News from home. Mr. McD., of the Theological Seminary, an
Irish student, who was allowed to remain there in peace, being a subject of
Great Britain, has just arrived at this house as a candidate for ordination. He
says that our house has been taken for a hospital, except two or three rooms
which are used as headquarters by an officer. Bishop Johns' house is used as
headquarters; and the whole neighbourhood is one great barracks. The families
who remained, Mrs. B., the Misses H, and others, have seen sent to Alexandria,
and their houses taken. Mr. J's and Mr. C's sweet residences have been taken
down to the ground to give place to fortifications, which have been thrown up
in every direction. Vaucluse, too, the seat of such elegant hospitality, the
refined and dearly-loved home of the F. family, has been levelled to the earth,
fortifications thrown up across the lawn, the fine old trees felled, and the
whole grounds, once so embowered and shut out from public gaze, now laid bare
and open—Vaucluse no more! There seems no probability of our getting home, and
if we cannot go, what then? What will become of our furniture, and all our comforts,
books, pictures, etc.! But these things are too sad to dwell on.
Mr. McD. gives an amusing account of the return of the
Northern troops on the night of the 21st, and during the whole of the 22d. Such
a wild, alarmed, dispirited set he had never an idea of. He had seen them pass
by thousands and thousands, first on one road and then on the other, well
armed, well mounted, in every respect splendidly equipped, only a few days
before. As a Southern sympathizer, he had trembled for us, and prayed for us,
that we might not be entirely destroyed. He and one or two others of similar
sentiments had prayed and talked together of our danger. Then what was their
surprise to see the hasty, disordered return!
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 47-8
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