Raining and cold.
This morning there was another arrival of our prisoners on parol, and not yet
exchanged. Many thousands have arrived this week, and many more are on the way.
How shall we feed them? Will they compel the evacuation of the city? I hope
not. Capt. Warner, Commissary-General, is here again; and if assigned to duty,
has sufficient business qualifications to collect supplies.
Thank God, I have
some 300 pounds of flour and half that amount of meal—bread rations for my
family, seven in number, for more than two months! I have but 7½ pounds of
meat; but we can live without it, as we have often done. I have a bushel of peas
also, and coal and wood for a month. This is a guarantee against immediate
starvation, should the famine become more rigorous, upon which we may
felicitate ourselves.
Our nominal income
has been increased; amounting now to some $16,000 in paper—less than $300 in
specie. But, for the next six months (if we can stay here), our rent will be
only $75 per month a little over one dollar; and servant hire, $40—less than
eighty cents.
It is rumored that
Gen. Early has been beaten again at Waynesborough, and that the enemy have
reached Charlottesville for the first time. Thus it seems our downward career
continues. We must have a victory soon, else Virginia is irretrievably lost.
Two P.M. The wind
has shifted to the south; warm showers. Three P. M. It is said they are
fighting at Gordonsville; whether or not the enemy have Charlottesville is
therefore uncertain.
I presume it is an
advance of Sheridan's cavalry whom our troops have engaged at Gordonsville.
SOURCE: John
Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate
States Capital, Volume 2, p. 438-9
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