The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-23 00:00:00

-THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY ZIWE Nr4, SEPTE USER 23, 1869.

Iman left. As soon as I learned this I sent back
I
orders to Fitz-John Porter to march with his corps
at 1 o'clock that night, so as to be with Hooker at
daylight in the morning. The distance was only
nine miles, and he received the despatch at 50
minutes past 9 o'clock, but did not reach the ground
until after ten o'clock next morning. He can pro-
bably explain better than I can the reason of this
delay. Fortunately Hooker had handled the
army s 9 severely the evening before, and the
movement of M'Dowell had begun to be so ap-
parent, that the enemy, fearful of being sur-
rounded, had retreated precipitately from Ma-
nassas Junction, directing his retreat through
Centreville, as M'Dowell, Reno, and Kearney had
made the road through Gainesville impractica-
ble. I immediately pushed forward to Manassas,
and thence to Centreville, which was 4cupied by
Kearney, that night only a few hours after the
enemy had left it. Reno had reached Manassas
Junction, and Fitz-John Porter was immediately
ordered up from Broad Run, where he stopped.
M'Dowell's movement, conducted with vigour and
speed, had been completely successful, the enemy
being intercepted at Gainesville, and part of his
forces driven back through Thoroughfare Gap.
Late in the evening of the M'Dowell's advance
(Gibbon's brigade) met the force of Jackson retir-
ing from Centreville, and about six miles from that
place. A very sharp skirmish took place, ended by
the darkness, in which the brigade of Gibbon be-
haved very handsomely, and suffered heavy loss.
Si-,el was close at hand with his corps, but did not
join the action. I instructed Kearney to move for-
ward at early day dawn towards Gainesville, closely
followed by Hooker and Reno, and engage the
enemy thus placed between M'Dowell and Sigel on
the west and Fitz-John Porter on the south. I
also instructed Fitz-John Porter with his own corps,
and King's division of M'Dowell's corps, which had
for some reason fallen back from the Warrenton
Turnpike towards Manassas Junction, to move at
daylight in the morning upon Gainesville, along
the Manassas Gap Railroad, until they communi-
cated closely with the forces under Heintzelman
and Sigel, cautioning them not to go further than
was necessary to effect this junction, as we might
be obliged to retire behind Bull Run that night for
subsistence, if nothing else. Heintzelman marched
early from Centreville towards Gainesville, closely
followed by Reno. Meantime, shortly after day-
light, Sigel's and Reynolds' division of M'Dowell's
corps had become engaged with the enemy, who
was brought to a stand, and he was soon joined by
Heintzelman and Reno, when the whole line be-
came actively engaged. Porter marched as directed,
followed by King's division, which was by this
time joined by Rickett's division, which had been
forced back from Thoroughfare Gap by the heavy
forces of the enemy advancing to support Jackson.
As soon as I found that the enemy had been brought
to a halt, and was being vigorously attacked along
the Warrenton Turnpike, I sent orders to McDowell

to advance rapidly on the left, and attack the enemy
on his flank, extending his right to meet Reynolds'
left, and to Fitz-John Porter to keep his right well
closed on M'Dowell's left, and to attack the enemy
in flank and rear, while he was pushed in front.
This would have made the line of M'Dowell and
Porter at right angles to that of the other forces
engaged. The action raged furiously all day,
M'Dowell, although previously in rear of Porter,
bringing his whole corps on the field in the after-
noon, and taking a conspicuous part in that day's
operations. To my surprise and disappointment, I
received late in the afternoon from Porter a note
saying that his advance had met the enemy on the
flank in some force, and that he was retiring upon
Manassas Junction without engaging or coming to
the assistance of our other forces, although they
were engaged in a furious action only two miles
distant, and in full hearing of him. A portion of
his force fell back towards Manassas, and he re-
mained, as he afterwards informed me, where he
was, looking at the enemy during the whole of the
afternoon of Friday and part of Friday night, pass-
ing over in plain view to reinforce the troops under
Jackson without an effort to prevent it or assist us.
One at least of his brigades under General Griffin
got round to Centreville, and remained there during
the whole of the next day's battle, without coming
on the field, though in full view of the battle which
was raging, whilst General Griffin himself spent
the day in making ill-natured strictures upon the
general commanding the action, in the presence of
a promiscuous assemblage. Darkness closed the
action on Friday, the enemy being driven back from
his positions by Heintzelman's corps and Reno, con-
eluded by a furious attack along the turnpike by
King's division of M'Dowell's corps, leaving his
dead and wounded on the field. I do not hesitate
to say that if the corps of Porter had attacked
the enemy in the flank on the afternoon of
Friday, as he had my written order to do, we
should utterly have crushed Jackson before the
forces under Lee could have reached him.

