the peace might be preserved, and God would mediate between them.
Of course I could only indorse on the back "demented." But the old man
hung round the department for a week afterward, and then departed, I
know not whither. I forget his name, but his paper is in the archives of
the government. I have always differed with the preachers in politics
and war, except the Southern preachers who are now in arms against the
invader. I think war is one of the providences of God, and certainly no
book chronicles so much fighting as the Bible. It may be to the human
race what pruning is to vegetation, a necessary process for the general
benefit.

MAY 25TH.--There is to be no fight--no assault on Pickens. But we are
beginning to send troops forward in the right direction--to Virginia.
Virginia herself ought to have kept the invader from her soil. Was she
reluctant to break the peace? And is it nothing to have her soil
polluted by the martial tramp of the Yankees at Alexandria and Arlington
Heights? But the wrath of the Southern chivalry will some day burst
forth on the ensanguined plain, and then let the presumptuous foemen of
the North beware of the fiery ordeal they have invoked. The men I see
daily keeping time to the music of revolution are fighting men, men who
will conquer or die, and who prefer death to subjugation. But the Yankee
has no such motive to fight for, no thought of serious wounds and death.
He can go back to his own country; our men have no other country to go
to.

MAY 26TH.--Was called on by the Episcopal minister to-day, Dr. Sawyer
having informed him that I was a member of the church--the doctor being
one also. He is an enthusiastic young man, and though a native of the
North, seems to sympathize with us very heartily. He prays for the
President of the Confederate States. The President himself attends very
regularly, and some intimate that he intends to become a candidate for
membership. I have not learned whether he has been baptized. Gen.
Cooper, the first on our list of generals in the regular army, is a
member of the church. The general was, I think, adjutant-general at
Washington. He is Northern born. Major Gorgas is likewise a native of
the North. He is Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. The
Quartermaster-General, Major Myers, is said to be a Jew; while the
Commissary-General is almost a Jesuit, so zealous is he in the advocacy
of the Pope.

Mr. Mallory, the Secretary of the Navy, I have seen but once;