TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LESSON OF THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN. THE three months' battle has ended, and unless General Longstreet can perform a military miracle, retreat before an equal force, and crush a superior one on his road, the South has lost East Tennessee. The final straggle for that great district, while it is, perhaps, the most dramatic and con- nected in the whole civil war, illustrates in the most striking way the character as well as the fortunes of the two great Powers engaged. Never were the qualities of an aristocracy— tenacity and clearness of view, coherence of purpose, celerity, and strength of organization, displayed on a grander scale or with a more successful result ; never did the one fighting quality of democracy—the power of hardening under defeat, more completely supply the absence of all the rest. The generals on both sides were, we take it, pretty much on a par; if the North had Grant in reserve the South had Long- street on the field ; if the South was hampered by Bragg, Burnside has not the nerve even to believe in himself. The first rush of the invader, whether, as we believe, admirably planned, or, as Roseeranz's enemies say, only a piece of lucky audacity, drove the Southern General out of Chatta- nooga. The place is the key of Tennessee, and a democracy would probably have fumed with rage; but the Southern govern- ing class only set itself calmly to repair the disaster. Like aristo- cracies everywhere, like the English after the first failure of the siege of Sebastopol, and the Austrians after the defeats of Archduke Charles, it held the clamour of the public good reason for not removing its general, retained General Bragg in supreme command in spite of his officers, and only despatched its best general of division to aid him with his ex- perience and advice. With a rapidity and in a silence which the North is but just learning to imitate, Mr. Davis moved twenty thousand men under Longstreet and Hill right across his dominions, reinforced the retreated army, and when Rosecranz came pouring on, drove him back with huge loss into the shelter of his mountain position. There he seemed beleaguered, guerilla cavalry assailed his communications, the fortifications were shut in till the mules died of hunger, and the friends of the North began to extenuate the possible capitulation. Then, instead of making a desperate rush, as a democracy would certainly have done, the South, which does not want to lose men even for victory, detached its most trusted General to cut off the only army which could bring swift assistance to the besieged. By a series of rapid movements Longstreet drove Burnside back to his depot of Knoxville, surrounded it on three sides, and by the last accounts seemed only to wait his own hour for making the final assault. The entire movement was so coherent and so successful, that it looked as if it had been planned step by step like Napoleon's march from Boulogne, and English opinion only waited for the apparently certain end. The whole series of successes were almost worse than worthless, for they had only raised the democracy up to the temper in which nations are never beaten. The North re- ceived the news of Rosecranz's repulse without even the usual momentary shiver, with a perceptible increase of heat, as of iron when sharply struck. It committed, of course, its habi- tual blunder, and punished a general for failure—a practice fatal to the development of high military ability, but which also teaches generals that their business is to succeed—but its strength made up for its want of self-restraint. A. popular nomination selected a very efficient general, that general was spurred by the voices behind him into prompt exertion, the immense resources which are available only where a nation is fighting instead of a mere government filled up all gaps ; mules, cannon, and men were forthcoming, the new general made his way over eighty miles of frightful country to the besieged camp, and the Federal army of Chattanooga was again the stronger of the two. The fluid organization, as we remarked at the moment, had closed above the wound: From the moment that General Grant joined the defeated force the energy and the skill of the Confederate leaders became mere aids to their powerful foe. A chief re- sponsible to a democracy might not have had self-control to attack Burnside first, but if he had the people would have found all necessary resources. The Confederate Generals had the self-restraint--they could, we dare say, now oven execute a retreat in safety—but their rulers, with all their brain, and energy, and persistence, were, after all, only a governing class. They could turn out a better army than their opponents, but not the limitless force a people in arms can supply. There were no reinforcements behind Bragg. The conscription had done its worst, the country, to use a phrase which is not American, though it reads like it, "had been raked with a small-tooth comb" for recruiting, every man available was in the field, and the whole was not enough. Bragg needed Longstreet's divisions as much as he had needed them before, General Grant's first attack drove him from the ridges over- looking the position, the necessity of dragging everything without rails over seven miles of swamp had worn out his men, and the movement, at first a retreat, ended in total rout. We see no reason to doubt the substantial truth of the statements that the Southern General has lost his artillery, lost some thousands of men, lost the organization of his army, and retreated in utter discomfiture thirty miles to Dalton. Thence he must still retreat, for there are no reinforcements to come, to Atlanta, there to await the new efforts the Southern chiefs will make to strengthen his or his successor's hands. Longstreet, aware that General Bragg is defeated, that Burnside's troops know the good tidings, that an assault will cost thousands of men, who can now less than ever be spared, and that his superiors will support him in any prudent retreat, as democratic orators could not afford to do, will probably give up the attempt, and by a brilliant retreat at once save his army and, except with those who worship success, increase his own reputation. Should he follow this course, Tennessee East and West is free, and the North has time to plant itself firmly within one more State, to re-organize its institutions, and to render rebellion impossible by breaking the power of the only caste which in the South can lead. The Southern society is "organized," but then its head can be cut oft Northern society is "disorganized," but then how reach the vital point of a polypus ?
