The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-05 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY,

(From the Times' Special Correspondent)
RICHMOND, Octe 8.
Upon the Ist inst. one of those casualties which
have attracted to the port of Wilmington, the sea

gate of the Confederacy, a degree of notice never
accorded to this insignificant town during all its

previous years of existence, startled this community
almost as much as the explosion of Grant's harm•
less mine at Petersburg two months before. At 3in

the morning of the lsta blockade running steamer,

named the Condor, the property of Mr Alex. Collie,
of London, while attempting to enter the mouth of
the Cape Fear River, had the misfortune, thanks to
her blundering pilot, to run aground on the breakers,
within 200 or 300 yards of the Confederate guns in

Fort Fisher. The Condor was a new Vireo funnelled

steamer, superbly adapted for her trade, with great
carrying capacity, drawing only seven feet of water,
and swift as a sea swallow. She was approaching
Wilmington on her first inward trip, and brought
out from Greenock, whence she sailed in August
last, several English and Confederate passengers,
and among them a lady named Mrs Greenhow, well
known on this continent as having, at the commence-

rnent of the war, conducted a spirited correspon-
dence with Mr Seward at WasLington, and as hay-

ing been imprisoned by that autocratic attorney.

Mrs Greenhow had passed many months in England
previous to sailing in the Condor, and was returning
to share the increasing perils of her own country.
After the Condor took the ground a Yankee vessel
was seen approaching through the gloom, with a
view to shelling or boarding the stranger. Mrs

Greenhow, remembering her former imprisonment

in Washington, and apprehensive of its repetition,
insisted, against the advice of the captain, on having
a boat lowered, and upon trusting herself to the ten•

der mercies of the waves rather than to those of the
Yankees. Into this Loat she carried with her the
mail bags, and Prof. Holcombe, whom the Condor
had picked up at Halifax, and whose name was last
summer brought before the public in connexion with
Mr Greeley's abortive negotiations with a view to
peace, which were entered into at Niagara Falls.
To the pilot, who had just ran the Condor aground,
was committed the delicate task of steering Mrs
Greenhow's boat, which was lowered into a raging

surf. Directly the boat left the leeside of the vessel

she was caught, broadside on, by a huge breaker,
and overturned. All the male passengers succeeded
in clambering up and clutching the keel of the cap-
sized boat, but in the darkness and amid the deaf-

ening thunder of the breakers nothing was seen or
heard of poor Mrs Greenhow. Her body *as sub.
sequently washed ashore near Fort Fisher, and
clese beside it a heavy leather reticlue, containing
2,000 dols in gold, which was believed to have been
slung round her neck when the boat was upset. It
is a strange proof of the strength of that boisterous
sea that such a weighty article as this reticule should
not have sunk, but should have been tossed up on
the beach like a bit of seaweed. Upon the afternoon
of the 2d Mrs Greenhow's body was committed to
the grave at Wilmington, according to the rites of

