The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—The details of the great battles in Ame•
rica are calculated rather to enhance than diminish
the sensation with which the first telegrams were
received. There has been no exaggeration, no over-
strained description of the conflicts or the carnage.
If, indeed, it be recollected that even the long,
reports of furious fighting which we yesterday pub-
lished still leave two days of sanguinary action
ana,,-sounted for, it must be allowed that war has
never tome berus in a shape so appalling.
ms:
Perhaps the Americans may uz.,:nroud of the pre-
..f',gght more
eminence; bat they have certainly
desperately, for a ldngcr time, and with
dreadful slaughter than any natiori before them, It
would not be impossible to match the results of any
one day's battle with stories from the wars of the
Old World ; but never, we should think, in the
history of man, were five such battles as these com-
pressed into six successive days. It is hard to con-
ceire how nature could have supported the ex-
haustion and the strain. We have been told that
after a single day's hard fighting the lassitude and
reaction in even a victorious army are such that
. .

any fresh force might snatch its laurels from it ;
whereas here are two armies hotly engaged in the
work of slaughter from the morning of Thursday
till the night of Tuesday with scarcely the inter-
mission of an hour. On every day except Saturday

__
there WdS a pitched battle, contested with the
utmost fary ; and even Saturday was devoted to
marching and fighting on the march. Nor were
these prodigious operations divided among
immense numbers brought into action by re-
lays. Neither army numbered apparently above
100,000 men, and of these every man seems
to have been engaged in every battle. Indeed,
we are expressly told that the Federal
" reserves" were brought up on the very first day,
The desperate ferocity of the fighting may be in-
ferred from the fact now reported that the slaughter
was produced without the aid of artillery. No rifled

guns or murderous shells did execuiion among

crowded masses. The great battle of Friday which
is said to have cost the Federals alone upwards of
10,000 men, was a hand-to-hand fight. The Con-
federates were posted in the well-known woods in
the vicinity of Cnancellorsville, where Hooker once
received so bloody a repulse, and so dense was the
thicket that cannon could not come into play.
Regiment against regiment, and man against man,
the combatants fired and hacked at each other
in this tangled wilderness till night closed in ; and

an intercepted report from General Lee actually
tells us that, on this side, the heaviest loss was i❑

men killed outright, and that he had comparatively
few wounded, If this be a correct version of the

