JULY 16, 1864:
As consternation grows in Richmond over the fate of Petersburg
and Atlanta, Confederate President Jefferson Davis wires General Joseph E.
Johnston demanding to know why Johnston’s only apparent plan of attack is to
retreat. Johnston wires back a worrisome and unsatisfactory answer which reads
in part:
. . . As the enemy
has double our number, we must be on the defensive. My plan of operations must,
therefore, depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an
opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to
be held for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be
freer and wider.
Across the Atlantic, the generally pro-Confederate Illustrated London News carries a
belated account of the sinking of the C.S.S. ALABAMA and the rescue of its crew
by the H.M.S. DEERHOUND. The newspaper castigates its interviewee Captain John
Winslow U.S.N. for not having the U.S.S. KEARSARGE aid the sinking vessel:
[H]e made no such
attempt to rescue them as a generous enemy would have done . . . It is
therefore probable that, if it had not been for Mr. Lancaster's prompt
interference, Captain Semmes and his brave comrades would have shared the fate
of Mr. Herbert Llewellyn, the surgeon (an Englishman, the son of a clergyman in
Wiltshire), who perished with their sinking vessel. The DEERHOUND has therefore
earned, in our opinion, the fairest honours of the day.
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