. . . I am in despair! Forty thousand troops are marching
upon Richmond through here; eight thousand more left in Staunton, as an
intelligent guard told us. Richmond must fall — how can it withstand such
numbers!
I am astonished that in the midst of our frightful troubles
we are enabled to be so calm. How awful is war! Who would think this was
Sunday, and our intended Communion! One of our overseers has just come into
town, and has told one of our servants that every sheep has been slaughtered,
every cow, and the horses carried off. We are ruined, nearly; if this house is
burned, then all is gone but the bare land. I continue to scratch down a line
now and then, to occupy myself. I do it too, that my father and friends in the
North may know — if ever I can send them these notes — something of what I am
passing through.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and
Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 192
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