The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-01 00:00:00

AMERICAN AFFAIRS,

A writer in the Times gives the following in-
teresting account of the state of affairs of the war
now raging in America :—Now that the American
war becomes again of stirring interest, it may be
well to survey the field of operations embraced in
the coming campaigns The Northern people have
deluded themselves for months past with tales of
refugees and deserters about the demoralisation and
starvation of the South. Nothing, from the first, has
been more remarkable than the credulity of the
Federals, except it be that perkm s in this country,
of some intelligence, should also permit their judg-
ment to be swayed by the anecdotes of President
Davis's coachman, or the statistical and military
knowledge of Miss Anna Dickenson. It is now
known that the cotton crop of the South last season
reached 800,000 bales—l pure addition to the
growth of all the [bed required by its people. It is
in the midst of this surplus capacity of a country
able to feed twenty times its present population
that tales of starvation have been believed in by
every loyal Unionist ; and while they were amusing
themselves with another theory, that of despon-
dency, the people of the South were urging their
Congress to pass heavy taxation bills and a more
rigid conscription law, thus eagerly proffering
money and life in the service of their country.
It has been known here for months past that the
Southern armies would take the field in greater
force than at any previous period of the war. Any
Federal would have smiled at this assertion a month
ago ; perhaps he will not do so now. Even before
the real campaign has begun all these delusions are
shattered. At every paint, even in Florida, strong
forces are encountered where none were supposed
to exist, and already Meade is on the defensive,
Thomas repulsed, Sherman defeated, and the great
cavalry movements at an end in utter failure.
Sherman's operations show clearly the nature of such
a war as this, and what is to be its issue. He under-
took iu the State of Mississippi what the North
undertakes over the whole Confederacy. He suc-
ceeded in marching right across the State, but to
what advantage ? Without attaching any weight
to the rumour of a disastrous defeat at Meridian,
his loss would be sufficiently great in incessant
skirmishes and the stragglers left behind on such a
march. At the departure of the steamer, New York
would have willingly compounded the loss at half of
his army. The cavalry column that issued from
Memphis, and like an avalanche was to sweep all be-
fore it, had but a short and very ignominious career.
Only the other day it was believed throughout the
North that the victorious Sherman was at Selma, no
one apparently knowing of the existence in his way
of a great river, the Tombigbee, held by the Confe-
derates, and long ago appointed as the line of defence
against a movement from the Mississippi. It was
forgotten, too, that at Selma his position would
have been that of Burgoyne at Saratoga, with
exactly the same prospects. There was another
theory of his marching to Mobi;e, no one knowing
that he would have to cross a pine barren of 80
miles, short of water and bare of forage for so much
as a grasshopper. . The Federals appear to be as
ignorant even of the geography of the South as
they have proved themselves to be of its resources
or the spirit of the people.

In the neighbouring State of Louisiana General
Banks employs himself in the noble pursuit of re-
enslaving the negroes—the terms of Federal slavery
being infinitely worse for the negro than those of
his former condition. He is busy, too, in getting
up a sham Government of speculators, sutlers, and
foreigners, to aid by their electoral vote the re-elec-
tion of Mr. Lincoln. If tha statement be correct
that Magruder is marchirg into the State from
Texas, these schemes may have to be abandoned for
more serious work. Magruder may well be tired of
inaction in Texas, where the Federal occupation of
a few points on the coast is obviously intended for
effect only.

In Florida the most discreditable affair of the war
has occurred, another result of moving away from
the gunboats. Not that it was discreditable for
brave men, exhausted by long marches, to be de-
feated with heavy loss, but that the ruler of a
country, whose only alleged qualification is common
honesty, should be found employing his troops and
engaging his private secretary in the work of
manoeuvring for his own re-election. It is, of course,
assumed that the people of the Nord' will tamely
submit to be ruled by one re-elected by what every
one knows to be sham votes. Such a compliment
was surely never paid to a people before ; and the
question arises whether in the history of human
affairs a country was ever conquered by attorneys
transformed into Generals, with forces directed, by
the tactics, not of war, but of electioneering.
In Georgia nothing more hopeless than the Fe-
deral prospects can well be imagined. Three years
have proved what it is to advance upon Richmond,
across the narrow intervening portion of Virginia,
but that is mere amusement when compared with
the conquest of Georgia from such a Uase as Chatta-
nooga. Apart from the repugnance of all people to
see great districts of their country laid waste, it
would be good strategy for the Confederate General
to lure on General Thomas to Atalanta, standing
entirely out of his way, and simply barring out his
return. Georgia is as large as England, and every
man in it is enrolled for service. What can be done
by any army of 40,000 men, with an equal oppo-
nent to overthrow, and with such a country to con-
quer? It is idle to talk of the invasion of regions
such as these, except so far as rivers can be ascended,
and the strip of land they command. Tne marcti
of an army through such a country is like one
furrow run through a field. We tried the experi-
ment in South Carolina—to our cost.

