We had the table laid this morning, but no bread or butter
or milk. What a prospect for delicacies! My house is a perfect fright. I had
brought in Saturday night some thirty bushels of potatoes and ten or fifteen
bushels of wheat poured down on the carpet in the ell. Then the few gallons of
syrup saved was daubed all about. The backbone of a hog that I had killed on
Friday, and which the Yankees did not take when they cleaned out my smokehouse,
I found and hid under my bed, and this is all the meat I have.
Major Lee came down this evening, having heard that I was
burned out, to proffer me a home. Mr. Dorsett was with him. The army lost some
of their beeves in passing. I sent to-day and had some driven into my lot, and
then sent to Judge Glass to come over and get some. Had two killed. Some of
Wheeler's men came in, and I asked them to shoot the cattle, which they did.
About ten o'clock this morning Mr. Joe Perry [Mrs. Laura's
husband] called. I was so glad to see him that I could scarcely forbear
embracing him. I could not keep from crying, for I was sure the Yankees had
executed him, and I felt so much for his poor wife. The soldiers told me
repeatedly Saturday that they had hung him and his brother James and George
Guise. They had a narrow escape, however, and only got away by knowing the
country so much better than the soldiers did. They lay out until this morning.
How rejoiced I am for his family! All of his negroes are gone, save one man
that had a wife here at my plantation. They are very strong Secesh
[Secessionists]. When the army first came along they offered a guard for the
house, but Mrs. Laura told them she was guarded by a Higher Power, and did not
thank them to do it. She says that she could think of nothing else all day when
the army was passing but of the devil and his hosts. She had, however, to call
for a guard before night or the soldiers would have taken everything she had.
SOURCE: Dolly Lunt Burge, A Woman's Wartime Journal,
p. 36-8
No comments:
Post a Comment