The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-31 00:00:00

it not unworthy of him to adopt, we find, in large type, at
the head of last night's Berliner Allgemeine, a declaration
that, another Berlin journal having made a certain state-
ment respecting him (relating to a confidential inquiry said
to have been addressed to the Minister-President), he saw
himself compelled to declare that the said statement was
"in every respect a lie." I have no acquaintance with the
matter to which reference is thus made, nor any reason to
doubt that Deputy Vincke had been, as he evidently con-
siders, wilfully misrepresented or maligned; but the terms
in hich he repels the imputation, adding his signature
and quality, can hardly be considered either parliamentary
or becoming.
The memorial of the Minister of War, communicated
yesterday to the military committee of the Chamber (in in-
direct reply to Baron Vaerst), and of which mention is made
above, is considered to have for its object to provoke the
Deputies into rejecting the Forckenbeck amendment and
adopting Waldeck's proposition, which latter is, in fact,
purely negative. The intention is perfidious enough ; the
Government reckons on a better position before the country
if its proposal finds positive rejection than if the Chamber
were to meet it in a conciliatory spirit, as it would do by
the adoption of Forckenbeck's project. I find that, in last
night's joint meeting of the Left and Left Centre, M Car-
lowitz, belonging to the latter party, spoke in favour
of the Waldeck resolution, which is important, for, up
to last night, the whole of the Left Centre was be-
lieved to support Forckenbeck. Not much transpires
of what passes at these combined meetings, for it
has been agreed to keep their proceedings secret for
the present, and consequently the usual channels of infor-
mation are clot.ed.

The reserves which were summoned to their respective
corps, in consequence of the concentration of troops on the
Polish frontier, are to be released from duty on the 7th
prom., and allowed to return to their homes.

Colonel Prince Emili Wittgenstein, lately reported to
have been defeated, wounded, and captured by the Polish
insurgents, is unhurt, and has just been promoted to the
rank of general as a reward for successes he had obtained.
One daily meets with such corrections of unfounded state-
ments put forth in Russian official gazettes or Polish parti •
san journals. The news that the Prussian deputy Bent-
kowski, who joined Langiewicz some time ago, had ac-
companied him in his Meat into Austrian territory, Is con-
firmed by a communication from him dated from a place in
Galicia, read in to-day's Chamber, and by which he resigns
his seat.

All to might's Berlin papers, Ministerial and Opposition,
discredit the information of the Cologne Gazette with respect
to important novelties in the Polish question, and some of
them point to the inconsistency between the assertion that
England has agreed to a congress and the substance of Lord
Palmerston's reply to an interpellation addressed to him in
last night's sitting of the house, and which the telegraph
to-day has brought us.

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)

VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI, Feb.' 6.

