Weather dark and cloudy. We had a good congregation in our
little church. Mr. ––– read the service. The Bishop preached on “Repentance.”
Richmond was greatly shocked on Friday, by the blowing up of the Laboratory, in
which women, girls, and boys were employed making cartridges; ten women and
girls were killed on the spot, and many more will probably die from their
wounds. May God have mercy upon them! Our dear friend Mrs. S. has just heard of
the burning of her house, at beautiful Chantilly. The Yankee officers had
occupied it as head-quarters, and on leaving it, set fire to every house on the
land, except the overseer's house and one of the servants' quarters. Such
ruthless Vandalism do they commit wherever they go! I expressed my surprise to
Mrs. S. that she was enabled to bear it so well. She calmly replied, “God has
spared my sons through so many battles, that I should be ungrateful indeed to
complain of any thing else.” This lovely spot has been her home from her
marriage, and the native place of her many children, and when I remember it as
I saw it two years ago, I feel that it is too hard for her to be thus deprived
of it. An officer (Federal) quartered there last winter, describing it in a
letter to the New York Herald, says the furniture had been “removed,”
except a large old-fashioned sideboard; he had been indulging his curiosity by
reading the many private letters which he found scattered about the house; some
of which, he says, were written by General Washington, “with whom the family
seems to have been connected.” In this last surmise he was right, and he must
have read letters from which he derived the idea, or he may have gotten it from
the servants, who are always proud of the aristocracy of their owners; but not
a letter written by General Washington did he see, for Mrs. S. was always
careful of them, and brought them away with her; they are now in this house.
The officer took occasion to sneer at the pride and aristocracy of Virginia, and
winds up by asserting that “this establishment belongs to the mother of General
J. E. B. Stuart,” to whom she is not at all related.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 198-9
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