With contempt she spurned his offers and ordered him never more to cross the threshold of her house.

Swearing vengeance against her, he left, and on the following morning she received an order to leave the limits of the city, that day, and prepare to enter the Confederate lines.

The dangers which then threatened her, she deemed vanished, for she feared more to remain in the midst of our enemies than to enter our lines.
The order was therefore received with joy, and she prepared to depart.
Though a pang of sorrow may have filled her heart at being compelled to relinquish her comfortable home, though she saw before her days, weeks, months, perhaps years of hardship, not one feeling of remorse at having rejected the offers of a libertine, ever entered the mind of the soldier's wife.

The time at length arrived for her to depart, and with her two children, a few articles of clothing, and a small sum of money, she was placed within our lines, far from any human habitation, and left to find a shelter as best she could.
"To this city she bent her footsteps, and here she anticipated finding an asylum for herself and children.

Gentlemen, we all well know that, unfortunately for our cause and country, the evils Speculation and Extortion, had spread their leprous wings and covered our land with destitution.