The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-03-07 00:00:00

, quotations
Pas Sib. A f.
81b.

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DORSET COUNTY EXPRESS

DORCHESTER, TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1865.

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

I view
' No-

Her Majesty held a Court at Buckingham
Palace on Tuesday, the 28th ult., to receive the
Foreign Ambaaaadora and their respective staffs.
She appeared to be in good health. It is under-
stood that Her Majesty will hold another Court
on the 13th inst., which will be limited to the
Engliah nobility and a few of the Queen's moat
intimate friends; and it is not improbable that
other semi-public appearances will be made by
the Queen during the season. Prince Arthur
has left England for aix months,for a tour in the
Holy Land.
On Thursday last the Bank of England
directors reduced the rate of discount from 5
to 4.}. per cent. The concession, being expected,
had a very trifling effect on the Stock Exchange.
It is not improbable that another reduction will
be made next week.

Lord Lyons, owing to ill health, returns home
from the poet he has with so much discretion
filled at Washington as the diplomatic represen-
tative of the British Government. he has
often shown a degree of subserviency to Yankee
arrogance, which at the time has awakened a
keen sense of hamiliation ; but he has had very
trying duties to discharge, and we are willing to
admit that he has discharged them in a spirit of
fidelity and patriotic moderation. It is under-
stood that Sir Frederick Bruce is to be his
successor. Sir Frederick was bold and inde-
pendent enough at Pekin; at Washington we
hope he will be a little more prudent, but not a
whit leas independent.
Gregorio Mogul has been tried and found
guilty of the manslaughter of the man Harring-
ton, on Saffron-hill, whom Pollioni was tried
for and condemned for having murdered. Could
Harrington by any possibility have been
slaughtered by one man and murdered by
another? It would almost appear as though
capital punishment was being brought into
public contempt by the logic of events. Pollioni,
now under sentence of death at Newgate, it will
surely now be hardly possible to hang; but if
these repeated exhibitions of the infirmity and
impropriety of the law of the gallows is to be
continued, the sooner the law is abolished
altogether, the better.
General Lee has issued an address to his army,
the spirit of which is eminently adapted to
awaken its enthusiasm and to prompt it to noble
deeds. Ile concludes in the following heart-
stirring terms ;—" Taking new iesolution from
the fate which our enemies intend for us,let every
man devote all his energies to the common
defence. Our resources, wisely and vigorously
employed, are ample; and with a brave army,
sustained by a united and determined people,
success, with God's assistance, cannot be doubt-
ful. The advantages of the enemy will have
but little value if we do not permit them to
impair our resolution. Let us, then, oppose
constancy to adversity,fortitude to suffering,and
courage to danger, with the firm assurance that
He who gave freedom to our fathers will bless the
efforts of their children to preserve it" These
sentences are framed in the highest style of heroic
eloquence, and would have one to regard the
American question, taking Richmond as a stand.
point of view,aa warlike as ever; while contemp-
lated from Washington, the indications of an
approaching peace rather increase than other-
wise. Operations, it is true, in the field do not
slacken. Nay, the North is even in the full
enjoyment of victory, having entered at last
"the cradle of the rebellion." By the Austra-
lasian arrived on Friday evening, we learn that
Charleston has fallen into the hands of the
Federate. By the previous mail we learnt that
Branchville, which is situated on the railroad
between Augusta and Charleston, and about
fifty miles north-west of the latter city, had
been evacuated by General Beauregard, who
then proceeded northward to Columbia, a dis-
tance of 68 miles. Here it was stated he would
make a determined stand, but on the 17th of
February Sherman arrived before the place,
shelled the town from the south bank of the
river Congaree, and entered it next morning, the
Confederate troops having moved oat under the
cover of night. Meanwhile a force under
Foster had been detached at Branchville to pro-
ceed against Charleston. Pressed on all sides,
and threatened with complete investment, the
city was evacuated the same night which wit-
noised the withdrawal of the Southern troops
from Columbia, and on the morning of the 18th
the Federate entered, without opposition, the
city where the first gun that heralded the civil
war was fired, and which, for nearly four years
has successfully resisted the most gigantic effort;
of the Federal navy. Two hundred and ten
guns were captured, but the cotton ware-
homes, arsenals, quarter-master's stores,
iron-clads, and railroad bridges had all been
set on fire by the Southerners before their
departure, leaving the place a blackened
roam of ruins. The Confederate garrison,
13,000 in number, marched northward to effect
a junction with General Beauregard, who was
expected to be strong enough with his reinforce-
ments, to offer battle to Sherman. The
intelligence of the fall of Charleston had been
received with exuberant demonstrations of
delight in the Northern States. It is thought
General Lee would be compelled to evacuate
Richmond within thirty days, as Grant was
closely hugging him, and virtually imprisoning
the best army of the Confederacy in the capital
of Seceseis. Should the evacuation take place,
Lee, it is said, would march towards, and con-
centrate all his forms at Lynchburg. The
Southern Congress was still discussing proposals
for a conscription of negro°s for the army, but
it appears that the Southern women, from the
eldest to the youngest, are opposed to the enrol-
ment of the black ; and as the ladies of the
Confederacy have been among the chief animat-
ing influences of the war, it is probable
that their wish will be omnipotent.
The fiercely indignant utterances which have
burst from the mass meetings held at Richmond,
would seem to indicate that tho Southern
people intend to fight it out to the last. Con-
cerning one of these meetings, one letter-writer
says :—" One resolution animated the mighty
assemblage, and that was, to fight to the last
- to sacrifice comfort, property, and
but honour. There is not to-day
whole vast empire of the Con-
one croaker who dare show his
-act or open his month; and but a fortnight
since the whole land WU full of them. The
reconstructioniats are all swept sway." The
Daily News correspondent, who takes a Northern '

