"Some infernal scoundrel, who is writing abusive letters about us to The New York Tribune."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes, sir, and he has been at it for more than a month."
"Can't you find him out?"
"Some think it is a Kentuckian, who pretends to be engaged in cattle-trading, but only makes that a subterfuge. I suspect, however, that it is an editor of The Picayune, which is a Yankee concern through and through. If he is caught, I don't think he will write many more letters."
I ventured a few words in palliation of the Governor and the Senator, but quite agreed that this audacious scribbler ought to be suppressed.
Attack on Sumter—Rebel Boasting.
April 12.
Telegraphic intelligence to-day of the attack upon Fort Sumter causes intense excitement. The Delta office is besieged by a crowd hungry for news. The universal expectation of the easy capture of the fort is not stronger than the belief that it will be followed by an immediate and successful movement against the city of Washington. The politicians and newspapers have persuaded the masses that the Yankees (a phrase which they no longer apply distinctively to New Englanders, but to every person born in the North) mean to subjugate them, but are arrant cowards, who may easily be frightened away. Leading men seldom express this opinion; yet The Crescent, giving the report that eight thousand Massachusetts troops have been called into the field, adds, that if they would come down to Pensacola, eighteen hundred Confederates would easily "whip them out."