No army news. In this quiet nook mail-day is looked forward
to with the greatest anxiety, and the newspapers are read with avidity from beginning
to end — embracing Southern rumours, official statements, army telegrams,
Yankee extravaganzas, and the various et cœteras. The sick and wounded in the various
hospitals are subjects for thought and action in every part of our State which
is free to act for them; we all do what we can in our own little way; and
surely if we have nothing but prayer to offer, great good must be effected.
Yesterday evening, while walking out, a young woman with a baby in her arms
passed us rapidly, weeping piteously, and with the wildest expressions of
grief; we turned to follow her, but found that another woman was meeting her,
whom we recognized as her mother; in another moment all was explained by her
father, whom we met, slowly wending his way homeward. He had been to the
hospital at Danville to see his son-in-law, whose name appeared among the
wounded there. On reaching the place, he found that he had just been buried. On
returning he met his daughter walking; in her impatience and anxiety about her
husband, she could not sit still in the house; and in her ignorance, she
supposed that her father would bring him home to be nursed. Poor thing! she is
one of thousands. Oh that the enemy may be driven from our land, with a
wholesome dread of encroaching upon our borders again! Our people are suffering
too much; they cannot stand it. The family here suffers much anxiety as each
battle approaches, about their young son, the pride and darling of the
household. He is a lieutenant in the Regiment; but during the fights around
Richmond, as his captain was unfit for duty, the first lieutenant killed in the
first fight, the command of the company devolved on this dear, fair-haired boy,
and many praises have they heard of his bravery during those terrible days. He
writes most delightfully encouraging letters, and never seems to know that he
is enduring hardships. His last letter, written on a stump near Charles City
Court-House, whither they had followed the enemy, was most exultant; and, brave
young Christian as he is, he gives the glory to God. He exults in having helped
to drive them, and, as it were, pen them up on the river; and though
they are now desecrating the fair homes of his ancestors, (Berkeley and
Westover,) yet, as they dare not unfurl their once proud banner on any other
spot in Lower Virginia, and only there because protected by their gun-boats, he
seems to think that the proud spirits of the Byrds and Harrisons may submit
when they reflect that though their ancestral trees may shelter the direst of
all foes, yet their ancestral marshes are yielding their malaria and
mosquitoes with an unstinting hand, and aiding unsparingly the sword of the
South in relieving it of invaders. Dear B., like so many Southern boys, he was
summoned by the tocsin of war from the class-room to the camp. His career was
most successful in one of the first literary institutions in this country, and
if he lives he will return to his studies less of a scholar, but more of a man,
in the highest sense of the word, than any collegiate course could have made
him. But we can't look forward, for what horrors may come upon us before our
independence is achieved it makes my heart ache to dwell upon.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 129-30
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