Met Wm. H. B. Custis, Esq., to-day in the square, and had a long
conversation with him. He has made up his mind to sign the ordinance. He thinks
secession might have been averted with honor, if our politicians at Washington
had not been ambitious to figure as leaders in a new revolution. Custis was
always a Democrat, and supported Douglas on the ground that he was the regular
nominee. He said his negro property a month before was worth, perhaps, fifty
thousand dollars; now his slaves would not bring probably more than five
thousand; and that would be the fate of many slaveowners in Virginia.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 31
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