Dolly Sumner Lunt

“ I have been left in my home all day with no one but Sadai. Have seen nothing of the raiders, though this morning they burned the buildings around the depot at the Circle [Social Circle, a near-by town] . I have sat here in the porch nearly all day, and hailed every one that passed for news. Just as the sun set here Major Ansley and family came back. They heard of the enemy all about and concluded they were as safe here as anywhere. Just before bedtime John, our boy, came from Covington with word that the Yankees had left. Wheeler's men were in Covington and going in pursuit. ”

“ At the beginning of the struggle the minds of men, their wills, their self-control, seemed to be all taken from them in a passionate antagonism to the coming-in President, Abraham Lincoln.
Our leaders, to whom the people looked for wisdom, led us into this, perhaps the greatest error of the age. "We will not have this man to rule over us!" ”

“ My house is a perfect fright. I had brought in Saturday night some thirty bushels of potatoes and ten or fifteen bushels of wheat poured down on the carpet in the ell. Then the few gallons of syrup saved was daubed all about. The backbone of a hog that I had killed on Friday, and which the Yankees did not take when they cleaned out my smokehouse, I found and hid under my bed, and this is all the meat I have.
[37] Major Lee came down this evening, having heard that I was burned out, to proffer me a home. Mr. Dorsett was with him. The army lost some of their beeves in passing. ”

“ The road was full of carriages, wagons, men on horseback, all riding at full speed. Judge Floyd stopped, saying: "Mrs. Burge, the Yankees are coming. They have got my family, and here is all I [5] have upon earth. Hide your mules and carriages and whatever valuables you have."
Sadai [Mrs. Burge's nine-year-old daughter] said:
"Oh, Mama, what shall we do?"
"Never mind, Sadai," I said. "They won't hurt you, and you must help me hide my things."
I went to the smoke-house, divided out the meat to the servants, and bid them hide it. Julia [a slave] took a jar of lard and buried it. ”

“ We are all sad; no loud, jovial [44] laugh from our boys is heard. Christmas Eve, which has ever been gaily celebrated here, which has witnessed the popping of fire-crackers [the Southern custom of celebrating Christmas with fireworks] and the hanging up of stockings, is an occasion now of sadness and gloom. I have nothing even to put in Sadai's stocking, which hangs so invitingly for Santa Claus. How disappointed she will be in the morning, though I have explained to her why he cannot come. Poor children! Why must the innocent suffer with the guilty? ”

“ Major Ansley and family have remained. We are feeling more settled and have begun to bring to light some of the things which we had put away.
July 28, 1864.
I rose early and had the boys plow the turnip-patch. We were just rising from breakfast when Ben Glass rode up with the cry: "The Yankees are coming. Mrs. Burge, hide your mules!" [9] How we were startled and how we hurried the Major to his room! [The Yankees did not come that day, but it was thought best to send Major Ansley away. He left at 2 A.M.] ”

“ My boys have not come home. I fear they cannot get away from the soldiers. Two of my cows came up this morning, but were driven off again by the Yankees.
I feel so thankful that I have not been burned out that I have tried to spend the remainder of the day as the Sabbath ought to be spent. Ate dinner out of the oven in Julia's [the cook's] house, some stew, no bread. She is boiling [36] some corn. My poor servants feel so badly at losing what they have worked for; meat, the hog meat that they love better than anything else, is all gone. ”

“ For years it has been stirring in the hearts of Southern politicians that the North was enriched and built up by Southern labor and wealth. Men's pockets were always appealed to and appealed to so constantly that an antagonism was excited which it has been impossible to allay. ”

“ In the morning took a barrel of salt, which had cost me two hundred dollars, into one of the black women's gardens, put a paper over it, and then on the top of that leached ashes. Fixed it on a board as a leach tub, daubing it with ashes [the old-fashioned way of making lye for soap] . Had some few pieces of meat taken from my smoke-house carried to the Old Place [a distant part of the plantation] and hidden under some fodder. Bid them hide the wagon and gear and then go on plowing. Went to packing up mine and Sadai's clothes. [19] I fear that we shall be homeless. ”

“ And I wish that when the journal tells of "bluecoats coming down the road" the reader might glance up and out through the open window, as I did, and see the very road down which they came.
Imagine yourself in a low white house standing in a grove of gigantic oaks surrounded by the cottonfields. Imagine yourself in a large comfortable room in this house, in an old rocking chair by the window. From the window you may see the white well-house, its roof mottled with the shadows of [xi] branches above; beyond, the garden and the road, and far away in the red fields negroes and mules at work. ”

“ They lay out until this morning. How rejoiced I am for his family! All of his negroes are gone, save one man that had a wife here at my plantation. They are very strong Secesh [Secessionists] . When the army first came along they offered a guard for the house, but Mrs. Laura told them she was guarded by a Higher Power, and did not thank them to do it. She says that she could think of nothing else all day when the army was passing but of the devil and his hosts. She had, however, to call for a guard before night or the soldiers would have taken everything she had. ”

“ Never have they known want of any kind. Their parents are with me, and how sadly they lament the loss of their boys. Their cabins are rifled of every valuable, the soldiers swearing that their Sunday clothes were the white people's, and that they never had money to get such things [27] as they had. Poor Frank's chest was broken open, his money and tobacco taken. He has always been a money-making and saving boy; not infrequently has his crop brought him five hundred dollars and more. ”

“ A WOMAN'S WARTIME JOURNAL
January 1, 1864.
A new year is ushered in, but peace comes not with it. Scarcely a family but has given some of its members to the bloody war that is still decimating our nation. Oh, that its ravages may soon be stopped! Will another year find us among carnage and bloodshed? Shall we be a nation or shall we be annihilated?... The prices of everything are very high. Corn seven dollars a bushel, calico ten dollars a yard, salt sixty dollars a hundred, cotton from sixty to eighty cents a pound, everything in like ratio.
[4] ”

“ He would not sin for his right hand. The purest and holiest men have owned them, and I can see nothing in the scriptures which forbids it. I have never bought or sold slaves and I have tried to make life easy and pleasant to those that have been bequeathed me by the dead. I have never ceased to work. Many a Northern housekeeper has a much easier time than a Southern matron with her hundred negroes.
November 12, 1864.
Warped and put in dresses for the loom. Oh, this blockade gives us work to do for all hands!
[15] ”

“ Thomas Burge, a portion of whose wartime journal makes up the body of this book, the place continues to be known by her name and her husband's, as it was when they resided there before the Civil War. Some of the negroes mentioned in the journal still live in cabins on the plantation, and almost all the younger generation are [vii] the children or grandchildren of Mrs. ”

“ A few minutes elapsed, and two couriers riding rapidly passed back. Then, presently, more soldiers came by, and this ended the passing of Sherman's army by my place, leaving me poorer by thirty thousand dollars than I was yesterday morning. And a much stronger Rebel! ”