3 April 1865 – 9 April 1865

Saw General Preston ride off. He came to tell me good-by. I told him he looked like a Crusader on his great white horse, with William, his squire, at his heels. Our men are all consummate riders, and have their servants well mounted behind them, carrying cloaks and traps—how different from the same men packed like sardines in dirty railroad cars, usually floating inch deep in liquid tobacco juice. For the kitchen and Ellen’s comfort I wanted a pine table and a kitchen chair. A woman sold me one to-day for three thousand Confederate dollars. Mrs. Hamilton has been disappointed again. Prioleau Hamilton says the person into whose house they expected to move to-day came to say she could not take boarders for three reasons: First, “that they had small-pox in the house.” “And the two others?” “Oh, I did not ask for the two others!”

Miss Middleton’s letter came in answer to mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me. “We long,” she says, “for our own small sufficiency of wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle unto death, although the neighbors continue to feed us, as you would say, ‘with a spoon.’ We have fallen upon a new device. We keep a cookery book on the mantelpiece, and when the dinner is deficient we just read off a pudding or a crême. It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this dessert in imagination, but perhaps it is as good for the digestion.” As I was ready to go, though still up-stairs, some one came to say General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton cried out, “Send word you are not at home.” “Never!” said I. “Why make him climb all these stairs when you must go in five minutes?” “If he had come here dragging Sherman as a captive at his chariot wheels I might say ‘not at home,’ but not now.” And I ran down and greeted him on the sidewalk in the face of all, and walked slowly beside him as he toiled up the weary three stories, limping gallantly. He was so well dressed and so cordial; not depressed in the slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report self-defense; says Joe Johnston attacked him and he was obliged to state things from his point of view. And now follow statements, where one may read between the lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in Western Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned because he and Joe Johnston were not on cordial terms, and as the fatigue of the mountain campaign would be too great for him, he would like the chance of going across the Mississippi. Texas was true to him, and would be his home, as it had voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General Lee is utterly despondent, and has no plan if Richmond goes, as go it must.

Richmond has fallen and I have no heart to write about it. Grant broke through our lines and Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville. They are too many for us. Everything is lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue black is our horizon. Hood says we shall all be obliged to go West—to Texas, I mean, for our own part of the country will be overrun. Yes, a solitude and a wild waste it may become, but, as to that, we can rough it in the bush at home. De Fontaine, in his newspaper, continues the old cry. “Now Richmond is given up,” he says, “it was too heavy a load to carry, and we are stronger than ever.” “Stronger than ever?” Nine-tenths of our army are under ground and where is another army to come from? Will they wait until we grow one?