The next morning, in the dining-room, every Southern man and woman gave us all a wide berth, not deigning to sit at the same end of the dining-room.
After breakfast I went for a few minutes into the parlor. The lady whose voice I heard in falsetto the night before followed me, accompanied by her colored nurse-girl carrying her baby, perhaps six months old.
I had no purpose of controversy in my heart; and so when the lady said, “My baby is named after the best man in the world—Beauregard,” I only smiled.
“I suppose you Yankees think you can conquer us?”
“That is what the people of the North hope to do.”
“Well, you can’t. There is not men enough in the North to conquer us; for when you kill the men off, the women will take up arms.”
“Well, madam, there are thousands of men gathering and drilling in the North, and they will soon be here; and it’s their firm purpose to maintain the Union, cost what it will.”
“They’ll kill the women, will they?”
“They will conquer the South.”
“Contemptible hirelings! they’ll kill the women, will they?” she hissed.