Browse Items (21 total)

By three o’clock in the morning we had bid adieu to every Confederate soldier, and instead of going to be, we retired to dress for the “sacking of the town.” “I mean to put on every white skirt I have,” exclaimed one…

Catherine Ann Devereux was one of six children born in 1823 to Thomas Pollock Devereux and Catherine Ann Bayard Johnson. She was raised in a wealthy plantation owning family where she received a private education from her father. Once married to…

The night before the Yankees came, a friend, who belonged to Wheeler's Cavalry called and my mother gave him supper. While he was there, the servants came in and said the soldiers were tearing down the garden fence and putting their horses in, so he…

Fayetteville, N.C., March 22, 1865

Sherman has gone and terrible has been the storm that has swept over us with his coming and going. They deliberately shot two of our citizens-murdered them in cold blood-one of them a Mr. Murphy, a wounded…

Sherman, with his hordes of depraved and lawless men, came upon us like swarms of bees, bringing sorrow and desolation in their pathway. For days, we had been expecting them, and our loved boys in grey had been passing through in squads looking…

. . . . This morning the last of the vandals left our city and burned the bridge after them - and leaving suffering and desolation behind them, and embittering every heart. The worst of their acts was committed to poor Mrs. Nichols. Violence done,…

Brother writes from Raleigh that Sherman effected a junction with Schofield at Elizabethtown in Bladen county, that on Friday there was a sharp fight a Black River (which divides Sampson from Cumberland) without decisive result. He is most despondent…

And now, old friend, you my Journal, for a time good bye! You are too bulky to be kept out, exposed to prying Yankee eyes and thievish Yankee fingers. You go for a season to darkness and solitude and my record must henceforth be kept on scraps of…

April 20, 1865

We have lived in such a state of excitement for the past month that I have not had the time to write any thing which occurred but to begin at this late day—After the evacuation of Goldsboro—we were in constant expectation of the…

April 25, 1865 Gen Johnston has surrendered his army! We have no army now-We have been overpowered-outnumbered, but thank God we have not been whipped—Did I ever think to live to see this day! After all the misery & anguish of the four…