The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-28 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
HEADQUARTERS OF GENERAL LEE, NEAR
BERRYVILLE, CLARKE COUNTY, VIR-
GINIA, June 22.

Upon no previous occasion since the command of
the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was
assumed (rather more than a year ago) by General
Lee has any one of his campaigns opened with
fairer promise or more encouraging augury than the
present. We have seen on a recent occasion the
initiative taken by Gen. Hooker, and the ignominy
which awaited his overgrown army and its imbecile
commander in the tangled wildernees and matted
thickets around Chancellorsville. We shall now be
called upon critically to observe the conduct of an
army acting in its turn on the offensive, and with
infinitely inferior wealth of resource than was com-
manded by Gen. Hooker, but which has the advan-
tage of being under the guidance of one of the ablest
existing masters of the art of war. It is only by
slow and gradual degrees that the reciprocity of
confidence now subsisting between Gen. Lee and
his army has grown to its full and perfect stature.
In one respect the unobtrusive humility and want
of demonstrativeness which are so winning and
engaging to those who have the happiness of enjoy-
ing the intimacy of Gen. Lee are disadvantages in
connexion with his command of a volunteer army, in
which emotion rather than discipline, heart rather
than habit, is the guide of action. But it cannot have
escaped close observers that the affection and admi-
ration of his followers for Gen. Lee culminated at
that battle of Chancellorsville, and that much of the
enthusiasm which had so long clustered aruund
General Jackson did not sink with him into the
tomb, but subsequently descended to the man whose
guiding brain had so often launched the avalanche
of " Stonewall" Jackson against their common
foe, and who brought into the field an unselfishness
as lofty and a purity as spotless as those of General
Jackson himself. It needed not the enthusiastic
cheers which greeted Gen. Lee as he rode at Chan-
cellorsville along the lines of his victorious troops
on the afternoon of May 3 to proclaim to those who
have watched them closely that they wear him in
their heart of hearts. Similarly, though at dif-
ferent moments during the last 10 or 12 days the
strategy has seemed inexplicable to empirical teed-
tians, such is the confidence universally reposed in
Gen. Lee that not a doubt has been expressed, not
a misgiving indulged. This confidence has been, as
11 write, repaid',by the solution of all misapprehen-
sions, and it is now patent, even to the moles at
Washington, that Gen. Lee has transplanted his
whole army from Fredericksburg to the Maryland
line, and has turned the flank of Gen. Hooker with-
out any penetration of his design by the latter, or
without any steps having been taken to molest or
harass the long line of the Confederates.

Right across the beautiful State of Virginia,
starting from the Potomac ai; Harper's Ferry, and
running in a south-westerly direction to the southern
limit of the State, stretches the blue ridge of moun-
tains, not dissimilar in height or appearance to
Snowdon or Helvellyn, and intersected by infre-
quent roads or " gaps" (as they are here called),
through which alone it is possible for armies to
penetrate. It will be obvious that upon the posses-
sion of these gaps depended the mastery of the situa-
tion as Gen. Lee's army edged off from Fredericks-
burg towards Winchester. If be had moved off pre-
maturely from Culpepper Court-house and seized
these gaps, Gen, Ewell's mission against the force
of General Milrov at Winchester would have been
frustrated, as General Milroy would have heard
that the whole army was moving, and would have
slipped off to Harper's Ferry. If after General
Ewell had struck his blow at Winchester General
Lee had been slow about seizing the gaps he might
have exposed himself and General Ewell to great
danger, it General Hooker had acted promptly, had
seized the gaps and interposed between Lee and