The Spirit Of Christmas Past

"Within The Lines"

Exerpts from..

A Diary by Mary Jones Polk

 

"...To this record I have added my  memories of the home of my youth, under Southern skies.  Then later the experiences of a Southern
woman during the Civil War.  This long retrospect of mine faithfully
portrays life in the South as it was in ante-bellum times, and then
afterward in her mourning vestments.
The beautiful. heroic South~ I write with a loving hand as I pay this
tribute to the past."
                                                             Mary Jones Polk

---

Around Christmastime, after the return of my cousin and myself to
Tennessee our lives could be described as like most Southern girls of
that period.  Wealthy Southerners usually resided on their plantations
and visited friends in their carriages, many miles apart, staying two
or three days or sometimes longer.

The Old Southern Mammy.

In the "quarters," as the negro cabins were called, there was usually a band,
which played at night for the "white folks" to dance. "Old Master" always led
off in the "Virginia Reel."
Our nurses we always called "Mammy," and it was not considered good manners
to address any old negro man or woman otherwise than as "uncle" or "aunt,"
adding the name whatever that might be - the surname was always the master's.
We were taught to treat them with respect.
There was such a kindly feeling on both sides between the owners and their slaves -
inherited kindly feelings. How could it be otherwise? Many were descendants of
those who had served in the same family for generations - for instance, the nurse
who nursed my children was the daughter of my nurse, and her grandmother had
nursed my mother.  My maid,Virginia (I cannot recall the time when she was not
my maid) was a very handsome young mulatto to whom I was especially attached.
When she was married in her white dress and long veil flowing to her feet, the
ceremony was performed in our back parlor, and Bishop Otey, the first bishop of
Tennessee, officiated.
How great the pride the negroes felt in the wealth and importance of their owners,
and interest indeed in all of their affairs, amusingly so, sometimes! I recall an old
woman, coal black, a red bandanna handkerchief tied over her kinky locks, and
great dignity of manner, she said to me: "Young missis should marry her cousin,
Marse Tom, and keep our family likeness in our family."

Our Social Life.

Indeed, ours was a gay and free-from-care life. I can recall delightful summers at
Old Point Comfort, and the Greenbrier White, in Virginia - winters in which I journeyed
from my father's plantation, near Helena, Arkansas, to New Orleans.

There were palatial boats on the Mississippi river then, for there was no other way to reach
New Orleans. At each landing, often at night, lighted by the pine torches on the bank, the
roustabouts would roll aboard the heavy bales of cotton, singing as they crossed the
gangway their gay songs. At their nearest landing, planters would come aboard with their
wives and daughters to do their annual shopping in the "city," and the big boat would plow
its way down the broad river with gay passengers laughing, dancing, singing, and many a
love tale, told upon the guards until it rounded at the dock of delightful New Orleans - the
city of camelias, cape jasmines and violets.  New Orleans, the beautiful metropolis of the
South.
At Greenville, Mississippi, a large party came on board, of young planters paying their
annual visit to their commission merchants, or with their sisters and sweethearts, going to
enjoy the gaieties of the city.  Formerly all families of prominence in the South knew of each
other so we quickly formed one party, and they added much to our enjoyment.
 The next summer I went to the "Greenbrier White," in Virginia, with my uncle, Andrew Polk,
his wife and daughter, then a child, Antoinette Polk, afterward the Baronne de Charette.
There could not have been a more delightful place. Brilliant belles from all over the South
- gay cavaliers, chivalric and courteous. I recall my saying: "There is nothing more I
Brilliant belles from all over the South - gay cavaliers, chivalric and courteous. I recall my
saying: "There is nothing more I wish for on earth; I am perfectly happy."

It was on the morning of November 29, 1859, that Col. Joseph Branch and I were married
at "Buena Vista," my father's,  home, at Columbia, Tennessee. Colonel Branch was finely
educated, benevolent and honorable, and I may be excused for saying, handsome.

