| From the Augusta Constitutionalist |
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| December 7, 1864 |
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| Columbia & Augusta Rail Road |
| This valuable work ought to be
prosecuted with all the power and energy of the Confederacy, and its
rapid progress towards completion regarded by both civil and military
as of paramount and vital importance. It is possible that in a few
weeks Branchville may be in the hands of our enemy and we are cut off
from South and North Carolina, and Virginia, as effectually as from
the Trans-Mississippi States. This event is now more probable than the
fall of Augusta, and the conviction is forced on our mind, that it is
a most suicidal policy to take four hundred laborers from this
important rail road enterprise that may speedily become an
indispensable work, for the purpose of fortifying a city that can so
easily procure any amount of labor from the surrounding country. |
| The day may be close at hand
when all may see, that the State of Georgia and South Carolina and
particularly the cities of Augusta and Columbia ought long since to
have been pushing forward this interior and safe line of communication
with all their might, and we respectfully suggest to the military
authorities the propriety of dispensing at once with the laborers
belonging to the Columbia & Augusta Rail Road. Public exigency
points to the propriety of placing five thousand laborers on this
important avenue of communication which may be the means of saving our
country from the most serious disaster that has yet befallen us.
Excavators, stone masons, and wood workers ought now to be engaged in
full force on the whole line of work, and the iron to place the track
be placed in a safe locality ready to be used as soon as the road is
prepared for it. This is no time for delay, the work can be completed
as easily in six months as in five years, and it will be hastened
speedily to its completion, if the Government and people can be made
to see its urgent necessity. |
| One of the People |
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