Yesterday, we went to the Capitol grounds to see our
returned prisoners. We walked slowly up and down until Jeff Davis was called
upon to speak. There I stood, almost touching the bayonets when he left me. I
looked straight into the prisoners' faces, poor fellows. They cheered with all
their might, and I wept for sympathy, and enthusiasm. I was very deeply moved.
These men were so forlorn, so dried up, and shrunken, with such a strange look
in some of their eyes; others so restless and wild-looking; others again
placidly vacant, as if they had been dead to the world for years. A poor woman
was too much for me. She was searching for her son. He had been expected back.
She said he was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. She kept going in and out among
them with a basket of provisions she had brought for him to eat. It was too
pitiful. She was utterly unconscious of the crowd. The anxious dread,
expectation, hurry, and hope which led her on showed in her face.
A sister of Mrs. Lincoln is here. She brings the freshest
scandals from Yankeeland. She says she rode with Lovejoy. A friend of hers commands
a black regiment. Two Southern horrors — a black regiment and Lovejoy.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 301
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