M'Dowell to take position along the turnpike from
Centreville to Fairfax Court-house, about two miles
west of the latter place. Heintzelman was directed
to post himself in rear and support of Reno, who
was pushed north of the road, at a point about two
and a half miles east of Centreville, and to cover
that road, it being my purpose, in the course of the
night, to mass my command on the right, in the
direction of Germantown, where I felt convinced
the next attack of the enemy would be made. Late
in the afternoon of Monday the enemy made his de-
monstration upon Geimantown, but was met by
Hooker at that place, and by Reno, reinforced by
Kearney, further west. The battle was very severe,
though short, the enemy being driven back a mile
with heavy loss, leaving his dead and wounded. In
this short action we lost two of ourmost valuable and
distinguished officers, Gens. Kearney and Stevens.
By moving, the whole of my command was massed
behind a difficult creek, between Flint Hill and
the Warrenton Junction, with the advance, under
Hooker, in front of Germantown. With the ex-
ception of Sumner, the commanders of the army
corps of the Army of the Potomac had continued to
inform me that their commands were and had been
demoralised ever since they left Harrison's Land-
ing—that they had no spirit and no disposition to
fight. The latter statement their conduct in the
various actions fully contradicted, but the straggling
in those corps was distressing. The full facts hav-
ing been reported, * * on Tuesday afternoon, to
retire to the intrenchments near Washington,
which was accordingly done on that day and the
next, in good order and without the slightest loss.
Banks, who had been left with the railroad trains
cut off at Bristol by the burning of the bridge, was
ordered to join me on Monday at Centreville, which
he did on the afternoon of that day. This brief
summary will explain sufficiently in detail the
whole of the operations of the forces under my com-
mand, during 16 days of continuous fighting by day
and marching by night. To confront a powerful
enemy with greatly inferior forces, and fight bim
day by day withont losing your army—to delay
and embarrass his movements, and to force him, by
persistent resistance, to adopt long and circuitous
routes to his destination, are the duties which have
been imposed upon me. They are, of all military
operations, the most difficult and the most haras-
sing, both to the commander and to his troops.
How far we have been successful, I leave to the
judgment of my countrymen. The armies of Vir-
ginia and of the Potomac have been united in the
presence and against the efforts of a wary and vigo-
rous enemy in greatly superior force to either, with
no loss for which they did not exact full retribu-
tion. Among the officers whom I feel bound to
mention with especial gratitude, for their most
hearty, cordial, and untiring zeal and energy, are
Generals M'Dowell, Banks, Reno, Heintzelman,
Hooker, and Kearney, and many others of inferior
rank, whom I shall take great satisfaction in
bringing to the notice of the Government. The
troops have exhibited wonderful patience and cou-
rage, and I cannot say too much for them."

THE CIVIL IVA.R 1N AMERICA.

(From the New York Evening Post.)

Our military affairs are very much in the same
position now that those of the French Republic were
when it became necessary for France to meet the
combined armies of the continent. There had been
a vast and enthusiastic uprising of the people ;
armies of enormous magnitude were raised; and
these armies were equipped as well as they could
be, by the joint exertions of the Government and
the nation. But they had to be officered, in the
outset, as all such improvised armies must be, by a
multitude of inexperierced and incompetent men,
who had generously rushed forward under an im-
pulse of patriotism, to proffer their services to their
country.

The consequence was, that wherever they en-
gaged the enemy, which was generally in detail,
they were either sadly beaten or put to rout. It
was soon seen by the authorities that, unless the
military administration was rendered more rigo-
rous, the cause of the country was lost. They ac-
cordingly adopted measures which, though arbi-
trary and extreme, speedily turned the scales of
fortune against the hitherto successful allies. The
first of these measures was the massing of the
troops, which prevented their being cut to pieces in
detail, and enabled them to move with vast momen-
tum and power upon given points of strategical
importance. But the second recourse was still
more effective, which was to hold each general
responsible, even to the extent of his life, for the
success of that part of the common Operations in
which he was employed. Those who failed were
either banished, or imprisoned, or put to death, and
in a little while there was no tardiness, no mistakes,
no quarrels on the field, and no defeats that could
be by human means avoided.

