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?

She died praying that she might die.

I will laugh at the laughable while I breathe

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.

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.

We are scattered, stunned; the remnant of heart left alive is filled with brotherly hate... Whose fault? Everybody blamed somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape.

I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.