THE FAILURE AT PETERSBURG. T HE 30th of July was for
the Northern Army one of more bitter disaster and disappointment than any mere defeat could have caused. For six weeks the sappers and miners had been engaged in a work which it was hoped would issue in the taking of Petersburg by the seizure of the works on Cemetery Hill, one of the most important defences of the town. Every kind of difficulty had been surmounted in driving the mine which was then successfully finished.
It was of great length. It passed through oozy earth and quicksand such as so long defeated our engineers at the Thames Tunnel, and had to be drained and lighted as it proceeded. This, however, was a kind of difficulty which the Yankee genius loves to battle with and displays infinite skill in surmounting. There was a difficulty almost as great. Its existence and direction had to be kept a secret from the Confederates, and therefore from the larger part even of the Federal army, which might be trusted indeed for good faith, but not for prudence. This difficulty, too, was met, and on the morning of the 30th July General Lee's army was sleeping in entire ignorance of the danger awaiting them. All General Grant's finesse, too, had been, exerted, and successfully exerted, to diminish the difficulties he would have to face. By the ruse of an attack on the north of the James River, which succeeded in imposing not only on the Confederate army but on the press of the North, he had led many to believe that he was once again shifting his base, and had induced General Lee to withdraw some 10,000 or 12,000 men from the defence of Petersburg to oppose the- expected assault of an army, whose (empty) supply trains had crossed to the north of the James on the previous day, for the very purpose of taking in the Southern leader. Hitherto- every expedient had amply succeeded. The great mine was com- plete. Five hundred feet had been pierced without the enemy learning that their foe was at work only twenty feet beneath them ; yet it was four feet wide at the bottom and high enough for ordinary men to stand in it with only a slight stoop. Six tons of gunpowder were deposited in the mine, which was to have been fired before dawn at half-past three a.m. on Satur- day, the 30th July. But on the morning of the day that was to crown this long and skilful preparation everything went wrong. Two fuses failed which delayed the explosion till twenty minutes before five, broad daylight, and so the advantage of the additional terror which darkness would have given to such an explosion was lost to the assailants. Again,. what probably had never entered into General Grant's calcu- lations, the explosion when it did take place was so terrible in its effects that it bewildered the Northern soldiers almost as much as their intended victims, and so delayed the assault. Not that the sound was awful. The twenty feet of earth to which the mine was sunk effectually muffled the sound.
But the earth trembled; there was one dull thud, and then the earth was rent along the entire length of the excavation, and the little redan or fort which it was intended to blow up rose, timber, masonry, earthworks, garrison and all, some say ; even with the heavy guns,—into the air, and remained poised for a moment, reaching to a height of 300 feet, in three broad columns chiefly of dull red earth, diverging from a single base, —like, says the New York Times correspondent somewhat quaintly,—like in shape to a Prince of Wales's feather of colossal size. This great mass of earth loomed up so sud- denly and so near the assaulting column drawn up under cover of the night behind the outer works, that the troops thought one of their own forts must by some mistake have been blown up instead of the enemy's, and so it is said that fifty valuable minutes were lost, and the charge not made till half-past five. When made, however, it was made gallantly, and the troops carried easily the first line ; but by this time the Con- federates also had recovered from their dismay and directed a galling converging fire on this first line of works, which were below the summit of Cemetery Hill, and of no use at all unless the second line could be carried also. The white troops which had first charged and carried the first line seem to have recoiled before the galling fire which assailed them when they attempted to gain the crest of the hill,—and the negro corps which followed and lost its white officers very rapidly under the fire failed in like manner. Every moment the fire became heavier, and at last there was nothing for it but to take refuge in the excavation caused by the explosion,—and afterwards, at great loss, to withdraw even thence across a space commanded entirely by the Confederate fire to the old line of works—operations in which the North lost 5,600 men hors de combat, and the fruits of six weeks' incessant expensive and scientific labour. Nor does the calamity end even there. General Lee has seen that even with 12,000 troops absent on the north side of the James, even under the disadvantage of so great a mine unexpectedly exploded within his lines, the Confederate garrison was equal to the defence of the place. He may, and probably will in some shape, use the knowledge this terrible experiment has given him, and feel at liberty to use the troops whom he sent across the James to resist the feint of Grant in other operations, galling if not dangerous to the North. He may send them to help General Early in his invasion of Maryland. He might even possibly draft them off, if there be yet time, to assist Hood in the defence of Atlanta. There can be no doubt that a sort of disaster has happened to the North such as will test their strength of purpose and perseverance more than any event since the failure of the attack on Charleston, perhaps more than any since the battle of Bull Run.
