Approx. 302pp diary, most pages numbered; plus additional loose correspondence.
Mary Gray Caldwell of Fredericksburg, VA, celebrated her fourteenth birthday, a week after Abraham Lincoln’s election set off the chain of events that culminated in the Civil War. She remained in her hometown throughout the war, watching it become a battleground twice and a camp for army troops of one side or the other repeatedly.
An ardent young secessionist, she set about chronicling what she truly believed would be the triumph of Southern arms. Her first diary was lost when her home was ransacked during the First Battle of Fredericksburg, in December 1862. She promptly took up where she left off, and this surviving journal runs from March 1863, through November 1865.
This is one of only four known Civil War diaries written from Fredericksburg, and the only one to cover the last two years of the war. In addition to the original journal, this lot contains a copy of Volume 11 of
Fredericksburg History and Biography published by the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust in 2012, which contains Part I of the transcription of this diary, as well as the complete typewritten transcripts presumed to have been used in the publication.
Mary records her wartime experiences, from holding court in her parents’ parlour with a room full of doting Confederate soldiers and officers, to fleeing in the middle of the night when cannon shells burst in town, to the resentment of “Yankee occupation” as the tides of war change. With over three years’ worth of material, any summary will, of necessity, leave out mention of numerous instances that will be of interest to anyone curious about the Confederate homefront from the viewpoint of a young belle. What follows is just a representative selection.
In her first entry, Mary talks of reports of Yankee soldiers nearby, who were planning to attempt a crossing of the Rappahannock River.
If they come across here, they will take this journal as surely as they did the one before it. If so, I hope it will do the cowards good. I wonder if they read my other one, ha ha… they are silly cowards thinking they can crush us – we, the Southern people. They are idiots at this to think such a thing. The young Ms. Caldwell entertained herself by flirting with the officers and sergeants of the Mississippians of Barksdale’s brigade, which were stationed in town. The attentions of so many men were heady tonic for a 16 year old, as she decided which were worthy of her attention, and which were not.
May saw the Second Battle of Fredericksburg, also known as the battle of Marye’s Heights, during the Chancellorsville campaign. Mary writes:
The 2d the Yankees crossed below and fighting there two days after which they crossed above and in town… They ruined us a second time…Jackson, the great Stonewall Jackson is dead… I heard one man say he equaled 10 thousand men. Barksdale’s troops were moved out, and their place was taken by Virginians, whom Mary did not care for at all:
[they] are, I think, the most ungallant set I ever saw… I saw a great many intoxicated. But the next day, she had already set her sights on a new target:
I should like to become acquainted with the Colonel of one of the regiments. He looks like such a nice man. Her behavior had not gone unnoticed in the town, and neither had the traffic of men to and from her parents’ house. On July 22, 1863, she ran into a friend who asked about her engagement to a sergeant friend:
That makes 4 times I’ve been engaged and twice married. That will do pretty well I think. Mary enthusiastically repeated all the rumors of gallant Southern victories, though, sadly, they were the stuff of fantasy. On July 5th, the good folk of Fredericksburg had no idea that the pivotal battle of Gettysburg had even occurred, but had plenty to talk about:
Great, Glorious, Grand news. I’ve just heard that Dick Taylor got New Orleans. Pemberton driven off Grant from Vicksburg, Lee cut off all communication between Baltimore and Philadelphia and that Lincoln has called for an armistice… all I hope for is that it does not prove a great big humbug. When they heard of Gettysburg, it was told as a great victory, with Lee capturing 40,000 Yankees, and 40,000 Marylanders joining the Army of Northern Virginia. When Mary heard of the fall of Vicksburg, she was confused, but then decided it must be a ploy by Johnston to trap Grant. It wasn’t until the winter of 1864 that she started viewing such reports with a skeptical eye.
She began teaching small children in town in February, and her journal was filled with mundane things until the protracted fighting between Grant and Lee in the nearby town of Spottsylvania, which occurred between May 8 and 21, 1864. On May 9, she begins her entry:
We are once more under the domination of the Yankees… All their wounded are here in this town and so in our house. Our back lot is full of them. On the 12th, the sound of nearby cannon fire shook the houses in town.
