The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-30 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)
NEW You, May 17.
It turns out that Mr, Stanton in hie Otcial reports of the
•
progress and remit. c!. :Lie great contest in Virginia on
more that die occasion has mistaken his wishes for facts.
ttetieral Grant:has made no real progress whatever,and Ge-
neral Lee still confronts him at Spottsylvania Court-house.
Both armies have suffered enormous losses, that of Grant
an amount variously estimated in this tity between 60,000
and 80,000 men. Frederickshrg is literally crammed full
of the wounded and the dying. Every house is a hospital,
and every room of every house is no sooner 'emptied of the
dead, than the dying are thrtht into it, to make way in
their turn for fresh Vratims of the unhallowed struggle.
The streets ate impassable for the wounded, who lie all day
and Night forlorn and unattended to in their last agonies,
not for want of pity and sympathy and the desire to show
them every possible care and attention, but solely because
their numbers are so many that there not surgeons and
nurses to be obtained to look after a tithe of them. Wash-
ington is represented to be in a situation scarcely less de-
plorable. As anticipated in my last, both armies have been
compelled by the weather and the state of the roads, as
well as by the fearful losses which each have suffered, to
pause for a while in their frightful conflict. Both are re-
ceiving reinforcements. Beauregard, leaving Richmond to
its defences, and Gen. Butler to be dealt with hereafter, has
succeeded in slipping from Petersburg and effecting a junc-
tion with Gen. Lee at Spottsylvania. The worst of the
work thus remains to be done. if Richmond is to be taken,
or Gen. Lee's army annihilated, or compeded to capitulate,
it will not be until many battles have been fought, as obsti-
nate and bloody as those of last week. But people in the city
who three days ago were sanguinehave had cause to change
their opinion of the facility with which the end was to be
attained, and are contented to adjourn the consummation,
which they still believe to be inevitable, until the 4th cf
July, a day on which they Seem to think possessed of a
strange influence over the hands, heart, and head of every
true Yankee. It is not every one, however, who is equally
credulous. General Lee has not yet reached the point
where he desires that his antagonist shall meet him for a
decisive effort, and seems content in the meanwhile not
only to lure him on to that position by such degrees as suit
his purpose, but to inflict upon him at every mile or half
mile of his progress an amount of slaughter that would
demoralise any army less gallant than that cf the Potomac.
While Grant, with characteristic energy and contempt of
life, says he will " pile up his men and conquer at all
hazards," Lee—with equal energy and heroism—dares him
to come on, whatever may be his numbers—foils every
attack which he cannot wholly repel—and on every occa-
sion inflicts at least ruble the damage which he receives.
Were men of no more value than mosquitoes they could
not be more ruthlessly sacrificed than they have been dur-
ing the past week, or as in all probability they will be
again as soon as Grant makes another march against his
enemy. Though his battalions are not engaged in fighting
against a foreign nation led by a would-be conqueror, who
would reduce them to subjection, but are lifting their fra-
tricidal hands against men of the same race and language,
who have taken up arms in defence of that sacred principle
of self-government on which the Federal Union must rest,
if it rest upon anything, it is impossible for any one, what-
ever his opinion of the cause of quarrel may be, to with-
hold his admiration for the noble qualities it has displayed
in this, the most tremendous struggle in which this army
was ever engaged. And if admiration be extorted by the
army of the North, shall it not be freely rendered to that
nobler, because smaller, army of the South—which bears
up so splendidly against difficulties that might
well appear to be overwhelming, and which, dis-
daining the vulgar inducewents of bounty, does
battle for home and independence—desiring nothing,
asking nothing, expecting nothing from the hated
Yankees but to be left alone to such Government as the
suffrages of the Southern people shall elect and maintain?
The great business of the war—all absorbing as it
might be supposed at a moment when the fate of the Re-
public hangs upon a thread—has not interfered with the
social, and scarcely with the political life of the people. In
New York, as in London, May is the month of meetings,
religious, philanthropic, moral, and it may be added, as far

as New York is concerned, immoral. The foes of elaVetee
of whiskey, and of marriage have each had their anniversary
celebrations. Since General Grant crossed the Rapidan the
supporters of Women's Rights, the believers in Spiritual-
ism, and of all the other " isms" that flourish in this land,
as they flourish nowhere else, have followed the example
—and brought oat their crotchets for discussion and "ven-
tilation," sometimes for the instruc`ion, en:legates for the
amusement, and not unfrequently to the disgust of all
sensible people. The Abolitionists, as might have been ex-
pected, are jubilant, for although, according to the procla-
mation of the President, slavery is still to be redoghized in
the United States, provided that the alaveholders be loyal
to the Government, the c'til thing has been abolished theo-
retically in every part of the once Great Republic, where
his proclamations have no more validity, than those of the
Xing of Dahomey. For this rcuson, and also because their
party is in power, the Abolitionists were in excellent spirits
at their anniversary—though they did not separate without
a schism in their ranks, upon two gasstione of considerable
interest—first, whether Mr. Lincoln was a wise man and a
good President ; and second, whether Great Britain was
a first or a second-rate Power. The balance of opinion on
the first question was decidedly against the President; on
the second, which was raised by Mr. Wendell Phillips, it
was as decidedly against Great Britain. Mr. Phillips seems
to consider that free countries in Europe cannot be great, for
he admitted hone to stand in the first rank except Russia and
France, and carried the sympathy and conviction of his
audience along with him.
