Page:A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865, Volume I.djvu/409

Rh for the fiscal year ending the 30th of June last to have been $3,337,853.01, and the expenditures for the same period $2,662,804.67. The statement thus exhibits an excess of receipts amounting to $675,048.34, instead of a deficiency of more than $1,000,000, as was the case in the preceding fiscal year. It is gratifying to perceive that the Department has thus been made self-sustaining in accordance with sound principle, and with the express requirement of the Constitution that its expenses should be paid out of its own revenues after the 1st of March, 1863.

The report gives a full and satisfactory account of the operations of the Post Office Department for the last year, and explains the measures adopted for giving more certainty and regularity to the service in the States beyond the Mississippi, and on which reliance is placed for obviating the difficulties heretofore encountered in that service. The settlement of the accounts of the Department is greatly delayed by reason of the inability of the First Auditor to perform all the duties now imposed on him by law. The accounts of the Department of State, of the Treasury, of the Navy, and of Justice, are all supervised by that officer, and more than suffice to occupy his whole time. The necessity for a third auditor to examine and settle the accounts of a Department so extensive as that of the Post Office appears urgent, and his recommendation on that subject meets my concurrence.

CONDUCT OF ENEMY. I cannot close this message without again adverting to the savage ferocity which still marks the conduct of the enemy in the prosecution of the war. After their repulse from the defenses before Charleston they first sought revenge by an abortive attempt to destroy the city with an incendiary composition thrown by improved artillery from a distance of four miles. Failing in this, they changed their missiles, but fortunately have thus far succeeded in killing only two women in the city. Their commanders, Butler, McNeil, and Turchin, whose terrible barbarities have made their names widely notorious and everywhere execrable, are still honored and cherished by the authorities at Washington. The first-named, after having been withdrawn from the scenes of his cruelties against women and prisoners of war, in reluctant