1862 May 14 Lynchburg, Va.

[from the diary of William M. Blackford, former diplomat, editor and banker in Lynchburg, Va., with five sons in the Confederate Army]

Wednesday 14  Rain all day--cold and
disagreeable. Pretty busily engaged
in Bank--Saw Balt. Washn. & N.Y.
papers of 6th & 10th just filled with
the most monstrous & improbable lies.
Truth, as to the military operations of
the army seems interdicted.  They are
jubilant at the abandonment by our
forces, of York Town--just as if it were
even intended they should be defended.
a half column of flaming hearsay
announces the [?]: McClellan's
Telegram shows he is a braggadocio
A paragraph admits they buried
4000 men on the field of Shiloh-- There is
great anxiety in Richd as the
strength of the obstruction in the River
at Wilton eight miles below Rich
the city. If the government have not or
do not make the barricade effective
their bodies ought to be added to it.
-The River is narrow & the channel
still more so--Our Charles Scott
would have built a dam across
in a fortnight with the resources
of labor & material they possessed.
--I cannot see why Johnson does not
attack the enemy--are we forever to
be on the defensive--Letter from Lanty
dated Sunday last on the late
battle as great as ours[?]  --He was not
in it--He wrote from Pendleton C.H.
Franklin, and thought Jackson wd
go as as far as Moorefield & then cross
into the
Valley

MSS 4763