There is current at present in the Confederacy a
proverb to the effect that it is safer to be engaged
in any battle, however bloody, than to undertake a
journey by railroad from Mobile to Vicksburg.
Certainly, as the traveller proceeds at the rate
of eight miles an hour over the last 45 miles of his
journey, and sees alongside of the track smashed
railroad cars, broken locomotives, the wrecks of a
thousand previous accidents, he will understand
that there is some truth in the proverb, and will be
thankful that he has got to his journey's end. Cir-
cumstances have brought upon the short link of
railroad which connects Vicksburg with Jackson
(the capital seat of the State of Mississippi) an
amount of pressure which the line was never de-
signed to support. Built with rails of the lightest
iron, bound together with the flimsiest ties, it is
astonishing that the permanent way should not long
ago have broken down and become impassable, when
it is considered that this railroad has for months
and months been the main link of communication
between the East and West. Over it have passed
thousands of head of cattle, vegetable products of
all kinds, the rich growth of Louisiana, Arkansas,
and Texas ; millions of barrels of sugar and molas-
ses, brought up the Mississippi from Louisiana, and
much of the traffic which once flowed up the river
from New Orleans, to be in part disgorged at Mem-
phis, an d to find its way to the East along the Mem-
phis and Charleston Railroad, of which a consider-
able portion has long been in the Federal grasp. It
is strange that the lesson can never be learnt by the
Washington Cabinet that the mighty area of the
Southern States forbids the possibility of bringing
them to terms by the seizure of all the strong places
upon the seaboard and along the rivers. For months
past all the best harbours on the coast, and most of
the important towns upon the great rivers, have
been held by the North. But although New Or-
leans, Pensacola, Key West, Port Royal, Beaufort,
and Norfolk, and many other points are in the
hands of the Federals, the only effect pro-
duced has been to weaken them, by exacting
large forces to hold these stations by sea and land ;
and in the interim the port of Charleston alone
has been a sufficient alkali to neutralise the acid of
Federal possession in twenty other spots. Nor
is there any mason to doubt that, if Charleston,
Savannah, Mobile, Wilmington, and Galveston fell
into Northern hands, there would be found along
the 3,000 miles of coast between the Capes of the
Chesapeake and the Rio Grande many other points
into which vessels could and would run notwith-
standing the efforts of ten times the number of ships
which the Federals can send to sea. Similarly, of
what avail is it that the Mississippi should be clutched
at New Orleans and Memphis, when Vicksburg and
Port Hudson, and the intervening 150 miles of river,
are closed against Federal intrusion ? Nor would
the position of the Federals be greatly bettered if
the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg and Port
Hudson could be finally silenced. Iron-clad vessels
could, in that case, go up and down the river, but
no trading vessel which descended the river would
ever reascend it to tell her tale at St. Louis or Cin-
cinnati. That the communication between the trans-
Mississippi State 3 and the East could never be cut
off, though Vicksburg and Port Hudson should fall,
is abundantly evident from the experience which
the Federals ought to have gained on the Potomac.
It cannot be unknown to Mr. Seward that all the
numerous Federal vessels on the Potomac, assisted
by the presence of a large Federal army, stretched
between Washington and Fredericksburg, were
powerless to check smuggling along some 150 miles,
through the majority of which the Potomac is ten
miles broad. How could it be possible to control
the hundreds of miles through which the Father of
Waters rolls his mighty flood to the sea, even though
all the assembled fleets of the world were to float
upon his broad bosom ? The Confederates know
too well the exhaustion of their enemy to be daunted
by the temporary inconvenience to which the undis-
puted possession of the Mississippi from St. Louis to
New Orleans by the war vessels of the North might
possible expose them.

But it is not necessary to point out to the
North that the object at which they are aiming
—the undisputed navigation of the Mississippi by
their vessels of war—will not bring the results
which they fondly imagine. Their object is every
day shown to be more and more unattainable, and,
be the ignorance of the Northern journals on the
subject what it may, it is impossible at this moment
that either Mr. Stanton or General Halleck can
entertain a particle of hope that Vicksburg will fall.
I have been astonished to find into what a Gibraltar
this insignificant hill city—wholly without fortifica-
tions at the commencement of the war, never
thought of as a defensible point until Governor
Pettus, of Mississippi, planted three or four light
pieces of artillery on the bluff, and checked the
panic terror which followed the surrender of Fort
Donnelson nearly a year ago, and prompted
the evacuation of Fort Pillow, Columbus, Island
No. 10, Nashville, and every strong point on or
near the Mississippi River—has gradually grown
under the favourable combination of such cir-
cumstances as :ground eminently adapted by na-
ture for defence, skilful direction of engineer
officers, the labour of twelve or fourteen hundred
negroes, and long absence of interference by the
Federal forces. The situation of Vicksburg is sin-
gular, and not easily described. The channel of
the Mississippi, as the river descends from the North,
is suddenly twisted in a north-easterly direction for
a couple of miles, when it again turns abruptly and
sweeps round towards the south-west, leaving a
low, narrow spit of land exposed and dry, and
almost enfolded within the embrace of its waters.
It might be imagined that a gigantic letter U,
narrow, and very deeply indented, had been traced
in the spongy Soil, Assuming that the river flows
in at the apex of the right-hand stroke of this
imaginary U, the situation of Vicksburg would be
from the bend at the bottom of the left-hand stroke

