[518]
compel them, under written orders, to send those articles of provision and forage to the railroad, and the cotton to be ready to be burned whenever the enemy shall be disposed to take it.
Have the goodness to detail on your staff a corps of active and intelligent officers, whose duty it will be to see that all your orders are immediately carried into effect—that is the plan I am going to pursue.
Yours very truly,
Headquarters army of the Mississippi, Jackson, Tenn., March 8th, 1862.
Dear Sir,—I am happy to hear, through the letter of your Adjutant-General, dated March 6th, and addressed to Captain Young, of my staff, that during the coming week a considerable number of your state troops will begin to assemble at Henderson.
But permit me to suggest that instead of collecting two thousand men at Memphis, you should assemble there about five hundred, the rest to rendezvous at Bethel Station, on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.
The proper orders will be issued for their equipment and subsistence, to the utmost degree within my power.
I hope the enemy will give us time for some efficient steps towards organization of these new levies.
I trust, too, that the people will be thoroughly aroused to a true sense and appreciation of the crisis upon us, and of their own duties in the hour of trial.
If so, I shall feel no doubt of our ability to rid the soil of Tennessee, at no remote date, of all invaders.
Yours very truly, Beauregard's order respecting Bell-metal.
Headquarters army of the Mississippi, Jackson, Tenn., March 8th, 1862.
To the Planters of the Mississippi Valley:
More than once a people, fighting with an enemy less ruthless than yours, for imperilled rights not more dear and sacred than yours, for homes and a land not more worthy of resolute and unconquerable men than yours, and for interests of far less magnitude than you have now at stake, have not hesitated to melt and mould into cannon the precious bells surmounting their houses of God, which had called generations to prayer.
The priesthood have ever sanctioned and consecrated the conversion, in the hour of their nation's need, as one holy and acceptable in the sight of God.
We want cannon as greatly as any people who ever, as history tells you, melted their church bells to supply them; and I, your general, intrusted with the command of the army embodied of your sons, your kinsmen, and your neighbors, do now call on you to send your plantation-bells to the nearest railroad To the Planters of the Mississippi Valley:
