It is too true that several thousand of our men were
captured at Arkansas Post, and that Little Rock is now in danger.
There seems to be no probability, after all, of an immediate
advance of the enemy across the Rappahannock.
But there are eight iron-clad gun-boats and ninety sail at
Beaufort, North Carolina, and, it is reported, 52,000 men. Wilmington will
probably be assailed.
Mr. Foote said, yesterday, if Indiana and Illinois would
recede from the war, he should be in favor of aiding them with an army against
Lincoln. And all the indications from the North seem to exhibit a strong
sentiment among the people favoring peace. But the people are not the government,
and they sink peace and reconstruction together.
Yesterday Mr. Crockett, of Kentucky, said, in the House of Representatives,
that there was a party in favor of forming a Central Confederacy (of free and
slave States) between the Northern and Southern extremes. Impracticable.
To-day we have news of the bombardment of Fort McAlister,
near Savannah. No result known. Now we shall have tidings every few days of naval
operations. Can Savannah, and Charleston, and Wilmington be successfully
defended? They may, if they will emulate the example of Vicksburg. If they
fall, it will stagger this government — before the peace party in the
North can operate on the Government of the United States. But it would not “crush
the rebellion.”
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 247-8
