CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT, September 5, 1864
Richmond, Va., September 5, 1864.
DEAR SIR: Owing to the withdrawal of so many men from Southwestern Georgia, hitherto the Egypt whence our supplies of subsistence for man and beast have been most largely drawn, and a growing disinclination to sell to the Government at schedule rates for our currency, very serious embarrassments are retarding the collection and delivery of supplies in that quarter at the depots and on the railroads. Extraordinary efforts are now specially necessary to maintain even scant supplies for the armies of both Generals Lee and Hood. Your well-known influence and high position induce me, therefore, to request that, if you can make it at all compatible with your convenience and engagements, you would visit that portion of the State, and by converse and addresses impress on the people the absolute necessity of furnishing and pressing forward the supplies in their possession. When men are wanting on the plantations to make deliveries surely there, as has been so often done in Virginia, the patriotic women (wives and daughters of planters at home) will undertake the duty of expediting deliveries, taking receipts and ordering teams, é&e., to transport. Our great difficulty now, I am informed, is that, as might naturally have been expected, the plantations near the lines of road having been exhausted, it is now necessary supplies should be hauled for longer distances. This is fortunately theseason of the year when teams can be best spared, and I am sanguine, if the people could be duly impressed with the indispensable necessity of forwarding, the requisite transportation to the railroads could be furnished. Railroad transportation, I am pleased to say, can be commanded, and surely the people will not allow their armies to be dispersed and their homes overrun and spoiled rather than deliver of their means and use their unemployed teams. You can, I am sure, rouse them toa sense of their danger and their duty.
Most truly, yours, JAMES A. SEDDON, Secretary of War.
(Same to Hon. H. V. Johnson, Milledgeville, Ga.)