The Convention has appointed ten additional members to the
Provisional Congress — President Tyler among them. It will be observed that my Diary
goes on, including every day. Fighting for our homes and holy altars, there is
no intermission on Sunday. It is true, Mr. Memminger came in the other day with
a proposition to cease from labor on Sunday, but our Secretary made war on it.
The President, however, goes to church very regularly — St. Paul's.
On last Sunday the President surprised me. It was before
church time, and I was working alone. No one else was in the large room, and
the Secretary himself had gone home, quite ill. I thought I heard some one
approaching lightly from behind, but wrote on without looking up; even when he
had been standing some time at the back of my chair. At length I turned my
head, and beheld the President not three feet from me. He smiled, and said he
was looking for a certain letter referred by him to the Secretary. I asked the
name of the writer, which he told me. I said I had a distinct recollection of it,
and had taken it into the Secretary with other papers that morning. But the
Secretary was gone. We then proceeded into the Secretary's office in search of it.
The Secretary's habit was to take the papers from his table, and after marking
on them with his pencil the disposition he wished made of them, he threw them
helter-skelter into a large arm-chair. This chair now contained half a bushel;
and the President and I set to work in quest of the letter. We removed them, one
by one and as we progressed, he said with an impatient smite, “it is always
sure to be the last one.” And so it was. Having found it he departed immediately;
and soon after I saw him on his way to church.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 54
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