| From the Memphis Appeal |
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| March 31, 1864 |
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| A Grave Matter -- The Piedmont Railroad |
| Our contemporary of the Macon Telegraph,
in that journal of yesterday, calls attention to a matter which, in
view of movements that the Federals will most probably endeavor to
make, and may succeed in making, is of the very gravest importance --
the early completion of the Piedmont railroad, the Greenville and
Danville connection. |
| We call upon the people and
the Government, says the Telegraph, to survey the field of war
and to mark what is coming before it is too late to avert the
catastrophe. The campaign from Chattanooga and the threatened advance on
Atlanta, is now fit only to amuse simpletons. With a line of three hundred and
thirty miles of railway from Louisville -- the way through a hostile
country -- over a single line or road with heavy grades, and in bad
order -- subject to constant interruptions, no general is going to risk the fate of
a large army on such precarious connections, while a safer move
remains upon the military chess board. |
| The enemy will doubtless
maintain a threatening attitude upon the Tennessee river, and
Sherman's army may remain in Tennessee about Nashville for some time,
as it momentarily threatening a descent upon Georgia, in order to hold
Johnston's whole force in their present position, but when Grant was
defeated in his attempt to penetrate the heart of the cotton States by
a lateral movement from Vicksburg, he gave up all idea of pushing down
into Georgia from the North in force with 100 miles communication to
maintain in his rear. The Dalton army will be practically nothing more
than an army of observation so long as it remains in its present
position, and yet it most probably remain there. |
| But what is coming? We answer
a grand combined attack upon Richmond and Virginia, which will be
prosecuted with all of Grant's energy and the immense conceptions of
numbers. First, North Carolina will be invaded, and nothing will be
spared to occupy the only remaining line of railway communication
between the army-feeding States and Virginia. Suppose it is done --
suppose the Wilmington & Weldon railway is cut, or the Weldon and
Petersburg. How is Lee's army to be fed, or how is it to be reinforced
either from Johnston or Beauregard? The enemy meanwhile advances from
the front, by the Rappahannock and the two banks of James river, upon
Richmond and Lee with three columns of seventy-five thousand men each
-- what then? No accumulation of supplies for the army -- none for the
city or Richmond -- what remains to Virginia and Richmond but
abandonment, and for Lee but retreat southward. "Peace upon the
principles of 1776," and State rights would be nowhere about
those then. |
| Now the Greensboro and
Danville connection, of which most unfortunately ten miles remain to
be completed, would give us an interior route of comparatively new
road, through a fruitful and loyal country, two hundred miles away
from danger on either hand, in almost a right line from Georgia to
Richmond; and these ten miles of incompleted road are suffered to
jeopardize the fate of the Old Dominion, and to defend it upon the
precarious choices of holding possession of a long and exposed line of
railway on the coast! Is this truly little short of madness? |
| And what does the reader
suppose is the mighty stakes upon which the great interests of the
Confederacy have been prised for so long? We answer a question of 19
cents a square yard in grading! More than two years ago the whole road
would have been taken by eminent Georgia contractors at 50 cents a yard,
which was the Georgia price, but the president refused to give more than
31 cents! They would have carried from 1500 to 2000 hands to the road,
although they refused to bind themselves to finish it in the six months,
which was what the president of the road then required. Refusing, them,
to dig North Carolina clay for thirteen cents less than they were
receiving to dig Georgia sand -- or to bind themselves to what they
might have found impossible the work has been carried on by the company
in such fashion as puts railroad men to the blush, and
thus at this critical and momentous period, we are well informed, if
left to themselves, the connection will not be made until November, if
then. |
| Now, why does the Confederate
Government or the Secretary of War rest a day in view of the coming
perils? That work can be completed in a month, if it will take hold of
the business. Call upon George H. Hazelhurst -- call upon the
well-known Georgia contractors, who have been building railroads all
their lives, and let the work be pushed through, day and night, and
completed before the enemy can fairly organize his grand campaign. |
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