A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital Part 22

A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital Part 22

McClellan has retired back into Maryland, hoping, I suppose, Lee will follow and fall into his ambuscade.

The President will call out, under the Conscription Act, all between the ages of eighteen and forty. This will furnish, according to the Secretary's estimate, 500,000, after deducting the exempts. A great mistake.

A letter from Gen. Lee indicates that he is in favor of making Treasury notes a legal tender. It was so with Washington concerning Continental money--but Congress pays no attention to the subject. Why does not the President recommend it? It would then pa.s.s--for, at present, he is master.

The paper from the Provost Marshal, referred by the latter to the President, came back to-day. The Secretary, in referring it, seems to incline to the opinion that the writ of _habeas corpus_ not being suspended, there was no remedy for the many evils the Provost Marshal portrayed. The President, however, did not wholly coincide in that opinion. He says: "The introduction and sale of liquors must be prevented. Call upon the city authorities to withhold licenses, and to abate the evil in the courts, _or else an order will be issued, such as the necessity requires_."

Judge Campbell, late of the United States Supreme Court, has been appointed a.s.sistant Secretary of War.

OCTOBER 23D.--The Gov. of Florida calls for aid, or he thinks his State will fall.

Albert Pike, writing from Texas, says if the Indian Territory be not attended to "_instantly_," it will be lost.

Per contra, we have a rumor that Lee is recrossing the Potomac into Maryland.

OCTOBER 24TH.--Bragg is in full retreat, leaving Kentucky, and racing for Chattanooga--the point of interest now. But Beauregard, from whom was taken the command of the Western army, day before yesterday repulsed with slaughter a large detachment of the Yankees that had penetrated to the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. Thus, in spite of the fantastic tricks of small men here, the _popular_ general is destined to rise again.

OCTOBER 25TH.--Many severe things are alleged against the President for depriving Beauregard of the command of the Western army. It is alleged that Bragg reported that the enemy would have been annihilated at Shiloh, if Beauregard had fought an hour longer. Now, it appears, that Bragg would have annihilated the enemy at Perryville, if he had fought an hour longer! And just at the moment of his flying out of Kentucky, news comes of Beauregard's victory over the enemy in the South. Nor is this all. The enemy some time since intercepted a letter from Beauregard to Bragg (a copy of which was safely sent to the government here), detailing his plan of the campaign in the West, if he had not been unjustly deprived of the command. But Bragg chose to make a plan of his own, or was directed to disregard Beauregard's advice. No one doubts that Beauregard's plan would have been successful, and would have given us Cincinnati and Louisville; but that of Bragg, as the one sent him by the government, has resulted in the loss of Kentucky, and, perhaps, Tennessee!

Brig.-Gen. Edward Johnson is recommended by Gen. Lee for promotion to major-general, and to be placed in command of the army in Western Virginia.

OCTOBER 27TH.--From information (pretty direct from Washington), I believe it is the purpose of the enemy to make the most strenuous efforts to capture Richmond and Wilmington this fall and winter. It has been communicated to the President that if it takes their last man, and all their means, these cities must fall. Gen. Smith is getting negroes to work on the defenses, and the subsistence officers are ordered to acc.u.mulate a vast amount of provisions here.

Letters from Beauregard show that the Commissary-General, because _he_ thinks Charleston cannot be defended, opposes the provisioning the forts as the general would have it done! The general demands of the government to know whether he is to be overruled, and if so, he must not be held responsible for the consequences. We shall see some of these days which side the President will espouse. Beauregard is _too popular_, I fear, to meet with favor here. But it is life or death to the Confederacy, and danger lurks in the path of public men who endanger the liberties of the people.

OCTOBER 28TH.--Gen. Bragg is here, but will not probably be deprived of his command. He was opposed by vastly superior numbers, and succeeded in getting away with the largest amount of provisions, clothing, etc., ever obtained by an army. He brought out 15,000 horses and mules, 8000 beeves, 50,000 barrels of pork, a great number of hogs, 1,000,000 yards of Kentucky cloth, etc. The army is now at Knoxville, Tennessee, in good condition. But before leaving Kentucky, Morgan made still another capture of Lexington, taking a whole cavalry regiment prisoners, destroying several wagon trains, etc. It is said Bragg's train of wagons was forty miles long! A Western _tale_, I fear.

Letters from Lee urge the immediate completion of the railroad from Danville to Greenville, North Carolina, as of _vital importance_. He thinks the enemy will cut the road between this and Weldon. He wants Confederate notes made a legal tender; and the President says that, as the courts cannot enforce payment in anything else, they are substantially a legal tender already. And he suggests the withholding of pay from officers during their absence from their regiments. A good idea.

Everything indicates that Richmond will be a.s.sailed this fall, and that operations in the field are not to be suspended in the winter.

Polk, Bragg, Cheatham, etc. are urging the President to make Col.

