There are many applications for passports to leave the
country. I have declared my purpose to sign no more for the Secretary without
his official order. But he is signing them himself, as I find out by the
parties desiring the usual passports from me to leave the city. They, like
guilty men, dislike to exhibit their permits to leave the country at the
depots. And the Northern press bears testimony of the fact that the spies in
our midst are still at work, and from this I apprehend the worst consequences.
Why did Mr. Benjamin send the order for every man to be arrested who applied
for permission to leave the country? Was it merely to deceive me, knowing
that I had some influence with certain leading journals? I am told he says, “no
one leaves the country now.”
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 91
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