Vicksburg — the enemy repulsed.
We publish the gratifying news this morning of the repulse of the enemy at
Vicksburg with heavy loss.
The "situation" is of course still deeply interesting.
What will the enemy attempt next in his position on the Big Black?
What are his abilities after his campaigning and repulse there?
What are our forces about?
and if he is compelled again to withdraw, will he be allowed to effect his long retreat with success?
All these questions arise, and no one here can answer except with conjecture.
We trust to our men and their commanders.
The valor which so often repulsed him may, guided by such a man as
Johnston, achieve something more than a repulse of the enemy, now that he is so far inland from his base of operations.
Let us hope that this event is fully as severe to the enemy as represented, and that our brilliant defence of a Gibraltar so often fruitlessly assailed may be turned now into a crushing disaster to the merciless invader.
To him
Vicksburg is a most trouble some place — a nuisance of the first magnitude.
Every failure to reduce it but increases his rage and his malignity.
He returns from each defeat with greater appliances in gunboats and machinery (at which he is especially great, and upon which he is especially reliant,) and increased numbers.
He hurls all his accumulated force with accumulated bitterness and desperation upon the devoted city.
But each assault is met with the true valor and constancy of Southern soldiers, and repulsed with terrible effect to the assailant.
How long he will continue to renew his attacks upon such a place, so gloriously defended, remains to be seen.
Yankee malignity certainly never dies, and if his final abandonment of his purpose upon
Vicksburg depended upon the subsidence of this passion (not his worst by any means) he would be forever before the walls of
Vicksburg.
But there is another motive which has something to do with his acts which may even govern his malignity that is his detestation of all unprofitable enterprises.
If he finds that attacking
Vicksburg pays not, neither directly nor indirectly, he may in time give it up with a malediction.
But should he ever get the opportunity to vent his wrath upon that place of immortal fame, he will not leave one stone upon another to tell where it stood.
