The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-19 00:00:00

1"7-17, CIVIL WAR Zli AMERIC,

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(From the 2'irne4. corre:;:pelv..,

NEW YORK, J4P, 5.
The old year went out and the new year C 2,1711 in
amid ouch warm though rainy weather, that the
streets of t his ill-paved city were ankle deep in ash
and mire ; and the roads of Virginia were is so soft,
spongy, and greasy a state that desertion from the
army of the Potomac was declared on high military
authority to be " But the twenty-
fourth hour of 1864 had not tolled before the most
potent of all scavengers, the frost, began to facili-
tate desertion and harden the road. The thermome-
ter suddenly fell from forty-two degrees above zero
to nine degrees below; and a storm of wind of an
intensity of cold that could scarcely have been sur-
passed in Siberia, or at the grave of Sir John
Franklin, began to blow from the north-east. The
water froze in the jugs and basins of sleeping apart-
medts. The bottled beer in the cellcrs was con-
verted into ice, and the milk in the pail or the ewer
at the farm house or the store became as solid as
glass. The tracks left by cartwheels in the mud
were hardened into ridges as difficult to penetrate as
it they had been of iron ; and desertion from the
Army of the Potomac was feasible to any faint-
hearted warrior who had courage enough left to
betake himself homewards. Several unhappy per-
sons were frozen to death in the streets of Philadel-
phia ; four Confederate prisoners perished or cold
and exposure in a railroad car on the way from
Jeffersonville to Chicago; and railway communica-
tion throughout the North and West was either
greatly impeded by snow drifts or stopped alto-
gether. It is asserted that no such extremity of
cold has been experienced south of Boothia Felix
for the last half century ; and the journals from
every part of the country continue to report from
day to day, the casualties and less of life that have
occurred in consequence. On Saturday and Sunday
the frost continued, but the bitter wind ceased to
blow. Consequently all the world made merry out
of doors. Men and women donned their furs and
woollen comforters, and everybody who could skate
hurried to the Central-park or ether places where
t'nerd were ponds or sheets of water, to indulge in
the favourite diversion of the Americans. Even on
Sunday the gaieties did not slacken. The Central-
park was as jubilant with holiday-makers as Rome
or Naples during the Carnival. Wealth, beauty,
youth, and fashion, as well as poverty, ugliness, old
age, and vulgarity, thronged to the scene of festi-
vity, and were as joyous as if skating were the
supreme end and felicity of human existence, and
as if no such thing as war were desolating the
fairest portions of the Continent, and storing up,
perhaps, for the present generation—most certainly
for its successors—a harvest of agonies and evils
such as the world has seldom witnessed.
New Year's-day is a sore trial to the patience of
public functionaries in America, and most of all to
the President. Mr. Lincoln, who is reported to have
caught the small-pox on a visit of philanthropy to
the wretched negro barrack, or settlement, in the
neighbourhood of Washington, having coropletely
recovered from the attack, held the usual handshak-
ing levee at the White House, and went through
the ordeal with unflinching bravery. To such of the
crowd as he was personally acquainted with he gave
a cordial greeting, and to some favoured few fired off
his Western wit or humour with all his ancient hila-
rity. It was remarked as a novelty that there were no
less than four negroes in the crowd, and that the
President received them with special good humour.
It is the first time in the existence of the Republic
that a black man has dared to mingle in the throng
on such an occasion, or to presume to think that his
felicitations on the New Year were as acceptable as
those of his white brother. As such the incident
deserves to be recorded. Generally throughout the
North, and especially in the New England States
and in New York, the negroes celebrated on Friday
evening, not alone the opening of another year, bat
the first anniversary of the President's Proclamation
of Emancipation. On these occasions, though the
white friends of the negro race were advertised to
make speeches in support of emancipation, very few
were present. A sprinkling of white women were
to be seen, together with a few prominent clergymen
of all denominations, except the Episcopalian and
the Roman Catholic ; but, with these exceptions, the
negroes and mulattoes had it all to themselves. The
only really prominent white man who lent his name,
his presence, and his voice to the celebration was the
Rev. D. Bellows, a noted Unitarian clergyman of
this city. This gentleman, like Mr. Wendell Phillips,
Mr. Ward Beecher, and the other zealots, lay and
clerical, of Abolitionism, mingles no little malignity
for the white race with his philanthropy for the
blacks. Mr. Wendell Phillips is of opinion, in his
animosity against the siaveholders, that true justice
will not be done to the negroes until the Southern
Confederacy shall have been parcelled out among
them in small farms, and the " mean whites" com-
pelled to labour for them. Dr, Bellows rides the
Abolition hobby almost as unmercifully; and de-
clared at the Emancipation Jubilee of New Year's-
vight that the anniversary which the coloured mcn
had met to o.debrate "deserved to stand alongside of
the birth of Jesus Christ." He thought that if white
men had been subjected to the same indignities as
the black the white race would have deteriorated, and
that our present Christian civilisation would have
been impossible. Setting at nought the experience
of all ages and the palpable evidence of anatomy, he
affirmed the difference between the whites and the
blacks to be nothing but a difference in external cir-
cumstances, and prophesied that in five or at most ten
years the black race would be "suddenly elevated—
make a great leap forward in civilisation—and be
socially and politically regenerated." The white
people present made no response, and the negroes
themselves seemed to think the news too good to
be true. But the reverend negrophiliat, nothing
daunted, repeated last night, at a second meeting
of coloured people, all his sanguine vaticinations
of the future of their race, advised them not to be
called nr to call themselves" coloured," but boldly
to insist upon being designated " blacks," for were
there not " red men," "yellow men," and " white
men," and were not all these " coloured ? ' He
himself, he said, was coloured, but his colour was
not black. He regretted to see so few white men
present of the class that might be regarded as repre-
sentatives of public opinion ; but God Almighty
was the author of the Proclamation of Emancipa-
tion, and not President Lincoln, and God s help
rather than man's, would render its policy
triumphant over all obstacles. Mr. Charles Sumner,
whose name was placarded all over the city as in-
tending to be present and make an oration, failed to
appear, but sent a letter apologising for his ab-
sence, in which he said, that wherever he was he
would celebrate the proclamation in his heart, be-
cause the proclamation was
the key to victory
and peace—that without it victory would have
been doubtful and peace impossible, whereas both
were now certain. Mr. Sumner, like Mr. Wendell
Phillips, is in earnest on this question, and :0, no
doubt, is the great body of the Unitarian and Pres-
byterian clergy ; but they stand in a small mino-
rity. No public man who aspires to political
honours or office cares to identify himself with their
Proceedings, and the whole business community
and the entire mass of the labouring population
keep as studiously aloof from abolitionism as the
shopkee-
pers of Paris from socialism and com-
munism.
t'thee churches may deplore this fact,
and. attribu
it to the innate wickedness of the
heart of fallen hu.nanity ; but it is a fact, never-
theless, and none know it so well as the negroes
themselves, or hope less from the emancipation of
their Southern brethren than they do.
As the great question of the constitutionality of
the proclamation, by which Mr. Lincoln endea-
voured to set aside the State
laws of one-half of the
late Federal Union, must
shortlyanxiety
tried e
,bienf
so rtec; t ee
Supreme Court, considerable
felt at 'Washington on the sub- 6
subject of that august
end
tribunal—the first alike in Power
dignity in
the Republic, and having within its competency to
set aside or annul the acts of the li.
—ZOCUtive. It
consists at present of ten Judges,
of whom six were
appointed by the Democratic party in the halcyon
days before Lincoln, and four by the R
epu ,e.ans
siece Me. Lincoln's cssomption of cffiee- The Chief
Justice, the Hon, Roger B. Taney, of Baltimore, a
man beloved in Maryland with a love seldom
accorded by Americans,
,approghes his 90th year,

