly remarkable for such a magazine of important facts There he wrote his able and not divulgent book, contenting himself with doctoring and dis cussion, rather than directly stating new and important facts. One most mooted point, of equal interest, North and South, he did not settle, as he alone could have done. This was the alleged remark of Mr. Lincoln when the Hampton Roads conference broke up. The President, it was stated — and without official denial at the time — pushed a sheet of blank foolscap toward the Confederate vice-president arid cried:
" Stephens, let me write ' Union' at the head of that paper, and you may write anything you please under it!"
Later this statement was denied; but neither by Mr. Stephens or Judge Campbell, the only direct witnesses pos sible. Both asserted that they had no option; that Mr. Davis's ultimatum was, and naturally, independence, be the other terms what they might. Lincoln's word "Union"
102 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
could never have headed that. Looking at the characters and at the hardened principles of the two presidents, the Hampton Roads conference may have been the grandstand play to the nations that some writers declare it ; but it is still a pity that all who could really settle that point of it went to their graves with sealed lips. Mr. Stephens, like Judge Campbell, probably believed honestly, at that time, that the Confederacy had "died a-borning." He was indubitably ready to save further loss, strain and bloodshed, but he was powerless under that ultimatum. The speech of Mr. Lincoln is probable and I have no doubt that he made, and thought he meant it. Carrying it out had been another matter, especially in view of the mad Booth's pistol, but I know that it was reiterated in Mr. Stephens's presence, without denial.
Mr. Stephens died at Atlanta, in 1883, and was buried at Liberty Hall. His only surviving relatives are grandneph- ews and nieces; a notable one being Alex. W. Stephens of the Atlanta bar.
One department not officially nominated in the cabinet was of such importance and far-reaching influence on the strength of the army as to be classed with the regular port folios. This was the commission for exchange of prison ers, under General Robert Ould. It demanded a man of mixed firmness and bonhomie, with widely extended acquaint ance and tried knowledge of human nature. All these centered in "Bob" Ould, and he was probably as near "the right man in the right place" as it is given appointees to be.
Apparently the Federal officials did not wholly believe those wild "yarns" of the terror of Anderson ville, the Libby and other prisons, upon which they fed full the horror-hungry maw of their public. Did they so believe they stand con victed of negligence and heartlessness in refusing urgent and continued appeals for regular and prompt exchanges.
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 103
For years Robert Ould had been one of the best known attorneys in Washington, popular in every club, cloak-room and cafe and influential by some occult process known only to the denizen in shadow of the dome.
In early life he married Miss Sarah Turpin, of a family noted for its handsome women, herself said to be the " beauty of the state in her time." The pair were popular in Wash ington circles, and regret was general when they "went South." They brought to Richmond with them a little daughter, who upheld the repute of her mother's side in the new generation.
Miss Mattie Ould did not enter her teens until the war was a year old. At its close and shortly thereafter she had made perhaps a wider reach ing fame than any belle of the '60's. Forced into society when but a child, her strik ing and peculiar beauty had added to it a resistless manner and a wit that literally startled by its audacity and point. Men raved about her and women praised, although she was the cause of many a
MISS MATTIE OULD
knight's recreancy. But dazzling as was her beauty, i it was probably her mental originality and her indescribable magnetism that made this mere girl a marked figure among the noted women about her. But her early triumphs were not presage of a bright or happy future. She did not live to reach their full fruition. Soon after the war and while still in her teens, she sur-
104 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
prised her friends and set busybodies wondering by marry ing Oliver Schoolcraft.
Almost without a honeymoon the gifted and beautiful young girl died. But young as she was, her beauty stands clear today on the memory of all who knew her, and Rich mond men and women are still repeating her epigrams. Miss Sallie Ould, the second sister, married Mr. George Donaldson and resides at Charleston, W. Va., when not traveling abroad. The only brother, Jesse Bright Quid, named for the burly old senator from Indiana — now resides with his family at Unicoi, Tenn. The traditional beauty of the family is still evidenced at Mobile, in Mrs. J. Howard Wilson who was Miss Sallie Turpin, a first cousin.
Late in life General Ould made a second marriage, the lady being the well-known Widow Handy. The beauty and society fame of her daughter, Miss May Handy, had carried the name to the bounds of the Union ere the lady made a tardy choice and became the second wife of James Brown Potter, of New York.
It is a singular coincidence that the two most noted beau ties of the Richmond of the recent past should have come from the same household.
In common with all who leave repute for wit, Miss Mattie Ould had had many things attributed to her which she not only did not say, but could not have said. Perhaps the most traveled one of these is that when found once with her head upon General Pierce M. B. Young's lapel, she only remarked coolly:
" There's nothing odd about it; it is only an old head upon Young shoulders!" The thing is not like Miss Ould in either of its aspects. Audacious as she was beautiful, the girl was no fool ever, and only such publish little affairs, if they have them. Moreover, Young himself, on the last meeting we had previous to his death, told me that there was not the
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 105
least foundation for the story. He added in his blunt way, " I never knew Miss Quid very well and never had such luck as that!"
