No news from any of the armies this morning. But Gen.
Whiting writes that he is deficient in ordnance to protect our steamers and to
defend the port. If Wilmington should fall by the neglect of the government, it
will be another stunning blow.
However, our armies are augmenting, from conscription, and
if we had honest officers to conduct this important business, some four or five
hundred thousand men could be kept in the field, and subjugation would be an
impossibility. But exemptions and details afford a tempting opportunity to make
money, as substitutes are selling for $6000 each; and the rage for speculation
is universal.
The President is looked for to-morrow, and it is to be hoped
that he has learned something of importance during his tour. He will at once
set about his message, which will no doubt be an interesting one this year.
How we sigh for peace, on this beautiful Sabbath day! But
the suffering we have endured for nearly three years is no more than was
experienced by our forefathers of the Revolution. We must bear it to the end,
for it is the price of liberty. Yet we sigh for peace — God knows I do — while
at the same time we will endure the ordeal for years to come, rather than
succumb to the rule of an oppressor. We must be free, be the cost what it may.
Oh, if the spirit of fanaticism had been kept down by the good sense of the
people of the United States, the Union would have been preserved, and we should
have taken the highest position among the great powers of the earth. It is too
late now. Neither government may, for a long series of years, aspire to lead
the civilized nations of the earth. Ambition, hatred, caprice and folly have
combined to snap the silken cord, and break the golden bowl. These are the
consequences of a persistency in sectional strife and domination, foreseen and
foretold by me in the “Southern
Monitor,” published in Philadelphia; no one regarded the
warning. Now hundreds of thousands are weeping in sackcloth and ashes over the
untimely end of hundreds of thousands slain in battle! And thousands yet must
fall, before the strife be ended.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p.
85-6
No comments:
Post a Comment