half way up towards its apex. All round the bend
rise the bluffs from which the upper batteries of the,
Confederates threaten the stream, while the same
bluffs extend down the river, and afford a nestling-
place for the town, behind which stretches a broken,
denEely-wooded, hill country, almost covering the
space between the Yazoo and Big Black Rivers,
which both empty into the east bank of the Missis-
sippi, the former 20 miles above, the latter 30 miles
below the town.

It will be obvious that if it were possible to divert
the Mississippi from its horseshoe course, and to
carry the stream across from the apex of the right-
hand stroke to the apex of the left hand stroke of
the U, the town of Vicksburg would be left high
and dry upon its bluffs, looking down upon the dry
bed, and no longer upon the majestic stream. The
accomplishment of so mighty an undertaking as the
canalisation of the Mississippi might be thought
sufficient to daunt even the adventurous elasticity
of Yankee enterprise. Bat the truth is that eccentric
river already shows an inclination to change its
course, upon the smallest provocation, rather than
to abide in its ancient bed. In several of the States
adjoining the river there are laws which punish
any attempt to alter the Mississippi's course, imply-
ing that there is little difficulty in so doing. The
advantage which a plantation derives from a water
front upon a river is a powerful temptation to
planters who live a mile or two back from the
stream, and see an opportunity of making a "cut
off" from one to another of its endless sinuosities, of
which the effect will be to bring the river by their
plantation. A physician who has for years been
familiar with the stream tells me that he has fre-
quently ridden out to see a patient in the morning,
and has found on returning at night that the river
has broken away hundreds of yards which he left
high and dry a few hours before. A few years ago
an artificial " cut off' of less than a mile brought
the Red River into the Mississippi, and saved a
detour of 30 miles. There was nothing unreason-
able, therefore, in the expectation of the Federals
that they might be able to succeed in making a
canal, or cut-off, across the neck of a long, low,
narrow tongue of land, against the base of
which the full volume of the Miasissippi's stream is
continually impelled ; but it must be admitted that
in the execution of their tusk they have shown less
than their ordinary acuteness. Instead of com-
mencing their canal precisely at the spot where the
stream strikes vehemently upon the river's right
bank, they have begun to dig a few hundred yards
below. Consequently, there is at the mouth of their
canal au eddy or backwater, the reaction from the
impulsive onslaught of the stream upon the bark
above, and through the canal itself the water has
no tendency to flow. Secondly, instead of digging
their canal with upright perpendicular sides, which
would have had a natural tendency to cave in and
permit the river to wash away the banks, it has
been dug with sides sloping at an angle of 45 deg.,
upon which the water presses heavily down, and
consolidates the blue Has into a water-tight culvert.
The result of these seeming mistakes is likely to be
that the boasted canal of these modern emulators of
Cyrus will not be a success such as that which
diverted the course of the Euphrates, and let in the
soldiers of Cyrus along its dry bed below the walls
of Babylon. Already there is a seeming conscious-
ness on the part of the Northern journals that the
canal is a failure. It has been tested advantageously,
and every chance has been afforded it by the flooded
and exuberant current of these last few weeks. The
Yankee ditch has, indeed, filled with water, but it
lies stagnant and sluggish, a strange contrast to the
turbulent stream which hastens unconsciously along
its winding and circuitous course and takes no heed
of the devices which would beguile and entrap it.
But it is doubtful, even though water should flow
freely through the canal, should tear its banks, and
admit the passage of heavy transports, whether the
Federals would dare to send their transports
through. The lower batteries of Vicksburg subtend
the gorge by which the lower end of the canal enters
the Mississippi, and are distant not more than a
mile and three-quarters from its exit. To-day, as I
was examining these batteries, a shot was fired from
one of them which, with a very low charge of pow-
der, fell right into the mouth of the canal. It would