despatch, it gives a more impressive idea of the fury
of the conflict than any other of the incidents tea
ported. It is clear, indeed, that whatever may be
said of the composition of the Northern armies, and
of their inferiority in this respect to the patriot
legions of the South, they have fought in this
campaign with a valour as obstinate as that of
their enemies. No mere indifferent or disaffected
mercenaries could have been led from a battle
like that at Wilderness to three more such battles
at Spottsylvenia. Be the impulse what it may
the Federals are fighting in stern reality, and with
a spirit as resolute as that of their adversaries.
Except that General Loe more than once sur-
prised the Federals with a sudden attack in mass,
and that his positions were always occupied with
admirable skill, there appears to have been little
display of strategy. On Thursday Lee attacked,
and with a result which at one moment looked
very like success. On Friday Grant attacked, and
Lee repulsed him. On Sunday and Monday Grant
attacked again with no better result ; on Tuesday
Lee appears to have been once more the assailant.
But in all these battles there was more fighting than
manceuvring, and more loss than result. Now that
the outlines of the earlier telegrams have been filled
up by detailed reports the contest appears even
more indecisive and the issue more obscure than
before. For the Confederates it may be said that
they have never actually lost a battle. On the first
day Lee only failed to inflict a complete defeat on
the advancing Federals. On the second day he him
self claimed the victory, and his enemies hardly
denied it. Oa the fourth and fifth days he repulsed
every attack, and heid his position ; while on the
sixth day he was strong enough and confident
enough to refuse his adversary the respite he de-
sired. As we are told, on the authority of Secretary
Stanton himself, that Grant did not design to renew
the attack on Tuesday, whereas we know that the
fighting on that day was the most desperate of all,
it follows that the battle must have been provoked
by Lee, so that as the curtain falls on this first act
of the dreadful drama the Confederates are assuming
the offensive, and compelling the Northern General
to fight against his will. For the Federals it may be
fairly claimed that if they have not won a battle
they have twice gained some of the results of victory.
Tney sustained the attack of the Confederates on
the first day so successfully that they themselves
were able to become the assailants the day after,
and if they failed to dislodge the enemy from
his position they saw him voluntarily retire from
it after the fight was done. They attacked him
again at Spottsylvania in his third position, and
against those lines and defences their whole force
has hitherto been hurled in vain. Yet, for all this,
Grant, though he cannot get on, has not been
compelled to fall back, and as he stands he is
actually twenty miles on the road to Richmond.
With valour and obstinacy so evenly balanced, it
/13,ev seem as if the issue would be decided by re-
sotircao and endurance. That, indeed, has always
been a fai,cirite belief among the Northern people ;
hut we sea few
.signs of such a result. One of the
Federal reports of he second day's battle says that
men cried to each other,
other such day, and we
in the Northern arm).
" The rebels can't endure a.:`
can." But the "rebels" did eisdeire two more such
days, and after enduring them fell again upon their
antagonists, and forced them to give mother battle.
Still the exhaustion on both sides must b terrible.
It is reasonable to conjecture that the Confederates,
receiving in position and behind defences the attacks
of the Federals, may have suffered less than their
enemies, bat they have, perhaps, fewer troops in
reserve. All we know, however, of this question
is that, notwithstanding the smaller population of
the Southern States, their armies have never yet
been found wanting in strength sufficient for the
occasion. Wherever a Federal force advanced,
whether in Virginia or in Texas, in Tennessee or in
Louiaiania, there a Confederate force equal to the
encounter has always been found. Atter all the
prophecies of Southern exhaustion this result has
invariably been experienced, and it is even more
te,selifest in this fourth year of the war than it was
in the first. We certainly do wonder how six
millions cm make such head against twenty mil-
lions, but the th;;:t7 has been done. We can no
more speculate on the " exhaustion" of the South
than on its submission or its repentance.
It is remarkable that in all the battles of this
Civil War the original estimate of tae losses suf-
fered by the contending armies has been at least
verified. It was supposed at first that the Trans-
atlantic propensity to exaggeration might have
magnified these ominous figures, but the state-
ments were invariably confirmed, and when, there-
fore, we are told on the present occasion that
Grant, who opened the campaign ou the morning of
the sth with 100,000 men, had lost 40,000 of this
number by the night of the 10th, we cannot alto■
gether refuse to believe the tale. We may, indeed,
ask ourselves what State or people could sus-
tain such warfare, but we have no right to discredit
the report. More directly, too, we may iquire in
what condition or with what forces he can expect
to appear before Richmond, even in the event of
his success, if this is the cost paid for the first two
stages of the journey. Yet we think it probable
that even the last furious onslaught of Lee on the
10th may not have deterred him from renewing the
attack on one of the following days. He has
stamped a new character on the tactics of the Fe-
derals. No other General would either have ad-
vanced upon Wilderness after the severe battle of
the sth, or followed up an almost victorious though
retiring enemy after the still harder fighting of the
6th. None but he, again, would have attacked his
adversary so resolutely on the Bth and 9th, or held
his ground so tenaciously in spite of fai:ure. Under
his command the Army of the Potomac has achieved
in invading Virginia an amount of success never
achieved before, except in repelling invasion. The
Confederate forces were once arrested by M'Clellan
and once by Meade, but that was when they thought
to carry war into Northern territory. Grant alone
has done more than this. He has advanced to-
wards Richmond. and though he has made but little
way, and has lost half his army, he has not been
driven back. Whether his position can be retained,
or his success improved, is a question which the
next mail will resolve for us.
HERALD.—Mr. Thomas Baring was somewhat
rash when he entered the list with Lord Robert
Cecil on the subject of the debate in the House of
Commons on the 13th inst. It cannot surprise any
one that he should have had the worst of the argu-
ment. He was so gently treated that he would, we
think, have done better if he had let it alone, and
allowed the question to drop. The recrimination
was so obvious, it was so ready on the lips of every
one who listened to Mr. Baring's attack on the
builders of the Georgia, it was put forward so
mildly, and by so polished an adversary, that the
edge of his weapon, though keen, was scarcely felt
to wound. It might seem to lookers•on that Mr.
Baring deserved rougher handling, that he might
been been more pressed than he was. Here was
a member of Parliament, standing up solemnly in
his place in the House of Commons, as a man called
upon to discharge himself of a public duty, to de.
flounce British merchants who, by supplying the

Confederate States with a ship of war, had in effect
violated the neutrality of the Queen, and serious Y
compromised the country in a struggle in which le
had professed to be strictly impartial. And all the
time it was notorious to those who heard him speak'
ing, it was known to every member of the house,
that the firm to which this very member of Parlia-
ment belonged had been engaged in supplying
munitions of war on a most enormous scale to the

