The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-04 00:00:00

River or James River, and had not sacrificed the
bone and sinew of his army in fighting his way to
the White-house, which he might have reached by
water without losing a man, his position now would
be very different. Weeks and weeks will probably
pass without amending his prospects before Peters-
burg. In the meantime diversions, which will dis-
tract him terribly will be pretty sure to change the
aspect of civil and military affairs in the North
before September has passed. Grant is one of those
sledge-hammers of war of the same stamp as Suwar-
row, whose spirits rise with danger, and whose
courage borders upon brutality. Lee is his equal
in celerity and endurance, his superior in foresight,
prudence, and sagacity,

July 5.

In contemplating the desoluting struggle which
has drawn upon the American Republic the eyes of
civilised mankind, no one can fail to marvel at the
weakness, querulousness, and frothiness which have
marked the deliberations of the representative as-
semblies of either belligerent. In the North, while
all the fiercest passions of mankind, disengaged by
the supreme peril of the nation, have been at sea
without rudder or compass, we have simultaneously
seen Congress roaring like a sucking dove, vapour-
ing about the Monroe doctrine, jobbing and recrimi-
nating, and occasionally imitating the example of
the Lower Empire,which, hemmed in by barbarians,
vented itself in abstract discussions while the bat-
tering ram thundered at the city gates. Similarly,
it is impossible to point to any debate in the
Southern Congress which has risen to the height of
the great argument before it ; and it is my belief
that in three years of discussion at Montgomery and
Richmond only one speech delivered in Congress
will hereafter arrest the attention of the historian.
I mean the remarkable effort of Mr Wigfall in
favour of the temporary suspension of the bill of
habeas corpus. If, however, the normal temper of the
two representative bodies at Washington has been
lees steadfast, less dignified, and nnshrinking than
has been the case at Richmond, it seems to me that
Washington has contributed more speeches that
will live, It requires no stretch of fancy to picture
that the speech which earned for Mr Vallandigham
the honour of expatriation, and likewise that the
speeches of Mr Long of Ohio, and Mr Voortrees of
Indiana, are likely to be quoted at many a fireside
when the rabid diatribes of Messrs. Sumner and
Lovejoy have been long forgotten. But, anyhow,
when we recall the remarkable ability displayed in
the Revolutionary War by such civilians as Alexan-
der Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Madison, Galla-
tin, and Jefferson, it is difficult to believe that the 20
millions in the Northern States should in their hour
of agony have produced not only no great soldier,
but also no eminent administrator in any depart-
ment of civil life. It may fairly be questioned
whether any other Northern civilian has shown such
tact and ability as have been displayed by Mr.
Adams at his delicate post in London,
If, on the other hand, there is in the Southern
Congress no Patrick Henry, it cannot be denied that
the joint resolution which it put forth before expir-
ing, and which may be read in another column, is
worthy of the occasion. it is understood that this
manifesto is from the hand of Mr. Rives, formerly
United States' Minister in Paris, and at present a
member of the House of Representatives at Rich-
mond, in which his long experience of public life,
and his worth and uprightness of character, procure
for him high consideration and respect. It has often
been alleged that the Confederate States have done
little or nothing to submit their cause temperately
to the intelligent judgment of the civilised world.
It will be seen at once that in the accompanying
manifesto some such attempt has been made by Mr.
Rives, Not forgetful of Tallyrand's warning against
an excess of zeal, Mr. Rives states without exagge-
ration the wellknown principles which the Southern
States have always maintained as to the separate
independence and sovereignty of States. It is im-
possible to look around you here in Richmond, or to
go 20 miles away to Petersburg, or converse with
the general officers, the subalterns, or the rank and
file of the Confederate army without acknowledg-
ing the truth of the following words :

" Fur ourselves we have no fear of the result. The wildest
picture ever drawn by a disordered imagination comes short
of the extravagance which could dream of the conquest of
3,000,000 people, resolved with one mind to die freemen
rather than live slaves, and forewarned by the savage and
exterminating spirit in which this war has been waged upon
them, and by the mad avowals of its patrons and sup-
porters of the worse than Egyptian bondage that awaits
them in the event of their subjugation."

