A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital Part 10

DECEMBER 27TH.--Notwithstanding the severe strictures, and the resolution of Congress, there is an increase rather than a diminution of the number of persons going North. Some of our officials seem to think the war is over, or that England will do the balance of our fighting!

DECEMBER 28TH.--The fathers and mothers and sisters of our brave soldiers continue to send their clothing and provisions. _They_ do not relax in the work of independence.

DECEMBER 29TH.--Persons are coming here from that portion of Western Virginia held by the enemy, with pa.s.sports from Gen. c.o.x, the Yankee commander. They applied to me to-day for pa.s.sports to return to Kanawha, which I refused. They obtained them from the a.s.sistant Secretary of War, Mr. Ould.

DECEMBER 30TH.--Some of our officers on furlough complain of the dullness of the war. The second year will be different.

DECEMBER 31ST.--Northern papers, received in this city, show very conclusively that the enemy are pretty accurately informed of the condition of our defenses and the paucity of the numbers in our regiments.

CHAPTER X.

Seward gives up Mason and Slidell.--Great preparations of the enemy.-- Gen. Jackson betrayed.--Mr. Memminger's blunders.--Exaggerated reports of our troops in Kentucky and Tennessee.

JANUARY 1ST, 1862.--Seward has cowered beneath the roar of the British Lion, and surrendered Mason and Slidell, who have been permitted to go on their errand to England. Now we must depend upon our own strong arms and stout hearts for defense.

JANUARY 2D.--The enemy are making preparations to a.s.sail us everywhere.

Roanoke Island, Norfolk, Beaufort, and Newbern; Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Pensacola, and New Orleans are all menaced by numerous fleets on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers of iron-clad floating batteries threaten to force a pa.s.sage down the Mississippi, while monster armies are concentrating for the invasion of Tennessee and the Cotton States. Will Virginia escape the scourge? Not she; here is the bull's-eye of the mark they aim at.

JANUARY 3D.--The enemy have in the field, according to their official reports, some three-quarters of a million of men; we, about 250,000, or one-quarter of a million. This might answer for defense if we could only know where their blows will fall; but then they have a strong navy and thousands of transports, and we have next to nothing afloat to oppose to them. And there is no _entente cordiale_ between Mr. Benjamin and any of our best generals.

JANUARY 4TH.--It is just as I feared. Gen. T. J. Jackson, supposing his project to be a profound secret, marched on the 1st instant from Winchester, intending to surprise a force of the enemy at Romney. But he had not proceeded half the distance before he found a printed account of his intended expedition in a Baltimore paper at an inn on the roadside.

This was treason of the blackest dye, and will cost us a thousand men.

The enemy, of course, escaped, and our poor soldiers, frost-bitten and famished, must painfully retrace all steps of this fruitless march.

JANUARY 5TH.--There are rumors of a court-martial, and I fear the enterprising Jackson will be made to suffer for the crime of others.

That men sympathizing with the Union cause were daily leaving Richmond for Baltimore was known to all, but how they gained intelligence of the contemplated movement of Jackson is the mystery.

JANUARY 6TH.--No news.

JANUARY 7TH.--Brig-Gen. Wise is to command on Roanoke Island. It is not far from Princess Ann County, where his place of residence is. If they give him men enough, say half as many as the enemy, he _will_ defend it.

JANUARY 8TH.--Dearth of news.

JANUARY 9TH.--b.u.t.ter is 50 cts. per pound, bacon 25 cts., beef has risen from 13 cts. to 30 cts., wood is selling for $8 per cord, but flour is abundant, and cheap enough to keep us from starving.

JANUARY 10TH.--The President is rarely seen in the streets now, and it is complained that he is not so accessible as formerly in his office. I do not know what foundation there is for these reports, and see no reason to credit them. I know he rides out in the afternoon, if the weather be fair, after the labors of the day, and he is a regular attendant at St. Paul's Church. I am rather inclined to credit the rumor that he intends to join the church. All his messages and proclamations indicate that he is looking to a mightier power than England for a.s.sistance. There is a general desire to have the cabinet modified and Christianized upon the inauguration of the permanent government.

JANUARY 11TH.--We have three candidates in the field in this district for Congress: President Tyler, James Lyons, and Wm. H. McFarland. The first will, of course, walk over the track.

JANUARY 12TH.--Gen. Wise, whose headquarters are to be fixed at Nag's Head on the beach near Roanoke Island, reports that the force he commands is altogether inadequate to defend the position. Burnside is said to have 20,000 men, besides a numerous fleet of gun-boats; and Gen.

Wise has but 3000 effective men.

JANUARY 13TH.--The department leaves Gen. Wise to his superior officer, Gen. Huger, at Norfolk, who has 15,000 men. But I understand that Huger says Wise has ample means for the defense of the island, and refuses to let him have more men. This looks like a man-trap of the "Red-tapers"

to get rid of a popular leader. I hope the President will interfere.

JANUARY 14TH.--All calm and quiet to-day.

JANUARY 15TH.--I forgot to mention the fact that some weeks ago I received a work in ma.n.u.script from London, sent thither before the war, and brought by a bearer of dispatches from our Commissioner, Hon.

Ambrose Dudley Mann, to whom I had written on the subject. I owe him a debt of grat.i.tude for this kindness. When peace is restored, I shall have in readiness some contributions to the literature of the South, and my family, if I should not survive, may derive pecuniary benefit from them. I look for a long war, unless a Napoleon springs up among us, a thing not at all probable, for I believe there are those who are constantly on the watch for such dangerous characters, and they may possess the power to nip all embryo emperors in the bud.

