June 17, 1863, The New York Herald
By our correspondence from Murfreesboro, published yesterday, it would appear that Rosecrans is making some advances against Bragg, but that he is ordered from Washington not to provoke the rebel general too far, but just to divert him sufficiently to keep him from sending reinforcements to Johnston, in the vicinity of Vicksburg. But from other sources of information, more reliable, we learn that it is highly probable that if Rosecrans boldly and in earnest advanced he would find no Bragg there, but discover, to his great mortification, that the rebel bird had flown, leaving behind only some deceptive appearances of his presence.
From the intelligence we have received we are led to believe that Bragg has reinforced Lee with one-third of his army, and Johnston with one-third, while with one-third he amuses Rosecrans, and if pressed by that generation will fall back upon the strong fortifications at Chattanooga, and hold them till he is reinforced in turn by Johnston or Lee, or from some other quarter. Such is the advantage of interior lines to the rebels, and the disadvantage to us of exterior lines. The probability therefore is that Johnston has at this moment an army fully as large as Grant, and that he will speedily operate against his rear, while, by concert, the garrison sallies out from Vicksburg and attacks him in front, thus enclosing him between two fires. It is highly improbable that Lee would make so bold a movement northward if he had not received large reinforcements from Bragg; and the importance of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and the peril in which these strongholds are placed, have no doubt compelled Jeff. Davis to send every available man from the balance of Bragg’s army to Johnston. The march of Lee is not an isolated move, but part of a comprehensive game which is played on the Mississippi, on the Rappahannock, on the Potomac, and on the Cumberland and the Tennessee. The pieces are being moved simultaneously by an unseen hand on the whole of the chessboard of the war, and we shall only see the full meaning and drift of the various operations when the game is won or lost.
The latest information from Vicksburg goes to show that Johnston has been reinforced and is advancing. Indeed, one rebel journal of the 9th inst. says that Johnston has already succeeded, by an adroit movement on the Big Black, in introducing a part of his army into the garrison at Vicksburg, while it is added by a journal of this city that the same news had reached Washington from our own generals, but that the despatch had been suppressed. From a telegraphic despatch from Baltimore, in another column, it will be seen that the Richmond papers of Saturday go still farther, and say that Johnston has cut his way through Grant’s lines with his whole army and entered Vicksburg – an operation by which it is expected he will be able immediately to raise the siege. This is probably premature. But it must be confessed that the rebel papers are growing more confident every day about the ability of their generals to hold Vicksburg and Port Hudson, while most of the correspondents of the Northern papers write in a far less confident tone of the ultimate capture of these strongholds than they did at first.
A letter in the Knoxville Register of the 9th instant, which we publish elsewhere, represents Johnston to be in a bad way, and the State of Mississippi to be in extreme danger. But this may be a dodge, and the writer may have received his instructions from Johnston, in order to deceive Grant and the administration at Washington. Certain it is that other and later advices from the South indicate a very different state of things. The Chattanooga Rebel of the 13th instant says Johnston is now supplied with commissary stores, transportation and artillery, all of which he wanted before. If this be true it shows the value of interior lines of communication. For the same reason it was equally practicable to have reinforced Johnston, not only from Bragg’s army, but from other points, and we would not be surprised if it should turn out that he is now in command of seventy-five thousand men. Ample time has been given the rebels by our War Department to do it. They have had interior lines, and it would be very unlike the game of strategy they have hitherto played if Jeff. Davis and his generals did not avail themselves of these advantages. A tremendous campaign, pregnant with vast results, is now culminating, and will probably be solved by the Fourth of July.