Monday, March 29, 2010

New Orleans Taken!

The news flashed along the electric wire yesterday morning and communicated to our citizens the gratifying intelligence, that the Crescent City, the emporium of the South, had struck the villainous rag it has so long flaunted in the face of God and the Government, and succumbed to its inevitable destiny. The blood of the patriot courses quicker through his veins when he reads of such victories, and he feels that peace will soon return again to his country – a peace so dearly purchased as to be highly prized and not be sacrificed again to ambition of designing demagogues.

If it be true that New Orleans is in the hands of the Union forces, then Beauregard is in close quarters and must either surrender or fight desperately before he can escape. Gradually the anaconda is contracting his coils and crushing the traitors. A few more weeks and the rebels will not be able to concentrate sufficient force at any one point to stand against the Federal troops. Scattered throughout the country in little guerilla bands, the more desperate ones will annoy the Unionists until the strong arm of the Government suppresses them. This with the aid of the Provisional Governors, will soon be accomplished.

New Orleans taken, and the doom of Memphis is sealed. Beauregard’s army will be scattered, and that arch traitor be either a prisoner or fled, before troops can reach Memphis from New Orleans. With every flash along the telegraphic wires we expect to read that the conflict has already commenced at Corinth. It will be one of the most desperate struggles ever fought on our continent, and decisive in the west, of the rebellion that for one year has arrayed one part of our inhabitants against the other in deadly strife. If Beauregard has retreated on Memphis, then that fated city will be the battle ground, and it be added as another to the once beautiful, but now desolate spots, that attest to the horrors of civil war.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 29, 1862, p. 2

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