Lee and Meade have been facing each other two or three days, drawn up in battle array, and a decisive battle may have occurred ere this. The wires have been cut between Martinsburg and Hagerstown.
Not another word have we from either Charleston or Jackson; but we learn that monitors, gun-boats, and transports are coming up the James River.
Altogether, this is another dark day in our history. It has been officially ascertained that Pemberton surrendered, with Vicksburg, 22,000 men! He has lost, during the year, not less than 40,000! And Lovell (another Northern general) lost Fort Jackson and New Orleans. When will the government put “none but Southerners on guard?”
Letters to-day from the Governors of South Carolina, Alabama, and North Carolina show that all are offended at the Confederate government. Judge Campbell’s judicial profundity (and he is the department’s correspondent) is unfortunate at this crisis, when, not great principles, but quick and successful fighting, alone can serve.
It appears that President Lincoln has made a speech in Washington in exultation over the fall of Vicksburg, and the defeat of an army contending against the principle that all men were created equal. He means the negro—we mean that white men were created equal—that we are equal to Northern white people, and have a right, which we do not deny to them, of living under a government of our own choice.
July 14th.—To-day we have tidings of the fall of Port Hudson, on the Mississippi River, our last stronghold there. I suppose some 10,000 or 12,000 of our men had to surrender, unconditionally. Thus the army of Gen. Pemberton, first and last, some 50,000 strong, has been completely destroyed. There is sadness and gloom throughout the land!
The enemy are established on Morris Island, and the fate of Charleston is in doubt.
We have nothing authentic from Gen. Lee; but long trains of the slightly wounded arrived yesterday and to-day.
It has been raining, almost every day, for nearly two weeks.
The President is quite amiable now. The newspaper editors can find easy access, and he welcomes them with smiles.