The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-29 00:00:00

THE ARMY.

The I battery of the 4th Brigade of Field Artillery
will commence its march from the Ili!sea Artillery
Barracks at Portsmouth this morning, for Woolwich,
to embark for service in New Zealand. Me fol-
lowing officers accompany the battery, Lieut.-Col.
Barstow in command :—Capts. Betty and Martin;
Lieuts. Toogood, Robson, and Donnythorse. It is
a very creditable fact, and also suggestive of the
present serviceable elate of the field artillery of
England, that within one hour of the I battery re-
ceiving its orders to prepare for embarkation for
foreign service, it was complete in all respects, even
including its tent equipage, and could have been
embarked.

Full benefit of reduced duty obtained by pur-
chasing Horniman's pure Tea; very choice at 3s. 4d. and
45. "High Standard "at 4s. 4d. (formerly 4s. Sd.), is the
strongest and most delicious imported. Agents in every
town supply it in packets.

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.—On Sunday an attempt
at suicide was made by a woman named Caroline
Murray, living at No, 3, Woodin-street, Cornwall-road.
It appears she had taken the best part of a bottle of a com-
pound mixture used for French polishing. She was taken
to Guy's Hospital, where the stomach-pump was used by
the house surgeon, but she remains in an insensible con-
ion.

[AnvEnTrsrmrgr].—lTolloway's Ointment and rills.—
Fear Not.—Though surrounded by circumstances disad-
vantageous to health, these remedies, properly applied, will
cut short fevers, influenza, inflammation, diptheria, and a
host of other complaints, always lurking about to seize on
the weak, forlorn, or unwary. - The superiority of Hollc-
way's medicines over others for subduing disease has been
so widely and fully proved, that it is only necessary to ask
the afflicted to give them a trial, and if the instructions
folded round them be followed no disappointment will ever
ensue, nor dangerous consequences result. Tn hoarseness
and ulcerated sore throat the Ointment should frequently
be rubbed on the neck, and top of the chest ; it will arrest
the increasing intlAmraltion, alley disquietude, and gr -
01utili7

The whole of General Meade's army is moving
forward, and a general engagement is expected un
the Rapidan. No positive information has been
received as to the strength of General Lee's army,
but it is supposed to have been depleted by the
despatch of troops to Tennessee and other parts.
It is stated at Fort Monroe that Lee is evacuating
Virginia, but this amounts to little more than sur-
mise.

The Mobile Register says:—‘, General Joe John-
son has assumed the command of the army of
Virginia, and a Philadelphia telegram asserts that
General Lee has proceeded southward for some
purpose."
Unreliable rumours received from Memphis state
that Generals Bragg and Johnston have driven
Rosecranz back, and that their cavalry have de-
stroyed his communications.
Sixteen thousand Confederates attacked General
Negley's division, 5,000 strong, at Bird's Gap, and
drove him back three miles and a half. On the fol-
lowing day, however, General Negley recovered his
ground with the loss of 35 men.
General Bragg has massed his army at Lafayette,
and holds the gaps of Pigeon Mountain directly in
front of Federal Gen. Thomas's column. The lines
of the opposing armies are representedto be a crescent
shaped by Pigeon Mountain, which extends like the
arc of a circle round Lafayette. The Confederates
hold the interior and the Federals the exterior lines.
Both armies are within a few miles of each other,
but separated by a range of mountains.
The latest reports state that the Confederates were
moving through Pigeon Mountain Gap, and form-
ing in line as if for attack. Gen. Rosecranz has as-
sumed a strong defensive position on Checkamanga
Creek, covering Chattanooga. Gen. Bragg is reported
to have a larger force than he had at Murfreesboro'.
General Longstreet is reported to have passed
through Resaca, with 20,000 men. His advance is
positively stated to have reached Lafayette. The
Confederate troops were hurrying to Atlanta from
all directions.

According to advices from Charleston of the 15th
inst., General Gilmore was shelling Fort Moultrie
from Fort Gregg. The Confederates had strength-
ened Fort Moultrie.
A Federal reconnoitring party has been captured
on the Savannah Railroad.
The Confederates have increased their force in
front of the Federal lines in North Carolina.
The Confederates in Western Virginia, 8,000
strong, are preparing for a raid.
Martial law is to be rigidly enforced throughout
Missouri. _ _

The Federals from New Orleans are moving in
Texas in three columns ; one by way of the Gulf to
Sabine Pass, another by way of Red River to Ope-
lousas, and another along the Teche. Two gunboats
of the expedition arrived at Sabine Pass, which was
found to be well fortified. One of the gunboats was
destroyed by the Confederate batteries, and the
other was captured by two Confederate gunboats
which came out for that purpose. The remainder of
the expedition retired.

