To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice.

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.

There is no slave, after all, like a wife...Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves.

Forgiveness is indifference. Forgiveness is impossible while love lasts.

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

Is the sea drying up? It is going up into mist and coming down on us in this water spout, the rain. It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.