richmond, May 30th.
After a terribly fatiguing journey we arrived here safely yesterday
morning. We left Montgomery on Sunday night, at 8 o'clock, and travelled night
and day, until yesterday morning.
The President was everywhere most rapturously received. . . . I was all packed to start for Texas,
when your father found that the President was so unwilling for him to go back
at that time, that he determined to accept the position of Aide and at least
act in that capacity until the opening of Congress, which will be on the 20th
July. So here we are. These Virginians seem likely to overwhelm your father
with their attentions and kill him with kindness — for yesterday he had to make
no less than four speeches.
The whole country as we came through was like a military
camp. The cars crowded with troops, and all as jubilant as if they were going
to a frolic, instead of to fight. The President is to take the field; but I
don't know the exact programme, and if I did it would not be safe to write it —
for there is no telling who may read our letters now-a-days. Your father of
course will go with him. It seems strange to me that I don't feel more
frightened.
SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in
’61, p. 54-5
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