A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital Part 32

Mr. Miles yesterday reported, from the Military Committee, a bill repealing the existing exemption law, and embracing all male residents between the ages of 18 and 45 years. The President, or Secretary of War, to have authority to grant exemptions in certain cases, if deemed expedient. This _ought_ to give us 200,000 more men. And they will be required.

A resolution was pa.s.sed demanding of the Commissary and Quartermaster-General the number of their employees capable of performing military duty. It would be well to extend the inquiry to the War Department itself.

A letter from Norfolk states that at a grand ball, in celebration of the emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes, Gen. Vieille opened the dance with a mulatto woman of bad character as his partner; and Mrs. V. had for her partner a negro barber.

JANUARY 23D.--The Northern papers are filled with what purports to be the intercepted correspondence of Mr. Benjamin with Messrs. Mason and Slidell. Lord John Russell is berated. The Emperor of France is charged with a design to seize Mexico as a colony, and to recognize Texas separately, making that State in effect a dependency, from which cotton may be procured as an offset to British India. He says the French Consuls in Texas are endeavoring to detach Texas from the Confederacy.

If this be a genuine correspondence, it will injure the South; if it be false (if the allegations be false), it will still injure us. I have no doubt of its genuineness; and that Mr. Sanders, once the correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, was the bearer. If Texas leaves us, so may Louisiana--and the gigantic Houmas speculation may turn out well at last.

Mr. Curry has brought forward a copyright bill; Mr. Foster, of Alabama, has introduced a bill to abolish the pa.s.sport system--leaving the matter to railroad conductors.

A dispatch from Gen. Bragg a.s.sures us that our cavalry are still capturing and destroying large amounts of Rosecrans's stores on the c.u.mberland River.

Col. Wall has been elected Senator from New Jersey. They say he is still pale and ill from his imprisonment, for opinion sake. I hope he will speak as boldly in the Senate as out of it.

I met Gen. Davis to-day (the President's nephew), just _from_ Goldsborough, where his brigade is stationed. He is in fine _plumage_--and I hope he will prove a game-c.o.c.k.

Major-Gen. French, in command at Petersburg, is a Northern man. Our _native_ generals are brigadiers. It is amazing that all the superior officers in command near the capital should be Northern men. Can this be the influence of Gen. Cooper? It may prove disastrous!

JANUARY 24TH.--Gen. Smith writes that he deems Wilmington in a condition to resist any attacks.

The exposition of Mr. Benjamin's dispatches has created profound mortification in the community.

Another transport has been taken from the enemy in the c.u.mberland River.

No further news from Arkansas.

There is a white flag (small-pox) within seventy yards of our house. But it is probable we must give up the house soon, as the owner is desirous to return to it--being unable to get board in the country.

Gen. Rains, who has been making a certain sort of primer, met with an accident this morning; one of them exploded in his hand, injuring his thumb and finger. He was scarcely able to sign his name to official doc.u.ments to-day.

Mr. Hunter has brought forward a measure for the funding of Treasury notes, the redundant circulation having contributed to produce the present fabulous prices in the market.

In the New Jersey Legislature pet.i.tions are flowing in denunciatory of Lincoln's Emanc.i.p.ation scheme, which would cast into the free States a large excess of profitless population.

JANUARY 25TH.--Gen. Lee mentions, in his recent correspondence, an instance of the barbarity of some of the Yankee soldiers in the Abolition Army of the Potomac. They thrust into the Rappahannock River a poor old negro man, whom they had taken from his master, because he had the small-pox; and he would have been drowned had he not been rescued by our pickets. It is surmised that this dreadful disease prevails to an alarming extent in the Yankee army, and probably embarra.s.ses their operations. Our men have all been vaccinated; and their recklessness of disease and death is perhaps a guarantee of exemption from affliction.

Their health, generally, is better than it has ever been before.

The government at Washington has interdicted the usual exchange of newspapers, for the present. This gives rise to conjecture that Lincoln experiences grave difficulties from the adverse sentiment of his people and his armies regarding his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. And it is likely he has met with grave losses at sea, for the invading army in North Carolina has retired back on Newbern. But the season for naval enterprises is not over, and we are prepared to expect some heavy blows before April.

The revelations in the intercepted dispatches captured with Mr. Sanders, whose father is a notorious political adventurer, may be most unfortunate. They not only show that we even were negotiating for six war steamers, but give the names of the firms in Europe that were to furnish them. The project must now be abandoned. And Louis Napoleon will be enraged at the suspicions and imputations of our Secretary of State regarding his occult policy.

Gen. Rains has invented a new primer for sh.e.l.l, which will explode from the slightest pressure. The sh.e.l.l is buried just beneath the surface of the earth, and explodes when a horse or a man treads upon it. He says he would not use such a weapon in ordinary warfare; but has no scruples in resorting to any means of defense against an army of Abolitionists, invading our country for the purpose, avowed, of extermination. He tried a few sh.e.l.l on the Peninsula last spring, and the explosion of only four sufficed to arrest the army of invaders, and compelled them to change their line of march.

JANUARY 26TH.--The _Northern_ papers say Hooker's grand division crossed the Rappahannock, ten miles above Falmouth, several days ago.

Burnside has issued an address to his army, promising them another battle immediately.

Gen. Lee advises the government to buy all the grain in the counties through which the ca.n.a.l runs. He says many farmers are h.o.a.rding their provisions, for extortionate prices.

I have no house yet. Dr. Wortham had one; and although I applied first, he let Mr. Reagan, the Postmaster-General, have it. He is a member of President Davis's cabinet--and receives $6000 salary.

There is much indignation expressed by the street talkers against Mr.

