Jan. 26, 1861.—The solemn boom of cannon today announced that the convention have passed the ordinance of secession. We must take a reef in our patriotism and narrow it down to State limits. Mine still sticks out all around the borders of the State. It will be bad if New Orleans should secede from Louisiana and set up for herself. Then indeed I would be “cabined, cribbed, confined.” The faces in the house are jubilant to-day. Why is it so easy for them and not for me to “ring out the old, ring in the new”? I am out of place.
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Note: To protect Mrs. Miller’s job as a teacher in New Orleans, the diary was published anonymously, edited by G. W. Cable, names were changed and initials were often used instead of full names — and even the initials differed from the real person’s initials.
