The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-21 00:00:00

THE WAR IN VIRGINIA.

(From Me Special Correspondent of the limes.)
RICHMOND, June 14.
Richmond, revisited at this moment by one who
leas been familiar with its inhabitants during their
last two years of agony, recalls ?feelings such as
those which, according to the late Mr Rogers,
animate the breasts of very old men in their ghost-
like wanderings through the streets of London.
" The West-end," said he, "Deems to me one vast
cemetery. Hardly a street In
_fias in it a house once
occupied by dear frier a whom I had daily
intercourse; if I stopped and
.knocked now, who
would know or take ioaerest in me ? The streets to
me are peopled with shadows ; the city is as a city
of the dead." How much more is this the case in
little Richmond, peopled by a simple and affectionate
community, looped together as it were by the ties
of one large family. To me personally there is
scarcely a street or corner which does not recall a
friend—and in such times friendships seem firmer
and warmer than in gala days—whose voice still
rings in my ear, though now hushed for ever. Few
of the English visitors who have in the last three
years braved the difficulties of entering Secessia will
have heard of " Jeb Stuart's" death without hearty
regret. With some superficial and venial faults of
harmless vanity, Gen. Stuart was the most credita-
ble impersonation of what is called in this country
the Southern Cavalier. Fearless to a fault, singu-
larly enduring of fatigue, never sick, never absent
from duty, never daunted nor dispirited, he died as
he had lived, after baffling with 2,000 men the
advance of thrice that number of horsemen, the most
cheerful of victims to a cause for which he would
have given a thousand lives, His loss is bewailed
by General Leo as that of a son. No such active or
efficient
agent in fathoming the designs and num-
bers of his enemy will be found by General Lee, let
this war last as long as it may.
It would be of small interest were I to recapitu•
late personal details about many other Southern
Generals who have fallen since the commencement
of May, and who to England are little more than
names. But it will have been a satisfaction to many
to learn that, upon the same plank road which upon
Nay 2, Mee, witnessed the deathwound of Stone-
wall Jackson, General Longstreet, dangerously
struck in the throat by a Southern bullet, escaped
death upon May 6, 1864, aithough receiving, after
three years of unparalleled exposure, his first
hazardous wound. You will have learnt that upon
the previous day two Confederate divisions—those
of Heth and Wilicox—held their ground long and
nobly against overwhelming numbers of their foes
They were to be relieved in the night; and the
men, worn down by exertion, looked for a brief red
pose as they scanned their thin numbers, when,
before the dawn of the 6th of May, heavy lines of
the enemy, massed in the night, and following each
other in quick succession, dashed upon, their en•
feebled ranks. They stood gallantly for a while ;
but at last, shrinking before the compact masses
,burled upon them, they commenced a retreat, which
from a walk grew into a run, from a rut into a de-
moralised rout. At this moment there was advancing
along the plank road the hardy corps which Long-
street has so long led. Into their leading files
dashed, at headlong speed and in wild disarray, the
broken ranks of Heth and Willcox, mingled with
fieldpieces, ambulances, caissons, runaway horses,
and shouting office/a striving to bear up against the
rcut, but whirled along in its resistless current.
Beside the road was Gen. Lee, irritated and excited
beyond precedent, and eager to stem the torrent of
flight by catching hold of any organised body of men
and launching them in person against the head of
the advancing stream. Upon this hurly burly of con-
fusion and alarm supervened at the most critical
moment the unshrinking constancy of Gen. Long-
street and his corps. Riding up to General Lee, he
said, " General, my men have seen such scenes
befote and will not be daunted; wait, and you shall
see the enemy driven like chaff before the wind."
Right nobly did his men, and especially Kershaw's
division, verify their General's confident promise.
