The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-30 00:00:00

with General Bragg. The army of General Lee in
Virginia has been constantly fighting, and the
reciprocal confidence of the men and the command-
ing general in each other has never ceased to grow.
In the Western Army just the reverse nas been the
case. They have hardly fought at se, and, in con-
sequence of their inaction and the frothy mendacity
of the Western Federal journals, the Confederate
morale has declined, and the reputation of General'
Rosencranz and of the men whom he leads has
gone up in proportion. You hear Western men
talking complacently of the manifest necessity. of
30,000 Confederates retiring without fighting when
they found themselves confronted by 50,000 Fede-
rals, forgetful apparently that General Lee has
fought such battles as Sharpsburg and Chancel-
lorsville, in the former of which 35,000 Confede-
rates fought evenly against (by M'Clelian's own
confession) 105,000 Federals, and in the latter
43,000 Confederates fought and utterly worsted an
army variously estimated at from 120,000 to 150,000
Federals. In consequence of the extravagant and
formidable reputation of Rosecranz, General Bragg
seems, when at last he ventured upcn a battle, to
have had no other hope than either to crush a sec-
tion of the Fedcral army in detail, or to fight with-
out being worsted; consequently, the battle Chica-
mange was fought without lien. Bragg's having
made such dispositions as would enable him to fol-
low up the victory which every general who ini-
uaDtiouzueunfs
Gen.ofex
Bragg'sc uses
ini-
tiates a battle should surely believe that he is about
to gain. have
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the night of Sunday, the t2O h
, or on the morning of
Monday, the 21st Sept., by the enormous victory
which Gen. Longstreet given had
him. To my mind,
these excuses only serve to render more incontro-
vertible the fact that
suchan opportunity as has
only occurred twice in the war was lamentably and
inexcusably flung away. On behalf of Gen. Bragg
it is said, " Our supplies were at Dalton ; the men
could not advance without food." The manifest an-
swer is, "In that case, why did Gen. Bragg force
on a battle P" Another excuse is, " Our men were so
wearied by incessant marching, from the morning
of the 14th to the night of the 20th, that they could
not pursue." The ready response is given that the
whole of M'Laws's division was up on Monday
morning, of which only a portion had previously
been engaged; that Jenkins's fine brigade, over 3,000
strong, cames„up that day fresh and full of fight; that
all the divisions of Longstreet and Buckner,who had
been fiercely engaged on Sunday, were electrified
and aghast to find that they were robbed of the
fruits of their grand Sunday's victory by the inac-
tion of Monday. Anether excuse is urged, though
hardly by General Bragg himself, to the effect that
he did not know on Sunday night that a victory
had been gained. It is certain that other Confede-
rate generals knew it, and had they acted on their
own responsibility and forgotten the existence of
Gen. Bragg, the Federal army would not new be
lying within its lines at Chattanooga. Other excuses,
which have been plentifully advanced, to the effect
that it was necessary to stop and collect the scattered
small arms and artillery; and to bury the dead—
some of whom have not been buried to this hour—
are too puerile to be worthy of a moment's conside-
ration. The conclusion is irresistible that General
Bragg failed to convert the most headlong and dis-
ordered rout which the Federals have ever seen
since Bull Run into a crowning victory like Water-
loo. I have endeavoured, by using only the simplest
and baldest phraseology, to avoid even the sem-
blance of exaggeration which might attach to
warmer and more coloured expressions.
That the rout was all, and more than all, that I
have stated becomes more and more apparent as you
ride over the ground and hear the tales of the
country folk who witnessed it. One old man, who
lives in a shanty close to the final stand made by the
Federals on the edge of Missionary Ridge, found 15
Federal soldiers cowering in his garden, and upon
his telling them that the Confederates were be-
tween them and their haven, Chattanooga, they
stacked arms and declared themselves his prisoners.