Upon my arrival as a bride at the plantation I found the house servants drawn up in a line
on the front porch to greet me and the house brilliantly illuminated.  Among them was
 "Aunt Beck," a dignitary of great importance, my husband's nurse and then his cook.
She was a privileged character. Colonel Branch's mother had left the children to the care
of this devoted nurse on her deathbed, and her affection for them was boundless.
As Governor Branch's cook in Washington, where he was Secretary of the Navy, she had
also been their consoler in many an escapade.
The summer after my marriage, 1860, I spent in the East and I had no idea of the feeling
in the North against the South.  My maid was soon enticed away at Niagara.  From thence
we went  to the Continental Hotel, in Philadelphia. The hotel was filled with Southerners.
A few evenings after our arrival a procession of a thousand men, bearing torches, stopped in
front of the Continental, and were addressed from a platform in front of the hotel by Charles
Frances Adams. I remember a part of his speech in which he said: "The North should be made
a haven to the oppressed negro of the South," and his other remarks were to the same purpose.

We felt wantonly insulted, and for the first time I had a foreboding for the future, which grew
stronger during our visit to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, of Virginia, soon after.
The "White" was different from what I had ever known it before. There was the "German" in the
morning and the ball at night, but there was a tone of seriousness underneath it all.
The young men, and the old, could be seen in groups discussing some point that was evidently
exciting them.
We felt the gathering clouds that foreboded the coming storm. From White Sulphur we
returned to our home in Tennessee. Everything there seemed beautifully peaceful and calm.

Tennessee's first vote against secession was sixty thousand, as the old Whig party, which had
great strength in Tennessee, was opposed to it, but when her sister States seceeded, Tennessee
went with them, and her best blood flowed freely in the cause.

Tennessee was a border State and she and Virginia bore the brunt of the war. It is stated
that one-fifth of the dead of both armies was on Tennessee soil.

The Tragedy Begins

Oh, the horrors of civil war! My mother was a Spartan mother, and she said to her four boys,
"Go and do your duty.  There was my gay and handsome brother, Tom, who left his wife and
children;  Lucius, whose name I can not write without a pang; Cadwalader, and Rufus.

Colonel Branch was in jail for a few days in Columbia, Tennessee, then exiled by
General Negley with the penalty, if ever caught in federal lines, to be hung as a spy,
and property confiscated. In the meantime my mother and I were alone at Buena Vista.
There were five hundred soldiers - a cavalry command- encamped about the place, but
the officers were kind and placed pickets at the doors for our safety. Yet, notwithstanding,
we had nightly alarms and the house often searched. I recall one occasion, as my mother
and I weredriving from Columbia, with many contraband articles, we were stopped by
two pickets, who proceeded to search the carriage.

As one soldier picked up some trifling article of my mother's, she exclaimed,
"Would you deprive me of that small pleasure?" The other soldier, at the same time,
saw a pair of soldier's gauntlets, I intended for General Cleburne. He  looked at me, saw
the terror in my face, a vision before me of Irving Block, in Nashville, where rebel women
were confined, and then turning to the other soldier he winked at me and said,
"Come away, there is nothing there, let these ladies go on."

Many letters and supplies and these same gauntlets we carried to Florence, Alabama,
to soldiers there. Of course, we ran a great risk, but we relied upon our coachman, who was
very loyal to us, and secreted some of the letters upon his person.

A federal raid had just taken place in the country through which we passed, and houses,
farms and fences burned, the fire still smouldering where food had been cooked. It became
dark and our coachman was blind at night, and the road so covered with autumn leaves we
lost our way. I walked in front, putting aside the leaves, to find traces of the road, and
calling out, "Drive to the right, drive to the left." At last I saw a fence and, following it up, we
came to a substantial log house, and were barely in it before a cavalry company came
dashing up, demanding if some of "Wheeler's soldiers were not there." Fortunately for us, our
host was a well-known Union man, and the house was not searched.
The few Union men were occasionally of great service to their friends and relations.
My brother-in- law, Judge Russel Houston, for instance, whose brother, Governor Houston, of
Alabama, and all of his own and his wife's family were "secessionists," stood very high among
the federals (as Union men of his ability and social prestige in the South were very rare), and,
in consequence, there was a great deal in his power.

