February 20th [1863]. Mary Harrison came to ask us to go with her to Mrs. Payne’s and thence to see the prisoners off. We did not feel like standing so long in such a crowd, though anxious to wave a handkerchief to them, too. Mary promised to come back to dinner, but Mrs. Dameron sent us an invitation to dine while Mary was here, so she declined coming back. We spent the day at Mrs. D——’s. Had quite a discussion about spiritualism. I don’t like to hear people say a thing can’t be true, or that it is not true and that they know it isn’t. I said that I felt too ignorant of nature’s mysteries to say what was or what was not true. Our being is so mysterious and the laws which govern it are so mysterious that I do not know how many other mysteries I may be involved in. I said that I was sure of one thing and that was that nothing but truth could live; false doctrine must die out, but truth can be crushed out only for a season. An abiding law of the universe must be abiding and revealed sometime. I am determined to be prejudiced against nothing but ignorance. Most people show so little sign of having thought at all except in commonplace, everyday matters, that it is a relief to be entertained with a beautiful fancy logically sustained as Mrs. Waugh sustains hers.
Sent for by Mrs. D—— on account of company at home; found Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Roselius and Mrs. Gilmour. Annie Waugh came in afterwards. Mrs. Wells tired out, having been running from one Federal ruler to another for days trying to get permission to send her young daughters in the Confederacy a few necessaries—no success after all her trouble. These people never say no at first. The Queen of the West, or, some say, the Conestoga, passed Vicksburg some time ago; she has captured three Confederate vessels with provisions, and has entirely cut off communication by water between Port Hudson and Vicksburg. Our Red River supplies and those from Texas also cut off. She must be sunk or captured. I expect to hear of one or the other in a few days. I read a speech of Wendell Phillips. No Jacobin of France, not even Robespierre, ever made so infamous a one. He says an aristocracy like that of the South has never been gotten rid of except by the sacrifice of one generation; they can never have peace, he says, until “every slaveholder is either killed or exiled.” He does not approve of battles—the negro should be turned loose and incited to rise and slay. “They know by instinct the whole programme of what they have to do,” he says. I at first blamed our secession, but our politicians knew these awful people better than I did and now I am glad that we are, or will, be rid of them.
