Gen. Wheeler has taken 700 of the enemy's cavalry in East
Tennessee, 6 cannon, 50 wagons, commissary stores, etc. Per contra, the
steamer Venus, with bacon, from Nassau, got aground trying to enter the port of
Wilmington, and ship and cargo were lost. There is a rumor that Gen. Taylor,
trans-Mississippi, has captured Gen. Banks, his staff, and sixteen regiments.
This, I fear, is not well authenticated.
A poor woman yesterday applied to a merchant in Carey Street
to purchase a barrel of flour. The price he demanded was $70. “My God!”
exclaimed she, “how can I pay such prices? I have seven children; what shall I
do?”
“I don't know, madam,” said he, coolly, “unless you eat your
children.”
Such is the power of cupidity — it transforms men into
demons. And if this spirit prevails throughout the country, a just God will
bring calamities upon the land, which will reach these cormorants, but which,
it may be feared, will involve all classes in a common ruin.
Beef, to-day, sold in market at $1.50 per pound. There is no
bacon for sale, or corn-meal. But we shall not starve, if we have faith in a
beneficent Providence. Our daughter Anne, teaching in Appomattox County, writes
that she will send us a barrel of potatoes, some persimmons, etc. next
Wednesday. And we had a good dinner to-day: a piece of fat shoulder Capt.
Warner let me have at $1 per pound — it is selling for $2.50 — and cabbage from
my garden, which my neighbor's cow overlooked when she broke through the gate
last Sunday. Although we scarcely know what we shall have to-morrow, we are
merry and patriotic to-day.
Last night I went to hear Rev. Dr. Hobson, Reformed Baptist,
or Campbellite, preach. He is certainly an orator (from Kentucky) and a man of
great energy and fertility of mind. There is a revival in his congregation too,
as well as among the Methodists, but he was very severe in his condemnation of
the emotional or sensational practices of the latter. He said, what was never
before known by me, that the word pardon is not in the New Testament, but
remission was. His point against the Methodists was their fallacy of believing
that conversion was sudden and miraculous, and accompanied by a happy feeling.
Happy feeling, he said, would naturally follow a consciousness of
remission of sins, but was no evidence of conversion, for it might be produced
by other things. It was the efficacy of the Word, of the promise of God, which
obliterated the sins of all who believed, repented, and were baptized. He had
no spasmodic extravagances over his converts; but, simply taking them by the
hand, asked if they believed, repented, and would be baptized. If the answers
were in the affirmalive, they resumed their seats, and were soon after immersed
in a pool made for the purpose in the church.
I pray sincerely that this general revival in the churches
will soften the hearts of the extortioners, for this class is specifically
denounced in the Scriptures. There is abundance in the land, but “man's
inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” I hope the extortioners may
all go to heaven, first ceasing to be extortioners.
The Legislature has broken up the gambling establishments,
for the time being, and the furniture of their gorgeous saloons is being sold
at auction. Some idea of the number of these establishments may be formed from
an estimate (in the Examiner) of the cost of the entertainment prepared
for visitors being not less than $10,000 daily. Their agents bought the best
articles offered for sale in the markets, and never hesitated to pay the most
exorbitant prices. I hope now the absence of such customers may have a good
effect. But I fear the currency, so redundant, is past remedy.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
78-9
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