The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-15 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, JAN. 2.

The President has kept his word. He issued his
Proclamation of Emancipation yesterday, but it was
not published until to-day in any of the journals,
though publicly read last night at Boston, at an
Abolitionist meeting, to the promoters of which an
early copy was forwarded. Mr. Lincoln abolishes
slavery as far as his words and signature can abo-
lish it in ten of the States of the Southern Confede-
racy, leaving it intact in such portions of those ten
States ae are occupied by the Federal forces, and in
the Border States of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Missouri. He admits, by these ex-
ceptions, that he has no power under the Constitu-
tion to touch the question of slavery in any place
where the owners of slaves are loyal to the Govern-
ment of which he is the head, but declares at the
same time that he sincerely believes the emancipa-
tion of such negroes as have the good fortune to be
the slaves of rebels "to be an act of justice." He
does not say whether it is justice to the slaves, or
justice to their masters, that inspires his policy. If
it be justice to the slaves, why does he not emanci-
pate those who belong to loyal owners? And if it be
justice upon the owners—justice inflicted in the
shape of fine or deprivation of property, does he not
admit the negro to be a chattel, which he has as
much right to confiscate as lands and houses, and so
place himself in antagonism with his Abolitionist
friends, who maintain that the negro is not, and
never can be, a chattel ? And when he invokes
"the considerate judgment of mankind and the gra-
cious favour of Almighty God" on his act, does he
think the one will approve or the other bless a
course of proceeding which ought to make the slaves
of loyal men curse the loyalty of their masters as
the greatest affliction that could befall them, and
which, in the case of the rebel owner, uses the slave
as an instrument of vengeance just as Mr. Lincoln
would use a sword, a rifle, a cannon, or any other
offensive weapon ? The proclamation is as cruel and
illogical as the war of which it is the climax. It
only declares slaves to be free in States where the
President has no more power either to make them
free or white than the Imaum of Muscat has,while it
retains them in bondage in every place in which
his armies could give effect to his words, and convert
his theories into facts. The whole document rests
upon a false foundation, and has no other justifica-
tion, even in the mind of its weak and irresolute
author, than the old, stale, and wicked plea of neces-
sity, that plea which evil doers, oppreLsors, tyrants,
and weak rulers have always employed since the
creation of the world, and will continue to employ
until its end in support of the foregone conclusions
of their own passion, prejudice, and madness. It
is, moreover, a direct and palpable incentive to a
servile war—of which no imagination, however tru-
culent and prurient, can exaggerate the horrors.
Though it enjoins upon the negroes the policy and
duty of abstaining from violence, it expressly per-
mits and advocates violence if it seem to them to be
necessary for self-defence or the procurement of
their liberty. In other words, Mr. Lincoln delibe-
rately counsels the negroes to defend by force the
--
liberty which his proclamation but not his arms has
bestowed upon them in case their masters should
resist, as they assuredly will, their escape from
bondage. It is impossible to put any other construc-
tion upon the words, and should a war of races and
a repetition of the atrocities of St. Domingo be the
result every drop of blood that may be shed in the
struggle—whether it be the blood of white men,
women, and children, or the blood of the unhappy
negroes themselves—will lie upon Mr. Lincoln's
head and on the heads of those who counselled him
to do evil that good might fellow. Happy will it
be for him if his proclamation falls innocuous upon
the Southern plantations, and if it prove, indeed, to
be as vain and idle as that "Bull against the
Comet," to which in a saner day, when he more
clearly understood his own duties and responsibili-
ties than he appears to do at present, he wisely corn-
!
pared it.
While opinions are scarcely at alldiviidediioy of
n this
!city as to the mingled cruelty and mpoi
letting loose in the South this awful element of
destruction, they are greatly divided as to its imme-
diate effect upon the war. Many hold that its only
possible resu.elitwsoimllebefetaor eamudbitottehrerasndhpoproelothnagt tibtes
struggle, Van
certain and speedy effecte to f put an
urise reonpde
as
at
no
i
it by the mediation or nt will b
e
rvent
blishedoiold be
and before
aeon as the document was pu ,
Powers. The premium on g g
the close of business in Wall-street to-day the price
advanced 2 per cent. upon the previous quotations,
with a tendency to a further inflation. It is im-
possible not to see that Mr. Lincoln is not sup-
ported by the public sentiment,
and difficult to
avoid anticipating that tbe fatal manifesto will ex-
plode at home in the North,
and it is to be
convulsion such as the countY andr
has wit-
nessed, never yet
lead to a political
hoped will never witness
again.

As noticed in my last, the words " intermediation
and intervention" appear to have lost their former
terrors. Men are not only weary of, but disgusted
with the war. They may love the Union, and de-
plore that it was ever broken ; but they are not
prepared to sanction an insurrection of the slaves
to punish the Southern planters, or to have the
guilt of a negro Jacquerie laid at the doors of the
Northern people. A prominent member of the
Republican party—who has done as much as or
more than any other public man in America, to
elevate Mr. Lincoln to the Presidential chair, to
support him in its occupancy, and to provoke the