The onward rush of Federals was stayed; at their
head fell General Wadsworth, gallantly yielding
his life for what he believed the holiest of causes ;
the Confederates swept forward irresistibly, and the
ground on which Iletb. and Willcox had bivouacked
passed again into their hands. At this moment,
Longstreet, after brief consultation with General
Lee, suggested a flank movement net dissimilar to
that by which twelve months before the bloody day
of Chancellorsville was decided by Jackson. It
was commenced, the promise of the first movement
was richly encouraging. Generals Longstreet and
Jenkins rode in great glee with their Staff along
the plank road, when one of those unforeseen acci-
dents which are inseparable from war, and doubly
hazardous with undisciplined troops, checked in an
instant all laughter and merriment. A volley at
short range, issuing from Mahone's brigade of Con-
federates as they poured obliquely through the
tangled undergrowth of the Wilderness, struck
Longstreet's little party like a white squall ; Gen.
Jenkins sprung high from his saddle and fell dead
with a bullet through his brain ; Longstreet
him-
self lay stretched in the road pulsoless and inani-
mate, and, as all thought, with but few minutes of
life left in him. Instantly the flank movement was
arrested. About an hour later,.Longstreet, awak.
ing from his swoon, exclaimed to Dr. Cullen, " In
another half hour, but for my wound, there would
not have been a Yankee regiment standing and
unbroken on the south of the Rapidan."
It is not desirable that I should trace seriatim the
military movements which have brought Generals
Lee and Grant, locked in a kind of death-grapple,
down from the bank of the Rapidan on May 3 to
the bank of the James on June 3. Most of your
readers are familiar with the circular iron swing gate
through which it is the custom of visitors to make
their exit from the Zoological Gardens, and which
stands opposite to the main entrance to the gardens.
They will remember that at that gate there are four
rotatory wings, revolving on the same axis, which,
as they swing round pass through the interstices of
four other stationary wings, or fixed grates, which
are attached immovably to the same axis as their re•
volving brethren. Conceive the movable revolving
wings to be the army of Gen. Grant, conceive the
fixed gates to be the army of Gen. Lee, and you
have a rough diagram of the tactics adopted by
both armies in these battles. It will be remembered
that on May 3 Grant began to launch his mighty
army across the Rapidan, and found himself con-
'' fronted by Gen. Lee on May 5 and 6 in the dense
labyrinth of the 'Wilderness. Few students of mili•
tars history
will fail to be struck by the resem-
blance which this impervioss region of Virginia
bears to-the gloomy and tangled glades which, on
Dec. 3, 1300, witnessed the defeat by the French
army of the Archduke John and his Austrians, and
coupled for ever in a bracket of fame the names of
Moreau and Hohenlinden. It is known to your
readers that, thanks to the opportune arrival of
Gen. Longstreet and his corps on the morning of
the 6th, the Federals were heavily countered in the
Wilderness and driven back with terrific loss.
But, nothing daunted, Gen. Grant set to work
with characteristic energy to execute his prede-
ternained plan of advance. making his with-
drawal from the lines of
front behind very heavy
skirmishers, he retired his right wing and swung it
behind his centre and left,
upon
ith, towards Spottayi - the morning, of the
vame Court-house, lie had
ulready secured the only direct roads
--
leediug
direction, and made surethat Lee would have to
fall back in confusion or submit to be cut fin
rom
at
o
Richmond. But he did not count upon the rare
t;;;lgieity of his opponent, which
in these reeent
b sales, no less than et Chancellorsville, has amounted'
e
to the intuition of military genius. Quickly pene-
trating his adversarys design, Lee began to ra
with him for Spotsylvania Court-home, a point
where EcV?ral roads convc.:;ci like the radii of a
men's outstretched fingers, s- • ssing under the
circumetances e eortance. The
minent
roads th 1'0,4;1 the forest had, as
,had said, been
secured by Grant. Lee quickly set to work, end
with his excellent corps or sappers a'd miners (a
body of men whose need he had last year severely
felt at Chancellorsville, and which he has ;ace called
into existence and organised) cut a way through
the trees and brushwood for his fieldpieces and
cßi""g* Th-3 revolving shuttle of General Grent's
right Wing 3 wang rapidly round urou its Vr.i'7, but