The Express.
London, England, 1862-11-22 00:00:00

AMERICA.

(MY o SPECIAL

MILSPONDMIT.)
NEW YORK, Nov. 8.

I need hardly say that the one subject of conversa-
tion in all circles since Tuesday last has been the
result of the election on that day. It has dis-
appointed nearly everybody. You will remem-
ber that I anticipated, some weeks ago, not a
triumph for Seymour, but a very large minority-
Tbe increased energy and activityof the Republicsas
since that period led me, as well as a large number
of men very much better fitted to form an opinion
upon the subject, to expect a majority of 20,000 or
30,000 for Wadsworth, the republican candidate.
The actual result has been that out of
100,000 votes, the Democrats have managed
to secure a majority of 10,000. 'Something
of the same kind bas occurred in Illinois and
New Jersey ; and, in fact, out of the seven State
elections which have taken place within the last
month, Massachusetts and Michigan are the only
two States which have accorded the government •
verdict of unqualified approval. When one re-
members that every State in the North only a year
ago gave the administration an overwhelming vote
of confidence—so much so that the opposition was
scarcely able to make itself visible—the question
which every one naturally oaks is—what does it all
mean

The friends of secession here at the Nortb, as I
well as in England, are naturally anxious to inter-
pret Seymour's election as a triumph of the pestle-
at-any-price party, and when he first took the field
I confess I was disposed to think that such it would
be if it ever took place. My reasons for changing
that opinion I have already given you. They were,
amongst others, the fact that though Seymour
opened his canvass by two or three speeches de-
cidedly condemnatory of the war from first to last,
he changed his note before ten days had elapsed,
and during the last three weeks has been as vehe-
ment in his denunciations of the rebels, and
in his expressions of a wish to fight it out to the
bitter end, as any Republican of them all. Now as
he is himself a shrewd politician, and as he is in
the hands of managers still shrewder, this change
could only be a shifting of his sails to catch the
breeze. He had found out, and so bad his friends,
that if he stood on an anti-war policy his case was
hopeless. The Democratic newspapers which sup-
ported him were equally vigorous in declaring him to
bea war man, and in defending him against imputa-
tions of secessionist sympathies. All this, as an
indication of the state of public feeling, is
very much more valuable than any number of
expressions of individual feeling that it would be
possible to collect. The leaders of the Democratic
party are the shrewdest electioneering agents in the
world, and have reduced the calculation of the
course of public opinion to an art. The utterances
of the democratic organs since the elections have
been no less distinct on this point. I have looked
over them carefully, and I can nowhere find the
shadow of an insinuation that the democratic
triumph is to have any other effect on the war
than to bring about its more vigorous, prosecution.
The speakers have all adopted this tone, even Fer-
nando Wood amongst the number. The leading
democratic newspaper of this city—that which most
faithfully represents the bone and sinew of the
democracy all through the State—the Journal of
Commerce—uses the following language on the sub-
ject this morning :

The North must unite on the platform of the constitution
and Union. The President of the United States demands
and is entitled to our support. Let us give him, and the
government of which he is the executive arm, such a sup-
port as will send joy to his heart, and invigorate the whole
people. Stand by the President to-day, and stand the firmer
by him because the radical men are abusing him and endea-
vouring to weaken confidence in him. Mr. Lincoln has no
longer an obligation to these men. He should now be
allowed to feel the force of conservative support. It must
be given. The responsibility of the administration is, in-
deed, still with the other party, but they themselves declare
that they have failed and incurred the just rebuke of the
people. If the President will accept it, he will receive the
hearty and the effective support of the conservative party—
the only men who ever do or can defend the Union and the
constitution.

