nerals and other bureau officers, supposed to be discussing
the damage done by the enemy to the railroads, etc. etc. I hope it was
not a consultation upon any presumed necessity of the abandonment of the
city!

We were paid to-day in $5 bills. I gave $20 for half a cord of wood, and
$60 for a bushel of common white cornfield beans. Bacon is yet $8 per
pound; but more is coming to the city than usual, and a decline may be
looked for, I hope. The farmers above the city, who have been hoarding
grain, meat, etc., will lose much by the raiders.

MARCH 3D.--Bright and frosty. Confused accounts of the raid in the
morning papers.

During the day it was reported that Col. Johnson's forces had been cut
up this morning by superior numbers, and that Butler was advancing up
the Peninsula with 15,000 men. The tocsin was sounded in the afternoon,
and the militia called out; every available man being summoned to the
field for the defense of the city. The opinion prevails that the plan to
liberate the prisoners and capture Richmond is not fully developed yet,
nor abandoned. My only apprehension is that while our troops may be
engaged in one direction, a detachment of the enemy may rush in from the
opposite quarter. But the attempt must fail. There is much excitement,
but no alarm. It is rather eagerness to meet the foe, and a desire that
he may come.

The Department Battalion returned at 2 P.M. to attend the funeral of
Capt. Ellery, and expect to be marched out again this evening toward
Bottom's Bridge, where the enemy is said to be in considerable force.

Custis, though detailed to duty in the department, threw down his pen
to-day, and said he _would_ go out and be in the next fight. And so he
left me suddenly. The Secretary, to whom I communicated this, said it
was right and proper for him to go--even without orders. He goes without
a blanket, preferring not to sleep, to carrying one. At night he will
sit by a fire in the field.

Some of the clerks would shoot Mr. Memminger cheerfully. He will not pay
them their salaries, on some trivial informality in the certificates;
and while they are fighting and bleeding in his defense, their wives and
children are threatened to be turned out of doors by the boarding-house
keepers.

MARCH 4TH.--Bright and frosty in the morning; warm and cloudy in the
afternoon. The enemy have disappeared.

On the 17th inst., Gen. Lee wrote the Secretary of War that he had
received a letter from Gen. Lo