Bright, calm, and
pleasant.
All quiet below,
save our bombardment of Dutch Gap Canal.
The Senate passed a
resolution yesterday, calling on the President for a statement of the number of
exemptions granted by the Governors. This will, perhaps, startle Governor
Smith, of Virginia, who has already kept out of the army at least a thousand.
Perhaps it will hit
Governor Brown, of Georgia, also; but Sherman will hit him hardest. He must
call out all his fighting people now, or see his State ravaged with impunity.
Both Houses of
Congress sit most of the time in secret session, no doubt concocting strong
measures under the influence of the existing crisis. Good news only can throw
open the doors, and restore the hilarity of the members. When not in session,
they usually denounce the President; in session, they are wholly subservient to
him.
Hon. R. L. Montague
has written to the Secretary of War, on behalf of the entire Virginia
delegation, requesting a suspension of the impressment of slaves until further
legislation by Congress; what that legislation will be, the President might
tell, if he would.
A dispatch from Gen.
Wheeler, dated to-day, 12 miles from Forsyth, states that Sherman advances by
the most direct route toward Macon, Ga.
My wife presented me
to-day an excellent pocket-handkerchief, my old ones being honeycombed and
unfit for another washing. Upon inquiry (since the cost of a single
handkerchief is now $20), I ascertained it to be a portion of one of my linen
shirts bought in London in 1846.
We have now 200
pounds of flour in the house; 1 bushel meal; 1 bushel sweet potatoes; 1 bushel
Irish potatoes; 3 half pecks white beans; 4 pumpkins; 10 pounds beef; 2 pounds
butter, and 3 pounds sugar, with salt, etc. This seems like moderate stores for
a family of seven, but it is a larger supply than we ever had before, and will
suffice for a month. At the market price, they would cost $620. Add to this l½
loads coal and a quarter cord of wood—the first at $75, the last at $80—the
total is $762.50. This sum in ordinary times, and in specie, would subsist my
family twelve months.