Preston Smith a brigadier-general. Unfortunately, Bragg's letter mentioned the fact that Beauregard had given Smith command of a brigade at Shiloh; and this attracting the eye of the President, he made a sharp note of it with his pencil. "What authority had he for this?" he asked; and Col. Smith will not be appointed.

OCTOBER 29TH.--There was a rumor yesterday that the enemy were marching on Weldon; but we have no confirmation of it to-day.

Loring, after all, did not send his cavalry into Pennsylvania, I presume, since nothing has been heard of it.

The _Charleston Mercury_ has some strictures on the President for not having Breckinridge in Kentucky, and Price in Missouri, this fall. They would doubtless have done good service to the cause. The President is much absorbed in the matter of appointments.

Gen. Wise was again ordered down the Peninsula last Sat.u.r.day; and again ordered back when he got under way. They will not let him fight.

OCTOBER 30TH.--The Commissary-General is in hot water on account of some of his contracts, and a board of inquiry is to sit on him.

The President has delayed the appointment of Gen. E. Johnson, and Gen.

Echols writes that several hundred of his men have deserted; that the enemy, 10,000 or 15,000 strong, is pressing him, and he must fall back, losing Charleston, Virginia, the salt works, and possibly the railroad.

He has less than 4000 men!

But we have good news from England--if it be true. The New York _Express_ says Lord Lyons is instructed by England, and perhaps on the part of France and other powers, to demand of the United States an armistice; and in the event of its not being acceded to, the governments will recognize our independence. One of the President's personal attendants told me this news was regarded as authentic by our government. I don't regard it so.

Yesterday the whole batch of "Plug Ugly" policemen, in the Provost Marshal's "department," were summarily dismissed by Gen. Winder, for "malfeasance, corruption, bribery, and incompetence." These are the branches: the roots should be plucked up, and Gen. Winder and his Provost Marshal ought to resign. I believe the President ordered the removal.

OCTOBER 31ST.--If it be not a Yankee electioneering trick to operate at the election in New York, on the fourth of November, the Northern correspondence with Europe looks very much like speedy intervention in our behalf.

Winder has really dismissed all his detectives excepting Cashmeyer, about the worst of them.

If we gain our independence by the valor of our people, or a.s.sisted by European intervention, I wonder whether President Davis will be regarded by the world as a second Washington? What will his own country say of him? I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman, and no military chieftain at all. And worse still, that he is a capricious tyrant, for lifting up Yankees and keeping down great Southern men. Wise, Floyd, etc. are kept in obscurity; while Pemberton, who commanded the Ma.s.sachusetts troops, under Lincoln, in April, 1861, is made a lieutenant-general; G. W. Smith and Lovell, who were office-holders in New York, when the battle of Mana.s.sas was fought, are made major-generals, and the former put in command over Wise in Virginia, and all the generals in North Carolina. Ripley, another Northern general, was sent to South Carolina, and Winder, from Maryland, has been allowed to play the despot in Richmond and Petersburg. Washington was maligned.

CHAPTER XX.

General Lee in Richmond: beard white.--First proposition to trade cotton to the enemy.--Secretary in favor of it.--All the letters come through my hands again.--Lee falling back.--5000 negroes at work on the fortifications.--Active operations looked for--Beauregard advises non-combatants to leave the city.--Semmes's operations.--Making a nation.--Salt works lost in Virginia.--Barefooted soldiers.-- Intrigues of Butler in New Orleans.--Northern army advancing everywhere.--Breach between the President and Secretary of War.-- President's servant arrested for robbing the Treasury.--Gen. J. E.

Johnston in town.--Secretary has resigned.--Hon. J. A. Seddon appointed Secretary of War.--The enemy marching on Fredericksburg.-- Lee writes that he will be ready for them.--Kentuckians will not be hog drivers.--Women and children flying from the vicinity of Fredericksburg.--Fears for Wilmington.--No beggars.--Quiet on the Rappahannock.--M. Paul, French Consul, saved the French tobacco.-- Gen. Johnston goes West.--President gives Gov. Pett.i.t full authority to trade cotton to France.

NOVEMBER 1ST.--Gen. Winder's late policemen have fled the city. Their monstrous crimes are the theme of universal execration. But I reported them many months ago, and Gen. Winder was cognizant of their forgeries, correspondence with the enemy, etc. The Secretary of War, and the President himself, were informed of them, but it was thought to be a "small matter."

Gen. Lee made his appearance at the department to-day, and was hardly recognizable, for his beard, now quite white, has been suffered to grow all over his face. But he is quite robust from his exercises in the field. His appearance here, coupled with the belief that we are to have the armistice, or recognition and intervention, is interpreted by many as an end of the war. But I apprehend it is a symptom of the falling back of our army.

