Our 5000 prisoners
taken at the battle of Chickamauga have arrived in this city, and it is
ascertained that more are on the way hither. Gen. Bragg said he had 5000
besides the wounded, and as none of the wounded have arrived, more must have
been taken since his dispatch. Every effort is being made on our part to
capture the army of Rosecrans — and everything possible is done by the enemy to
extricate him, and to reinforce him to such an extent that he may resume
offensive operations. Without this be done, the campaign must close
disastrously in the West, and then the peace party of the North will have a new
inspiration of vitality.
It is now said that
Gen. Lee, despairing of being attacked in his chosen position, has resolved to
attack Meade, or at least to advance somewhere. It is possible (if Meade has
really sent two corps of his army to the West) that he will cross the Potomac
again — at least on a foraging expedition. If he meets with only conscripts and
militia he may penetrate as far as Harrisburg, and then let Europe perpend! The
Union will be as difficult of reconstruction, as would have been the celebrated
Campo Formio vase shivered by Napoleon. It is much easier to destroy than to
construct. The emancipation and confiscation measures rendered reconstruction
impracticable — unless, indeed, at a future day, the Abolitionists of the
United States should be annihilated and Abolitionism abolished.
To-day I got an
excellent pair of winter shoes from a quartermaster here for $13 — the retail
price for as good an article, in the stores, is $75; fine boots have risen to
$200!
The enemy's
batteries on Morris Island are firing away again at Sumter's ruins, and at
Moultrie — but they have not yet opened on the city.
The newspapers
continue to give accounts of the Chickamauga battle.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
59-60
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