July 29th, 30th and 31st. Nothing of interest enough to record has transpired during the past three days, unless it be the arrival of transport boats to convey us to “Dixie,” which latter is the only evidence to our minds that we are really to be exchanged, for we have ceased to believe the Yankees any longer. And I might add, the general happiness manifested by the prisoners in anticipation of once more realizing that freedom which allows one to move about at pleasure, and untrammelled by a sentinel at every step. No one can entertain an adequate idea of what liberty is, until he has been confined in a Yankee prison, and then he will understand both liberty and tyranny.
August 1st. About three thousand Confederates were put on board boats to-day, and started for the South—landed at “Aiken’s Landing,” August 5th.
My prison experience has taught me that the Yankees are one grand bundle of lies and inconsistencies. The newspapers, particularly, have begun, and kept up, a wholsale system of lying, under the military censorship and direction of the Secretary of War. In spite of their disclaimers to the contrary, their own acts and words betray their purpose to steal all the negroes they can. It is true that some have pleaded, and are now pleading for peace under the old government, offering the South all she ever had, and claiming nothing that is not common to all. But this is simply because they have seen the folly of their undertaking, and would like now to slip out of the difficulty, especially since they believe they have about as many slaves as they will probably get. But those who are now causing all the bloodshed around us, will, if they persist, find the bounds of slavery yet spread beyond limits heretofore held. The Confederate Government, however, is fighting for Constitutional Liberty—the liberty of our forefathers against all things, and nothing but annihilation can prevent them from upholding it; and to the Yankees it may be said:
“The purpose you undertake is dangerous;
The friends you have named uncertain;
The time itself unsorted;
And your whole plot too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition.”