The excitement about Port Hudson and Vicksburg is intense.
When I heard on Friday that the last attack was being made on the former place,
I took to my prayers with a delirium of fervor. If I was a man, if I had the
blessed privilege of fighting, I would be on the breastworks, or perchance on
the water batteries under Colonel Steadman's command. But as I was
unfortunately born a woman, I stay home and pray with heart and soul. That is
all I can do; but I do it with a will. In my excitement, I was wishing that I
was a Catholic, that I might make a vow for the preservation of Port Hudson,
when a brilliant idea struck me. It was this: though vows are peculiar to
Catholics, mosquitoes are common to all sects. From that arose this heroic
scheme: I said, “Hear me, Miriam, thou who knowest I have slept undisturbed but
three nights out of seventeen, four hours out of each of the other fourteen
having been spent in destroying my insatiable foe. Thou seest that nightly
vigils are torturing me pale and weak, thou knowest what unspeakable affection
I have for the youth yclept by the ancients Morpheus. Yet listen to my vow: If
Port Hudson holds out, if our dear people are victorious, I offer up myself on
the altar of my country to mosquitoes, and never again will I murmur at their
depredations and voracity.” Talk of pilgrimages, and the ordinary vow of
wearing only the Virgin's colors (the most becoming in the world); there never was
one of greater heroism or more sublime self-sacrifice than this. And as if to
prove my sincerity, they have been worse than ever these last two nights. But
as yet I have not murmured; for the Yankees, who swore to enter Port Hudson
before last Monday night, have not yet fulfilled their promise, and we hold it
still. Vivent vows and mosquitoes, and forever may our flag wave over
the entrenchments! We will conquer yet, with God's blessing!
A week or ten days ago came a letter from Lydia, who is placed
within the lines by this recent raid. She writes that the sugar-house and
quarters have been seized for Yankee hospitals, that they have been robbed of
their clothing, and that they are in pursuit of the General, who I pray Heaven
may escape them. She wrote for clothing, provisions, and a servant, and after
we had procured them all, and were ready to send them, we discovered that they
would not be allowed to pass; so I hardly know what the poor child will do
unless she accepts Brother's invitation to come down to him immediately, if she
thinks it right.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 390-1
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