Back at the department at work, but not much to do yet. The
mails are not heavy.
We have Bragg's report of the battle of Perryville. He beat
the enemy from his positions, driving him back two miles, when night set in.
But finding overwhelming masses accumulating around him, he withdrew in good
order to Bryattsville. Thus Kentucky is given up for the present!
McClellan has retired back into Maryland, hoping, I suppose,
Lee will follow and fall into his ambuscade.
The President will call out, under the Conscription Act, all
between the ages of eighteen and forty. This will furnish, according to the
Secretary's estimate, 500,000, after deducting the exempts. A great mistake.
A letter from Gen. Lee indicates that he is in favor of making
Treasury notes a legal tender. It was so with Washington concerning Continental
money — but Congress pays no attention to the subject. Why does not the
President recommend it? It would then pass — for, at present, he is master.
The paper from the Provost Marshal, referred by the latter
to the President, came back to-day. The Secretary, in referring it, seems to
incline to the opinion that the writ of habeas corpus not being
suspended, there was no remedy for the many evils the Provost Marshal
portrayed. The President, however, did not wholly coincide in that opinion. He
says: “The introduction and sale of liquors must be prevented. Call upon the
city authorities to withhold licenses, and to abate the evil in the courts, or
else an order will be issued, such as the necessity requires.”
Judge Campbell, late of the United States Supreme Court, has
been appointed Assistant Secretary of War.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 174-5
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