Letters from
Governor Vance received to-day show that he has been making extensive
arrangements to clothe and subsist North Carolina troops. His agents have
purchased abroad some 40,000 blankets, as many shoes, bacon, etc., most of
which is now at Bermuda and Nassau. He has also purchased an interest in
several steamers; but, it appears, a recent regulation of the Confederate
States Government forbids the import and export of goods except, almost
exclusively, for the government itself. The governor desires to know if his
State is to be put on the same footing with private speculators.
He also demands some
thousands of bales of cotton, loaned the government—and which the government
cannot now replace at Wilmington—and his complaints against the government are
bitter. Is it his intention to assume an independent attitude, and call the
North Carolina troops to the rescue? A few weeks will develop his intentions.
Mr. Hunter is in the
Secretary's room every Sunday morning. Is there some grand political egg to
be hatched?
If the government
had excluded private speculators from the ports at an early date, we might have
had clothes and meat for the army in abundance—as well as other stores. But a
great duty was neglected!
Sunday as it is,
trains of government wagons are going incessantly past my door laden with
ice—for the hospitals next summer, if we keep Richmond.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the
Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 126-7
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