ere will be
an attack on Wilmington before long, and asks reinforcements.

One from Gen. Beauregard, intimating that he cannot spare any of his
troops for the West, or for North Carolina. The President notes on this,
however, that the troops may be sent where they may seem to be actually
needed.

Also an application to permit one of Gen. Sterling Price's sons to visit
the Confederate States, which the President is not disposed to grant.

The lower house of Congress yesterday passed a bill putting into the
army all who have hitherto kept out of it by employing substitutes. I
think the Senate will also pass it. There is great consternation among
the speculators.

DECEMBER 25TH.--No war news to-day. But a letter, an impassioned one,
from Gov. Vance, complains of outrages perpetrated by detached bodies of
Confederate States cavalry, in certain counties, as being worse than any
of the plagues of Egypt: and says that if any such scourge had been sent
upon the land, the children of Israel would not have been followed to
the Red Sea. In short, he informs the Secretary of War, if no other
remedy be applied, he will collect his militia and levy war against the
Confederate States troops! I placed that letter on the Secretary's
table, for his Christmas dinner. As I came out, I met Mr. Hunter,
President of the Senate, to whom I mentioned the subject. He said,
phlegmatically, that many in North Carolina were "prone to act in
opposition to the Confederate States Government."

Yesterday the President sent over a newspaper, from Alabama, containing
an article marked by him, in which he was very severely castigated for
hesitating to appoint Gen. J. E Johnston to the command of the western
army. _Why_ he sent this I can hardly conjecture, for I believe Johnston
has been assigned to that command; but I placed the paper in the hands
of the Secretary.

My son Custis, yesterday, distributed proposals for a night-school
(classical), and has some applications already. He is resolved to do all
he can to aid in the support of the family in these cruel times.

It is a sad Christmas; cold, and threatening snow. My two youngest
children, however, have decked the parlor with evergreens, crosses,
stars, etc. They have a cedar Christmas-tree, but it is not burdened.
Candy is held at $8 per pound. My two sons rose at 5 A.M. and repaired
to the canal to meet their sister Anne, who has been teaching Latin and
French in the country; but she was not