The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-21 00:00:00

THE C

:RICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, July 7.
The three days of Gettysburg have saved Wash-
ington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Gen. Meade,
brave, modest, and master of his business and re-
sources, has done what Gen. M'Clellan did twice
before. He has rescued the Federal capital from the
disgrace of hostile occupation, and cleared the soil
of the North from the presence of the invader. The
great result has been purchased by the lives of
30,000 men, of whom as many died on the one side
as on the other. Beyond this, and considered as
bringing the war nearer to its termination, the
awful carnage of those bloody battlefields has been
utterly in vain. North and South have so many
citizens the less ; the North has won prestige, and
the South has lost it; and both have learnt the
lesson that, in this particular quarrel, he is strongest
who stands on his own soil upon the defensive. No
other result is apparent. At this moment no one
knows the exact position of Gen. Lee, who has seen
repulsed with as great bravery as he attacked, de-
feated in his immediate objeot and compelled to
retreat, but who is still at the head of a numerous
army, master of the mountain passes through
which no enemy can follow him, and ready to dis-
pute the advance of the foe upon Southern territory
with as much
acctobstinay as that with which he him-
self was confronted he then obscure, but now for
ever memorable little town of Gettysburg. The
Federal Government and people are naturally much
elated at a success on which a few days ago it
seemed over•sanguine to calculate, and, with, cha-
racteristic elasticity of spirit, as jubilant Its if the
war were over, and nothing more was to be
done but to grant a general amnesty and
shake hands all round over the restoration of the
Union. And as, according to the proverb, "it
never rains but it pours,'' the North, well con-
tented with one victory, has been rewarded by a
second. Vicksburg there is no reason to disbelieve
has actually fallen. A short Caesarean despatch
from Admiral Porter to the Secretary of the Navy
announced that it surrendered to the United States'
forces on the 4th of July. Another non-official
despatch, via Cairo, confirmed the statement, adding
that General Pemberton, on the morning of the na-
tional anniversary, offered to surrender if allowed
to march out with the honours of war; that Gene-
ral Grant would listen to no terms ; and that, after
consultation with his officers, General Pemberton
surrendered unconditionally. The friends of the
South in this city do not know upon whom to vent
their wrath at this unlooked-for catastrophe. Some
blame the inaction of General Joseph Johnstone,
who, they affirm, was in a position, with ordinary
energy and enterprise, to have raised the siege a
week ago, while others openly accuse General Pem-
berton, who is a Northern man and a native of
Philadelphia, of treachery, and the receipt of a
heavy bribe from the Federal Government to sur-
render on the 4th of July, with a view to theatrical
effect. However the truth may be, it should be
remembered that this is not the first time that a
similar accusation has been raised against the Ge-
neral by the Southern press at Richmond, as well
as by the sympathisers with the South in this city,
and that early in June last he issued a proclama-
tion to the garrison of Vicksburg denying that he
would sell Vicksburg, and stating that only when
the last pound of food had been consumed and the
last man perished in the trenches would he surren-
der the city. These were brave words. They have
not been followed up by deeds equally desperate,
and until the actual truth be known General Pem.
berton may blame his own braggadocio for the sus-
picion which has fallen upon him.
People who were so remarkably careless and in-
different last week under the prospect of invasion
explain that the indifference was the result of
knowledge and of well-based confidence, not of
ignorance or apathy, and that they knew there
never was the least danger to any of the cities of
the North, and especially to Washington. When
Wall-street learnt on the unsafe authority of the
" sensatiouu journals that Lee was utterly routed
and in full flight to the Potomac, which he was
certain never to reach, it measured the results of
General Meade's victory by a fall of six per cent. in
the price of gold, and a rise of two and three per
cent. in the value of Government securities; but
taking counsel of the last official despatch of Gen.
Meade, and calmly reviewing the whole circum-
, stances, it modified its opinion, and sent gold up
and securities down again by about one-half their
previous rise. To-day the feeling was much less
hopeful than it was yesterday. Until late in the
afternoon, when the capture of Vicksburg was an-
nounced, gold slid down rapidly to 331., a lower
point than it has touched for six or eight months.
