The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-15 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(From the Times' Special Correspondent.)

WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA, Sept. 22.
I have rarely essayed to lift the curtain of the
future, or to venture upon prophecies in regard to
this mighty and inscrutable conclusion, which
laughing philosophers like Mr Seward pronounced
a 90 days' enzeute, which many a Southerner, be.
lieving in the kingship of cotton, regarded as a
struggle in which, before six months had flown,
the principals would be England and the Northern
States, but which may now be unhesitatingly de-
scribed as the most momentous incident of the
nineteenth century. But it needs no prophet at
this moment to announce that it is impossible the
next six months can pass without entirely altering
the aspect of the war and the attitude of the weary
and exhausted combatants. There is universally a
sense of the critical and compromising nature of the
circumstances which surround both Governments
such as I have never witnessed before. The spring
of 1865 will have seen either the abandonment by
Mr Lincoln of his impossible undertaking, or the
capture of Petersburg, if not of Richmond, by Gen.
Grant, and the assumption of a new attitude by the
Southerners in the resistance which for generations
to come they will never cease to offer, rather than
be trodden down under a heel such as has recently
crushed the life out of Poland.
It is probable that the onward march of Sherman
into Georgia will be arrested at Atlanta. In several
of my previous letters (many of which I have reason
to believe have recently been unsuccessful in
piercing the blockade with safety) I have pointed
out the embarrassments with which Sherman was
beset when undertaking by far the most hazardous
enterprise yet attempted by the Federals in this
war. It would be gross injustice to deny to Sher-
man the credit which his success in
.capturing
Atlanta deserves—a success which is largely due
to his personal attributes, or, as they are phrased by
Northern newspaper correspondent, (between whom
and Sheridan there is much such harmony as exists
between lambs and wolves), his" eccentricities." To
have conducted a campaign from a base distant 300
miles away from Atlanta, the object of his operations
I refer to Nashville in Central Tennessee—to have
kept open for six months his communication along
this entire distance upon a single line of railway,
crossing several great rivers and numberless creeks,
and traversing a country every foot of which is in-
habited by a hostile population—to have dispensed
with all such assistance as is contributed to Grant
by the Potomac and James rivers, and to have
finally prevailed in the proximate object of the cam-
paign—that is to say, in the capture of Atlanta, is
no mean achievement. Nor is the fall credit to
which Sherman is entitled less freely accorded to
him in Richmond than in Washington, whatever

may be the opinions entertained in the former city
as to the fiendish inhumanity of several of his let.
ters and public utterances. It is difficult to conceive
how a believer is the Republican axiom that Go.
vernments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed can reconcile to its conscience such
moasuree as Gen. Sherman has not scrupled to adopt
towards the helpless non-combatants who ha\ e
fallen into his hands.
Bat, in according to Sherman the praise which is
justly his due as an able and tenacious General, it
must not be forgotten that there is all the difference
in the world between Georgia and Virginia. In the
latter State it has never been possible for the Fade•
rals to keep open even 49 miles of railroad with a
view of supplying their army along it. If it be
practicable for Sherman to keep open a line of
railroad from Nashville to Atlanta, why has it never
been possible for or any of his successors
to keep open a line from Washington to Richmond,
which are divided from each other by only 120 miles ?
The distance from Acqua Creek, on the Potomac, to
Richmond, via Fredericksburg, is little mere than
60 miles, with a line of railroad already in existence
at the commencement of the war, as was the case
between Nashville and Atlanta. And yet the Fe-
derals have never been able to avail themselves of
any portion of this railroad, with the exception of
the ten miles between Ac qua Creek end Fredericks-
burg. The inference is irresistible that the Georgians
and Virginians are made of different stuff. I am not
blind to the fact that the far sparser population of
Tennessee and Northern Georgia than of Virginia is
an element highly favourable to Sherman: But I
have long been of opinion that of the two great
armies of the Federals, their Weslern army is come
posed of much finer material than their Eastern,
whereas the Confederates under General Lee have
alweye been vastly superior to those in the,West who
'nave successively obeyed Sydney Johnson, Beaure-
gard, Bragg, Joseph E. Johnson, and Hood. General
Grant finds it almost impossible to keep up tele-
graphic lines between Petersburg and Norfolk, and
has been betrayed into impetuous outbursts of me-
nace against the residents in those counties of Vir-
ginia which are situated along the Southern bank
of the James River between City point and Norfolk,
because certain of General Lee's scouts have inter-
fered with the telegraph wires. It is obvious that
Grant might as well threaten and storm, because
General Hampton and the Confederate cavalry have
recently picked up 2,500 head of cattle behind the
Federal lines—but the wrath of the Federal General
against the inhabitants of Surrey and Nansemond
counties indicates of what stuff are the men by
which these counties are peopled. Refuges, ejected
from their homes in Northern Georgia, and turned
adrift in a desolate and uninhabited region, have not
the resources which await outcasts in a more densely
peopled territory, like Virginia, and are, therefore,
more easily terrified by a Sherman into passive ac-
quiesence in the presence of a hated foe. But, in
addition to this, there is beyond question a stubborn-
ness in the temper of men, women, and children in
Virginia which they aro proud to attribute to the
fact that good English blood runs undefiled in their
veins to an extent unknown in any other State of
the old Union. When the census of 1850 was taken
it was found that out of a population in Virginia
rather exceeding one million there were only 20,000
persons who had not been born within the State,
The spirited and lofty endurance of the Old Domi-
nion throughout this war is a fact of which Eng,'
land might justly claim to be as proud as she was
of the unshrinking vigour with which her sons and
daughters confronted the mutiny in Hindostan, and
triumphed over dangers and against odds which
have never been paralleled.
It is possible many of your readers, taking their
impressions from Mr Seward's recent speech at
Auburn and from the tone of the Northern journals,
may believe that Grant's army is growing from day
to day and from week to week, while Lee is suffering
from disease, desertion, and depression to the extent
represented in the same veracious chronicles. lam
in a position to throw some light upon this subject,
and I may here remark that the extent of informa-
tion possessed by Gen. Lee as to the movements
and numbers of the enemy (and, as I doubt not,
possessed also by Gen. Grant on the same subject)
is probably unexampled since armies faced each
other in the field. This may probably be attributable
to the fact that no such war between men speaking
the same tongue has been witnessed ; and also to
the light imparted to the Governments and
generals upon either side by the journals issuing
daily from Richmond and New York, and inter-
changed almost before the ink with which they are
printed is dry. There is not a transport or war
vessel which goes up or down the James River
whose name, armament, tonnage, cargo, and (if she
carries troops) number otpassengers are not approxi.
mately known to General Lee. It is not necessary
that I should state more than that Grant had last
week five army corps in front of Lee. It is a
liberal computation to estimate each of these corps
at 10.000 men. If Lee regarded his troops as Grant
views his army, and were disposed to sacrifice them
evith analogous callousnes4, I do not hesitate to
concur in the oninioi of most of Lee's inferior
officers that Grant would have been in full retreat
before the Ist of October. The Weldon railroad,
now held with loud 1, roans of self-laudation by
Warren's F,sderals, could, in General Beauregard's
judgment, be regained with a loss of at most 1,500
Confederates. But it is felt while the end of this war,
or Southern independence, is being slowly reached
by the gradual inertness of resistance which bars the
door to Richmond, it is little less than murder to
throw troops against intrencbments which it will