A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865 being a record of the actual experiences of the wife of a Confederate officer

The officer who had examined our trunks the previous day took the trunks to the depot in a wagon, mother and I going in a hack. After we got on the train, our officer, Lieutenan...

I passed May and a part of the summer of 1863 in fruitless efforts to get a pass to Virginia. This was when the Civil War was at its whitest heat, and I was in the city of Balti...

Mrs. Harris kept a select and fashionable boarding-house. There were many regular boarders and a stream of people coming and going all the time. She was a Southern sympathizer,...

The Arlington is one-half of a double house, a veranda without division serving for both halves. Just before noon up rode a regiment of Yankees and quartered themselves next doo...

While I was at Hicksford I stayed at General Chambliss’s. I was very happy there. Dan’s camp was not far off, and he came to see me very often and every morning sent his horses...

After leaving the saucy and peremptory adjutant we were shown into the handsomest ambulance I have ever seen. I suppose the one we had been using was returned to Harper’s Ferry...

In forty-eight hours we knew that the surmise of the orderly was correct--there was enough fighting. The first cannon-ball which tore through the air at Brandy was only too grav...

One lovely morning mother sat at an upper window shelling peas for dinner. The window commanded a view of the Petersburg heights and beyond. Presently she stopped shelling peas,...

Though the last act of our heroic tragedy was already beginning I was so far from suspecting it that I joined mother at the Arlington, prepared to make a joke of hardships and w...

Soon after my marriage my brother-in-law moved to Baltimore, and my mother decided to go with Milicent and her little boy. I had never really been separated from them before; I...

He and I had begun to discuss ways and means of getting back to Virginia. One day, as usual, he was sitting beside me in the parlor after dinner, and, as usual, we were talking...

I hurried into my room and changed my dress--to be careful of wearing apparel had become a pressing necessity--while mother went out to see about trains. We found there was no P...

Our troops had to get out of winter quarters before they were well settled in them. I am not historian enough to explain how it was, but the old familiar trip “On to Richmond” h...

The night of our third day found us at the wagoner’s cottage on the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As we climbed our slow and painful way up to the ruddy little light that bec...

“I really thought you rather liked Dan Grey, but it seems I was mistaken. And you really don’t want to see him? Sad--I must tell him and condole with him.”

When Dan recovered I returned to Norfolk, and there I stayed for some time, getting letters from him, taking care of uncle and developing a genius for housekeeping. One day I wa...

The day after we got the batch of letters the door opened softly, and there she stood, holding Bobby by the hand. She had come so quietly that we did not know it until she stood...

As we traveled along farther and farther from Dan, I kept on crying softly to myself now and then, turning my face from Milicent. Presently her arm stole around me.

Many years ago I heard a prominent lawyer of Baltimore, who had just returned from a visit to Charleston, say that the Charlestonians were so in the habit of antedating everythi...

We found fresh straw and hot bricks in the bottom of our ambulance when we were ready to leave the next morning, an excellent luncheon and two bottles of wine. Soon after we sta...

I had heard that before. Indeed, I had heard a great deal about Dan Grey that made me long to get even with him. Everybody had a way of speaking as if Petersburg wasn’t Petersbu...

Not long after this I had to give up my room to Governor Bailey of Florida and his family. They had come on in search of their son, whom they had for months believed to be dead,...

Late one day we saw an ambulance driving up to the gate through the pouring rain. A few minutes after, Patsy, the housemaid, came in to say that the adjutant had sent for his wi...

The tallow candles were lighted on each side of my bureau--the time came when I remembered those _two_ tallow candles as a piece of reckless and foolish extravagance--when there...

The War Department of the United States issued a notice that on such a date a flag-of-truce boat would go from Washington to Richmond, and that all persons wishing to go must ob...

“If de vimmins had peen dere, dey vould haf pult your close off, unt dey vould haf search you all ofer. I ton’t know as you haf anyding you not vant dem to see, but if you haf a...

“Shentlemen,” he began earnestly, “tey haf got te leetle Chew poy trunk mit giffin’ him visky, unt he haf tolt everyding. I pe your vrent. You mus’ get avay pefore mitnight.”