"I have been ill since I wrote last. Serena's letter.* They have been visited by bushwhackers, the roughs that always follow in the wake of an army.
My sister Kate they forced back against the wall. She had Katie, the baby, in her arms, and Miller, the brave boy, clung to his mother, though he could do no more. They tried to force brandy down her throat. They knocked Mary down with the butt end of a pistol, and Serena they struck with an open hand, leaving the mark on her cheek for weeks. When they struck Mary, Serena seized the captain's arm. 'Do you let your men do that?' And she showed Mary's bleeding head. 'No, no,' he said, 'that's too bad. You keep all together, and I will get them away for tonight, and then you go off at once.' Which they did that night to the Kings—the next day to Greenville. It was too much. It made me ill."
*Serena Miller Williams was a niece of Mary Boykin Chesnut, daughter of MBC's younger sister Catherine "Kate" Miller and David Rogerson Williams II. In June 1865, Serena was sixteen years old.