This week Mary Jeffreys Bethell of Rockingham County, North Carolina speaks of God and the war. A Methodist, Bethell attends a nearby Baptist church, offering her assessment of the congregation:
We went to Union yesterday to hear Mr. Macneely preach, he is an old Baptist, he is a revivalist, a warm preacher, there was some feeling in the congregation. We are having some cold and disagreeable weather now, the ground was white with snow last Friday.
There was a bloody battle in Kentucky on the 19th of this month, the North got the victory, the South lost 500 killed and wounded, so the paper states. I pity the wounded soldiers, and the wives, Mothers and Sisters that lost dear ones in the battle. Surely God is judging his people, everyone ought to humble themselves in sackcloth and ashes, and fast, and pray to God to spare us, and save us from war and bloodshed.
The battle of which she speaks is the recent Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, the first significant Union victory of the war.
Bethell continues recording her feelings and thoughts during the coming years of war. Yet her journal thoughts are self-edited, as she offers no mention of her sons (Willie and George) serving in the Confederate Army; George, in the 55th Regiment, North Carolina Troops, is captured and imprisoned. Bethell does talk of home front conditions at large, and difficulties in particular in the wake of her husband joining the army in 1864. Among her trials is the departure of the family’s slaves.
Sources: Holding Notes, Mary Jeffreys Bethell Diary, 1853-1873, University of North Carolina (link); entry of January 27, 1862, in “Documenting the American South,” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (link)
