The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-27 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the limes Correspondent.)
BALTIMORE, June 13.
A story is told in Baltimore by a gentleman who
was recently in Richmond, that the Southern Pre.
sident was asked in his presence how soon he thought
the war would end ? Placing his hand upon the
head of a little boy, not five years of age, Mr. Davis
replied," Not till this child is an old man." Mr.
Davis's sorrowful anticipation is shared in this
city, if not further north. All expectation that the
Federals will conquer the Confederates, or the Con-
federates the Federals, has subsided. The exhaustion
of neither party is deemed possible. The interven-
tion of Great Britain and France has ceased to be
looked for. The capture of Richmond, if effected—
which few believe—may gratify the pride of the
North, but will not expedite the subjugation of the
South. The strength of the Confederates lies in no
city and no locality, but in the hearts of a people,
whom the prolongation of hostilities may exasperate,
but can never incline to peace. The only chance
that promises speedier results then Northern vice
tory is Northern defeat, to be achieved over
Grant or Sherman, it matters not which. The
idea of those who see in the independence
of the South the only chance for the preserva-
tion of the liberties of the North is, that
such a defeat in the midst of the Presidential con-
test would lead to a commercial panic and a furious
agitation
a civil
o war i
fPoPular passions, out of which would
spring
n the North. Then it is argued
tao
the South might extort the recognition of its inde-
pendence
suchdnc an event Powerful Northern party which
would Certainly arise to prevent
ee from that
of the Republic. But
Ftheedefruarlt
vh
cr
itord
yieewnitielgnr
oa
ttibe
raina
Federal success, and
the child will become a youth, the
youth a man,and
of 70 winters
the man grow gray with the burden
before the South will learn submission. The South
North can
-
can bear defeat. Tee question is if the
bear it without political convulsion. It Would seem
frem the plight of General Grant ; from his inac,
tivity for the last eight days—from the fearful
losses he has endured—from the readiness of Gene-
ral Lee to confront and foil him at any point epee
which he may select to hurl his legions—from the
well-known though strenously denied fact that the
Confederates in every battle have inflicted et least
three times the damage they have sustained ; and
from the fact, equally ominous, but not so stoutly
contested, that a siege of Richmond might conserve
the suturner and Grant's army along with it by the
diseases and fevers of an encampment among the
swamps of the Chiekahominy, that this great ques-
tion may have a speedier answer than most people
anticipated a month ago, and that Grant's defeat,
retreat, or withdrawal, is not only ioateinent from
day to day, but will be followed by complications
far graver and more perilous than attended the
drawn battles of M'Clellan and Meade, or the re..
verses of Pope, Burnside, and Hooker.
The indications to-day are that Grant will try
anotner change of base, and risk another great
battle, before resorting to the last extremity of a
siege. Mr. Stanton's curt despatches lead to the
inference that the movement has already com.
menced, and the guarded letters of the New
York and Philadelpteie journals name the James
River as the new starting point of his
during army. It is, perhaps, sufficient criticism

upon this movement to say that there are but
few military men in the North who do not consider
it fraught with much greater danger than any which
the army has yet encountered, and no friends of
the South who do not fervently hope that nothing
will prevent General Grant from attempting it.
Reinforcements continue to be forwarded, but
they are chiefly raw recruits and emigrants who have
' not been six months in the country—men who
doubtless do not lack courage, but who have not
acquired the habits of discipline or the professional
pride of the trained soldier. And however name.
rolls these reinforcements may be, it is not probable
that they more than half fill up the successive de-
pletions which the army of the Potomac has suffered
during the last five weeks. The frightful loss of
life in every battle does not account for more than
20 or 30 per cent. of the 100,000 men who have
disappeared from the effective force of the army
since the passage of the Rapidan. To these have
to be added the wounded who fell in fair fight under
the shot and shell of the enemy, the prisoners, the
deserters, the three-year Volunteers whose term has
expired, the tattered and attenuated remnants of
whose once complete regiments continue to march
through this city. But whether reinforced in whole
or in part, General Grant has but little superiority
in numbers over General Lee ; while the latter has
an immense advantage not only in position, but in
everything that goes to elevate the morale and in-
, crease the heroism of an army.
In anticipation of the next battle, news of which
is hourly expected, the military hospitals of this
city have been cleared of every man fit to bear re-
moval to his home in the north or west, and all
preparations made to receive from 6,000 to 10,000
men. Baltimore has not the accommodation for
the wounded to be found at Washington, which a
gentleman just arrived from that city describes
as being one huge hospital ; but such ac-
commodation as it has is kept in constant requi-
sition. The hospitals are situated in various parts of
the town, and tax to their utmost the professional
resources of the place. I visited one of them a few
days ago, immediately after a clearance had been
made of the most advanced cases of convalescence,
and saw as much human suffering in the space of
half an hour as I care to see again i❑ a lifetime. Ten
houses—one of them a large hotel situated on one
side of Camden-street, and six, including a piano- I
forte manufactory, directly opposite—have beer
hired by the Government, connected one wit,- -

