Excerpt One February 15th, 1861. — I came to Charleston on November 7th and then went to Florida to see my mother. On the train, just before we reached Fernandina, a woman called out: "That settles the hash!" Tanny touched me on the shoulder and said: "Lincoln’s elected." "How do you know?" "The man over there has a telegram." Someone cried: "Now that the black radical Republicans have the power I suppose they will Brown us all." [A reference to radical abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.] I have always kept a journal, with notes and dates and a line of poetry or prose, but from today forward I will write more. I now wish I had a chronicle of the two delightful and eventful years that have just passed. Those delights have fled, and one’s breath is taken away to think what events have since crowded in. It was while I was in Florida, on November 11th that (alas!) My husband resigned his seat in the Senate of the United States. I might not have been able to influence him, but I should have tried. In Florida I spent two weeks amid hammocks and everglades, oppressed and miserable. One evening while we were at dinner, Stephen brought in some soldiers from an encampment near there, the Montgomery Blues. The poor fellows said they were "very soiled blues." They had been a month before Fort Pickens and not allowed to attack it. Colonel Chase, who commanded the Alabama troops there, they accused of too great affection for the Fort. He built it himself, and could not bear it should be proved not impregnable. Colonel Lomax telegraphed Governor Moore if he might not try "Chase or no Chase." The Governor of Alabama was inexorable. They said "we have been down there and worked like niggers, and as soon as the fun seems about to begin, we are replaced by regulars." Sadly discomfited they were. My mother packed a huge hamper of eatables for the Colonel, and the subalterns amiably played a game of billiards. I dare say they would fight, as they eat, like Trojans.... I saw a few men running up a wan Palmetto flag, and shouting, though prematurely: "South Carolina has seceded!" I was overjoyed to find Florida so sympathetic, but Tanny told me the young men were Gadsdens, Porchers and Gourdins, names as inevitably South Carolinian as Moses and Lazarus are Jewish."