expenses; and therefore I see
no good reason why this State, of all others, being the most exposed,
should not muster into service every well-armed company that presents
itself. There are arms enough for 25,000 men now, and that number, if it
be too late to take Washington, might at all events hold this side of
the Potomac, and keep the Yankees off the soil of Virginia.

MAY 2D.--There are vague rumors of lawless outrages committed on
Southern men in Philadelphia and New York; but they are not well
authenticated, and I do not believe them. The Yankees are not yet ready
for retaliation. They know that game wouldn't pay. No--they desire time
to get their money out of the South; and they would be perfectly willing
that trade should go on, even during the war, for they would be the
greatest gainers by the information derived from spies and emissaries. I
see, too, their papers have extravagant accounts of imprisonments and
summary executions here. Not a man has yet been molested. It is true, we
have taken Norfolk, without a battle; but the enemy did all the burning
and sinking.

MAY 3D.--No letters from my wife. Probably she has taken the children to
the Eastern Shore. Her farm is there, and she has many friends in the
county. On that narrow peninsula it is hardly to be supposed the Yankees
will send any troops. With the broad Atlantic on one side and the
Chesapeake Bay on the other, it is to be presumed there will be no
military demonstration by the inhabitants, for they could neither escape
nor receive reinforcements from the mainland. In the war of the first
Revolution, and the subsequent one with Great Britain, this peninsula
escaped the ravages of the enemy, although the people were as loyal to
the government of the United States as any; but the Yankees are more
enterprising than the British, and may have an eye to "truck farms" in
that fruitful region.

MAY 4TH.--Met Wm. H. B. Custis, Esq., to-day in the square, and had a
long conversation with him. He has made up his mind to sign the
ordinance. He thinks secession might have been averted with honor, if
our politicians at Washington had not been ambitious to figure as
leaders in a new revolution. Custis was always a Democrat, and supported
Douglas on the ground that he was the regular nominee. He said his negro
property a month before was worth, perhaps, fifty thousand dollars; now
his slaves would not bring probably more than five thousand; and that
would be the f