Sarah Morgan had fled her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in August 1862 when Confederate forces unsuccessfully attempted to retake the city. She lived for eight months with relatives at Linwood, a plantation five miles northeast of Port Hudson, while her widowed mother stayed in the nearby town of Clinton. Severe food shortages and the prospect of a Union attack on Port Hudson eventually drove Morgan, her sister Miriam, and their mother from northern Louisiana in April 1863. After fruitlessly trying to find refuge in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, they reluctantly decided to move in with Morgan’s half brother in Union-occupied New Orleans. In September 1862 Major General Benjamin F. Butler, the Union commander at New Orleans, had ordered that any person who failed to take the oath of allegiance be registered as “an enemy of the United States.” Shortly after Morgan arrived in New Orleans, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, Butler’s successor, ordered the expulsion of all registered enemies who remained within Union lines. Morgan wrote about the order on the anniversary of the death of her brother Henry, who had been killed in a duel in New Orleans in 1861.
Thursday April 3oth.
Was not the recollection of this day bitter enough to me already? I did not think it could be more so. Yet behold me crying as I have not cried for many and many a day. Not for Harry; I dare not cry for him. I feel a deathlike quiet when I think of him; a fear that even a deep drawn breath would wake him in his grave. And as dearly as I love you, O Hal I dont want you in this dreary world again! Not here, O Hal! Not here! Stay where you can look down on these pitiful mortals and smile at their littleness. But I would not have you among them, Hal! Stay there, where maybe one day God will call me. I will go to you, but dont wish to be back here, Harry. Long long ago I learned to say “Thy will be done,” and almost to be thankful you were in your grave. Two years ago to day Hal, you folded your hands and died so quietly and meekly. Two years of trials and hardships have been spared you. Say thank God, Harry! O safe, safe, in the heaven above pray for us, pity us, miserable creatures that we are!
To day came to us the proclamation which should link the name of Yankee to those of the inhabitants of the lower regions. Talk of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes! Talk of Louis XIV! Of—Pshaw! my head is in such a whirl that history gets all mixed up, and all paralels seem weak and moderate in comparison to this infamous outrage. To day, thousands of families, from the most respectable down to the least, all who have had the firmness to register themselves enemies to the United States, are ordered to leave the city before the fifteenth of May. Think of the thousands, perfectly destitute, who can hardly afford to buy their daily bread even here, sent to the Confederacy, where it is neither to be earned, nor bought, without money, friends, or a home. Hundreds have comfortable homes here, which will be confiscated to enrich those who drive them out. “It is an ill wind that blows no one good.”
Such dismal faces as one meets every where! Each looks heart broken. Homeless, friendless, beggars, is written in every eye. Brother’s face is too unhappy to make it pleasant to look at him. True, he is safe; but hundreds of his friends are going forth destitute, leaving happy homes behind, not knowing where the crust of bread for famishing children is to come from to-morrow. He went to Gen. Bowen and asked if it were possible that women and children were included in the order. Yes, he said; they should all go, and go in the Confederacy. They should not be allowed to go elsewhere.
Penned up like sheep to starve! That’s the idea! With the addition of forty thousand mouths to feed, they think they can invoke famine to their aid, seeing that their negro brothers dont help them much in the task of subjugating us. And these are the men who cry Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! These are the men who hope to conquer us! Ever unite with them? Never, never! Defenders of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile! These are the foes who are striving to overcome you! Deliver your cities in their hands? Die first!
O that from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande their vile footsteps should have been allowed to press our soil! Give up to them? Rather than submit, I would that, all gathered together, we should light our own funeral pyre, and old men, brave soldiers, fair women and tender children should all perish hand in hand in the bright flames we would send up to Heaven as a memorial of our toil, sorrow, and suffering.
If I was a man! O if I was only a man! For two years that has been my only cry, and to day I fairly rave about it. Blood, fire, desolation, I feel ready to invoke all, on these Yankees. Miriam and I are both desperate. If we could only get back, even to Clinton! It seems base treason to remain apparently under the protection of this hateful flag, while all of our own creed and country are sent out to starve. We would endure any thing, if we could only get mother’s consent. If she would only stay with Brother, and let us go back to Clinton! For she cannot endure the privations we would have to undergo, while we could stand anything, just to get out of sight of these Yankees again. But she wont listen to it. So we will have to remain patiently here, and consequently labor under the suspicion of belonging to a side we abhor with all our souls. George and Gibbes will be frantic about it. If we could only, only get away!
Evidently, Banks had been whipped in the Attakapas. In spite of his fanfaronade of trumpets, I believe he has been outrageously beaten (as usual) and turns round to punish women and children for his defeat. The “Union” is certainly on its last legs when its generals resort to such means as getting negroes to fight its battles seeing how white men fail, and take to running women and children out of the land. You have roused the Devil in us, Banks! We women will tear you to pieces yet!
Dont care who knows I smuggled in a dozen letters! Wish I had had more!