To-day we are all down again. Bragg has retreated from
Murfreesborough. It is said he saved his prisoners, captured cannon, etc., but
it is not said what became of his own wounded. The Northern papers say
they captured 500 prisoners in the battle, which they claim as a victory. I do
not know how to reconcile Bragg's first dispatches, and particularly the one
saying he had the whole field, and would follow the enemy, with this
last one announcing his withdrawal and retirement from the field.
Eight thousand men were taken from Bragg a few days before
the battle. It was not done at the suggestion of Gen. Johnston; for I have seen
an extract of a letter from Gen. J. to a Senator (Wigfall), deprecating the
detachment of troops from Bragg, and expressing grave apprehensions of the
probable consequences.
A letter was received from R. R. Collier, Petersburg,
to-day, in favor of civil liberty, and against the despotism of martial law.
Senator Clark, of Missouri, informed me to-day that my
nephew, R. H. Musser, has been made a colonel (under Hindman or Holmes), and
has a fine regiment in the trans-Mississippi Department.
Lewis E. Harvie, president of the railroad, sends a communication
to the Secretary (I hope it will reach him) inclosing a request from Gen. Winder
to permit liquors to be transported on his road to Clover Hill. Mr. Harvie
objects to it, and asks instructions from the Secretary. He says Clover Hill is
the point from which the smuggling is done, and that to place it there, is
equivalent to bringing it into the city.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 232-3
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