March 10th.–Second year of Confederate independence. I write daily for my own diversion. These mémoires pour servir may at some future day afford facts about these times and prove useful to more important people than I am. I do not wish to do any harm or to hurt any one. If any scandalous stories creep in they can easily be burned. It is hard, in such a hurry as things are now, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now that I have made my protest and written down my wishes, I can scribble on with a free will and free conscience.
Congress at the North is down on us. They talk largely of hanging slave-owners. They say they hold Port Royal, as we did when we took it originally from the aborigines, who fled before us; so we are to be exterminated and improved, à l’Indienne, from the face of the earth.
Medea, when asked: “Country, wealth, husband, children, all are gone; and now what remains?” answered: “Medea remains.” “There is a time in most men’s lives when they resemble Job, sitting among the ashes and drinking in the full bitterness of complicated misfortune.”