The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-27 00:00:00

COALS.—The LILLESHAL L COMPANY'S
COALS.
Direct from their own Collieries,
Marquis' 24s. per ton. I Double 20s. per ton.
Top 23a. „ Nut 5........ 18s. „
Deep ....215. „
Well screened and delivered within five miles of their De-
pots, Westbourne Park-road, IT., and 17, South Wharf,
Paddington, W., and Maiden-lane, N.
Best Coke
Terms cash.
JOHN SCOTT, Sole Agent.

111 HE THIRD EDITION OF " THE SUN,"
Containing the Latest SPORTING INTELLIGENCE,
Jan be had Every Evening of
G. GLhNIE, NEWS AGENT,
No. 4. Connaught-terrace, Hyde-park.

The Weather—Sun Office, May 27, 1864.

_ -
TIIERNIOMETER.
This day at Two o'clock 63
Barometer-29.92.
Wind—N.W.; moderate breeze, and fine.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Cris DAY.—Morning, 6h. In.—Aftemoon, 6h. 30m.
0-moratow.-Morning, 6h. 58m.—Afternoon, 7h. 20m.

ljg

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1864.

Every additional scrap of intelligence from that
blood-stained, corpse-littered, slaughter-ground,
the seat-of-war in Virginia, more and more clearly

realises to our apprehension the reality of the fact

which from the first was sufficiently apparent,

namely, that the advantages throughout have been
upon the aide of the Confederates. With all our at
first extorted, bat long since unstinted and earnest
admiration for the heroism of the South, and for the

consummate generalship of their illustrious Ccim-

mander-in-Chief General LEE—the one Great

Captain barn of the War—the marvel is that it

should still continue to be so. The wonder is that the

advantages should yet remain upon the side of the

Confederates. Remember, merely, the dispropor
Lion there still is—as there has been from the very

first—between the aggregate numerical strength of
the two contending Powers ! It il a struggle not

between equals, not between six and half-a-dozen.
The disproportion we are referring to is not as

of two to one. Whereas the Federals are
some 20,000,000, the Confederates are no more
than 6,000,000 ! Yet, still, within the can-

,ral States of what was once the Union—

;hat state of Virginia common to the cipitals alike

of the North and of the South, of the Confederate
Richmond and of the Federal Washington, great

armies led respectively by the foremost soldier

here of President ABRAHAM LINCOLN, there, of

President JEFFZRSON DAVIS, are still, after four
long and terrible years of civil conflict still con-

tending ! They are still—those main armies

of the North and of the South—still, after

four years, contending, and contending more

fiercely and more ferociously than ever, in

a portion of that Wood satavated State of
Virginia, situated behind the rival capitals—the
capitals of the North and of the South, Richmond
and Washington. Against the largest and the
most highly-disciplined army the North has

yet been able to bring together into the field,
the army of the South has, during this
present month, been holding its own manfully
during the chief part of a fortnight of almost

continuous fighting ! And that fighting more

disastrous and destructive of its kind—considering
first of all that it has been nearly, as one may say,
a hand-to-hand encounter, not with artillery and
long-distance rifles, but with sword, and pistol, and
bayonet, and considering, in the second place, that
it has been fightir g, persisted in by the belligerents

day after day almost uninterruptedly—fighting,
we say, more disastrous end more destructive than
we have any equivalent record of even in the
bloodiest pages of our European annals. In testi-

mony of our accuracy in assenting to which it is
only requisite, indeed, to recall to recollection the
feet that after three days continuous fighting during
these recent contests in Virginia, on one side alone,
namely, on the side of the Federate (according
to their own account) as many as 40,000
men were put hors de combat—the dead more
over vastly outnumbering the wounded in this
hideous aggregate of slaughter ! So piteous, so
merciless, so literally to the death and to despera-
tion have been these hand to hand combats between
North and Soutb, during this very month of May,
upon that afflicted soil of Virginia! And now, the
latest additional intelligence from these sanguinary
battle fields,the supplementary intelligence brought
to us this very afternoon by telegram, consequent
upon the arrival of the Scotia with accounts from
New York down to the morning of the 18th inst.
ine.usively—more than simply confirms our first,
our instant impression as to the successes being on
the side of the Confederates. Even the rumoured
retreat of General LEE from his new position, his
more than ever formidable position at Spottsylvania
Court House, appears never to have been thought of
for a moment by the Southern Commander-in-Chief
There, at Spottsyivania Court House, at these lines of
the transatlantic Torres Vedras of the Confederate
WELLINGTON, the Southern army maintained its
ground when these last advices left, The position
of LEE was not only at the Court-house, but north
of it. There, at Spottsylvania, after all their ten Mc
fighting, the opposing armies still, when the latest
news left,continued doggedly to confront each other.
Further military operations, it would seem, were
alone interrupted by the casualty of the heavy
rainfalls. But, satisfactory for the South, though
these tidings up to the 12th inst. inclusively, were,
from those heed-quarters of the belligerents north of
the Court House of Spottsylvania—from other parts
of the seat-of-war the accounts now brought to us
by the Scotia are wonderfully favourable for the
Confederates. From Drury's Bluff, for in-
stance, we learn that General Butler—
the infamous General BUTLER—had been, not
only attacked successfully by the Confederates, but
had been compelled to retire to his lines after con-
siderable Joss. From Newmarket, again, we hear
that the Federal General SIGEL had, with a loss of
five guns and of upwards of 600 men, been so un-
mistakably defeated, that he had been driven to
the necessity of retreating upon Strasburg,
by crossing the Shenandoah. As more than a
counterpoise to the tidings of General JOHNSTONE'S
retreat towards Atlanta, hotly pursued, as the
telegram intimates, by the Federate, there comes
a fregenent of additional information as to the d:s-
plight in which General BANKS still finds
puted
himself and the army entrusted to his guidance. A
mere portion of this army, we are hero apprised, has
been compelled to march overland to the Mississippi
river—to what end ? To that end that speaks (how
eloquently) of the momentous alternative of life or
death—of" fighting its way out !" Such are the very
last advices brought to us by steam and electricity
from the scenes of that cruelly protracted civil war
in America, that civil war of which it way be said
that—however much longer it may be protracted—
it can never, we may rest perfectly well satisfied,
result in the subjugation of the haughty
and heroic
spirit of the South even by the most stupendous
efforts that can be directed against the Confederates
by the gigantic but hitherto impotent weulth, and
Lumbers, and grimly desperation of the Federale.