Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868

1861: "Our Cause is just"

1861 "Our Cause isjust" May 15: My Brother started at daybreak this morning for New Orleans. He goes as far as Vicksburg on horseback. He is wild to be off to Virginia. He so fears that the fighting will be over before he can get there that he has decided to give up the plan of raising a company and going out as Captain. He has about fifty men on his rolls and they and Uncle Bo have empowered him to sign their names as members of any company he may select. Mamma regrets so that My Brother would not wait and complete his commission. He could get his complement of men in two weeks, and having been educated at a military schoolx gives him a great advantage at this time. And we think there will be fighting for many days yet. We gave him quite a list of articles to be bought in the City, for it may be some time before we shop in New Orleans again. May 23: Mamma was busy all the morning having the carpets taken up and matting put down and summer curtains hung. Of course the house was dusty and disagreeable. Mr. Newton and the children were shut up in the schoolroom and so escaped it, but Uncle Bo wandered aimlessly around, seeking rest and finding none. I retired to the fastness of my room with a new novel and a plate of candy and was oblivious to discomfort until Frank came to say dinner was ready and "the house shorely do look sweet and cool." In the afternoon Mamma lay down to rest as she was tired 1 In Frankfort, Ky. 18 14 BROKENBURN out. Mr. Newton and Uncle Bo rode out to Omega [Landing ] 2 for the mail and to hear the news. The boys, Little Sister, and I all went down the bayou for a walk with a running accompaniment of leaping, barking hounds, ranging the fields for a scent of deer or maybe a rabbit. The boys are so disgusted if the dogs race off after a rabbit. They think it ruins them for deer dogs. How pleasant to have the smooth, dry ground underfoot again after so many months of mud. It has been such a long, muddy winter and spring. No one knows what mud is until he lives on a buckshot place and travels buckshot roads. Tonight a little fire was pleasant and we all gathered around it to hear Mr. Newton read the papers. Nothing but " War, War" from the first to the last column. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the trumpet of war is sounding, and from every hamlet and village, from city and country, men are hurrying by thousands, eager to be led to battle against Lincoln's hordes. Bravely, cheerily they go, willing to meet death in defense of the South, the land we love so well, the fairest land and the most gallant men the sun shines on. May God prosper us. Never again can we join hands with the North, the people who hate us so. We take quite a number of papers: Harper's Weekly and Monthly, the New York Tribune, Journal of Commerce, Littell's Living Age, the Whig and Picayune of New Orleans, and the Vicksburg and local sheets.3 What shall we do when Mr. Lincoln stops our mails? The Northern papers do make us so mad! Even Little Sister, the child of the house, gets angry. Why will they tell such horrible stories about us? Greeley *is the worst of the lot; his wishes for the South are infamous and he has the imagination of Poe. What shall.we do when our mails are stopped and we are no longer in touch with the world? We hear that Mr. Peck has raised a company of Irishmen 2 A shipping point on the Mississippi in northeast Madison Parish. 8 The Vicksburg Whig and the Madison Journal, Delta, La. * Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. A radical Republican paper, the Tribune was one of the most widely circulated newspapers of the day.—Dictionary of American Biography, VII, 531. 1861: "OUR CAUSE IS JUST" 15 from the levee camp and that the Richmond [La.]6 company has disbanded and re-enlisted for the war. They were twelvemonth men. Wednesday Uncle Bo went out to the river to drill the men and...