Prior to that windfall of good fortune cautious men
declared that the backbone of the rebellion was not
broken ; that the end was no nearer than it was be
fore; that the capture of Vicksburg grew less pro-
bable every hour; that Gen. Banks was not alone
in danger of defeat, but of enforced surrender at
Port Hudson ; that all the recent advantages gained
by the Federals were idle and transitory as a name
written in water; that New Orleans would probably
share the fate of Gen. Banks, if that were adverse;
that a Federal advance to Richmond, which hot
headed zealots were again urging, would restore
to General Lee the opportunity of victory which
he let slip at Gettysburg ; and that short of
European intermediation there was no agency
whatever that could bid the sullen and resolute
South and the vain but unstable North make up
their difference, and consent to dwell apart, two in
political and social sentiment, but one perhaps in
the amicable relations of commerce. But upon the
confirmation of the news the public sentiment took
once more a hopeful turn. Gen. Banks it was
thought would assuredly be reinforced by General
Grant, the Mississippi would be free from its source
to its mouth, and the South would sue for peace. It
is here that the Northern people fall into deplorable
error. They know that they love the Union them-
selves, and cannot understand that the South should
abhor it. The war has been hammering the truth
into the Northern mind with very hard blows ; but
the Northern mind has not been ductile to receive
it. In adversity the Northern people may have be-
lieved to a qualified extent in Southern estrange;
Powers
ment ; but in prosperity they refuse to .admit that
any American can in his heart be false to aUnion
which has made America one of the Great
of the earth. Nevertheless, the question of interven-
tion
or intermediation, of which rumours mere
Or
less precise and authentic continue to arrive by
every mail from Europe, scarcely
dieslan the
and France,
exsame
jealous hostility as betore. If Eng
with or without the aid of Spain and other Powers,
were to propose an armistice, the signs are that the
great bulk of the Northern and North-western peo.,
pie would agree to the proposal after a faint
Federal
tfoo re odious
media-
tion pro-
test. The forced conscription—to which the
Government must resort, ordle—thias so us to the
whole people of a
fighting
age
would be accepted, if only for the certainty that
it would put an
end to all danger from this
source. If the i
war s to continue even for a
twelvemonth Mr. Lincoln must have a new army of
at least a quarter of a million of men. He cannot
get such an army, or a third of it, by voluntary
enlistment ; nor by the persuasive power of all the
greenbacks that Mr. Chase's steam engines can
print off, if they work night and day, to fill the
pockets of Irish and German mercenaries; and the
aid of the negro, even to the extent of only 10,000
men, is not to be obtained, even though General
Fremont, or General Butler, should offer to lead
them on a grand raid of slaughter and pillage
through the rich plantations of South Carolina,
Mississippi, and Alabama. A conscription, or a
collapse, is the question which the Federal Govern-
ment must decide ; and it is ore so perilous that
111 r. Lincoln may well be excused for declining to
meddle with it as long as any chance remains in
I the chapter of accidents to extricate him from a di-
I lemma in which it is as fatal to stand still as it may
be to go forward.
"Independence Day" was duly celebrated on the
day after the repulse oWhf General Lee, but before the
Whatever may have been the
details were known.
tone of sentiment in other cities, the Fourth of July
orations in New York betrayed a strong and steady
bias in favour of peace. It would seem as if love for
the Union, no longer the fierce and all-absorbing pas-

sion of the popular heart, nor the frenzy beyond re
son which it was in the earlier days of the war, heal
settled down into a calculation under the stern ex-
perience of the last 16 months. People ask themselves
if the Union is worth 20 years of war, or the sacrifice
of liberty,or national bankruptcy and financial chaos,
or the permanent stigma on the fair fame of the Re-
public that would follow the subjugation of the
South—if such a subjugation were possible. They
feel more than half inclined to answer these questions
in the Legislature, and begin to have a glitrmering
notion of a fact long palpable to Europeans who have
dispassionately studied the principles on which the
Republic was based, that they have all along been
fighting against logic and against fate. The speech
of Governor Seymour, of New York, uttered with
full knowledge of President Lincoln's announce-
ment of the success that attended the Federal army
at Gettysburg on Friday, was that of a man whose
heart was not moved by any passionate impulse to
sympathise with Gen. Meade's victory. He did not
speak as if he thought the victory would end any-
thing, or settle anything, or do more than protract
a struggle which had already lasted too long.
