The awful hour, when thousands of human lives are to be
sacrificed in the attempt to wrest this city from the Confederate States, has
come again. Now parents, wives, sisters, brothers, and little children, both in
the North and in the South, hold their breath in painful expectation. At the
last accounts the two armies, yesterday, were drawn up in battle array, facing
each other. No water flowed between them, the Northern army being on this side of
the Rappahannock. We have no means of knowing their relative numbers; but I
suspect Gen. Hooker commands more than 100,000 men, while Gen. Lee's army,
perhaps, does not exceed 55,000 efficients.
Accounts by passengers, and reports from the telegraph
operators at the northern end of the line, some ten or twelve miles this side of
the armies, indicate that the battle was joined early this morning. Certainly
heavy cannonading was heard. Yet nothing important transpired up to 3 P.M., when
I left the department, else I should have known it. Still, the battle may be
raging, without as yet, decisive result, and the general may not have leisure
to be dictating dispatches.
Yet the heavy artillery may be only the preliminary overture
to the desperate engagement; and it seems to me that several days might be
spent in manoeuvring into position before the shock of arms occurs, which will
lay so many heads low in the dust.
But a great battle seems inevitable. All the world knows the
fighting qualifications of Gen. Lee, and the brave army he commands; and Gen.
Hooker will, of course, make every effort to sustain his reputation as “fighting
Joe.” Besides, he commands, for the first time, an army: and knows well that
failure to fight, or failure to win, will consign him to the same disgrace of all
his predecessors who have hitherto commanded the “Army of the Potomac.”
It is certain that a column of Federal cavalry, yesterday,
cut the Central Railroad at Trevillian's depot, which prevents communication
with Gordonsville, if we should desire to send heavy stores thither. And some
suppose Lee is manoeuvring to get in the rear of Hooker, which would place the
enemy between him and Richmond! He could then cut off his supplies, now being
drawn by wagons some twenty or thirty miles, and spread alarm even to
Washington. But, then, how would it be with Richmond, if Hooker should accept
the position, and if the force at Suffolk should advance on the south side of the
river, and gun-boats and transports were to come, simultaneously, up the York
and James? Has Hooker the genius to conceive such a plan? Suppose it were so,
and that he has shipped his supplies from the Potomac — the supplies which Stuart expects to capture —
with the desperate resolution, abandoning his base on the Rappahannock, to
force a junction with the heavy detachments south and east of this city? A Napoleon
would get Richmond—but then Lee might get Washington! Longstreet's corps
is somewhere in transitu between Petersburg and Gordonsville, and would no
doubt be ordered here, and it might arrive in time. Our defenses are strong;
but at this moment we have only Gen. Wise's brigade, and a few battalions at
the batteries, to defend the capital — some 5000 in all.
This is mere speculation, to be succeeded speedily by awful
facts. The inhabitants here do not doubt the result, although there is a feverish
anxiety to get intelligence. There is no such thing as fear, in this community,
of personal danger, even among the women and children; but there is some alarm
by the opulent inhabitants, some of whom, for the sake of their property, would
submit to the invader. One thing is pretty certain, Richmond will not fall by
assault without costing the lives of 50,000 men, which is about equal to its
population in ordinary times.
Well, I am planting potatoes in my little garden, and hope
to reap the benefit of them. I pay 50 cts. per quart for seed potatoes, and
should be chagrined to find my expenditure of money and labor had been for the
benefit of the invader! Yet it may be so; and if it should be, still there are
other little gardens to cultivate where we might fly to. We have too broad and
too long a territory in the revolted States to be overrun and possessed by the
troops of the United States.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 304-6
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