We have been beaten in an engagement near Jackson, Miss.,
4000 retiring before 10,000. This is a dark cloud over the hopes of patriots,
for Vicksburg is seriously endangered. Its fall would be the worst blow we have
yet received.
Papers from New York and Philadelphia assert most
positively, and with circumstantiality, that Hooker recrossed the Rappahannock
since the battle, and is driving Lee toward Richmond, with which his
communications have been interrupted. But this is not all: they say Gen. Keyes
marched a column up the Peninsula, and took Richmond itself, over the Capitol of
which the Union flag “is now flying.” These groundless statements will go out
to Europe, and may possibly delay our recognition. If so, what may be the
consequences when the falsehood is exposed? I doubt the policy of any species of
dishonesty.
Gov. Shorter, of Alabama, demands the officers of Forrest's
captives for State trial, as they incited the slaves to insurrection.
Mr. S. D. Allen writes from Alexandria, La., that the people
despair of defending the Mississippi Valley with such men as Pemberton and
other hybrid Yankees in command. He denounces the action also of quartermasters
and commissaries in the Southwest.
A letter from Hon. W. Porcher Miles to the Secretary of War
gives an extract from a communication written him by Gen. Beauregard, to the
effect that Charleston must at last fall into the hands of the enemy, if an
order which has been sent there, for nearly all his troops to proceed to
Vicksburg, be not revoked. There are to be left for the defense of Charleston
only 1500 exclusive of the garrisons!
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 324
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