“I tell you the cause is lost, colonel!” with feverish energy, “lost irremediably, at this moment while we are speaking! It is lost from causes which are enough to make the devil laugh, but it is lost all the same! When the day of surrender, and Yankee domination comes—when the gentlemen of the South are placed under the heel of negroes and Yankees—I, for one, wish to die. Happy is the man who shall have gotten into the grave before that day!{1} Blessed will be the woman who has never given suck!{2} Yes, the best thing for me is to die—{3} and I am going to do so. I shall not see that Dies Irae! I shall be in my grave!”
{Footnote 1: His words.}
{Footnote 2: His words.}
{Footnote 3: His words.}
And breathing heavily, the journalist again leaned back in his chair, as though about to faint.
An hour afterward, I terminated my visit, and went out, oppressed and gloomy.
This singular man had made a reluctant convert of me to his own dark views. The cloud which wrapped him, now darkened me—from the black future I saw the lightnings dart already.
His predictions were destined to have a very remarkable fulfilment.
On the 21st of December, a few days after our interview, Sherman telegraphed to Lincoln:—
“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns, and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”