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lor any appointment. I am going to see the President lor him after dinner. Wigfall, of Texas, is here. He promises to be as trouble- some to us as he was to the Congress at Washington.

May 3. We have in the Confederate States at least 100,000 stand of arms and ample ordnance for our necessities. We have powder enough to furnish our troops for a year's active campaign and 2,500, ooo percussion caps. Governor Brown did a dirty trick in Georgia.

The convention ordered the arsenal at Augusta and the arms in it turned over to the government. Brown secretly sent Rockwell up to Augusta and shipped all of the good arms to Savannah before the agent of the government could get there. Under other circumstances it would be wrong, but at present it was disgraceful.

We have delayed declaring war for two days, waiting for the Vir- ginia commission. I wanted to act yesterday. As soon as Congress adjourns Howell says he is going into his old district and raise a regiment for the war.

May 4. Well we have cast the die and accepted the war forced upon us by Lincoln and the Abolitionists. The bill was passed unani- mously and wants only the signature of the President to become the law. The issue is with God. He knows how earnestly I have en- quired of him for guidance in this hour of trial. There will be no fight at Fort Pickens for three weeks yet. Some of the most rabid secessionists here counsel delay in making another attack in order to let the fever at the North cool off. Our people are becoming daily more satisfied that they must sustain the government. Leroy Napier took $40,000 in the Confederate loan and gave $10,000 to the volunteers and their families. This is but an index of the popu- lar feeling. We may have a long and hard fought war, but I do not believe it.

May 6. I made the acquaintance of General Beauregard this morning. He is decidedly Frenchy in his appearance; a small thin man, slightly gray and very pleasant in conversation. Why he was called here is left a secret to the administration.

May 7. The Virginia delegates who were sworn in to-day have given us more confidence in that State. She is in earnest. In ad- dition to this the good news of the secession of Arkansas and Ten- nessee have kept the cannon booming all day.

If we could only get rid of Lee Walker and Mallory*and the Lord would kill off Governor Letcher and his General Gwynn at


 * The Secretaries of War and Navy.