In Their Own Words
May 22, 1865
Diary Entry on Father Trying to Help Stop Raiding
Eliza Frances Andrews wrote in her diary of her father trying to intervene with a Union officer to help stop raiding on plantations.
“No visitors all day, except two of father’s country friends who came in to dinner. In the afternoon Mary and I took the carriage and made some calls that have been on our minds a long time. Conversation was mostly an exchange of experiences. We have suffered much less in town where the soldiers are under some restraint, than the people have on the plantations. The garrison are insolent, and annoy housekeepers by their familiarity with the servants, and at the same time they are hard on the negroes that work for them, but we can submit to these things for the sake of the protection the Iowa hoosier tries to give us. On account of father’s always having been such a strong Union man, he is supposed to have some influence with our new masters, and is frequently appealed to by the citizens to lay their grievances before the Yankee commandant, and so he has become pretty well acquainted with him in a business way. He says he is a dreadful vulgarian, but seems to have plenty of good sense, and a good heart. I suppose he is a Jew, but one can’t always judge by names. Two of the most infamous wretches that have made themselves conspicuous here were named ‘Saint’ and ‘Angel.’”
Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), pp. 265-266.
