THE SITUATION OF THE NORTH. [Fnou OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New
York, October 3, 1863. Two weeks have passed since the battle of the Chickamauga, and Rosecranz still holds Chattanooga, and Burnside Knoxville. The encounter seems to have been like that of two railway trains, in which one receives somewhat more damage than the other, but both are effeitually crippled. The Southern newspapers are filled with exaltations over a great victory ; but are also filled with wailings over Bragg's failure, with all his preparation and his reinforcement, to accomplish the great essential purpose of his campaign—the rout of Rosecranz's army and the cutting his line of communications, so that he must either lay down his arms, or retreat into Kentucky as Lee did into Virginia after the battle of Gettysburg. The Richmond Whig, of September 23, three days after the fight, well says, " Rosecranz must not only be beaten in battle, but he must be destroyed or driven from East Tennessee, otherwise the battle might as well not have been fought. If this stronghold is not wrenched from him now it will hardly be hereafter." In spite of his undisturbed possession hitherto, we all think that it is much too soon to speak with confidence even of the probability of his holding his position permanently ; but we know well that to dis- lodge him now would be a far more difficult task than it would have been ten days ago, and that every day makes it harder. After reading carefully nearly every detailed description of the battle, published on either side and in any part of the country, I find that the account given of it in my last letter was substantially correct. The number of guns captured has diminished from fifty to thirty-six ; the prisoners are reckoned at 7,000, 2,000 of whom are wounded. To set off against these we have only nine or ten guns, and hardly 1,000 prisoners—taken chiefly by General Thomas —leaving a heavy balance against us. But in the loss of officers and men the preponderance is on the other side. And this happened, although we lost the day and so many guns, because our right and centre were broken, after it was found that the left was immoveable, byrepeated dashes of great masses of men in overwhehning numbers, columns broken by our fire being continually replaced by fresh men. This is apparent enough in the " Confederate " accounts of the fight. In that published in the Richmond Dispatch, the writer, speaking of this attack on the second day on the right and centre, says : "The enemy had massed a heavy force on this part of the field [not true, or but partially so], and maintained his position with so much stubbornness that Walker was ordered up with his reserves to the support of Hill and Polk. He moved for- ward in superb style, and fell upon the enemy like a thunderbolt ; but the Federal columns [lines] still stood their ground, and fought with desperate gallantry." Again, speaking of an attack upon another part of the field, he says, " Here a desperate struggle ensued. Kershaw carried the position again and again, and lost it as often." The assault was finally successful, however, when " Gracie's, Kelley's, and Trigg's brigades" had been added to the attacking force. The enemy could afford to be thus lavish of his men on this occasion, important as it was, owing to his large preponderance of numbers—his reinforcements, too, having been mostly picked men from General Lee's army. We know by the rebel accounts that of Longstreet's corps alone, be- sides Hill's, six brigades were actually in the fight, and more were marching up as reserves. But the battle of the Chickamauga is now of the past for us as well as for you ; and I should not have directed your attention to these rebel accounts of it, were it not that they, no less than the facts they chronicle, seem to me some- what inconsistent with that feeling of " contempt" which a British officer alleges in the last Blackwood to be universally felt in the rebel armies for their opponents. Men who fight " with desperate gallantry" against even the thunderbolt reserves sent to punish their fernier "stubbornness" in maintaining a position, and who take again and again another position, from "the veteran Kershaw," at the head of the chivalry, and who are not finally driven off until three more brigades are brought up, may be very contemptible sort of folk, but I cannot exactly see it. But seriously, do you not begin to see that this contempt, the re- ports of which, alas ! are so freely written by British pens, and so eagerly read and willingly believed (pardon me—if I am wrong), by the majority of British readers, is artificial—a mere fashion, an affectation, encouraged by a comparatively few leaders who set the fashion for their own advantage ? If you do not see this now, I trust the time is coming when you will see it, or if you do not, that it will be because even the expression of contempt has passed away. After which specimen of Yankee vapouring I drop the battle of the Chickamauga, where, doubtless, we had a hard knock, and pass to other subjects more pleasant to men of my inclining.