He went out to search for some Confederates, and
upon his return in an hour or more with some of
Wheeler's cavalry, he found the Federals still there
awaiting their captors. Everybody who lives along
the main road which connects Chattanooga with
Lafayette echoes the same story of the panic, con-
fusion, and terror of the Federal flight. The same
phrases were every where on the white lips of the
fugitives—a hurried entreaty for water, and an
eager iequiry as to the road and distance from
Chattanooga. One enthusiastic Southern matron
expressed her conviction that if the women who live
aa.. weasel:le had follownd el/141ply rs. tho 12,4,20 01
the Yankees upon Sunday night with loud and
shrill screams, the town of Chattanooga would have
been found evacuated on Monday morning. The
very correspondents of Northern journals testify to
the utter demoralisation of the army, and one of
them—the correspondent of the Cincznnatt Corn.
mercial—openly compares the rout to Bull Run.
`let General Bragg lingered and hesitated at a
moment when, as cannot but be apparent to every
reasonable man, there was for the first time during
this war a chance of terminating it finally and for
ever at one blow. If the Federals had once been
driven out of Chattanooga, who can doubt that, out
of Rosencranz's army of about 70,000 men, not more
than one-fourth would ever have reached Nasaville ?
Oppressed with many such thoughts as to the
immense opportunity thrown away, I rode over the
field of battle. It is less interesting, by reason of
its enormous area and the dense and tangled forest
in which it was fought, than other eitnioar sceena
I have witnessed. And yet, as it seems to me, there
is not one reasonable and sober Northerner, how-
ever rabid a Unionist he may be, who could witness
the arena upon which one of these bloody debates
has been conducted, and fail from that moment to
abandon all hope that the Federal soldiers will,
whatever may be their numbers, ever vanquish their
opponents on the field of battle. Take your stand
upon the ground occupied by the Federals, and face
in the direction towards which they faced—you
will see every limb and trunk of the trees in your
front pitted with bullets, like the marks of small-
pox on a man's face. It is evident that a perfect
tornado of iron hail must have rent these primaeval
forests, and were it not that the majority of the
bullet-marks are at a height of 6ft, or more from
the ground, it would seem incomprehensible that
any human being could have lived and moved for
five minutes, if exposed to the pitiless pelting of
such a deadly storm. Proceed next to take your
stand as it were in the Confederate ranks. A few
spare bullet holes, most of them excellently aimed,
tell of, comparatively speaking, a handful of troops,
firing little, but advancing rapidly with fearful
howls and yells through the woods, and striving to
bring the 'debate to the bloody arbitration of the
bayonet, to which their opponents are never willing
to wait and submit it. It would be impossible for
Mr. Sumner or Mr. Seward himself to contemplate
rue of these scenes and to dispute the enormously
evDeerior courage and ferocity with which the South-
ehnieks fight. Other sights, visible on the field of
eaughtt: attga, one month after the battle was
during the last a character with which I have been
will
not it twelve months but too familiar, and
They may admitbe Conceived
of description to your readers.
lines in the soinceived by the reader of the femous
shuddering at a erhof Corinth," which exhibit Alp
SfiVO by one wit ht which can never be realised
with regret and horst: looked on it ; and it was
three hundred bodies of thatp I observed two or
affording to the most revolting
still unburied,
And to the uncleanest of
thebirdsgo.beasts of the field
tunity for such a banquet as /
little
air an oppor-
expected ever
to witness.
The most noticeable incident that has occurred
since the date of my lest letter has be en the urred
incle-
ment weather by which we have bees visited,
will be remembered by some 'of your readers that'
when the battle of Chicamauga was fought the whole
of the States which line the Mississippi River had
been exposed to an almost unexampled drought of
two or three months' duration. With the Ist of
October came the much desired rain, and already
we are beginning to long again for the choking dust
in preference to the muddy adhesive paste which
makes camp life so distasteful. I have seldom seen
in any climate a more fearful night than that of the
14th of October. The rain, which had scarcely
ceased foe three days or nights, descended as though