THE BATTLE OF RICHMOND.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1720, 3 September 1862, Page 9

THE BATTLE OF RICHMOND.

£Frotn the •• Time*,” June 12.]

[From the “Time«’’ June 14.]

A battle has been fought before Richmond, and, notwithstanding the “ sensation headings” in the newspapers and the despatches of the General, wo strongly suspect that battle was not a Federal victory. We are told that on Saturday, the last day of May, the Confederates threw themselves in great force upon the right wing of General M’Clellau’s army before Richmond. There is an euphemistic and apologetic tone in toe very tyewtfg of 9f

tfiis procoedipg.which prepares us for a doubtful victory. Tne enemy took advantage of a storm in order to make this attack. When the attack was General Casey's ! division “ gave way unaccountably and disunitedly.’* An historian loss delicate in his phraseology than General M'Clellan would probably have said that they broke.and ran. The General continues —“ This caused a temporary confusion.” That is to say, the fact of the first lino running panic-stricken from the field deranged the Federal order of battle. During this derangement the guns and baggage were lost. Thus far a defeat could not have been more mildly and gently described. It seems to have been a scamper without resistance, for the rout was “ unaccountable” and “ disunited.” The guns and baggage were all lost, and the field was abandoned. General M'Clellan goes on, however, to show that a change came over the scene. He succeeded in bringing other divisions of his vast army to the rescue. Generals Heintzelman and Keys brought up their divisions, and so also did Generals Sedgewick and liichardson. Here were four divisions brought upon the field at this critical moment. The enemy were checked. General M’Clellan says they were driven back at the point of the bayonet, and that the ground was covered with their dead. But, although the enemy had been repulsed, and the ground covered with his dead, ho was not so discouraged but that he renewed the attack on the following morning. Ho was, according to General M’Clellan's report, upon this second day again everywhere rcpulsefl. That he was pursued General M’Clellan does not "affirm ; it is not even asserted that he ran. The utmost that General M’Clellan claims is, that the Confederates were arrested in full pursuit of the Federals, and were forced back by fresh troops. The General knows that his own loss is heavy, and thinks that that of his enemy “ must be” enormous.

Such is the account given by the Federal Com-mandor-in-Chiof of that Battle of Richmond which the Federal papers announce to the Northern public as “ Great Slaughter of the Rebels,” and “ Splendid Conduct of the Union Troops.” Wo have no doubt that everything staled by the General as within his own knowledge is strictly true, but yet, perhaps, if the account had been written by a completely impartial eyewitness, thoimpresion conveyed might have been somewhat different. We might then have known why it was the General did not,.on the second day, pursue the repulsed enemy up to the walls of his city, or even enter it with the fugitives. We should not have been obliged to seek about among less trustworthy channels of news for some details wherewith to clothe with flesh the dry skeleton which the General has sent (or Mr. Lincoln’s closet. As it is, there are many things of no slight importance which we learn from those unauthorized persons who contrive to elude the vigilance of Mr. Stanton’s myrmidons, and who still write letters from the Federal camp. It was, it seems, the levies from New York and Pennsylvania which ran so promptly on the first assault, leaving Colonel Baily to meet his death while vainly trying to save his batteries. As we may depend upon it that this circumstance will be remembered hereafter, when the Northern States come to apportion among themselves the credit and the burdens of the war, we cannot afford to pass over this battle without noting that incident. So also, when General M’Clellan states that the enemy were on the first day driven back, he omits to state how far they were driven back. This omission is rectified, by another account, which stales that the Federals regained all the ground “ but about half a mile.” The special correspondent of the New York Times, however, still further elucidates this important point by stating that on Sunday morning “ the rebel army still occupied the camps of Casey’s and Couch’s divisions.” This first day’s Federal victory therefore ended by leaving the Federal camp in the hands of the vanquished Confederates. It is, moreover, told on the same authority that the guns, the ultimate fate of which is left dubious in General M’Clcllan’s despatch, were not only not recovered, but that all the nineteen were carried off to Richmond, together with the Commissariat stores. The Confederates, therefore, on Saturday night, had half a mile of the Federal battle-field, two camps, nineteen guns, and all the baggage, and yet they lost the victory in the Federal General's despatch, and in the Federal newspapers. It must be very hard for a Confederate General to win a victory in the Northern newspapers. The results of the second day’s fight is much less circumstantially stated. That it was a desparate struggle all agree. The Federal General speaks exultingly of the bayonet charges, and the Federal newspapers relate how several hundreds of the Confederates are found to have died ofbayouet wounds. But there is no reason to doubt the courage of either line of combatants after the rowdies of New York and Pennsylvania had left the field. The sweepings of the Atlantic Cities form no sample of the American Anglo-Saxon. The contest, no doubt, was obstinate ami deadly, and the fight was between men of undaunted valour. But the battle of Sunday was fought under very different conditions from that of Saturday. M’Clellan had had a night to recover and recruit. He had the advantage ol a railway to concentrate his troops, to bring up his ammunition, and to carry away his wounded. The Confederate General had delivered his blow with very creditable tactics and no inconsiderable success, but the fight on the second day was brought about with neither generalship nor surprise ; it was a prepared trial of force in which the Federals by their superior arms and equipments had an advantage. The triumph of generalship is to throw a superior body ot troops upon a weak part of the enemy’s lino. This was done on Saturday with considerable effect, but perhaps not with such decisive effect as had been anticipated. By Sunday morning the opportunity was gone. M’Clellan had come up to the threatened spot, that spot was no longer the weak point which invited attack, and we may bo sure that the best and freshest troops of the army of the Fotoraac were massed to resist the second Confederate assault. Under these circumstances the event of the second day was still no disaster to the Confederates. Wc hear of no flight, no panic ; they were driven back to their old position. That is all. When the firing on both sides ceased, “the rebels had fallen back to beyond our original lines, leaving guards stationed to watch our advance, and also to bring their wounded off the field.” It is clear from this that the Confederates at the close of the second day's battle held the some ground from which they had advanced on the morning of the first day. The victory, therefore, exists only in the large type of the Northern newspapers. It was but a Confederate victory neutralized by a second day’s drawn battle. When we have yielded the customary tribute to the combative instincts of the human animal, what it there more to say ? All their heroism and bloodshed is as useless and as wicked as if it had been exhibited between hired gladiators in a Fagan amphitheatre. It proves nothing, and it decides nothing. In all probability it will not even hasten or arrest the fall of Richmond, and, if it did, it would hare no effect upon the world’s history, or even upon this miserable war. This battle of two days tells no more than that both parties are still strong enough to shed each others' blood, and weak enough to continue to do so. Wc remark in this Battle of Richmond and in other recent engagements that a practice is rife with the Federal Generals which we never before heard of except among the leaders of Asiatic soldiers. It is constantly stated that cavalry are placed behind the Federal soldiers to drive them on upon the enemy. In the recent case it is related that fugitives were shot by troops sent after them by their own Generals. May it not be that many more than those few, who are thus sabred or pistolled into the battle, are kept in this contest sorely against their will? Is there no hope that the crisis of this madness has arrived? If not, all that wc have seen is but a harmless game to what wo shall see now that the heats of summer are coming on.