The success is immense, but, as usual, we have to call on those who approve the cause of the North not be premature. It is fearfully difficult to crush a single province occupied by a real " society " when raised to the temper in which life has lost its value, to subdue a La Vendee, even when attacked by a Napoleon and all the forces of France. The North has made in the two years an advance which seems incredible, has recovered Missouri, and conciliated Ken- tucky, and cleared the Mississippi, and subjugated Arkan- sas, and placed a bullet in Louisiana, and out the links which bound the South to Texas. The South has lost of its old dominion Maryland and Delaware, Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas; its hold on its "territories" is nearly gone ; New Orleans is in rival's hands; Charleston is under bombardment; Mobile lives expecting attack ; Richmond is threatened by a great army ; every port on the coast is blockaded ; and the support afforded by its allies from within the Northern States has slowly died away. But it retains two powerful armies, a territory nearly as large as that of the North, a labouring class which, for its diminished space, is rather more numerous than before, the strength which is bred amidst continued battle—and for which our language, strange to say, does not afford a word—and above and before all these resources, a ruler born to rule. What- ever strength can be derived from education in battle will be forthcoming upon the Southern side ; whatever real social power used from above unscrupulously upon all below can secure for resistance will assuredly be secured ; whatever a really great intellect, fettered by no scruples and chilled by no fears, either of this world or the next, can with those means do, will, we believe, be done. They will all fail, not only because, as Liberals say, Providence is working out a terrible but just retribution for years of triumphant wrong, but because, as even Tories admit, the fanaticism of tyranny has roused its one equal foe the fanaticism of free- dom, because less than six millions of men mad for an unjust. cause have driven twenty millions of the same race as mad as themselves in a just one, because, in short, an armed caste has for the fiftieth time in history compelled a nation to organize as strongly as itself. Judged by the rules which guide men who believe that God governs as well as reigns, there never was an ultimate hope for the South ; and judged by the rules which guide statesmen and soldiers, there is now not even an immediate one. They are outnumbered by armies who were al ways as brave as themselves, whom they have made as skilful as themselves, and who have been hammered and welded, and annealed into a strength of purpose as coherent as their own. From the hour when the North, converted if not to the principles which constitute right at least to those which alone can build up free republics, decided that slavery should perish or the nation perish with it, the faint chance of the South disappeared. The smaller champion had only the advantage of his superior will, and now, at last, his adversary has a will as immoveable as his own. There is little hope for the South, but the struggle will yet be long, marked by as incessant a play of gain and loss as the flow of a rising tide. Those who expect a sudden and successful rush forward in Georgia will,—always supposing there is no internal revolt,—we believe, be disappointed. General Grant might move on rapidly, and so might his army ; but mortal man could not carry trains of ordnance, and thousands of mules, and miles of ammunition waggons, and scores of miles of carts carrying food for them all, rapidly through such mud as now covers whatever of Georgia is not a waste of sand. If the world were on fire an army could neither do with- out one meal per diem, or get that meal by force out of the scat- tered Georgian farms. Even when that State is conquered, there are armies to be carried through Mississippi, where every plantation has its swamp, and every swamp is a slough of despond, and over the hills, and morasses, and fat black mud which make up the rich State of Alabama. Rapidity on this side is impossible, as much as it is on the East, where General Meade is now learning what any Indian General could have told him, that in a roadless land there is no enemy like a sharp shower of rain. If the South holds on, if her soldiers can be fed, and her slaves cannot all escape, and her fighting class still thinks that fighting for slaves pays those who victors or conquered have no slaves to profit by, the con- quest of Georgia may take as long as that of Tennessee. We have no faith in a guerilla war to be waged by men living amongst sleepless household spies ; but the South, however limited in dimensions, can, while its labouring class still labours, and it retains cotton enough to tempt Europe to send lead, and powder, and shells keep an army of some kind in the field, and that army is backed by the rank wealth of forest, and hill, and swamp, and lagune, in which nature within the tropics delights to show how terrible as well as beautiful she can afford to be. There is no task on earth like the con- quest of a delta, defended by those who till it, and it is down towards the deltas that the North is steadily forcing her way.
When her army is broken the South has always one chance. Even now, when the cloud seems about to burst on its last remaining possessions, and its enemy has risen to the revolu- tionary height, and the last hope of aid from Europe is dis- appearing under M. Fould's report, and its only new resource is acknowledged to be despair, the planters can still win the game. Let them but rise to the height of circumstances, fling their wealth into the gulf which is opening to swallow it whether or no, and raise the race they have kept in. bondage to full and equal freedom, and the North, with its purpose snapt, may still recoil before a new army, which will then have allies in every State and sympathizers enough in every European Court.
Previous page
