Mrs. Mary S. Mallard in Her Journal [1864, Liberty County, Georgia]
“Monday, December 19th.
Squads of Yankees came all day, so that the servants scarcely had a
moment to do anything for us out of the house. The women, finding it
unsafe for them to be out of the house at all, would run in and conceal
themselves in our dwelling. The few remaining chickens and some sheep
were killed. These men were so outrageous at the Negro houses that the
Negro men were obliged to stay at their houses for the protection of
their wives; and in some instances, they rescued them from the hands of
these infamous creatures.
Tuesday, December 20th.
A squad of Yankees came soon after breakfast. Hearing there was one
yoke of oxen left, they rode into the pasture and drove them up…needing a
chain…they went to the well and took it from the well bucket. Mother
went out and entreated them not to take it from the well, as it was our
means of getting water. They replied: “You have no right to have even
wood or water,” and immediately took it away.
Wednesday, December 21st.
10 A.M. Six of Kilpatrick’s cavalry rode up, one of them mounted on
Mrs. Mallard’s valuable gray named Jim. They looked into the dairy and
empty smokehouse, every lock having been broken and doors wide open day
and night. They searched the servants’ houses; then the thundered at the
door of the dwelling. Mother opened it, when one of them presented a
pistol to her breast and demanded why she dared keep her house closed,
and that “he be damned if he would not come into it.”
She
replied, “I prefer to keep my house closed because we are a helpless
and defenseless family of women and children.” He replied, “I’ll be
damned if I don’t just take what I want. Some of the men got wine here,
and we must have some.” She told them her house had been four times
searched in every part, and everything taken from it. And recognizing
one who had been of the party that had robbed us, she said: “You know my
meal and everything has been taken.”
He said, “We left you a sack of meal and that rice.”
Mother
said, “You left us some rice; but out of twelve bushels of meal you
poured out a quart or so upon the floor---as you said, to keep us from
starving.”
Upon
one occasion one of the men as he sat on the bench in the piazza had
his coat buttoned top and bottom, and inside we could plainly see a long
row of stolen breast jewelry---gallant trophies, won from defenseless
women and children at the South to adorn the persons of their mothers,
wives, sisters, and friends in Yankeeland!”
(The War the Women Lived, Walter Sullivan, J.S. Sanders & Company, 1995, pp. 238-239)
The North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
“Christmas in Wartime -- 1861-1865”
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