missioners of assessment shall be the prices established for all
citizens of the Confederate States; and that any person who shall charge
any price beyond such assessment shall be deemed guilty of a criminal
offense, and be subject to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars
and to imprisonment not exceeding one year."

We are now tending rapidly, under fearful exigencies, to the absolutism
which, in a republic, alone can summon the full forces into the field.
Power must be concentrated, and wielded with promptitude and precision,
else we shall fail to achieve our independence. All obstructions in the
way of necessary war measures must be speedily removed, or the finances,
and the war itself, will speedily come to an ignominious end.

The Secretary recommends, and the President orders, that Gen. Bragg be
assigned to the command of North Carolina. The President yields; Bragg
is "given up."

The Richmond _Enquirer_ is out, to-day, in an article advocating the
employment of 250,000 negroes in our army.

NOVEMBER 12TH.--Bright and pleasant.

The rumor is revived that Mr. Seddon will resign. If he really does
resign, I shall regard it as a _bad_ sign. He must despair of the
Republic; but, then, his successor may be a man of greater energy and
knowledge of war.

We are destitute of news, with an awful silence between the armies. We
believe this cannot last long, and we know Grant has a great superiority
of numbers. And he knows our weakness; for the government will persist
in keeping "at the front" local defense troops, smarting under a sense
of wrong, some of whom are continually deserting.

The money-changers and speculators, who have lavished their bribes, are
all in their places, preying upon the helpless women and children; while
the clerks--the permanence of whose tenure of office was guaranteed by
the Constitution--are still kept in the trenches, and their families,
many of them refugees, are suffering in destitution. But Mr. Seddon says
they _volunteered_. This is not candid. They were told by Mr. Memminger
and others that, unless they _volunteered_, the President had decided
their dismissal--when conscription into the army followed, of course!

NOVEMBER 13TH.--Bright and cold; ice on the porch. All quiet below, save
the booming of bombs every night from our iron-clads, thrown at the
workmen in the canal.

There is a dispatch from the West, relating to Gen. Forrest's operations
in Tennessee, understood to