NP, MAP 3/31/1864

From the Memphis Appeal
 
March 31, 1864
 
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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