Raftsman's Journal

One Evidence of Exhaustion.

The order issued by Gen. Lee, calling upon his rebel friends to rake and scrape together from every quarter harquebusses, carbines flintlocks, and blunderbusses, stowed away since the days of the Revolution; rapiers, claymores, stilettos, and halberds, which the chivalry have used in days of yore for cutting and slashing one another, pikes, bayonets, muskets, shot guns, squirrel rifles—in short, everything which can be classed under the general head of "shooting irons," gathered from the various battle-fields and treasured up as relics, to be surrendered to the Ordnance Bureau, is evidence that the rebels are running short of arms. Now that Fort Fisher has fallen, they cannot get them from England. Their sole dependence, therefore, is on what they have on hand: and every battle they fight must diminish the number. It is plain that, shut out from any further foreign supply they must soon exhaust all the fighting weapons they have.