Benjamin and Mr. Sanders, in the matter of the intercepted dispatches: against Mr. Benjamin for casting such imputations on Napoleon and his consular agents, and for sending his dispatches by such a messenger, in the absence of the President; against Sanders for not destroying the dispatches. Many think the information was _sold_ to the United States Government.

Col. Wall has made a speech in Philadelphia. He said he should take his seat in the United States Senate as an advocate of peace; and he boldly denounced the Lincoln administration.

Our official report shows that our military authorities, up to this time, have burnt 100,000 bales of cotton in Arkansas. I have not learned the amount destroyed in other States--but it is large. Gen. Lee thinks the object of the expeditions of the enemy on the Southern coast is to procure cotton, etc. The slaves can do them no good, and the torch will disappoint the marauders.

Strong and belligerent resolutions have been introduced in the United States Congress against France, for her alleged purpose to obtain dominion in Mexico. It is violative of the Monroe doctrine. And Mr.

Benjamin's accusation against the consuls (embracing a French design on Texas) might seem like a covert purpose to unite both the Confederate and the United States against France--and that might resemble premeditated reconstruction. But diplomatists _must_ be busy--always at their webs. President Davis would be the last man to abandon the ship Independence.

JANUARY 27TH.--It is too true that several thousand of our men were captured at Arkansas Post, and that Little Rock is now in danger.

There seems to be no probability, after all, of an immediate advance of the enemy across the Rappahannock.

But there are eight iron-clad gun-boats and ninety sail at Beaufort, North Carolina, and, it is reported, 52,000 men. Wilmington will probably be a.s.sailed.

Mr. Foote said, yesterday, if Indiana and Illinois would recede from the war, he should be in favor of aiding them with an army against Lincoln.

And all the indications from the North seem to exhibit a strong sentiment among the people favoring peace. But the people are not the government, and they sink peace and reconstruction together.

Yesterday Mr. Crockett, of Kentucky, said, in the House of Representatives, that there was a party in favor of forming a Central Confederacy (of free and slave States) between the Northern and Southern extremes. Impracticable.

To-day we have news of the bombardment of Fort McAlister, near Savannah.

No result known. Now we shall have tidings every few days of naval operations. Can Savannah, and Charleston, and Wilmington be successfully defended? They may, if they will emulate the example of Vicksburg. If they fall, it will _stagger_ this government--before the peace party in the North can operate on the Government of the United States. But it would not "crush the rebellion."

JANUARY 28TH.--The bombardment of Fort McAlister continued five hours yesterday, when the enemy's boats drew off. The injury to the fort can be repaired in a day. Not a man was killed or a gun dismounted. The injury done the fleet is not known. But the opinion prevails here that if the bombardment was continued to-day, the elongated shot of the enemy probably demolished the fort.

Last night and all this day it snowed incessantly--melting rapidly, however. This must r.e.t.a.r.d operations by land in Virginia and probably in North Carolina.

JANUARY 29TH.--It appears from the Northern press that the enemy _did_ make three attempts last week to cross the Rappahannock; but as they advanced toward the stream, the _elements_ successfully opposed them. It rained, it snowed, and it froze. The gun carriages and wagons sank up to the hubs, the horses to their bodies, and the men to their knees; and so all stuck fast in the mud.

I saw an officer to-day from the army in North Carolina. He says the prospect for a battle is good, as soon as the roads admit of marching.

We have nothing further from the bombardment near Savannah. The wires may not be working--or the fort may be taken.

Gov. Vance has sent to the department a strong protest against the appointment of Col. August as commandant of conscripts in Northern Tennessee. Col. A. is a Virginian--that is the only reason. Well, Gen.

Rains, who commands all the conscripts in the Confederate States, is a North Carolinian. But the War Department has erred in putting so many strangers in command of localities, where natives might have been selected. Richmond, for instance, has never yet been in the command of a Southern general.

There are indications of a speedy peace, although we are environed by sea and by land as menacingly as ever. The _Tribune_ (New York) has an article which betrays much desperation. It says the only way for the United States Government to raise $300,000,000, indispensably necessary for a further prosecution of the war, is to guarantee (to the capitalists) that it will be the _last_ call for a loan, and that subjugation will be accomplished in ninety days, or never. It says the war must then be urged on _furiously_, and negro soldiers sent among the slaves to produce an insurrection! If this will not suffice, then let peace be made on the best possible terms. The New York _World_ denounces the article, and is for peace at once. It says if the project (diabolical) of the _Tribune_ fails, it may not be possible to make peace on any terms. In this I see indications of a foregone conclusion.

All over the North, and especially in the Northwest, the people are clamoring for peace, and denouncing the Lincoln Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. I have no doubt, if the war continues throughout the year, we shall have the spectacle of more Northern men fighting against the United States Government than slaves fighting against the South.

Almost every day, now, ships from Europe arrive safely with merchandise: and this is a sore vexation to the Northern merchants. We are likewise getting, daily, many supplies from the North, from blockade-runners. No doubt this is winked at by the United States military authorities, and perhaps by some of the civil ones, too.

If we are not utterly crushed before May (an impracticable thing), we shall win our independence.

JANUARY 30TH.--There is a rumor that Kentucky has voted to raise an army of 60,000 men to resist the execution of Lincoln's Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.

Fort Caswell, below Wilmington, has been casemated with iron; but can it withstand elongated b.a.l.l.s weighing 480 pounds? I fear not. There are, however, submarine batteries; yet these may be avoided, for Gen. Whiting writes that the best pilot (one sent thither some time ago by the enemy) escaped to the hostile fleet since Gen. Smith visited North Carolina, which is embraced within his command. This pilot, no doubt, knows the location of all our torpedoes.

Nothing further from Savannah.