We need some of this rigour in the management
of our own armies. There has not been, from the
beginning of the war up to this time, even so much
as an inquiry into the causes of our want of suc-
cess. M'Dowell failed ingloriously at the first
battle of Bull Run; he was never court-mar-
tialled or tried, but he was shortly afterwards
made a major-general and put over a large com-
mand. 11,PClellan failed on the Chickahominy,
and the causes and reasons of the failure have
been left to the wranglings of the newspapers,
while M'Clellan, after a few weeks of temporary
obscuration, is again raised to high command. In
the same way the disastrous affairs at Great Bethel,
at Ball's Bluff, at Stono Inlet, and at a dozen
other places, were subjected to no other adjudication
than the superficial and often unintelligible com-
ments of the journalists. We do not now say that
the commanding generals were in either of these
cases at fault, for that is not the question ;
they failed, and for this failure they should have
been held to answer at the regular tribunals, until
which time others should have been put in their
places. In other words the government should
have made success the standing rule of merit, until
competent authorities had adjusted the degree of
praise or blame in disputed cases ; but so long as it
refrains from the exercise of this salutary rigour it
must expect disaster and defeat.

An army will not fight as well under a leader
who has been defeated as under one who has been
successful, and an American army in particular,
which is so largely composed of intelligent, think-
ing, and reflective men. It discerns at once the
weaknesses of generals, as we have seen in the case
of Pope ; it loses confidence; and although every
individual man may be as brave as Julius Ccesar,
and as patriotic as Washington, the body as a
whole clnnot proceed with spirit, dash, and hope.
It is not assured that it is going to be led to vic-
tory ; it halts, it hesitates, and finally it breaks
away. Confidence is two-thirds of any battle; and
when confidence is lost you may, as the Russians
are sometimes said to do, whip your troops up to the
fire, but their fighting will be slow, indecisive, and
feeble. Give them on the other hand a leader who
to acknowledged skill and prudence adds chivalric
audacity and dash, and they will follow him to the
gates of death.

We trust, then, that our military authorities will
at once give us this first and indispensable sign of
renewed vigour in military management; that they
will subject every commander who has failed to the
severest scrutiny and trial ; that they will advance
the men who have shown mastership in any line of
duty; that they will not allow any probable popu-
lar or military clamour to stand in the way of the
execution of their duty ; that they will regard no
political cr personal considerations; and thus, while
they weed the incompetents or the misplaced from
the army, they will encourage both army and nation
by the conviction that a reign of energy has begun.
The rebels, who have shown better leaderships than
we, do not scruple in this respect. A year ago
Beauregard was the idol of the Southern troops and
Southern masses, but he decamped from Shiloh and
he is now not named. Floyd and Wise have shared
his fate, as others who will do not meet the one
essential point—success.

At Devonport, the other day, a rat, which was
being chased by several persons, ran up a man's leg inside
his trousers. It laid hold of the man's leg with its teeth
and held its grip with such tenacity that the man's trousers
had to be cut, and the rat Was ultimately taken off with a
piece of flesh between its teeth. The wound inflicted is
stated to be serious.

THE NEW GREAT WAR POWER.

(From the Spectator.)