The judge of the New York District Court has
decided that President Lincoln's proclamation pre-
vented Writs of habeas corpus being granted in all
cases occurring before or after its issue.
A fearful state of affairs is reported to exist on
the Kansas-Missouri borders.
COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.
NEW YoRK, Sept. 18 (Evening.)

Money easy. Gold, 331; per cent.prem. Exchange
on London, 146/. Stocks steady. New York Cen-
trals, -1-35 Z ; Illinois, 1241 ; Erie, 107.1 ; 6 per Cent.
Unitedpi States Bonds, 1051. Cotton very firm. Mid.
Upland,
to 71. c. Flout firm and advancing.
Wheat advancing. Corn good inquiry. Provisions
and coffee steady. Sugar quiet. Molasses good
inquiry. Crude petroleum quiet at 35,1 c. to 36c.
mnd,
70e.

. (Front the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, Sept• 11.
_

I shall leave this to-morrow, on my way to St.
Louis, Missouri. The Jayhawkers of Kansas held
their war council at Paola on the 9th, as they had
announced, and mustered 3,500 armed men. They
did not, however, carry into immediate execution
their threat of a raid across the borders, to the an-
nihilation of Missouri Bushwhackers, and revenge
for the Lawrance massacre. They limited them-
selves to fiery speeches and thundering resolutions;
the upshot of which was the sending of a deputa-
tion to Washington, headed by the Senator and
Gen. Jim Lane, to demand the removal of the two
Generals in command of those districts for the
United States Government, Schofield and Ewing.
Letters from Washington assure us that the substi-
tution of Gen. Hunter for the unpopular Schofield
was already contemplated by the Cabinet. Whether
Hunter or nay other man may succeed in establish.
ing the authority of the Government among that
border population, and break them of the habit
long rooted among them of taking the law into
their own hands, time will show. Great exaspera-
tion, no doubt, reigns in Kansas, and Missouri is a
prey to terror and confusion. Mayor Anthony, of
Leavenworth, one of the Kansas Jayhawkers, was
suddenly arrested by orders of Gen. Ewing, who,
however, gave way befor3 popular excitement, and
immediately released his prisoner. The guerilla
Quantrell is still at large at the head of 1,100 Bush-
whackers.
To do these people justice, their confidence in
ultimate success, however remote, their conscious-
ness of their power to undertake a foreign war im-
mediately on the termination of the civil struggle,
or even simultaneously with it, never belied them-
selves at the-most critical moments. The bragging
faculties of these Yankees transcend all comprehen-
sion. They ought to borrow the cock from the
French, and bet it up instead of the French eagle
on their national escocheon, and take "While
I live I crow," for their motto. Their attachment to
the Union partakes of religious fanaticism ; the
idea that their country is to be a world and their
nation in a few years a mass of 100,000,000,000 of
people is not to be shaken out of their heads. Talk
to any man you list, you are immediately referred to
the "stunning" results of the last census, to the
" 35;1; per 100 increase of the population in 10
years," to " more than 50,000,000 of acres of fresh
land brought into cultivation within that same
period ;" " the produce of manufactories increased in
a decennium from 1,000,000,000 to 1,900,000,000
dols. The banking capital from 227,000,000 dols. to
421,000,000 dols. ; railroads increased in ten years
22,000 miles in length, and their capital from
296 000 000 tiold, to 1,150,000,000 dolp; anti au

The Yankees never tire of dinning these big
numbers into your ears, and the augment of " hun-
dreds of millions" in ten years, the doubling of
wealth and produce, equally extend to every branch
of domestic industry or foreign trade. Without
placing too implicit reliance in the numbers of the
census, for I am assured that its operations have
been neither carefully nor conscientiously achieved,
it requires no great persuasion to bring me to be-
lieve that the prosperity of the Union, and espe-
cially of the Northern division, was something
enormous, and that, without any unforeseen check,
the growth of the country and its wellbeing must
go on at a rate obeying the laws of geometrical pro-
gression. Only did not the civil war, breaking out
just upon the publication of that astounding census,
act as a material check upon the groat tide of Ame-
rican felicity ? The answer of the West, so far as,
after nearly a month's inquiry, I can make out, is
unanimously negative. The West was just recover-
ing from a succession of bad harvests. The price of
previsions rose in the same measure as the plentiful
supply enabled the Western producers to meet the
demand of the war. The inundation of greenbacks,
though puzzling and alarming at first, was hailed as
a fertilizing element. It was not wealth in itself, but
a means to get wealth. The Westerner was as eager
to seize on that paper money as he was anxious to
rid himself of it. The transmission of property when
gold was up at 60 or 70 was astonishingly and almost
absurdly rapid and fretful. In this city alone, with
140,000, or, as people here contend, 165,000 Souls,
the sales of real estate were in those stormy days
reckoned at something like 150 per diem. Now,
with gold at 31, or more recently at 28, the sales are
about 15 a day, the average in normal times. Money
and, what is more, money's worth, was within
everybody's reach. Every one had a chance to
settle his own affairs and look oat for what seemed
to him the safest investment. There has been as
yet no serious abatement in this spread of well-being,
which, as it certainly took place in spite of the war,
the Americans rather too sanguinely ascribed to the
war itself. Financially speaking, many of them
consider the war as a blessing and look for ward with
uneasiness to its conclusion.

