The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-11 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA..

(Front the Mos Corresponient.)
NEW YORK, June 28.
General Grant's prospects seem to grow blacker
every day. He has lost 35 per cent. of his army at
the lowest computation. His reinforcements, how-
ever loudly the contrary may be asserted by the
brave noncombatants of the press and the platform
—who whistle to keep up their own courage and that
of the people—do not replace in numbers, much
less in soldierly quality, the slain, disabled, and
captured heroes whom he has sacrificed or lost in
the pursuit of a victory that appears to be as remote
as ever. And, worse than all, if the great problem
is now to be solved, Mr Lincoln has no more rein.
forcements to send, unless he shall immediately
order a new levy of 300,000 or 400,000 men as he is
advised to do, and the 300,000 or 400,000, or the
half of them, shall respond to the call. The mere
enrolling, equipping, drilling, and organising such
a vast assemblage will occupy from three to six
months, and in far less than three months, if Gen.
Lee use his time and energy to the same purpose as
during the last 50 days, he may effectually consign
Grant's invasion of Virginia to the page of history,
to rank with those of M'Clellan, Pope, Hooker, and
Burnside. Already Grant is compelled to act on the
defensive, and his position in every respect looks so
gloomy thatathe Secretary of War, having no good
news to tell, and no hopes to express one day that
the facts uf the morrow may not scatter to the winds,
abandoned for the greater part of last week his func-
tion of telegraphic historian, and ceased to send de-
spatches to Gen. Dix. Even the telegraphic wires
from Washington to New York were smitten with
and refused to convey mes-
a temporary paralysis,
sages, either because the news was bad, or, as the
friends of the Government alleged, because recent
thunderstorms and the torrid heat of the weather
had in someway or other bemuddled the electricity.
Today, however, Mr Stanton has unsealed his
lips, and communicated two despatches—the one
from General Grant, the other from General Sher-
man, and neither of them favourable. His previous
telegram informed the world that " the greatest
movement of the war was in progress." The nature
of the movement was not divulged, but is to be read
in the newspaper accounts of Grant's defeat in the
attempt to make it. His design, it appears, was to
cut all the railways connecting Richmond with the
South, and was to b 3 inaugurated by the seizure of
the line from Petersburg to Weldon. The effort
was not fortunate, and cost General Grant 2,000
prisoners and as many killed and wounded men,
besides four pieces of artillery. Its failure made it
impossible for him to carry out his plan of seizing
the other two lines, that from Petersburg to Lynch-
burg, and the other still more important from Rich•
mond to Danville, The result placed him in a
position of cocsiderablo peril, and compelled him to
make a retrograde movement to his old position
near Petersburg. His head-quarters were in that
immediate neighbourhood yesterday afternoon, at
which time he was engaged in no operations except
is firing into the bridge which spans the Appo-
mattox between that city and the suburb of Poca-
hontas, with the view, apparently, of preventing
the communication of the Confederates on the north
of the river with the city itself. Mr. Stanton adds
that all the railroads leadirg into Richmond had
been destroyed, "and some of them badly," asser-
tions which are contradicted by every newspaper
correspondent in the field, as obviously untrue on
General Grant's own showing.
Unfavourable news from General Sherman has
for some time been anticipated, bat not exactly in
the shape in which it has at length appeared. It was
thought that Johnson, having retired or retreated
to the point to which he wished to allure his too
adventurous enemy, would suddenly turn and offer
battle, while General Forrest, advancing on Sher-
man's rear, would place the Federal army between
two fires, and either defeat it with great loss, or
compel its surrender. Bnt it appears that Sherman
was the attacking, party, and that at 8 o'clock
yesterday morning he aistulted Johnson's formid-
able intrenched position on the Kenesaw Mountain,
near Marietta, in two divisions, the one under Gen.
Macpherson, the other under General Thomas, and
that both were repulsed with a loss cf nearly 3,000
men and several general officers. General Sherman
does not claim to have inflicted a corresponding or
even a heavy loss upon the enemy, inasmuch as
Johnson kept behind his parapets, and had the ad-
vantage of an immensely strong position. As Gen.
Sherman is particularly sound upon the negro
question—as sound as Wendell Phillips—his rash
assault and signal failure are leniently dealt with
by all the philosophical papers, and excite but little
criticism.
The Stat© of Maryland, by the constitutional
action of the people, provided for in its laws, teas
formally end for ever abolished slavery. The insti-
tution long since ceased to pay in New Yurk and
New England, and was consequently abolished as
a wasteful, as well as an inhuman, system of labour.
It began to be unprofitable in Maryland nearly
quarter of a century ago, and has ever since been
slowly but surely dying out. Now there remains
no vestage of it, except the social degradation of
the negroes, which it will take something stronger
than an Act of the Legislation of Maryland to re-
move. Bat has Maryland for this reason become
reconciled to political partnership with the North,
and for ever turned her back upon her Southern
friends? No one who knows anything whatever
of the state of popular feeling in Maryland—rural
or urban—and especially in the great city of Balti-
more, can assert or believe anything of the kind.
Maryland sympathises with the South—when
wholly free—as intensely as she sympathised with
it when partially a Slave State. As it is very
generally held in England, and loudly maintained
by the Federal and abolitionist party in the North
that slavery is the sole cause of the war, and that
if it were abolished there would be nothing left to
breed disunion, it may be well to enquire why it
happens that this and other Border States, where
slavery is disappearing, for commercial and other
reasons, are so persistently Southern in all their
hopes and aspirations. Slavery in most of the
Border States has long been nominal. Muse, pro-
prietors of negroes, having no uses to put them to,
have been urged to send them south for sale. Thee,
have refused on the ground of humanity. They j
in-
herited thein with their farms and felt bound
to
support them, or, if they were poor and unequal to
the burden, they allowed them to gain their own
subsistence as they pleased, and in a majority of
instances to enjoy the fruits of their earnings, In
thousands of cases the slaves were allowed to work
cut, their own manumission; in as many more they
were freed by their masters. Sometimes, though
perhaPs, not. often, they refused to accept liberty
either as Et gift or at a price. So loosely was the
institution maintained, and so lightly was itvalued,
that if it had not been for the Northern crusade
against it, and the infringement upon the principle
of State rights With which it was accompanied,
slavery Would have died out as surely in those re-
gions as in New York or Pennsylvania. Missouri,
Kentucky,
and Tennessee are even now prepared to
abolish it, not by
Mr. Lincoln's decree on the plea
of military necessity,
but b the legitimate action
of their own Legislatures. Yet
y
if the military
pressure were removed from those States, a truce
agreed upon, and the People
the North or the
allowed to decide freely
whether they would unite With-
Senth, they would vote themselves members of the
Southern Confederacy by an overwhelming majo-
rity. Slavery may have embittered the animosities
thet ultimately found relief in war, but if slavery
had never ailieted the lank_the disrup -
tIOn of the
Union would none the loss have occurred in the
fulness of time, Social, commercial, and political
causes of disunion were at work from the very
mogiciit of the establishment of the Republic, and
shivery, though it may have expedited the event,
was but one of a score of agencies, any one of
which was suffielent to produce it.
The Cri.enda of Mr Chase talk of a foreign loan
to be negotiated in Amsterdam in addition to the
400,000,000 dole. which be has just been authorised
to contract at home. As it is the main recommenda-
tion of all Mr. Chase's loans that the United States
bind themselves to pay the interest in gold, it is
well for the foreigners, if any such there be, who
meditate the investment of their superabundant
money in Aravricen securities, to consider whether