and has lately bseri e'erlTea teliiiiseni-bfißibtis
indisposition. Great hopes were entertained by the
-Republican pE.rly that this gentleman would either
die or resign his cface, in either of wh'ch cases an
Abolitionist and supporter et the Adm:nistration
would have been appointed in his p.a.:T. Much to
the disappointment of the White House and the
Administration, he has recovered, and much to their
disgust he has declared that he will not resign as
long as he lives,—unless, indeed, a Democratic Pre-
sident should be elected in place of Mr. Lincoln, in
which case he would debate the question whether
it would not be better after his long services that he
should retire into private life. The President, it is
understood, desires to elevate Mr. Chase to Mr.
Taney's position, for the double purpose of placing
an Abolitionist on the Bench, and of removing out
of the wayia formidable competitor for the honours
of the Presidency. But the good constitution and
the firm resolve of the venerable Chief Justice
having prevented, at least for the present, the
realisation of the project, it has become necessary
to devise some other scheme for securing the deci-
sion of the Court in favour of the measure, which
Mr. Lincoln's friends affirm to be the crowning
glory and his opponents the crying shame of his
administration. It has, therefore, been suggested
that ten Judges are not sufficient to transact the
business of the Supreme Court ; that the multifa-
riousness, complexity, and importance of the ques-
tions that come before it for decision have grown
with the prosperity and enterprise of the country
and that, if ten Judges had work enough 40 years
ago, there is work enough at the present day for 14
at the least. In other words, Mr. Lincoln is urged
to create by the consent of Congress four new
Judges, who, being all of the Republican party,
would give him in the Supreme Tribunal a majority
of eight against six. In this case the obstinate Mr.
Taney might continue to live to 150 without
danger to the Republican cause, and everybody,
except Mr. Chase, the Democratic party, and the
friends of the Constitution " as it was," would have
reason to be satisfied. The attempt will undoubt-
edly be made, with what success no one can at pre-
sent tell. If the American people submit to it, as
they probably will, they will afford one more proof
of their readiness to bend their necks to the yoke of
that great military chieftain and dictator, that
embryo Cromwell or Buonaparte, whose blood-red
shadow looms ominously on the horizon,
A man of great mark and influence has just passed
away. John Hughes, Catholic Archbishop of New
York, died on Sunday, at the age of CS, from
softening of the brain, and general prostration of the
powers of life. He came to America a poor Irish
boy, began life as shopman or assistant to a florist
in New York, and, entering the Church at an early
age, succeeded, by dint of pliancy, industry, and
native talent, in working himself up to the high
ecclesiastical position which he has held for the last
26 years, as bishop and archbishop. He exercised
an enormous influence over the Irish Catholic popu-
lation—not so much for leading them in political
affairs as for following the current of their opinions
and prejudices, and for his thorough personal sym-
pathy in all their feelings of nationality. He was
entirely a man of the people, and, if somewhat anti-
English, was more so from policy than from convia-
tion. He was not an opponent of slavery, for if he
had been he would have placed himself in anta-
gonism, not only to his Church, but to the senti-
ment of the whole Irish population. He was
deliberately opposed to an enforced military con-
scription, and during the riots cf last July took no
pains to conceal either from the Government or the
people that he considered the draught unwise and
unjust, if not tyrannical. As befitted his sacred
character, he was a friend of peace, and, soaring
high above the madness of the crowd to those serener
attitudes of thought where passion has no foothold,
he took occasion to impress upon the minds of the
youthful students of the Etc lesiastical College of St
Xavier, and upon those of his flock, that the liberty
of the Republic was to be prized as something far
more estimable than extent of territory, and that
the happiness of a state was to be considered better
worth securing than it " bigness." The Americans
were not then in a condition to profit by his teach-
ing. Neither are they now. Neither does it ap-
pear that they ever will be. To be the " biggest "
and most powerful nation in the world is their
highest ambition. For that darling object, which,
notwithstanding all their hopes and all their
vaunts is no nearer than it was years ago, they have
already sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives,
millions of treasure and legal and constitutional
rights more precious than all the gold of the
earth; and, worse than all, they are ready,
if we may believe the governing party, to
incur double and treble sacrifices of the same hind in
the future, rather than renounce the idea of a con-
solidated Empire. Though it would have to be main-
tained at the cost of a Southern Poland, to be a per-
petual thorn in their sides, a chronic disease in the
body politic, a standing peril to their liberty, a con-
stant drain upon their pockets and their temper, and
a never-ceasing cause of anxiety and unhappiness,
they crave it as the sum of all earthly desire. Empire
was once considered the lust of kings only. The
Americans, in their present temper, lust for it more
ardently and unreasone.hly than any King or Em-
peror who ever troubled the world from Alexander
;o Napoleon.

