The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-30 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)
NEW YORE., May 17.
It turns out that Mr. Stanton in his official reports of the
progress and results of the great contest in Virginia on
more than one occasion has mistaken his wishes for facts.
General Grant:has made no real progress whatever,and Ge-
neral Lee still confronts him at Spottsylvania Court-house.
Both armies have suffered enormous losses, that of grant
an amount variously estimated in this itY between 60,000
and 80,000 men. Fredericksburg is literally crammed full
of the wounded and the dying. Every house is a hospital,
and every room of every house is no sooner emptied of the
dead, than the dying are thrust into it, to make way in
their turn for fresh victims of the unhallowed struggle.
The streets are impassable for the wounded, who lie all day
and night forlorn and unatteuded to in their last agonies,
not for want of pity and sympathy and the desire to show
them every possible care and attention, but solely because
their numbers are so many that there not surgeons and
nurses to be obtained to look after a tithe of them. Wash-

ington is represented to be in a situation scarcely less de-
plorable. As anticipated in my last, both armies have been
compelled by the weather and the state of the roads, as
well as by the fearful losses which each have suffered) to
pause for a while in their frightful conflict. Both are re-
ceiving reinforcements. Beauregard, leaving Richmond to
its defences, and Gen. Butler to be dealt with hereafter, has
succeeded in slipping from Petersburg and effecting a junc-
tion with Gen. Lee at Spottsylvania. The worst of the
work thus remains to be done. If Richmond is to be taken,
or Gen. Lee's army annihilated, or eempe:led to capitulate,
it will not be until many battles have been fought, as obsti-
nate and bloody as those of last week. But people in the city
who three days ago weresanguinehave had cause to change

with which the end was to be
tattained.heir opinionand nafr e thefacility
contented to adjourn
the consummation,
which they still believe to be inevitable, until the 4th cf
y seem to think possessed of a
heart, and head of every
Je
turlayn,gae dinfluence
heivc he r tthhee
hands,
true Yankee. It is not every ctig, however, who is equalty
credulous. General Lee has not yet reached tnt point
where he desires that his antagonist shalt Meet him for a
decisive effort, and seems content in the meanwhile not
only to lure him on to that position by such degrees as suit
his purpose, but to inflict upon him at every mile or half
mile of his progress an amount of slaughter that would
demoralise any army leas gallant than that cf the Potomac.
While Grant. with characteristic energy and contempt of
life, says he will " pile Up his men and conquer at alt
hazards," Lee—with equal energy and heroism—dares him
nhl
oee
eeemat nodnreeout
hvwl
value
wholly
the
than
aer pameg
el —0 s
aawnuhdi
eoohe ns
het
enheerryeye
ecoiocvucealed-.
to come on, whatever may be his numbers—foils every
attack
i e
Were
r
in lw i
ehcnti es
atenf
not be more ruthlessly sacrificed than they have been dur-
ing the past week, or as in all probability they will be
again as soon as Grant makes another march against his
enemy. Though his battalions are not engaged in fighting
against a foreign nation led by a would-be conqueror, who
would reduce them to subjection, but are lifting their fra-
tricidal hands against men of the matte race and language,
who have taken up arms it tlefence of that sacred principle
of self-government tt Fe which the
a eaeral Union must rest,
if it
ever hreisst upon anYtit,g, it is itapossihle for any dile,d wa-
hold b' °PIPLon of the cause of antartel may be, to with-
, -as admiration for the noble qualities it has displayed
.a this, the most tremendous etenggle iii *hick this army
was ever engaged, And if Katatitation be extorted by the
army of the North, 'shall it not be freely rendered to that
nobler, because smaller, army of the South—which bears
up 80 splendidly against difficulties that might
well ae
taker to be overwhelmingi and which, die-
...ming the vulgar inducer...tenth of bounty, does
battle for home and Independence—desiring nothing,
asking nothing, expecting nothing from the hated
Yankees but to be left alone to such Government as the
suffrages of the Southern people shall elect and maintain?
The great business of the war—all absorbing as it
might be supposed at a moment when the fate of the Re-
public hangs upon a thread-atm not interfered with the
social, and scarcely with the political life of the people. In
New York, as in Lwidon, May is the month of meetings,
religious, philanthropic, moral, and it may be added, as far
as New York is concerned, immoral. The foes of slavery,
of whiskey, and of marriage have each had their anniversary
uelebrations. Since General Grant crossed the Rapiean the
supporters of Women's Rights, the believers in Spiritual-
ism, and of all the other " isms" that flourish in this land,
as they flourish nowhere else, have followed the example
—and brought out their crotchets for discussion and " ven-
tilation," sometimes for the instruction, sometimes :for the
amusement, and not unfrequently to the disgust of all
sensible people. The Abolitionists, as might have been ex-
pected, are jubilant, for although, according to the procla-
mation of the President, slavery is still to be recognized in
the United States, provided that the slaveholders be loyal
to the Government, the evil thing has been abolished theo-
retically in every part of the once Great Repuolic, where
his proclamations have no mere validity than those of the
King of Dahomey. For this reason, and also because their
party is in power, the Abolitionists were in excellent spirits
at their anniversary—though they did not separate without
a schism in their ranks, upon two questions of considerable
interest—first, whether Mr. Lincoln was a wise man and a
good President; and second, whether Great Britain was
a first or a second-rate Power. The balance of opinion on
the first question was decidedly against the President; on
the second, which was raised by Mr. Wendell Phillips, it
was as decidedly against Great Britain. Mr. Phillips seems
to consider that free countries in Europe cannot be great, for
he admitted none to stand in the first r ank except Russia and
France, and carried the sympathy and conviction of his
audience along with him.
