"I want to get home to Philadelphia without being detained on the way."
"Copperas Breeches" vs. "Black Breeches."
In the hotel office, two well-dressed southerners were discussing the omnipresent topic. One of them said:
"We shall have no war."
"Yes, we shall," replied the other. "The Yankees are going to fight for a while; but it will make no difference to us. We have got copperas breeches enough to carry this war through. None of the black breeches will have to shoulder muskets!"
The reader should understand that the clothing of the working whites was colored with a dye in which copperas was the chief ingredient; while, of course, the upper, slaveholding classes, wore "customary suits of solemn black." This was a very pregnant sentence, conveying in a few words the belief of those Rebels who instigated and impelled the war.
A Correspondent in Durance Vile.
The morning newspapers, at our breakfast-table, detailed two interesting facts. First, that "Jasper,"[7] the Charleston correspondent of The New York Times, had been seized and imprisoned in the Palmetto City. Second, that Gen. Bragg had arrested in his camp, and sent under guard to Montgomery, "as a prisoner of war," the correspondent of The Pensacola (Fla.) Observer. This journalist was an enthusiastic Secessionist, but had been guilty of some indiscretion in publishing facts touching the strength and designs of the Rebel army. His signature was "Nemo;" and he now bade fair to be No One, indeed, for some time to come.