The next day, Mary saw something that shook her to her very core: The division of Major General Edward “Allegheny” Johnson, with Johnson and most of its officers, being marched through town and across the pontoon bridge to captivity in the North. But for Mary, the nightmare was not yet over. On May 15th, she notes that the town (and her family’s home) is chock-full of Yankee soldiers, when suddenly:
Well, I have just now been interrupted by a most brave and gallant sight, a regiment of armed Negroes. They have been passing through all day. Oh, it is a most horrible sight, enough to make the hair rise on one’s head. June 15th brought word that her cousin Virgil was killed while leading his men in a charge, and that her cousin Mort has been taken prisoner:
As for poor Mort, I very much fear that his imprisonment will go hard with him for he was both spy and scout for General J.E.B. Stuart… the brave, gallant, patriotic Stuart is no more. On November 12, 1864, Mary’s father brought word from Richmond that the Congress was debating a measure to draft 40,000 slaves into the army as laborers and teamsters, to free up white men to fight. She thought that a better idea would be to have the women do all the clerical and administrative work, and send those men to fight. As the discussion continued on, she notes,
I wish no Negroes to fight for me, but it is better than to be made their equals. In March 1865, Mary’s mother died. About the same time, three Yankee “gunboats” came up the Rappahannock to seize tobacco belonging to the Confederate government. On April 12, the rumors regarding the Army of Northern Virginia were confirmed: Lee had surrendered. Mary memorized his farewell address.
Mary Gray Caldwell penned a lament on April 27 for her state of Virginia:
She is to be trampled by those who have destroyed. Her slaves are, in all probability, to become her masters, for it is said the Yankees intend on giving the negroes a vote. A negro to have a vote for our rulers. If that is to be so, as I told Mag, I will feel as if I want to commit suicide and kill everyone else. A negro to rule over me. I think the women had better rise and take the rule, as men are found unfit to govern...We are not subjugated and never will be. It is impossible. We may be overrun and maybe we are so now, but as to the Southern people being subjugated, that can never be. Through the summer of 1865, she argued with the Union officers boarding with her parents, trying to get them to see what a mistake abolition was:
One of their Lieutenants told me yesterday that if I ever got into trouble about anyone wishing me to take the oath, he would help me out and tell them it would be impossible for me to take the oath. It would choke me to death. I thanked him, and told him that, if I ever needed his services, I should call on him. By the summer of 1865, Mary had decided that maybe having Yankee soldiers in town wasn’t so bad. On June 7, 1865, she writes:
The military are still in town, and I shall be right sorry when they are gone for I am afraid the negroes will give the people trouble. I was alays so afraid of an insurrection. As summer turned to autumn, Mary tried to cope with the new world. On August 5, 1865, she writes:
There is a school for the colored children in town now, taught by a white man who makes the children call him Uncle Tom. Amongst other things that he teaches is… to keep themselves clean as the white children, for they are as good as they are, and then to learn who redeemed them from slavery, Abraham Lincoln. November 28, 1865, marks her last entry:
I am somebody more apt to pluck roses from the past than to remember those that are briars that have so scratched us and that there is gall mixed with every cup of sweet. No, I should look forward to the future. Mary Gray Caldwell (1846-1930) was the daughter of Richard Caldwell, a clerk, and his wife Caroline, a schoolteacher. Mary wed Berryhill McLean Carter on January 27, 1876, and passed away at the age of 83.
Condition
Binding is no longer intact (and no longer present), but the pages are still stitched together. The pages are in rough condition, with substantial wear along the edges and corners. The majority of the front page of the diary has completely separated from the top left corner of the page, but the page is present. The first 34 pages in the diary show some paper loss, mostly near the top or bottom right corners of the pages. At least two different types of lined paper have been incorporated into the diary, so there are some uneven areas of toning where larger pieces of paper were used within the diary. There are a few areas throughout the diary that show spotting, but the spotting does not impact the entries. The spotting/staining is mainly along the perimeter of the pages. The majority of the entries are legible.