To-day General Chesnut and his staff departed. His troops
are ordered to look after the mountain passes beyond Greenville on the North
Carolina and Tennessee quarter.
Misery upon misery. Mobile1 is going as New
Orleans went. Those Western men have not held, their towns as we held and hold
Charleston, or as the Virginians hold Richmond. And they call us a “frill-shirt,
silk-stocking chivalry,” or “a set of dandy Miss Nancy.” They fight desperately
in their bloody street brawls, but we bear privation and discipline best.
_______________
1 The battle of Mobile Bay, won under Farragut,
was fought on August 5, 1864.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 319