the Roman Catholic Church. A general feeling o
gloom in connexion with the thought of the high
hcpes with which Mrs Greenhow returned to her
native lend, and of her having been tossed, a life-
less corpse, upon its inhospitable strand, has per-
vaded this community, which at this sad moment
remembers only how zsalous and enthusiastic was
her devotion to the Confederacy.
I cannot forbear touching upon another incident
connected with the port at Wilmington. Upon the
night preceding the wreck of the Condor, another
English vessel, named the Night Hawk, ran ashore
within 20 yards of the spot where the Condor was
subsequently stranded. The Yankees. with an an-
dacity which seems (so far as the blockading squad•
ron off Wilmington is concerned) to be on the ins
crease, sent a boat to board and fire the Night Hawk,
although she lay within canister range of Fort
Fisher. The crew of the Yankee boat could scarcely
have exceeded 25 or 30 men ; there must have been
60 persons on board the Night Hewk,when she tan
aground. Of these, some 20 escaped to land in one
of the boats. Immediately that the Yankees
boerded the unresistiog commercial vessel, which
lay wholly at their mercy, they set to work, crying,
"No quarter," slashing upon all sides with their
cutlasses, and firing promiscuously with their re-
volvers. The two engineers were instantly but.
chered, the chief engineer's head having been
bisected by the stroke of a cutlass, and several
other persons are said to have been wounded by
pistol shots. The vessel was fired at the stem and
stern, and inasmuch as Fort Fisher gave some signs
of life by throwing up a rocket, and inasmuch as
there was a rumour of gunpowder on board the
doomed vessel, the Yankees, as cowardly where
there seemed to be danger as they had been ruf-
fianly where thero was no resistance, took to their
boat, leAving some half dozen hapless victims on
board the blazing vessel, to be burnt, blown up, or
drowned, as the case might be. Fortunately the
flames, after burning a day and a half, were distin-
guished, chiefly by the agency of the captain and
crew of the Falcon (another of Mr Collie's vesselsj,
and the boilers and machinery of the Nights Hawk
were uninjured. She will probably, 'within a few
days or weeks, issue forth from Wilmington with
her full cargo of cotton on board. But my object in
mentioning this incident is to ask your readers
whether they are able to discern any difference be•
tween the conduct of the Yankee boat crew and that
of the inhuman fiends who man the piratical craft
which issue from the island of Formosa and assail
becalmed and defenceless commercial vessels in the
Chinese seas. I was under the impression that in.
ternationallaw prescribes that the penalty of running
the blockade is not that those engaged in this trade
should be butchered unresistingly, bat that their
vesaels,if captured, should be forfeited to the captors.
But it seems that the Federals, many of whom have
asserted in my hearing that the civilisation of New
York and Boston is equal, if not superior, to that of
Pgais and London, think there is no disgrace in
butchering unarmed and unresisting men. There is
little hope that a Government which has shown
such forbearance—it may be wise forbearance, al-
though it is hard to witness the inhumanities of this
war, and to think so—es oars will be aroused even to
the utterance of a fable remonstrance by such inci-
dents as this; but it is worthy the consideration of
those English captains who engage in the blockade
running trade whether it would not be wise to arm
their crews with muskets and cutlasses, solely with a
view to preventing their vessels being boarded, if
aground, by a handful of Yankees, who, if they find
an unarmed crew on board, are likely to emulate the
atrocities of the Coinese buccaneers, and to slash
and slay because there is no more danger from their
victims than Nero anticipated from the flies which
• he transfieed.

I em happy to report a far more confilent feeling
in Richmond than existed at the date of my last
letter. It cannot be denied that when upon the
29. h of September it was discovered in Richmond
that Grant was advancing upon the city with two
army corps (the 10th and 18th), and that Lee had
only a handful of troops to resist the Federals, a
feeling closely akin to panic possessed this com-
munity. It is the only instance of panic which, in
some experience in Richmond, I can recollect. But
the city slowly and sternly recovered itself, and it
as nothing less than justice to an unpopular man
to say that no one in Richmond displayed such
firmness and presence of mind, and developed such
resources at the moment of the greatest menace' as
Gen. Bragg. la many of my previous letters I have
pointed out to your readers the true disadvantages
of Lee's position as compared with Grant's. As a
general illustration it may be said that Lee is on
the arc, Grant on the sherd, of a circle ; but as this
expression does not exactly define the position of
the two armies, whose lines (extending each of them
over a length of 3) miles) do not pursue any uni-
form course or inclination, I will endeavour, at the
risk of repeating what I have described many times
before, to make my meaning clearer. Your readers
will understand that, in such an attitude as is occu-
pied by the armies of Lee and Grant, the army
which takes the initiative and acts on the aggres-
sive has an immense advantage. Lee is like a skil-
ful one-armed prize fighter, fighting a big bully
with two erms, stronger, taller, more active, and
7reener-sighted than himself. The most tempting
an a premising cpporturities offer themselves to him

