Bright, clear, and
warm.
A dispatch from Gen.
Bragg.
AUGUSTA,
December 3d, 6 P. M.— A strong force of the enemy's cavalry and infantry
advanced from Louisville and encamped last night six miles from Waynesborough.
They turned off this morning toward Savannah. Our cavalry is pressing in the
rear, and all available means is being thrown to their front by rail. There is
time yet for any assistance which can be spared, to be sent by way of Charleston.—B.
B.
The Northern papers
say our army under Hood in Tennessee has met with a great disaster. We are
still incredulous—although it may be true. If so, the President will suffer,
and Johnston and Beauregard will escape censure—both being supplanted in the
command by a subordinate.
Brig.-Gen. Preston
is still directing orders to Col. Shields, who is under the command of
Major-Gen. Kemper, and the conflict of conscription authorities goes on, while
the country perishes. Preston is a South Carolina politician—Kemper a
Virginian. Mr. Secretary Seddon leans to the former.
The law allowing
exemptions to owners of a certain number of slaves is creating an antislavery
party. The non-slaveholders will not long fight for the benefit of such a
"privileged class." There is madness in our counsels!
We are still favored
by Providence in our family. We have, at the market prices, some $800 worth of
provisions, fuel, etc., at the beginning of winter, and my son Thomas is well
clad and has his order for a month's rations of beef, etc., which we get as we
want it at the government shop near at hand in Broad Street. His pay and
allowances are worth some $4500 per annum.
Major Ferguson
having got permission of the Quartermaster-General to sell me a suit of
cloth-there being a piece too dark for the army, I got four yards, enough for
coat, pants, and vest, at $12 per yard—the price in the stores is $125; and I
have the promise of the government tailor to make it up for some $30 or $40,
the ordinary price being $350; the trimmings my family will furnish—if bought,
they would cost $100. Tom has bought a new black coat, made before the war, for
$175, the peace price $15, in specie, equivalent to $600. And my daughter Anne
has made three fine bonnets (for her mother, sister, and herself), from the
debris of old ones; the price of these would be $700. So I fear not but we
shall be fed and clad by the providence of God.
SOURCE: John
Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate
States Capital, Volume 2, p. 346-7
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