The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-29 00:00:00

eross the river, in order, if possible to get into the
rear of the retiring Northerners. Failing in that
effort, to effect an opportune passage of the
river, General LONGSTREET was compelled,
i.t seems, to hold his hands, as it were, in the
very midst of his success. Though at the same
time, as the last curt sentence of that portion of the
usual jumble of telegrams, we have the significant
intimation—" More fighting is expected." Fol-
I owed, under a later date (the 18th) by the yet
'more striking intimation, " The Fighting with
General LONGSTREET is still progressing." Mean- i
time the tables have at the very least, we know for
certain, been turned. They have been turned so
unmistakeably, that not only is LONGSTREET known
to have changed his position as the pursued into that
fef the pursuer, but the Federal forces are ascertained
to have deserted Lookout Mountain and Missionary
Ridge, and, with those "'coigns of 'vantage," the
'whole country side between the latter and Ring-
gold.
The result here, is, for all the world, as much of
an anti-climax in its way, after the late evidences
of Federal exultation at so many Northern successes
achieved, and at so many consequent Southern
defeats, if not even most
.calamitous disasters
—the result here, we say, is of its kind quite
as much of an anti-climax es the abrupt
withdrawal of the Federal main army, under
MEADE, back again across the Rapidan at the
very moment when people had been taught
to believe that LEE and his Confederates had been
trapped by the said MEADE—either to a surrender
like that of MACK at Ulm, or, to a crushing and
overwhelming defeat in pitched battle like that
suffered by the Austrians and Russians together
under their twe emperors immediately after Ulm,
upon the foughten field of Austerlitz! Pre-
cisely at the very moment when the more
credulous were preparing to witness a
single meal made, off-hand, of LEE and his army,
LSE's formidable antagonist and Ms army withdrew
together, very quietly indeed, back again across the
Ra pidan ! And so, now, also, quite as absurdly, in
opposition to the immediately preceding accounts
given to us by the Federal authorities, the defeated
turns out to be the defeater—Missionary Ridge and
Lookout Mountain, being withdrawn from by the
Northern troops almost as hastily as Pear station
Itself—that pear, in NAPOLEONIC phrase, turning
out to be very ripe indeed, ripe even to dropping.
While such is the latest phase of the war as recog- 1
nisable in the actual military movements, the fury
of the mutual antagonism engendered by the war
between the Federals and the Confederates appears
just now to be intensifying rather than in any way
whatever assuaged. Judging from the tone in
which Mr. LINCOLN'S amnesty proclamation has been
denounced by one and all of the Southern journals
that have yet commented upon it, but more parti-
cularly by the press of Richmond, that document
appears to be regarded unanimously among the Con-
federates as more infamous and more exasperating
even than its notorious predecessor! That proclama-
tion by which the President of the once United
States of America gave the signal for a Servile
War by the announcement of what can alone
be aptly designated as a Penal Abolition. Inso-
much does there seem to be a sort of evil fatality
about the official acts and words of Mr. LINCOLN
as the last of the United States Presidents, that
this latest proceeding of his, so far from in any way
preparing the road for anything like a settlement,
seems to have been only too signally effectual already
in rousing the Southern people en masse to fresh
evidences of their combined zeal and dogged deter-
mination.