Gen. Beauregard telegraphs that preparations should be made
to withstand a bombardment at Savannah, and authority is asked, at the instance
of Gov. Brown, to impress a sufficient number of slaves for the purpose.
Gen. Jos. E. Johnston telegraphs the President that Grant
has fallen back to Vicksburg, and, from information in his possession, will not
stay there a day, but will proceed up the river. Gen. Johnston asks if
this eccentric movement does not indicate a purpose to concentrate the enemy's
forces for the reduction of Richmond.
Grant's men, no doubt, objected to longer service at this
season in the Southwest; perhaps Lincoln thinks Grant is the only general who
can take Richmond, or it may be necessary for the presence of the army in the
North to enforce the draft, to overawe conspirators against the administration,
etc. We shall soon know more about it.
Misfortunes come in clusters. We have a report to-day that
Gen. Morgan's command has been mostly captured in Ohio. The recent rains made
the river unfordable.
It appears that Gen. Pemberton had but 15 days' rations to
last 48 days, that the people offered him a year's supply for nothing if he
would have it, and this he would not take, red tape requiring it to be
delivered and paid for, so it fell into the hands of the enemy. He had a six
months' supply of ammunition when he surrendered, and often during the siege
would not let his men reply to the enemy's guns.
Advertisers in the papers offer $4000 for substitutes. One
offers a farm in Hanover County, on the Central Railroad, of 230 acres, for a
substitute. There is something significant in this. It was so in France when
Napoleon had greatly exhausted the male population.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 387
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