The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-20 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent )

NEW YORK, Sept. 6.
As the recent rapid growth of a peace sentiment
among the masses of the people was not so much the
result of a belief in the wickedness or impolicy of
the war as of a daily increasing disgust with its
management and of despondency as to its issues,
it is not surprising that the victory of General Sher-
man at Atlanta and the evacuation of that city by
the Confederates should have revived the fast-fading
enthusiasm of the multitude, and caused impulsive
thousands to shout " War I" who last week could
do nothing bat shout "Peace !" Although the re-
sults and even the value of the victory are nu.
known, and although General Hood's army is still
capable by a bold stroke of retrieving its ill-fortune,
and inflicting upon General Sherman a heavier re-
verse than that commander has yet suffered, the
Republican party is in raptures. In commercial
phrase, the evacuation of Atlanta has "sent up
Lincoln stock" and depreciated M'Clellan stock in
a corresponding ratio. Another such victory, to be
achieved either by Sherman in Georgia or Farragut
in Mobile, would, in the estimation of the govern.
ing party, make an end of M'Clellan as a Presiden-
tial candidate, and secure the re-election of Mr
Lincoln. New York has been as gay as a carnival
since the day the news arrived, and Broadway,
from Bowling-green to Gracechurch, has gleamed
with star-spangled banners from balcony and
housetop, from steeple and portico, and from
every available position where a flag had room to
flatter, or a knot of people to congregate. All
through the North similar manifestations of re■
joicing seem to have been hastily organised, or
broken out in spontaneous combustion, wherever
the Abolitionist and Ministerial party •was
in the majority. The Democratic party has
not received the news with the same cheerfulness,
but has looked on dubious, if not sulky. Its ten-
dency to injure the Democratic and to favour the
Republican candidate was so fully appreciated that
as long as it was possible to doubt the fall of At-
lanta, the Opposition ignored or disbelieved it.
When the fact was placed beyond dispute, not on
the vague authority of the Secretary of War, but
on the positive testimony of Gen. Sherman himself,
the Democrats suddenly remembered that Sherman
was an officer of 11I'Clellan's appointing, and that
if it had not been for the far-seeing sagacity of the
hero of Antietam, the services of the hero of At-
lanta might have been lost to the Republic.
ne he Democratic party affected to treat Mr Lin-
coln with some show of respect as long as he was
merely President in esse. As soon as, by his accept-
ance of the Baltimore nomination, he became a can-
didate for re election, and a President in posse, they
declared their reticence to be at an end, and their
determination to use all the means allowable in
party warfare, whether of, direct charge, of covert
insinuation, of denunciation, of accusation, or of all
the artillery of hate and spite, to prevent his success
at the polls. The Republican party has resolved, it
appears, to play the same game against Gen. M'Clel-
lan. Before his nomination the wire-pullers, leaders,
and organs of the Republican and Abolition faith
pretended to consider him a soldier of fair abilities,
a competent engineer, a man of respectably medi-
ocre talent, and a gentleman of blameless private
life, but not a representative American, or a person
fit to be in rusted with high duties, either civil or
military, in a perilous crisis of the public for-
tunes, But now they have wholly changed their
tactics. If Mr Lincoln is to be disparaged as an
" imbecile," General M'Clellan shall be posted as a
" traitor." If Mr Lincoln is to be held up to public
odium for having infringed public liberty by the
arbitrary arrest of the members of the Legislature of
Maryland ; by the incarceration without offence,
proved or committed, of senators, members of assem-
bly, judges, and eminent citizens, Gen. M'Clellan
shall also be held up to greater oblcquy for having
been the ready instrument of the tyranny which it
now suits his purpose to condemn. If Mr Lincoln
have failed to restore the Union, Gen. M'Clellan
shall be accused of a worse crime—the crime of
having offered in the early days of the war his
sword and his services to the Confederate cause. If
Mr Lincoln has not been able to bring the war to a
satisfactory and honourable close, it is because such
a General as M'Clellan was so long allowed to re-
main in command of the Army of the Potomac, and
had neither the military genius nor the inclination
to strike a Leavy blow at the rebellion when oppor-
tunity served. Such is the character of the attacks
now made upon him in every quarter where the
chiefs of the Republican party have the power to
appeal to public opinion, and such with increasing
virulence is likely to be their character until the day
of election. Another class of his opponents make
believe to consider that his reputation is a matter of
national concern, that he is as yet ore of the purest
and most eminent military servants of the Republic,
that nothing which his enemies can do can injure
him, that he runs no risks, except from his friends,
and that neither friend nor foe can deal such a blow
against his character as he himself can inflict by
acceptance of tl'e Chicago nomination. That he, a
soldier, and a good one, should hope to stand
upon a peace platform they hold to be suicidal
folly, and urge him in the most respe.cful terms
to refuse the nomination unequivocally and
peremptorily, and trust to President Lincoln
for the present and the page of history for the
future to do justice to his magnanimous self-denial
and enlightened appreciation of public duty. The
voice of this particular charmer is musically pitched,
but if Gen. M'Ciellan should listen to its siren
tongue, he will indeed prove that his enemies have
formed a truer estimate of his mental calibre than
his friends and that it is possible for a man to be
at the same time a brave soldier and a timid civilian.
As it would have taken 30,000 or 40,000 men to
preserve the peace of New York, if the Administra-
tion had determined to enforce the conscription
among its bitterly hostile population, it has been
finally decided that New York has done so well by
volunteering, and has, moreover, provided so many
sailors for manning the Federal navies that it would
be an act of es treme injustice to so loyal and patriotic
a cotntruity to drag from his home and work a
single citizen who did not care to risk his life under
Grant or Sherman. Thus, as far as New York is
concerned, the grapes of the conscription are held
to be sour at the best, and not worth pulling ; and
if that rich city, into the ports of which so many
thousands of warlike Germans and quarrelsome
Irishmen are weekly and daily pouring from Bre-
men, Cork, and Liverpool, will but take tithe of the
new comdrs as before, pamper them with greens
backs, and clothe them in the uniform of the Fede-
ral army to fight in a cause of the merits of which
they know nothing, worthy Mr Lincoln, who can.
not just at this time afford to make himself unneces-
sarily unpopular, though still insisting upon the
principle of the draught, will graciously consent to
forego its application in the individual instance,
and trust to other States and cities to be more
docile and obedient than the metropolis. Mr Lin-
coln has acted wisely in this respect. There is no
disguising the fact that the working classes of
New York are in an ugly temper, and that if their
ill-blood were once excited to fever heat by poli-
tical or social passion, the worst excesses of
the mobs of Paris or Vienna would find their
counterpart here. The crowded cities of the Old
World have no monopoly of the "dangerous classes."
Though there is room and to spare in America for
scores of millions of agriculturists, there are large
classes who prefer to congregate in towns, and who
will not move out of them, to better their fortunes
by the hard labour of subduing the wilderness.
They are either hopelessly id.le, hopelessly dishonest
or incurably vicious, and New York contains almost
as many of them as London or Paris ; and far more
than any other city in the world., these two excepted.
Were the tocsin of riot to sound, whether the call
to the multitude were aggravat ed by the grievance
of a conscription for the con etontly-augmenting
price of the necessaries of life, ikt would only need