Fall of New Orleans.
The fearful state of suspense in which this city existed for two or three days, has at last ended.
New Orleans is in the possession of the enemy.
It was evacuated by
Gen. Lovell, who has removed his forces to Camp Moore, on the Jackson railroad.
This is a heavy blow; it is useless to deny it. But we were anticipating it, and the public mind had already become prepared for it, before the truth had been fully ascertained.
It is a heavy blow, but it is very far from being a fatal blow.
We may expect to hear of disasters wherever the enemy's gunboats can be brought to bear, on all the points still in our possession.
Give him all of them — every one--and still he is as far from his object as he was this time last year.
Hatteras fell,
Hilton Head fall,
Roanoke Island fell,
Donelson fell, New Orleans has fallen.
But our great armies are still in the field.
They have not fallen — they have not been worsted — they have always beaten the enemy, wherever they have encountered him. When they shall have been beaten and dispersed, so that they can never rally again, then it may be time to feel gloomy about our prospects.
Until that time shall have arrived, it were unmanly to despond, far less to think of abandoning the cause.
Even then the last resource of a brave nation, resolved not to be enslaved, remains to us. We can even then, as other nations have done before us, resolve ourselves into a guerilla force, composed of the whole country, and fight the battle for life or death, throughout a million of square miles.
But that time is not come.--They have not beaten our armies in pitched battles, nor do we believe they will ever do it.
Beauregard, with a powerful force, is said the guardian of the
Southwest.--
Johnston, with a force still more powerful, faces
McClellan at
York,
Stonewall Jackson presents an undaunted front in the
Valley, our armies in
Georgia and
South Carolina are unsubdued, and we continue to hold our own in the Old North State.
The enemy has never been able to obtain an advantage over us, except by means of his gunboats.
Take him away from them, and we can always defeat him.
By the loss of New Orleans we are separated from
West Louisiana,
Texas,
Arkansas, and
Missouri.
But many of the brave troops from that side of the river are with us, and those that are there will still keep up the fight, in spite of their isolation.
They will thus constantly employ a large portion of the enemy's army, and serve as a powerful diversion in our favor.
If every seaboard town in the
Confederacy, and every river town which can be reached by gunboats, were in the possession of the enemy to-morrow, it would not have the slightest effect upon the issue of this contest.
It would not be so disastrous as a defeat of
Beauregard's army, or give half the same cause for despondency.
Fortunately, they took no prisoners our troops remain to reinforce
Beauregard, or to go elsewhere as they may be ordered.
The event of this war is still as much in the hands of our people as it was before the fell of New Orleans.
Having made himself-master of the river and seaboard towns, the enemy, if he wish to conquer us, must come into the interior.
There he will have to beat our armies, without the aid of his iron-clad boats, before he can boart of having subdued the country.
In the meantime the occupation of so many points must necessarily tend to the weakening of his strength upon those points on which the grand issue is to be decided, and thus far his success is scarcely a disadvantage to us. Let our countrymen imitate the firm and magnanimous conduct of our rises in the revolution, and we doubt not to see our cause gloriously triumphant.