My sister was very loyal to her husband, but natural feeling would assert itself. I recollect
standing with her at a window, when a cavalry company of General Wheeler's, who had
been burning bridges between Columbia and Nashville to prevent the approach of the
enemy, came dashing through the town, closely pursued by a federal company. My sister, in
her excitement, clasped her hands and exclaimed, "Oh, if they had but wings to fly!"

But amidst this gloom there were occasional flashes of sunlight. When the Confederates
were in possession how gay it was, and the soldiers such toasts.
My brother Lucius went into the battle as a first lieutenant. His regiment, the first Arkansas
was cut to pieces, the captain of the company made a prisoner, and left with but one
officer. Lieutenant Polk took command and led the regiment for two days. The next day
after the battle he was elected colonel by the men unanimously and appointed afterwards.
Of that heroic brother what could I not tell? There was never a nobler and more magnanimous
spirit, united to a tenderer and more merciful one - to write of him even in the "so long ago" sends a pang to my heart.

On December 15, 1864, I started for the plantation in Arkansas with my nurse and small family to see my husband.

Nashville was in Federal lines, but I had a permit to go to Memphis, via Louisville. There, through the influence of my brother-in-law, Judge Russel Houston, then of Louisville, whose handsome home in Nashville had just been burned to the ground to build Fort Houston, I was permitted to take with me many contraband articles.
I had a shoe trunk filled with sugar and medicines, and an overcoat for my husband, with tobacco in the pockets to give the provost marshal the impression that I was carrying an old, worn coat. These articles were sealed by the provost marshal to prevent inspection. We embarked upon the Golden Eagle, a boat which on the trip before had carried negro soldiers. In consequence,we were fired upon all the way down the river, a flash from the bushes on the banks and a volley of shot. I was in the pilot house, and it was the object to disable the pilot of our boat - the shot flew thick and fast around us. We all fell uponthe floor, and lay trembling until the guerillas were out of sight.
At last we arrived at Memphis and changed our boat for the Commonwealth. The captain refused to take pay from a Southern woman, until I assured him I was well supplied with money.

Next we stopped at Helena, where General Buford, of Kentucky, who was in command and noted for his petty tyranny, refused to let me proceed farther. I pleaded, and then wept, but soon restrained my tears when I noticed the expression of his face.
He was indignant, and replied, "Madam, my refusal was in kindness, as I was a West Pointer with your Uncle Leonidas, but now you return to Memphis on the first boat that lands here."
The boat came in an hour. It had lashed to it, in tow, another steamboat filled with smallpox patients, soldiers whom they were sending to some hospital in the North. The odor was insufferable, although there were heavy tarpaulins on that side to exclude the air. I was terrified (as Laurence, my baby,  was sick, and soon broke out with an eruption which proved to be measles), but there was no appeal.
For seven weeks we were compelled to remain in Memphis at the Gayosa Hotel.
No one was allowed to pass the lines, to go out or to come in Memphis. I did not know the reason then, but knew afterward - Hood's army was advancing into middle Tennesee.

At last, on Christmas day, we were permitted to leave. I went with my aunt, Mrs. Andrew Polk, to headquarters to ask a pass to proceed down the river, my second attempt.
The general was absent, but the officer in command very sternly refused to give it to me, saying the general had left such orders in regard to all applications. I thought it hopeless, and was preparing sadly to leave, when, all at once, there was such a transformation, such a desire to assist, such kindness!
My astonishment was great. My aunt was a beautiful and charming woman.