the
es of Balti-
, end every pose
_deed is provided for
....nained on the day of my
ac part fatal cases, or cases of
ens had but faint hopes. There
were [tr-
`'o had lost legs and arms, and men who
COP'
eating resignedly—and many of them
tine
Aciously—the inevitable amputation that might
or that might not save their lives, and who seemed
Ito have lost all interest in the war and the world,
and in everything around them, save perhaps in the
friendly care of some sympathising nurse, who
smoothed their pillows or offered them their drink
or their medicine. There were some who had the
crowns of their heads carried off by fragments of
bursting shells, and yet survived ; some shot through
the lungs and certain to die, but yet thinking by a
look any kind-hearted surgeon who ventured to tell
them, against his convictions, that there was yet
hope ; others whose jaws had been torn away, some
shot in the foot, some in the baud, some through the
shoulder, and some in the head—the ball in one in-
stance not being merciful enough to take life, but to
leave insanity behind it. The rooms were tastefully
adorned with the Federal flag, vases of flowers, and
sometimes with aquariums, or Wardian cases of ferns,
and the walls hung with portraits, among which that
of Jenny Lind was most conspicuous, and appeared
in every room. These gifts were contributed by the
nurses, all of whom were Northern and principally
New England ladies, who had read of Florence
Nightingale, and, inspired by her example, had de-
voted their time, their kindness, their care, and their
money to the relief of suffering humanity, and the
elevation of the common hospital to the comfort and
the dignity of a home. Among these ladies was one
in deep mourning, whose husband married her two
years ago, started from the altar to the battle-field,
and returned no more. Another, who paid two visits
daily to the hospital, was not exactly a nurse, but
did something of a nurse's duty in her own peculiar
way. She was about 60 years Jr age, scrupulously
neat in her attire, W4B dressed in decent black, car-
ried a basket of cakes on her arm, and seemed as if
she had been permitted to come into the hospital
to carry on her humble trade among the soldiers.
She stopped at every bed, or at every chair in which
a soldier sat up reading, and offered her frugal ware,
looking hurt if it were not accepted. But the good
woman was no merchant. She made the cakes
herself fresh every morning, and they were her free-
will offerings to the men. II; was all she could
afford, and it was the only way that suggested
itself to her mind in which she could be of service.
It was supposed she had lost a husband, or more
probably a son, in the recent battles, but as she said
nothing about it and seemed to shun conversation,
no one cared to invade the secrecy in which she
chose to envelope herself. In addition to her
cakes, she carried in her basket a col ection of newly
gathered roses ; and when in her peregrinations
through the wards she came to a bedside of which
the occupant was palpably doomed to rise no more
alive, she placed a rose upon his pillow if he slept;
or, if he were awake, put it into his hand, with a
look of motherly commiseration, and passed on.
And who shall deny the wealth of pity in her gentle
action, or assert that in her humble ministrations
there was no portion of those heavenly chem•
teriatics which we ascribe to the angels ?
Although the ladies of Baltimore, with this one
exception, left to the ladies of a more Northern
and Eastern latitude the duty of attending to the
wants and cheering the last hours of the Federal
wounded, it must not be supposed that their sym-
pathies were not as abundant as those of their
Northern sisters. The sympathies existed, but they
flowed in another direction. There were no Con-
federate wounded to be cared for, but there were
Confederate prisoners in Fort Delaware and other
places in the vicinity who required the kindly atten-
tion of those who believe that they suffered in a
righteous cause. The military autocrat of Baltia
more—who rules as stringently es Butler before
him, though he may see treason and disloyalty in
the expression of sympathy with Southern captives,
has not yet deemed it expedient to say so, or to pro-
hibit the good Samaritans of his satrapy from feeds
ing the hungry and clothing the naked, even if the
hungry and the naked be the enemies of his Govern-
ment. The good Samaritans therefore—all of them
ladies—having full command of their husbands'
purses for this object, if for no other, no sooner hear
of the arrival of a detachment of Southern prison-
ers than they meet to apportion the wants of the
captives among them, and to provide them, each
according to her means, with the clothing and other
comforts they may require to render captivity lees
irksome. One lady, three days ago, clothed 100
pri-oners t.t her own expense ; another provided
for 50, another for 20, and many more provided toe
two or three. They were not allowed to deliver
their bounty personally, but were permitted to re-
ceive the epistolary thanks of the recipients. The
letters of the prisoners are in every style of com-
position, from the ungrammatical to the correct,
from the business-like to the romantic, but ail con-
vey the same manly gratitude and the same un-
wavering Confidence in the foal triumph of the
cause for which they have suffered so much and are
ready to suffer to the end.

other, and form the chief military hospite'
more. The wards are clean and airy

sible adjunct of health and cur'

the wounded. Such as rr-
visit were for the mo-

which the surge,-

were men vet

rho Senzaphore of Marseilles states that the at-
mospherical variations which have so
prevailed during the
last month have now ceased, and that summer has regularly
set in. During the last few days the thermometer has stood
at from 26 to 28 deg, Centigrade (79 to 80 Fahrenheit).
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