From information (pretty direct from Washington), I believe
it is the purpose of the enemy to make the most strenuous efforts to capture
Richmond and Wilmington this fall and winter. It has been communicated to the
President that if it takes their last man, and all their means, these cities
must fall. Gen. Smith is getting negroes to work on the defenses, and the
subsistence officers are ordered to accumulate a vast amount of provisions
here.
Letters from Beauregard show that the Commissary-General,
because he thinks Charleston cannot be defended, opposes the
provisioning the forts as the general would have it done! The general demands of
the government to know whether he is to be overruled, and if so, he must not be
held responsible for the consequences. We shall see some of these days which
side the President will espouse. Beauregard is too popular, I fear, to
meet with favor here. But it is life or death to the Confederacy, and danger
lurks in the path of public men who endanger the liberties of the people.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 176
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