30 March 1865, Chester, South Carolina

"I said to General Preston, 'I pass my days and nights partly at this window. I am sure our army is silently dispersing. Men are passing the wrong way—all the time they slip by. No songs nor shouts now. They have given the thing up. See for yourself—look there!' For a while the streets were thronged with soldiers, and then they were empty again. The marching now is without tap of drum. I told him of the woman in the cracker bonnet at the depot at Charlotte who signaled to her husband as they dragged him off. 'Take it easy, Jake—you desert again, quick as you kin—come back to your wife and children.' And she continued to yell, 'Desert, Jake! desert agin, Jake!'"