We have the following dispatch from Gen. Beauregard, which
is really refreshing in this season of disasters:
Charleston, July 22d, 1863.
The enemy recommenced shelling again
yesterday, with but few casualties on our part. We had, in the battle of the
18th inst., about 150 killed and wounded. The enemy's loss, including
prisoners, was about 2000. Nearly 800 were buried under a flag of truce.
Col. Putnam, acting brigadier-general,
and Col. Shaw, commanding the negro regiment, were killed.
G. T. Beauregard, General.
It is said the raiders that dashed into Wytheville
have been taken; but not so with the raiders that have been playing havoc with
the railroad in North Carolina.
Another letter from J. M. Botts, Culpepper County, complains
of the pasturing of army horses in his fields before the Gettysburg campaign,
and asks if his fields are to be again subject to the use of the commander of the
army, now returning to his vicinity. If he knows that Gen. Lee is
fallen back thither, it is more than any one here seems to know. We shall see
how accurate Mr. B. is in his conjecture.
A letter from Mr. Goodman, president of Mobile and Charleston
Railroad, says military orders have been issued to destroy, by fire, railroad
equipments to the value of $5,000,000; and one-third of this amount of destruction
would defeat the purpose of the enemy for a long time. The President orders
efforts to be made to bring away the equipments by sending them down the road.
Col. Preston, commandant of conscripts for South Carolina,
has been appointed Chief of the Bureau of Conscription; he has accepted the
appointment, and will be here August 1st. The law will now be honestly executed
— if he be not too indolent, sick, etc.
Archbishop Hughes has made a speech in New York to keep down
the Irish.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 385-6
