A Confederate Reports On Conditions In Eastern Tennessee: The Wagons Are Coming In But Slowly Only 10 For Pulaski & 10 For Smythe Have Come

(CONFEDERATE LETTER). ALS. 2pg. Bristol [Tennessee]. November 26, 1864. An autograph letter signed Jno. M. Orr to Isaac Shelby, Jr.: The wagons are coming in but slowly only 10 for Pulaski & 10 for Smythe have come. Eakin has 15 from this part of Washington. I have kept employed those which came first I start today all which are here on the way to Greenville. I shall go in theIt has been impossible for me to go before I am afraid that Gen. B. has done me irreparable injury & has destroyed all my calculations by taking Smith away. From all I can hear they have done nothing in the way of collecting stock in wheat. I may be mistaken in this I thot [sic] all was going on here. By staying here & keeping at work and men as I could pick up I have saved 300 to 500 head of hogs which would have been killed at home & brot [sic] to us. If Capt. Smith has not been arrived back to me please get it down at one I cant be away from here more than a week. I enclose rects for $75,000If I had cotton here & especially if I had salt for exchange it wd. bring in much meat &c which is withheld from indisposition to take the money & the low Tenn. price. Shelby, Jr. was the Confederacys chief of commissary stores for the Department of Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. The letter is written on the thin paper common to the late Confederate period and has various minor faults. (Inventory #: 6310)