The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-12 00:00:00

SPIRLC OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " SPECTATOR" ON GEN. SHERMAN'S MARCII.
--•l'h9 details of the American war do not often

excite the imagination. The vast extent of territory
over which the conflict is spread, the length of timo

it has lasted, the absence of any commanding genius
on either side, the failure of both armies ever to
follow up success, and the snippety style of Ameri-
can reporting, often eloquent and honest, but always
incomplete, all tend to diminish the interest of even
the most striking events, and little incidents it has
bean almost impossible to follow. Military men, we
believe, affirm that there never was a war which
taught soldiers so much, but to the public there has
seemed something essentially and strangely un-
dramatic in the whole course of the war. At last,
however, we have an episode calculated to make
men who are not Americans draw their breath.
There has scarcely occurred in modern warfare an
incident more Exciting, more replete with the eke
meats of true interest, surprise, suspense, and mega
nitude of possible result than the march of General
Sherman from Atlanta to the East Coast. That able
officer, the only one of the Northern side who has
yet kept a great army in movement over a long
period of time without suffering a reverse, has settle
ally undertaken, without a line of communications,
to carry an army of 60,000 men 350 miles through
a country tropical in all essential characteristics, in-
habited by an organised people of the same race as
his own soldiers, and pledged, as all men believe, to
resistance to the death. He plunges, as it wore,
into space, and space filled with threatening appear.
Races, projects his army like a shell over a continent,
resolved only that, after a march as long as from
Edinburgh to London, or, to use a better illestra.
tion, from Benares to Calcutta, he will come out
victorious at the other end. The difficulties in the
way of such an enterprise are almost indescribable,
General Sherman has first of all to keep 50,000 men
11 incessent movement for at least thirty days,
overthrowing or evading whatever may cross his
path, and this in a semi-tropical land, where
every undulation is a hill, every copse a forest, every
sun-crack a ravine. He has during all that space
of time to keep them fed, for though he can
carry biscuit and coffee, and that not easily, the bis-
cuit required alone amounting to 1,500,000 lbs, or
1,500 cartloads, he can carry nothing else, and if he
attempts to keep American soldiers on bread and
coffee alone his camp will very soon be a hospital,
and his men useful only when the prospect of actual
battle gives them unnatural strength. Then he has
to carry his sick, in itself a most perplexing pro-
bleu]. In a march like this, besides the ordinary
sickness incident_a_l, to a town with a population of
50,000, besides al the men struck down by fever
and dysentery and the incidents inseparable from
vast crowds of men and beasts and carts in simul-
taneous movement, every footsore soldier is a sick
soldier, and whatever his rate of progress—and he
must move quickly—men will be dropping out at
every mile. They cannot be left behind even if the
General were the man to leave them, for the prate
tice demoralises the soldiery, makes them dread
every exertion which may entail a few hours' ill-
ness, every risk which may bring a wound. There
is nothing for it but to carry them, and in so tre-
mendous a march they w4l be among the most
serious and embarrassing of impedimenta. Then
there is the ammunition, not only to be carried but
to be spared, for he can get no more till he reaches
the sea, and powder and bullets must be served out
as if they were made of gold, the severest test that
can be applied to the discipline of an army, If the
men once suspect there is deficiency there is an end
of order, for though individuals might be trusted,
no body of men without powder will advance on
enemies with it. Finally he has, while advancing
through an enemy's country and irritating its people
by the organised plunder necessary to feed his men,
to secure rapid, minute, and trustworthy informa-
tion, without which his soldiers must be for 30 days
permanently on the alert, i.e., driven wild with
fatigue, excitement, and want of rest. Only a sin-
gular combination of circumstances could make such
an enterprise a hopeful or even a possible one, and
such a combination we are inclined to believe exists.
General Sherman is in the first place in command
of the best army the North has as yet produced,
the only one which can be said to have had
long experience in fighting and marching at the
same time, the only one which can be relied on to
move, as regular troops sometimes will, on restricted
rations supplied by chance. His force has been col.
lected for nearly a year, during the whole of which
time it has been accustomed to act together, has been
incessantly " on service," and has learnt to under-
stand its General's qualifications and its own power.
The mere fact that General Sherman could make the
attempt at all, could plunge into the wilds without
supplies, could require his soldiers to give up tents
and feed on bread alone, is clear proof of his ascend-
ancy and their obedience. His march, moreover, is
