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

wo miles and a half of Chattanooga. Ever since the

capture by General Hooker of Racoon Mountain, the

Federals have had to waggon their supplies over
two and a half miles of road, whereas Bragg's sup-

plies have had from seven to nine miles to traverse,
and roads which for badness were nevar surpassed
on earth. After he sent Longstreet off to Knoxville,
and still more when he sent 'two divisions of his

army away to support and reinforce Longstreet, it
was surely the height of rashness to hold the lines

'rom Lookout Mountain on the extreme left to Chica-

mauga Creek on the extreme right, which had so
long been held by nearly 70,000 Confederates, with

a force of not more than 35,000 bayonets. The ex-
treme length and weakness of General Bragg's line
when it was attacked by Grant on the 23d, 24th,
and 25th inst., explains the fact which presents the

only serious feature for the Confederates in con-
nexion with the recent successes of the Federals

before Chattanooga—the fact that for the first time
in this war the Confederates, when behind breast-
works and acting on the defensive, have been driven
out and grievously discomfited by their opponents.
The week which ends this day has been the period
of most restless and feverish anxiety to which,
during the last 14 months, the Confederate States
and their umbilicus, the city of Richmond, have ever
been subjected. It is known and felt that if winter
checks the war without great strides having been
made by the Federals, it is idle to talk of the

Washington Cabinet being able to get such an army
into the field next spring as will have the remotest
chance of prevailing against Southern resistance.
With eyes of irrepressible anxiety the telegrams
from Bragg and from Lee have been scanned, and
to-morrow, for the fiftieth time, we are told that the
week is to commence which will be the supreme

crisis of the Confederacy. No thoughtful or im-
partial reader in England will for a moment be
taken in by such like assertions. If it be possible
that the armies of Lee and Bragg can be driven
from the open field, and that Atlanta and Richmond
should fall into Federal hands, the first stage of the
war will merely be completed. President Lincoln

will End himself face to face with nine or ten

Polands. The military problem now fiercely ds-
bated between the two sections would yield to the
political, which none can pretend to deny presents
features of vastly deeper gravity and ever-increasing
difficulty of solution.

Before these words have been read by the English
public the history of the momentous week which
will extend from the 29th of November to the 6th
of December will be, to Englishmen, like a tale
that is told. The correspondent situated as lam is
under the disadvantage of feeling that his prophe-
cies about coming events will not even for a mo-
ment enlighten the public mind which he is address-
ing, and enable it by anticipation to judge more
correctly of the shadows which those coming events
are wont to cast. Prophecy end event will be read
simultaneously in England; it is even possible, such
is the uncertainty attending a correspondence con-
ducted within the cordon of a blockade, that this
letter may be so long delayed en route as to have
divested both prophecy and event of every grain of
interest 'which they once possessed. It cannot for a
moment be denied that the coincidence of momen-
tous collisions between the four great armies of this
continent within the same week invests the present
hour with strange and tragic interest. Nor is it
possible to exaggerate the magnitude of the danger
with which General Bragg and his army are
threatened. Your readers will not require to be
told that the deterioration in the morale and
spirit of Bragg's army, which in a former letter I
described as having been actively at work since the
battle of Alurfreesborough, has rapidly increased
since the battle of Chicamanga. The dissatisfaction
of his generals at the fruitlessness of a battle which
put 15,000 Confederates hors de combat—the loud-
mouthed discussions of General Bragg's incompe-
tency in three-fourths of the Confederate journals
—the estrangement which has openly existed be-
tween General Bragg on the one side, and Generals
Polk, Buckner, Hindman, Cheetham, D. H. Hill,
and Forrest on the other—the known absence of
harmony between General 'Bragg and his right arm,
General Longstreet, suppressed and kept out of
sight though it has been by the patriotism and
military subordination of the latter—have conspired
to daunt and dispirit and leaven the whole mass of
Bragg's rank and file, until it became a moral cer-
tainty that the first serious collision between Grant
and Bragg could result only in disaster to the latter,
This collision, which I do not believe would have
occurred this year had not Bragg sent Longstreet
off to Knoxville, was precipitated by this hezardous
step. lam not able to speak confidently as yet on
the subject of the full extent of the disaster which
has overtaken the Confederate arms in Northern
Georgia. That it is very serious cannot be questioned.
The great problem which awaits solution during the
coming week is whether Grant, whose energy and
audacity surpass those of any Federal generel
thrown as yet to the surface by this war, will be able
to wipe Bragg's army entirely out, and to break it
up without hand. If Bragg can form a new line
either at Ringold, at Dalton, or at Tunnel-hill, and
can hold it during Cee next two weeks, Atlanta will
in that case be safe. If he is pursued by Grant with
the latter's usual and characteristic energy; if the
Federals are not mired in the spongy glutinous
slime which hedges in Chickamauga Creek, and
stretches for miles along both its banks, it seems to
me scarcely doubtful that Atlanta is in alarming
jeopardy. On the other hand, a fortnight's delay is
all that is wanted to secure safety for Bragg's army,
and to tide over the winter. Behind him lies the
great State of Georgia, the New England of the Con-
federacy, the soil of which is now trodden and
seriously menaced by the Yankee invader, and there
is no manner of doubt that Georgia will at once
throw her every man into the field with a view to
supporting Bragg, and will busy herself frantically
during the winter in utilising the resources which
58,000 square miles of area, a population in 1860 of
nearly 1,100,000 souls, and an estimated valuation of
645,895,237 dols., conspire to give her. There will
arise from these reverses the compensation which
the Confederacy has hitherto never failed in similar
perils to find ; nor was it without deep significance
that, alluding to the recuperative energy sho has
hitherto shown, it was proposed that
" Non Hydra secto corpore firmior
Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem"

should, when a motto was being sought for her
public seal, be the motto of her choice.
But, in the meantime, what is likely to be the
fate of General Longstreet, cut off from communi-
cation with Bragg, isolatedat a distance of 110 miles
fr 'me Chattanooga, and held at bay by terrible for-
tifications from " shutting down" upon his foe ?
Apparently, Burnside's fate involves a fine race be-
tween starvation and General Grant. Upon the
25th inst., the very same day upon which Bragg's
army was driven headlong from Missionary Ridge,
we know that Longstreet had Burnside hemmed in
on every:side, that he was shelling Knoxville and the
Federal positions heavily, and it was believed that
the Federal supplies were very scanty. Furthermore
it is known that strong reinforcements have left
Grant's army at Chattanooga, and unless Longstreet
can cemplete his work quickly he will probably be
compelled to raise the siege of Knoxville. There is not
much anxiety in regard to the safety of Longstreet's
army, which, if robbed of its prey, can escape with-
out molestation into Western Virginia. But.the
hopeful feature in Longstreet's horizon is that
Bragg, knowing that Grant had sent reinforcements
to Burnside, detached two divisions from his army
to help Longstreet, which will probably obstruct
and delay the rapid advance of Grant's relieving
force. It is an exciting episode which is being
enacted around Knoxville in the drama of the
war. Upon the success or failure of Long-
street will hinge the possession or furfeitare
by the Confederates of those important mountain
passes,in Eastern Tennessee which are the keys to
the four States of Virginia, Georgia, North Caro-
lina, and Tennessee. His capture of Burnside and
the Federal force in Knoxville will do much to
bring about a resumption of the exchange of pri-
soners, concerning which such a war of words has
raged between Commissioners Meredith and ()tild—
e war in which it is hard not to agree with the New
York World, that the advantage has been gained by
the Confederate Commissioner, In a future letter I
hope to give to your readers full details of the con-
dition of the Federal prisoners in the Libby Prison.