MARCH 15TH.-For several days troops have been pouring through the city, marching down the Peninsula. The enemy are making demonstrations against Yorktown.
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, By John Beauchamp Jones
MARCH 14TH.—The Provost Marshal, Col. Porter, has had new passports printed, to which his own name is to be appended. I am requested to sign it for him, and to instruct the clerks generally.
MARCH 13TH.—Nevertheless, I am (temporarily) signing my name to the passports, yet issued by the authority of the Secretary of War. They are filled up and issued by three or four of the Provost Marshal’s clerks, who are governed mainly by my directions, as neither Col. Porter nor the clerks, nor Gen. Winder himself, have the slightest idea of the geography of the country occupied by the enemy. The clerks are all Marylanders, as well as the detectives, and the latter intend to remain here to my great chagrin.
MARCH 12TH.—Gen. Winder moved the passport office up to the corner of Ninth and Broad Streets.
The office at the corner of Ninth and Broad Streets was a filthy one; it was inhabited—for they slept there—by his rowdy clerks. And when I stepped to the hydrant for a glass of water, the tumbler repulsed me by the smell of whisky. There was no towel to wipe my hands with, and in the long basement room underneath, were a thousand garments of dead soldiers, taken from the hospitals and the battle-field, and exhaling a most disagreeable, if not deleterious, odor.
MARCH 11TH.—I have summed up the amounts of patriotic contributions received by the army in Virginia, and registered on my book, and they amount to 31,515,898.*
The people of the respective States contributed as follows:
North Carolina $325,417
Alabama, 817,600
Mississippi 272,670
Georgia 244,885
South Carolina 137,206
Texas 87,800
Louisiana 61,950
Virginia* 48,070
Tennessee 17,000
Florida 2,350
Arkansas 950
* Virginia undoubtedly contributed more than any other State, but they were not registered.
MARCH 10TH.—One of the friends of the Secretary of War came to me to-day, and proposed to have some new passports printed, with the likeness of Mr. Benjamin engraved on them. He said, I think, the engraving had already been made. I denounced the project as absurd, and said there were some five or ten thousand printed passports on hand.
MARCH 9TH—Gen. Winder has appointed Col. Porter Provost Marshal,—Godwin not being high enough in rank, I suppose.
MARCH 8TH.—Gen. Winder has appointed Capt. Godwin Provost Marshal
MARCH 7TH.—Gen. Winder has established a guard with fixed bayonets at the door of the passport office. They let in only a few at a time, and these, when they get their passports, pass out by the rear door, it being impossible for them to return through the crowd.
MARCH 6TH.—Some consternation among the citizens—they dislike martial law.