through a semi-tropical region, i e., a region
" sparsely" settled, in which population is aggree
gated in smell villages placed at long intervals, in
which there are no great cities, and over which the
collection of armies is a very difficult and exceed-
ingly tardy process. These circumstances, more.
over, though they make the collection of food more
tardy, render it also more easy, the isolation of each
knot of people making resistance almost hopeless.
If indeed he burns all he does not want, he may by
driving men to despair provoke the despairing re-
sort Beauregard calls on them to employ—the re-
moval, namely, of all cattle, all crops, and all sources
of food into the hills, whence they cannot be ex-
tracted without too much loss of time. We cannot,
however, believe that General Sherman has sanc-
tioned a policy so fatal not to the Confederates, but
to the discipline of his own army. The man is a
soldier, and an able one, and no able soldier ever yet
permitted troops whom he could pay to obtain a
taste for unlimited license and destruction. He
might as well reduce them to a mob at once. The
loss of barns and houses over a route of 30 miles
broad cannot cripple a State like Georgia, and it can
and will send every white man into the field as an
irreconcilable and most dangerous guerilla, while
the practice invariably throws the army which com-
mences it " out of hand." It has already ruined the
guerilla cavalry of the South. His own order die
rects destruction only when " bush whackers" assail
his army, and it is his subordinates' interpretation of
his order which will work or prevent the mischief.
The negroes of course he will gather up as he would
any other allies, and it is in the existence of this class
that the prospect of success in his daring expedition
chiefly lies. Tne peasantry of the country, the actual
workers and tillers, are, on the whole, on the in-
vaders' side, and if not irritated by en insane de-
struction of their subsistence as well a 3 their masters'
will supply all deficiencies. There are no beasts of
burden like willing men. They can terry the sick,
drive on the cattle, keep the camps clean, i.e.,
healthy, and bring in the only vital information,
the neighbourhood of cavalry, while the dread of
their sentiments spreads through the white inhaoi-
tants that sense of the absence of unanimity which
is so fatal to a despairing defence. Moving through
a vast half-populated but fertile region, in which
there are no centres and one half the population is
favourable to the invader, General Sherman, unless
resisted by armies, has in fact nothing to overcome
except the natural difficulties of distance, which
cannot be altered, of the rivers, which are few, and
of the climate. which he is encountering at the best
season of the year. But will he not be arrested by
armies ? The question is one hard to answer in this
country ; but comparing carefully the facts before
the world we, on the whole, think he will not be.
Where is the army to come from. General Sher-
men before he quitted Atlanta had most adroitly
suffered General Hood to begin a fool's dance towards
Tennessee, which renders it impossible for that
officer to turn on his track without exposing his
rear to General Thomas, who at present is leading
him further and further away. Hood may possibly
by a series of successes retake Tennessee, though we
doubt it, he having only 60,000 men "in his de-
partment," i.e, in three States two armies and four
or five garrisons ; but that will not hinder General
Sherman's march any more than the seizure of Por-
tugal would have stopped Wellington's advance on
Toulouse, As for General Beauregard's proclama-
tions about coming assistance, he is simply whistling
like a boy in the dark to keep his courage up. His
men cannot travel in balloons, and without them
bow is he to march from Corinth to Clinton, 320
miles in an air line, in time to catch up a force
pressing forward at 15 miles a-day. Southward
there is no force strong enough to arrest him even
if Mobile were abandoned, and northward there is
only General Lee t
TThe EXAMINER" ON TROTTING TOO FAST.—
On Monday last the driver of a Hansom cab was
charged, at Msrylebone, with occasioning the death
of a woman by knocking her down at the corner of
Park-street and High-street, Camden-town. The
first witness, a police-constable, deposed to seeing
the cab come along Park street, and turn the
corner, the horse trotting at a furious rate. On
which the magistrate, Mr Yardley, interposed—
" You can't say that a hors 3 trotting is going at a
furious pace." Thereby evidently implying that
unless a horse be galloping, it cannot be said that
he is going at a furious, that is an excessive pace.
The quiet rejoinder of the witness was that the
horse was going about 12 miles an honr ; and
another policeman stated that he Saw the prisoner,
who had previously boasted of having a horse that
" could go," mount his seat and drive away
" furiously" towards Park-street. We all kno w
that many horses can trot 12 miles an hour, and
even more ; and hundreds of Hansom cab horses will
trot at Viet rate, at least for a short distance. In
truth the question of trot or gallop would be
a very inadequate test of speed. Many of the Lon-
don cab horses, owing to foundered feet, weak loins,
or other defects, have not s trot in them ; the only