| From the Clarksville, Tenn. Jeffersonian |
| |
| May 15, 1861 |
| |
| Contraband of War |
| The Government Collector at New Albany has
decided that Rail Road tickets provided for the Memphis, Clarksville
& Louisville Railroad in that city, are contraband of war. The
printer writes to the Superintendent of the road here, as follows: |
| "Fearing that the tickets ordered by
you on the 31 instant, might be seized and confiscated under the order
of the Secretary of the Treasury, we called upon the custom-house
officer, and he decided very learnedly that printed tickets for a
railroad company in a seceded State was an article contraband of
war." |
| This is carrying the idea of contraband to
an extremity. It is literally running the thing into the ground. In
the first place, the officer undertakes to decide what, as yet at
least, is not true that Tennessee is a seceded State, and then
declares an article to be contraband of war, which every man who has
brains enough to grease a gimlet, knows is not contraband. |
| The joke of the thing is that the Northern
printer is the sufferer by the absurd decision. |
|