The sad tidings from Vicksburg have been confirmed by
subsequent accounts. The number of men fit for duty on the day of capitulation
was only a little upwards of 7000. Flour was selling at $400 per barrel! This
betrays the extremity to which they had been reduced.
A dispatch to-day states that Grant, with 100,000 men
(supposed), is marching on Jackson, to give Johnston battle. But Johnston will
retire — he has not men enough to withstand him, until he leads him farther
into the interior. If beaten, Mobile might fall.
We have no particulars yet — no comments of the Southern
generals under Pemberton. But the fall of the place has cast a gloom over
everything.
The fall of Vicksburg, alone, does not make this the darkest
day of the war, as it is undoubtedly. The news from Lee's army is appalling.
After the battle of Friday, the accounts from Martinsburg now state, he fell
back toward Hagerstown, followed by the enemy, fighting but little on the way. Instead
of 40,000 we have only 4000 prisoners. How many we have lost, we know not. The
Potomac is, perhaps, too high for him to pass it — and there are probably
15,000 of the enemy immediately in his rear! Such are the gloomy accounts from
Martinsburg.
Our telegraph operators are great liars, or else they have
been made the dupes of spies and traitors. That the cause has suffered much,
and may be ruined by the toleration of disloyal persons within our lines, who
have kept the enemy informed of all our movements, there can be no doubt.
The following is Gen. Johnston's dispatch announcing the
fall of Vicksburg:
“JACKSON, July 7th,
1863.
“HON. J. A. SEDDON, SECRETARY OF WAR.
“Vicksburg capitulated on the 4th inst. The garrison was
paroled, and are to be returned to our lines, the officers retaining their
side-arms and personal baggage.
“This intelligence was brought by an officer who left the
place on Sunday, the 5th.
“J. E. JOHNSTON, General.”
We get nothing from Lee himself. Gen. Cooper, the Secretary of
War, and Gen. Hill went to the President's office about one o'clock. They
seemed in haste, and excited. The President, too, is sick, and ought not to
attend to business. It will kill him, perhaps.
There is serious anxiety now for the fate of Richmond. Will
Meade be here in a few weeks? Perhaps so — but, then, Lee may not have quite
completed his raid beyond the Potomac.
The Baltimore American, no doubt in some trepidation
for the quiescence of that city, gets up a most glowing account of "Meade's
victory" — if it should, indeed, in the sequel, prove to have been one.
That Lee fell back, is true; but how many men were lost on each side in killed,
wounded, and prisoners — how many guns were taken, and what may be the result of
the operations in Pennsylvania and Maryland — of which we have as yet such
imperfect accounts — will soon be known.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 374-5
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