April 8, 1863, Daily Mississippian (Jackson, Mississippi)
The Richmond correspondent of the Knoxville Register says:
The evils incident to revolution are in this city developed in their worst aspect. Citizens of Richmond are not affected by them, but the crowds which congregate in the Capital, of both sexes, give abundant evidence of the rapid progress of social demoralization growing out of the unhappy condition of our country. I cannot say more, without saying too much, and can give you no adequate conception of the looseness of morals that is becoming prevalent among those whose necessities open the gateway to all vices. Gambling, such as would startle habitues of European watering places, is not the worst of the moral calamities that has befallen Richmond.
Not only do the Faro banks attract “despositors” from civil and military classes of society, but men who stand high, at least officially, above Congressmen and Major Generals, nightly resort to the magnificent gambling hells of Richmond. I have visited such establishments in Eastern and Southern cities, but have entered none in which the spirit of utter recklessness was so strongly betrayed as in those of this city. The vice of gaming contracted in the army over an “innocent game of old sledge,” becomes the absorbing passion of the gamester in the Faro banks of Richmond. The hope of sudden wealth, the insatiable love of excitement, the desperation resulting from the loss of fortune by the calamities of war, and the absence of those which wives and children throw about men, have all combined to fill this city with reckless gamblers.
Women from all the States and cities of the South visit Richmond. They would reach the army, and often find it impossible. They have not anticipated the vastness of the expenditures to which they would be subjected. Their very necessities suggest a course of conduct which it is needless to portray. Penniless, helpless, unadvised, unrestrained by the presence of those to whom they are known, they resort to means of securing assistance of which at home they would never have dreamed. Religion is a stranger among the floating population of Richmond. Sunday, in this city, is the day of high carnival for all vices. Patriotism might well weep.