It is but too true; both have fallen. All Port Hudson
privates have been paroled, and the officers sent here for exchange. Aye! Aye!
I know some privates I would rather see than the officers! As yet, only ten
that we know have arrived. All are confined in the Custom-House. Last evening
crowds surrounded the place. We did something dreadful, Ada Peirce, Miriam, and
I. We went down to the confectionery; and unable to resist the temptation, made
a detour by the Custom-House in hope of seeing one of our poor dear
half-starved mule and rat fed defenders. The crowd had passed away then; but
what was our horror when we emerged from the river side of the building and
turned into Canal, to find the whole front of the pavement lined with Yankees!
Our folly struck us so forcibly that we were almost paralyzed with fear.
However, that did not prevent us from endeavoring to hurry past, though I felt
as though walking in a nightmare. Ada was brave enough to look up at a window
where several of our prisoners were standing, and kept urging us to do
likewise. “Look! He knows you, Sarah! He has called another to see you! They
both recognize you! Oh, look, please, and tell me who they are! They are
watching you still!” she would exclaim. But if my own dear brother stood there,
I could not have raised my eyes; we only hurried on faster, with a hundred
Yankees eyes fixed on our flying steps.
My friend Colonel Steadman was one of the commissioners for
arranging the terms of the capitulation, I see. He has not yet arrived.
* * * * * * * * * *
Dreadful news has come of the defeat of Lee at Gettysburg.
Think I believe it all? He may have been defeated; but not one of these reports
of total overthrow and rout do I credit. Yankees jubilant, Southerners dismal.
Brother, with principles on one side and brothers on the other, is
correspondingly distracted.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 398-9
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