Here I am, and still alive, having wakened but once in the
night, and that only in consequence of Louis and Morgan crying; nothing more alarming
than that. I ought to feel foolish; but I do not. I am glad I was prepared,
even though there was no occasion for it.
While I was taking my early bath, Lilly came to the
bath-house and told me through the weatherboarding of another battle. Stonewall
Jackson has surrounded McClellan completely, and victory is again ours. This is
said to be the sixth battle he has fought in twenty days, and they say he has
won them all. And the Seventh Regiment distinguished itself, and was presented
with four cannon on the battlefield in acknowledgment of its gallant conduct!
Gibbes belongs to the “ragged howling regiment that rushed on the field yelling
like unchained devils and spread a panic through the army,” as the Northern
papers said, describing the battle of Manassas. Oh, how I hope he has escaped!
And they say “Palmerston has urged the recognition of the
Confederacy, and an armed intervention on our side.” Would it not be glorious?
Oh, for peace, blessed peace, and our brothers once more! Palmerston is said to
have painted Butler as the vilest oppressor, and having added he was ashamed to
acknowledge him of Anglo-Saxon origin. Perhaps knowing the opinion entertained
of him by foreign nations, caused Butler to turn such a somersault. For a few
days before his arrival here, we saw a leading article in the leading Union
paper of New Orleans, threatening us with the arming of the slaves for our
extermination if England interfered, in the same language almost as Butler used
when here; three days ago the same paper ridiculed the idea, and said such a
brutal, inhuman thing was never for a moment thought of, it was too absurd. And
so the world goes! We all turn somersaults occasionally.
And yet, I would rather we would achieve our independence
alone, if possible. It would be so much more glorious. And then I would hate to
see England conquer the North, even if for our sake; my love for the old Union
is still too great to be willing to see it so humiliated. If England would just
make Lincoln come to his senses, and put an end to all this confiscation which
is sweeping over everything, make him agree to let us alone and behave himself,
that will be quite enough. But what a task! If it were put to the vote
to-morrow to return free and unmolested to the Union, or stay out, I am sure
Union would have the majority; but this way, to think we are to be sent to Fort
Jackson and all the other prisons for expressing our ideas, however harmless,
to have our houses burned over our heads, and all the prominent men hanged, who
would be eager for it? — unless, indeed, it was to escape even the greater
horrors of a war of extermination.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 102-4
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