every day, He cannot afford to hazard even 20 livcs
in a tentative operation. The fact of his great nume•
rical inferiority to his enemy, and that he is ethered
down and forced to keep always a large portion of
his army before Petersburg, are disadvantages
equivalent to the loss of an arm b j a prizefighter.
Grant, on the other hand, has, in the eyes of those
who rightly survey the ground, such advantages as
make it astonishing that, in the four months be
tween the 12th June, when he crossed the James
River, and the present time, he should have made
so little use of them. In his centre lies the James
River, with its dozens of Yankee gunboats and
monitors, covering the Federal base of operations,
and making it even unapproachable by General Lee,
' It is doubtless with a view to getting still more out
of these monitors that General Butler is attempt-
ing to cut a canal through Dutch Gap, into which he
hopes to tempt the James River. It is not thought
here, I may say par parenthese , that any advantage
will result to Butler's comrades from this canal, even
if, contrary to Federal experience at Vicksburg, it
proves a success. By means of the pontoon bridges
which connect Bermuda Hundred with Deep Bot-
tom, Grant can throw any number of men by night
or day to the north or south of the James. It is
almost impossible for Lee to know if Grant's de-
monstrations, whether they threaten Richmond on
the extreme Federal right, or the South side rail-
road on the extreme Federal left, are feints or
realities. On the other hand, from the configure.
tion of the ground, it is almost impossible for Lee
to cut Grant's extended lines in any vital place. The
most tempting place to assail those lines would be
somewhere not far from the spot where Grant's mine
was sprung. Bat the shape of the ground and the
position of the forest is such that the lines can only
be attacked at two or three confined spots, and here
naturally Grant has defended himself with triple
tiers of fortifications, and keeps always strong
bodies of men in position. But the greatest of all
advantages is the following :—From the 4th of May
up to the present hour Lee's army has been con-
tinuously in the trenches, either actually under fire
or at any rate not knowing at what moment it might
not be attacked by a savage and multitudinous foe.
The Confederates have been fighting or on the rack
without intermission for more than five months.
On the other hands the Federal General, who
knew from the beginning that Lee was, through the
paucity of his numbers, restricted to acting on the
defensive, had it in his power at any moment to give
four-fifths of his army an entire rest. There was
nothing to prevent Grant's saying on August 1, " I
shall want great efforts from you on the 20th of this
month ; rest and recruit yourselves until that day."
On the contrary, for 160 days Lee's troops have
known no rest, either by night or day. We all re.
member how the work in the trenches told upon
our officers and privates in the Crimea ; it cannot
be wondered that a far more uninterrupted pressure
for more than five months should have told fear.
fully upon the poor Confederates, exposed to one of

the fiercest summers ever known in Virginia, scan-
tily fed upon meat—mostly salt meat—and bread,
without vegetables, with only occasional coffee, with
no other stimulant, and threatened ceaselessly by
overwhelming numbers, who have at their command
all that a lavish profusion of expenditure and the
scientific experience of the whole civilised world can
contribute. I cannot be blind to the fact, as I meet
officers and privates from Gen. Lee's army, that
they are half warn cut, and that, though the spirit
is the same as eve 2„ they urgently need rest. lam
in hopes that during the c)miug winter this rest
will not be denied to them, as Lee's army becomes
stronger ; but be that as it may, I am convinced,
when the tine history of the Confederate campaign
of 1864 in Virginia is written, it will record a
struggle unsurpassed in heroism and in the patience
and self.denying endurance of the troops gee° the
time when blood was first spilt upon the earth, and
man first lifted his hand in anger against his bro.
ther. There is one plan by which, at the price of
the bricks and mortar of Petersburg, General Lee
might curtail the existing prolongation of his lines,
might assume a much stronger defensive position,
and considerably increase the difficulties of his oppo-
nent. That this plan will be adopted if occasion
requires is by no means improbable, but so long as
Gen. Lie feels himself strong enough to hold and
protect Petersburg es well as Richmond he will cone