I have been startled to-day by certain papers that came under my observation. The first was written by J. Foulkes, to L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General, proposing to aid the government in procuring meat and bread for the army _from ports in the enemy's possession_. _They were to be paid for in cotton._ The next was a letter from the Commissary-General to G. W. Randolph, Secretary of War, urging the acceptance of the proposition, and saying without it, it would be impossible to subsist the army. He says the cotton proposed to be used, in the Southwest will either be burned or fall into the hands of the enemy; and that more than two-thirds is never destroyed when the enemy approaches. But to effect his object, it will be necessary for the Secretary to sanction it, and to give orders for the cotton to pa.s.s the lines of the army. The next was from the Secretary to the President, dated October thirtieth, which not only sanctioned Colonel Northrop's scheme, but went further, and embraced shoes and blankets for the Quartermaster-General. This letter inclosed both Foulkes's and Northrop's. They were all sent back to-day by the President, with his remarks. He hesitates, and does not concur. But says the Secretary will readily see the propriety of _postponing_ such a resort until January--and he hopes it may not be necessary then to depart from the settled policy of the government--to forbear trading cotton to the Yankees, etc. etc.

Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of State, has given Mr. Dunnock permission to sell cotton to the Yankees and the rest of the world on the Atlantic and Gulf coast. Can it be that the President knows nothing of this? It is obvious that the cotton sold by Mr. Dunnock (who was always licensed by Mr. Benjamin to trade with people in the enemy's country beyond the Potomac) will be very _comfortable_ to the enemy. And it may aid Mr.

Dunnock and others in acc.u.mulating a fortune. The Const.i.tution defines _treason_ to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I never supposed Mr. Randolph would suggest, nay _urge_, opening an illicit trade with "Butler, the Beast." This is the first really dark period of our struggle for independence.

We have acres enough, and laborers enough, to subsist 30,000,000 of people; and yet we have the spectacle of high functionaries, under Mr.

Davis, urging the necessity of bartering cotton to the enemy for stores essential to the maintenance of the army! I cannot believe it is a necessity, but a dest.i.tution of that virtue necessary to achieve independence. If they had any knowledge of these things in Europe, they would cease their commendations of President Davis.

Mr. Randolph says, in his letter to the President, that trading with ports in possession of the enemy is forbidden to citizens, and not to the government! The archives of the department show that this is not the first instance of the kind entertained by the Secretary. He has granted a license to _citizens_ in Mobile to trade cotton in New Orleans for certain supplies in exchange, in exact compliance with Gen. Butler's proclamation. Did Pitt ever practice such things during his contest with Napoleon? Did the Continental Government ever resort to such equivocal expedients? A member of Washington's cabinet (and he, too, was a Randolph) once violated the "settled policy of the government," but he was instantly deprived of the seals of office. He acted under the advice of Jefferson, who sought to destroy Washington; and the present Secretary Randolph is a grandson of Jefferson. Washington, the inflexible patriot, frowned indignantly upon every departure from the path of rect.i.tude.

I can do nothing more than record these things, and WATCH!

NOVEMBER 2D, SUNDAY.--I watch the daily orders of Adjutant and Inspector-Gen. Cooper. These, when "by command of the Secretary of War,"

are intelligible to any one, but not many are by his command. When simply "by order," they are promulgated by order of the President, without even consulting the Secretary; and they often annul the Secretary's orders. They are _edicts_, and sometimes thought very arbitrary ones. One of these orders says liquor shall not be introduced into the city; and a poor fellow, the other day, was sentenced to the ball-and-chain for trying to bring hither his whisky from Petersburg. On the same day Gov. Brown, of Georgia, seized liquor in his State, in transitu over the railroad, belonging to the government!

Since the turning over of the pa.s.sports to Generals Smith and Winder, I have resumed the position where all the letters to the department come through my hands. I read them, make brief statements of their contents, and send them to the Secretary. Thus all sent by the President to the department go through my hands, being epitomized in the same manner.

The new a.s.sistant Secretary, Judge Campbell, has been ordering the Adjutant-General too peremptorily; and so Gen. Cooper has issued an order making Lieut.-Col. Deas an Acting a.s.sistant Secretary of War, thus creating an office in defiance of Congress.

NOVEMBER 3D.--The right wing of Lee's army has fallen back as far as Culpepper County, and the enemy advances. Active movements are speedily looked for; many suppose a desperate attempt to take Richmond.

Our government has decided that _no one_ shall be permitted to go North for thirty days.

A requisition for heavy guns to defend c.u.mberland Gap, elicited from the Inspector of Ordnance a statement of the fact that we are "short" of guns for the defense of Richmond.

There was a rumor yesterday that the enemy was marching in force on Petersburg. This, at all events, was premature.

A letter from Hon. C. C. Clay, Senator, says there is much defection in North Alabama, and that many people are withdrawing themselves to avoid conscription.