Through it all there loomed, large and menacing,
the great question of " State rights," in vindication
aaasrndwse,alsalsnaedrstiwtohe inhoo
.whf
haerhDe
whichelt the South had taken up
m
oicaraecoy, to common
nbwe tithhetonnelPence
-
vation of the country, amid
the countless host of
perils that threaten to ake.a worse division of the
once exultant and saucy
bisec-
tion. He claimednoin theer m uitel
foron
havingthan a mereassisted bi stehce-
tFheed
recenter a l Governmentalartsof hour of its agony during
invasion
any ;he did not even re-
cognise it as havingclaims upon his justice or
generosity as Governor of
i‘ thehad
State of New York,
but he declared that he occupied every hour
to the point of physical exhaustion to rally our
(New York) troops to the rescueo of an adjoining
sister State (Pennsylvaniapandptoplace New York
ever hold."
in that position of dignity and we
that truly respects its own rights should whicha State
ic To-day," he added, " the great masses of
Conser-
vatives who still battle for time-honoured principles
of Government, amid denunciation and contumelyieipls
e
and abuse, are the only barriers that stand between
the Federal Government and its own destruction."
All other parties who urged it to the commission of
acts of despotism, to the suspension of the habeas
corpus, to the seizure of citizens at midnight in their
beds for the expression of their opinions, to rots:
cible suppression of newspapers, to the incitement
of servile war, and to the laying weste by fire and
sword of States that merely claimed the right of
governing themselves within their own limits,
aecording to the enactments and the piinciples of
their owu Constitution, the Governor held up to the
scorn and reprobation of his hearers. He bad no
sympathy with, or toleration for, the President in
his assumption of the arbitrary powers with which
Congress, acting in excess of its duty, had endea-
voured to clothe him. " This doctrine," he said,
" of the suspension of the Constitution is unsound,
it is unjust, it is treasonable ;" and, at the words tee
immense assemblage that filled the Academy of
Music, from floor to roof, rose to its feet like one
man, and cheered him, with waving of hats and
handkerchiefs and uproot of voices, that bespoke the
intensity of its feeling. Governor Seymour affirmed
that he would uphold what lie called the "just
power" of the Federal Government; but he would
also maintain the "just right" of the States. He
argued that liberty in America was impossible un-
less the people came back to the faith and the pin-
ciples of their fathers—faith and principles which
consecrated e jealous opposition to the central Go-
vernment, lest it should absorb too much into its
own hands and end in a despotism ; and an equally
jealous support of the local Government of the
States, the only safeguard and bulwark of Republi-
can liberty. Governor Seymour, of Connecticut,
was equally decided. "If I knew anything of the
nature of this Government," he said, " its true
greatness consists in the ability it may possess, not
to destroy, but to restore and bring together, and,
by compromise and a new order of things, to re-
build the Temple of Freedom. For this end war is
unavailing. The States of the South may be
wrong; but that is not the question. As they
came voluntarily into the Union you cannot
compel them to remain in it by the force of
arms. You may devastate their fields and
reduce them to beggary ; but you cannot by
these means have the Union which your fathers
founded." It was by speeches like these that on
the anniversary of American independence the two
most eminent citizens of New York and Connec-
ticut expressed themselves opposed to the principle
on which the war was based and the habit on which
it was conducted, and found themselves supported
by the unanimous support of an auditory that had
finally lost the relish for blood. It is true that there
was one embryo citizen, at a meeting of the Young
Men's Catholic Association, held in another place,
who declared that it was utterly impossible for the
North to listen to any proposition for peace so long
as one Southall soldier remained in arms ; but, as he
was only an Englishman, newly imported here,
seeking in this country the social and political posi-
tion which he had forfeited in his own, it is just
possible that Americans may not consider him the
best authority in support of a principle of conduct
which, had it been too long acted upon by King
George 111., would either have brought that
monarch to calamity, or consigned George Wash-
ington to a place in history less splendid than that
which he now occupies. The Irish and Germans
have ceased to hope in the prosecution of the war.
