It is coming in earnest! The supposed thunder, heard down
the river yesterday, turns out to have been artillery. A fight has occurred at
Bethel, and blood — Yankee blood — has flowed pretty freely. Magruder was
assailed by some five thousand Yankees at Bethel, on the Peninsula. His force
was about nine hundred; but he was behind intrenchments. We lost but one man
killed and five wounded. The enemy's loss is several hundred. That road to
Richmond is a hard one to travel! But I learn there is a panic about
Williamsburg. Several young men from that vicinity have shouldered their pens
and are applying for clerkships in the departments. But most of the men of proper
age in the literary institutions are volunteering in defense of their native
land.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 51
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