Nothing from Lee, or Johnston, or Beauregard, or Bragg — but
ill luck is fated for them all. Our ladies, at least, would not despair. But a day
may change the aspect; a brilliant success would have a marvelous effect upon a
people who have so long suffered and bled for freedom.
They are getting on more comfortably, I learn, on the
Eastern Shore of Virginia. Only about 25 of the enemy's troops are said to be
there, merely to guard the wires. . In the Revolutionary war, and in the war of
1812, that peninsula escaped the horrors of war, being deemed then, as now, too
insignificaut to attract the cupidity of the invaders.
The Secretary of the Treasury sent an agent a few weeks ago
with some $12,000,000 for disbursement in the trans-Mississippi country, but he
has returned to this city, being unable to get through. He will now go to
Havana, and thence to Texas; and hereafter money (if money it can be called)
will be manufactured at Houston, where a paper treasury will be established.
Gen. Jos. E. Johnston has recently drawn for $20,000 in
gold.
A letter from the Commissary-General to Gen. Lee states that
we have but 1,800,000 pounds of bacon at Atlanta, and 500,000 pounds in this
city, which is less than 30 days' rations for Bragg's and Lee's armies. He says
all attempts to get bacon from Europe have failed, and he fears they will fail,
and hence, if the ration be not reduced to ¼ pound we shall soon have no meat
on hand. Gen. Lee says he cannot be responsible if the soldiers fail for want of
food.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 386-7
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