Troops were arriving all night and to-day (Hood's division),
and are proceeding Southward, per railroad, it is said for Tennessee, via
Georgia Road. It may be deemed impracticable to send troops by the western
route, as the enemy possesses the Knoxville Road. The weather is excessively
dry and dusty again.
Gen. Jos. E. Johnston, Morton, Miss., writes that such is
the facility of giving information to the enemy, that it is impossible to keep
up a ferry at any point on the Mississippi; but he will be able to keep up
communications, by trusty messengers with small parcels, with Lieut.-Gen. E.
Kirby Smith's trans-Mississippi Department. He says if he had another cavalry
brigade, he could make the navigation too dangerous for merchant steamers
between Grand Gulf and Natchez.
Two letters were received to-day from privates in North
Carolina regiments, demanding to be transferred to artillery companies in the
forts of North Carolina, or else they would serve no more. This is very
reckless!
Ordnance officer J. Brice transmitted to the Secretary
to-day, through the Ordnance Bureau, an Official account of the ammunition,
etc. at Vicksburg during the siege and at the evacuation. He says all the
ordnance stores at Jackson were hastily removed to Vicksburg, and of which he
was unable, in the confusion, to get an accurate account, although he
accompanied it. He detained and held 9000 arms destined for the
trans-Mississippi Department, and issued 120 rounds to each man in the army,
before the battle of Baker's Creek. Much ammunition was destroyed on the
battlefield, by order of Gen. Pemberton, to keep it, as he alleged, from
falling into the hands of the enemy. During the siege, he got 250,000
percussion caps from Gen. Johnston's scouts, and 150,000 from the enemy's
pickets, for a consideration. There was abundance of powder. The
ammunition and small arms turned over to the enemy, on the surrender, consisted
as follows: 36,000 cartridges for Belgian rifles; 3600 Brunswick cartridges;
15,000 rounds British rifled muskets; 9000 shot-gun cartridges; 1300 Maynard
cartridges; 5000 Hall's carbine cartridges; 1200 holster pistol cartridges;
35,000 percussion caps; 19,000 pounds of cannon powder.
All this was in the ordnance depots, and exclusive of that
in the hands of the troops and in the ordnance wagons, doubtless a large
amount. He says 8000 defective arms were destroyed by fires during the
bombardment. The troops delivered to the enemy, on marching out, 27,000 arms.
The Governor demanded the State magazine to-day of the War
Department, in whose custody it has been for a long time. What does this mean?
The Governor says the State has urgent use for it.
Gen. Cooper visited the President twice to-day, the
Secretary not once. The Enquirer, yesterday, attacked and
ridiculed the Secretary of War on his passport system in Richmond.
The Northern papers contain the following letter from
President Lincoln to Gen. Grant:
Executive Mansion,
washington, July 13th, 1863.
major-General
Grant.
My
Dear General: — I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I
write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service
you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached
the vicinity of Yicksburg I thought you should do what you finally did — march
the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go
below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better
than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got
below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go
down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned northward, east of the
Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal
acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.
A. Lincoln.
If Pemberton had acted differently, if the movement
northward had been followed by disaster, then what would Mr. Lincoln have
written to Grant? Success is the only standard of merit in a general.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
37-9
