[483] shown by the following reply to one of his calls for information about the close of the year 1862:
It will be observed that the President, through Gen. Smith, calls for information on three points, and to these exclusively is the answer addressed.
First--Every source within the Confederate lines from which supplies could have been obtained last year or this has been fully explored.
All such have either been exhausted or found inadequate.
If in any small portion of the Confederacy supplies have not been aimed at, it was because it was known that such portion would not afford enough for the current domestic supply of that particular area.
It has been erroneously supposed that Southern Georgia and Alabama, and certain portions of Florida, would afford large amounts of stock, but they have not done it. They have not even fully fed those posts which from geographical position would naturally draw from them, and they cannot do as much in the future as they have done in the past.
This appears abundantly from facts within my knowledge and from testimony in this office.
Second--To state more fully the reasons for immediate action it is necessary to recapitulate:
The report states a clear deficit of bacon of 8,116,194 pounds, or twenty-five per cent.; a clear deficit in salt beef of 36,000 beeves, at an average of five hundred pounds --making 18,000,000, or ninety per cent. per bullock.
Whole value of the above, in rations, 22,516,194.
Total deficit per cent., 43.
This calculation is upon the basis of the forces this year in camp and field.
Further: it does not include immense supplies purchased from private hands, which cannot be had at all for this winter, because the stock to create them is not in the Confederate lines, and the salt cannot be had if the stock could.
Besides, large local supplies have been completely exhausted, as in London and Fauquier and other districts.
And even the above estimated subsistence is not at all secure.
The hogs, though bargained for, have not all been driven to places of safety.
The salt to cure them has not all been secured, and what has been engaged has not all been delivered, and must take its chances for transportation over long distances, upon uncertain roads discordantly connected.
It is not safe, then, to rely on these estimates.
Added to that, the winter is at hand; the rises of the rivers all impending; invasion on a large scale is imminent; the supplies which had been hoped for from the enemy's lines are not to be expected.
The supplies now offered are ample, and are tendered at lower rates in cotton, even at the extreme bid, than they can be bought at for Confederate currency in our own lines.
If not availed of now they most probably never will be, for lack of power and opportunity.
And, finally, both Mobile and Charleston are pressing for large supplies out of resources which must be held for the armies of Virginia, or the border States will be lost; while the same reserves, and the accumulations I have been endeavouring to make in Tennessee, are demanded by the armies of General Bragg.
Third--As to the relative advantages of procuring supplies from Memphis and from the vicinity of New Orleans, the proposition to make such purchases is not a new idea.
They were made at the commencement of the war to an extent which is little known.
In an elaborate report on the operations of this Bureau, made by Major Ruffin, under my under and superintendence, and submitted to Congress in January last, it is stated: Experts estimate that the product of about 1,200,000 hogs was imported in the early part of last year (1861), from beyond our present lines into what is now the Southern Confederacy.
This was accomplished by the action of State authorities; in some cases by