There are many passages of warlike history which
reveal such excesses of systematic and callous bru-
tality towards non-combatants as have drawn down
upon them the common execration of mankind.
The merciless ferocity of Tilly in the Palatinate, the
Dragonnades of Louis XIV., the conduct of war by
Cromwell in Ireland, of the Duke of Cumberland
after the battle of Culloden, are among the instances
which occur to everybody. The military student
will, perhaps, recall a more modern instance in the
retreat of the baffled Massena from before the lines
of Torres Vedras, and will remember the ruthless..
ness towards peasants, villages, and convents which
wrung from Wellington the remark that, "It has
seldom been equalled and never surpassed." I do
not believe, however—and I say it advisedly—that
any of these infamous passages, in regard to which
lapse of time serves but to increase the asperity of
our indignation, surpasses in atrocity the system of
Federal warfare in the Southern States, and notably
in Virginia. In burning words of eloquent censure
Mr. Motley has held up to our loathing the hor-
rible cruelty of Alva and the bigoted tyranny of
his master. Yet Mr. Motley is the complacent and
contented servant of a Republic which, in the name
of liberty, encourages enormities as repugnant to the
civilised warfare of the 19th century as were Philip
IL's outrages, in the name of religion, to the moral
sense of the 16th. Ido not mean that throats are
cut indiscriminately as they were by Alva, although
many a dark tale of cupidity and assassination has
issued from the forests and byways of Virginia.
I could, were it not as distasteful to me to write as
it is to your readers to learn such gloomy horrors,
accumulate evidence substantiating the occurrence
of many such murders of civilians in cold blood be-
yond refutation. Nor, again, do I assert that women
are stripped and forced to run races in the presence
of a licentious soldiery, as in the days of the brutal
Duke of Cumberland. But I do mean to assert—and
I challenge contradiction of this statement—that
outrages such as my pen must seek a periphrasis to
describe, and of which white women are the object,
have repeatedly occurred ; that in a special degree
the coun try called the northern neck of Virginia (lye
ing between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers)
has witnessed them again and again; that the Afri-
can savage, stimulated by those white agents who
give:effect to Mr. Sumner's and Mrs. Beecher Stowe's
theories, is the perpetrator of them, that I am in
position to mention not less than ten horrors, which
during the last three months, have occurred in the
county of Westmoreland alone, and which are un-
surpassed in atrocity by the most loathsome records
of modern or ancient warfare. After this statement
it is a relief to turn to the mere details of plunder
and cupidity. Your readers can scarcely be igno-
rant that through every portion of Virginia Fede-
ral raiders have circulated, have killed every four-
footed or feathered animal, except the horses which
have been carried off, have stripped lonely women
surrounded by children of every vestige of food,
have pillaged ladies' clothing and every portable
article of value, have burnt barns and houses at will
wherever their lust of plunder has been balled.
Will it be pretended that this is civilised war-
fare ? Can it be alleged that the Federals are
merely exacting retribution for similar deeds of the
Southerners in Pennsylvania? I apprehend no such
defence will be [Attempted. The truth is, that for
the first time in modern warfare we are contem-
plating an army which is at once republican end
undisciplined. We SCE officers who in many cases
are more deb :sod than their men, and who impose
upon these men none of the restraints which strict
dieciplice end organisation extracted from the Re-
publican levies by whose agency Napoleon tiorei-
neered over Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, and
Madrid. Tha censequenc:s may be imagined. Ido
not deny that among the Federal officers are ecca-
smelly high-minded and nenourable men, such ae
General :Alccde or General Kelly, and I leelieve I
may acid General Grant, who would scorn the im-
putation of plundering in:war as they would