The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-09 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATION.

( From the limes' Special Correspoldent)
CONFEDERATE CAMP, NEAR PETERS-
BURG, VIRGINIA, Aug. 5.
It see! ns to me impossible that this present month
can end without witnessing great shifting. of the
pieces won the chessboard of war in \ uvula.
Your readers cannot fail to have perceived that the
army which nominally menaces Richmond from
bey and Petersburg is virtually besieged rather than
besieging, and is not only harmless, but actually
pent up by General Lee within one of the most pes-
tilential swamps which anywhere poisons the au-
tumnal breeze upon the southern bank of the James
River. It has long been a farce to pretend that
" On to Richmond'! was any longer the cry of the
once arrogant but now emasculated host, which has
been reduced from fifties to tens of thousands by
the savage and self-exhausting impulse imparted
to this campaign in the month of May by General
Grant. It is indisputable that the Federals long
ago discovered the hopelessness of getting into
either Richmond or Petersburg above ground along
the southern bank of the James River. It became
necessary, therefore, to fan the sinking embers of
hope and excite the ready credulity of the benighted
northern public by mysterious promises in their
journals that " a great Napoleonic device —a starts
ling and paralysing development' was in contems
pitition by General Grant ; and for several weeks
past the key to this mystery has been in General
Lee's possession by his knowledge of the fact that
extensive mining operations against portions of his
earthworks had been commenced and were in active
progress. linable to prevail by an advance above
ground, General Grant repeated the policy which
had reduced Vicksburg 12 months ago, and betook
himself to burrowing.
Your readers will have learnt long before the ar-
rival of this letter that lien. Grant's secret eclatait
on the 30th ult., when his first mine eiploded under
the sel.ient or the earthworks held by the Confede-
rate division of Gen. Hoke. It cannot be denied
that the engineers of Gen. Lee's army were at fault
i n their calculations as to the rapidity with which
tl'e Federal tunnel was being carried forward. It
was believed that the mine, the approach of which
at this particular point was as well known to Gen.
Lee as to Gen. Grant, would not be completed for a
week or 10 days. Counter preparations were in
progress, but had not attained a sufficiently ad-
vanced stage to effect their purpose of intercepting
the burrowers. The Federals deserve credit for the
swiftness and silence of their subterranean opera-
tions. Much is said in Northern journals about the
short-handled pickaxes necessary for working in a
tunnel little more than four feet high. It is
here believed that the great silence of the miners,
as they wormed their way under Pegram's bat-
ery and baffled the vigilant ears in the Confede-
rote listening galleries, was obtained by their entire
ab andonment in the advanced portion of their work
of the pick, and their employment of what are called
in ,`,he Western prairies" post-hole augres," or cir-
cula r hand-borers, by which the earth is perforated
screw fashion, with a view to the sinking of posts.
By means of these noiseless angres, driven horizon.
tally Instead of (as when they are employed above
ground) vertically the tunnel crept forward, and
the charge of powder was deposited at a depth
of ablaut 22 feet beneath the soles of the
unconscious rebels. Then followed, with the
earliest dawn of Saturday last, the explosion
which was to have struck terror to the heart of
s ebeldom. And here, for the hundredth time since
tile date of my first letter from Seceesia, I must
disabuse the English public of the impression which,
if they have reed the letters in the New York journals
th have been likely to form about the shock of
the explosion. It might be imagined, were credit
giv, ?II to these sensational narrators, that the crust
of fie soil was rent as by a volcano, that Grant had
pre:ised an earthquake into his service, and that a
rumbling roar, such as shook Lisbon to its founda-
tions in 1755, was heard for miles around. Nothing
o f the kind was actually experienced. At General
Li. •e's head-quarters, not more than two miles from
the, explosion, the report was hardly, if at all,
audible. Out of the four guns which composed the
battery in the salient two were blown into the air.
