Narration from “In Camp and Prison” – from the memoir of Belle Boyd
“This needs to be heard and understood by everyone engaged in the conveyance of history”
BirdDogg: – from June 18th, 2025
1 thought on “How I Became a Confederate Spy”
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The experience of a people , who have been invaded and occupied may have begun in Virginia . Although there may be other stories in Maryland or other border states . The invader was a foreign army and not the sanguinary fanatics like John Brown . And yet shooting a Yankee soldier was not punished ?
… her words and thoughts were of a reasonable and self controlled person , who can devote time and dedication to this historical purpose . She was not hysterical nor non compos mentis .
Was she an exception ? Since she was not punished and though 17 at the beginning of the war was not treated so unlike others , who had more or less interest in the world around them . Certainly far more mature , than girls today. But an uninvited guest’s churlish misdemeanor had earned him an appropriate and perhaps Virginian consequence in defense of honor and home.
Life was not only different but an exaggeration or magnification of what it today is not. This is the generation of my great grandmother. How the experience we call life has degraded . The advents of the artificial world , where moral decline and decadence is only an intellectual musing . And the perfunctory , lawless diurnal passing is a phlegmatic dismissal often with relief of another damnable day.
There are those , who desire a better life . It is the people’s longing , that political speculation has long exploited. Yet the quality of life then once taken for granted today or even scorned is only a spirit of memory , an ephemeral and solemn exaltation , gazing at a monument .
Things have changed in Virginia since this episode in 1961. Where uninvited guests are shown the door or even more unequivocal expression of impropriety . It was a moral responsibility , something today demonized . How things have changed !
Can recall how my grandmother had changed since her mother in both language and women’s duties and responsibility. It was radical and was named euphemistically reconstruction .
Today Virginia is not southern. No, it is occupied by northern opportunists and jew merchants and intriguers. But such people who originally were there deserve a deep and respectful bow and the spontaneous , plaintive tear to ask , where have they gone?
pro terrem et sanquinem,
Paul Kurt