Neither is the loss in men very seriously felt. The
battles of which we have read the long roll with
awe and dismay were no doubt sanguinary affairs,
and the actual losses of the Northerners in dead and
wounded are something appalling. American regi-
ments have, however, a singular knack of melting
away, whether in success or defeat, so that their
dwindling to mere squads is not wholly, nor yet
mainly, occasioned by fatal casualties in the field.
The freedom of the citizen greatly interferes with
the discipline of the soldier, and especially during
the first campaign the volunteer only considered
himself bound to the standards by his own free will.
Young heroes coming home from camp without
leave were hardly looked as deserters ; they were
simply called " absentees," There was no one to
interfere with them ; no call from their officers to
bring them back to duty. Not a few of them
were as ready to enter a second engagement as
they had been to break through a former one.
When we say that, for instance, Illinois had,
before the 31st of December, 1862, sent
135,000 men into the field, we must be under-
stood to mean that regiments and other corps to
that amount at several times left the State, and
when we hear that a regiment which mustered 1,000
at its start is reduced to 50 or 60 combatant, we
must not be too sure that all the '• balance," as the
Americans have it, is either under the sod or in
hospital.
The answer of the American volunteers to the call
was no doubt very creditable. Mere patriotikm would
have been sufficient to supply the State with the ele-
ments of an army equal to a happy prosecution of
the war, had the Government only known how to
manage them; but the waste and lavish use made
by civil and military authorities of the means placed
at their disposal shook the volunteers' confidence in
their leaders, and they soon tired of being led like
sheep to unavailing butchery. The era of volunteer-
ing came to an end, and was succeeded by enlistment
by bounties. It was then that the alien and mer-
cenary was widely mixed up with the native and
patriotic element. The army became rougher and
more brutal, but admitted of stronger management,
and was, to a certain extent, more readily amenable
to discipline.

The strongest pecuniary inducements failed in

the end to procure voluntary recruits, and then
was that Government resorted to that most impro.
vident of all measures—conscription.

Conscription, however—it is well to be undeceived
on that point—was never carried into effect, and
was, perhaps, never seriously contemplated. The
Bill passed at a time in which the affairs of the
North were at the lowest ebb, and attempts to en-
force it were not made until after Gettysburg and
Vicksburg had allayed the worst Northern anxieties,
till all necessity for the odious measure was provi-
dentially removed. New York and other parts of
the -North-East put forth their demurrer, and the
President, with vain obstinacy, determined to pro-
ceed with the draught, precisely because he saw that
the measure was unpopular. Violent resistance was
at an end instantly, but citizens, town magistrates,
State authorities, and the whole communities con-
spired to turn the law into a dead letter, and the
Government, after a vast deal of expense, danger,
and disturbance, only collected at three times the
cost about one-third of the force that was to spring
from the draught—a force, with very few excep-
tions, consisting of substitutes, hirelings, and
bounty men of the very worst description.
All this for the North-east ; as for the West, we
heard not a word of the draught in Illinois and the
States further to the West, with the exception of
Wisconsin, nor am I sure that a single conscript has
as yet been drawn from Ohio ; while Indiana has
been declared exempt. With all its readiness to offer
up hundreds of thousands of its youth to the national
cause, it must not be supposed that the actual loss of
the country in men may be very serious. In every
city on my way I have always been assured that the
men who went out as soldiers were those who could
be spared as citizens. Labour in the towns has never
ceased from want of hands, and the prodigious
spread of agricultural implements (increasing in the
last ten years from 6,000,000 dols. to 17,000,000),
together with the influx of immigrants from the
North of Europe, has enabled the husbandman to
pursue his undertakings with undiminished activity.
No doubt, the North-West, as well as East, has
thriven and thrives by the war, and if there is
anything that may have power to alienate all sym-
pathies,
and to set tho heart of every generous man
against their cause, it is the brutal exultation, the
savage delight with which they hail not only their
own success, but the wanton misery which their not
over-civilised warfare inflicts over an enemy to whose
valour and endurance they are themselves compelled,
in unguarded moments, to do full justice. President
Lincoln struck the keynote of his countrymen's feel-
ings when he ordered thanksgivings for the results,
whatever they might be, of a war between brethren.
The greatest victory in a civil conflict must be looked
upon as a subject for national mourning. In con•
sonance with the President's note of triumph, every
calamity, whether of God or man's own inflicting,
which may strike that "Bogus Confedere,cy," as
the; call it, is the occasion of 1111Filemly and unmanly
mirth for these cold-blooded Northern Ei publicans.
Something of the relentless cannibal spirit of vin-
dictiveness would seem to have crept into the
Yankee character from contact with the Red Indian,
whose bunting-ground he usurped. " Such a gen-
tleman in such a county in Maryland was the owner
of 400 slaves ; he is now left with 14 betweAt batiks
and decrepit men and women." Such items of in-
telligence are to be read daily in the papers here,
followed by insane cries of " Burn Charleston!" and
riba!d jokes about the downfall of the ruffian Jeff.