it is not believed that more than from 20 to 30 Con-
fede.-ates were uplifted by the hot breath of the
mine sprung beneath their feet. It is the universal
opini on of experienced Confederate officers that
really steady troops would not have been shaken
out of a work which was only injured to the extent
of blowing up two guns and some 25 men. No
breach was made in the integrity of the outer line
of earth works by the explosion, which took effect
within the enceinte of the salient. If the gunners
o f the two remaining pieces had stood firmly to
th eir work and poured grape and canister into the
advancing masses of Federals, and if they had been
supported by the Confederate infantry just behind
the salient, it is probable that no lodgment would
ever hare been effected by Grant within the Con-
federate lines. As it was, the defenders of the
salient, b sing a portion of one of the least steady
Confeder ate brigades, were staggered by the sad.
denness and novelty of the explosion, and. re-
coiled before the swiftly advancing columns of
the 9th Federal corps. The crater of the mine,
being about 120 ft. in length and 73ft. in width,
belched forth dark curls of smoke, and yawned
grimly, as though conscious of the bloody mass of
huniani,ty which was shortly to be discharged into
and swallowed up within its ragged and sulphurous
cavity.

Again, let me correct an error which has found
nranleode_nce even among thoughtless readers in Rich-
• It is stated that the Federal negro troops,
as they were carried into the Confederate works by
the dense mass of white associates which environed
there, shouted
Torti.,,ifiercely " No quarter !" " Remember
coiz'ult and other similar battle cries. In a
knowtaun
and
vna
understood,
this, where negro nature is well
shonle. 11,4,;e nderstood, it is strange that such a tale
not believe obtained a moment's credence. I do
that
lured onward terrified wretches were ever
who are starvedd to d!i nsuuetion as the miserable negroes
are still believed by mtuthe Federal ranks, and who
land likely to gain EtTiabny, excellent persons in Eng-
improve nor understand:lT, which t hey can neither
from all the bloodshed
as a blessed legacy derived
conceive that the negrao emitataiaerY of this war. To
tiveness as to " remembervon cherish such vindic-
that he possesses the courage aodPillow" is to assume
of the Anglo-Saxon, I will
not
the emotions
moment than that it is ienpo„ibie:y. mere at this
have watched this American war those who
beginning to come to any other conclusion from the
uathan that
it will in the end reveal the hollowness
cerity of Northern negro philanthropy y
exhibitingd in
to the world what manner of soldiers Mrs. st
and her coadjutors have made out of the Africanwse ;
and, secondly, by exhibiting what must be the nn
ture of the slavery against which neither impunity,
nor opportunity, nor temptation, nor cupidity, nor
three and a half years of war's disturbing influences,
have sufficed to make 4,000,000 of slaves attempt,to
rebel.
It is hardly necessary to state :that the " no
quarter" of the Federal negro was inaudible to the
Confederate officers who stood nearest to them. The
explosion of the mine took place before 5 o'clock in
the morning, and, within a quarter of an hour of
its occurrence, the salient was occupied by from
12,000 to 15,000 Federal troops. But from that
moment forward until the work was regained by the
Confederates, about 2 o'clock, General Grant found
himself unable to reinforce his troops. Such was the
fire of the Confederate artillery issuing from the
lines leading up to the captured salient that it
swept away every formation of men which emerged
from the Federal earthworks. The body of Fede-
rala, had they been suffered to remain until night,
would und,:nbtedly hare hecn largelyabove ground or below by the following reinforced
But at ab -eit 2 o'ololkGeneral morning.
, .t Lee, after one un-
successful attack upon
make aggressors about noon,
ordered Malone toshortwork with them.
There are few names more
lloi deserving of European
notice than that of Mahone. an executive
officer, conspicuously the hero of
estlb,oaensg Campaigntee in,
Virginia of 1864. Advancing
earthworks which led up to the Federal right,'o'
Mahone flung a brigade of Alabamians upon them,
and the struggle was alrast instantly at an end. At