Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1864-07-29

ments which the grand spade-and-pick
army never exists an hour without.
In our judgment the plan of the cam
paign is at last developed. Western
Virginia, the Valley and its resources, is,
by the movement on Staunton and Lex
ington, to be rendered unavailable for
provisions. Grant is to throw his army
into Notifications across the railroads
from Richmond south, and So cut of
our army supplies. Thus the starvation
of a siege will be as effectually secured
as if an army could be found large
enough to surround the legions of Lee,
as Grant did Gen. Pemberton provided,
of course, that the Danville road shares
the fate that the Weldon road probably
will. !,
If Gen. Lee chooses to stop the game
by fight he has to put his finger on the
Rankings, and having found him and
stopped him for fight, will have to
charge the hills Grant will occupy and
the trenches Grant will dig. If Presi-
dent Davis concludes to swap capitals,
and giving Grant Richmond, starts off
ahead of him for Washington, we will
have the army to subsist in the desert
waste between the two capitals; have to
make time on foot that will beat the
transports on the Potomac and the Ches-
apeake; have the Notifications of Wash
ington to storm and a siege to stand
there should we get inside.
We lose Richmond if we hold the
Weldon and Danville railroads; we lose
the railroads if we save Richmond, or
we attack Grant in his nightly trenches
| if we try to save both. 1t is true that
Gen. Beauregard could still keep south
of Grant and prevent raids into Caroli-
ma, but could not keep him from stop
enough men to attack Grant in reverse,
and place him between two fires. We
hope Grant thinks he has. This is a
game with no possible hindrance, per-
fectly plain to even such unmilitary
cOmprehenSiOnS as our own, and we re-
spectfully submit that there is no fun in
it.
The writer is aware from personal OBJ
servatiOn, that there is personal popu-
larity and enthusiastic devotion to Grant
| among his soldiers, not equalled by any
thing ever seen in that army before
nor surpassed in the army of Lee-and
very much like the love of the Old
Guard for Napoleon. Therefore he can
| flank and fight for some days yet before
they get tired of it.
These are facts, and plain as they are,
| it is not in good sense to talk of the trap
headed Grant butting his brains out
against the ramparts of Richmond!
When the supplies of Sherman are cut
off, as we trust they will be, and the
great raider of Mississippi, broken in
battle or starved out, begins disastrous
| retreat over the country himself has
devastated; when Johnston has thun-
| dered on his flying rear and Forrest
stops his fight; when the fords of the
Tennessee are in peril, and Chattanooga
! again beeieged; when Western Tennes-
see looks up+in hope, and Johnson, the
traitor, trembles in the Notifications of
Nashville, then let us all flap our wings
and crow, and not till then.
When Grant changes base in the
Mcclellan style, and Malvern Hill is
again an altar of sacrifice, and our horses
drink at the Potomac and pasture in
Maryland, then let us laugh at ''Bull-
Headed Grant," and examine the en-
brasures around Richmond for the brains
he left about loose.
But when we get to enjoying so great
ly the joke of which the Yankees retain
the point, and grow happy on paper
over half State lost, and capital not
yet saved, let us look through the VIM
dows of the blockade and see with
European eyes-hOaO do aOc look? We
do not mean to form our hopes upon
what the paid journals of England and
France write for pecuniary recompense,
but to look at the scene as impartial
eyes must see it.
Secretary Stanton recommends to the
Nndn fhT 10, Ii;
permits the drafted man to pay three
hundred dollars and stay out of the
army, be repealed. That shows that
Lincoln is afraid he has not men enough
to take the Confederacy just now. 1t
also shows that he intends to try and get
| them. Ergo, failure now does not
stop the war;
| Let us, then, earnestly beseech our
people to faithfully and steadily work
hope for results, but let us not hope to
| initiate the enemy in vain and prema-
ture boasts.
Let us not make ourselves a laughing
stock of Europe, by winning victories
on paper not yet won on the field. Let
us not quicken the popular pulse at
home which dreams an prophecies of
| harms half so much as the blood that
leaps forth in the ecstacy Of triumph, eb-
| bing back in sick CONFUSION upon the
disappointed heart.
| Humility is as worthy virtue in
people as in person; and quiet faith,
as far removed from boastful arrogance
as from cowardly despair, is the spirit to
carry us through.
| Abasement precedes promotion, in the
Divine DEGREES; and it is not alone the
Mason who teaches, ''whoso humbleth
himself shall be exalted"
President Davis is never so near the
| standard of greatness, as when he frank
ly owns our evil state; and feeling that
there is much cause to doubt our own
strength, he tells Congress and the world
plicating SOvereignties of the nation to
join him upon set days in prayer.
The last time we saw him his words
were-"Let us do right and we will
whip them yet"
God sees that the heel of the invader
is upon our hearthstones, and his pollu-
| ton upon affairs and maiden virtue; but
| let us hope that to us are the words
| Though we have lien among the pots,
yet shall We be as the wings of dove
covered with silver, and her feathers
| with yellow gold"
More about the Rebel Peace Propositions.
, an Armistice and q Convention of the
States Proposed Franklin Pierce Pro-
posed ds the Candidate Of the Chicago
| Convention.
Especial to the Chicago Evening Journal.)
NEW YORK, July 21.-The CONNER
ciaps Niagara Falls correspondent says !:
"Saunders has left for Washington, with
a proposition to this effect: If Mr.. Lin
coin will publish proclamation of ar
mistice with call for convention of
all tho StataS tho SOuth will aUran to If