Bright and
beautiful. All quiet below, save an occasional booming from the fleet.
Nothing from Georgia
in the papers, save the conjectures of the Northern press. No doubt we have
gained advantages there, which it is good policy to conceal as long as possible
from the enemy.
Squads of
able-bodied detailed men are arriving at last, from
the interior.
Lee's army, in this
way, will get efficient reinforcements.
The Secretary of the
Treasury sends a note over to the Secretary of War to-day, saying the
Commissary-General, in his estimates, allows but $31,000,000 for tax in
kind—whereas the tax collectors show an actual amount, credited to farmers and
planters, of $145,000,000. He says this will no doubt attract the notice of
Congress.
Mr. Peck, our agent
to purchase supplies in North Carolina, has delivered no wheat yet. He bought
supplies for his family; 400 bushels of wheat for 200 clerks, and 100 for
Assistant Secretary of War, Judge Campbell, and Mr. Kean, the young Chief of
the Bureau. This he says he bought with private funds; but he brought it at the
government's expense. The clerks are resolved not to submit to his action.
I hear of more
desertions. Mr. Seddon and Mr. Stanton at Washington are engaged in a singular
game of chance. The harsh orders of both cause mutual abandonments, and now we
have the spectacle of men deserting our regiments, and quite as many coming
over from the enemy's regiments near the city.
Meantime Gen. Bragg
is striving to get the able-bodied men out of the bureaus and to place them in
the field.
The despotic order,
arresting every man in the streets, and hurrying them to “the front,” without
delay, and regardless of the condition of their families—some were taken off
when getting medicine for their sick wives—is still the theme of execration,
even among men who have been the most ultra and uncompromising secessionists.
The terror caused many to hide themselves, and doubtless turned them against
the government. They say now such a despotism is quite as bad as a Stanton
despotism, and there is not a toss-up between the rule of the United States and
the Confederate States. Such are some of the effects of bad measures in such
critical times as these. Mr. Seddon has no physique to sustain him. He has
intellect, and has read much; but, nevertheless, such great men are sometimes
more likely to imitate some predecessor at a critical moment, or to adopt some
bold yet inefficient suggestion from another, than to originate an adequate one
themselves. He is a scholar, an invalid, refined and philosophical—but
effeminate.
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