A young lady of Louisiana, whose father’s plantation had been brought within the enemy’s lines, in their operations against Vicksburg, was frequently constrained by the necessities of her situation to hold conversation with the Federal officers. On one of these occasions a Yankee official enquired how she managed to preserve her equanimity and cheerfulness amid so many trials and privations, and such severe reverses of fortune. Our army, said he, has deprived your father of two hundred negros and literally desolated two magnificent plantations.
She said to the officer–a leader of that army, which had for months hovered around Vicksburg, powerless to take it with all their vast appliances of war, and mortified by their repeated failures: “I am not insensible to the comforts and elegancies which fortune can secure, and of which your barbarian hordes have deprived me; but a true Southern woman will not weep over them, while her country remains. If you wish tocrush me, take Vicksburg.”
