Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-01-28
THE DISTRESS AT THE SOUTH.

gentleman who has spent several years in Macon,
Georgia. where be engaged in business, and who
Gently escaped by of passport permitting him to
visit Europe reached Newark, New Jersey where his
rends reside, few days since His account of the con-
don OF affairs at the South confirms the reports lately
received from other refugees and the public Journals It
is thus related by the New York Evening Post:
" The rebellion he declares is an utter failures even
the leaders see that is out of the question while
the people would hail with delight the restoration
of the Federal authority On the day this gentleman e
Macon OF the principal bankers OF the place said to
him: Our only hope now is that the Federal army will
deliver us from our troubles for without that interven
on must perish The utmost destation every whore
prevails actual starvation is at the doors of hundreds of
the poorer classes and those who supposed them
selves from their possession Of large MEANS beyond the
reach of want have found themselves reduced compa
rative poverty.
The rebel authorities are enforcing the conscription
in all parts of the South with phess energy forcing into
the ranks of all ages and conditions. Even gray
haired old men, eneebled by age that months priva-
tons IN camp or field must put them their graves
snatched up by the officers of conscrpton and the pro-
position recently made in the rebel Congress by Senator
Brown to force into the service every person the Con-
ederacy over the Of sixteen years. 10 literally carried
out This Wholesale consctpt has necessarily occa
stoned the greatest suffering leaving entire families and
communities without any of defence subsistence
and producing CHAOS and misery every where
The greatest ignorance is said to exist among the peo
pie generally as 10 the condition Of affairs the North
they told that people subjected TO cruel dos
pom that there liberty of speech or action that
the Government TO destroy the entire population Of
the South and that the Southern people at this
ment to abandon their contest they would be punished BIZ
the severest penalties that magnty could invent But
even this, told, would prevent deserton of
the rebel cause by The great nass of people, oppor
tuuty afforded them they would gladly run all risks and
cheeruly submit to the worst that might await them if
they could only escape the rigors Of rebel rule
Our informant says that he himself expected that upon
landing from the steamer in this city he would be seized
and hurried to prison suspicious character and he
adds that when coming ashore he permitted tog0
about his business without any moletation without
notice even from any quarter he much astonshed
he well could be.
:" The gentleman who furnishes these statements 10
known to us as entirely Trustworthy and sincere and he
speaks wholly Of what he has seen and known. Three
years ego he wrote letters persons at the North with
whom be had dealings 10 the strongest terms
that the South could not be subdued; that the North
would not fight, and that il it did, could not bold out in
the contest be deares the only hope of the South
in the advance Of the Northern armies and the prostraton
of the Infamous desposm which s eating out the vitas of
Southern life and making the airest fields desoate and
ghastlyn