Spent this morning in the house of mourning. Our neighbour
Mrs. Stebbins has lost her eldest son. The disease was “that most fatal of
Pandora's train,” consumption. He contracted it in the Western Army. His poor
mother has watched the ebbing of his life for several months, and last night he
died most suddenly. That young soldier related to me an anecdote, some weeks
ago, with his short, oppressed breathing and broken sentences, which showed the
horrors of this fratricidal war. He said that the day after a battle in
Missouri, in the Fall of 1861, he, among others, was detailed to bury the dead.
Some Yankee soldiers were on the field doing the same thing. As they turned
over a dead man, he saw a Yankee stop, look intently, and then run to the spot
with an exclamation of horror. In a moment he was on his knees by the body, in
a paroxysm of grief. It was his brother. They were Missourians. The brother now
dead had emigrated South some years before. He said that before the war communication
had been kept up between them, and he had strongly suspected that he was in the
army; he had consequently been in constant search of his brother. The Northern
and Southern soldier then united in burying him, who was brother in arms of the
one, and the mother's son of the other!
The Bishop and Mrs. J. returned home to-day from their long
trip in the South-west. They travelled with great comfort, but barely escaped a
raid at Wytheville. We welcomed them gladly. So many of our family party are
wandering about, that our little cottage has become lonely.
Mr. C. has come out, and reports a furious bombardment of
Sumter. This has been going on so long, that I begin to feel that it is indeed
impregnable,
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 236-7
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