The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-17 00:00:00

THE CONFEDERATE STATES.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
GUINEY'S STATION, VIRGINIA, May 7.
Of all the strange sights which within these last
few days have met my eyes nothing stranger than
the small country station from which this letter is
dated has as yet fallen under my observation.
Situated on the Fredericksburg and Richmond rail-
road, 12 miles from the former town, Guiney's
depot has for many months been an important en-
trepot for commissary and ammunition and ord-
nance stores, and is the furthest point to which
during squally seasons in and about Fredericks-
burg, the trains from Richmond advance. Conceive
this spot as I see it this morning, with 12,000 or
14,000 men encamped about it, swimming in mud,
ghastly from the multitude of its sick and wounded
men, a Babel of confusion, voices, and tongues.
Here, too, are at least 6,000 Federal prisoners, look-
ing in their blue uniform like a crop of indigo rising
from the low, sas arupy sail, and refusing until this
morning to be paroled, because they professed to
believe that Stoneman, or Sedgwick, or Hooker
would rescue them. " John Sedgwick is not a man
to be stopped." " You haven't done with Joe
Hooker yet." " Wait till something is heard from
Stoneman." Such are some of the phrases which
salute your ears as you wander among them, com-
puting whether the proportion of Irish and German
faces amounts to two-thirds or four-fifths. Turn to
the wooden storehouse adjoining the station and
marvel at the immense piles of captured muskets
which have already come in, and which would fill
Exeter-hall from floor to roof. These muskets have
been lost in the attempt to execute Exeter-hall's ab-
horred, but possibly well-intentioned behests ;
stronger hands and stouter hearts are wanted before
those behests shall prevail.
A few hundred yards from Gainey's lies a com-
fortable Virginian farmhouse belonging to a Mr.
Chandler. In it " Stonewall" Jackson is understood
to be lying wounded. With a beating heart I rode
up to ask after him, for rumour had stated that his
condition was not favourable. Dr. Maguire, his
staff surgeon, met me outside the house. He stated
that until two this morning nothing could be more
favourable than his patient's progress towards re-
covery, that he had ceased to entertain any fears
about the wounded right hand, and that it had been
his intention to convey the General to Richmond
today. But at two this morning the General woke
with an acute pain in his side, and, although Dr.
Maguire hoped that it might proceed from neuralgia,
he had the greatest apprehensions in regard to
pneumonia. The General was asleep while I was
talking with the doctor. Shortly after he awoke,
and upon examination it was pronounced that the
symptoms were decidedly those of pneumonia.
The doctor proceeded to cup and leech him ; from
that moment I gave up all hope of his recovery.
General Jackson's physique was far from being
robust. It is an unerring indication of the fiery
earnestness with which he entered into this war that
from the time the first musket was fired he forgot his
feebleness, and exposed himself to hardships, pri-
vations, destitution of food, exposure by night and
day, such as I verily believe have never been sub-
mitted to by any General, whether modern or an
cient, since first war desolated the earth. The
famous description of Hannibal recurs to the mind as
you think of him,—" Caloris ac frigoris patientm
par ; nullo labore aut corpus fatigari aut animus
vine; poterat." There was in his endurance of
hardship, in his indifference about food or shelter,
in his unsparing and undemonstrative self-sacrifice
something that was positively sublime. All have
felt that in military genius, in strategical ability,
Jackson may have had many superiors; but the
sight of him, and of him alone, stirred the blood
like a trumpet, and the words " Stonewall Jackson
is coming" carried confidence to his friends and
terror to his foes, such as of yore the word "Marl-
brook" inspired when whispered into the ear of
French children.
I retired a few hundred yards from the house ; the
train from Richmond came in, bringing with it his
wife and only child—a daughter born less than six
months ago. It was impossible to look at the house
where he lay, and to think of the meeting between
himself and his wife, from whom he had for two
years almost entirely torn himself away to render
eervice—and such service—to his country, without
a mist coming over the eyes and a choking sense of
suffocation rising in the throat. I turned to look at
the wounded—the unknown and unrecorded heroes
of this war, with love for whom, unsparingly as he
called upon them to exert themselves, Jackson's
whole heart was instinct. It was a sad and piteous
sight. In no previous battle has the suffering been so
great. The tangled, intricate, and difficult country
in which the battle was fought, the threatening de-
monstrations of the Federals at several points, made
it dangerous to ex pc se waggons and ambulances to
the possibility of capture, and almost all the wounded
who were able to walk had walked, some 12 and 14
and some between 20 and 25 miles, from the field of
battle to Guiney's Station. Amputations on the field,
instant attention to wounds, now known to surgeons
as being vitally necessary, were in few cases possi-
ble. More than onecase of limbs badly shattered and
untouched fir four or five days, and in which mor-
tification had ensued and death was inevitable, came
under my notice. Many other cases were noticeable
in which, though life was likely to be spared,
health and vigour were manifestly gone for
ever. The want of prompt surgical assistance to
men wounded in battle involves not merely the
alternative of death or life, but of enjoyable, elastic,
vigorous, sparkling life, and the innumerable forms
of death iu life, or living death. There was a com-
mittee of worthy and excellent citizens from Rich-
mond dispensing soup and medicines, but their
efforts were like a drop in the ocean.
I went down to Richmond by one of the trains
which conveyed the wounded. It was, indeed, tra-
velling through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Such sights and scenes—how many of them have I
now seen !—are not to be detailed to your readers.
They sink deep into the heart of him who:witneases
them, as the wild screams of the delirious live and
are impressed upon the tympanum of his ear. My
thoughts were with Jackson ; the shadow of the
coming event strode forth and cast a chill over the
heart. But it was encouraging even in such a mo-
ment to note the energy of the Confederates, which
in one day had repaired the damage done by Stone-
man's cavalry to the Fredericksburg and Richmond
Railroad, and in two days had got the Virginia
Central Railroad again in working gear.
Let it now be understood, in answer to the cuckoo
cry always raised by the North of overwhelming
numbers concentrated by the rebels, that the late
series of battles was fought by General Lee without
the addition to his numbers of one man from Rich-
mond. When first General Hooker's menacing
attitude was assumed, General Longstreet was called
for by General Lee. Put Longstreet replied that
he could not leave Suffolk without losing many of
his waggons, which were deep in the recesses of
North Carolina, and would be seized by the enemy
if he retired from before Suffolk, and opened the
country to the unchecked ravages of the enemy.
General Lee immediately telegraphed to him not
to incur a certain lOss for the sake of a pro-
blematical gain, and seriously inclined to make
the best possible preparation for the reception of
Hooker. It is not necessary that I should state
how small General Lee's army actually was. No
statement of mine, made when the echoes of the
cannon have scarcely died away, would command
credence in the North or in England, any more than
the unquestionable fact that General Lee fought the
battle of Sharpsburg with 35,000 against consider-
ably more than 100,000 men. But it will be be-
lieved when I state that not one man left Richmond
to assist General Lee, except some small bodies
which went to guard the large stores at Hatover
Junction and Gordonsville, and to prevent the de-
struction of the railroad bridge over the South
Anne River.
It is too early at present to enter into an examina-
tion of the strategical merits of General Lee's
operations. The
impression of all who are pest
qualified to judge is that hereafter they will by re-
garded by competent military critics as exhibiting
ability of the very highest order. Threatened at
many points by an immensely superior foe, he, did
not scruple to divide his little army into three por-
tions, one of which he left under General Early to
guard the heights of Fredericksburg, one of which