Blankets, that used to sell for $6, are now $25 per pair;
and sheets are selling for $15 per pair, which might have been had a year ago
for $4. Common 4·4
bleached cotton shirting is selling at $1 a yard.
Gen. Lee's locality and operations, since the battle of Sharpsburg
or Shepherdstown, are still enveloped in mystery.
About one hundred of the commissioned officers of Pope's
army, taken prisoners by Jackson, and confined as felons in our prisons, in
conformity to the President's retaliatory order, were yesterday released on
parole, in consequence of satisfactory communications from the United States
Government, disavowing Pope's orders, I presume, and stating officially the
fact that Pope himself has been relieved from command.
We have taken, and paroled, within the last twelve or
fifteen weeks, no less than forty odd thousand prisoners! The United
States must owe us some thirty thousand men. This does not look like
progress in the work of subjugation.
Horrible! I have seen men just from Manassas, and the
battlefield of the 30th August, where, they assure me, hundreds of dead Yankees
still lie unburied! They are swollen “as large as cows,” say they, “and are as
black as crows.” No one can now undertake to bury them. When the wind blows
from that direction, it is said the scent of carrion is distinctly perceptible
at the White House in Washington. It is said the enemy are evacuating
Alexandria. I do not believe this.
A gentleman (Georgian) to whom I gave a passport to visit
the army, taking two substitutes, over forty-five years of age, in place of two
sick young men in the hospitals, informs me that he got upon the ground just
before the great battle at Sharpsburg commenced. The substitutes were mustered
in, and in less than an hour after their arrival, one of them was shot through
the hat and hair, but his head was untouched. He says they fought as well as
veterans.
_______________
* It is held by the government now, January,
1866, and my family are homeless and destitute. Onancock, Accomac County,
Va. — J. B. J.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 155-6