The teetotallers and advocates of the Maine liquor law
have also had their annual gathering. They did not appear
to be so well satisfied with things in general as their friends
the abolitionists. They were quite ready to make it a felony,
punishable with fine and imprisonment, though not exactly
with the gallows, to distil, to vend or to drink a glass of
alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, on the pre-
scription of a properly qualified physician, but did not see
their way very clearly to the happy consummation of their
wi-hes. Neither did they seem to think that victory could
reward the gallant exertions of the army of the Potomac
until it was commanded by a teetotaller, and until every
general of division or brigade confined himself to tea and
cold water. As General Grant and General Meade drink
wine when they can get it, the prospect in this direction did
not appear hopeful to these excellent philanthropists.
The spiritualists have mustered in great strength, ap-
parently with the design of purging their faith of a heresy
that has grown into it, the heresy of "free love," as its
friends call it, and of " free lust," as it is designated by its
opponents. The free lovers consider marriage to be slavery,
the slavery of the woman to the man, and a thing as odious
in its way as the slavery of the black man to the whits ; they
therefore urge its abolition. Tho Spiritualists, who design
to form a new religion, do not wish their faith to be encum-
bered with a notion so irreconcilably at varience with Chris-
tianity, with civilisation, with morality, and with the gene-
ral opinion of all mankind, and are striving desperately to
outset the "free lovers" from their communion. But they
find the achievement more difficult than they imagined, and
assert that evil spirits, and not good ones, instil such indecent
thoughts and such wicked heresy into the minds of harlots
and of other worse people of the opposite sex. Of course the
spirits had something to say of the war and of the progress
of hostilities in Virginia. One set of spirits declared that
General Grant would triumph over all obstacles, while an-
other set declared as confidently that Grant would be anni-
hilated. As there was no superior spirit to say which told
the truth and which the lie, the matter remained in abey-
ance, and was not decided to any one's satisfaction, when,
after sittings prolonged into the second week, the Conven-
tion adjourned.
Less dreary than the gathering of these crazy fanatics
was the meeting of the fair Ladies of the Covenant, who
assembled last night at the Cooper Institute to sign a pledge
not to wear any article of foreign finery until the restoration
of peace. The ladies are by no means so enthusiastic in the
cause as the ultra-patriots imagined. The young ones have
awakened to the suspicion that the movement is a Yankee
dodge, got up by the New England manufacturers of infe
nor dry goods, to palm off upon them the ugly home-made
article at a foreign price, and the old ones, especially those
who have money in their pockets, and like to look young,
though youth may have departed—have come to a similar
conclusion. The shafts of ridicule have been let fly against
the whole movement, and especially against the leaders. It
is alai ed if they are not the identical ladies who refused
to drink tea or other imported beverages, in the days before
George Washington became the father of his country, and
whether it is not time that such venerable persons should
retire into private life and leave the affairs of the world to
a younger generation. It is also asked whether the whole
of them--young or old—are net of the strong-minded order,
and whether it will not be fatal to the chances of marriage
of any spinster or young widow if she be seen among them,
or to wear the badge of the order—a bee on the left shoulder.
The inquiry is simultaneously made, whether the bee
would not be more appropriately and suggestively worn in
the bonnet. The principal speakers at the meeting were
the philanthropical and wealthy Peter Cooper, from whom
the building in which it was held derived both its name
and existence. and the Rev. Drs. King and Hitchcock.
The last mentioned gentleman was especially severe on the
tawdy and costly finery trailed through the streets of Broad-
way by the ill-dressed and vulgar rich women of New York;
and declared that their heartless extravagance in the hour
of their country's peril, when the heroes of the army of the
Potomac were dying by thousands on tha bloody battlefield
of npottsylvania, " was indecent, unbefitting, unsympa
thetic," and, hi one word, "a shame." But his le/narks
did not appear to receive much favour, and were received
with as decorous a silence as if they had been uttered from
the pulpit. The pledge which the ladies were to sign on
becoming Covenanters was not a very stringent one, for it
only bound them to refrain during the war or the rebellion
from the purchase of imported articles of luxury for which
these of home manutacture and production could be conve-
niently substituted. This weak mode of putting the case to
the consciences of those who loved pleasant finery more than
unpleasant duty, called forth the indignant reprobation of
a Miss Sus:an B. Anthony, the only lady who mustered Euf-
ficient courage to address the meeting, but who had not in.
11,1' :*P enough to procure the stabs itntioa of the word