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

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(From the Special Correspondent of Me Times.)
RICHMOND, Dec. 14.
It is not t;oo early to pass in brief review the
military history of the Federal and Confederate
States during the current year, and to strike the
balance of substantial success gained during its con-
tinuance by either side. lam far from saying that
military operations during the present winter are
finally suspended, but in my belief no immediate
importance will attach to any campaigns attempted
between the present time and the month of April
next, unless they happen to include a large ship-
ment of Federal troops to Charleston, to Norfolk, or
some other Southern port. It is evident that the
Confederate authorities, represented substantially
by President Davis and General Lee, are at this
moment awaiting the developments of Federal stra-
tegy before their own plans for the winter are ulti-
mately fixed ; but, at the same time, the indications
of the hour lead me to anticipate that the great
campaign of next spring will not be in Eastern
Virginia, but along the line stretching from Western
Virginia to the Mississippi River. It is more and
more evident that if ever again the Confederates are
strong enough to make an aggressive movement
upon the North, the route heretofore selected,
through Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg into
Maryland and Pennsylvania, will be attempted no
more. It is seen and felt that another of the old
cries which have been on both sides freely ven-
tilated, and still more freely discarded during
this war, is " played out" in the glare of the
stern experience taught by facts. " Peace must be
dictated on Pennsylvanian soil" has been a strophe
of the South ; in answer to which have been sung
no less fallacious Northern antistrophes, affirmative
of a vast amount of imprisoned Union sentiment
in North Carolina, Arkansas, and elsewhere, and
boastful of the advantages of free navigation of the
;4lississippi, which has hitherto involved the destruc-
tion of 20 fine steamers by the hand of the incen-
diary and the suspension of all insurance upon boats
navigating the great river. Both sides have hugged
and cherished delusions, and to a consciousness that
they were delusions both sides are, I believe, awak-
ing. It seems to be recognised as a fact that if
peace be ever conquered by the Southerners it must
be, not in Pennsylvania or Maryland, but on the
banks of the Ohio river. It seems to be beginning
to be understood by the North that even if Rich-
mond, Atlanta, and Charleston are taken, the great
political problem of dealing with 8 or 10 La Vendees
is but commencing, and is regarded everywhere
except in Washington as defying solution.
The opening year found Gen. Lee's army, number-
ing about 70,000 bayonets and 8,000 cavalry lying in
its old and proud position above Fredericksburg.
It was seen that there would be difficulty in provi-
sioning so large an army in bare and devastated
Northern Virginia, and Gm. Longstreet with 25,000
men was detailed to occupy the neighbourhood of
Suffolk, to scour the counties of Virginia and North
Carolina, which adjoin the Blackwater and Chowan
Rivers, and to gather up corn and pork. High as
is my estimate of Gen. Longstreet's value as a sol-
dier, I cannot but admit that disappointment was
experienced in Richmond by reason of his failure to
effect more at Suffolk, when trusted for the first
time with an independent command. It is asserted
that he exhibited inactivity in investing instead of
pouncing upon Suffolk, and that he was still slower
in taking up stakes when recalled by Gen. Lee to
assist at the battle of Cnancellorsvills. The year,
as will be thus seen, opened with what is re-
garded in high quarters here as a failure of Gen,
Longstrcet's at Suffolk, and it has closed with
another imputed miscarriage of his at Knoxville,
It seems to me, however, to be forgotten by most of
General Longstreet's countrymen, exasperated by
their galling sense of the bitter burden of war, that
even if he failed at Suffolk and Knoxville, they
have to thank him and his noble troops alone for
the great victory at Chicamanga and for unsur-
passed gallantry on the bicody field of Gettysburg.
When the fact is remembered that from the first
dap when he joined the Confederate army before
Bull Run up to the present date General Longstreet
has never been off duty for an hour, but lass faced
death in every form upon the perilous edge of a
thousand battles and skirmishes, it may well be that
empirics who fight arm-chair campaigns in Rich-
mond, Washington, or London may feel themselves
abashed into momentary silence.
