The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-09 00:00:00

THE BOUT HERN CONFEDERATION.

(From the limes' Special Correspondent)
CONFEDERATE CAMP, NEAR PETERS-
BURG, VIRGINIA, Aug. 5.
It se ems to me impossible that this present month
can end without witnessing great shifting of the
pieces rpon the chessboard of war in Virginia.
Your resiclers cannot fail to have perceived that the
army which nominally menaces Richmond from
beyond P' etersbarg is virtually besieged rather than
besieging, and is not only harmless, but actually
pent up by General Lee within one of the most pes-
tilential swamps which anywhere poisons the au-
tumnal breeze upon the southern bank of the James
River. It has long been a farce to pretend that
" On to Richmond". was any longer the cry of the
once arrogant but now emasculated host, welch has
been reduced from fifties to tens of thousands by
the savage and self-exhausting impulse imparted
to this campaign in the month of May by General
Grant. It is indisputable that the Federals long
ago discovered the hopelessness of getting into
either Richmond or Petersburg above ground along
the southern bank of the James River. It became
necessary, therefore, to fan the sinking embers of
hope and excite the ready credulity of the benighted
Northern public by mysterious promises in their
journals that " a great Napoleonic device —a start•
hog and paralysing development" was in conteme
plation by General Grant ; and for several weeks
past the key to this mystery has been in General
Lee's possession by his knowledge of the fact that
extensive mining operations against portions of his
eorthworks had been commenced and were in active
progress. Unable to prevail by an advance above
ground, General Grant repeated the policy which
had reduced Vicksburg 12 months ago, and betook
himself to burrowing.
Your readers will have learnt long before the ar-
rival of this letter that lien. Grant's secret eclatait
on the 30th ult., when his first mine eiploded under
the salient of the earthworks held by the Confede-
rate division of Gen. Hoke. It cannot be denied
that the engineers of Gen. Lee's army were at fault
in their calculations as to the rapidity with which
the Federal tunnel was being carried forward. It
was believed that the mine, the approach of which
at this particular point was as well known to Gen.
2.ee as to Gen. Grant, would not be completed for a
w eek or 10 days. Counter preparations were in
pr ogress, but had not attained a sufficiently ad-
vat‘ced stage to effect their purpose of intercepting
the' burrowers. The Federals deserve credit for the
awifi'ness and silence of their subterranean opera-
tions. Much is said in Northern journals about the
short-1. andled pickaxes necessary for working in a
tunnel little more than four feet high. It is
here believed that the great silence of the miners,
as they wormed their way under Pegram's bat-
tery and baffled the vigilant ears in the Confede-
rate listening galleries, was obtained by their entire
abandonment in the advanced portion of their work
of the pick, and their employment of what are called
in the Western prairies " post-thole angres," or cir-
cular hand-borers, by which the earth is perforated
screw fashion, with a view to the sinking of posts.
Ey means of these noiseless angres, driven horizon-
tally instead of (as when they are employed above
ground) vertically the tunnel crept forward, and
the charge of powder was deposited at a depth
of about 22 feet beneath the soles of the
unconscious rebels. Then followed, with the
earliest dawn of Saturday last, the explosion
which was to have struck terror to the heart of
rebeldom. And here, for the hundredth time since
the date of my first letter from Secessia, I must
disabuse the English public of the impression which,
if they have read the letters in the New York journals
they have been likely to form about the shock of
the explosion. It might be imagined, were credit
given to these sensational narrators, that the crust
of the soil was rent as by a volcano, that Grant had
pressed an earthquake into his service, and that a
rumbling roar, such as shook Lisbon to its founda-
tions in 175,5, was heard for miles around. Nothing
of the kind was actually experienced. At General
Lee's head-quarters, not more than two miles from
the explosion, the report was hardly, if at all,
audible. Out of the four guns which composed the
battery in the salient two were blown into the air.
it is not believed that more than from 20 to 30 Con-
federates were uplifted by the hot breath of the
mine sprung beneath their feet. It is the universal
opinion of experienced Confederate officers that
really steady troops would not have been shaken
out of a work which was only injured to the extent
of blowing up two guns and some 25 men. No
breach was made in the integrity of the outer line
of earthworks by the explosion, which took effect
within the enceinte of the salient. If the gunners
of the two remaining pieces had stood firmly to
their work and poured grape and canister into the
advancing masses of Federals, and if they had been
supported by the Confederate infantry just behind
the salient, it is probable that no lodgment would
ever have been effected by Grant within the Con-
federate lines. As it was, the defenders of the
salient, being a portion of one of the least steady
Confederate brigades, were Staggered by the suds
denness and novelty of the explosion, and re-
coiled before the swiftly advancing columns of
the 9th Federal corps. The crater of the mine,
being about 120 ft. in length and 75ft. in width,
belched forth dark curls of smoke, and yawned
grimly, as though conscious of the bloody mass of
humanity which was shortly to be discharged into
and swallowed up within its ragged and sulphurous
cavity.
Again, let me correct an error which has found
credence even among thoughtless readers in Rich-
mond. It is stated that the Federal negro troops,
as they were carried into the Confederate works by
the dense mass of white associates which environed
them, shouted fiercely " No quarter !" " Remember
Fort Pillow !" and other similar battle cries. In a
community like this, where negro nature is well
knownalann, and understood, it is strange that such a tale
Ks have obtained a moment's credence. I do
not believe thattd such terrified wretches were ever
lured onward
str uction as the miserable negroes
who are starved
in to
the Federal ranks, and who
are still believed by many excellent persons in Eng-
land likely to
gain a liberty, which they can neither
improve nor understand
blessed legacy derived
from all the bloodshed and a
negro
could lniaer3' of this war. To
"
conceive that the
cherish such vindic-
tiveness as to remember Fort Pillow's is to assume
that ha possesses the courage and
will
not B
share the emotions
of the Anglo-Saxon, I
ayf
more at this
moment than that it is impossible
for those who
have watched this American War closely
beginning to come to any other conclusion from
thatinfromthe
it will in the end reveal the hollowness and
cerity of Northern negro philanthropy by exhibiti-
nge
to the world what manner of soldiers Mrs. Stowe
and her coadjutors have made out of the Africans ,
and, secondly, by exhibiting what must be the nu.
ture of the slavery against which neither impunity,
nor opportunity, nor temptation, nor cupidity, nor
three and a half years of war's disturbing influences,
have sufficed to make 4,000,000 of slaves attempt_to
rebel.
It is hardly necessary to state :that the " no
quarter"
of the Federal negro was inaudible to the
Confederate officers who stood nearest to them. The
explosion of the mine took place before 5 o'clock in
the morning, and, within a quarter of an h our of
its occurrence, the salient Was occupied by from
12,000 to 15,000 Federal troops. Bat from that
moment forward until the work was regained by the
Confederates, about 2 o'clock, General Grant found
himself unable to reinforce his troops. Such was the
fire of the Confederate artillery issuing from the
lines leading up to the captured salient that it
swept away every formation of men which emerged
from the Federal earthworks. The body of Fede-
rals, had they been suffered to remain until night,
would undoubtedly have been largely reinforced
above ground or below by the following morning
But at ;bout 2 o'clock, General 149 P, after one :ling-.
successful attack Opca the aggressors ebunt noon,
ordered Mahone to rn•lks short work with them.
There are few names more deserving of European.
notice than that of Mahone. He is, as an executive
offleer, eonepicuonsly the hero of the Campaign in
Virginia of 1364. Advancing along the line oh
earthworks which led tip to the ,Federal
rink
Mahone flung a brigade of Alabamians upon them,
and the struggle wad alrneet instantly at an end. At