The Daily Dispatch: March 13, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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The reaction in Petersburg.

The Petersburg Express has an article on the immense reaction of public sentiment in Virginia since the failure of the Peace Congress to accomplish anything in the way of an adjustment of difficulties. It says that in Petersburg the immense anti-secession majority by which Mr. Branch was elected has in all probability been already reversed. It says:

‘ "Henceforward, propositions and efforts to save the Border States must come from them, (the North,) and that very speedily; for at the rate the secession fever is now daily spreading amongst us, it will not be long before the Federal Government will be totally and hopelessly broken up, by the withdrawal of fourteen or fifteen of the States, unless, in the whiriing interval, the dominant party at the North comes quickly forward and do what they ought to do, if they wish to arrest it in its course. We doubt whether it is not Too late now for any accommodation. 'The Southern heart' has been so much 'fired' with indignation in the last two or three weeks, by the exasperating conduct of the Black Republicans, both in the Peace Conference and in Congress, that it has well nigh ceased to cherish the but recently strong desire for an amicable settlement of the sectional differences, so that the Union could be saved from further dismemberment, and the twenty-seven remaining States live in peace together."

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