The Southern papers were even more boastful and romanc- ing
after the battle of Gettysburg than the Northern papers have ever yet proved themselves, and that is saying a good deal. Their accounts of the battle were altogether intuitive, the editor of the Richmond Examiner, for instance, staking his " existence " that if Lee had fought at all he had inflicted a crushing defeat. Richmond boasted for many days that the Confederates had taken 40,000 prisoners, as they had pre- viously explained that Beauregard (who is safe at Charleston) had joined Lee with 40,000 men. Forty thousand is the sacred number in America, as forty was in Palestine, the new world always multiplying by a thousand. The most beauti- ful specimen of the Southern gloria in excelsis for non-existent blessings is, however, to be found in the pages of the Chatta- nooga Rebel of June 26, which wrote, that "for Vicksburg, Virginia, and Middle Tennessee, the harbinger rays of peace seem to burst in harmonious lustre from the long night of war," adding, in short rhythmical sentences, "To drive Grant out of Mississippi, To invest the Yankee capital, And to defeat Rosecranz, Are our present objects."
"Never were prospects brighter for the consummation of these legitimate and possible contingencies !" " Possible " was the true climax. Rosecranz was even then defeating Bragg, not Bragg Rosecranz, and the latest telegram says, though we do not trust the news, that Bragg had retreated hastily from Chattanooga, and, if so, left the Chattanooga Rebel to change its name to the Chattanooga Freeman. We trust its preen on that occasion may be equally impressive.
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