Left Rapidan Station this morning for some point near Manassas. What a beautiful sight it is to see the long columns of troops fording the stream! Each man seems eager to push on until we reach the goal of our desires, and that is Washington! Nevertheless, I fear greatly that we will never be able to accomplish that, although it is within the range of possibility.
Another great battle has been fought at Manassas, and we have again been victorious. Our troops are rapidly pushing on after the enemy, and it is very probable that we will cross the Potomac into Maryland; then the Marylanders will have a chance to rid their soil of Yankee soldiery, if they desire it.
Marched all day and halted for the night at Culpeper Courthouse; had a drenching rain in the afternoon and slept on the wet ground. All this region of country has been utterly devastated by the vast quantities of troops passing through it. For miles you scarcely see a white inhabitant, and there are not a hundred barrels of corn from Rapidan Station to Manassas. The churches are defiled by the sacrilegious Yankees, who scribble and write all sorts of blasphemous epithets on the walls of buildings consecrated to God.
SOURCE: William S. White, A Diary of the War; or What I Saw of It, p. 127-8
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