Tne first blow delivered by the Federals in 1863
fell at Charleston. Mr. Seward's despatches through-
cut the latter winter had mitigated the influence of
the battle of Fredericksburg by loud promises to
Europe of crushing damage to the rebellion in the
spring, and the fanfares of General Hooker about
his army as " the finest on the planet" were but
echoes of Northern peens over the irresistible
armada which was to pulverise resistance at Charles-
ton. On the 7th of April the Ironsides and her
eight mailed sisters shot their bolt, and in less than
two hours retired, leaving the bones of the Keokuk
at the bottom of Charleston harbour. And here I
may take leave of Charleston by stating that the
siege, commencing with the attack of the 7th of
April, has not been intermitted until the present
hour. An onslaught, far mere formidable than
that of the 7th of April, though less noticed by
chronicles, was made against Sumter in August,
after the Confederate evacuation of Morris.
Island. It and all similar onslaughts laseve
been unsuccessful, and although the 200th day
of the siege is now approaching, and although
Fort Sumter is dismantled as an artillery fortress,
General Gilmore and Admiral Dahlgren are, it may
confidently be affirmed, further this day from Lakin,"
Charleston than they were on the 7th of April. It
is true that Fort Sumter leas long ceased to be mate-
rial as a point to ba occupied or retained ; the Fede-
rals want-it for the name of the thing, and in their
efforts to take it have lavished nearly as much
money as England and France spent in reducing
Sebastopol. The Confederates hold it with grim
obstinacy, and with all the sullen pride of the Game-
cock State; but, as a moral spectacle, history has
few sublimer scenes to exhibit than a fortress
crumbling into ruin, rent by 1,000 tons of shot, with
guns dismounted and buried, with casemates shat-
tered, yet clung to and occupied to the last by its
indomitable little garrison. It has been well re-
marked that the illustrious defence of Jelialabad
and of the Residency at Lucknow are the only
, modern parallels to the retention of Fort Sumter;
but it must be remembered that in the two former
eases the garrisons had no loophole for escape,
whereas in the latter the value of Fort Sumter has
long been merely moral, and it has been held against
prodigioua odds and with desperate tenacity " for
the name of the thing."
The interest of the operations against Charleston
had scarcely died away in April When the storm-
cloud, ridden and guided by General Hooker, burst
with terrific fury upon the head of General Lee.
Few who witnessed from the interior of the Confe-
deracy the tumultuous gathering of the elements
during the last few days of April will forget their
fearful menace and the anxiety of that perilous
crisis. There were but two men of mark in the
little " Rebel" army of North Virginia, who, when
the tempest smote them, were dauntless and un-
ruffled, and to them was happily committed the
guidance of the Confederate bark through the
eye of the storm. It is now matter of history how
Gen. Lee breasted its waves, and how "Stonewall"
Jackson gave
limb and life to execute his beloved
chief's instructions. But for the death-wound of
General Jackson and the lathes of one Confederate
General, a victory as crowning as Worcester, as
crushing as Marengo, 'would have rewarded Gen.
Lf.7-'s heroic little army ; and though hereafter the
tale of betties may he indefinitely swelled itit is my
elief Clat Chancellorsville, eonsu;cuous
among all
his other battles, will confer upon Gen. Lao
such
forge pie D'IItIICTI gave to the great Frederick, or
sli
imanca sccnred for our own immortal Wellington.
Then arose one of those cmbarrasemente which arc
inseparable from carrying on war from hand to
mouth, and with the restricted resources at the com-
mand of the Confederate States. It was immedi-
ately determined "to carry the war into Africa,e the
more so when at the commencement of J une the peril
of Vicksburg became patent to President Davis. For
three weeks General Lee's advance into Pennsyl-
vania was hindered by thn imPotstbilitY of get-
tirg together sufficient F.npkilies to enable him to

move. At last, on June the 16th, the main body of
his army broke up from Culpepper Court-house, and
on 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 of 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 from 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. In 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
little bluff 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
cause 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 comma,
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. Lee 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 recr.Ave passing salutations,
and of incendiary stratagems which have already
wrought haves wheraever they have been essayed,
and which will be fatal to the 20 addi-
tional steareeers 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 Roscucrans
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. Tiaen 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
iu suspense. It is reserved for this groat 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 tongue, 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 that 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 vied
partial credence to their enemy's statements. In no
other way can I explain the escape before the battle
of Chicamanga of the Federal General Thomas
from the Confederate Generals Hindman and
Cleburne, and of the Federal General Crittenden
from tho Confederate General Polk, than by believ-
ing th atP, ragg'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 akin of their teeth, and
General Rosencrans, taking timely alarm, showed
marked ability in rapidly concentrating
his
army before the Battle of Chicamauga •
but before the preliminary action of the 19th Sep-
tember a new element was annexed to the array 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 seenreci a success which produced in
no slight degree the more decieive triumph of the