The recent news from Tennessee and North Carolina, although it has a tendency to allay public impatience, makes the people still more anxious to hear from other points where much is expected from the Government forces. Fort Donelson is now the point of attraction – the immense force taken against it, and the news we have received at the time of writing this, that the enemy had several times been driven from their entrenchments, fill us with the hope that we may anticipate another brilliant victory. Now that success has crowned our arms so signally in recent battles, we begin to look hopefully for an advance from headquarters. While willing to abide the full development of the masterly plans of Gen. McClellan, yet we hope the next move in the programme may look to a conquest that will shake all rebeldom to its rotten centre. A move on Richmond, or Memphis, or New Orleans, or even Norfolk, and the subjection of those strongholds of the rebels, will tell not alone upon them, but upon those European powers that are watching so intently the progress of this war. When our Generals-in-Chief, McClellan, Halleck, and Buell, begin to advance, then the rebels may quake, as their fate is approaching a crisis.
On one who estimates aright the relative resources of the contending parties, but must acknowledge the supremacy of the Federal Government in everything that confers power upon a people, and admit the utter futility of the insurgents to struggle long against their fate. Hope in their own ability to wage a war successfully against the government, has no doubt fled the breasts of the leaders in this rebellion; but still they trust that by procrastinating something may turn up on their favor. They look now to the meeting of the English Parliament in the hope that its first action will refer to the blockade of the Southern ports. The way to defeat their hope and to prevent embroiling our Government in war with England, is to push our armies upon the rebels at every available point and crush them before their sympathizers across the ocean have had time to mature their policy. Conquer Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans and raise the blockades ourselves, then England cannot complain on that score, and if her true object be the restoration of her commerce with the South and she have a particle of real hatred to the institution of slavery, she will seek no further pretext to involve herself in an internecine war.
The distance that divides the two armies on the Potomac is less than a day’s march. The passage may be difficult, but it is not impossible. A successful blow struck there would be at the heart of the rebellion. It would send a thrill of joy throughout the nation, and England would hesitate to aid the rebels. An advance of Gen. Halleck’s forces down the Mississippi would be the precursor of a victory no less influential in its effects. We look anxiously, in common with co-patriots of the North, to see one or both of these moves soon undertaken, and knowing that Gen. McClellan will not make an advance unless he is sure of victory, we would regard such a demonstration as but the harbinger of an early suppression of the rebellion, and the restoration of peace and prosperity to our country.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, February 17, 1862, p. 2
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