The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-10 00:00:00

Federals to oppose them. They also said—and
their statement was so strengthened by that of some
eye • witnesses of the surprise—that some overseers of
plantations were with the Confederates serving them
as guides. Some planters and other persons re-
maining on their farms hereabout have been arrested
under suspicion of having given information to the
Confederates. Among them was a doctor, who
came on horseback from Garrick's landing; he was
not armed, but he had with him a large dog, which
was all over smeared with blood, and raised sus-
picion. My landlord is afraid that people will think
him also involved in this affair, and the sutler living
in the house is positive of it, saying that he had
been away from home, and that he ought to be
hanged. Yesterday night a hospital was attacked

and some persons taken prisoners, and medicines
- -

and other things carried away. I have told you
already about the effect of this utterly unexpected
attack on the shipping in the river. It produced a
similar sensation among the people in the camp
near White House and Colonel Ingall's, living near
my house, and all the inmates of the latter were
horribly excited, if not frightened. This little
affair would not be worth mentioning, for it is a
thing frequently occurring in camp life before the
enemy, but it has some other more serious feature
about it, which the correspondents failed to point
out. Had this Confederate party consisted, as
obstinately stated by some, of guerillas, it would be
of no consequence at all, for such might easily be
found in every rear of an army, where the dis-
affected inhabitants are left undisturbed, but they
were regular troops, coming from somewhere else,
and we may conclude from this that there is a flaw
in the position of the army.
It is stated positively that the Confederates have
received large reinforcements, but from where,
Heaven only knows ! Beauregard's dissolved army
might have sent reinforcements to different places,
and has done so, I believe. There may be truth in
his having sent troops to Charleston, to West Vir-
ginia, and to Richmond. Jackson, in Weat Vir-
ginia, has been reinforced by 12,000 men, and the
army in Richmond has reached, they say, the num-
ber of 200,000. I think this number to be exag-
gerated for the purpose of making the War Depart-
ment the better inclined to send reinforcements to
M'Clellan. Casey's division, which was routed at
the battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks—the learned
are not yet in accord on the name—is utterly dis-
graced and in the rear. M'Clellan's despatch was
very severe, and I believe unjust, as I conclude from
official and private reports of this battle.
The division fought very well, considering the
rawness of the troops ; and the fault is with General
Keyes, they say, who placed such an inexperienced
division in advance. The lies told in the papers
about this battle are glorious ; the correspondents vie
with each other in a manner which is quite disgust-
ing to me. There was, for instance, a great deal
said about bayonet charges, which were even men-
tioned in M'Clellan's official reports, and the num-
ber of dead, who perished by the bayonet were
given to a fraction. Now it comes out that among
all the thousands of wounded only one bayonet
wound occurred. Every experienced officer knows,
that real bayonet encounters are very rare, and yet
more rare with young troops. There seems to be
a particular repulsive power in cold steel with the
eyes of determined men behind it. One party gene-
rally turns tail as soon as he sees the white of the
eye. This was at least the experience of the Napo-
leonic wars, where real bayonet fights were always
mentioned as something particular. Ido not think
that soldiers have altered so very much since then.
I must say I greatly admire the courage and resig-
nation of these brave American Volunteers. They
consider the hardships which they have to undergo
to be inseparable from war, and have no idea that
the greater part of them is unnecessary, and owing
to the ignorance or negligence of their generals, or
the scoundrelism of selfish, money-making people.
These Volunteers stand what no European army
would without revolting. There are hundreds
slaughtered by the ignorance or drunkenness of
some general, and such a fellow is protected from
ignominious dismissal by the testimonial of other
fellows. The soldiers are not paid in time, nor
do they get what they have a right to demand;
bad roads always being the excuse, although bad
management ought to be substituted. The river
and the railways reach closely up to M'Clellan's
army, but notwithstanding this it occurs that whole
divisions are for consecutive days without other
food than a few wretched biscuits and yet more
wretched coffee. For days they have not an ounce
of meat; if they even get it it is salt beef, hard as
sole leather, and more profitable to the purse of the
contractor than to the poor soldier, who throws it
despairingly into the swamp in which the imbeci-
lity of his general has placed him.
If there is a necessity for it soldiers may go up to
their neck in swamps,l would not object to it; but
here they are marched to and fro without purpose,
and countermanded every 24 hours, and led across
streams and swamps only to form line of battle and
to dress properly where neither line of battle nor
dressing is required. This war, they say, is no
ordinary war, every life taken on each side is a loss
to the country, and therefore things ought not to be
precipitated, and these slow approaches of General
111‘Clellan are admirable. Well, I must say my
opinion is far different, for M'Clellan loses in this
way more men than he would by storming the
wretched Confederate works. I heard that he was
inclined to make short work and to storm, but again
this has been contradicted. The general will not
risk a battle, which might turn out to be a second
and more pernicious edition of Bull Run, and not
only endanger the cause of the Union, but also the
prospects of the general. That is of course impor-
tant, and therefore he lets the Volunteers die in the
swamps, and goes the more secure way by starving
out the Confederates. That I hear is the intention
of M'Clellan now, and we must not expect a deci-
sion for weeks if not brought about by the Confede-
rates themselves. Fortunately the Confederates
are also afraid to bring about a battle, and not ac-
quainted I hope with the week points in the Federal
position and army.
To watch this war is disgusting both to an edu-
cated soldier and to an honest man, for nowhere is
to be seen more military stupidity and more dis-
honesty than in this brave American army. You
must not wonder if I get warm and bitter. The
whole muddle does not affect me personally in the
least, but I cannot help feeling as a soldier and
a man. You have not seen the poor fellows in the
hospitals or returning from the camps, to die at
home of sicknesses which might have been prevented
by a little care and a little more honesty. Some
that I have seen are, without being ill, emaciated
and weak from sheer want. They cannot bear suit-
able food, from having lived for weeks on biscuits,
bad coffee, and swamp water, and breathed the foul
and poisonous air of swampy woods during their
sleep, e
e am not very sentimental and no Sybarite
either ; but my
on
the
hearing
heart aches and tears fill my eyes
simple tales of those poor fellows,
and looking
into their emaciated faces.
On my way...
to this plantation from the camp I
gs—a signboard on
saw before me some tents surrounded with curious
thin
which was written with
large letters, " Drs. Brown and Alexander, Govern-
ment Embalmers." They
are not to embalm the
Government, however, but only
those who require
it by the care of the Government. My Irish gentle-
man friend was acquainted with the doctor,—l do
er Brown or Alex
not know svheth ender, but we
found him sitting on a mat in his drawers and
large diamond pin in the latter shirt, with a
ereent- "rake a drinka,,
muddy-coloured ga `
. • Of
whisky tumblers.
That Old Bourbon W and large era.
asking questions. The
That once over I began
doctors were doing a large business; there behind
"
were four corpses. " See them eOf course, poor
fellows ! none of them shot, all died by fever. The
'
doctors told me their principal ingredient for em-
balming was a kind of liquid
glass and gypsum,
which hardened to a substance like stone. In this
state the body would keep for many years, per-
haps for ever. The bodies looked well preserved,
although not very agreeable. The doctors took for
embalming a private 25 dols., and for an officer 50
dots. I was told that since the commencement of
this war above 2,000 bodies of soldiers had been
embalmed and sent home. This was done by
Adams's Express, in deal boxes, lined with sheet
-
zinc. The poor fellow I saw nailed up wore his