The falling back in Tennessee.
Gen. Bragg has certainly retreated to
Shelbyville, thirty miles from his victory at
Murfreesboro' as he did last fall from his victory at
Perryville.--On this occasion he has saved his prisoners, captured guns, stores, &c. But if he has
retired (that is the fashionable phrase on our side, as "a change of base" is on the other,) to
Shelbyville with his whole army he has thrown
East Tennessee entirely open to the
Yankees.
There is a very strong position beginning with
Shelbyville on the left, extending across the railroad running from
Nashville to
Chattanooga, at or near its junction with the
Shelbyville road, with its centre at a place called
Decker's, and its right terminating in the Cumber land Mountains — the whole distance being twenty-five miles from left to right, which, we understand, military men thought last summer ought to be the place to defend
East Tennessee.
It may be that
Bragg has fallen back to this position.
If he has, all is right.
But if he has merely gotten out of the way, with the design to go to reinforce the army facing
Grant, which three hundred miles off, then
Eastern Tennessee is in great danger, if
Rosecrans wishes to take it. If he should once get possession of it, 200,000 men cannot dislodge him. And
East Tennessee is precisely the very portion of the
Confederacy which it is most inconvenient for as to lose, since it cuts it completely in two.
The New York
Herald says the
Yankees lost 20,000 men in the battle of the 31st, but were victorious!
That is a lie on the face of it. There is no doubt that our men beat the
Yankees, as they always do — as they did at
Perryville last summer — and that
General Bragg has repeated the game he played then; that is to say, he has become alarmed at his own success and run away from it. One would think that memorable example would have been enough.
