Dispatches from
Montgomery indicate that President Davis is as firm a States right man as any
other, perfectly content to bear the burdens of government six years, and hence
I apprehend he will not budge in the business of guarding Virginia until after
the ratification of the secession ordinance. Thus a month's precious time will
be lost; and the scene of conflict, instead of being in Pennsylvania, near
Philadelphia, will be in Virginia. From the ardor of the volunteers already
beginning to pour into the city, I believe 25,000 men could be collected and
armed in a week, and in another they might sweep the whole Abolition concern
beyond the Susquehanna, and afterward easily keep them there. But this will not
be attempted, nor permitted, by the Convention, so recently composed mostly of Union
men.
To-night we have
rumors of a collision in Baltimore. A regiment of Northern troops has been
assailed by the mob. No good can come of mob assaults in a great revolution.
Wrote my wife to
make preparations with all expedition to escape into Virginia. Women and
children will not be molested for some weeks yet; but I see they have begun to
ransack their baggage. Mrs. Semple, daughter of President Tyler, I am informed,
had her plate taken from her in an attempt to get it away from New York.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 24-5
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