There is a slight reaction perceptible in the
European enthusiasm for the South. Among the
many causes which have produced that strange aber-
ration of feeling, the principal has been an unavowed
half-conscious sense of relief. The American Re-
public, always prosperous and always exacting,
with resources as boundless as its vanity, and
courage almost equal to its irritability, had begun
to dismay politicians. Statesmen felt as if a power
were growing up with which single nations would
be incompetent to deal, and the popular annoyance
at repeated concessions was deepened into hate by
a feeling that such concessions were not altogether
without need. The division of the States was
therefore hailed as an event of good omen for the
world, a catastrophe which, however dreadful in its
circumstances, still, like the French Revolution or
the Irish famine, had its own compensations. To
make the sense of relief complete, however, it was
essential that the fragments of the great empire
should be politically manageable, should be reduced
to the point at which they could no longer safely
menace, and it begins to be doubtful whether this
requisite has been altogether secured. The South
is developing rapidly into a first-class fighting
power, and its admirers confess that, its indepen-
dence secured, they could see the tide of victory roll
back without very keen repugnance.
Were peace declared next week, the South would
remain immeasurably the strongest power on the
American continent. All the causes which led ob-
servers to believe in its military weakness have one
by one disappeard, and for the 50th time it has been
demonstrated that aristocracy, whatever its other
demerits, is the most effective of ruling powers.
From the very beginning of the contest, the action
of the South has been direct, coherent, and singu-
larly able. From among 300,000 slave-owners, all
accustomed to govern, and all, from the permanent
danger in which they live, imbued with the military
spirit, it was inevitable that really governing men
should immediately step out. Accident placed at
their head an organizing mind which there is rea-
son to believe one of consummate power, and in a
few weeks a Government, strong to the point of
despotism, had been brought into working order.
Supported by popular opinion,and the fear of losing
their property—a fear strong enough to make
Frenchmen, for example, submit to despotism—
the governing class were enabled to perform a feat
almost without a parallel. They drove the whole
of the non-propertied class into the ranks of the
army, officered it from their own numbers, and
in a war of combat drilled and disciplined a semi-
civilised race into effective soldiers. General
Jackson has an army which is able to march,which
he can carry away from his base of operations, and
which can act with the secresy and suddenness be-
longing only to regular troops. Compare M'Clellan's
march down the peninsula with the Southern in-
vasion of Maryland, effected at the rate of 20 miles
a day, There is nothing in their own organisation
to prevent the Southerners reaching Canada. Al-
most without support, dependent on the North for
powder and guns, cloth and food, the energy of the
leaders, and the inventiveness always developed in
the Anglo-Saxon race under the stimulus of danger,
supplied all deficiencies. Possessed as they were of
all property, the aristocracy being really in earnest
could not be checked for ;milt of means. They
fought like Frederick the Great or the Committee of
Public Safety, devoted all property to the war,
taxed themselves practically in their whole incomes,
and gradually welded the whole population into
one fighting mass. This was the easier, because to
the mass of that population war was a direct relief,
The mean white, badly fed and incapable of labour,
accustomed to hardship and consumed by ennui, felt
a soldier's life, with its regular duties, and rations,
and plentiful excitement, a relief from its former
existence. The exceptional character of society
greatly favoured his conversion into a soldier. Ac-
customed to look up to the planters as the sole pro-
perty holders, he readily obeyed them as officers,
and fanatic for slavery, marched against Abolition-
ists with an almost religious zeal. Unused to labour,
his disappearance left the locality, no poorer; the
slaves, who had always worked, working on still
like machines. The labour-market could not be dis-
turbed, for the labourer was the one class from
which recruits could never be drawn. A systematic
despotism, probably at once lightened by the absence
of overseers and intensified by the free use of the
punishment of death, previously avoided because the
slave was valuable, crushed them into rank and
order, and society, as a mass, had organised itself
for war.

Strong men cropped up everywhere. Aristocracy,
incapable of some forms of genius—a great aristo-
cratic poet is still to seek—always, until worn down
with intermarriage, produces governing men; and
Jefferson Davis had able assistants. At least three
able generals, Beuregard, Lee, and Jackson, rose
successively to the top. A finance minister was
appointed who, whatever his system, succeeded in
finding without revenue all the required supplies.
A minister of marine was found who, as no navy
existed capable of contending with the foe, called
on science, used railway iron to make ships, and by
his first essay created profound alarm in every Go-
vernment in Europe. The Merrimac was destroyed,
but not till she had modified all men's thoughts on
the subject of naval warfare, and after her destruc-
tion the Secretary still regained by a similar device
the temporary control of the Mississippi, and is even
now alarming the Northern coast. New ships
were purchased in Europe. At least two captains
were discovered of the very first class for energy
and rapidity of movement; and the South, in the
teeth of every natural obstacle, was enabled to claim
an effective though still insufficient navy. For the
rest, the Government in whose territory the enemy,
with secret allies in the population, can obtain no
information, and no unbought supplies, must be
ably and zealously served. The South, to all out-
side appearances, acts as one man, a working mili-
tary despotism as efficient as that of France, and
far more terribly in earnest.

