The daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1863-1864, 1863-11-17
FROM WASHINGTON.
pecial Correspondence of the Wheeling Register

WASHINGTON, Nov. l3, 1868.
Although the papers have made a good
deal of fuss over the late movements on the
Rappahannock and elsewhere, it remains to
be seen which side will benefit most in the
end, by which I mean, not the end of the
war but Of this campaign. Lee is on his
own ground, every inch of which he is per
fectly acquainted with; it will therefore re-
quire extremely adroit management to out
wit him.
In this district there will be a strong eff
fort to avoid draft if possible, or at least to
reduce the numbers to be drafted to min
imum. But it is complained that the quota
announced on the next draft here is exces
sive, in fact the figures given by the Pro
vost Marshal fall but little short of the de-
mand on the State Of Vermont. Our con-
dition, like that of the border States gener-
ally is very helpless one; the powers that
be do with us quite as they feel disposed,
there being no law but their own wills to
restrain them.
Quite controversy is going on amongst
certain persons who feel an interest in such
subjects as to the number of depraved wo-
men now in this city and its adjunct,
Georgetown, 1t had been set SO high as Is,
900, but more pains taking investigations
have reduced their figures to less than one
half of their forbidding significance. Be
fore the war $50 of that description was set
as the limit, but black and white now OK
coed 5000, the increment being one of the
boasted advantages which were to be deri
we'd from the lift applied to us by those sub
limated personages from Boston and other
Eastern regions who came here to raise us
to "higher plane of civilization" Certain
ly the most conspicuous result of ourpro
ised elevation has been the increase of the
women of the town between one and two
thousand per cent This is pretty much
the way with all the fine representations
made by the party founded son moral ideas;"
their brilliant discoveries prove to have no
more substance than the sailors, Cape Fly
away, which is composed Of fog or mist /
am afraid that the magnificent prospects
which have been heretofore held out to
Wheeling and West Virginia if they would
only take stock largely in radical abolition
ism vii not prove much more satisfactory.
The promies were intended to produce an
effect valuable to the Abolitionists, and that
is about all tie value they will ever have.
Ii is very natural that the people at large
should feel degree of concern for the hor-
rible circumstances in which some IL to Is
600 Federal captives are placed in and
about Richmond. Per contra, there are
several thousand-from four 70 six-Con-
federate prisoners at Fortress Monroe, whose
condition as to food is doubtless superior to
that Of the sufferers at Richmond, but who
are desperately bare and badly off for cloth
ing, many Of them having but the thin
and threadbare garments in which they were
at Gettysburg. The first dictate
of common feeling and common sense is that
exchanges should be carried on as far as
practicable, but it appears that the "negro
in the woodpile" is the source of all the
trouble. Because Mr.. Lincoln cannot force
the Confederates to accept his new negro
equality notions, tens of thousands Of
gallant white men are to suffer the pangs Of
hunger and almost every other form of hu-
nan privation. The aspect presented BY