Longstreet to Lee on Impressment of Gold and Measures for Final Campaign.
[Confidential.]
Head-quarters, February 14, 1865.
General R. E. Lee,
Commanding:
General,—Recent developments of the enemy’s designs seem to indicate an early concentration of his armies against Richmond. This, of course, would involve a like concentration on our part, or the abandonment of our capital. The latter emergency would, I think, be almost fatal,—probably quite so, after our recent reverses. To concentrate here in time to meet the movements of the enemy we will be obliged to use the little of our Southern railroad that is left us in transporting our troops, so that we cannot haul provisions over that route. I fear, therefore, that we will not be able to feed our troops unless we adopt extraordinary efforts and measures. I think that there is enough of the necessaries of life left in Virginia and North Carolina to help us through our troubles if we can only reach them. Impressing officers, however, nor collectors of taxes in kind, nor any other plan heretofore employed, is likely to get those supplies in time or in quantities to meet our necessities. The citizens will not give their supplies up and permit their families and servants to suffer for the necessaries of life without some strong inducement. For each one may naturally think that the little that he would supply by denying himself and family would go but little way where so much is needed. He does not want Confederate money, for his meat and bread will buy him clothes, etc., for his family more readily and in larger quantities than the money that the government would pay. The only thing that will insure our rations and national existence is gold. Send out the gold through Virginia and North Carolina and pay liberal prices, and my conviction is that we shall have no more distress for want of food. The winter is about over, and the families can and will subsist on molasses, bread, and vegetables for the balance of the year if they can get gold for their supplies. There is a great deal of meat and bread inside the enemy’s lines that our people would bring us for gold; but they won’t go to that trouble for Confederate money. They can keep gold so much safer than they can meat and bread, and it is always food and clothing.
If the government has not the gold, it must impress it, or if there is no law for the impressment, the gold must be taken without the law. Necessity does not know or wait for law. If we stop to make laws in order that we may reach the gold it will disappear the day that the law is mentioned in Congress. To secure it no one should suspect that we are after it until we knock at the doors of the vaults that contain it, and we must then have guards to be sure that it is not made away with.
It seems to my mind that our prospects will be brighter than they have been if we can only get food for our men; and I think that the plan that I have proposed will secure the food.
There seem to be many reasons for the opinion that the enemy deems our capital essential to him. To get the capital he will concentrate here everything that he has, and we will be better able to fight him when we shall have concentrated than when we are in detachments. The Army of the Mississippi will get new life and spirits as soon as it finds itself alongside of this, and we will feel more comfortable ourselves to know that all are under one eye and one head that is able to handle them.
I remain, most respectfully and truly, your obedient servant,
J. Longstreet,
Lieutenant-General.