tinue to•elinee to both. If he gave up the town of
Petersburg, and fell back upon the western and
,•
higher bank of the Appomattox, holding the heights
of Pccahontas, which girdle Petersburg on the west
4nd north, his strength for defence would be much
greater; but he would have in some measure to
give the little city np to its assailants, much in the
same fashion as Fredericksburg was given up to the
Federals while the Confederates held Marye's
Heights. It has often been argued by wise military
heads that this would be a lathe:7.oll3 step, but expe.
rienee has shown to what misery the inhabitants of
towns surrendered to the enemy are reduced, and
to this misery Gen. Lee will not consent that Peters-
burg shallbe exposed, if he can prevent it. My own
impression is that the success or failure which may
follow Hood's daring move in Georgia (of which I
spoke in my last letter) will govern the operations
of Grant against Richmond. The reciprocity and
mutuality which have always existed between the
various armies of the Federals on the one band and
of the Confederates on the other, in the East and
West, were never more apparent than at this me.
men% If the Confederates maintain their present
attitude before Richmond, and continuo to hold their
enemy back until, as is here anticipated, a great
disaster has overtaken Sherman in the West, I do
not scruple to say that, in my opinion, Richmond
will laugh its assailants to scorn. If, on the other
hand, Sherman is able to extricate himself from his
present critical position, by either beating or out-
witting Hood, there will be reason for apprehension
about Richmond during the coming winter the like
of which has never existed before,
Meantime, there is every reason to think that
Grant, electioneering and "pipe-laying" for Mr Lin-
coln after a fashion never dreamt of, will afford us
lively times between this date and the end of the pre-
sent month. Ihere is, in my belief, little reason to
apprehend that Richmond is threatened with immi-
nent and immediate danger. The operations of
General Grant are likely to be of the same guarded
and stealthy character as the approach of the Red
Indian when about to attack the camp of a Western
squatter. It is evident that the main strength of
the Federal forces is concentrated at the two ends
of the Federal lines, or, in other words, at the salient
in the immediate neighbourhood of Chaffin's Bluff,
which was lately taken by the Federals, and which
is called Fort Harrison ;*and, secondly, at a point
close to the Weldon Railroad, which is called Fort
M‘Rae. Your readers are aware that three sepa-
rate Efforts (none of them considerable efforts) have
been made by General Lee to retake Fort Harrison,
but hitherto without success. It cannot be denied
that the proximity of Fort Harrison to Cheffin's
Bluff (which is to the northern bank of the James
River what Drewry's Bluff or Fort Darling is to the
southern bank) is an inconvenience to General Lee,
which is likely to be increased when General Grant
has completed the bombproofs and casements which,
in spite of incessant Confederate shelling, he is said
to be there erecting. But lam assured that Gen.
Lee has in contemplation, or perhaps in course of
execution, a plan of which I can at present say no
more than that it will considerably interfere with
the probably programme of Grant.
On the whole, it is impossible not to take a more
cheerful view of the Confederate prospects in Vir■
ginia than it was proper to entertain at the close
of the last month. At this moment lam ex-
cluding from my mind all thought of the operations
in Georgia, which, with or without reason, are
regarded as likely to exercise great influence
upon tt'e fortunes of Grant. But it must not be
forgotten that all the apprehensions lately enter-
tained about the operations of the Federals through-
out Virginia centre at this instant in the army of
General Grant. It is evident that the valley cam-
paign of General Sheridan is a total failure ; and
General Burbridge, advancing against the Coeede-
rate saltworke ip South-Western Virginia, has been
utterly defeated by General Echols. Grant is the
supreme hope of the Federate ; with the discern&
ture of Grant, whether brought about by an unsuc-
cessful attack of his own or by the hopelessness
which would seize his army if Sherman were routed
in Georgia, falls the stately fabric of Northern