“Sir:—The President has referred your letter of the 19th inst. to this department.
“In reply, you are respectfully informed that it is not deemed judicious, unless in the last extremity, to resort to the means of supply suggested. The patriotic motives that dictated the suggestion are, however, appreciated and acknowledged.
“Your obedient servant,
“James A. Seddon,
“Secretary of War.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
Removed into Clay Street.—Gen. Toombs resigned.—Lincoln dictator.—He can call 3,000,000 of men.—President is sick.—His office is not a bed of roses.—Col. Gorgas sends in his oath of allegiance.—Confederate gold $5 for $1.—Explosion of a laboratory.—Bad weather everywhere.—Fighting on the Mississippi River.—Conflict of views in the Conscription Bureau.—Confederate States currency $10 for $1.—Snow a foot deep, but melting.—We have no negro regiments in our service.—Only 6000 conscripts from East Tennessee.—How seven were paroled by one.—This is to be the crisis campaign.—Lee announces the campaign open.
March 1st.—To-morrow we remove to new quarters. The lady’s husband, owning cottage, and who was confined for seven months among lunatics, has returned, and there is not room for two families. Besides, Mrs. G. thinks she can do better taking boarders, than by letting the house. What a mistake! Beef sold yesterday for $1.25 per pound; turkeys, $15. Corn-meal $6 per bushel, and all other articles at the same rates. No salaries can board families now; and soon the expense of boarding will exceed the incomes of unmarried men. Owners and tenants, unless engaged in lucrative business, must soon vacate their houses and leave the city.
But we have found a house occupied by three widows in Clay Street. They have no children. They mean to board soon among their relatives or friends, and then we get the house; in the mean time, they have fitted up two rooms for us. We should have gone yesterday, but the weather was too bad. The terms will not exceed the rent we are now paying, and the house is larger. I espied several fruit trees in the back yard, and a space beyond, large enough for a smart vegetable garden. How delighted I shall be to cultivate it myself! Always I have visions of peas, beans, radishes, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes of my own raising! God bless the widows sent for our relief in this dire necessity!
Met Judge Reagan yesterday, just from the Council Board. I thought he seemed dejected. He said if the enemy succeeded in getting command of the Mississippi River, the Confederacy would be “cut in two;” and he intimated his preference of giving up Richmond, if it would save Texas, etc. for the Confederacy. Texas is his adopted State.
March 2d.—The enemy burnt the steamship Nashville on Saturday near Savannah. She was employed taking provisions to Fort McAlister. I think it was destroyed by an incendiary shell.