Tuesday, January 14, 1862. — My old veteran orderly, Gray, says it makes his flesh creep to see the way soldiers enter officers’ quarters, hats on, just as if they were in civil life! [The] Twenty-sixth Regiment left today. Three or four inches snow. Some winter!
Spent the afternoon looking over a trunk full of letters, deeds, documents, etc., belonging to General Alfred Beckley. They were buried in the graveyard near General Beckley’s at Raleigh. Some letters of moment showing the early and earnest part taken by Colonel Tompkins in the Rebellion. The general Union and conservative feeling of General Beckley shown in letters carefully preserved in his letter-book. Two letters to Major Anderson, full of patriotism, love of Union and of the Stars and Stripes — replies written, one the day after Major Anderson went into Sumter, the other much later. His, General Beckley’s, desire was really for the Union. He was of West Point education. Out of deference to popular sentiment he qualified his Unionism by saying, “Virginia would stay in the Union as long as she could consistently with honor.”
General Beckley’s note from “J. C. Calhoun, Secretary of War,” informing him of his appointment as a cadet at West Point, and many other mementos, carefully preserved, were in the trunk. Title papers and evidence relating to a vast tract of land, formerly owned by Gideon Granger and now by Francis Granger and brother, were also in it. All except a few letters as to the Rebellion were undisturbed.
