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

two miles and a half of Chattanooga. Ever since the
capture by General Hooker of Racoon Mountain, the
Federals have had to waggon their supplies over
two and a half miles of road, whereas Bragg's sup-

*For the present I will merely say that the grossest
exaggeration has daracterised the representations
of the Northern journals in regard to the treat-
ment which Northern prisoners have met with.
To say that their rations have not been so
abundant as those issued to them when they
were Federal soldiers is nothing more nor less
than to say that the Confederate army puts up
with fare which the Federals—fighting for pay, and
not for principle—would not tolerate for a week.
That the Federal prisoners fare better than the
Confederate soldiers I am abundantly satisfied from
what I have learnt. That there is great suffering
among the Confederate prisoners in the North is
still more abundantly evident from the deluge of
letters flooding the Richmond papers every morn-
ing ; and the inference which may safely be drawn
is that the condition of a prisoner in the hand either
of Federal or Confederate authorities is very far
from being on a bed of roses ; but while the Federal
journals, possessing the ear of Europe, denounce in
the name of outraged humanity the atrocities of the
Libby Prison, the Confederate journals, which daily
exhibit the horrors of Fort Delaware, are powerless
to make their voice heard beyond the walls of
Richmond, and leave to their enemy the advantage
which ho has possessed from the beginning in his
unchecked and irresponsible access to the ear of
Europe. .

plies have had from seven to nine miles to traverse,
and roads which for badness were never surpassed
on earth. After he sent Longstreet off to Knoxville,
and still more when he sent :two divisions of his
army away to support and reinforce Longstreet, it
was surely the height of rashness to hold the lines
from Lookout Mountain on the extreme left to Chica-

manga Creek on the extreme right, which had so
long been hold by nearly 70,000 Confederates, with

a force of not more than 35,000 bayonets. The ex-
treme length and weakness of General Bragg's line

when it was attacked by Grant on the 23d, 24th,
and 25th inst., explains the fact which presents the

only serious feature for the Confederates in con-
nexion with the recent successes of the Federals

before Chattanooga—the fact that for the first time
in this war the Confederates, when behind breast-

works and acting on the defensive, have been driven
out and grievously discomfited by their opponents.
The week which ends this day has been the period
of most restless and feverish anxiety to which,
during the last 14 months, the Confederate States
and their umbilicus, the city of Richmond, have ever
been subjected. It is known and felt that if winter

checks the war without great strides having been
made by the Federals, it is idle to talk of the

In conclusion, reviewing the situation at this mo-
milt of the Confederate States, I cannot but be of
opinion, that President Davis, by his well-inten-
tioned, though ill judging, obstinacy in adhering to
his friend Gen. Bragg, has done more to shake the
stability of his hold upon the affections and confi-
dence of the Confederate people than by any other
act which has signalised his two and half years of
troubled and agitated power. It would seem that
Mr. Davis has failed to discern that the compe-
tency of a General, like the virtue of a woman, can-
not afford to be discussed in public. The very fact
of the discussion by his soldiers of their General's
competency adds most alarmingly to his incompe-
tency, and no one can have watched Gen. Bragg's
army for the last two months without noticing thr
fearful deterioration to which its want of faith in
its head has visibly subjected it. War in a re-
publican country, with a daily press which is
its interpreter, and which is read by every soldier
that conducts it, is very different from the
wars of Marlborough or Napoleon, and so Mr.
Davis has long ago discovered. It is greatly to his
honour and credit that he has not emulated Mr
Lincoln's example and imposed upon the journals
which surround him a decorum of criticism and
comment which is, indeed, strange and exotic upon
American soil. But a defiance of an almost unani-
mous :public opinion, for which, in reference to
Genera) Bragg, Mr. Davis is responsible, even as-
suming that public opinion was wrong and Mr. Davis
right, is, to say th 3 least, an error. May it not be
converted by persistence in it from an error into an
irreparable calamity, and may there be truth in the
rumour which circulates through the feverish streets
to-day to the effect that General Hardee is about to
assume the command from which General Bragg by
transgression fell !

