The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-12 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Special Correspondent of the Tunes.)
NEW YORK, Oct. 27.

The American " Fall " is in all its gorgeous
beauty. The weather for the last two or three weeks
has been as near perfection as man may hope to enjoy
it anywhere out of Eden—neither hot ncr cold, nor
damp, nor cloudy, the very best that could be con-
trived for the furtherance of the arts of peace ; the
mast favourable also that could be desired to help
on the murderous work of war. Autumn on this
continent, however, is a season as fleeting as it is
lovely. On Saturday last we had heavy, incessant
rain in this. city. Sunday was dark and windy, and
we felt the wintry chill in our veins. At St. Louis,
Missouri, several degrees to the south of New York,
they had the other day six inches of snow, with a
sharp frost; the snow, by the latest accounts, lingers
still on the ground. If present indications mean
anything, we must make up our minds for an early
setting in of winter.
Every one feels that now or never is the time for
the Federal acnies to be up and doing. But
Meade's army of ti,:e Potomac has just been crippled
by the destruction of the Alexandria and ()rang°
Railroad, and that of the Cumberland, under Grant,
has come into the hands of a new commander, who,
however quick and far sighted, must yet require a
few days to look about him, to take in the difficulties
of the position into which his forces were thrown
by the blind impetuosity of his predhi ecessor
he,
may ex-
Rosen-
cranz, and hit upon some plan by
ected to move
which
tricate himself. Gen. Meade is not exp
forward for a month. Gen. Grant is said to have to
deal with a Confederate force of 80,000 men under
Bragg ; a force so aided by the natural and artificial
strength of the position, that the i
Federals have but
against t with success,
little chance of marching
and hardly more probability of marching away from
it with safety. General Grant may condense a
host of 150,000 combatants at Chattanooga, but the
battlefield is not fCaavourable for the man ceuvring of
Cavalry is no great help in the nat.-
large masses.
row moan
tain defiles, and artillery little better than
a positive encumbrance. Bragg, who occupies a
ground of his own choice, a territory known to him
inch by inch, need hardly shrink from a conflict in
which the odds are no worse than two to one. On
the other hand, although few here doubt that the
object of General Lee in his last movement was
merely to place a month's distance between himself
and Meade, and that aim was signally attained—
although he might now spare a division or two to
strengthen Bragg, still it is well to bear in mind
that the direct communication between Lynchburg
and Chattanooga is through East Tennessee, in
the hands of the Federals under Burnside,
and that Lee's reinforcements can only reach Bragg
by a roundabout way through the best part of the
territories of North and South Carolina and Georgia,
a distance that can be computed at not less than be-
tween 600 and 700 miles, and along railway lines
which have been so used up, both as to rails and
rolling material, owing to the wear and tear of the
war, that the rate of travelling is nowhere more
than 12 miles an hour. All this leads people here to
suppose that Lee's efforts will rather be directed to
the demolition of Burnside's army in East Tennessee.

Preponderance of numbers on the part of the I
North and advantage of position on the part of the
South may keep the armies on either side in mute
and inactive observation of each other, so that we
may have nothing to note down from week to week
except unimportant cavalry and light infantry skir-
mishes, such as the one reported to have taken place
on Saturday last near Bealeton Station, when the
Southerners, crossing the Rappahannock, drove
back Gregg's cavalry and established themselves on
the left bank of the river. Should nothing decisive
occur either in Virginia or Tennessee during these
four or five weeks before the close of the Indian
summer brings about a suspension of hostilities in
those regions, it is questionable whether the weari-
some operations of the siege of Charleston and the
desultory warfare in the remote South-west will
have power to keep up the warlike enthusiasm of
the North at its present fever heat. It is not any
amount of adversity, not any startling disaster, I
take it, that can ever wear out the endurance of
these stubborn Yankees; it is the consciousness of
the utter impotence of all their encleavoure, as illus-
trated by day after day, year after year, slow, un-
eventful campaigning. Nine or ten Commanders-
in-Cnief have been immolated to their impatience
from INl.Dewell to Rosencranz. Broad hints are
thrown out now that the authorities of the War-
office, or, indeed, the whole Administration at Wash-
ington, should be superseded. An outcry is raised
that the way to Richmond is not through Culpep-
per or Fredericksburg; that a new experiment
should be tried of a landing on the peninsula be-
tween James and York Rivers ; that from No4em-
ber to February the season is most favourable for
military operations on those low grounds, free at
tha: time from malaria, and often hardened by frost
for the passage of artillery. " The way to Rich-
mond," people say, "lies to day where it lay two
years and a half ago, when Gen. M'Clellan followed
it up to the gates of the Virginian capital." But
" the only road to Richmond," they add, "lice over
the vanity, the arrogance, and self-satisfaction of
t.h.e Washington Administration, which, out of
hostility to M'Clellan, will not allow the re-
-11""1 of the experiment in the peninsula."
e must not see in these bitter remarks any-
thing bat the natural outburst of popular impa-
tience. Were the Government, in obedience to
these suggestions, to undertake a second compaign
into the Jamethe risk or renewing s
tntt
,id York River peninsula, and run
the calamities which have made
that marshy g
for ever memorable, I have
little doubt the clamour
against their reckless im-
ovidence would be
far louder than it now is
against their temporising
the fail of iticlamoae helplessness. The fact is,
itself, like
however gratifying to Northern that of Charleston,
vindic-
tiveness, would not bring the war vanity and vindic-
Ps conclusion, and it would hardlyar materially nearer
be rash to anti-
cipate that the new campaigning season in the
spring of 1861 will find us no
farther
towards the solution of this American
advanced
rluan puzzle than
we are at this moment.
Little as one may sympathise with the snff
mocked
and stubborn North, it is impossible to "d
eny that
it brings into the cause of Union an
amount of
l
consistency and unanimity which very nearl_
re-
sembles heroism. The real peace mea_peao
small flock, SO at-
auy-price men—are a very far /
am able to count them. Most of the Democrats,
lves
many of the Southerners themse , evince cm
unconquerable tenderness for the
preservation or
restoration of their great united country. Talk
to them of the appalling waste of human life, talk
of national binkruptcy staring them in the face,
and their ever recurring argument is, the dissolution
of the Union would be by far the greatest of evils.
" Can you cut a man in twain right round the
waist and expect him to live ?" they say. " Would
England part with Ireland on any terms ? Or would
not Austria stake her existence on the integrity of
her empire by maintaining her hold on Venetia, or
Russia upon Poland? Nut the greatness, merely,
and the prospect of boundless empire, but the
Peace and freedom, the security and commercial
prosperity of the North would be et an end for ever
if
it and the South went asunder. The first halving
of the great
divisions Republic would lead the way to endless
and sub-divisions ; and what is now one
country and one t
na ion would split up into as many
wrat,linc,
0 r, Powers and rival fractions
of people as
now make up the European council of nations."
You may well tr
them that Such
is, indeed,
reason with them, and tell
,ndeed, likely to be their des-
tiny ; that States of
one hundred, or four hundred
millions of people—such as they,
expect theirs to
in
become—are not seemingly harmony
with the
general scheme of this nether
world of ours ; that
the dream of world-wide dominion, of universal em-
pire, is no new phase in the annals of mankind;
but that such edifices fall and crumble
from
mere weight of their bulk and extent; thate n ifthe
they could get over their present difficulty, there
would be no lack of future causes of dissension, no
scarcity of new hydra-Leads springing from the
very blood of the one they vainly hope now to lay
underground."
They are not to be reasoned with ; they will fight
their brethren to the bitter end, and " the blood be
upon their own head and on that of their children's