The following passage is taken from Mary Chestnut's Civil War, ed. by C. Vann Woodward, p. 591. The date is late March 1864; Richmond. "Yesterday we went to the capitol grounds to see our returned prisoners. ... We walked slowly up and down until Jeff Davis was called upon to speak to the prisoners. Then I stood almost touching the bayonets, where he left me. I looked straight into the prisoners' faces. Poor fellows! They cheered with all their might - and I wept for sympathy, enthusiasm, and all that moved me deeply. Oh! these men were so forlorn, so dried up, shrunken, such a strange look in some of their eyes. Others so restless and wild looking - others, again, placidly vacant, as if they had been dead to the world for years. A poor woman was too much for me. She was hunting for her son. He had been expected back with this batch of prisoners. She said he was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. She kept going in and out among them, with a basket of provisions she had brought for him to eat. It was too pitiful. She was utterly unconscious of the crowd. The anxious dread - expectation - hurry and hope which led her on showed in her face."