not be easy to get large transports, heavily laden
with soldiers, through, without exposing some of
them to be blown up by a shell ; and it is doubtful,
with the low degree of enterprise which at present
attends all the Federal efforts by water or land,
whether any such attempt would ever be made
even though the condition of the canal rendered it
possible. It has never been doubted that ironclads
could run past these batteries, as they can pass any
batteries which command only a wide and unob-
structed stream; but to all intents and purposes, the
Mississippi has for 22 months been sealed against
the Federal invader, and so there is every probabi-
lity of its remaining to the end. It should never be
forgotten how few points along the Mississippi be-
tween Tennessee and New Orleans are available for
the landing and encampment of troops. Mile after
mile, league after league, the river runs through ar-
tificial levees, behind which dreary wastes of
swamp and fen, the abode in summer of countless
alligators, and in winter extending back miles
from the river, present an impassable obstacle
to the passage of men. It is sad to watch even
through a telescope the encampments of the
unhappy soldiers, fighting " for the best
Government that the world ever saw," and
detailed to undergo pneumonia, diarrhoea, camp
fever, and hundreds of other diseases in the pestilen-
tial swamp which lies in the Yankee canal. There
is no need to ask the question whether there is not
mush sickness among them. The eye tells you what
hundreds of deserters daily confirm, that death is at
this moment holding high carnival among the Fe-
deral camps, and has found a richer feast there than
at Fredericksburg. It remains briefly to describe
the land defences of Vicksburg, on which an amount
of skill and labour has been expended which would
gladden the heart of a military engineer. It may
be remarked that the natural ruggedness of the hilly
country in the neighbourhood renders the rear of
Vicksburg unapproachable to an attacking force
save at the cost of stupendous labour in making
roads, cutting down trees, and building bridges ;
but, as an additional protection, lines extending
many miles behind and around the town, have been
carefully traced, in which every knoll and emin-
ence has been made a point of defence and connected
with its neighbour by elaborate rifle-pits. Such a
network of redoubts, miens, lunettes, and irregular
works, all linked together by covered ways, and
forming a system of defensive works which would
be impregnable if held by a sufficient force of
men, has rarely been seen. The confidence which
animates the defenders of the heroic little city is
based on the fact that twice before a small number
of Confederates has repulsed immense bodies of Fe-
deral assailants. It would be a satisfaction to an
avowed lover of peace if he could witness the slight
amount of damage which a feu d'enfer of nearly
three months' duration has produced on Vicksburg.
Day after day, night after night, one flotilla of gun-
boats above the town, and another, which had
ascended from New Orleans and took its station be-
low, rained shot and shell into the streets; and yet
it is difficult to see any traces of the enormous globes
of iron with which the air was continually filled.
There were many occasions upon which round shot
and shell, at the rate of four to a second, were poured
into the town without intermission for three con-
secutive hours. Vicksburg has suffered less than
Fredericksburg, but they both teach the same les-
son that we learnt at Sebastopol—that the heaviest
artillery fire which it is within the power of man to
direct upon an ordinary town is vastly less danger-
ous and damaging than had previously been ima-
gined. The injury done to Vicksburg could all be
repaired at a cost of 20,000 dole. How many times
this amount has been expended upon it by the Fede-
rals in 15-inch, 13-inch, and smaller shells, in round
shot and grape, and spherical, case, and shrapnel ?
What are the chances, under existing circum,
stances, of Vicksburg being taken ? It requires
some patience tranquilly to discuss them. There
are three methods of attack, of which two have 4
been unsuccessfully tried already. The first is the
bombardment of the town and batteries by gun-
boats and mortar-boats on the river; in the hope of
silencing the Confederate guns. This was tried
elaborately at an enormous cost last summer, and
the result is known to the world. The second is

