"secret agents." What for?

Gen. Lee has made regulations to prevent cotton, tobacco, etc. passing
his lines into the enemy's country, unless allowed by the government.
But, then, several in authority _will_ "allow" it without limit.

I set out sixty-eight early cabbage-plants yesterday. They are now under
the snow!

APRIL 3D.--The snow has disappeared; but it is cloudy, with a cold
northwest wind. The James River is very high, and all the streams are so
much swollen that no military operations in the field are looked for
immediately. It is generally believed that Grant, the Federal
lieutenant-general, will concentrate an immense army for the capture of
Richmond, and our authorities are invoked to make the necessary
dispositions to resist the attempt.

The papers contain a supplemental proclamation of President Lincoln, and
understand it to be merely an electioneering card to secure the
Abolition vote in the convention to nominate a candidate for the
Presidency. If it does not mean that, its object must be to induce us to
send an army North to burn and pillage, so that the Federal authorities
may have a pretext to raise new armies, and prosecute the war, not for
the Union, but for conquest and power.

Custis and I received yesterday $500 in the _new_ Treasury notes, but we
had to pay $16 for two pounds of bacon. So no diminution of prices is
yet experienced. _It is now a famine_, although I believe we are
starving in the midst of plenty, if it were only equally distributed.
But the government will not, it seems, require the railroads to bring
provisions to the exclusion of freight for the speculators. Certain
non-combating officers of the government have abundance brought them by
the _Southern_ Express Co., and the merchants have abundance of goods
brought hither by the same company for the purposes of speculation.
Well, we shall see the result! One is almost ready to believe that the
government declines to fill the depots here, harboring the purpose of
abandoning the city. That would be abandonment of the cause. Nearly all
who own no slaves would remain citizens of the United States, if
permitted, without further molestation on the part of the Federal
authorities, and many Virginians in the field might abandon the
Confederate States army. The State would be lost, and North Carolina and
Tennessee would have an inevitable avalanche of invasion precipitated
upon them. The only hope would be civil war in the North, a