Young was reckless and essentially a "flirt," as the slang goes, but in a close intimacy covering years I never knew him to lie, and I do know of more than one case in which he went out of his way to see that justice was done to a woman's repu tation.
Two examples of Miss Quid's quickness I can personally vouch for. Shortly before her marriage she was at a dinner in Richmond with several lawyers, one of whom was a noted Munchaiisen; he was also a desperate drinker and held long sessions. He was boasting of one case in which he had earned a $30,000 fee, and then spent it in a single spree. Her table neighbor asked Miss Ould if she credited the story. Her answer was prompt:
"I might doubt the storied earn, but he's all right for that animated bust!"
A bumptious young lady-slayer was insisting that the brilliant girl had been giving him some confessions. Someone cried: "He your father confessor!"
"Scarcely," she laughed. "He is only a gosling, and I am no such goose as to confess, except to the proper gander!"
Two homes directly opposite the White House were notable ones in the social as well as the official life of Richmond. These were occupied by the families of Senator Thomas J. Semmes, of Louisiana, and of Judge John Archibald Camp bell, of the same state, assistant secretary of war. In the old government, no less than the new, this jurist had been a noted and potent factor. A native Georgian, he had moved to New Orleans in early professional life. There he made reputation so rapidly as to become head of a bar noteworthy for such advocates and orators as Semmes, Benjamin, Soule and their peers.
106 BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES
Judge Campbell was the son of Duncan Greene Campbell and Mary Lawrence Williamson, and was born on the ances tral plantation in Wilkes county in 1811. Appointed to West Point by War Secretary John C. Calhoun, young Camp bell was called home before graduation by the death of his father. This possibly lost the world a good soldier, but gave it a great jurist. He early moved to Alabama, and while scarce more than a youth married Anne Esther Goldthwaite. She was of English parentage and her brothers and cousins of Goldth\vaite name have made the family notable in the sub sequent professional life and in social matters in the Gulf State.
By this union there were six children, only one being a son, who was named for his grandfather. The five daughters have all helped to make social history in two capitals and many another city. Henrietta Goldthwaite, Katharine Rebecca, Mary Ellen, Anna and Clara.
Duncan Greene, the son, married Ella, daughter of Charles B. Calvert, of Riverdale, Md. He survived this wife, dying in 1888 and leaving four children to the care of his father and sisters.
Henrietta, the eldest sister, was a most popular and ad mired member of Washington society prior to the war, and esteemed as one of the most delightful women in its Richmond ^replica. She had married Captain George William Lay, later aide-de-camp and confidential secretary to General Winfield Scott. This high post, with his rank of colonel, Lay resigned, taking the same grade in the Confederate ser vice, as Beauregard's inspector-general, in Virginia. Inva lided after the Seven Days' fights, he was placed at the head of a special bureau of conscription with General John S. Pres ton, of South Carolina. A good soldier and true man, he died at New Orleans in 1867.
The second Campbell sister, Katherine, married General
BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES 107
V. D. Groner, of Norfolk, and the third, Mary Ellen, gallant and well-loved Arthur Pendleton Mason. The fourth is still Miss Anna Campbell and resides with her widowed sister, Mrs. Lay, in the Baltimore home left by their father. The fifth sister, the "baby of the family/' was Clara, now the wife of Fred M. Colston, a prosperous and much esteemed banker of the Monumental City. But the Mason pair, young, gifted and with all to live for, passed away in New Orleans soon after peace was declared.
In war-time the Campbell home was much sought by the best of young and old in the new "capital." Mrs. Campbell was a gentle and delightful hostess and the attractiveness of her grown daughters — and of the exceptional men of her household — was a magnet for the grave as well as the gay. There were no strained rela tions between that family and others of the government to which its head had made allegiance.
Judge Campbell, like Gen eral Lee and scores of great Confederates, was an "origi nal Union man." He had practiced much in the supreme court at Washington, had been promoted to be one of its j ustices by President Pierce and was, naturally, saturated with national ideas. In the
disruption of these he foresaw only suicide for Southern Rights, and he was outspoken of belief at the time of that so-called "Peace Commission," which the tergiversations of Mr. Buchanan made not only useless, but ridiculous.
When New Orleans became impossible as a field for his pro-
108 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF THE SIXTIES
fession and Judge Campbell first moved his family to Rich mond, he was offered several positions of importance. Dif fering from Mr. Davis as he did, the latter still respected his gifts and his loyalty. But the jurist declined, although when he had found "blood thicker than water" and had come to his people, it was for better or worse. At first he refused all proffers, but when his personal friend, George W. Randolph, importuned his assistance in the war department, the old jurist accepted the post and held it under all changes until the evacuation.
