Gen. Lee mentions, in his recent correspondence, an instance
of the barbarity of some of the Yankee soldiers in the Abolition Army of the
Potomac. They thrust into the Rappahannock River a poor old negro man, whom
they had taken from his master, because he had the small-pox; and he would have
been drowned had he not been rescued by our pickets. It is surmised that this
dreadful disease prevails to an alarming extent in the Yankee army, and probably
embarrasses their operations. Our men have all been vaccinated; and their
recklessness of disease and death is perhaps a guarantee of exemption from
affliction. Their health, generally, is better than it has ever been before.
The government at Washington has interdicted the usual
exchange of newspapers, for the present. This gives rise to conjecture that
Lincoln experiences grave difficulties from the adverse sentiment of his people
and his armies regarding his Emancipation Proclamation. And it is likely he has
met with grave losses at sea, for the invading army in North Carolina has
retired back on Newbern. But the season for naval enterprises is not over, and
we are prepared to expect some heavy blows before April.
The revelations in the intercepted dispatches captured with
Mr. Sanders, whose father is a notorious political adventurer, may be most
unfortunate. They not only show that we even were negotiating for six war
steamers, but give the names of the firms in Europe that were to furnish them.
The project must now be abandoned. And Louis Napoleon will be enraged at the
suspicions and imputations of our Secretary of State regarding his occult
policy.
Gen. Rains has invented a new primer for shell, which will
explode from the slightest pressure. The shell is buried just beneath the
surface of the earth, and explodes when a horse or a man treads upon it. He
says he would not use such a weapon in ordinary warfare; but has no scruples in
resorting to any means of defense against an army of Abolitionists, invading
our country for the purpose, avowed, of extermination. He tried a few shell on
the Peninsula last spring, and the explosion of only four sufficed to arrest
the army of invaders, and compelled them to change their line of march.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 245-6
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