The London times on Confederate military movements.
--The London
Times, of the 26th ult., has an editorial on the late military operations of the
Confederate commanders, resulting in the defeat of
Rosecrans and the retreat of
Meade.
It says:
‘
In these last operations in
Tennessee and
Virginia the
Confederate commanders have displayed a degree of military skill and a power of combining their force that the
Federals have never been able to attain.
The armies of
General Lee and
General Bragg, in
Georgia and
Northern Virginia, were more than four hundred miles apart in a straight line.
Yet they cooperated with and supported each other with as much celeray as if they were engaged in one operation.
A whole corps has been taken from one and added to the other with facility as great as if the main bodies had only been separated by the distance of a day's march.
The immense advantage of railroads for the purposes of war has never yet been so signally proved as by the transfer of
Longstreet's corps from
Virginia to
Tennessee to aid in the defeat of
Rosecrans, and back again to enable
Lee to make this advance so confidently.
The troops thus twice moved from point to point must have traversed more than a thousand miles of road, some of the railway lines they took being circuitous.
The possession of these lines has been of immense advantage to the Southerners, but it requires great strategical ability to turn even advantages to account.
Lee and
Longstreet could not refer to any operations of ancient war for precedents.
To weaken one army in the face of an enemy of equal force, to strengthen another four hundred miles distant, was hardly within the resources of old military science.
It has not only been done, but repeated, and both movements have been successful.
It is a remarkable achievement, and its importance is singularly Illustrated by a complete contrast with it.
Burnside was dispatched to reinforce
Rosecrans as soon as
Longstreet's movement was ascertained.
But the
Federal General had no railway lines to move by. He struggled on through a country either roadless or ill-provided with the means of communication.--He could not arrive in time to prevent the disaster of
Chattanooga.
’
