| From the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph |
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| March 31, 1864 |
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| The Piedmont Railroad |
| The Great Question of the Day |
| While the newspapers are
vexing their righteous souls about questions of States Rights and the habeas
corpus, and striving to intimidate a government which is only too
slow and timid to take responsibility, where it ought to be taken, we
feel it our duty to sound the alarm and to proclaim our conviction
that the real vital question of the day -- the question of questions
-- the point upon which not only States Rights, but every other kind
of Southern Rights hangs, is the completion of the Piedmont Railroad
-- the Greensboro' and Danville connection. |
| We call upon the people and
the Government 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 a humbug fit
only to amuse simpletons. With a line of 330 miles of railway from
Louisville -- all the way through a hostile country -- over a single
line of road with heavy grades, and in bad order -- liable to constant
interruptions, no General is going to risk the fate of a large army on
such precarious connections, while a sager 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 if 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 400 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 must 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 his 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 &
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 of 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 times. |
| 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, 200 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 jeopardise the
fate of the Old {appears to be a line missing
here} chances of holding possession of a long and exposed line
of railway on the coast! Is this temerity little short of madness? |
| And what does the reader
suppose is the mighty stake upon which the great interests of the
Confederacy have been poised 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, then, to dig North Carolina Clay for thirteen
cents less they 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 mechanism
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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