And now it would seem that the State, thus
organised and changed in its character, is about to
secure independence, and the communication with
the external world, which is all it needs to perfect
its military arrangements. Can any one seriously
doubt that it will be one of the most formidable
states of the earth ? The Southern leaders have
always had a floating idea that slave states should,
as Calhoun advised, be organised on a military
basis, and the planters are not likely to lose the
lesson they have acquired. The army, which
gives them importance abroad, will impart to
them also a new feeling of security at home. A
strong and most able despotism will direct a
regular army of 200,000 men, filled with unfailing
rapidity by the conscription, composed of soldiers
who have reached just that point of civilisation
at which men, without losing their instinctive
ferocity, become capable of action in coherent masses,
and governed by officers educated in command, and
trained in a terrible series of campaigns. The South
has no wooden fleet to abandon, and, with the sale of
one cotton crop, it can place a hundred Merrimacs,
manned and armed, on the water. The property of
the country is at its governor's disposal, and must,
therefore, be adequate to the support of the army,
while the expense of the year has accustomed the
governing class to severe and effective taxation. The
laves, so far from a source of weakness, have proved
an element of strength, enabling the South alone
among the nations of the world, to make war with-
out in the smallest degree impeding the work of
production. Add to all this a geographical situa-
tion eminently favourable to expansion, and how is
Europe to restrain such a power if it chooses to de-
vote its energies to the foundation of an empire ?
By invasion? A million of Anglo-Saxons have made
the attempt in vain. By blockades ? No blockade
could equal in severity or duration that which the
South has survived. By naval warfare ? The South
can conquer Mexico without sending a ship to sea,
and move troopS'tbythehundred thousand in regions
whither France could transport only tens. Without
mentioning the revival of the slave trade, which
Virginia may be able to stop, the South will cer-
Spain cannot against such
tainly covet Cuba, which
a power defend. It will hanker for Hayti, which
the island, will scarcely care to
Europe, not owning
protect. it will long for the West Indies, whose

free blacks are a permanent menace to the first
principle of its existence, and England may at any
moment be exposed to an enemy who can produce a
cotton crisis, and who is, at least, as formidable as
the United States ever were. The command of the
isthmus, the most important point on the American
continent, and almost indispensable to our vast pos-
sessions on the Pacific, must belong to the power
which, seated at once on the Atlantic, the Gulf, and
the Pacific, can at any moment transport 50,000
trained soldiers to Nicaragua, and which in Walker's
expedition, indicated clearly the groove its am-
bition would select. To all human appearance
if the South succeeds, a grand military aristocracy
—brave, tenacious, and merciless, may enthrone it-
self on the continent from the Potomac to Panama,
everywhere ruling a subject race, reduced from a ,
state of more or less complete freedom to permanent
and degrading bondage. It may be, moreover, for '
a time, one of the strongest of external powers, con-
testing our liberty in the Gulf and obliterating our
influence in the Pacific, with a mighty alliance to
offer to any European enemy, and an organisation
which no State based on freedom can permanently
hope to conciliate. That is the prospect before us,
and it is one which may make the most ardent sym-
pathiser with the South hesitate in his effusion of
friendship. He relied on two secret beliefs—that
the South must be exhausted, and that a slave
power must always be weak—and both are proving
fallacious. The South has lost many men, but
white it has enough for its army, its chiefs, who
want no mean whites to grow corn, will not feel
their power diminished. It has incurred a great
debt, but the governing class has lent the money to
itself, and is quite capable, if need be, of making a
holocaust of its bonds. It has two crops to sell, the
value of which will soon recoup all losses, and its
slaves will be worth at once more than their
highest value. As to slavery, while the slaves
obey, they are a source of military strength, and
the planters have learnt the secret of making them
obey. Rome armed her slaves with impunity, and
the men who fell at Thermopylae induced helots to
share their fate—and be forgotten. The slaves re-
lease the white men for war, and the South is, in
fact, a military despotism in which two millions of
males, governed by astute and determined chiefs,
stand ever prepared for battle. Is that the result
which those who accuse us of fanaticism, because
we support civil government and remain true to the
principle of human freedom, so anxiously desire ?