landing troops on the Yazoo River, and marching
them through swamp and bayou to attack the line
of bluffs which run back from the Mississippi to the
Yazoo River, and strike the latter at Snyder's-mill,
about 13 miles from Vicksburg. This was attempted
on the 27th of December last, and an attempt was
also simultaneously made to force the obstructions
stretched across the Yazoo at Snyder's-mill. Both
of these efforts met with signal failure. The Ben-
ton, which was regarded as the b,-,st of the Missis-
sippiironelads,was roughly handled by the batteries.
The 45,000 men whom General Grant led ap from
Chickasaw Bayou (a small stream which empties
intoo the Yazoo) found the natural obstacles and
difficulties of the country almost more than they
could surmount, and when some 6,000 of these men
got sufficiently near to the bluffs to encounter oppo-
sition they were met by an advanced guard of 1,500
Confederates and routed with inglorious facility.
The third and, apparently, the only possible method
of attack which remains is to land men in trans-
ports right under the guns of Vicksbrg, and to carry
the batteries by storm. It is hardly necessary to say
that this plan of attack would exact much more des-
perate valour than either of the others. It is inevi-
table that several transports must be sunk as they
approach the batteries, while the men who land from
the surviving transports would be exposed to a
tremendous fire of grape, canister, and musketry.
It is not probable that an army so demoralized as
that which General M'Clernand commands could be
induced to undertake so desperate and hopeless a
venture; but, if they do, the result is " beyond a
peradventure." There is some talk of pontoons
being thrown across the stream and troops beingthus
conveyed across either below or opposite the town.
The idea of building a pontoon-bridge in the face
of the Confederate batteries is manifestly absurd.
Tee difficulties of building it anywhere upon the
Mississippi are so stupendous that it is hardly
worth while to further discuss such a possibility.
It is impossible to witness the vagueness and aim-
lessness of the Federal efforts at Vicksburg, at Baton
Rouge, at Murfreesborough, no less than in the
neighbourhood of Fredericksburg, without coming
to the conclusion that the whole head is sick and
the whole heart faint—that there is no man in the
North bold enough to face resolutely the desperate,
but inevitable necessity, and at all hazards to stop
a war which has already cost at least 500,u00 lives.
and of which the result is unalterable, although
500,000 more were added to swell the total.

