There are also quite a number of letter-carriers obtaining
special passports to leave the Confederacy. They charge $1.50 postage to
Washington and Maryland, and as much coming hither. They take on the average
three hundred letters, and bring as many, besides diverse articles they sell at
enormously high prices. Thus they realize $1000 per trip, and make two each
month. They furnish the press with Northern journals; but they give no valuable
information: at least I have not conversed with any who could furnish it. They
seem particularly ignorant of the plans and forces of the enemy. It is my
belief that they render as much service to the enemy as to us; and they
certainly do obtain passports on the other side.
Gen. Winder and his alien detectives seem to be on
peculiar terms of intimacy with some of these men; for they tell me they convey
letters for them to Maryland, and deliver them to their families. This is an
equivocal business. Why did they not bring their families away before the storm
burst upon them?
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 93
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