The teetotallers and adeodates of the Maine liquor law
have also had their annual gathering. They did not appear
to be so well satisfied with things in general as their friends
the abolitionists. They were quite ready to Make it a felony,
punishable with fine and imprisonment, though not exactly
with the gallows, to distil, to vend or to drink a glass of
alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, on the pre-
scription of a properly qualified physician, but did not see
their way very clearly to the happy consummation of their
wi-hes. Neither did they seem to think that victory could
reward the gallant exertions of the army of the Potomac
Until it was commanded by a teetotaller, and Until every
general of division or brigade eohilhed himself to tea and
cold water. As General Grant and General Meade drink
wine when they can get it, the prospect in this direction did
not appear hopeful to these excellent philauthtopiste.
The spiritualists have mustered in great strength, aPe
parently with the design of purging their faith of a heresy
that has grown into it, the hereet of "free love," as its
friends call it,
and of" n'eo lust," as it is designated by its
opponents.
-' melue free lovers consider marriage to be slavery,
the
eravery of the woman to the man, and a thing as odious
in its way as the slavery of the black man to the white; they
therefore urge its abolition. The Spiritualists, who design
to form a new religion, do not wish their faith to be encum-
bered with a notion so irreconcilably at varience with Chris-
tianity, with civilisation, with morality, and with the gene*
ral opinion of all mankind, and are striving desperately to
outset the "free lovers', from their communion. But they
find the achievement more difficult than they imagined, and
assert that evil spirits, and not good ones, instil such indecent
thoughts and such wicked heresy into the minds of harlots
and of other worse people of the opposite sex. Of course the
spirits had something to say of the war and of the progress
of hostilities in Virginia. One set of spirits declared that
General Grant would triumph over all obstacles, while an-
other set declared as confidently that Grant would be
anni-
hilated-
As there was no superior spirit to say
which
the truth and which the lie, the matter remained in
abey-
ance, and was not decided to any one's satisfaction, when,
after sittings prolonged into the second week, the Conven-
tion adjourned.
Less dreary than the gathering of these crater fanatics
was the meeting of the fair Ladies of the Coienant, who
assembled last night at the Cooper Institute to sign a pledge
not to wear any article of foreign finery until the restoration
of peace. Teo ladies are by no meant so enthusiastic in the
cause as the ultra-patriots imagined. The young ones have
awakened to the suspicion that the movement is a Yankee
dodge, got up by the New tngland manufacturers of infee
tier dry goods, to palm off upon them the ugly home-made
article at a foreign price, and the old ones, especially those
who have money in their pockets, axed like to look young,
though youth may have departed—have come to a similar
conclusion. The shafts of ridicule have been let fly against
the whole movement, and especially against the leaders. It
is asked if they are not the identical ladies who refused
to drink tea or other imported beverages, in the days before
George Washington became the father of his country, and
whether it is not time that such venerable persons should
retire into private life and leave the affairs of the world to
of them--young or old—are not of the strong-minded order,
a younger generation. It is also asked whether the whole
and whether it will not be fatal to the chances of marriage
of any spinster or young widow if sho be seen among them,
or to wear the badge of the order—a bee on the left shoulder.
The inquiry is simultaneously made, whether the bee
would not be more appropriately and suggestively worn in
the bonnet. The principal speakers at the meeting were
the philanthropical and wealthy Peter Cooper, from whom
the building in which it was held derived both its name
and existence, and the Rev. Drs. King and Hitchcock.