The disaster, however, is rather moral than physical. The loss of the 5,600 men is certainly not so important to General Grant as the loss of the 3,000 Southerners put hors de combat in the same encounter is to General Lee. The failure no doubt indefinitely postpones the taking of Petersburg and the siege of Richmond, and disappoints the hopes of those who may have been sanguine enough to look to either of these events as near. But it does not, we conceive, really affect at all the main service which Grant's army is now rendering to the Federal cause, namely, to keep Lee in check while Sher- man is dealing with Hood at Atlanta. The main point to bear in mind is that neither Lee nor Grant have ever yet attacked the entrenched camp of the other with success. And if Lee, emboldened by this successful resistance, should send away a large detachment to Maryland, there is no reason why Grant should not detach troops to meet them, still maintain himself in his present position, keep up his close watch on Richmond, lie in readiness to cut off Lee's army from its provision field in the South whenever the force opposed to him becomes too small for its task, and generally reserve himself for further operations till the successful conclusion of Sherman's Georgian campaign sets a still greater force at his disposal. We apprehend that the issue of this year's efforts depends less upon Grant than upon Sherman,—except of course that if General Lee's army were liberated from its present duties of resisting the army of the Potomac it would soon decide the fate of the Georgian struggle adversely to the North. But for this purpose no mere detachment of a few thousand men would suffice, as the Northern army in Georgia is at least double that of the Southern, and there- fore no doubt if General Lee can spare a few thousand men —more he could not spare till Grant is disposed of—he will send them rather to join the "raiders" in Maryland than the defenders of Atlanta. Nor would General Grant be afraid to detach quite as many to defend Washington and Baltimore, if that be necessary. It is a mere question of relative numbers. If 'the North is content to be passive for the present before Petersburg it will need no larger army than Lee needs for its defence, but for any successful offensive operations it will need either vastly increased resources of its own, or what is the same thing, vastly diminished resources on the part of its oppo- nents. If the spirit of the Northern people remains unchanged, the moral effect of the reverse is not greater than the physi- cal, and it need be productive of no further reverse. There is little reason to doubt that Sherman will succeed in his under- taking, and his success once complete will open quite a new field of resources to General Grant. On the whole, we incline to think, in spite of the manifold rumours of a growineb peace party, and a deepening disgust with the war which we hear of now for about the twentieth time since it broke out, that the purpose of the North will not waver, and that if it does not, each fresh campaign will produce results more and more important as the resources of the South diminish. In Georgia already boys of fifteen and men of sixty are being drafted into the army, and yet it is not large enough for effective resistance.
We observe that Mr. Lindsay, with that moral tenderness of nature which has always marked his public career, shudders in spirit before his constituents at Sunderland to contemplate the terrible warfare which will ensue if the South should be driven at last to arm their slaves in their own defence. It is scarcely likely, we think, that that hopeful expedient would have been postponed so long from motives of mere humanity, when the North have already 150,000 negro troops in their service. The truth is that the South dare not arm those to whom they have so long denied all the rights of manhood, and have not the moral courage to surrender their only ground of rebellion by first emancipating them. It would they feel be a victory gained over them in the eyes of Europe, were they to abandon altogether that perfect liberty to oppress others, for the mere extension of which into the Federal territories of the Union they were willing to hazard war and call it the " cause of Independence." The card of arming the negroes, which Mr. Lindsay tells us the South still has to play, is not, we think, likely to win the trick. Not but what if it did we might be almost equally well satisfied with the result. We care nothing for the abstract cause of Unionism. We doubt whether the political action and reaction of various States would not be a great gain to the political life of Americans. But we cannot wish even this terrible war to cease till the wicked motive of it is utterly defeated, and abjured as publicly as it was avowed. Gallantly as the South fight we believe their resistance to be merely a matter of time, unless indeed they should ever set themselves right in the minds of all true freemen by renouncing formally the only consideration which induced the rebellion, and openly putting the struggle on other grounds,—on feelings that are the growth of subsequent events. That would no doubt paralyze in a very great degree the energy of the most active promoters of the war in the North, as well as give something like a colourable pretext for the mediation of European Powers. But it would also cut the ground from under the feet of the rebellion, and be a formal declaration that the Southerners had brought on the country the most gigantic miseries of modern times for a wicked purpose which, and much more than which, they had been compelled to re- linquish. At all events till this happens,—and there is no sign as yet that it ever will happen,—we cannot but heartily wish success to the Power which is stronger and richer only because it has not been weighed down and impoverished and debased by long contact with slavery, and which if it has but the same obstinate tenacity for good which is too often the special strength of evil, cannot but make a great stride in every fresh campaign towards final though dearly-bought success.
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