Another gentleman I had met during the day had said to me, that ‘he and many others wished they were living under a king of the English royal family. That Virginians deeply regretted that they had ever been separated from England; but that it was their own doing; for, if they had not helped, the Yankees never could have brought about the separation alone.’ Before I left Richmond, I had heard some of this gallant and most unfortunate people give utterance to the sentiment, ‘that they were so stung by the sense of defeat, that they were ever wishing themselves dead. That everything had been so completely set on the cast of the die, that now, when it had decided against them, they could not find anything to live for. That their sense of honour had been crushed by defeat. That their property had been taken from them. That their black slaves had been made their masters.’ [Sidenote: _Billiards._] I afterwards met with other Virginians, who, having been impoverished by the war, had voluntarily expatriated themselves that they might, if possible, find elsewhere some support for those who were dependent on them. They were men who had been in the first and the last fight, and had lost everything they possessed. But I never heard from their lips one word of disloyalty to the Union to which they had returned in perfect good faith. They had appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. The decision had been against them; and they had submitted without any reservation to that decision. Their bitterness was only for those trading politicians who, being, as they thought, incapable of understanding honourable men, had sent a Freedman’s Bureau and an army of occupation to oppress and torment those who were now quite as loyal to the Union as themselves, and if they were not, yet were utterly incapable of moving a finger against it.