My sister Metta and I were pouting in a corner because he would not allow us to go and see the fun. This scene made a deep impression on my mind, as may be judged from the frequent allusions to it in the diary. Their bells now, but they will wring their hands-yes, and their hearts, too-before they are done with it.” While the people of the village were celebrating the event with bonfires and bell ringing and speech making, he shut himself up in his house, darkened the windows, and paced up and down the room in the greatest agitation.Įvery now and then, when the noise of the shouting and the ringing of bells would penetrate to our ears through the closed doors and windows, he would pause and exclaim: “Poor fools! I shall never forget that night when the news came that Georgia had seceded. The most he could do was to advocate the call of a convention instead of voting the State out of the Union on the spot. He did his best to hold Georgia in the Union, but he might as well have tried to tie up the northwest wind in the corner of a pocket handkerchief. He was stoutly opposed to secession, but made no objection to his sons' going into the Confederate army, and I am sure would not have wished to see them fighting against the South.Īlthough he had retired from public life at the time, he was elected to the legislature in 1860 under rather unusual circumstances for the secession sentiment in the county was overwhelming, and his unwavering opposition to it well known. My father, Judge Garnett Andrews, was a Georgian, a lawyer by profession, and for nearly thirty years of his life, judge of the Northern Circuit, holding that office at the time of his death in 1873. Its original name clung to the building long after it ceased to haveĪnything to do with finance, and hence the frequent allusions to “the bank” in the diary.Īnd now, that the narrative of the diary may be clearer, I must crave the reader's indulgence while I add a few words about the personal surroundings of the writer.Ī diary, unfortunately, is from its very nature such a selfcentered recital that the personality of the author, however insignificant, cannot be got rid of. Robertson, like everybody else in the village at that time, had received into her house a number of refugees and other strangers, whom the collapse of the Confederacy had stranded there. Robertson, who was cashier at the time, continued to occupy the building in the interest of the stockholders. On the outbreak of the war the bank went out of business, but Dr. Two rooms on the lower floor were used for business purposes, while the rest of the building was occupied as a residence by the cashier.

Davis held his last meeting with such of his official family as could be got together, and signed his last official paper as president of the Southern Confederacy. On the north side was the old bank building, where Mr. Like most of the older towns in the State it is built around an open square, in the center of which stood the quaint old county courthouse so often mentioned in this part of the diary, with the business houses of the village grouped around it. The population at this time was.about 2,200, one-third of which was probably white.

The passing of the Confederacy (April 22-may 5, 1865).Įxplanatory note.-The little town of Washington, Ga., where the remaining events of this narrative took place, was the center of a wealthy planting district about fifty miles above Augusta, on a branch of the Georgia Railroad.

Eliza hudson columbia sc