After the war he moved his family back to New Orleans, later devoted himself wholly to supreme court practice and returned to Washington. Changed conditions made that city no congenial home for the family and they went to Baltimore, where all the survivors reside, except Mrs. Groner, who lived in Virginia.
In the early war the Southern sentiment toward the so- called " Union men," however earnest and useful in the cause they had adopted on principle, "my country, right or wrong," was much that of the North toward "copperheads." Thoughtlessness, that could not differentiate free thought from grand action, overlooked the fact that Robert Edward Lee, Alexander Hamilton Stephens and their peers, if they had any, were, like John Archibald Campbell, "original Union men."
Of vital import at all times of war — and most of all in a young country just forming its army — is the adjutant- general. The secretary of war was helpless without a just, experienced and reliable guide to the fitness and records of new appointees.
The Confederacy was peculiarly fortunate in this regard. General Samuel Cooper was a veteran of two wars, thoroughly familiar with the personnel of both armies; clear-headed and without prejudice. A West Pointer of the class of 1815, he
BELLES, BEAUX AND BEAINS OF THE SIXTIES 109
had served with Harney in Florida and on both the Scott and Taylor lines in Mexico. When he succeeded General Roger Jones as adjutant-general of the United States Army, he had already learned the men whom he was to handle later and those whom they were to meet, two points invaluable in assignments and field of duty. He resigned and was among the earliest to tender service at Montgomery, and there and in Richmond was a trusted and capable adviser to his chief to the bitter ending. General Cooper was a Northern man, having been born at Hackensack, N. J., June 12, 1798. He was the son of Samuel Cooper and Mary Horton, sterling people of the little state. In the early '30's he married Miss Sarah Maria Mason, grand daughter of George Mason, of Gunston Hall. Naturally, when promoted to adjutant- general of the old army, the family removed to the na tional capital.
Mrs. Cooper was the daugh ter of a race noted for the strength, helpfulness and gentleness of its women. Prior to the war her quiet home in Washington had been a favorite resort of the best of official and society people, drawn thither by the beauties of person and char acter of her young lady daughter, Maria. One of the prettiest and best remembered weddings of the capital was when this universally loved girl married dashing Lieutenant Frank Wheaton, and Fitzhugh Lee, then of the slender rank, was best man.
MRS. SAMUEL COOPER
110 BELLES, BEAUX AND BRAINS OF TEE SIXTIES
Eheu fugaces! The bride has been dead decades, but lives still in the memory of loyal friends and in her charming and tried daughter and her children. His native state, Rhode Island, has only lately reared a stately monument to Major- General Frank Wheaton and later still paeans and sobs
mingled about the bier of his lifelong friend, Fitz Lee. The only child of General Wheaton and his beautiful and univer sally lamented wife was a daughter, named for her moth er. She married a young army officer, who gave his life for the old Flag at San Juan Hill — Captain Ho well. His widow survives him, with a lovely family: Frank Ashley, Charles and Maria.
In Richmond the young lady of the house was Miss Jennie Cooper, a sunny-na- tured woman, bright, frank and of strong character. Never having had the society craze, she did not topple her home "into the swim," but free and genial hos pitality met all who crossed its threshold and their name was legion. Captain Samuel Cooper was the only son, a quiet, easy-going fellow, always ready to do his duty, but not find ing it, as a general thing, in the social rush of the early Ws. He and his sister were the sole survivors of the family. He never married and lived with her at "Cameron," where he died two years ago.
Popular with both sexes, Miss Cooper probably had more "reports" about her in war days and close thereafter than most women; many of them doubtless, with a basis. She
MRS. NICHOLAS DAWSON (JENNIE COOPER)
BELLES, BEAUX AND BKAINS OF THE SIXTIES 111
married Nicholas Dawson, a merchant of Baltimore, but citizen of Virginia. The old family seat, " Cameron," near Alexandria, has been their home, the three children making the fourth generation its venerable walls have sheltered. Mrs. Dawson still resides there with her second son, Philip, of the Riggs National Bank, Washington. Cooper, the eldest child, recently married Miss Edna Horner, daughter of Major Horner, of the Confederate army. He has built a new home on the Cameron domain, to be near his mother; going into Alexandria for his business. The only daughter, Miss Maria Mason Dawson, still more recently married Rev. William Gibson Pendleton, grandnephew of General Pendleton of Confederate artillery fame. His father is Colonel William Nelson Pendleton, of the old and noted line.
So, in the midst of her children, the widow finds solace in their happiness.
CHAPTER IX
THE SUB-CABINET
NEXT door to the Campbell residence, and differing from it in details of attractiveness, was another much sought and ever delightful home. Senator Thomas Joseph Semmcs was the diametric opposite of his learned brother next door, in his secession views. He was an original of the advanced rank; had been a member of the convention that took Louisiana out of the Union, and his eloquence