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712 Series I Volume XXXI-III Serial 56 - Knoxville and Lookout Mountain Part III

Page 712 KY.,SW.VA.,Tennessee,MISS.,N.ALA.,AND N.GA. Chapter XLIII.

Nothing is said of the connection of this person with the disbursements for Colonel Logan's command, but there is an air of authority about the language employed which naturally suggested an official relation, and which, if none existed, should at least have been met by a notice which would have relieved the Government from any responsibility for a proposition to discount its obligations to pay the just claims of citizens.

To prevent the distrust which such impressions create, you are requested to give the matter due attention.

Very respectfully, yours, &c.,

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

COLUMBUS, November 18, 1863.

General J. E. JOHNSTON:

I send you a copy of a dispatch I have just sent to the President, and respectfully ask that you will suspend the execution of your order until his decision can be made known.

CHAS. CLARK,

Governor of Mississippi.

[Inclosure.]

COLUMBUS, November 18, 1863.

President DAVIS:

Yesterday several members of the Legislature received dispatches from the western and northwestern counties announcing that in consequence of the attempted impressment of negroes in those counties by Confederate soldiers, large numbers have been stampeded and are now in the woods. If this policy is pursued it will, in my judgment, be productive of the most disastrous results. The two houses of the Legislature have unanimously adopted the following resolutions, to which I beg to call your attention:

Resolved [the Senate concurring], That the Governor be requested to do all things necessary to protect the people of the State from the illegal pressing of slaves and other property by officers of the Confederate Army, or by parties assuming to be such, officers especially, to prevent the wholesale pressing of slaves now progressing in the border counties of this State, which, if continued, in our opinion, will have the effect to cause the slaves of those counties to go almost en masse to the lines of the enemy.

I hope to hear from you at the earliest moment.

CHARLES CLARK,

Governor of Mississippi.

MERIDIAN, November 18, 1863.

His Excellency CHARLES CLARK,

Governor of Mississippi, Columbus:

Under the instructions of the President, out troops are ordered to bring off all male negroes of military age in danger of falling into the enemy's hands, to keep them out of the Federal Army.

J. E. JOHNSTON.


Page 712 KY.,SW.VA.,Tennessee,MISS.,N.ALA.,AND N.GA. Chapter XLIII.