October 26th.–Clear and frosty. Quiet below.
Gen. W. M. Gardner (in Gen. Winder’s place here) has just got from Judge Campbell passports for his cousin, Mary E. Gardner, and for his brother-in-law, F. M. White, to go to Memphis, Tenn., where they mean to reside.
Mr. Benjamin publishes a copy of a dispatch to Mr. Mason, in London, for publication there, showing that if the United States continue the war, she will be unable to pay her debts abroad, and therefore foreigners ought not to lend her any more money, or they may be ruined. This from a Secretary of State! It may be an electioneering card in the United States, and it may reconcile some of our members of Congress to the incumbency of Mr. B. in a sinecure position.
A friend of Mr. Seddon, near Vicksburg, writes for permission to sell thirty bales of cotton–$20,000 worth–to the enemy. He says Mr. Seddon’s estate, on the Sunflower, has not been destroyed by the enemy. That’s fortunate, for other places have been utterly ruined.
Investigations going on in the courts show that during Gen. Winder’s “Reign of Terror,” passports sold for $2000. Some outside party negotiated the business and procured the passport.
Gen. Early has issued an address to his army, reproaching it for having victory wrested out of its hands by a criminal indulgence in the plunder found in the camps captured from the enemy. He hopes they will retrieve everything in the next battle.
Governor Smith’s exemptions of magistrates, deputy sheriffs, clerks, and constables, to-day, 56.