The last mentioned gentleman was especially severe on the
tawdy and costly finery trailed through the streets of Broad-
way by the ill-dressed and vulgar rich women of New York ;
and declared that their heartless extravagance in the hour
of their country's peril, when the heroes of the army of the
Potomac were dying by thousands on the bloody battlefield
of Bpottseilvania, was indecent, unbefitting, unsympa
thetic," and, in one word, gt a shame." But his remarks
did not appear to receive mudh favour, and were received
with as decorous a silence as if they had been uttered from
the pulpit. The pledge which the ladies were to sign on
becoming Covenanters was not a very stringent one, for it
only bound them to refrain during the war or the rebellion
from the purchase of imported articles of luxury for which
these of home manutacture and production could be conve-
niently substituted. This weak mode of putting the case to
the consciences of those who loved pleasant finery more than
unpleasant duty, called forth the indignant reprobation of
a Miss Swim B. Anthony, the only lady who mustered suf-
ficient courage to address the meeting, but who had not in-
Anc,t.l to prtcuro the eeleteilut:ere o ill.' word

"possibly" for the obnoxious word "conveniently." In
consequence the whole affair very nearly miscarried, and
the fair assemblage dispersed----the etronr-minded among
them asserting that French milliners and Foreign importers
had packed the hall; and the rest going home, strongly
minded to wear what they pleased, if they could afford to
purchase it, and to do all in their power to perpetuate the
reputation which the gentle promenaders of Broadway have
established, of being the worst and most expensively dressed
women in the world, It is asserted in most Of the papers
that Mrs Lincoln, who is not, hoWeVer, a leader of fashion;
has refrained froth lending the countenance of her name to
the movement " lest foreign Powers should take umbrage 1"
A lady, who signs herself Jane G. Swisshelm, and
is said to be one of tue female clerks emplo3ed in one of the
public offices at Washington, says that not only Mrs. Lin-
coln, but the President is of this opinion, and in a letter to
a western journal, to the columns of which she is a frequent
contributor, takes credit to herself for letting the people
know that the chief magistrate considers his foreign rela-
tions in so precaricus a state that the people must continue
to buy more velvet and lace than they can afford, for fear of
a rupture with their European customers. She raises her
voice against such a scandal, and desires the " American
people to know that their Government is afraid to decrease
the amount of purchases of street silk mops, lest the thun
der of French and English cannon should be heard on their
shores." It would appear from the postscript of Mrs Swiss-
helm's epistle. teat the intormation of the President's no-
tions on this delicate subject was communicated to her in
confidence, but that the honour of the country being at
stake she declined to keep it secret. " Our officials," she
says, "need not in future fear to express their sentiments
fully, as no one will be likely to tell me anything that may
not be published , but I do not imagine that President Lin-
coln had any objection to having the country know his
opinions on this or any other question," But whatever
be the cause—whether it bo the President's disapproval, or
the ridicule of the male sex generally—the movement is not
fashionable and cannot apparently be made so.

MAY 18.
Postscript—l have bat little time before the departure of
the steamer to allude to the forged proclamation attributed
to President Lincoln, which was published in two of the
morning journals to-day and refused insertion in all the
rest. In these days, when it is considered a good joke to
forge official documents, and not discreditable in a Minister
of Sato to give them currency, it was scarcely possible for
any one to read the document without a suspicion that Mr.
Lincoln never penned or published it, but that it was the
invention of some unscrupulous Confederate, designed to
injure the Federal cause, to turn the President into ridi-
cule, and to paralyse the arm of General Grant in face of
the army. It appears that one of the morning journals had
printed off about 20,000 copies of its ordinary issue when
the attention of the editor or manager was drawn to this
proclamation, and that he immediately ordered the sup-
pression of the whole number rather than give it currency.
Everybody who read it was startled, Many were scan-
dalised, but the bulk of the public, if any opinion can be
formed of the masses by the remarks made in public
places, incline to believe that the document was
genuine, that it told unmistakable truths in unmistakable
language, and that it was eminently characteristic of the
style and the mind of the President. To set the matter at

rest, I telegraphed to Washington to know if anything had
been heard of it in that city. The reply just received is
that the proclamation is " bogus" and a " wicked forgery."
It had the effect, however, during the short term in which
it was believed, of sending up gold from 178 to 184, from
which same people infer that it was concocted by speculators
in this city. The forgery, however, is not likely to go un-
punished, if any clue can be obtained to its perpetrator. It
nay be a joke to forge the name of Mr. Mallory, or of Lord
Lyons and Mr. Jefferson Davis, but it is no joke to forge
the name of the President and the Secretary of State to a
document which, if it reached the army of the Potomac,
might have have produced a very disastrous close of the
campaign in Virginia, by the complete discouragement and
demoralisation of the troops. So the forger, whoever he
may be, may expect a short shrift and a long rope as the
sentence of the drum-head court-martial before which he
will indubitably be brought, if he is discovered.