This, it must be admitted, is sufficiently explicit.
There is certainly no way of supporting Mr. Lin-
coln open to any man who is not anxious to subdue
the South by force of arms, for whatever tbe Pre-
sident's other faults may be, there is no doubt
whatever of his zeal in the prosecution of the war.
Does the election indicate hostility to the eman-
cipation proclamation, or any desire on the part of
the North to retrace its steps on the slavery ques-
tion I I have given a good deal of attention to this
point, because I think it the gravest of all. I confess,
if it could be shown that the Northern people
were sorry for their assaults on slavery, and anxious
I to undo all they have been doing for its destruction,
it would go far to justify the won't accusations
brought against them by their enemies. We could
easily find many solid reasons for their refusing to
touch slavery at the outset ; but having once en-
tered upon the crusade against it, to repent them of
having sought its abolitiou and offer to build it up
again before the wondering eyes of Christendom,
would earn for them the heartiest contempt that was
ever visited upon a nation. But I am glad to say that
I can perceive no more trace of a desire to reverse
the, policy of the government or undo its acts upon
this question than upon the general question of
prosecuting the war. There has been no allusion
to any such plan in any speech or article that I have
been able to see or hear of ; and though I have
talked the matter over with many persons of pro-
minenoe in both parties, am unable to detect any
trace of anything of the kind in even the dreams of
the Democrats. There is iu fact, even amongst
those who most admire or most strenuously defend
slavery, a degree of rooted though it may be a pain-
ful conviction that its destruction is now a military
necessity, that the war is a tremendous struggle, in
which no weapon can be neglected, and that to
agree to respect rebel property in slaves is simply
to agree to assist the Confederacy in sending more
soldiers to the field, and more cons to their gra-
naries. Upon this and all other questions imme-
diately relating to the conduct of the war, tbe
letters of the /soldiers have more to do in forming
public opinion than either newspapers or speeches,
and the soldiers have been abolitionised almost to
a man. Those who are not anti-slavery from prin-
ciple have been made so by defeat, and suffering,
and hope deferred. They have discovered that
is the slavebolder's weakest point, and they desire
to strike it. Now, when you consider that there is
hardly a family—l know of none—which has not
son, or brother, or cousin in the army, and that
his letters are the basis on which all their opinions
are formed about thewar and the way of conducting
it, you may readily imagine that there are few poli-
tical theories or political prejudices that can stand
against the sad, earnest voice which comes up day
by day from the camp. I will say nothing

of the silent but hardly less potent il.
ducements to hate slavery, which are fur.
nished in a vast number of homes by
the seventy or eighty thousand Northern graves
which now dot the slave soil. And there is one
other reason for believing that the result of the late
elections has not been affected by a desire to frua-
trute the emancipation policy of the President,
which I think as cogent as any, because it is a
thoroughly practical one, viz., the fact that neither
the governors nor the members of Congress now
elected can have the smallest influence upon it, or
utter one official syllable in opposition to it.
Mr. Seymour will not enter upon his duties
before January I. And long before that time
the quota of men drafted from New York will be
in the field, under the President's ordees—a fact
of soar importance, when we remember that with-
out military force he cannot emancipate • single
negro, and with the military force nobody at the North
can possibly prevent his emancipating all be can
reach. Moreover, the new membersof Congress do
not take the seats befeseDeceinber 1863, and it is
the Congress now sitting which legislates and votes
money for the final year ending June UK or
in all human probability the end of the war.
I say nothing of the chaise of rapid successes in
the field turning the tide of public opinion strongly
' in favour of the government long before the new
Congress enters upon its (tutus. The Democrats
themselves are so thoroughly well aware of their
powerlessness, that the Herald, which generally
gives utterance to the follies of the most foolish of
them, proposes that the Congress men now elected
should meet in a sort of convention, and make their
opinions known to the President in an informal
and unofficial way. There is little likelihood, how-
ever, of any such course being adopted. The
leaders are very much too knowing to risk an ex-
posure of their impotence, as the President weald
not, and could not constitutionally, pay the least
attention to anything they might say.
Having run over some of the things, and those the
most important,which the democratic victories do not
mean, it only remains to say a word as to what
they do mean. On this point lam much of the
same mind that I was three weeks ago, when I in-
formed you that the democratic leaders had
managed to unite under their standard all who
were in any way, and for any cause, dissatisfied
with the government those who have been
alarmed by the undue and injudicious exercise of
the power of arrest, under the suspension of the
habeas corpus, and these are very numerous ;
and a majority of those who are dissatisfied
with the manner in which the war has been con-
ducted, and these include the whole of the Repub-
licans, as well asthe Democrats; and those who are
dissatisfied with the management of the finances,
which has brought a discount of 30 per cent. on the
Treasury notes in the second year of the war, have
all voted the democratic "ticket," as the sole
means, and the strongest means, of protesting.
I hear every day of Republicans pure who
, are heart and soul in the war, and who
are ready to sacrifice their last son and last
cent. in order to bring it to an honourable conclu-
sion, who have voted for Seymour in sheer weariness
, of disgust. "It will no doubt lead people abroad
to think the reaction has set in ; it will no doubt
encourage the South, by leading them to think the
r North is fatally divided," they say : "let it do
so ; if it rouses our own government into activity
and decision we shall have bought the change
very cheaply."