Diary of Jennie Sellers

Many of our young residents were very aware of the Civil War and its potential impact on our community. They received information from newspapers, from neighbors and by going into West Chester. Jennie Sellers, a 17 year old from Locust Grove discussed the war in her diary.

Jennie Sellers 1861

• January 2 – Papa says there is a good bit of excitement about West Chester on account of the evacuation of Fort Moultre ( in South Carolina) by Major Anderson. He has retired to Fort Sumter.
• January 10 – Papa went down to the shop for our paper (The Jeffersonian). It is full of news. There was a vessel sailed for Sumter. It was “The Star of the West”, but they fired on her and she had to retreat.
• March 1- Mr. Lincoln, the president-elect has arrived in Washington. He is the guest of Senator Seward until the 4th of March. The Southern states have elected Jefferson Davis for their president. He was inaugurated the 18th of February at noon at Montgomery, Alabama. He made a very good speech at Capitol Hill. Lincoln says the seceding of the South as an artificial show, and says he don’t know anything about the tariff question. He thinks it would be best not to pass a new tariff law and that it had better lay over for future consideration. The Republicans have made a proposition before the governor of Pennsylvania to arm the militia, thus putting a tax on the people of half a million more than is necessary.
• April 14. There is a good deal of news this week in the papers. It states that the war has probably commenced at South Carolina. There are seven thousand men there now, that is of the South. Two thousand from Indiana. It is reported in the Philadelphia press that they have made a breech in the southeast side of Fort Sumter and silenced two of Anderson’s guns. That the war was commenced on the sixth day about two o’clock in the morning. It has been reported that a Spanish fleet has been filled out to take Mexico.
• April 15. The war is still going on at last account. Papa brought home word from the sale. Said to be the latest news. That Major Anderson has made an unconditional surrender. That the President has sent out his Proclamation from the Southern men to lay down their arms within twenty days. If not, he will send down 75,000 men to force them.
• April 22 – It is reported that a Southern division crossed the Susquehanna last night and was going to burn Oxford. This morning they were then going to march on to West Chester and take Hickman. They had a fight in Wilmington yesterday. They tore up the railroad and we heard that they were going to blow up Dupont’s Powder Works, that Dupont’s had telegraphed to Philadelphia for troops. While I write this, we can hear the canons and the drums.
• April 26 – There was word came into West Chester this afternoon before we came out that President Jeff Davis had telegraphed President Lincoln for him to remove all the women and children from Washington for he was going to take the Capitol on Saturday.
• December 25 – There has been a great fire at Charlestown S.C. Fortress Monroe, December 13, 1861. A telegraphic dispatch to the Norfolk Day Book of today from Charleston S.C. states that a fire broke out in that place on Wednesday night which was supposed to be the work of an incendiary, and at the date of the last dispatch, five o’clock on Thursday afternoon, the conflagration was still raging. Assistance was sent for to August December 14th. Dispatches from Fortress Monroe state that passenger by the flag of truce boat from Norfolk bring accounts of negro insurrection at Charleston, and that half the city is in ashes. The Richmond Examiner states that a large portion of Richmond is in ashes. The account states that the plot was disclosed by the body servant of a military officer, who said that the negroes of the city were to be joined by large bands of negroes from the country, who were to come in armed at night. He said that the Lash factory had been fired by a free negro whom he designated and who had been arrested. A small quantity of arms had been found under the floor of a negro cabin…. In other negro cabins, knives and hatchets were found secreted. The greatest consternation prevailed. Families were closing and barring their windows. Another account states that negro insurrections broke out in the interior of South Carolina two days before the fire and are still raging unchecked. But this last report is not well authenticated.