Gen. Lee writes that he will endeavor to protect the workmen
while removing the iron at Aquia Creek, but he fears the work has been too long
delayed. The government has been too slow.
Gen. Sam Jones writes from Abingdon that his cavalry was at
Jonesborough on the 30th ult., although the enemy's raiding parties were on
this side. He says if he had a little more infantry, he could soon clear East
Tennessee of the foe; and asks that an order from Gen. Cooper (A. and I. G.),
calling for two of his best regiments of cavalry, be revoked.
In Gen. Lee's recent campaign beyond the Rappahannock, our
losses in killed, wounded, and missing amounted to 1740; the enemy's losses
must have been three times that number.
The President made a speech in Charleston on the 1st
instant. We have copies from him to-day of his correspondence with Gen. Bragg
since he left Chickamauga field. Gen. B. says he will immediately call for
Hardee's brigades, promised him, and without delay commence operations on the
enemy's left (it is too wet on the right), and drive Burnside out of East
Tennessee. But he complains of Gen. Buckner, who assumes to have an independent
command in East Tennessee and West Virginia. The President replies that neither
Bragg nor Buckner has jurisdiction over Gen. Jones in West Virginia, but that
he gets his orders from Richmond. He does not promise to remove Buckner, whom
he deems only impatient, but says he must be subject to Bragg's orders,
etc.
Gen. Bragg has applied for Gen. Forrest (who went some time
since to Mobile and tendered his resignation, in a pet with Gen. Bragg) to
command a cavalry force in North Mississippi and West Tennessee. In short, the
President is resolved to sustain Gen. Bragg at the head of the army in
Tennessee in spite of the tremendous prejudice against him in and out of the army.
And unless Gen. Bragg does something more for the cause before Congress meets a
month hence, we shall have more clamor against the government than ever. But he
has quashed the charges (of Bragg) against Gen. Polk, and assigned him, without
an investigation, to an important command.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
87-8
