November 26, 1864. George Anthon dined here and spent the evening. He tells me that according to the talk of the New York Club the harlotry of the city is largely reinforced by Southern refugee women who were of good social standing at home,
...but find themselves here without means of support and forced to choose between starving and whoring. Mortal man will never know the whole amount of sorrow, suffering, bereavement, devastation, and crime for which the secession conspirators of 1860 a.d. are answerable.
It seems a just retribution on the Southern slaveholding chivalry who have been forcing their female slaves — black, mulatto, and quadroon — to minister to their pleasures that their rebellion should drive their wives and daughters to flee northward...
...and prostitute themselves to Northern “mudsills,” plebeian “Yankees.” All the North is full of these refugees, male and female.
One of them tried to seduce Burnside the other day at Washington and nearly succeeded, but as she was turning down the gas he remembered Molly (Mrs. Burnside) and fled the room.