The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-18 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(Frerrt the Times Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Feb. 5.
The Senate and the House of Representatives,
though agreed that a conaaription is necessary, and
that the President has both the right and the power
to call for all the men, he needs, are not in accord
upon some of the most important portions of the
machinery by which a conscription is to be enforced.
The Senate, not having the fear of public opinion
before its eyes—for its members are not elected
by the people, but by the Legislatures of their re-
spective States—is in favour of the utmost stringency
in carrying out the Act ; while the House of
Representives, elected for a shorter period, and
by direct vote of the masses, has a wholesome
dread of the consequences that might befall if it
legislated in a spirit hostile to the wishes or the
prejudices of the multitude. The Senate, with the
double purpose of procuring the largest possible
number of men, and of extracting from the pockets
of unwilling conscripts the largest possible amount
of money, fixed the price of exemption at 400 dole.,
instead of 300 dols., and furthermore enacted that
this commutation was only to exempt the payer
from one Presidential call. In other words, the
man who had been drawn and paid his money
might be drawn a second, a third, or even a tenth
time, if the President saw fit to make a second, a
third, or a tenth demand upon the country for
soldiers, and would have to pay commutation
each time if he did not choose to face the dan-
gers of the battlefield and do his part otherwise
than by proxy in the extermination of Southern
" rebels." Another provision of the Senate was
that no conscript should be allowed to procure a
substitute out of the classes liable to the draught,
but only from the class of aliens and persons
under 20 or above 45 years of age. The first
two of these provisions were generally felt to
be cruel aggravations of the inevitable torture of
the draught, while the third was considered to place
unnecessary difficulties in the way of those who
were willing to pay their money. In that shape
the bill came from the Upper to the Lower House,
where, by large majorities, it has been stripped of
the obnoxious clauses. The price of commutation
has been restored to 300 do's., as it stood under the
abortive conscription of last year; the payment of
that sum is to liberate the conscript for the full
period of three years, or the war, and he who prefers
to find a substitute may take him from among the
class liable to the draught, and not to be compelled
to find an alien or a boy under age to serve in his
place. The Republican journals do not approve
these amendments. They insist that the experience
of last year is sufficient to prove that a large pro-
portion of the draughted men will avail themselves
of the privilege of exemption ; that each man who
pays his 300 dols. will have in his pocket a certificate
of freedom from military service for three years, and
that it will take bat a very small number of draughts
or calls under these circumstances to rule the whole
serviceable male population out of the lists. Unless
the bill be restored to the shape given to it by the
Senate, they fear that the conscription will be little
more than an irritating nullity. They are un-
doubtedly right. The last conscription was next to
a nullity, and the new one can be no better, and
may perhaps prove worse, both in respect of the
irritation it may cause and the small wool that may
be yielded after the loud cry. Out of the 300,000
men called for last summer, 75,000 were exempted
for physical disability, 74,000 for alienage and
other cruses; 41,000 paid 300 dols. each and left
the Government to find substitutes ; 34,000
took the matter into their own hands and
paid the market price for a substitute, whatever
it might be; 11,000 took the bounty and went
to the camp, the field, or the hospital ; and
65,000 were either not procured at all or remain un-
accounted for. There is no reason to believe that
the new conscription will be more successful, ex-
cept, perhaps, in the amount of money which it will
extract from the pockets of the rich, or from the
funds at the disposal of cites and counties, the inha-
bitants of which will prefer to buy off the poor rather
than incur the risk of street insurrection, accom-
panied by murder and arson. Thus the chances of
any considerable increase of the existing army are
exceedingly small. This, however, might prove to
be no real disadvantage if competent men were at
the head of affairs. If that army, inclusive of the
veterans who have re•enlisted under the call of
October last, amount to half a million of men, it is
quite large enough for a man of military genius to
handle, and for a wise administrator to provide for ;
better than an army three times as large com-
manded by such officers as this war has produced,
and controlled in its movements by the three gentle-
men who form the Military Council at Washington.
A last resource, however, remains, which is to de-
clare the war a" holy war," and to preach a crusade
for the extirpation of slavery, root and branch.
It is no longer sufficient that the nigger should be
free, that he should be a soldier and a voter, but
that he should be to all intents and purposes the
social equal of the white man. Nay, more; it has been
discovered by the advanced spirits of the party that
he is in many important respects the superior of the
whites, and that if the latter do not forget their
pride of race and blood and colour, and amalgamate
with the puzer and richer blood of the blacks, they
will die out of America and wither away in un-
prolific skinniness, meriting by their obstinacy and
folly the fate of the red man, whom they have either
exterminated or driven into the wilderness. The
first to give tongue to the new doctrine was the Rev.
Theodore Tilton, the coaejutor of the Rev. Henry
et Ward Beecher in the editorship of the Independent,
who a few months ago declared in an assemblage
principally composed of women—possibly all of the
strong-minded order—that it was good for white
women to marry black men, and that the " pas-
sional" and " emotional" nature of the blacks was
needed to improve the white race. Mr. Wendell
Phillips has often hinted the same thing, no doubt
to the great joy of the stalwart negroes who have
attended his lectures, if not to that of the shameless
white women who have not thought it unworthy
of their modesty to listen. The doctrine once
broached has found believers and adherents, and
a little tract called " Miscegenation" has recently
beta widely circulated, in which the whole sub-
-is discussed for the study of such Yankee
girls as have exhausted the sensational novels,
and of sack Abolitionist preachers and lecturers
as have not yet risen to the height of this
black argnmoot.
When Miss Dickinson repeated
on Monday evening last, at the Cooper Insti-
tute, the lecture which she delivereci before the
President at Washington a fortnight ago, she was
earnewhat late in ,reeking her appearance on the
platform, and to pacify the audience (mostly com-
posed of women), who were
growing impatient of
delay, the advertisements and laudatory notices of
this tract were handed round for
to ilium perusal—a
circumstance which suggested
that the
lecturer was either the author of the :07
or peere.
niarily interested in its sale. A. few
extracts from
this work will serve to convey to European readers
some notion of the fanaticism that B°easily takes
root in America, and of the fermentation of
ideas
even of the most disgusting kind, which may bt;
made to prevail among a people in times of Social
and political revolution. The fundamental idea
of the new Anacharsis Clootz, or worse than he,
who i•eguilty of the treatise, is this—" Whatever
there is of power and vitality in the American race I
is derived, not from its Anglo-Saxon progenitors,
but from all the different nationalities which t'
to make up this people. All that is needed te
make
Lo 4 the finest race on earth is to ene,rec'
0 upon our
si.ock the negro element which Provi;..,' on ow
ce has ed
by our side upon this contivent. Of all the rich
trew•urta of blood vouchsafed to lit that of the negro
Se the most preeioute because it is the most unlike
ac y other that eaters into the composition of our
national life. . • They (the negroes) are our
brothers anti sisterg. Py mingling with them we
become porerfu!, progrffsive, and prosperous; by
refusing to do so, tra become feeble, unhealthy,
narrow minded, nrlfit for the nobler offices of
freedom, and certain of early (I,•cay." The author
cites various writers to show that in marriage
people are attracted by their opposites; that the
intellectual men does not seek for intellect in his
wife, but for eff:ction without much intellect; that
the dark prefer the blonde, the r r.rt the tail, the