After a slight shower last night, a cool, clear morning
The ominous silence or pause between the armies continues.
Lieut.-Gen. Longstreet, it is said, is "hidden." I suppose he is
working his way around the enemy's right flank. If so, we shall soon hear
thunder.
It is also supposed that Lee meditates an incursion into
Pennsylvania, and that Gen. Beauregard will protect his rear and cover this
city. All is merely conjecture.
We are amused at the enemy's accounts of the storming of
Plymouth. Their papers pretend to have not heard the result, and would lead
their readers to believe that Gen. Hoke was repulsed, and that the place is
“impregnable.”
The following appears in the morning papers:
“GEN.
LEE'S BILL OF FARE.—The Richmond correspondent of the Mobile Advertiser gives
the following about Gen. Lee's mode of living :
“In Gen. Lee's tent meat is eaten but
twice a week, the general not allowing it oftener, because he believes
indulgence in meat to be criminal in the present straitened condition of the
country. His ordinary dinner consists of a head of cabbage, boiled in salt
water, and a pone of corn bread. In this connection rather a comic story is
told. Having invited a number of gentlemen to dine with him, Gen. Lee, in a fit
of extravagance, ordered a sumptuous repast of cabbage and middling. The dinner
was served: and, behold, a great pile of cabbage and a bit of middling about
four inches long and two inches across! The guests, with commendable
politeness, unanimously declined middling, and it remained in the dish untouched.
Next day Gen. Lee, remembering the delicate tit-bit which had been so
providentially preserved, ordered his servant to bring that middling.' The man
hesitated, scratched his head, and finally owned up: 'De fac is, Masse Robert,
dat ar middlin' was borrid middlin'; we all did'n had nar spec; and I done paid
it back to de man whar I got it from.' Gen. Lee heaved a sigh of deepest
disappointment, and pitched into his cabbage.”
By a correspondence between the Secretaries of the Treasury
and War, I saw that Mr. Memminger has about a million and a quarter in coin at
Macon, Ga., seized as the property of the New Orleans banks—perhaps belonging
to Northern men. I believe it was taken when there was an attempt made to
smuggle it North. What it is proposed to do with it I know not,
but I think neither the President nor the Secretaries will hesitate to use it—if
there be a "military necessity." Who knows but that one or more
members of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, or his generals, might be purchased with gold?
Fortress Monroe would be cheap at that price!
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the
Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 194-5