Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 4.
Frank Moore, Ed.

You will naturally desire to know how the people of the confederate metropolis stand these trying times, for it is evident that we are not safe in these days of light-draft gunboats and high water. I answer, in the main, we stand it very well. Some, to be sure, are down-hearted, and nobody wears as broad a grin as they did the day after the battle of Leesburg. Still there is a universal determination to do or die — to go down, if need be, with our harness on, warring like a brave people to the last. I passed General Wigfall on my return from dinner, and asked him if there was any news? “ No,” said he, “ I don't believe we have been whipped since dinner; I expect, though, to hear of another defeat in the next five minutes.”

Somehow I can't help thinking of Halleck's assertion by telegraph to McClellan, that “the Union flag is on the soil of Tennessee, never to be removed.” This is brag, but the Yankees have up to this time stuck like leeches wherever they have effected a landing. They intrench themselves, and at the first spadeful of earth thrown up by them, our generals give right up, and say all is lost. They have attacked us repeatedly in trenches and forts, and carried the latter invariably, while we, with the exception of the St. Nicholas affair and a few others, have not done a daring thing through the whole war. Another noticeable thing between the Yankees and ourselves is that they follow up their victories, while we squat down in our tracks the moment a battle is ended. This is a shameful fact, which disheartens me more than anything else. I have no hope now in anybody but God and Beau-regard.