I wrote to my agent on the Eastern Shore to send me the last
year's rent due on the farm. But I learn that the cruisers in the bay are
intercepting the communications, and I fear remittances will be impracticable.
I hope my family are ready by this to leave Burlington. Women and children have
not yet been interfered with. What if they should be compelled to abandon our
property there? Mrs. Semple had her plate seized at New York.
At fifty-one, I can hardly follow the pursuit of arms; but I
will write and preserve a Diary of the revolution. I never held or sought
office in my life; but now President Tyler and Gov. Wise say I will find
employment at Montgomery. The latter will prepare a letter to President Davis,
and the former says he will draw up a paper in my behalf, and take it through
the Convention himself for signatures. I shall be sufficiently credentialed, at
all events — provided old partisan considerations are banished from the new
confederacy. To make my Diary full and complete as possible, is now my business.
And,
"When the
hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's
lost and won,"
if the South wins it, I shall be content to retire to my
farm, provided it falls on the Southern side of the line, and enjoy sweet
repose “under my own vine and fig-tree.”
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 29
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