[Confidential.]
HEADQUARTERS,
February 14, 1865.
General R. E. LEE,
Commanding:
GENERAL: Recent
developments of the enemy's designs seem to indicate an early concentration of
his armies against Richmond. This, of course, must involve a like concentration
on our part or the abandonment of our capital. The latter emergency would, I
think, be almost fatal – possibly quite so, after our recent reverses. To
concentrate here in time to meet the movements of the enemy, we shall be
obliged to use the little of our southern railroad that is left to us in
transporting our troops, so that we cannot haul provisions over that route. I
fear, therefore, that we shall not be able to feed our troops unless we adopt
extraordinary measures and efforts. I think that there is enough of the
necessaries of life left in Virginia and North Carolina to help us through our
troubles, if we can only reach them. Impressing officers, however, nor
collectors of tax in kind, nor any other plan heretofore employed are likely to
get these supplies in time or in quantities to meet our necessities. The
citizens will not give their supplies up and permit their families and servants
to suffer for the necessaries of life without some strong inducement, for each
one may naturally think that the little he would supply by denying himself and
family will go but a little way where so much is needed. He does not want
Confederate money, for his meat and bread will buy him clothes, &c., for
his family more readily and in much larger quantities than the money that the
Government would pay.
The only thing, then, that will insure our rations and our
national existence is gold. Send out the gold through Virginia and North
Carolina and pay liberal prices, and my conviction is that we shall have no
more distress for want of food. The winter is about over now, and the families
can and will subsist on molasses, bread, and vegetables for the balance of the
year, if they can get gold for their supplies. There is a great deal of meat
and bread inside the enemy's lines that our people would bring us for gold, but
they won't go to that trouble for Confederate money. They can keep gold so much
safer than they can meat and bread, and it is always food and clothing. If the
Government has not the gold, it must impress it; or if there is no law for the
impressment, the gold must be taken without a law. Necessity does not know or
wait for laws. If we stop to make laws in order that we may reach the gold, it
will disappear the day that the law is mentioned in Congress. To secure it no
one should suspect that we are after it until we knock at the doors of the
vaults that contain it, and we must then have guards, to be sure that it is not
made away with. It seems to my mind that our prospects will be brighter than
they have ever been if we can only get food for our men, and I think the plan
that I have proposed will secure the food. There seems to be many reasons for
the opinion that the enemy deems our capital essential to him in order that he
may end the war, as he desires. To get the capital, he will concentrate here
everything that he has; and we surely are better able to fight him when we
shall have concentrated than when we are in detachments. The Army of the West
will get new life and spirit as soon as it finds itself alongside of this, and
we will feel more comfortable ourselves to know that all are under one head and
one eye that is able to handle them.
I remain, most
respectfully and truly, your most obedient servant,
J. LONGSTREET,
Lieutenant-General
SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
46, Part 2 (Serial No. 96), p. 1233-4; James Longstreet, From Manassas
to Appomattox, p. 641-2
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