Mr. M——, Major Ruffin’s commissary agent, denies selling government
beef to the butchers; of course it was his own. But he has been ordered not
to sell any more, while buying for the government.
Mr. Rouss, of Winchester, merchant, has succeeded in getting
some brown cotton from the manufacturer, in Georgia, at cost, which he sells
for cost and carriage to refugees. My wife got 20 yards to-day for $20. It is
brown seven-eighth cotton, and brings in other stores $3 per yard. This is a
saving of $40. And I bought 24 pounds of bacon of Capt. Warner, Commissary, at
$1 per pound. The retail price is $2.50 — and this is a saving of $36. Without
such “short cuts” as these, occasionally, it would be impossible to maintain my
family on the salaries my son Custis and myself get from the government, $3000.
How often have I and thousands in our youth expressed the
wish to have lived during the first Revolution, or rather to have partaken of
the excitements of war! Such is the romance or “enchantment” which “distance
lends” “to the view.” Now we see and feel the horrors of war, and we are unanimous
in the wish, if we survive to behold again the balmy sunshine of peace, that
neither we nor our posterity may ever more be spectators of or participants in
another war. And yet we know not how soon we might plunge into it, if an
adequate necessity should arise. Henceforth, in all probability, we shall be a
military people. But I shall seek the peaceful haunts of quiet seclusion, for
which I sigh with great earnestness. O for a garden, a vine and fig-tree, and
my library!
Among the strange events of this war, not the least is the
position on slavery (approving it) maintained by the Bishop of Vermont.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
88
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