To day I paid Dr. [ ] Billingslea $5. for his medical attendance upon Lear (my mother's freed woman). He presented a bill stating Lear as my servant. I refused to pay the bill as a debt due by me, or to make myself, in any way liable for such claims, as there are now near 40 free negro[e]s emancipated by my mother and sister, but handed him $5. in acknowledgment of his kindness to Lear.
The National Intelligencer of July 12, contains various articles worth memory [.]
1. Botts'22 letter about the liability of naturalized citizens to compulsory military service — in condemnation of Sec.[retar]y. Cass' doctrine [.]
2 The "Mexican Question"23 by Geo[rge] L. Stevens[.]
3. "MOBILRZATION"24 — as applied to the Prussian Army. Explanation of the term — taken from a French Military Journal[.] <The term I think is also used in France, and, in its generic sense, means only — the common meaning of the word — the putting of troops in condition to move or march — E. B.> "In Prussia, says the Journal, the obligation of military service is incumbent on all." . . .
"The military system of Prussia rests upon an organization which divides the forces of that monarchy into two distinct armies: the one the army of the line, or regular troops: the other the army of the reserve, or the militia, who are called the landwehr, and which consists of the same men who, having passed through the army of the line, are subject to landwehr duty, from their 26th. [25th.] to their 32d. year[.]
Besides the landwehr, which is divided into [a] first and [a] second levy, there is also the Landsturm or general levy, which comprises men between the ages of 40 and 50 years."
4th. A curious snake story, which seems well: avouched — A man was bitten by a rattlesnake, spots appeared on him like the spots on the snake, and when he died (which was in a few hours) there was found on his person, an exact likeness of the snake — true as a degeurrotipe [daguerreotype] — extending from the wound, on the hand, up to the shoulder, and down the body, to the groin.25
[Marginal] Note. Nov 20. 1859. A case fully as remarkable [sic][.]
22 John M. Botts of Virginia: Whig congressman, 1839-1843, 1847-1849; defeated Know-Nothing candidate for Congress in 1854; opponent of the "gag law" of 1836, of the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, and of secession. On Virginia's withdrawal from the Union, he withdrew from public life, was imprisoned by the Confederacy but finally paroled, and later became a leading Conservative supporter of Johnsonian restoration policies.
23 This appeared in the issue of July 11, not in that of July 12.
24 This, too, appeared in the issue of July 11. And Mr. Bates has not quoted from it accurately.
25 This, too, appeared in the issue of July 11, rather than that of July 12.
SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 30-2
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