February 19th.—Another bright and glorious morning. I hear of no news whatever from the South—although I know that important events are transpiring—and the reticence of the government is construed very unfavorably. Hence if Beauregard has fought a battle, it is to be apprehended that he did not gain the day; and if this be so, South Carolina lies at the conqueror’s feet.
I thought I heard brisk cannonading in the distance (down the river) this morning, but am not certain. I saw Mr. Hunter going briskly toward the Executive department. He does not come often now to the War Office.
The new Secretary has a large audience of members of Congress every morning.
The President and three of his aids rode out this afternoon (past our house), seemingly as cheerful as if each day did not have its calamity! No one who beheld them would have seen anything to suppose that the capital itself was in almost immediate danger of falling into the hands of the enemy; much less that the President himself meditated its abandonment at an early day, and the concentration of all the armies in the Cotton States!
