The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-29 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, DEC. 17.

The public anxiety for news of General Sherman
has been relieved by the announcement, on Confe-
derate, and, therefore, unimpeachable authority,
that he has reached the seacoast and taken by
assault Fort M'Allister, commanding the entrance
to Ossibaw Sound, and forming one of the main de-
fences of Savannah. The announcement is simul•
taneously made that he has captured Savannah
itself and 11,000 prisoners, after a fight which
lasted eight hours. This news, though generally
credited by the Federal press, is not official, and
rests entirely upon statements made by steamboat
passengers from Charleston Bar, who allege that it
was received by flag of truce just prior to their
departure. Mr Lincoln states, as a fact within his
own knowledge that General Sherman has reached
the Atlantic with 40,000 men, black and white,
more than he started with; and, as the Confede•
rates admit, and the Federals assert, that he has
suffered but little loss, and met with but little real
impediment in his hazardous march, it may be as-
sumed as certain, if he have not already taken Sa.
vannab, that he has commenced the siege. Impor-
tant, if not decisive, news may therefore be hourly
expected from that quarter. In Tennessee both the
news and the rumours are equally unavoidable to
the Confederate cause. General Hood, besieging
Nashville with a force not equal to that opposed to
him, has been attacked and defeated with severe
loss, and forced back, according to the testimony of
General Thomas, in a despatch to Mr Stanton, no
less than eight miles. At Petersburg and Rich.
mond all is quiet, General Grant having attempted
no further movements since the repulse of
General Warren on the Weldon Railway. The
expedition of Admiral Porter, the same that was
destined for Wilmington more than six weeks
ago, and that was ordered to " go in and win" at
any cost before the day of the Presidential election,
and that appears to have been detained in cense■
quence of the sudden determination of Gen. Sher-
man to abandon Atlanta and march through Georgia
to the sea, received final instructions on Tuesday
last, and in the forenoon of that day the Admiral
with his whole fleet sailed under sealed orders to
the southward. Whether the point at which he
aims is Charleston, Savannah, or Wilmington is not
known to the public; but the popular theory fixes
upon Charleston as the most likely place, and pre-
supposes, moreover, that the attack upon that pee-
cant city—" the cradle of the rebellion"—is to be
simultaneous with Sherman's assault upon Sayan.
nah. Expectation is intensely excited, though few
persons who have studied the history of the war, and
understand either the resources or the temper or
the South, are of opinion that the capture of either
or both of those cities will conduce in any percep-
tible degree to the conquest of the Confederacy.
Bat the Americans are not entirely engrossed
with the war. The sensation created by the Phos-
phorus Plot for burning down New York having
wholly subsided—a new sensation has been disco-
vered of a much more piquant nature. The sense.
tion of a grievance against Great Britain is new, yet
old—and ever fresh and agreeable. The newspaper
organs of Mr Seward have found an opportunity
to threaten. their favourite foe, and to talk loudly
of annexing Canada and the West India Islands,
and if Great Britain be not particularly humble
and discreet, of detaching Ireland from the British
Crown by the aid of the Fenian brotherhood and of
at least a quarter of a million of sympathising
Yankees. The discharge of the soi-disant Confede-
rate soldiers who, under Lieut. Bennett Young,
robbed the banks, stale the horses, and murdered
the unoffending cit.zens of the little town of
St. Albans, in Vermont, is the occasion of a hubbub
which for the time being has almost rendered in.
audible the din of war at Savannah and Nashville,
and directed the thoughts of an impulsive public to
the always exciting and rarely unpleasant possibi-
lity of a war with England. Though Me' Justice
Coursal, of Montreal, discharged the prisoners on
the technical ground that in a case of extradition
the warrant for the arrest of the criminals ought to
boar the signature of the Governor. General of Ca-
nada, which in this instance had not been affixed, it
suits the purpose of the tk..
nions can be judged by those of the journals and of
the officials who arc generally supposed to write and
speak under its inspiration, to treat the dismissal as
a denial of justice. Judge Coursal, who is a French
Canadian, and not an Englishman, as most of the
New York papers suppose, is attacked with every
variety of unseemly epithet. No one seems to cone
eider it possible that his law can be correct, or that
his judgment can be honest, and the Tribune goes
so far as to assert as beyond doubt that he set the
raiders at liberty " because they were American
rebels, and that political sympathy with them moved
him to resort to a course which can be sustained
neither by law nor reason." And this impudent
charge is made against :a judge merely because he
would not stretch or misinterpret the law he is called
upon to administer in deference to the inflamed pas-
sions of the Northern Federalists, and because he
has thrown the responsibility of further action upon
what he believes to be an imperial question upon an
imperial officer, who may, moreover, at the very
moment that the discharge of the self-styled Confe-
rate soldiers was made known to him, have issued a
warrant for their recapture. Unless the course of jus-
tice be illegally expedited in one sense, or perverted
in another, to suit the exigencies of the American
temper, never very amiable towards the land whose
language they speak, and whose laws, but not whose
manners or principles, they have inherited, war is
forthwith to be declared, and Canada formally, and
in spite of the Canadians, annexed to the unhappy
family of the Union. Gen. Dix, in his capacity of
Military Governor of New York and New England,
no sooner learnt through the agency of the telegraph
that the raiders had been let loose, than- he rushed
late print with a "general order." He would not
allow the sun to go down upon his wrath, nor wait
to be officially informed of the circumstances, but,
taking the facts as certain, and the discharge of the
prisoners to be an act of hostility to his Government,
he directed his military subordinates on the border,
in ease of any further depredations on American soil
committed by marauders or persons acting on Con-
federate authority, to shoot the perpetrators on the
spot if possible, to follow them into Canada in case
of need, and under, no circumstances to deliver up
their prisoners, but send them to headquarters for
trial by courtemartial. The animus of the order is
apparent, and cannot fail to be offensive to the
Canadian people, who object quite as strongly as
General Dix to the invasion of the Federal States
either by " robbers" or by Confederate soldiers,
who make Canada the basis of their operations.
Lord Monck, the Canadian Governor, and the
Canadian people of all classes and nationalities,
have alike shown so earnest a desire to do justice to
the Americans, and to act not only as became good
neighbours but good friends, and to avoid all pos.
sible occasion either of dispute or misunderstand-
ing, that an American official of the high rank of
Major-General Dix might well have afforded to
wait the movements of the Canadian Ministry in
the now case supervening on the judgment of the
auterior Court before issuing a. proclamation so
likely to provoke ill.feeling, if not hostility. But
it always is or seems to be necessary in America for
politicians, whether in or out of office, to be em.
ployed in creating political capital, and no capital
of the kind is to be made so easily as by digging in
the deep and apparently inexhaustible mine of hos.
tility to Great Britain. It is admitted that the
order of General D.x, if acted upon by indiscreet or
over-zealous agents on the border, may embroil the
two Governments. ,6 So it may,' ' Says the New York
Times of this morning ; " but if war with England
must come, let it come. Not ours be the guilt. It
will belong only to English malignity
and lawless-
ness. We were never in:a better condition for war
with England than we are now." The New York
7 lines is edited by no obscure rowdy or unprin-
cipled adventurer, but by a scholar and a proles.
sional politician, a member of Congress, and candi-
date either for the Speakership of the house of
Representatives or for the Embassy to Paris, which-
ever may be the most easily attainable. Yet, unre-
strained by his position, he indulges in rodomon.
trade like this through a whole column ; speaks of
scattering the "red equad" of British soldiers in