by John Beauchamp Jones
JANUARY 27TH.—It is too true that several thousand of our men were captured at Arkansas Post, and that Little Rock is now in danger.
There seems to be no probability, after all, of an immediate advance of the enemy across the Rappahannock.
But there are eight iron-clad gun-boats and ninety sail at Beaufort, North Carolina, and, it is reported, 52,000 men. Wilmington will probably be assailed.
Mr. Foote said, yesterday, if Indiana and Illinois would recede from the war, he should be in favor of aiding them with an army against Lincoln. And all the indications from the North seem to exhibit a strong sentiment among the people favoring peace. But the people are not the government, and they link peace and reconstruction together.
Yesterday Mr. Crockett, of Kentucky, said, in the House of Representatives, that there was a party in favor of forming a Central Confederacy (of free and slave States) between the Northern and Southern extremes. Impracticable.
To-day we have news of the bombardment of Fort McAlister, near Savannah. No result known. Now we shall have tidings every few days of naval operations. Can Savannah, and Charleston, and Wilmington be successfully defended? They may, if they will emulate the example of Vicksburg. If they fall, it will stagger this government—before the peace party in the North can operate on the Government of the United States. But it would not “crush the rebellion.”
