Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/203

 Rh not been sharpened till the Confederate war broke out.

Thomas wrote much for the papers in those days, urging every Southerner to take care of the soldiers in the field. Five young men, who were guests at Burleigh in the first spring of the war, were fitted out by him and sent off with one hundred dollars apiece, and directions to have their bills charged to him. Gray cloth was ordered up from New Orleans, and uniforms cut out and made by the dozen in the house and sent to the camps. Blankets were not to be bought in any Southern market, and he decided to give every one that he owned, but his daughters begged to be allowed to keep some, and he compromised on giving away nineteen of the largest size, about half. He wished us to cut up the carpets to put on the beds. Great boxes of food and wine were sent off to the hospitals. He sent his carriage for sick soldiers, and took care of them as long as they were allowed to stay, treating each private as if he were the commander-in-chief of the army.

He greatly enjoyed a dinner that he gave to General John C. Breckenridge and a brilliant party of officers and fnends in September of 1862. It was the last entertainment given at Burleigh before the tide of war swept over it. There were about eighteen guests, among them some friends from New Orleans,—Mr. Needier Jennings, Mr. George W. Ward, and Mr. Violet, Andrew Jackson Polk, of Tennessee, and the Hon. Senator Gwin [sic:Gwynn], of California. Two of our own soldier boys were there on furlough, Edward Dabney and Augustine Dabney's son, Thomas Gregory Dabney.

Everybody was full of hope. None then realized the true state of things, that Vicksburg would fall and all our part of the country be overrun. Vicksburg had stood two sieges, and we thought that little city impregnable, and the gay company assured the ladies that they should be defended, and should never see the war more near-by.

General Breckenridge had been called the handsomest man in the United States when he was a candidate for