Washington Cabinet being able to get such an army
into the field next spring as will have the remotest

chance of prevailing against Southern resistance.
With eyes of irrepressible anxiety ithe telegrams
from Bragg and from Lee have been scanned, and
to-morrow, for the fiftieth time, we are told that the
week is to commence :which will be the supreme

crisis of the Confederacy. No thoughtful or im-
partial reader in England will for a moment be
taken in by such like assertions. If it be possible
that the armies of Lee and Bragg can be driven
from the open field, and that Atlanta and Richmond
should fall into Federal hands, the first stage of the

war will merely be completed. President Lincoln

will End himself face to face with nine or ten

Polands. The military problem now fiercely de
bated between the two sections would yield to the
political, which none can pretend to deny presents
features of vastly deeper gravity and ever-increasing
difficulty of solution.
Before these words have been read by the English
public the history of the momentous week which
will extend from the 29th of November to the 6th
of December will be, to Englishmen, like a tale
that is told. The correspondent situated as lam is
under the disadvantage of feeling that his prophe-
cies about coming events will not even for a mo-
ment enlighten the public mind which he is address-
ing, and enable it by anticipation to judge more
correctly of the shadows which those coming events
are wont to cast. Prophecy end event will be read
simultaneously in England ; it is even possible, such
is the uncertainty attending a correspondence con-
ducted within the cordon of a blockade, that this
letter may be so long delayed en route as to have
divested both prophecy and event of every grain of
interest which they once possessed. It cannot for a
moment be denied that the coincidence of momen-
tous collisions between the four great armies of this
continent within the same week invests the present
hour with strange and tragic interest. Nor is it
possible to exaggerate the magnitude of the danger
with which General Bragg and his army are
threatened. Your readers will not require to be
told that the deterioration. in the morale and
spirit of Bragg's army, which in a former letter I
described as having Dean actively at work since the
heal° of Murfreesborough, has rapidly increased
since the battle of Chicamauga. The dissatisfaction
of his generals at the fruitlessness of a battle which
put 15,000 Confederates hors de combat—the loud-
mouthed discussions of General Bragg's incompe-
tency in three-fourths of the Confederate journals
—the estrangement which has openly existed be-
tween General Bragg on the one side, and Generals
Polk, Buckner, Hindman, Cheetham, D. H. Hill,
and Forrest on the other—the known absence of
harmony between General Bragg and his right arm,
General Lengstreet, suppressed and kept out of
sight though it has been by the patriotism and
military subordination of the latter—have conspired
to daunt and dispirit and leaven the whole mess of
Bragg's rank and file, until it became a moral cer-
tainty that the first serious collision between Grant
and Bragg could result only in disaster to the latter,
This collision, which I do not believe would have
occurred this year had not Bragg sent Longstreet
eff to Knoxville, was precipitated by this hazardous
step. lam not able to speak confidently as yet on
the subject of the full extent of the disaster which
has overtaken the Confederate arms in Northern
Georgia. That it is very serious cannot be questioned.
The great problem which awaits solution during the
coming week is e. bather Grant, whose energy and
audacity surpass those of any Federal general
thrown as yet to the surface by this war, will be able
to wipe Bragg"s army entirely out, and to break it
up without hand. If Bragg can form a new line
either at Ringold, at Dalton, or at Tunnel-hill, and
can hold it during the next two weeks, Atlanta will
in that case be safe. If he is pursued by Grant with
the latter's usual and characteristic energy; if the
Federals are not mired in the spongy glutinous
slime which hedges in Chickamauga Creek, and
stretches for miles along both its banks, it seems to
me scarcely doubtful that Atlanta is in alarming
jeopardy. On the other hand, a fortnight's delay is
all that is wanted to secure safety for Bragg's army,
and to tide over the winter. Behind him lies the
great State of Georgia, the New England of the Con-
federacy, the soil of which is now trodden and
seriously menaced by the Yankee invader, and there
is no manner of doubt that Georgia will at once
throw her every man into the field with a view to
supporting Bragg, and will busy herself frantically
during the winter in utilising the resources which
58,000 square miles of area, a population in 1860 of
nearly 1,100,000 souls, and an estimated valuation of
645,895,237 dole., conspire to give her. There will
arise from these reverses the compensation which
the Confederacy has hitherto never failed in similar
perils to find; nor was it without deep significance
that, alluding to the recuperative energy she has
hitherto shown, it was proposed that
" Non Hydra secto corpore firmior
Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem"

