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The occupation of Cairo.--This audacious movement has had good effect in developing the purpose of our enemies to prosecute the war in earnest, and in its inspiring influence upon the Tennessee and Kentucky mind.
It conveys a threat which the people of those States will join their brethren of the Confederate States in resenting with promptitude.
Geography has made Cairo a strategetical position of the utmost consequence.
It is the key to the upper, as New Orleans and the Lake and the Balize are the key to the lower Mississippi.
It can blockade St. Louis on the one hand, and Louisville on the other; while, if in possession of a considerable force, possessing heavy ordnance, and commanding the railroad leading south of that point, it would menace the city of Memphis, and open the way for an invading army to make that an advanced post of occupation.
It is not pleasant to contemplate such a possibility.
But it is good policy to face it fairly, if we would defeat it effectually.--Jackson Mississippian, April 26.
Van Nostrand. New York, New York. 1862.
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