The Americans are fast following in the path where
their foreign born friends and fellow•citizens have
led ;end, if it be left to renegade Englishmen and
native contractors, placemen, and functionaries
alone to cry " War to the bitter end !" the end draws
near, and will neither be retarded nor expedited by
anything that such persons can urge against it.
Notwithstanding all the warlike excitement and
fresh recurring hopes and fears of the last ten days,
Mr. Lincoln has tound time to indite a long and
elaborate reply to the memorial of 19 citizens
of Ohio, appointed as a committee by a State
Convention held at Columbus, to lay srespectfully
before him their reasons for demanding the revocad
-
tion of the illegal sentence of banishment passe
characteristic of the President. He consents to
Vallandigham. The reply is eminently
upon Mr. Vallandig
plead before the committee, as if they had laced
p
him on trial, which virtually they did, and justifies
an action which he admits to be
ea extraordinary and
unconstitutional on the sole pile of a necessity of
o
which he is the sole judge. declines to annul
the sentence on account f its illegality ; but is
willing, as a matter of favour, to grant Mr. Vallan-
moral, nor personal right to propose.
digham liberty to go home upon conditions which
gentlemen will confess to certain
are wholly irrelevant to t e case, and which he had
they will not, Mr. Vallandigham's
nlfeitthheernleingeatheeinf
truisms, which he recapitulates, Mr. Vallandigham
sente may
nee shall remain in force. return.
They are to admit
in writing, and sign the admission with their names,
that thereis a rebellion in the United States ; that
an army and a navy are constitutional means of
; that no one of them
will do anything which in his ow
suppressing that rebellion
and that theea
fc rtehaestne
favour the decrease or hinder n'
judgmentch
will
said army and navy ;
his sphere do all he can to have the said army and
wofillthine
navy, while engaged in suppressing the rebellion,
paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for;
shall go forth free to do as he
pleases, and be only liable to punishment for such
new offence as he may hereafter commit. No one
can say that such a ro os al is sagacious, but most
admit
people will 1) I)
it to be cunning. It says in
effect to the committee :—" I believe you to be all
traitors ; but if you will pledge yourselves in writ-
ing to loyalty
and support of my Government
your traitorous friend shall go free ; not be-
cause he ought to go free, but because I
reckon that I gain a balance of eighteen pledged
supporters out of this clever little transaction.
In fact, it was the village attorney who spoke, and
not the statesman. The committee saw tnrough
the President's meaning at a glance, and in an able,
temperate, but severely cutting rejoinder placed
him in a light that, were he not the President,
would be fatal to all his future chances of success
as a politician and a publicist. They informed him
that it was not for the sake of Mr. Vallandigham
personally that they had ventured to remonstrate
with the Executive; but for the sake of the prin-
ciples involved in Mr. Vallandigham's arrest, which
affected every citizen of their State ; that the Pre-
sident had no right to exact any pledge from them,
implying thereby that they el ere disloyal or rebel-
lious, or that Mr. Vallandigham could be released
upon conditions, as if he had been rightfully pun-
ished. They wound up by declining his proposi-
tions, and throwing upon him the responsibility
which they declare to be aggravated by an intima-
tion in his extraordinary letter that he will, if ever
he sees fit, in the public interests, repeat the illegal
acts of which the committee complained. The whole
proceedings in the case, as far as the President is
concerned, have been one
unnecessary blunder. Perhaps the worst part of
the blunder is that Mr. Lincoln has been unwise
enough to offer reasons for his conduct. If he had
annulled Mr. Vallandigham's sentence he would
have done well. If he had refused to disannul it
without stating why or wherefore be would not have
done quite so well, but he would have done infi
nitely better than by an elaborate statement, full of
false reasoning and quirks and quiddities of petti-
fogging law, to have drawn upon himself the dignie
fled rebuke of the Ohio Committee. As the case
now stands be bah exhibited himself before Euroi e
and his own countrymen in the light of a tyrant,
without any of the mental and moral qualities that
may serve to make tyranny respectable if they can
not make it agreeable.

•ea.'