Bright and pleasant.
The rumor is revived
that Mr. Seddon will resign. If he really does resign, I shall regard it as
a bad sign. He must despair of the Republic; but, then, his
successor may be a man of greater energy and knowledge of war.
We are destitute of
news, with an awful silence between the armies. We believe this cannot last
long, and we know Grant has a great superiority of numbers. And he knows our
weakness; for the government will persist in keeping “at the front” local
defense troops, smarting under a sense of wrong, some of whom are continually
deserting.
The money-changers
and speculators, who have lavished their bribes, are all in their places,
preying upon the helpless women and children; while the clerks—the permanence
of whose tenure of office was guaranteed by the Constitution—are still kept in
the trenches, and their families, many of them refugees, are suffering in
destitution. But Mr. Seddon says they volunteered. This is not
candid. They were told by Mr. Memminger and others that, unless they volunteered, the
President had decided their dismissal—when conscription into the army followed,
of course!
SOURCE: John
Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate
States Capital, Volume 2, p. 330
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