On her North Carolina plantation Catherine Edmondston struggled to make sense of conflicting reports regarding events in Pennsylvania and Mississippi.
JULY 8, 1863
News! News! News!—so much of it that I do not know how to begin to tell it! There has been a battle, a terrible battle at Gettysburg in Penn. We get Yankee accounts alone of it, but from their gasconade, bluster, & boasting, we pick the grain of wheat & are sure that the modest telegram which announces to us that Meade is falling back to Baltimore & Lee pursuing him is true. We lose three Brigadier’s, Garnett, Barksdale, & Kemper killed—Pender & Scales wounded. I know none of the Col’s so do not enumerate them. On their side the loss is heavier, including Reynolds, said to be the best General they have. He commanded the 3d army corps. Sickles, the infamous, loses his leg, so he will assassinate no more men because the world had discovered what he had long known & winked at. They have taken 2,000 (two thousand), we twelve thousand prisoners! The slaughter terrific both sides admit. The bridge over the Susquehanna at Wrightsville has been destroyed, whether by us or them I cannot understand. Gen Lee has issued orders for the government of his army in the enemy’s country so widely different from those that emanate from the pens of their Generals that I preserve it for contrast. Read it & then turn to Pope’s and Steinwehr’s! A no 20.
These twelve thousand prisoners of ours refuse their parole, in order I suppose to embarras us & weaken Lee by the guard which they will force him to send with them. They deserve to be shot but we are, fortunately for them, too much under the law of Knightly honour & chivalry to give them their deserts.
The Yankee papers report that Johnson has cut Grant to peices & that Vicksburg is releived, but it does not elate us in the least, for we do not beleive it. The accounts from Louisiana are very fine but too good & a little contradictory. Brashear city has been taken by Gen. Dick Taylor. Magruder threatens New Orleans. Banks has fallen back from Port Hudson with only five thousand men & more to the same effect. It does not affect us much. We know not how much to beleive & Gettysburg eclipses all else. The news from Tennessee & Bragg is bad, very bad. He has fallen back from Tallahoma & virtually abandoned Tenn and part of North Ala, but we must not yet blame him. He may have been weakened by reinforcing Johnson in order to rescue Vicksburg. Let us wait before we condemn him. The damage done to the R R at Magnolia is slight, but a handful of miscreants have scoured the country burning & destroying everything before them, under Gen Martins very nose too! Murad the Unlucky I call him.
Went with Father and Mama to call on Mrs Clark & Miss Hines. Mrs James Smith poor thing did not make her appearance, being too much distressed about her brother, Col Evans, of whose fate they are yet in ignorance. How I pity those poor people who have friends at Gettysburg! What agony they must endure. From Mr Smith we learned that the enemy under the German Gen Weitzel had advanced to Williamston which they occupied & burned a few more houses. Col Martin holds Rainbow Banks where he is strongly entrenched. Brisk firing has been heard there today. The Yankees may intend only a diversion or they may be coming up to destroy the Gunboat now building. A few hours will determine. Gettysburg, however, absorbs every thought, so that we almost forget our own fate in that of our Army.
JULY 9, 1863
Glorious news, too good to be true! We hear unofficially that the fight was renewed on Sunday. Gen Hill made a feint of falling back. Meade pressed on when the two wings commanded by Ewell & Longstreet swept round & enclosed the entire Yankee Army; 40,000 men laid down their arms. Now this cannot be true. So large a number of men would not surrender in an open plain & in their own country. The Telegraph has played pranks with its message. I will not transcribe the flying rumours, the reports brought by “reliable gentlemen” & “wounded officers.” There has been a fight & victory seems to incline to our side. We hope but we dare not beleive as yet.
Came brother yesterday afternoon, like “Widrington” in “doleful dumps,” beleives a wild rumour gotten up I fancy by speculation to the effect that Vicksburg has capitulated. We laugh at it in spite of what we hear Com Barron says about its want of provisions & Johnston’s weakness. Mr E & himself armed themselves & went down to the store with the intention if need was of keeping on & volunteering under Col Martin at Rainbow but met the good news on the road that we had ambushed the enemy at Gardner’s bridge & that they had retired leaving ten of their number dead on the field, for which God be praised! Ah! for news from Penn! God keep Gen Lee. Give him wisdom & to his men endurance, obedience, & moderation.
JULY 10, 1863
Grant me patience with the news! I know not what to beleive! I hate to fill my Journal with rumours & yet it will be no truthful expositor of our lives if I fail to relate the state into which these uncertain Telegrams have brought us. One tells us that the fight was not renewed on Sunday, consequently the 40,000 men whom it reported as refusing parole were not captured & Lee is not pressing Meade who is not falling back to Baltimore, but per contra Lee it is who is falling back to Hagerstown. Now which is true? But our perplexities do not end here. A Dispatch which freezes the marrow in our bones, signed, too, Joseph E Johnston, tells Mr Seddon that Vicksburg has capitulated, that the garrison march out with the honours of war, officers wearing their side arms. This no one seems to beleive tho it is countersigned by one of Johnson’s staff. The impression is that the wires have been tampered with by sugar speculators.
