The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-20 00:00:00

move. At last, on June the 16th, the main body of
his army broke up from Culpepper Court-house, and
cn the 18th commenced that abnormal and extra-
ordinary spell of wet weather which followed him
into Pennsylvania, and never deserted him until he
had got back to the neighbourhood 01 Winchester.
It is my belief that the influence upon the result of
the Pennsylvania campaign of the inclement season
which converted June and July into February and
March was such as no pen can estimate. Moreover,
if it be conceded that campaigns are influenced by
such a thing as luck, I should say that fortune
turned against the Confederates from the moment
that they left the Potomac behind them. The
unwarrantable elation which resulted from the
easy and premature victory of the Ist of
July, the unfortunate absence of Gen. Stuart and
his cavalry, who took a wrong road between Wash-
ington and Gettysburg and lost 48 hours on the
march, and the consequent ignorance of Gen. Lee
as to the numbers and movements of his foe, the
impossibility of reconnoitring the admirable posi-
tion into which Gen. Meade without any design or
forethought of his own, was driven, and finally the
mistake of delivering the main Confederate attack
on the right instead of in the centre, where the
ground was vastly easier of access, turned the scale
against the Confederates, and forced upon the
proudest army morally which they have ever assem-
bled upon any field the inglorious necessity of re.
treat Irons before an enemy far too shattered and
demoralised to pursue. The loss of both armies,
considering the numbers that fought, was certainly
unparalleled in the annals of this war, amounting, I
shrewdly suspect, to two-fifths in killed, wounded,
and missing on either side. Of all the struggles
which I have yet witnessed Gettysburg was, in my
judgment, par excellence, the soldiers' fight; nor
should I omit to pay my humble tribute of praise
to the gallantry and endurance with which the
Federals fought.
The military operations which preceded the re-
treat of Gen. Pemberton's army into the fastness
of Vicksburg are still the subject of such angry
and heated discussion that I can give nothing but
my own general impression of the truth. Twice in
this war ou the Confederate side, and once on the
Federal, have I been cognisant of battles which
were lost before the first shot was fired, or, in other
words, which were contested on one side by
armies so devoid of faith in their respective
generals as to make their defeat a moral certainty.
The second battle of Manassas was lost by General
Pope's soldiers, stimulated as they were to addi-
tional distrust in their general by the manifest
disaffection towards him of General Fitzjohn
Porter and others before a cannon-shot was fired
upon either side. Ia the battle of Baker's Creek,
on the 11th of June, the antipathy of the Confede-
rate soldiers towards General Pemberton, added to
the scarcely concealed aversion entertained for him
by General Loring, occasioned his headlong defeat
by General Grant, and led to the further disastrous
battle of Big Black River, where General Pember-
ton was again defeated with the loss of all his field
artillery, and driven pell-mell into Vicksburg. In
the battle of Missionary Ridge, on the 25th of
November,the Confederates occupied lines as strong
as the Federal position at Gettysburg, and stronger
than the Confederate position at Fredericksburg.
They were driven from them with disgraceful faci-
lity solely because of the deterioration of their
morale consequent upon their distrust in General
Bragg. Reverting to Vicksburg, due credit should
be given to General Grant for the promptitude and
alacrity with which he followed Gen. Pemberton's
shattered army and hemmed them into the famous
late) laiuff city. Frem that moment the fate of
Vicksburg was sealed. It is idle to pretend that
General Johnston could ever have raised the siege
in such a country as hedges in the rear of Vicks-
burg, but I cannot help thinking that he might
have fallen upon General Banks and raised the
siege of Port Hudson, or that he might have struck
northwards and seized the bank of the Mississippi,
and, acting in concert with General Bragg (then
lying at Tullahoma), have materially interfered
with General Grant's communications down the
mighty river, It is impossible to deny that, be the
cline what it may, General Grant found in the
Confederate Generals opposed to him near Vicksburg
great lack of energy and harmony, and that among
them was found no match for the Federal comman-
der in quickness, persistence, and audacity.
Then followed the natural exhaustion consequent
upon the strenuous and protracted exertions of both
parties, and promoted by the intensity of the heat
of August and the commencement of September. It
soon became evident that Gen. Meade had little
stomach for a fight in which he would be the assail-
ant, and Gen. Leo the recipient of the attack ; nor
did it require much time to prove that the fall of
Port Hudson and Vicksburg would prove an un-
fruitful triumph to the Federals. If prudence per-
mitted, I might tell of guerilla organisations on
both banks of the Mississippi, from which no craft
upon the stream fails to receive passing salutations,
and of incendiary stratagems which have already
wrought havoc whenever they have been essayed,
and which will infallibly be fatal to the 20 addi-
tional steamers which the Federals have recently
and recklessly purchased at Cincinnati. It was at
this moment that the eyes of all men turned natu-
rally to the West and fastened upon Rosencrans
and Bragg as representatives and champions of the
two armies which had thus far in 1863 borne none
of the heat and burden of the day. Then was illus-
trated the effect upon operations in the field of an
element which to so remarkable a degree has never
made itself felt in the conduct of former wars. Ten
years ago the functions of a journal in time of war
did not extend beyond a dry record of past transac-
tions and a retrospective sketch of the march of
military movements ; but recently the presence, in
connexion with English armies in the field, of a new
order of chroniclers has wafted the roar of battle
home to the ears of their countrymen, and brought
contemporaneous public opinion to bear upon grave
questions of war and policy while the issue is still
in suspense. It is reserved for this great civil
contest in press-ridden America to exhibit two
sections of the same nation engaged in fratricidal
strife, lashed by the fervid utterances of a pungent
newspaper press served up hot and hot, speaking
the same tongac, and admitted to a knowledge of the
inmost heart and much of the secret policy of their
opponents by the constant and rapid interchange of
journals across the Border. Never during this war
have I observed the influence on both sections of
the newspaper press so markedly exercised as at the
moment which I am attempting to describe. It was
reasonable tl- at the Federal rejoicing over Vicks-
burg and Port Hudson captured and Gettysburg
won should find loud expression in journals natu-
rally given to extravagant boasting ; but it was not
reasonable that a Federal General should be goaded
into activity and induced to undertake deeply
hazardous movements by mendacious newspaper
representations that the army of his antagonist was
a disorganised mob. And yet there is every reason
to think that the same influence which drove
General Rosencrans forward, and led him to divide
his forces in front of an united enemy, brought him
safely off from his rash experiment. As I have re-
marked in a previous letter, General Bragg had
been so constantly taught by Western Federal
journals to regard his army as little better than a
spiritless mob without solidarity or cohesion that
he and his Generals were insensibly led to yied
partial credence to their enemy's statements. In no
other way can I explain the escape before the battle
of Chicarnauga of the Federal General Thomas
from the Confederate Generals llindman and
Cleburne, and of the Federal General Crittenden
from the Confederate General Polk, than by believ-
ing thatßragg's extravagant estimate of Rosencrans'
ability had affected his subordinates, and induced
Hindman and Polk to disobey their superior's
positive commands. As it was, Thomas end Crit-
tenden escaped by the skin of their teeth, and
General Rosencrans, taking timely alarm, showed
marked ability in rapidly concentration.' his
army before the Battle of Chicarnauga •
but before the preliminary action of the 19th Sep-
tember a new element was annexed to the army of
General Bragg in the person of General Hood,
scarcely recovered from his Gettysburg wound, who,
with arm in sling, handled his gallant division to
perfection, and secured a success which produced in
no slight degree the more decisive triumph of the