The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-23 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
RICHMOND, Dec. 21, 1863.
It is a singular commentary upon the brilliant
engineering capacity of Gen. Gilmore, of which so
aouch has been said in Northern journals, that after
one of the costliest sieges on record, and after the
loss of hundreds of lives, and the expenditure of
mountains of projectiles, he has attained no result
greater than was within his reach so far back as
June, 1862. It will appear hardly credible that
before the battle of Secessionville it was competent
for the Federals to establish batteries as near to
the heart of the city of Charleston as is the situa-
tion of their present batteries on Morris Island at
Cumming's Point. It should be understood by
your readers that there is on James's Island, near
the Stono River, to the west of Secessionville, a
church, which lies a distance of precisely four and
a half miles from S. Michael's Church, in the
centre of Charleston. This church was occupied
by the Federals before the battle of Secessionville
in June of last year. It was again occupied by them
before their attack upon Battery Wagner on the
10th of July of the current year. Upon the 16th
of last July the Confederates attacked the
Federal garrison which held the church in question,
and, inasmuch as . the garrison consisted almost
entirely of black troops, little difficulty was ex-
perienced by the Confederates in recovering the
position. At the same moment Gilmore's main
force was doing desperate fighting and cannonad-
ing, which resulted at the end of 58 days in land-
ing him at a point equidistant from Charleston
with that which he had evacuated almost without
a struggle on Jaly 16, 1863. It will readily
be believed that since July the Confederates
have not been idle in providing against the danger
of this point falling again into Federal hands. I
am assured that the science of defensive military
engineering has been exhausted in securing James
and Sullivan's Islands from the possibility of suc-
cessful attack. There is, I have little reason to
doubt, but one possible avenue bywhich the Federals
can indulge the venom of the Atlantic Monthly, so
often shed and projected against Charleston, and
enable the writers in its pages to sow the ruins of
that hated city with salt. It will be by landing
LO,OOO men on the South Carolina coast, by seizing
upon the Charleston and Savannah Railroad and
advancing along it upon the former city. It may
be imagined, before such an attempt can be success-
ful, what an amount of labour, time, and money it
evill exact. Any other Government on earth, save
that which has attempted to canalise the Missis-
sippi, and to secure its free navigation by supplying
fresh steamers upon its waters quicker than they
can be burnt by the enemy, would be aghast at the
stupendous magnitude of such a task as supplying
the requisite transport for this enterprise, and estab-
lishing the necessary supply depots at Hilton Head
and Port Royal. Vengeance is doubtless as sweet
to Boston as to any other city on earth, but gene-
rations yet unborn will wince under their expe-
rience of the burden laid on their shoulders by such
men as Mr. Everitt. It needs but the folly of a
few additional enterprises like the attempted cap-
ture of Charleston by land to make the burden
heavier than future generations can bear.
It seems to me that whenever and if ever reason-
ableness and sobriety resume their sway in Boston
and New York, the siege of Charleston, as con-
dacted by the Federals, will be looked on as one of
the most stupendous follies ever witnessed upon
earth. In order to attain to such a success as is in-
volved in the ability to throw Greek fire into
Charleston from a distance of four miles and a half,
and in order to stop a great port of entry for blockade
runners, a sum of money has been lavished which
would purchase the whole State of South Carolina.
It is probably known in Eugland long before this
time that the Greek fire is not more formidable than
a child's Christmas crackers ; it wilt probably be
known hereafter that Charleston, as a port of entry
for blockade-running vessels, will do as much busi-
ness in 1864 as she did in 1862. Bat, putting spite,
venom, and vengeance out of the question, 1 believe
that never upon earth was an enterprise undertaken
in which the object sought possessei a value so dis-
proportionate to the price which it exacted for its
attainment. The payment of this price by the Fede-
rals, unrewarded though it has hitherto been by any
encouraging success, is the measure, net of the value
which they attach to the possession of the city of
Charleston in ruins, but of the grudge which ever
since the days of Andrew Jackson the Northern
States, and pre-eminentiy New England, have
nursed and cherished against the home of" nullifi-
cation," the cradle of Secession.
Again I feel tempted to raise a warning voice about
the disparity of the armament on board of the English
and American navies. It is impossible for those who
have been many months absent from England to be
well informed us to the actual state of public opinion
at the present moment upon this vital subject. But,
judging from the officers of her Majesty's navy who
have at rare intervals brought vessels of war into
Confederate ports, it appears still to be held that
the 68-pounders or 8-inch smooth bore is England's
best weapon of offence against iron-clad vessels.
The experience gained at Charleston enables me
confidently to affirm that as well might you pelt one
of the Yankee Monitors or Ironsides with peas as
expect them to be in any way damaged by 8-inch
shot. Another disagreeable question forces itself
upon an Englishman's attention when he is cogni-
rant of the terrific broadside thrown by the eight
11-inch guns of the Ironsides—one of the most
formidable broadsides, in the opinion of the de-
fenders of Charleston, which has ever been thrown
by any vessel upon earth. Have we any ship in
existence which could successfully resist such a
broadside, and respond to it with anything like
commensurate weight and vigour? I should be
faithless to my duty if I did not mention that it is
the universal opinion of all the English officers
serving in the Confederate army with whom I have
conversed that England is behind America in the
weight and power of the guns sent by both nations
to sea. It is still a matter of the greatest surprise
to those who are cognisant of the endless experi-
menta in guns and projectiles which are every day
made by the Federal and Confederate States that
England has not thought it worth her while to
attach to the armies of both nations such a commis-
sion as APClellan had in the Crimean War, with a
view to their gaining such scientific information
with regard to ordnance and projectiles as at this
moment can be gained nowhere else on earth. It
is my conviction that from both sections such com-
missioners would receive nothing but courteous and
unreserved information upon all that it imported
them to know. It is scarcely creditable to our
Government that they should be blind to the oppor-
tunities for gaining information which this gigantic
conflict affords, or that from Old -World pride they
should refuse to avail themselves of the experience
to be derived. fret? a continent destined henceforth
and evermore to play no secondary part in the
drama of the world.
It is my intention in my next letter to give full
details of my recent visit to the Libby Prison and
Belle Isle, In the meantime, I will content myself
with stating that, in my belief, prisoners of war
have seldom been more tenderly treated than are
the 1,040 Federal officers now held captive in the
Libby. There was at one moment a great deficiency
of the Commissary-General's stores at Richmond,
occasioned by temporary causes, and of not mor
than your days' duration. During these four days
the prisoners experienced what has again and again
been endured unmurmurir'erly by Confederate sol-
diers in the field, and wereobligtd to live entirely
upon farinaceous food. Loud as have been tho out-
cries in Yankeedom about their starving prisoners,
there has been no less uproar in the Confederate
Congress against Commissary-General Northrup, by
reason of the deprivation of meat which,during;
these four days, he inflicted ?pan the prisoners.
Mr. Foote, the Thersites of the Southern Congress,
has made the rafters ring with his dennneiations of
President Paris, who is ureleretood to be a friend
of Mr. Northrup, and wh) for divers reasons is
especially obnoxious to Mr. Foote. It will not, in
my opinioe, be possible for the New York journals
to awaken a fresh burst of European indignation by
factitious representations of miseries which have
no existence in fact. That the condition of a pri-
soner of war is at best triste and unenviable need