The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-01 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATION.

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(From the Special Correspondent of the Times,)
RICHMOND, Nov. 19.
I hasten to correct the erroneous interpretation
which in my letter of the 14th inst. I gave of the
important movement which has for some 10 days
past been in process of execution by Gen. Langstreet
and his corps. I had reason for thinking that the
prevailing rumours were incorrect, and that Gen.
Lungstreet's eyes were turned westward, in contem-
plation of an attack upon Gen. Sherman, and the
Federal army which is advancing from the Missis-
sippi and Corinth towards Chattanooga, along the
line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. It
appears, however, that to Gen. Stephen D. Lee, one
of the most energetic Confederate officers whom I
have yet encountered, has been committed the task
of checking and hindering Gen. Sherman's advance,
and delaying to the utmost his junction with Gen.
Thomas at Chattanooga. It is impossible that a
difficult and hazardous duty—that of arresting the
march of 20,000 infantry by opposing to them a
cavalry force of less than half their number—can
have been more gallantly and judiciously executed.
Gen. Lee, sometimes by taking up a strong position
and resisting Sherman in front, sometimes by hang-
ing on his flank or rear, sometimes by falling on and
cutting off detached bodies of men, has so delayed
and harassed his opponents that it is variously re-
ported that the Federals have fallen back to Corinth,
or that they have, at any rate, retreated to the northern
side of the Tennessee River. It is not at all impossible
that Gen. S. D. Lee has returned to Canton, in Mis-
sissippi, which would imply that his task of arrest-
ing Sherman has been successfully accomplished.
But it is already very manifest that the Federals arc
realising the difficulties of repairing railroads for
hundreds of miles through a country bitterly
hostle to them, and in which every bridge and yard
of trestlework have to be vigilantly guarded by
night and day. To repair and keep in working
order the railroad from the Mississippi to Corinth,
and from Corinth to Chattanooga, would require
70,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry. The Confede-
rates are too well aware of their enemy's deficiency
in numbers, of the waning spirit of the new Federal
recruits, and of the diminishing reservoir from
which those recruits are drawn, to be daunted by

such sentiments as are attributed to Mr. Seward,
to the effect that he " would continue to drive new
Federal bullocks into the field" (I quote his own

reported words) until the 200,000 remaining Con
federate troops are killed off or exhausted. It is
possible that Mr. Seward's supply of bullocks will
fail before the task which he assigns to them is half
way towards its execution. It may be that a free
press, wisely and conscientiously conducted, may
prove to a Government and nation struggling in the
throes of threatened dissolution an auxiliary more
valuable than iron-clad Behemoths, and more po-
tential than the mightiest cannon ; but, neverthe-
less, long observation has led me irresistibly to the
conclusion that in the entire body politic of the
North no limb has, in this supreme hour of a na-
tion's agony, so wofully manque and fallen short of
its high office as the daily press. Statesmen and
Generals, it is true, have been called for in vain ; in
all the auxiliary departments of the army no great
name has struck upon the public ear. Quartermas-
ters have vied with each other only in dexterity of
fraud ; in the medical department no such conspi-
cuous light as Larry or Guthrie has distilled from
the great sum of human misery brought under a sur-
geon's ken the only balm which war offers in compen-
sation to humanity—increased familiarity with the
methods of preserving life and mitigating suffering.
But, universal as has been the dearth of genius and
virtue, lamentable as has been the levelling equality
of republicanism in its effects upon mind and cha-
racter, nowhere, and in no ether department, have
men been more gravely tried, or more utterly iound
wanting, than the conductors of the metropolitan
press of New York, and the lesser lights in the pro-
vinces who thence draw their inspiration. There
is, I believe, in the Confederacy at this moment no
man of thoughtfulness and reflection who would not
solicit the pissage, throughout the insurgent States
of any honourable Commissioners in whom the
North would confide, and who would not abide by
the report of these Commissioners as to the ability
of the Southerners to maintain this struggle for ten
yea- ; and yet in the face of facts which are patent
to all, with an entire absence of mendicancy and
seeming want from our streets, the North is for the
twentieth time stimulating its courage and reviving
its drooping faith by the assertion of its journals
that Richmond is starving, that no family has more
than one meal per diem, that gaunt famine is glar-
ing on Southern highways and threatening
Southern households, and that resistance, main-
taiaed to the utmost stretch of endurance, is about
to give way finally and for ever.
I have now been quite long enough in the South
to estimate and understand the amount of pressure
which it is necessary for Confederate armies and
Confederate citizens to endure, and I can safely say
that, although they have bean severely tried, their
sufferings are light and tria ial compared with what
has been endured by many other nations. There have
been momenta in the recent history of England, such
as 1801 ; and in the history of France, such as 1813,
when national distress weighed far more heavily
and national perplexity and gloom shrouded more
obscurely the future. Want of food in such a
degree as England experienced it in the year in
question has never beau dreamed of in the Confe-
der cy. It is difficulty to meet general assertions to
the effect that five or six millions of people scat-
tered over an enormous area are starving, otherwise
than by asseverations that such is not the case. I will
endeavour to mention two or three facts, which will
strengthen and sustain my denial. In the first place
the sight of man or woman begging in the street is
as unknown as in old days it was in the most pros-
perous cities of the North. Secondly, there is not
a religious denomination in this city of which the
ministers do not assert that never in their recollec
tions were there so few applications to them for
relief. It was mentioned to me last night by Dr.
Hoge (who has recently returned from England),
that the principal Presbyterian minister of Rich-
mond, Dr. Moore, announced last Sunday to his
congregation that there was no poor in his parish
suing for relief, and that he would therefore de-
vote the collection of that day's alms to the wives of
a cavalry eegiment. Thirdly, the daily supply of
food offered in the market knows neither stint nor
stay. Prices, it is true, are enormous if the dollar
is supposed to be worth 4s. ; the; are very small if
the dollar represents its true value, which is between
33. end 4d. English. That dollars are plentiful
enough, when there are upwards of 600 millions of
them in circulation, will easily be believed. Once
for all, then, the assertion is undeniable that the
presaure for food is neither at present nor likely to
be hereafter a serious or disturbing element ; that
inert ased confidence in the currency, which Congress
is believed likely to inspire, will draw ample sup
lies to Richmond ; that the privations of the Confe-1
derate armies in the field, about which so much
has been said and written, are grossly exaggerated.
If any of your readers would be at the pains of
reading a book which has recently appeared in
Paris, entitled " Souvenirs Militaires de M. it
Due de Fezensac," they would find facts and de-
tails about the sufferings of Napoleon's armies,
sustained by them for 10 years, which utterly throw
anything known on this continent into the shede.
The fact is that, measured by the standard of the
Federal armies, Confederate rations are scanty
measured by the standard of European armies, and
especially by the Russian, Austrian, or French stan-
dards, the comparison in the estimation of an ac-
complished Austrian officer would not be disadvan-
tageous to the Confederates.
Your readers will have learnt long before the ar-
rival of this letter that the operations of General
.Longstreet are directed against General Burnside at
Knoxville. There are the best reasons for thinking
that very great scarcity of supplies has recently
prevailed in the Federal armies at Chattanooga and
Knoxville ; in fact, but for the seizure of Racoon
Mountain by General Hooker, and the consequent
relief gained thereby for the starving troops ci
Thomas, there is now no doubt that the Federals
must. have fallen back or attacked. The loss of Ra-
e oon Mountain is a very heavy blow to the Confe-
derates. lam ignorant of the circumstances which
le d to its evacuat'on, almost without a blow; but