t paper. The journal
that is understood to speak for Mr. Davis recommends a forced loan, the
last resort of men the last days of whose power are near at hand.
Another cause of the scarcity of food in the South is to be found in the
condition of Southern communications. If all the food in the Confederacy
could be equally distributed, now and hereafter, we doubt not that every
person living there would get enough to eat, and even have something to
spare,--civilians as well as soldiers, blacks as well as whites; but no
such distribution is possible, because there are but indifferent means
for the conveyance of food from places where it is abundant to places
where famine's ascendency is becoming established. The Southern railways
have been terribly worked for three years, and are now worn out, with no
hope of their rails and rolling-stock being renewed. Our troops have
rendered hundreds of miles of those ways useless, and they have
possession of other lines. Southern harbors and rivers are held or
commanded by Northern ships or armies. The Mississippi, which was once
so useful to the Rebels, has, now that we control it, become a "big
ditch," separating their armies from their principal source of supply.
It is that "last ditch" in which they are to die. That wide extent of
Southern territory, which has so often been mentioned at home and abroad
as presenting the leading reason why we never could conquer the Rebels,
now works against them, and in our favor. Food may be abundant to
wastefulness in some States, while in others people may be dying for the
want of it. The Secessionists are now situated as most peoples used to
be, before good roads became common. The South is becoming reduced to
that state which was known to some parts of England before that country
had made for itself the best roads of Christendom, and when there would
be starvation in one parish, while perhaps in the next the fruits of the
earth were rotting on its surface, because there were no means of
getting them to market. With a currency so debased that no man will
willingly take it, while all men readily take Union greenbacks,--with
railways either worn out or held by foes,--with but one harbor this side
of the Mississippi that is not closely shut up, and that harbor in
course of becoming closed completely,--with their rivers furnishing
means for attack, instead of lines of defence,--with their territory and
numbers daily decreasing,--with defeat overtaking