Dispatches from
Charleston, yesterday, brought the melancholy intelligence that Fort Sumter is
but little more than a pile of rubbish. The fall of this fort caused my wife a
hearty cry — and she cried when Beauregard reduced it in 1861: not because he
did it, but because it was the initiation of a terrible war. She hoped that the
separation would be permitted to pass without bloodshed.
To-day we have a
dispatch from Beauregard, stating the extraordinary fact that the enemy's batteries,
since the demolition of Sumter, have thrown shell, from their Parrott guns,
into the city — a distance of five and a half miles! This decides
the fate of Charleston; for they are making regular approaches to batteries
Wagner and Gregg, which, of course, will fall. The other batteries Beauregard
provided to render the upper end of the island untenable, cannot withstand, I
fear, the enginery of the enemy.
If the government
had sent the long-range guns of large caliber when so urgently called for by Beauregard,
and if it had not sent away the best troops against the remonstrances of
Beauregard, the people are saying, no lodgment could have been made on Morris
Island by the enemy, and Sumter and Charleston would have been saved for at
least another year.
At all events, it
is quite probable, now, that all the forts and cities on the seaboard (Mobile,
Savannah, Wilmington, Richmond) must succumb to the mighty engines of the
enemy; and our gunboats, built and in process of completion, will be lost.
Richmond, it is apprehended, must fall when the enemy again approaches within
four or five miles of it; and Wilmington can be taken from the rear, as well as
by water, for no forts can withstand the Parrott guns.
Then there will be
an end of blockade-running; and we must flee to the mountains, and such
interior fastnesses as will be impracticable for the use of these long-range
guns. Man must confront man in the deadly conflict, and the war can be
protracted until the government of the North passes out of the hands of the
Abolitionists. We shall suffer immensely; but in the end we shall be free.
SOURCE: John
Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate
States Capital, Volume 2, p. 22-3
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