Another Richmond letter in the London times.
The London Times, of December 1st, publishes another interesting letter from its special correspondent in Richmond. We make the following extracts:‘ In the annuals of civilized warfare such harmony in support of a war has never been approached. --The women are never failing source of wonder and admiration to the stranger, and next to the women in earnestness are the clergy, and especially those of the Ro sh faith. It is absurd to talk of such a word as earnestness being applicable to the colored race, but to the fullest extent of their powers, detestation of the Yankee is expressed by the negroes.
In a former letter from the North I expressed the opinion that Mr. Davis was the oldest living American; that impression is mere than confirmed by intercourse with him. The President is one of those calm, firm undemonstrative men, inclining to reticence, but, if interested, easily led on to animated conversation; who belong to a type which, strange to say, seems to abound in the South, and is at variance with the imputed impulsiveness of these children of the sun.
In many interviews with Northern men of mark it has never been my fortune to encounter one whose mind was not made in the same mould with that of his follows, who had not traveled along the same Macadamized road of learning along which, though pursuing it to different lengths, the twenty millions of the North undeviatingly advance. An interview with President Davis reveals to you an American with striking originality, whose mind has made its own road as it journeyed; who has thoughtfully profited by his own experiences, and got beyond the act phrases and the primers which circumscribe vigor and reach of thought. Each word is slow, weighty; and , the countenance and voice agreeable and convincing, the mouth one of the firmest that ever was set in mortal head. The President looks and worn, but speaks cheerfully of his health. There is nothing to justify the repeated allegations of Northern papers that he is physically at his last gasp.
A month in the Confederacy has taught me what a tremendous power, beyond the unanimous resistance of the the North is contending against in the vest dimension of the area it is serving to subdue. I have hitherto but grazed the edges of the great State of Virginia, but in order to do this day after day has been spent in the saddle hundreds of miles have been ridden, and a notion of the difficulty of advancing an army has been gained from the experience of a single horseman seeking food and for his horse and himself. From Gen. Lee's advanced pass four days (three in the saddle and one on the railroad) are required for the journey to Richmond, though the distance is less than two hundred miles. But the rocky roads of the Blue Ridge make thirty miles on horseback a good day's journey. An for food and forage. It is almost as difficult to procure as in Central Africa.
The confidence generally entertained here, that if Gen. McClellan Samuel advance it will be to his ruin, is based upon the fact that no such army as that now commanded by Gen. Lee has ever been in the field to oppose him since the birth of the Confederacy. Whenever the history of this war is fully written, the world will be aghast at the disparity of forces with which battle after battle has been won by Southern Generals; and especially by Gen. Jackson. The best commentary upon the Maryland campaign is found in the two facts that Harper's Ferry, with ,000 men and an untold number of guns and abundant munitions of war, fell, almost without coating a life, into the hands of its assailants, and that seven weeks have this day elapsed since the battle of Sharpsburg without any serious attempt being made by Gen. McClellan to provoke another battle.
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It is hard to expect that a State which, like Virginia, has borne the hear and burden of the war, which has laid bare her bosom to the smiler and submitted to sacrifices Hardly paralleled on earth, should look with patience upon the lukewarm zeal of other rich and powerful States, and accept their lip service as equal to her heart's blood. In the annals of the Old Dominion there will be no loftier page than that which tells how month after month the war which established the independence of the South was fought on her willing soil; how Lee, and Jackson, and Stua and a hundred others, were among her chosen sons, and how, upon every battle-field, rivers of the best blood of Virginia were freely shed rather than abandon the title to independence which finds its expression in her fierce motto of ‘"Sic Semper Tyrannis."’
In one respect there need be little anxiety entertained in Europe about the pompous proclamation in which President Lincoln announces that after the 1st of January next all slaves in the States then in rebellion will be et free. From the very first dawn of this war that proclamation has been practically enforced. There remains no power to enforce it in January, 1863, which was not invoked and employed in January, 1862.
It is remarked, after the experience of eighteen months of warfare, that the smooth-bore rifle is generally preferred by the Southern soldiers to the Enfield or Springfield. The Confederates do not believe in long shots, and seldom fire until within two hundred yards of their enemy. At this distance the constant tendency of the rifled musket is to throw its ball too high. It is asserted that in the battles around this town traces of the musket balls fired by the Confederates indicate an average height of from three to six feet above the ground, whereas the Federal bullets ranged at a height of from six feet to nine feet. There is not a question that a vast majority of the Federal bullets go high above their opponents' heads.
It is most creditable to the Confederacy to remark how, under all the pressure of their circumstances, public liberty has never been sacrificed, the habeas corpus act never suspended. As an instance, I may mention that there are two journals published daily in this town, which animadvert upon the President and his Cabinet, and upon the Governor of Virginia, in language which could scarcely be surpassed by the New York Herald--It has been held better to put up with the inconvenience of their strictures, and with the apparent manifestations of dissension thus exhibited to the North, than to suppress of interfere with the freedom of the press. But one effect of this tolerance is observed in the fact that nearly all the quotations copied into Northern papers from the Richmond press are extracted from these two journals, and the appearance of dissension, which has no real existence, is thus de very presented to Northern eyes.
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