The cry is “Ho! for Greenwell!” Very probably this day week
will see us there. I don't want to go. If we were at peace, and were to spend a
few months of the warmest season out there, none would be more eager and
delighted than I: but to leave our comfortable home, and all it contains, for a
rough pine cottage seventeen miles away even from this scanty civilization, is
sad. It must be! We are hourly expecting two regiments of Yankees to occupy the
Garrison, and some fifteen hundred of our men are awaiting them a little way
off, so the fight seems inevitable. And we must go, leaving what little has
already been spared us to the tender mercies of Northern volunteers, who, from
the specimen of plundering they gave us two weeks ago, will hardly leave us
even the shelter of our roof. O my dear Home! How can I help but cry at leaving
you forever? For if this fight occurs, never again shall I pass the threshold
of this house, where we have been so happy and sad, the scene of joyous
meetings and mournful partings, the place where we greeted each other with glad
shouts after even so short a parting, the place where Harry and father kissed
us good-bye and never came back again!
I know what Lavinia has suffered this long year, by what we
have suffered these last six weeks. Poor Lavinia, so far away! How easier
poverty, if it must come, would be if we could bear it together! I wonder if
the real fate of the boys, if we ever hear, can be so dreadful as this
suspense? Still no news of them. My poor little Jimmy! And think how desperate
Gibbes and George will be when they read Butler's proclamation, and they not
able to defend us! Gibbes was in our late victory of Fredericksburg, I know.
In other days, going to Greenwell was the signal for general
noise and confusion. All the boys gathered their guns and fishing-tackle, and
thousand and one amusements; father sent out provisions; we helped mother pack;
Hal and I tumbled over the libraries to lay in a supply of reading material;
and all was bustle until the carriage drove to the door at daylight one
morning, and swept us off. It is not so gay this time. I wandered around this
morning selecting books alone. We can only take what is necessary, the rest
being left to the care of the Northern militia in general. I never knew before
how many articles were perfectly “indispensable” to me. This or that little
token or keepsake, piles of letters I hate to burn, many dresses, etc., I
cannot take conveniently, lie around me, and I hardly know which to choose
among them, yet half must be sacrificed; I can only take one trunk.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 37-9
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