IRELAND.

DUBLIN, lan. 13,

Another special meeting of the corporation was
held on Saturday, to consider the important ques-
tion whether the statue of the Agitator should be
left iA the niche it occupies at the side of the City-
hall or be promoted to a more commanding position
in the centre. The Conservative members opposed
the contemplated change on the ground that it
would be an unwise precedent to establish, and also
that it would be giving O'Connell an apparent pre-
cedence over ono of her Majesty's ancestors—a
statue of George 111, having formerly stood on the
proposed site, from which it was removed because it
spoilt the appearance of the hall. The debate
lasted more than two hours, and, as on the previous
occasion, bi_eame eztremely personal. Alderman
Reynolds, who abused unsparingly all who differed
from him, observed that there were some statues in
the hall which he would willingly see removed—

statues of Dutchmen, and worse than Datchmz-n.
Dr. Lucas was a mad apothecary, and Grattan's
name was not worthy to be mentioned in connexion
with the Liberator's. Ultimalely his resolution was
adopted by a majority of 13, amid groat cheering
from the occupants of the gallery.
The Federal agents are parservering in their en-
deavours to fill the thinned ranks of the American
armies with the youths of Ireland. One of these
persons has been pursuing his avocations in Gal-
way for the last week with considerable success, as
appears from the following account in the Galway
Express :—" The town of Galway has been conside-
rably enlivened this week by a visit of an Irish
American, a native of Longhrea, who has kindly
offered to take out to America, free, as many able-
bodied men as he can procure. As soon as the ob-
ject of the visit of Air. Feeny (for such is his name)
was known, large numbers of our poor labourers
proceeded to his Quarters anxious to be booked. He
stated that ho had been commissioned by a railway
contracting company to engage as many labouroes
as he could in Ireland to work on railways. On
their arrival a sum of .+.:2 per head is to be paid them
to procure an outfit, and 8s a day is promised them
on arrival at their destination, but where that is we
have not been able to learn. Each man is to have
2s. per day stopped out of his salary, to reimburse
his employers for the expense incurred. Large num-
bers are said to have entered their names on these
terms. In Longhrea Mr. Feeny is said to have pro-
cured over 250 men, and in Galway, although the
booking only commenced on Friday, more than 200

are said to have got their names enrolled. Whether
these men are engaged us bona fide labourers or
otherwise it is impossible to determine. It is said
that Mr. Feeny was arrested under the Foreign En-
listment Act in Longhrea, on suspicion of enlisting
for the Federal army, but as no proof could be had
he was acquitted.

RESIGNATION OF AN IRISH learn
by electric tel:Traph rh4t the Dublin Evening Atail an-
nounces, on reliable authority, that Judge Ball irs about to
"42A, Ilia oat in the Court o Commou