DEC. 1

I have an opportunity of adding a postscript to
my letter, although three additional days have done
little to throw further light upon the situation. In
Virginia the two antagonistic armies face each
other, and have heed each other for three days
past, divided only by a narrow stream called Mine
Creek, which runs into the Rapidan river from the
south a few miles west of the junction of that river
with th© Rappahanock. But I should not omit to
explain to the reader that the position occupied by
the two armies at the battle of Chaneelloraville,

which was fought in the immediate neighbourhood
of their present camping ground, was precisely the
reverse of their actual position at this moment.

General Meade and the Federals face westward,
and have their backs turned on Fredericksburg
and the old battlefield of Chancellorsville ; General
Lee and his army face eastward, with their
backs to the Blue Ridge. There appears on
both sides a disinclination to attack, which does
not seem to me wise policy on the part of the
Federal General. For three or four days heavy
reinforcements have been going forward to General
Lee from Richmond, and if Meade had fought on
the 29th his superiority in numbers, which is likely
to be great whenever the battle comes off, would
have been very much greater. On the night of
Sunday the 29th I witnessed the departure from
Richmond of a large portion of Pickett's division—
the same division which was so roughly handled at
Gettysburg—and which, it might be supposed, had
good ground for weary distaste of the war. The
Englishman introduced for the first time into the
Confederacy, and unfamiliar with such scenes,
might have fancied that the excited, enthusiastic,
shouting, jubilant troops were advancing to their
maiden battlefield, inexperienced in the dire horrors
of the bloodiest combats which this century has
known, and intoxicated with the animal joy which
heralds the dreadful revelry of a soldier's first
battle. I could not bat contrast their exhilira-
tioa with the stolid dulness and depression which
were perceptible almost universally among Gene-
'al Bragg's troops ; nor could I fail to do homage to