In that Sate the war is limited to throwing shells
at the housas of private individuals. The siege is
virtually over, a very costly failure, and the fire is
kept up plainly for appearance sake. It does not
seem to be intended to get up a " bogus" represen-
tation for this State. South Carolina has forced
from the Northerners what they rarely yield to
aught human or Divine—that is, respect. Stone
fleets, monitors, even that wonderful creation the
heroic negro conscript, all have gone for nothing,
and Charleston seems unlikely to be sowed with salt
in our day. In North Carolina the negro Federals
made an inroad to the ruin of innumerable fowls,
and the death of one poor Confederate soldier
whom they met and hung. The Union sentiment
of that State is well known to all except its own
inhabitants; but this is not, the way to promote it.
A General Wild, who commanded this valorous
raid, has since, in the department of Butler, charged
a clergyman of the Episcopal Church with being
disloyal in his sermons, and sentenced him to sweep
the streets of Norfolk for three months. It is a new
way to bring back a people into fraternal union to
begin by offering insults to the women of the coun-
try, and then to. its clergy. By the latest accoants
the invaders of North Carolina were congratulating
themselves on being under very strong shelter,
without having permanently advanced one mire
inland in the course of more than two years.
A war of this nature may be divided into two
portions. The first consists of those operations in
which naval forces can co-operate, This combina-
tion of power, csnpled with superior numbers, must
be on many points overwhelming. The wonder is,
not that the Mississippi should be forced, but that
it was held so long. Any one informed beforehand
of the elements of the contest might fairly have
taken it has granted that most of the ports would
be captured, if not all of them, and that every navi-
gable river would be ascended. Instead of this
only one great port is in the hands of the Federals
at the end of four years, and no one of the rest
seems likely to be taken throughout the war. Im-
portant as the progress of the Federals has been in
this stage of the war, it is much less than oar own
was in the revolutionary war at the end of an equal
term. They have taken but one leading port ; then
there was but one left untaken. What the ultimate
result , of our greater successes was appears to be
altogether forgotten.
And now comes the second stage of the war, be-
yond the reach of gunboats, when Sherman has to
advance into Mississippi, or Seymour into Florida.
Here comes the really decisive struggle, man to
elan, and he must have a strange spirit who does
not instinctively feel that the man who defends his
home and his property will fight differently from
the mercenary bribed by env:mous bounty. Even

if there were a doubt on such a point, an analysis of
all the battles of the war would end it. When
there has been any approach to equality in numbers
arid position the victory has ever been with the
South; in many instances they have triumphed
against both. And where is there now a single
direction in which there is a prospect of further
progress of the invaders ? Is it at Richmond,
Charleston, Savannah, or Mobile, which last is
more defensib!e than any of them ? That element,
space, now comes into view vvas pointed out at
first as decisive of the issue. Who can conquer a
country so extended that un army in the minat of it
is no more than a cluster of flies upon a mountain
side ? The very absence of popu.a.ion, though it
weakens the defence, is still more fatal to the
attack. In a well peopled country an army may
defy the populace and live upon its spoils, but it
cannot feed on cotton or forage in pine barrens.
It is a singular spectacle that is now presented to
us. In one part of the continent a Federal Union
is abandoned, and a foreign ruler welcomed to (-nit
the evils of that system. The Americans attributed
the bloodshed in Mexico to the vices of a sanguinary
race. How do they account for their own ? And
while the Federal system is abandoned in one
quarter in sheer disgust it is attempted to force its
continuance upon another people by all the atroci-
ties of this war. There was another Federal Union
in Central America, which broke up into separate
States. There was another—Columbia, which had
the same fate. Tnere was a fourth, called the United
States, Its turn has c me.