On the third day after my arrival I was having a pleasant talk in my sitting-room, with an old gentleman, a neighbor, when the doors opening upon the front gallery were thrown simultaneously open, and blue-coated soldiers swarmed into the room.
Realizing the absolute necessity of coolness, I arose, and said to the leader, apparently: "If you will control your men, I will supply what they demand, water, towels and food."
"They are helping themselves," he said, as a chicken flew past, followed by half a dozen soldiers in pursuit. He looked at me, and said: "I see that you are a woman of sense, so I will give you a little advice. Behave as you are doing now, and you will have no trouble. Here comes the captain now!" Looking out I saw advancing down the road an officer at the head of a hundred cavalry. He behaved with great politeness, and remarked that at the plantation above us (the Douglas), "the house had been set on fire three times, as the ladies had been so insulting to the soldiers that he had found difficulty in controlling them."

They stayed two days, the men encamped upon the place, the officers in the house.
One of them picked up an album, and looking at a photograph, said: "Who is this?" I said: "General Pillow, an uncle of Colonel Branch's first wife."
 "And this?"
 "That," I said, "is General Leonidas Polk, the uncle of Colonel Branch's second wife. This," I went on to say, as he turned another leaf, "is General Lucius Polk, my brother, and this, General Laurence Branch, killed at Sharpsburg."
 "What a nest of rebels!" he exclaimed, and closed the book in disgust.
I left soon after to weep and wring my hands in the retirement of my room, and then to appear composed and calm before the soldiers.

The war had ended - the long agony was over, and again we met in our mother's home, in Columbia, Tennessee.
First came Lucius, bravest of the brave, on crutches. Next, Cadwalader, whose horse was shot from under him, and he left for dead on the battle-field at Prairie Grove. Next, Rufus, who spent his seventeenth birthday in a prison on Johnson's Island.
We met again, in the parlor, where, after the battle of Franklin, Generals Cleburne, Granberry and Stahl had been laid, before they were interred at St. John's churchyard.
A bloody handkerchief was over General Cleburne's face, but one of his staff took from his pocket an embroidered one, and said: "Cover his face with this; it was sent him from Mobile, and I think that he was engaged to the young lady."
 No wonder that it is said that the jingle of spurs and the measured tread of a Confederate soldier is often heard in the hall of the old house at night!

We separated, for yet another battle - the battle for our daily bread, and with no resources, and the debt of five years, growing in interest, before us!
The men who were in that war have not been long- lived, as a rule. Sickness, hardship and wounds impaired their vitality. They worked with the same doggedness of purpose, uncomplaining and in  silence, as did Lee, their great leader.

But hope was gone - no longer there to vivify their souls.
Then came Reconstruction days. It would have been very different if the negroes had been left to themselves, and not listened to the "carpet-baggers" who swarmed over the South, but by them they were incited to lawlessness and insult.
My husband and I went to our beautiful home, "Buena Vista," which had been my father's.
It was endeared to me by a thousand memories of childhood and girlhood. There had I been married, and there had my children been born. It was a large, old- fashioned brick house, on an elevation. On one side, a garden bordered with the Microfilla rose, and
one side, a garden bordered with its summer house and arbor festooned with wreaths of yellow jasmine - its garden beds in the old style, with borders of box, trimmed square.
In front of the house a climbing rose, twenty feet high, still hung from an oak, in which were embedded the bullets of the enemy. Upon the gallery had stood a Confederate soldier, a mere youth, who had  fired from behind the pillars, until the boy fell dead, riddled with bullets.

In the joy of meeting, we tried to forget the past - and we were happy. My husband, big in heart as well as stature, and the four children, mere babies, and the father's delight in them. He was of so bright and sanguine a nature, it was an inspiration to be with him. I, leaning on him for love and protection! In my checkered life was it not a dream of
heaven!  I carry it with me when days are dark, and turn to that picture of the past.
 

Two years of this ideal life passed, and a summons came from the plantation in Arkansas, and he must leave.
Colonel Branch left our home on November 11, 1867. I wished to go with him, but the care of the little children and the place prevented, and crippled by the war, our means were not what they had been.  I had a premonition of ill, as I gave him the farewell kiss.

