The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-22 00:00:00

military district, that the whole country is in com-
motion. " Such is the terror," says the Tribune
correspondent, "among the people in remote parts
of this county (Anna) that many insign'ficant per-
sons are in constant fear of arrest. I may add as a
remarkable fact that during these passing nights
women and children go into the woods to sleep. All
business is suspended, for those who have not been
arrested have run away. Even one member of the
State Senate, Mr. J. H. Smith, has departed/
Surely such vigour as this is a little too vigorous
for the loyal State that has been kind enough to
furnish the Union with its existing President, and
somewhat too much at variance with the principles
of Democratic liberty, on which the Republic is
supposed to be based, to meet with the approba-
tion of that still considerable number of Americans
who are honestly of opinion that liberty is a tre-
sure hard to win, and well worth the keeping.
The jaded appetite of the public of this city that
relishes no longer the stale oratory of the old hacks
of the war party appears to find its chief enjoyment
at present in the pythonio ravings of Miss Anna
Dickinson, the Yankee spiritualist, who has sud-
denly become as popular as General Butler. The
principle that attracts a vulgar crowd to witness
any foolhardy or perilous act, such as that of a men
putting his head into the lion's mouth, or Blondin
cooking his dinner on the tight-rope, is the same
that attracts an equally vulgar mob to listen to a
clergyman inculcating hate, preaching blasphemy,
or retailing comic anecdotes from the pulpit; or to
a woman in the rostrum approaching to within a
hair's breadth of indecency, yet not actually reach-
ing it. Specimens of the " War Democrat," the
" War Republican," the " War Christian" (as if
such a person were possible I) and all the other male
varieties of furious spouters and declaimers who
preach bloodshed and extermination having been
paraded before the public until they ceased to mini-
ster to the crazy excitement of the day, it became
necessary that the " wire pullers" of the war should
discover some new attraction sufficiently violent and
" spicy" to please the populace of well-dressed per
sons whose principles are flattered, or whose pocket's
are replenished, by the protraction of hostilities. It
was found in due time in the shape of Miss Dickin-
son, a blooming Philadelphian, who rendered her-
self famous in Connecticut as a stump speaker dur-
ing the progress of the recent elections in that State.
The political Barnums saw in her a person exactly
suited to their mind, and by dint of a little judicious
preliminary puffery, such as all Barnums know how
to employ, they managed to excite the curiosity of
New York. And, as New York, like all great cities,
loves a new sensation, even if it be a vicious
one, she has proved a great success. On her
second appearance, on Saturday evening last, the
Cooper Institute was found to be too small to con-
tain the immense crowds—at 50c. each person—
that applied for admission. The subject of her
oration was announced to be " The Three Methods
of Peace ;" and, as it was tolerably well known,
from her previous display a fortnight ago, that
peace after the fashion of Butler was the peace to
her mind, hundreds of persons who have no sympa-
thy with her sentiments thronged to the platform,
as they would have thronged to see Blondin,
if he had been announced to dance on the tightrope
with a donkey on his back. In addition to these
were the ordinary crowd, who approved the preacher
for the sake of her text. Her three methods of
peace were—" Compromise," " Separation," and
" Extermination." Amid the most enthusiastic ap-
plause of her audience, of whom fully one half were
women, she declared that Compromise and Separa-
tion were alike impossible; and that Extermina-
tion, beimg the only course left, was the bounden
duty of the Government and people of the North—

extermination to the bitter end,"—meaning even
o the slaughtering of her own sex and of little
children, if they happened to be slaveowners or the
babes of slaveowners. The sentiment, fiendish in
the mouth of Gen. Butler, was ineffably horrible
from the mouth of a woman ; but was, nevertheless,
more vehemently applauded than if it had been the
quintessence of wisdom and of wit—the summing
up of all human justice and mercy. A few of the
flowers from the Dickinsonian garden of rhetoric may
be worth culling for scientific study in Europe—not
for their fragrance or their beauty, but simply for
their value as specimens of the fecundity of growth on
the volcanic soil of war and revolution, if not as
marks of the moral decadence of the American people.
She declared that on the mountain tops of the great
North-West the curse of human bondage could not
live, because those mountain tops were so near to
God and Heaven—nearer, in her estimation, it is to
be supposed, than the plains and prairies of the same
region where, though the people will not enslave a
negro, they will not suffsr him to live. She de-
nounced Mr. Seward as a traitor and a "sly fox ;"
every Northern man with Southern principles as
the " meanest thing on God's earth ;" the State of
New Jersey, of which the Legislature has recently
passed a sensible and creditable series of resolutions
in favour of peace, as " little, mean, contemptible
New Jersey, made out of leavings, offscourings, and
fragments, after the Union was formed." Mr.
Buchanan, the late President, was she said " a man
whose spiritual nature was well represented by his
figure—one-sided and leaning to the South" (Mr.
Buchanan's head leans slightly on his shoulder).
She described the Copperheads as " liars and cow-
ards, who had not bravery enough to fight any-
where;" and Gen. M'Clellan "as a thing too small
for criticism, a man who was neither an c.fficer nor
a soldier," and " a mean creature of the Democratic
party." She also denounced Mr. Seward and Gen.
Halleck as "men who had baffled and thwarted
every plan formed by the Administration, and who
had crushed every General who had accomplished
anything." None of these were her heroes. Her
men were Butler, Fremont, and Sigel—men of
principle, exterminators each of them, and Butler,
above all, " the only man who had the courage to
hang a traitor for an insult to the flag." Denying
that the war was fendish, as a Boston Democratic
journal had asserted, she indignantly exclaimed--
" Fiendish does the Boston Courier call it ? Does
it think that God is dead ? and that He has not re-
membered the sufferings of the slave ?—that he
has not bottled up every tear shed in helpless.
ness, moarning,and darkness throughout the South ?
That He has not made Abraham Lincoln His agent
to work out His plans, and that in opposing him the
Southern people are striking their puny fiats in the
face of the Almighty ? " The New York World as-
serts that the public appearances of Miss Dickinson
" are a melancholy symptom of the degeneracy of
political intelligence in America." Might it not
have added that they are equally melancholy as
symptoms of a widespread moral perversion and
social rottenness ? If Miss Dickinson would but
scrape lint, boil gruel, or bandage the wounds of a
single she might earn the praise of every-
body b'.e but honourable name.
wsoldier,ha
knew
her hum
unenviable notoriety of pub-
As it is, she earns the n
i
liclv unsexing herself in the cause of blood, and
hiring out her violent and unscrupulous tongue for
a money payment to attack and vilify honourable
men, whose only crime is that they desire peace with
their brothers and brave soldiers, of whose bravery
she has no means of judging, and of which she, as a
woman, ought not to judge if she had the means.
There is, however, an avenging Nemesis for women
of this kind. Men go to listen to them for the sake
of a new excitement, just as they would go to the 1
theatre, but, however much they may be amused at
what they hear, and however exciting the rattle of
the glib tongue may be, they are never so
by the charms of the f
mar-
riage. Old spinstership is their
and if Miss Dickinson escape it
doom,
truly brave man in A
Copperhead or a Republican.
fascinated
air performer as to offer f .
7 there will be one
merles, whether he be a

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