Here goes! News has been received that the Yankees are
already packed, ready to march against us at any hour. If I was up and well,
how my heart would swell with exultation. As it is, it throbs so with
excitement that I can scarcely lie still. Hope amounts almost to presumption at
Port Hudson. They are confident that our fifteen thousand can repulse twice the
number. Great God! — I say it with all reverence — if we could defeat them! If we could scatter, capture, annihilate
them! My heart beats but one prayer — Victory! I shall grow wild repeating it.
In the mean time, though, Linwood is in danger. This dear place, my second
home; its loved inhabitants; think of their being in such peril! Oh, I shall
cry heartily if harm comes to them! But I must leave before. No use of leaving
my bones for the Yankees to pick; better sing “Dixie” in Georgia. To-morrow,
consequently, I go to that earthly paradise, Clinton, thence to be re-shipped
(so goes the present programme) to Augusta in three days. And no time
for adieux! Wonder who will be surprised, who vexed, and who will cry over the
unforeseen separation? Not a single “good-bye”! Nothing — except an old brass
button that Mr. Halsey gave me as a souvenir in case he should be killed in the
coming assault. It is too bad. Ah! Destiny! Destiny! Where do you take us?
During these two trying years, I have learned to feel myself a mere puppet in
the hands of a Something that takes me here to-day, to-morrow there, always
unexpectedly, and generally very unwillingly, but at last leads me somewhere or
other, right side up with care, after a thousand troubles and distresses. The
hand of Destiny is on me now; where will it lead me?
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 328-9
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