Two days after he arrived at the plantation, he walked the main road to examine a bridge over the bayou, which needed repairs.  As he stood there, a buggy with the physician on the place, Doctor  Pendleton, in it, came up.  Doctor Pendleton had charge of the hospitals of the two plantations.
He had been drinking heavily and was seeking a quarrel, so he called to Colonel Branch, making an insulting remark, and drew his pistol.

The Death of Colonel Branch.

My husband raised his hand and cried out: "I am unarmed"; but the fatal shot was fired, passing completely through his body. He fell upon the bank, partially paralyzed, and the negroes, rushing from the  cotton-field, bore him to the house.
They filled his room, weeping, and crying aloud, while his old nurse knelt beside him. He said: "Will no one write to my wife, and tell her 'farewell' for me."
The crying of the negroes distressed him, so he said: "Let only a few come in at a time to bid me farewell." This they did, and so he passed away.
The negroes were wild, they declared he should be avenged. Many of them had been in his family for generations, and some in mine. None had left during the war; this was two years afterward, and still all were there, faithful to the close.

 They armed themselves with guns, anything with which they could kill, and started to Judge Fletcher's plantation, where Doctor Pendleton had just arrived.
The old judge had turned to him, and said: "If you killed Colonel Branch, get out of my house this moment," when an overseer from our place, came dashing through a short cut to the house, and cried out:
"Go, for your life; the Branch negroes are on your track, and they will kill you , as sure as
there is a God in heaven."

Communication was very slow in those days, and a week had passed before I arrived at the plantation. I wished my husband to be interred in St. John's Cemetery, at Columbia, Tennessee.
 I traveled on the Henry Ames, the boat on which I had gone down the river on my bridal trip eight years before, and on the anniversary. I had only heard that he was wounded, but as  we met each Arkansas River packet, the captain would call out for news through his speaking-trumpet: "How is Colonel Branch?"
At last I heard the answer...the answer came, "He is dead."

Many years have passed since then, and my days glide serenely by, only speed more swiftly, as rivers hurry when they near their destination, the ocean's depths.
I can not tear my thoughts from that past life and those I loved so much, and I sometimes feel that they are very near me, and I recall the words of Isaiah:

"Seeing What a Cloud of Witnesses Encompass Us About."

My mother, may she be near me; may her sweet eyes gaze in mine.
Does she watch and pray beside me, with a mother's love divine?
Can He be near, my dearest? The world seemed a dream of bliss,
When, alas! so soon he left me to the bitterness of this.
A witness, may be, my brother, with his wounds a tale to tell
Of battle-fields where heroes fought and the conquered banner fell.
 Silent and grand, like sculptured knight, he waits in his lowly bed,
The sound of the reveillé to call soldier from the dead.

They come on silent wing through the blue realms of space,
With a glory caught from Heaven, upon each radiant face.
We feel their presence near us, and a rapture, as of yore,
Comes o'er us, as they whisper "Love is love forever more."

God's messengers, sent to us in the silent hour of prayer,
In whispers and in dreams - it may be in visions rare -
They soothe us with the thought of that blessed land of Peace,
Where tears shall never flow and all life's troubles cease.

The spirits are about us, but, alas, we cannot see,
For our vision's dim and blinded to Heaven's great mystery.
 But with dying eyes we'll see them, as we leave this world of sin.
They'll ope' the gates of Paradise that we may enter in.
Mary Jones Polk Branch..Memoirs of a southern woman

Credit:  Images are original art by Mort Kuntsler and are used solely to represent the
time period, not the actual people in the diary.  See more of his work here.
Thanks to University of North Carolina for the use of these excerpts from MaryPolk's Memoirs.
 They can be read in their entirety here.

Next..Diary of A  Young Georgia Girl
Memoirs of Eliza Andrews