the character and influence of Lee and " Stonewa
Jackson, which has stamped and moulded the rank
and file which upon Virginian soil have been only
familiar with victory, and which neither in Penn-
sylvania nor Maryland have ever known defeat. It
was d ffieult to have any other opinion than that
the seventh " On to Rica mend" which is now being
eassayed by Meade, would share the same fate as its
six predecessors, and that Bull Run, Bethel, Drury's
Bluff, M'Ciellan's battles round Richmond, Fre-
dericksburg, and Chancellorsville would culminate
in the coming strife of Mine Cre: k.
And yet there is reason to pause and dread the
battle which seems to be now inDninent more than
any of-its forerunners. For the first time Lee fights
without either Jackson or Longstreet by his side.
The Federals, on the other hand, I confidently anti-
cipate, will fight better than they ever fought be-
fore. Without an atom of military genius, Meade
understands the value of the secret which seems to
have been known to M'Clellan alone among the
Federal Generals in Virginia---the secret of massing
the troops and keeping them close together, never
man ceuvring in face of his enemy. Lee will fight in
the ratio of two men against three. At Chancellors-
villa ho fought in the ratio of three men againgt
eight. But it is not any want of confidence in the
army of General Lee which shakes my faith. It
the Confederate horizon is at this moment overcast,
it is not because Confederate troops are less valiant
than of yore, bat because the Confederate people are
more corrupt. It is difficult not to curl the lip when
the grasping, money-grubbing, mercenary spirit
of the Yankee is denounced in an atmosphere
reeking with speculation more feverish and eager
than any that Wall-street exhibits. Go this day
to the great auction sale of blockade-running goods
exhibited by Messrs Kent and Paine, in the prin-
cipal street of Richmond, take note of the army of
young and abiebodied men who might, if they were
men and not sharks, swell Lee's host to 100,000
bayonets, and who are engaged in scrambling over
each others' backs to buy silks and muslins, and to
invest some of the Confederate notes which they
have in two years and a half of unscrupulous greed
amassed in materials and fabrics which, whether the
Confederates sink or swim, must still command gold.
What may still be in store for this agonised and sorely
tried continent it is more difficult rto say that when
the thunder of the first gun which initiated the
greatest revolutionary war of history reverberated
around the wails of Fort Sumter and died away on
the startled ear ; but if on the 7th of this current
month the Confederate Congress, which assembles
to hold counsel upon matters of as grave debate as
were ever submitted to deliberative oody, and
which, it must be owned, has hitherto shown little
grasp, or earnestness, or capacity, fails to rise to
sgur
ce
ha t
misery
of oar ee
a it,rt h thenas
nay
li height
expectedlit
fthe
never yet been known—the entension over the
whole area of Seeessia of the bloody border war-
fare of Missouri and Kansas—a cessation of the
pure and mild sway of General Leo and his imita-
tors, and an ascent to the surface cf Quantrell,
l\PNiell, Parson Brownlow, and others of the sane
brood—the dispersion all over the Slave States of at
least 20'),000 border ruffians or guvtillns, more

should, when a motto was being sought for her
public seal, be the motto of her choice.
But, in the meantime, what is likely to be the
fate of General Longstreet, cut off from communi-
catio❑ with Bragg, isolated at a distance of 110 miles
from Chattanooga, and held at bay by terrible for-
tifications from " shutting down" upon his foe ?
Apparently, Barnsido's fate involves a fine race be-
tween starvation and General Grant. Upon the
25th inst., the very same day upon which Bragg's
army was driven headlong from Missionary Ridge,
we snow that Longstreet had Burnside hemmed in
on everyside,that ho was shelling Knoxville and the
Federal positions heavily, and it was believed that
the Federal supplies were very scanty. Furthermore
it is known that strong reinforcements have left
Grant's army at Chattanooga, and unless Longstreet
can complete his work quickly he will probably be
compelled to raise the siege of Knoxville. There is not
much anxiety in regard to the safety of LODgareet's
army, which, if robbed of its prey, can escope with-
out molestation into Western Virginia. But the
hopeful feature in Longstreet's horizon is that
Bragg, knowing that Grant had sent reinforcements
to Burnside, detached two divisions from his army
to help Lengstrect, which will probably obstruct
and delay the rapid advance of Grant's relieving
force. It is an exciting episode which is being
enacted around Knoxville in the drama of the
war. Upon the success or failure of Long-
street will hinge the possession or forfeiture
by the Confederates of those important mountain
pasies'in E tstern Tennessee which are the keys to
the four States of Virginia, Georgia, North Caro-
lina, end Tennessee. His capture of Burnside and
the Federal force in Knoxville will do much to
bring about a resumption of the exchange of pri-
soners, concerning which such a war of words has
raged between Commissioners Meredith and Ould—
a war in which it is hard Lot to agree with the New
York World, that the advantage has been gained by
the Confederate Commissioner, In a future letter I
hope to give to yonr readers full details of the con-
dition of the Federal prisoners in the Libby Prison.

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 1, 1864.

merciless than Italian Condottieri, more stealthy
and wily than the Red Indian savage, who will
never cease to slay and burn until the Federals re-
linquish their grasp upon a country of which it
would take a standing army of 2,000,000 soldiers to
crush the spirit and extinguish the resistance.