Davis, the traitor Lee, and the "Bogus Confede-
racy." No doubt, the ruin of the slaveowner is uni-
versal and complete, and there is a good chance of
the negro blotch being removed from the American
escocheon. The chances are, however, that an an-
cient injustice may be repaired by a thousand acts
of far more glaring iniquity. The stanchest friend
of emancipation surely never contemplated the utter
ruin of the master for the more than doubtful bene-
fit of the slave. There is not even a word said
about the Maryland gentleman above alluded to
either bearing arms against or evincing any hos-
tility to the Federal Government. The deeds of
spoliation and confiscation which are now being so
recklessly perpetrated throughout the invaded South
no less than through Maryland, strike the loyal no
less than the disloyal, the innocent no less than the
guilty, with not the feeblest attempt at discrimina-
tion, and it is precisely in this unsparing work that
the Federal troops are cheered and hounded on by
the ruthless outcry of Northern popular opinion.
Extermination is urged, not only with savage ran-
cour, but with a sneering levity, a childish glee,
which certainly reflects no honour upon the manli-
ness of the American character. Peter of the North
is now at last beating out the brains of Paul of the
South, and he shouts and crows in the eager hope
to drown the world's outcry against the fratricide.
May be the work of desolation which elicits his
loud applause may, at some time or other, recoil
upon his own head. I already repeatedly told you
how the havoc of the lower lands of the Mississippi
fills these Westerners with dismay, makes them
anxious about their Southern markets, and causes
them to regret the downfall of that Southern com-
merce which places them utterly at the mercy of
the rapacious -Western traders. The time may come
when Peter of the West may have a bone to pick
with Paul of the East, and then he who succumbs in
the strife may look into his own heart to know what
moderation and clemency, what tenderness and sym-
pathy he may expect from American brotherhood,
" There is," we are again assured to-day, " almost
no business in New Orleans except that connected
with the army. Around the whole crescent,'
where there used to lie 3,000 or 4,000 ships, there
are now hardly 100 vessels of all classes. These
are all employed, to some extent, in the military ser-
vice. The charters of some of these ships are curio-
sities, and indicate into whose pockets go the
many millions of money extravagantly expended in
the prosecution of the war. One vessel carrying
3,000 sacks of corn from New York was under char-
ter at 125 dols. a day, and had been out 122 days,
making the cost of freight alone about 15,000 dots., or
about 2 dols. 50c. per bushel. Another vessel, that
had probably taken Kamschatka in her route from
New York to New Orleans, had been out so long and
at so extravagant a charter that the corn she brought
stood the Government in nearly 5 dols, per bushel
when landed in New Orleans," &c. The necessity
of " supplying the Department of the Gulf from the
North-West, and by means of the Mississippi river,"
is the great topic of men's thought and talk here,
and in the meanwhile all accounts agree in describ-
ing the navigation of the great river as still unsafe,
and both its banks overrun by guerillas daily in-
creasing in numbers and daring.
There are serious complaints of prevailing drun-
kenness in the army. The evil is less among the
soldiers than among the officers, who arc "the liberal
patrons of the army merchant, whose tempting spirit
cases go to all parts of the lines." Could the cata-
logue be made out of the shames and crimes, the
sacrifices of bravo men, the self-immolation of noble
souls thus squandered, the people would stand ap-
palled. Common conversation singles out this and
that commander, and once promising officer, as the
victim of this vice, perhaps dismissed in disgrace,
or gone home to die, not because of a southern cli-
mate, but because of a habit the deadly blight of
which no miasm can equal. A general lapse into
drunkenness among the people is, I am told, one of
the most striking consequences of the war. Not a
few of the officers of the army are also desperately
addicted to gambling.