- 4.6-4

of the situation, seems confident of the
...lorth in the present campaign. "Wilmington,"
he writes, " will doubtless not be held long after
Charleston has fallen; the whole coast will be
given up, and the Confederate armies will con-
centrate at some point in the interior for one
last and desperate effort. Ido not believe the
end will come without some terrible fighting.
Such an army as Lee's, annealed by four
years of not inglorious efforts of endurance,
will not fall to pieces very easily, and it
is not, therefore, impossible that the North may
fiad its final campaign the costliest of any."
But to find men for this "closing effort," it is
thought that the North must have recourse to
an extensive draft. The 'New York correspon-
dent of the Times sys that the "North is
hardly less straightened than the South for men,
having tried volunteering and pumped the well
! dry, while high bounties have also failed; as fellows
receive them, enlist and desert—receive them
again,and again desert." The Southern view of
the situation is far more hopeful for the Con-
federacy. The inde.r says :
It would require double the time this war has already
la,ted, and double the measure of calamities it has
already entailed, to reduce the Confederacy to such a
condition that it must take counsel of despair. If the
whole sea-board are abandoned, including Richmond,
and the war transferred into the interior of its immense
territory, the situation would still be no worse than
what some of the wisest men of the South, not only
fearlessly but hopefully contemplated as the probable
result of the first six months of hostilities. The cities
of the coast are useless except for foreign commerce,
and four years ef unremitting industry have enabled
the South to develop a self-supplying power which
renders it practically independent of foreign commerce.
Hitherto the war has been fought on the frontiers,
simultaneously at several points of • circumference of
many thousand miles, and therefore from • strategetioal
point of view under serious disadvantages. But no Con-
federate army had yet been destroyed, no decisive defeat
sustained in a pitched battle; and with the concentration
of all its strength, the Confederacy enters upon a new
phase of the contest, full of evil portents to the pre-
sumptuous invader. In the first American war of
independent* every important town had been lost, and
the ooldnial Congress was • migratory body, before the
tide commenced to turn steadily in favour of the
colonist's, and revolutionary France began her career
of military triumphs, when all her ports were blockaded,
a great portion of her territory in the hands of the
enemy or a prey to civil ear, and nearly all Europe in
armed coalition against her. In the armed litigation of
nations, strategy and the fortune of war may decide the
point of pride or of power which is at issue ; but a
whole people in arms to defend its all, has its destinies,
God willing, in its own hands, and the Confederate
people show no signs of faltering or of hesitation."