Federal States, that they had taken a part in the
war by rendering what succour they could to the
opposite side. We have endeavoured to be neutral ill
this unhappy civil conflict. If the shipbuilders
who have sent out the Alabama and Georgia
have infringed this neutrality, so have the
the naval armaments have com-
mitted us to a nas
-chants who have sent rifles and cannon
to the ita7th*
If
-stile attitude towards the Federal
States, the land armee.:
ants have similarly involved
us with the Confederate Ste."es. It is absurd, on the
h e-
very face of it, that the known i :.,rtisans of one see'
tion of the Union should deliberately
frame articles
of indictment against those who are sussected oi.
befriending the opposite side. If the house of Be!Ing"
has a right to send shiploads of rifles to the Nortai
the builders on the Mersey, the Tyne, or the Clyde'
have just as much right to send armed vessels tc!
the South. If it be objected that the supply of
arms to a belligerent is no infraction of international
law, it may be answered that the furnishing them
with armed ships is just as much in accordance wit3l
the law of nations. It is our own municipal law the".
is in question, our Foreign Enlistment Act, supple'
mented by the Queen's proclamation of neutrality.
Lord R. Cecil asked the house to consider the feel-
ings with which the Confederates must regard the
enormous reinforcements which have been conveyed
to the North by the English people through the,
hands of Messrs. Baring and Co., in violation. of
her Majesty's proclamation of neutrality. Mr. Baru);
was absent when the charge was made, and writes
next day to ask for an explanation of it, and a dig'
tinct reference to the terms of the proclamation re'
ferred to. Lord R. Cecil, in reply, quotes the pre'
clamation of May 13, 1861, which forbids the (157
rying of " officers, soldiers, dispatches, arms, mili-
tary stores, or materials, or any article or articles
considered and deemed to be contraband
of war, according to the law or modern usage
of nations, for the use or service of either usf
the said contending parties." All persons ea
offending are to be liable to certain penalties and
penal consequences. Lord R. Cecil also quotes the
uncontradicted statement of Mr. Laird in the Hong
of Commons on the 27th March, 1863. Mr Laird,
on reference to the bills of entry in the custora
houses of London and Liverpool, found that there
had been " vast shipments of implements of war to
the Northern States." Among those who were en-
gaged in these transactions was " the celebrate°,
house of Baring and Co." Lord Robert presumes
that the word " carrying" in the Queen's proclarns'
tion applies to those who employ others to carry Or
abet them in carrying. Whether or no this inter-
pretation will hold in strict law we cannot pretera
to say, and it is really but of small importance. A-
condiment that is good for one bird is suited fer
another had of the opposite sex. If the Messrs.
Baring did not absolutely " carry" the rifles to the
North, neither did the builders of the Alabama 87).4
Georgia carry their ships to the South or to their
Southern owners. And yet Mr Baring attempts to
escape on this quibble. " Shipping documents," be
says, " were furnished to us to give effect to the
credit lodged in favour of the parties furnislaill
these supplies, and to see that they were propel'
forwarded to their destination." The Messrs'
Baring, then, did not carry these munitions of vor'
all they did was to see that the rifles and guns seers
"properly forwarded." We confess that the dis'
tinction is too nice for our obtuse intellects. If it isf
urged that certain things are done as a mere part 0,
the ordinary routine of business we can understah:;
the argument if we do not admit the excuse. .1
might better [serve as an apology for those ehlr
building firms whose sympathies were not otherwlss
enlisted on either side, than for the bankers vsbo6e:
credit is said to be extensively pledged to the suer:;
of the Northern cause in the American quarrel. 1:
we admit the cogency of Mr. Baring's argument s'
to legality, it leaves him at the same time without
a
a case against the builders of the Alabama, tt.r
ila
Georgia, the Alexandra, or the steam rams. 'fP
most that he can urge is, what must be allowed I°..
them, that, if violating the spirit, he has kept withl.
the letter of the law. The costly prosecutions 1130
stituted by the Government have proved futile; tvra
of the bones of contention have now been purchase,
by the Admiralty, and added to the British flee!:
The steam rams of the Messrs. Laird are said toh,:
masterpieces of the art of naval construction,
11.0
trust that some day they will do as good serviee.lb
the cause of Great Britain as their iron sisters whicd
our friends across the Atlantic have built, St.,
launched, and carried so bravely into action svit"e
out the assistance of European sympathisers. 0%.
ram at Newbern has engaged and put to rout
whole fleet of Federal gunboats. No ship that Icret
could have sent them could have done more the
this. We applaud the Confederates for taking their
own part so well. Re are precluded from heleig
them ; we go on supplying the North, for the North
has powerful friends, if few in number. The frisnde
of the South may, perhaps, take comfort in
~t,l!,
thought thet, as the sequel of the late battles in vl,'•
ginia, some batteries of artiliery, and some thousa9u.,
of well made small arms of precision, have ere 01;
changed hands, and are doing good service on tl3;.
side which is not so happy as to bask in the Butt
shine of the favour of the Messrs. Baring.