Some of our functionaries are not justly ent.i.tled to the great positions they occupy. They attained them by a species of _snap-judgement_, from which there may be an appeal hereafter. It is very certain that many of our _best_ men have no adequate positions, and revolutions are mutable things.

JANUARY 16TH.--To-day, Mr. Benjamin, whom I met in the hall of the department, said, "I don't grant any pa.s.sports to leave the country, except to a few men on business for the government. I have ceased to grant any for some time past." I merely remarked that I was glad to hear it.

Immediately on returning to my office I referred to my book, and counted the names of fifty persons to whom the Secretary had granted pa.s.sports within thirty days; and these were not all agents of the government. Mr.

Benjamin reminded me of Daniel Webster, when he used to make solemn declarations that his friends in office were likewise the partisans of President Tyler.

JANUARY 17TH.--A Mr. O. Hendricks, very lately of the U. S. Coast Survey, has returned from a tour of the coast of North Carolina, and has been commissioned a lieutenant by the Secretary of War. He says Burnside will take Roanoke Island, and that Wise and all his men will be captured. It is a _man-trap_.

JANUARY 18TH.--Gen. L. P. Walker, the first Secretary of War, is a.s.signed to duty in the Southwest under Gen. Bragg. How can he obey the orders of one who was so recently under his command? I think it probable he will resign again before the end of the campaign.

JANUARY 19TH.--There has been a storm on the coast, sinking some of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps. Col. Allen, of New Jersey, was lost. He was once at my house in Burlington, and professed to be friendly to the Southern cause.

I think he said he owned land and slaves in Texas.

JANUARY 20TH.--Mr. Memminger advertises to pay interest on certain government bonds in _specie_. That won't last long. He is paying 50 per cent. premium in treasury notes for the specie, and the bonds are given for treasury notes. What sort of financiering is this?

JANUARY 21ST.--A great number of Germans and others are going to Norfolk, thinking, as one remarked, if they can't go to the United States the United States will soon come to them. Many believe that Burnside will get Norfolk. I think differently, but I may be mistaken.

JANUARY 22D.--Some of the letter-carriers' pa.s.sports from Mr. Benjamin, which have the countenance of Gen. Winder, are now going into Tennessee.

What is this for? We shall see.

JANUARY 23D.--Again the Northern papers give the most extravagant numbers to our army in Kentucky. Some estimates are as high as 150,000.

I know, and Mr. Benjamin knows, that Gen. Johnston has not exceeding 29,000 effective men. And the Secretary knows that Gen. J. has given him timely notice of the inadequacy of his force to hold the position at Bowling Green. The Yankees are well aware of our weakness, but they intend to claim the astounding feat of routing 150,000 men with 100,000!

And they suppose that by giving us credit for such a vast army, we shall not deem it necessary to send reinforcements. Well, _reinforcements are not sent_.

JANUARY 24TH.--Beauregard has been ordered to the West. I knew the doom was upon him! But he will make his mark even at Columbus, though the place seems to me to be altogether untenable and of no practicable importance, since the enemy may attack both in front and rear. It would seem that some of the jealous functionaries would submit to any misfortune which would destroy Beauregard's popularity. But these are exceptions: they are few and far between, thank Heaven!

JANUARY 25TH.--The French players have been permitted by the Secretary to leave the country. But _British_ subjects are now refused pa.s.sports.

JANUARY 26TH.--President Tyler has been elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority.

JANUARY 27TH.--The Secretary of War has issued such a peremptory order to Gen. Wise, that the latter has no alternative but to attempt the defense of Roanoke Island with 3000 men against 15,000 and a fleet of gun-boats. The general is quite sick, but he will fight. His son, Capt.

O. Jennings Wise, who has been under fire many times already, commands a company on the island. He will _deserve_ promotion. The government seems to have proscribed the great men of the past and their families, as if _this government was the property of the few men who happen to wield power at the present moment_. Arrogance and presumption in the South must, sooner or later, have a fall. The great men who were the leaders of this revolution may be ignored, but they cannot be kept down by the smaller fry who aspire to wield the destinies of a great and patriotic people. Smith and Lovell, New York politicians and Street Commissioners, have been made _major_-generals, while Wise and Breckinridge are brigadiers.

JANUARY 28TH.--There must soon be collisions in the West on a large scale; but the system of lying, in vogue among the Yankees, most effectually defeats all attempts at reliable computation of numbers.

They say we have 150,000 men in Tennessee and Kentucky, whereas we have not 60,000. Their own numbers they represent to be not exceeding 50,000, but I suspect they have three times that number. The shadows of events are crowding thickly upon us, and the events will speak for themselves--and that speedily.

JANUARY 29TH.--What we want is a military man capable of directing operations in the field everywhere. I think Lee is such a man. But can he, a modest man and a Christian, aspire to such a position? Would not Mr. Benjamin throw his influence against such a suggestion? I trust the President will see through the mist generated around him.

JANUARY 30TH.--Some of the mysterious letter-carriers, who have just returned from their jaunt into Tennessee, are applying again for pa.s.sports to Baltimore, Was.h.i.+ngton, etc. I refuse them, though they are recommended by Gen. Winder's men; but they will obtain what they want from the Secretary himself, or his a.s.sistant Secretary.

JANUARY 31ST.--What if these men (they have pa.s.sports) should be going to Was.h.i.+ngton to report the result of their reconnoissances in Tennessee? The Tennessee River is high, and we have no casemated batteries, or batteries of any sort, on it above Fort Henry.