The following significant article from the Richmond Examiner
of the 16th inst., shows that the rebels are uncomfortably oppressed by the view
of their present situation:
* * * “While the political leaders of the South have been
reposing in dreams of approaching peace and while our accomplished captains of
engineers have been expending their remarkable scientific ingenuity in the erection of works as wonderful,
and almost as extensive and quite as valuable as the Chinese wall to resist
invading forces from a given direction, the enemy have gradually and at leisure
gathered up their immense resources and concentrated their tremendous energies
to envelope the Confederacy with their armies and fleets and to penetrate the
interior from some one of many alternate points. Although they can now do nothing, they have their
general programme in perfect order for execution when the weather changes in
the ordinary course of the earth around the sun and it this moment we find
ourselves in the face of superior forces wherever we look whether to the North,
the East, or the West, or the South itself.
General Sydney [sic] Johnston has to strain every nerve to prevent the
military as well as the geographical heart of the country from slipping out of
his grasp. Generals Joseph Johnson [sic]
and Beauregard are held by McClellan on the Potomac as in a vice. A gigantic armament is ready to attempt the
descent of the Mississippi, and their fleet on the Atlantic seacoast and the
Gulf are too freshly before the attention to require remembrance. Such are the fruits of a policy purely
defensive. Without even the hesitancy
which would come of a possible interruption, the enemy have thus surrounded the
Southern Confederacy, and if permitted to repeat as often as may be desired
their efforts to penetrate its heart, they will necessarily attain the place
and the time where success awaits them.
“There is now but
one chance of success from the net that has been coolly drawn around us. – it is
to concentrate our energy on one point, and cut it through, to convert our
defensive into an offensive war, and transfer the scene of at least part of
these hostilities to the enemy’s own country.
Situated as we are it is only possible at one point – and that is
Kentucky. If the forces that we are
dispersing to the four corners of the continent every day to meet the new
menaces were collected under the hand of General Sydney Johnson [sic] till a
column was formed sufficient to enable him to manoeuvre with some possibility
of success over the plains of that region he might hurl back the army in front
of him, at present, and penetrate the State of Ohio. The attainment of the object would render
worthless all the plans of the enemy.
The circle of armies would be in the condition of the constrictor whose
back has been broken, the scene of war would be transferred to his own
territory, and everyone who has witnessed the ravages of armies in any of the
invaded districts of Virginia knows what a precious blessing is designated in
that brief phrase. He would be attacked
beyond his defences. The alarm and
confusion of the United States would paralyze its Government and its Generals,
and the entire arrangement by which we suffer now and dread great disasters in
future would be immediately reversed.
“At present Gen.
Johnson confronts superior forces of the enemy under Buell, one of the most
cautious painstaking and able Generals on the other side. General Buell has now; immediately in front
of Johnson, an army of seventy six thousand men (Yes, 110, men – Eps) and can
bring to bear on us, and other given points, thirty thousand more. What the Confederate commander has may not be
stated, but it is probably enough to hold his present strong position against
any numbers that might attack him there or pass him on either side, get to his
rear and cut off his supplies. This he
can do by leaving a sufficient army in front of Gen. Johnson while he can still
send upon the right or left flank a force as large as he leaves behind. That this is the plan of Buell is now no
longer doubtful. He has placed a force
of 8,000 men at Glasgow, thirty miles to the eastward of Bowling Green
threatening the rear of Gen. Johnson while it is within easy supporting
distance of two other posts held in strong force by the enemy. If the plan of Buell is successful it may
result in a great disaster. To defeat
him it is absolutely necessary that more men should at once be sent to Bowling
Green. Gen. Johnson must have a force
sufficient to attack Buell in front with a good chance of success and by so
doing will not only defeat his scheme on the centre of the Confederacy, but
immediately transfer the war to the State of Ohio, and thus save the whole
South from the great danger of being overrun in the first fine weather of the
coming spring.
“We are satisfied
that, beyond the flattering possibilities of a foreign intervention, the only
rational hope we can entertain of a speedy termination of this war, is to be
found in an offensive campaign across the Ohio, from the point that Gen.
Johnson now defends. The best line of
advance imaginable to strike at the vitals of the North which are the Lake
States, is that through Kentucky. The
country is a plain, the people are not actively hostile, supplies without stint
and the great resources of the North are beyond. The enemy understand this and are making
tremendous efforts to secure Kentucky to them without the possibility of escape. This season of inaction, from the inclemency
of the skies, is a precious boon of Providence to us, we can now determine on a
plan, and prepare for its execution in a short time, that will render naught
and abortive all the costly and complicated devices of the adversary.”
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 4
