Monday, July 9, 2018

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: September 29, 1863

We have nothing additional from Bragg, except confirmation of his victory from Northern journals; and it is reported that Meade is sending two more army corps to the Southwest, for the purpose of extricating Rosecrans from his perilous predicament. It is believed our cavalry is in his rear, and that we have the road below Chattanooga, cutting him off from his supplies.

The President sent for the Secretary of War and Gen. Cooper just before 3 P.M. to-day, having, it is supposed, some recent intelligence of the movements of the enemy. It is possible we shall send troops, etc., with all possible expedition, to reinforce Bragg, for the purpose of insuring the destruction of Rosecrans's army, and thus to Tennessee may be transferred the principal military operations of the fall campaign.

Young Mr. Kean has taken friend Jacques's place at the door of the Secretary, and put him to abstracting the recorded letters containing decisions, the plan I suggested to the President, but which was claimed as the invention of the Assistant Secretary of War.

Some one has written a flaming article on the injurious manner in which impressments have been conducted in Mississippi — the President's State — and sent it to him. This being referred to Col. Northrop, the Commissary-General, the latter splutters over it in his angular chirography at a furious rate, saying he did not authorize it, he doubted if it were done, and lastly, if done, he was sure it was done by agents of the Quartermaster-General.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2p. 55-6

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