Every where the story is the same. Gen. Banks,
who was counted upon as likely to force his way up
from New Orleans, past the batteries at Port Hud-
son, and to co-operate with Gen. M'Clernand in an
attack upon Vicksburg, finds his troops so untrust-
worthy that he is more afraid of them than of the
enemy. Deserters flock into every Confederate camp
in Louisiana, and nothing but the broad river pre-
vents an almost unanimous desertion of the Federal
troops opposite Vicksburg. How long it will be
before Mr. Seward and his Abolitionist backers
consent to absolve themselves from the criminal
guilt of unnecessary bloodshed it is hard to say ;
but the general impression here seems to be that the
North, and especially New England, utterly hopeless
in regard to the departed Union, are eager for one
morsel of sweet revenge before they bow to that in-
exorable logic to which Republics, no less than
monarchs, cannot choose but yield. In other words,
a desperate attack will be made by land and sea on
Charleston, in hopes that its defenders will be so
hard pressed as to be compelled to burn the town.
But there are not wanting indications that, unless
the attack on Charleston is made very soon, the ven-
geance of New England will lose its opportunity.
It is not a question of weeks, it is a question of days
whether, in American phrase, the whole bottom of
the Northern Government will not fall out, whether
without any fresh disaster, sauve qui peut will not
be heard in the Federal camps in Virginia, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, Vicksburg, and Baton Rouge ;
whether the naval officers, who are sending in their
resignations—which are invariably refused—by
wholesale, will not strike work altogether. It has
taken less than two short years to bring down the
great republic from the towering eminence of eighty
years of unparalleled prosperity, and to suspend it
on the brink of a precipice of which no living man
can fathom the depth. I had almost forgotten to
mention an instance of Yankee enterprise which is
refreshing at a moment when acts of energy and
daring are much out of fashion among their troops.
Two days ago a little river boat, adapted...in peaceable
times to the carriage of cotton, and called, as it is
here believed, the Conestoga, ran boldly past the
batteries, and got safely down the river, though
heavily fired at along the whole of the five miles of
water front which are included within the defences
of Vicksburg. The Conestoga was prepared for
hazardous venture by protective armour, consisting
of cotton bales strapped tightly round her exterior
with iron bands. She possessed the additional ad-
vantage of being one of the swiftest boats on the
river. But though well adapted to run the gaunt-
let, there is a general feeling of shame and annoy-
ance among the defenders of Vicksburg that she
should have escaped that annihilation which, but
for an accident, would probably have been her fate.
It happened that a Confederate steamboat, named
the Vicksburg, was lying at a wharf in the centre
of the town, and alongside this boat the Conestoga
stopped for a minute or two, and unsuccessfully en-
deavoured to set her on fire by throwing a blazing
bale of cotton steeped in turpentine on the deck.
Near the spot stood a Confederate gun—a ten-
inch Columbiad—of which the fire would have
pierced, at that short distance, ten times the thick-
ness of the armour with which the Conestoga was
girt. Unfortunately, this gun, which had fired two
shots at the Conestoga as she descended the stream,
had upon its second shot got so far out of gear as to
be unavailable at the instant when it was sorely
needed. The Conestoga was severely struck several
times, but passed uninjured down the river, and has
since distinguished herself by committing havoc
among the Confederate barges between Vicksburg
and Port Hudson, and inspiring an alarm which far
transcends the amount of damage she has already
done. Great threats are fulminated against her as
she returns up stream, and there are rumours of
mysterious bouts about to descend the Red River,
and repeat General Magruder's recent exploit
against the Harriet Lane.

But, although a decent respect for Yankee prow-
ess demands that the different methods of attacking
Vicksburg should be tranquilly discussed, there is
overt' indication that the vast army which has for
nearly three weeks sat down in the swamp oppo-
site Vicksburg is about to take wings and reascend
the river without attempting any fresh onslaught
upon the lines which defend the city. The swollen
state of the river, the dreary wastes of oozy swamp
and fen which everywhere line its banks, have com-
bined to baffle Yankee ingenuity and to thin Yankee
regiments more terribly than sword or bullet. Hu-
manity recoils from the thought of life thus need-
lessly wasted—life, of which the heartless politicians
of Washington take no more heed than of the frogs
which people these same swamps. The condition
of the army is becoming intolerable, and everybody
knows it.

Richmond and Vicksburg have long been consi-
dered the two hinges upon which the future of this
war turns. My firm impression is that Vicksburg
will never be seriously attacked again. It is not
probable that the Federals will take their departure
without venting their spite and mortification by
throwing more shot and shell into the town, and
possibly attempting to burn it down. But there is
not an intelligent man in the North who has the
faintest hope that the Confederate batteries can in
this way be silenced. There seems only one Federal
army in the West in which the demoralization and
disaffection have not become epidemic—the army
under General Resencrans in Middle Tennessee.
But, in addition to widely-spread rumours that
General Rosencrans' health has broken down, the
difficulties with which he has to contend are enor-
mous. In his front is General Joseph E, Johnston,
in a position so strong as to make an attack upon
him difficult and hazardous. In his rear, from time
to time, are the bold cavalry captains who emulate
the fame which General J. E. B. Stuart has gained
in Virginia—General John Morgan, of Kentucky,
the youthful General Wheeler, of Georgia, and
General Forrest. At this moment it 18 known that
the commands of all these Generals have been
lumped together, and added to the cavalry force