One just from Baton Rouge tells us that my presentiment
about our house is verified; Yankees do inhabit it, a Yankee colonel and his
wife. They say they look strangely at home on our front gallery, pacing up and
down. . . . And a stranger and a Yankee occupies our father's place at the
table where he presided for thirty-one years. . . . And the old lamp that
lighted up so many eager, laughing faces around the dear old table night after
night; that with its great beaming eye watched us one by one as we grew up and
left our home; that witnessed every parting and every meeting; by which we
sang, read, talked, danced, and made merry; the lamp that Hal asked for as soon
as he beheld the glittering chandeliers of the new innovation, gas; the lamp
that all agreed should go to me among other treasures, and be cased in glass to
commemorate the old days, — our old lamp has passed into the hands of strangers
who neither know nor care for its history. And mother's bed (which, with the
table and father's little ebony stand, alone remained uninjured) belongs now to
a Yankee woman! Father prized his ebony table. He said he meant to have a gold
plate placed in its centre, with an inscription, and I meant to have it done
myself when he died so soon after. A Yankee now sips his tea over it, just
where some beau or beauty of the days of Charles II may have rested a laced sleeve
or dimpled arm. . .1 Give the
devil his due. Bless Yankees for one thing; they say they tried hard to save
our State House.
_______________
1 This “little ebony table” — which happened to
be mahogany so darkened with age as to be recognized only by an expert many
years after the war — and a mahogany rocking-chair are the two pieces of
furniture which survived the sacking of Judge Morgan's house and remain to his
descendants to-day. Such other furniture as could be utilized was appropriated
by negroes. — W. D.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 308-9
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