The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-29 00:00:00

TwE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,
4- ---

(27, tines Correspondent)
NEW 'Zoltan Jan. 15.
Walia gold is rising in price to pay for the luaus
T. 13 which Americans cannot produce, and which
they are largely importing from Europe, while the
active operations of war languish, or appear to
languish, to be unexpectedly resumed in all pro-
babiiity at no distant day by a combined onslaught
of. Generals Lee and Longstreet upon the position
of General Grant in Tennessee, the war of faction
gathers strength in preparation for the Presidential
election of November next, The forces of the De-
mocratic party are to assemble at Chicago on the
4th of July to build their "platform," and to nomi-
nate their candidate. Where the Republicans are
to assemble is not yet determined. Mr. Lincoln's
friends will support him because he issued the pro-
clamation of emancipation; and General M'Clellan's
friends, and those of any other candidate that the
Democrats may think it more desirable to bring
forward, will support their nominee because of his
opposition to the Abolitionst policy. It is solely
with a view to electioneering that at this moment
the fervid orators of abolition, black and white, lay
and clerical, male and female, are more than unus-
ually loud in the assertion that there is no hope of
peace, no safety for the Republic, no chance even
of the union of any considerable number of States,
excepi in the vigorous prosecution of negro emanci-
pation. Not only must the slaves of " rebels" be
set free by the sword, but the slaves of " loyal "
men must be liberated by the purse of the Federal
Government. If there really is to be, what some
ardent Republicans deny and some prudent ones
doubt, another Presidential election by the old
method of the ballot-box, the struggle between the
Democrats and Republicans will be fought at the
polls to this issue. Pending the preparations for
the conflict, it is well to consider what progress the
emancipation proclamation has already made, and
what effect it has had upon the white race and what
upon the black, in order that impartial Europe, so
deeply interested in the result, as well as the Ame-
ricans themselves, may know whether Mr, Lincoln
and the theorists and idealogues who have his mind
and conduct in their keeping, are statesmen and
philanthropists, or fools and dreamers who would
deliberately ruin a great nation for the sake of an
abstraction, and consign the dark skinned objects
of their solicitude to the chances of gradual decay
and demoralisation, if not to violent extermination,
rather than suffer them to live in a state of involun-
tary servitude. It is but a few days more than a
twelvemonth since the proclamation:was issued, and
ample time and opportunity have been afforded to
study the results, both physical and moral, of an act
that Mr. Wendell Phillips, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Victor
Hugo, and a few English abolitionists, consider only
second in grandeur and sublimity to the birth of
Christ ; but which the whole people of the Southern,
and more than one-half of the people of the North-
ern States, deem to be an act of cruelty to the black,
as well as of suicidal folly to the white race.
Considering its political effect upon the white
people of the Federal and the Confederate States
it will scarcely be denied that it has divided the
North and exasperated the South. It has drawn a
broad line of demarcation between Northern parties
and embittered the strife by the introduction of a
principle of social and political equality between
white men and black, for the reception of which
white men ara not prepared, and which the majo-
rity in the North will resist both actively and pas-
sively, and on any and every occasion. It is equally
clear that it has had all the effect upon the South-
ern mind of an attempt to stirr up a servile insurrec-
tion, and that so long as it continues to be avowed
and acted upon the South can neither offer terms of
peace nor accept them.
But extreme philanthropists who believe that all
great humanitarian measures must work some
degree of evil and suffering, who assert that the
blessing is this case very far transcends the bale, and
that the white race will become reconciled to the fact
of emancipation and ad its consequences as soon as
it becomes persuaded by the lapse of time and the
force of circumstances that the fact is irrevocable,
must excuse the practical millions if these latter
ask what effect the measure has had upon the peo-
ple which it was more particularly intended to
benefit ? The question cannot yet be thoroughly
answered, but very considerable light has already
been and will for the future be thrown upon it. In
the first place, the proclamation was addressed to
nearly four millions of slaves in the South, and ac-
cording to the census of 1860 to 429,401 slaves in
the border States of Delaware, Maryland, Ken-
tucky, and Missouri, inclusive of such as belonged
to " loyal" owners. As in the last mentioned States,
the slaves of Unionists were almost as numerous as
the slaves of sympathisers with the Confederacy, it
may be estimated in round numbers that 4,200,000
of the black race were invited by Mr, Lincoln to
seek the protection of the Federal armies, and thus
secure their freedom, if not their subsistence. It
is not pretended by any Abolitionist, however en-
thusiastic, that as many as a million of negroes of
both sexes and all ages have availed themselves of
the opportunity. Neither is it to be believed that
as many even as half a million have done so.
Taking the lower estimate as nearly correct, there
remain at least 3,700,000 negroes in the South to
whom the proclamation has been a dead letter,
end who, perhaps, have never even so much as
h..rd of it. Oa inquiring what has become of the
half million who have thus escaped from slavery
into freedom it is found that a large number—
Mr. Lincoln in his Message says 100,000—have
procured employment, either as teamsters, waggoners,
and servants, in the Federal armies, or as soldiers
regularly drilled and equipped, but commanded by
white efficers ; that another aggregatiou of possibly
100,C00 and upwards, inclusive of women and chil-
dren, have been colonised at Fortress Monroe, or set
tu work on abandoned plantations on the banks of
the Mississippi and elsewhere, under Federal mili-
tary supervision ; that large numbers he ve congre-
gated in the Federal capital; and that the remain-
der, with their wives and families, have spread
themselves over the North and West in search of
agricultural and other employment.
Divlding them into these four classes, let us see
what freedom has done for them. As teamsters and
soldiers they receive a somewhat lower rate of pay
than their white competitors, but in other respects
the Government does what it can to make their con-
dition comfortable. But the negroes by no means
make good soldiers. The fact is openly admitted by
all who have come into contact with them. So much
doubt hangs over their bravery, and their power to
restrain either their rage or their fear, when excited
by the periia of battle, that they are systematically
placed in positions of the greatest danger, in order
to test alike their discipline and their valour. It is
considered desirable to "make the experiment on
the vile body," and to thrust the negroes under
hotter fire than it would be thought humane or
Christian to drive a white regiment into—all for
the sake of ascertaining the military value of what
was once thought mere refuse. And the white
soldiers, so far from looking upon these desperate
adventures as acts of barbarity, applaud them, with
as little sympathy for the sufferings of the negroes
as the monkey felt for the anguish of the cat
when he thrust her pates within the burning
bars of the grate to get out the chestnut for the use
of the superior animal. In default of white volun-
teers for the work of Southern extermination the
aid of the black is thankfully accepted. If 50,000
black men could be enrolled for the war in the State
of New York they would diminish the liability of
white men in a conscription to the same amount ;
and would be received with satisfaction both by
Democrats and by Republicans, though for different
reasons. It should, however, be remembered, in
estimating the real value of negro armies, that no
ono has yet presumed to advocate that they should
be commanded by negro generals, or led even by
negro lieutenants and captains. Hitherto all the
efficers appointed over them have been white men,
and often white men of the lowest and most brutal
character. As a specimen of the class, Col. Mont-
2.,Tnery, famous for his wanton destruction of towns
arFlorida and South Carolina, will
d villages in Flor
serve as well or better than any other. This person
addressed his negro troops a few days ago on the
enormity of the offence of which they had dared to
be guilty, in demanding the same amount of pay as