Some of the late Secretary's friends are hinting that
affairs will go amiss now, as if he wonld have prevented any disaster! Who gave
up Norfolk? That was a calamitous blunder! Letters from North Carolina are
distressing enough. They say, but for the influence of Gov. Vance, the legislature
would favor reconstruction!
Gen. Marshall writes lugubriously. He says his men are all
barefoot.
Gen. Magruder writes that Pemberton has only 20,000 men, and
should have 50,000 more at once — else the Mississippi Valley will be lost, and
the cause ruined. He thinks there should be a concentration of troops there
immediately, no matter how much other places might suffer; the enemy beaten,
and the Mississippi secured at all hazards. If not, Mobile is lost, and perhaps
Montgomery, as well as Vicksburg, Holly Springs, etc.
One of our paroled men from Washington writes the President
that, on the 6th instant, Burnside had but seventy regiments; and the President
seemed to credit it! The idea of Burnside advancing with seventy regiments is
absurd. But how many absurd ideas have been entertained by the government, and
have influenced it! Nous verrons.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 197
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