Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
the Dispatch in Georgia--Military Enthusi
asm — Bountiful crops, &c.
Rome, Floyd Co., Ga., 15th June, 1861
I enclose you another list of subscribers to the Daily Dispatch, making in all about seventy-five sent you in the last week.
Add to this the number previously sent to this office, and it makes the daily circulation of your very able and deservedly popular paper more than double that of any other daily journal received here.
Virginia papers are now sought after and read with great avidity and interest by our people.
Notwithstanding the laggardness of the Old Dominion in assuming her true position in the great movement for Southern independence, and her unmerited censure of South Carolina and the other Gulf States for their superior sagacity and wisdom in the premises, yet she has a warm place in our affections, and every true Southern heart throbs responsive to her call for help to expel from her borders the ruthless invaders of her sacred soil.
In addition to the three companies that have already repaired, with burnished guns, glistening bayonets, and Cherokee knives of fearful dimensions, to the scene of war in the Old Commonwealth, two other volunteer companies have been organized and equipped in our little mountain city; one of them, the Cherokee Artillery, left for camp the first of this week, and the other, ‘"Floyd Sharp Shooters,"’ commanded by Capt. Hamilton, expect to leave for Virginia on Tuesday next; and, if I am not very much mistaken, the myrmidons of Lincoln will be deeply and bullet-ly impressed with the significance of the name of this last company.
I doubt if any town in the Confederate States, of the same population, has as many well drilled companies in the army of Virginia as Rome, and yet other companies are about being organized.
May there not be something in a name ? Ancient Rome boasted of her ‘"legions"’ of fighting men, why may not modern Rome do the same — on a small scale ?
From the military spirit and heroinism manifested by the accomplished bride of Capt. Magruder, of our city, you may naturally and truthfully infer that our ladies are not behind the sterner sex in military ardor and enthusiasm.
If necessary to avenge the outrages perpetrated by Yankee demons upon their sisters of Virginia, fifty thousand of Georgia's fair daughters would clothe themselves in the panoply of war and rush to the bloody conflict.
But I hope the chivalry and undaunted bravery of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, may obviate the necessity of their taking the field.
The wheat crop of Georgia is now secured, and nothing like it, in quality and quantity, has ever been seen before since Adam was a baby. If Old Abe was ever impressed with the foolish notion that we were on the verge of starvation in the Cotton States, a glance at our running-over garners and the luxuriance of our growing crops would very soon dispel the fatal illusion.
The sweet and Irish potato crop alone of the South will keep our army in good fighting order for the next six months. If there is any starving to be done anywhere on the continent during the present year, it will certainly not be on this side of Mason & Dixon.
The lantern jawed denizens of the sterile hills of New England may, if their pumpkin crop should fail, go to bed on empty stomachs, while we ‘"poor Southerners"’ are filled to repletion with not only the necessaries, but luxuries of life.
Then, perhaps, they will envy the condition of our sleek, fat negroes, for whom they seem to have so much commiseration. J. R. S. 