It has come at last! What an awful sound! I thought I had
heard a bombardment before; but Baton Rouge was child's play compared to this.
At half-past eleven came the first gun — at least the first I heard, and
I hardly think it could have commenced many moments before. Instantly I had my
hand on Miriam, and at my first exclamation, Mrs. Badger and Anna answered. All
three sprang to their feet to dress, while all four of us prayed aloud. Such an
incessant roar! And at every report the house shaking so, and we thinking of
our dear soldiers, the dead and dying, and crying aloud for God's blessing on
them, and defeat and overthrow to their enemies. That dreadful roar! I can't
think fast enough. They are too quick to be counted. We have all been in Mrs.
Carter's room, from the last window of which we can see the incessant flash of
the guns and the great shooting stars of flame, which must be the hot shot of
the enemy. There is a burning house in the distance, the second one we have
seen to-night. For Yankees can't prosper unless they are pillaging honest
people. Already they have stripped all on their road of cattle, mules, and
negroes.
Gathered in a knot within and without the window, we six
women up here watched in the faint starlight the flashes from the guns, and
silently wondered which of our friends were lying stiff and dead, and then,
shuddering at the thought, betook ourselves to silent prayer. I think we know
what it is to “wrestle with God in prayer”; we had but one thought. Yet for
women, we took it almost too coolly. No tears, no cries, no fear, though for
the first five minutes everybody's teeth chattered violently. Mrs. Carter had
her husband in Fenner's battery, the hottest place if they are attacked by the
land force, and yet to my unspeakable relief she betrayed no more emotion than
we who had only friends there. We know absolutely nothing; when does one ever
know anything in the country? But we presume that this is an engagement between
our batteries and the gunboats attempting to run the blockade.
Firing has slackened considerably. All are to lie down
already dressed; but being in my nightgown from necessity, I shall go to sleep,
though we may expect at any instant to hear the tramp of Yankee cavalry in the
yard.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 337-8
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