| From the Houston Telegraph |
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| January 13, 1865 |
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| From the Mobile Evening News, Dec. 30 |
| The Augusta Constitutionalist
says: An officer who came from West Point informs us that with a
sufficient amount of labor employed, and energy displayed by the
authorities of the road, trains would be running over the Oconee
bridge {on the Georgia RR} in less than
ten days. Three thousand hands are employed on the other end of the
road towards Atlanta, while there are only forty employed on this end.
The Georgia road is of vital importance to the government and people
this juncture, and the work of repairing should be pushed as rapidly
as possible to completion. With the necessary amount of labor, we
understand that our railroad communication to Montgomery via Atlanta
could be resumed by the 1st of March. In view of the situation now
held by Sherman on the coast, and of the probability that he may be
able to destroy our present line of railroad communication between
Richmond and the southwest, which, it must be admitted, runs
dangerously near the seaboard. |
| The South Carolina journals
are urging attention to what may yet become an important link and be
made to supply the place of the line, should the latter be tapped by
the enemy. The South Carolinian says, the Augusta, Hamburg &
Columbia railroad is incomplete, time and events may make it the most
important line of interior communication that we shall have with the
South. Without it the granaries of Georgia may be as useless to us as
the gold dust of Africa. |
| Richmond owes its safety to
forty miles of Railroad that connects Danville, Va., and Greensboro',
North Carolina {the Piedmont RR}. That
safety may yet depend on the Railroad from Columbia to Hamburg. As we
are advised, the last named has progressed far to completion already,
and only assistance from the Government in procuring a portion of iron
and additional labor which the company, under existing circumstances
is unable to control, is needed to finish it in a very short time. If
possible, it should be placed in running order without delay. |
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