Gen. Lee writes (a
few days since), from Brandy Station, that Meade seems determined to advance
again; that troops are going up the Potomac to Washington, and that volunteers
from New York have been ordered thither. He asks the Secretary to ascertain if there
be really any Federal force in the York River; for if the report be correct of
hostile troops being there, it may be the enemy's intention to make another
raid on the railroad. The general says we have troops enough in Southwestern
Virginia; but they are not skillfully commanded.
After all, I fear
we shall not get the iron from the Aquia Creek Railroad. In the summer the
government was too slow, and now it is probably too slow again, as the enemy
are said to be landing there. It might have been removed long ago, if we had
had a faster Secretary.
Major S. Hart, San
Antonio, Texas, writes that the 10,000 (the number altered again) superior
rifles captured by the French off the Rio Grande last summer, were about to
fall into the hands of United States cruisers; and he has sent for them, hoping
the French will turn them over to us.
Gen. Winder writes
the Secretary that the Commissary-General will let him have no meat for the
13,000 prisoners; and he will not be answerable for their safe keeping without
it. The Quartermaster-General writes that the duty of providing for them is in
dispute between the two bureaus, and he wants the Secretary to decide between
them. If the Secretary should be very slow, the prisoners will suffer.
Yesterday a set
(six) of cups and saucers, white, and not china, sold at auction for $50.
Mr. Henry, Senator
from Tennessee, writes the Secretary that if Ewell were sent into East
Tennessee with a corps, and Gen. Johnston were to penetrate into Middle
Tennessee, forming a junction north of Chattanooga, it would end the war in
three months.
SOURCE: John
Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate
States Capital, Volume 2, p. 83-4