The news from the North Via Fortress Monroe inform us that Grant is retiring, that Vicksburg is releived, that Banks has been driven from Port Hudson, cries aloud for succour for N O & says Louisiana is slipping from the grasp. Then, too, another telegram from Loring dated Jackson tells us of his successes on the ‘Big Black,’ news of Dick Taylor’s & Magruder’s victories, one at Port Hudson the other in the Teche, whilst another has it that they have joined forces. I take refuge in utter unbeleif. I wish I could convince myself that the war is a myth, a hideous dream, but alaas! it presses too heavily to be thrown off like an incubus. There is but one comfort left—that our Government unlike the Yankee despotism does not lie. Its official Dispatches are all true, for they come from Gentlemen & through Gentlemen’s hands do they pass until they reach us. So when we see ‘R E Lee’ signed to a dispatch we can rely on it, as there is no Telegraph to be tampered with by unprincipled speculators, as we hope and beleive is the case with Johnston’s reported Dispatch. Vicksburg cannot have fallen! Not ten days ago they drove 300 mules out of the city. Surely, Yankee tho he is, Pemberton is not a traitor! He must have been able to inform Johnston of his situation. I cannot beleive it. As for the news from Penn, I never expected so much as they gave us, so am not depressed when they take the surplusage away. Give me the bare fact of a Victory & I am content without a “rout.” I have been so occupied with public that I have omitted all mention of private matters.
Last week we had a freshet in the River, a heavy one which drowned a large portion of our corn. We hoped, however, to save much of it, as the water remained up but a short time. These hopes, however, are all crushed, for a second rise higher & slower than the first is now in progress. The crop is all resubmerged & much that escaped last week is destroyed this. It is a heavy blow. The loss to Father and Mr Edmondston is heavy, heavier to Father than to Patrick, for the Low grounds proper at Looking Glass are not in cultivation this year. But God has sent it. We must not repine.
I have been very unwell for some days & the suspense about public matters, the wearing anxiety about Vicksburg, & the uneasiness about the river do not help to make me better. Hannah More’s ill “bile”—oppresses me. I leave our killed & wounded until they are authenticated. I hope they are exagerated. Petigru again wounded!
July 11, 1863
I have no heart to write. Vicksburg has fallen! It is all true. No lying speculator has imposed upon us. Pemberton has surrendered! As yet it is all dark. We are told that they were reduced to the verge of starvation & yet 200 mounted men of the garrison have been paroled & have reached Jackson, the officers allowed to march out with their side arms, retain their horses & private property. Now who ever heard of a beleagured city starving with horses & mules in it? Pemberton drove 500 mules out of his lines not ten days since & now lo, he is starving. The garrison surrendered on the 4th of July. I would have waited until the 5th & not have sullied our national anniversary with such an act. My doubts of Pemberton return. He is a Pennsylvanian & his heart cannot be in the cause as ours is. Can he be a traitor? I am not willing to trust him. I could have born the disaster better had it come to us through a Southern hand.
Ah! Mr Davis, Mr Davis, have we not suffered enough from Northern Generals. Remember Lovel & New Orleans & now comes Pemberton & Vicksburg to crown that first disaster! Just at the moment of triumph too. Banks driven from Port Hudson and Johnston nearly ready to fall on Grant. We remember Pemberton’s blunders before he was shut up in Vicksburg, blunders which his defence of it had almost made us forget, & then his bluster about holding out whilst there was a “pound of Mule’s flesh” left. Think of Londonderry, think of Antwerp, & then think of marching out with 200 mounted men besides officers, horses & citizen’s “stock,” which now they are “in haste to remove.” We remember all this I say, & thoughts too bitter for words rise in our hearts against this Northerner, this Pemberton! The truth will never be known, smothered in a court of Inquiry, as was Lovels conduct at New Orleans. Grant me patience O Lord! grant me patience. Let me see Thy hand in it & make me cease to repine at the instruments Thou hast chosen to chastise us with!
From Lee’s army we get only Northern accounts through lying newspapers in Yankee pay & tho they are depressing enough, we do not credit them. They have it that Lee is beaten & in full retreat, demoralized & scattered & that Meade’s victorious army presses on him whilst French & Milroy’s late command & a host of other generals in Buckram bar his retreat across the Potomac. They will “fight him eight hours” by “Shrewsbury clock” no doubt. We know from our operator at Martinsburg that he is at Hagerstown, a retreat certainly but rendered necessary on account of his wounded & thirteen Thousand prisoners with whom he is encumbered. The Yankees say he left his wounded on the field, not one word of which we beleive. In the face of their victory Keyes & his marauders are ordered immediately to Washington. Eastern Va is deserted by them & if Lee had been beaten surely they are not such fools as not to reinforce him & send him before he recover from the shock in a triumphant “On to Richmond” march. I have not said so much of Keyes as I ought perhaps. Latterly, he has long since ceased to give us uneasiness & has merely been ravaging the country, burning & destroying with the usual Yankee wickedness, barbarity, and wantonness.
D H Hill has been more than a match for him & he is now gone back to his master Lincoln. I do not tell all the Yankees say of our pretended defeat. I shall have the truth soon from our own side. We are sad enough today without their lies to madden us in addition. What with the loss of Vicksburg & our crop, well may we say—“The King does not dine today.” At present prices we lose $30,000 worth of corn by this rise (Father, brother, & Patrick I mean), a heavy blow, but we are in God’s hands. We see Him in it & do not murmur, but when a human instrument like Pemberton peirces us, we feel it deeply & keenly, tho’ it is God still who allows it. We should remember that.
Suffolk has been evacuated, not a Yankee left in it after thirteen months occupation. An order was issued to burn it, but before it could be carried into execution Lee was over the border & fearing retaliation, Dix countermanded his barbarous edict. So, we go. Grant’s army is marching on Jackson, “burning every dwelling that they come to on their route,” women & helpless children turned without food or shelter into the woods & fields. How long O Lord? how long?