NP, TD 3/5/1862

From the New Orleans True Delta
 
March 5, 1862
 
New Orleans & Texas Railroad
   B. J. Sage, Esq., will visit the Western parishes, from Lafourche to Rapides, pressing the claims of the above road, to be built from New Iberia to the Sabine, 117 miles, thus completing the connection between this city and Houston, upon the attention of the planting community as a means of employing their surplus labor profitably in grading, furnishing cross-ties, etc., their pay being in stock. As a work of great commercial importance, connecting two great centers of commerce by a direct road, and finally, as a great arm indispensable to military necessity, it being the only means of transporting soldiers and munitions and subsistence along our coast, to say nothing of the number of beeves and the vast quantities of breadstuffs, salt, etc., alike necessary for soldiery and people. The water on the coast and the inlets of the country are shallow, and the coast is skirted with an impassable sea-marsh twenty to thirty miles in width, making the road safe from hostile interruption.
   This road should be built at once, and the planters cannot do better than to put their surplus labor into it in the shape of stock, than which there can be no better in the Southern Confederacy. Fair prices will be allowed and the planters placed as equal partners in the concern, which is controlled by as highly respectable a board of directors as the city can produce.

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