We have had for ten days past a fleet of five Russian men-of- war in our harbour, commanded by Rear-Admiral Lisovsky. No such representation of the great autocracy has ever before been seen in this country ; and we have just given the Admiral and his officers a civil and military welcome—an ovation, as that nondes- cript the newspaper reporter calls it. I ought to speak of his phraseology with more respect, for, according to European authority, he it is, and not Irving, Prescott, Chalmers, Emerson, Longfellow, and our other recognized authors of like and less "epute, who makes what is queerly called " American" literature. You will find this position taken in the very Spectator itself, in unequivocal terms, if you look back a few numbers. The gentle- man is availing himself of his authoritative position to enrich the American language (for, of course, " American" literature must be written in the American language), with words which, like himself, are fearfully and wonderfully made. In the way of ovation he has got on as far as ovationary. I saw it myself ; actually, "ovationary cheers," in one of our best newspapers. He, doubtless, thought that he had done something very fine ; but if he could have seen how certain multitudes here who do not exactly recognize the imperial position to which he has been assigned by European power, and who, in fact, have the audacity to assert the Monroe doctrine, in that respect at least, regarded his rubbish, he would not have taken much comfort from this new creation. But, begging pardon for such a digression, I return to our Russians. They had what must have seemed to them, and what in fact was, a very hearty welcome; andfrom this, doubtless, political deductions will be drawn by our foreign friends, who are watching us and our affairs. But we have learned better than to suppose that any demonstration of kindness and good-will, to say nothing of near and natural ties, will have a feather's weight with the Government and the govern- ing classes of any European nation. Indeed, we are not at all pre- pared to assert that they should have even the feather's weight, and hereafter, as heretofore, when we think it proper to do a man or a nation honour, we shall do so for our own sakes, and with no thought of making a friend. So, rest assured, we have done in this case. We ovationized (I think that beats our friend the reporter, and should entitle me to a place in "American " literature), we ovationized the Prince of Wales with all our hearts and with much elaborateness, all of us in all conditions of life. We did the same, in as far as he would let us, for Prince Napoleon, though in a much more moderate manner, and with less heart and less generality of demonstration ; for we were foolish enough, in the previous case, to think that blood was thicker than water. We have become wiser since. The welcome in the present case has no more political significance than in either of the former. And this, too, was a mere impromptu and Common Council affair, proposed on one day, prepared the next, and effected the day after. In the welcome to the Prince of Wales the whole community joined, the representatives of the best of such intellectual and social culture as " America" can afford taking the lead. The preparations were long, the expense lavish, and paid almost entirely out of private pockets, not a few, but numberless. City officials were excluded as far as possible from participation in any but a purely official part of the demonstration. Poor Lisovsky was left entirely in the hands of the Common Council, commonly called " the Common Scoundrels," and the people, at a day's warning, went out to see the show, and to cheer the representatives of one of the few great nationsby which, except in official language, their own is treated with decent respect, I will not say courtesy, or even consideration; yet, let me own, and I think that I can afford to own without regret, and, at any rate, I do own without regret, that even the consciousness that Russia treats us with a kindness and consideration which are refused
to us by our own flesh and blood, failed to infuse our welcome with any of that feeling which was diffused throughout the whole com- munity during the entire visit of the Prince of Wales, who, although not English, as we are, but German by mother's as well
as by father's side, yet represented to us the mother (or shall I say the stepmother ?) country. We do not regret the welcome we gave Albert Edward. It was no more than became us; and if any
cheeks should blush when it is thought of (we do not say there should), they are not ours. Nor, with all the hearty welcome which we give the Russians can we fail to feel that they are strange, and foreign, and unkin. And then we fall to wondering, and even—I will answer for some of us—to grieving that self- respect must hereafter steel us to civil indifference to those who are not strange, or foreign, or unkin.
In the course of the slight ceremonies of this welcome a remark was made by one of the Committee of the Cominon Council which former experience teaches me will be seized upon abroad and used to our discredit, although it has excited general surprise and disgust here. Admiral Lisovsky apologized on his quarter-deck for not having fired a royal salute from the whole fleet, giving as a reason the great number of vessels around him, on board of which he feared some one might be injured. "Oh," replied this com- mittee-man, " we are used to killing people in this country !"
Whereupon inevitably up goes the old cry as to the indifference to human life in " America," which now, it will be said, is confessed by the " Americans" themselves. But oh 1 good European critics,
the man that made this speech (which referred to our war) the bad taste of which (the speech, not the war) I have heard remarked upon by all sorts and conditions of men, even our artizans and mechanics, was not an " American," or the product of " American
institutions." He was born and bred among you ; he was an Irishman. The Common Council of New York is chiefly composed of Irish emigrants, who came over here from their native bogs not only penniless, but utterly ignorant and degraded. You may see this by their names—Michael Tuorny, Terence Farley, Patrick Cafferty, Phelim Toole, &c. ; and they have got into their present places either by keeping grog-shops, or being superintendents of gangs of labourers of their own countrymen. So much for their right to represent " Americans." But as to the indifference to human life of which you speak so frequently, and as to which the correspon- dent of the London Times recently favoured Europe with some exclamations, let me assure you that it does not exist, except in the most remote parts of the Slave States, and on the far Western border, which is to us what Australia is to you. You go to your Auitralia by water ; we to ours, not so very much nearer, by land. Except in those quarters so remote from our civilization, there is no country in the world, as far as I can judge, in which human life is so highly regarded--in which the loss of a single human life in any manner makes such a profound impression. Why, murder has almost ceased to be a capital crime, in spite of the horror and the sensation that a murder excites, because it is almost impossible to find a jury that will assume the responsibility of deliberately putting a man to death. In the State of New York capital punishment is by sta- tute, to all intents and purposes, abolished, so hedged round is the life of an accused person. And through all this bloody war we have let deserters go unpunished until within the last month or two, simply from our horror at the taking of human life. Fighting for our country is another matter, +think we " Englishmen in Shirt- sleeves." What think you Englishmen in coats ? The progress of the war did not steel our hearts on this subject. Men, men in humble life, who heard.that their sons and brothers, private sol- diers, had fallen in battle, used to go on to take care of, and often
bring back, their bodies in such numbers, and for so long a time, that the undertaking of this sort of obsequies became a branch of business, and finally it produced such confusion and inconvenience that it was put a stop to by the military authorities. You con- tinually write about us as if we cared nothing, or very little, when we hear that five or ten thousand men have fallen. Would you know bow we really do feel? Read this burden of the song written for the celebration of the last 4th of July in Philadelphia :— " Help us, Lord,, our only trust ! We are helpless, we are dust ! All oar homes are red with blood ; Long our grief we have withstood; Every lintel, each door-post, Drips, at tidings from the host, With the blood of some one lost. Help us, Lord, our only trust ! We are helpless, we are dust!"
But in spite of this, if it takes the lives of five hundred thousand men to save this Republic, they will be given. _ _
A YANKEE.
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