The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-07 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

~~

(From the Times' Correspoydent.)
NEW YORK, Oct. 21.
Another drawn battle he.s to be added to the many
indecisive col,fi:cts of the war. General Longstreet,
at the head of the army until recently commanded
by General Early, attempted, in the morning of
Wednesday, the 19. h, to drive General Sheridan
from the Valley of the Shenandoah. The shook was
tremendous, the onslaught was well planned and
led, and for a few hours promised to be duecesful.
The Federals were overpowered on various points,
lost 20 pieces of artillery and a large number of
men, and had been forced back four miles, when, in
the afternoon, General Sheridan,. who had been
absent on a political visit to Washington, arrived
from Winchester. His presence served to restore
the confidence of the army. He reunited the scat-
tered and broken diyijaons, and succeeded, after a
desperate struggle, in turning the tide of victory, re-
capturing the lost artillery, and 23 pieces additional
belonging to the enemy, besides a large number of
prisoners. Darkness intervening the fight ceased,
and Mr Stanton telegraphed to all parts of the
country that a glorious and splendid victory had
been achieved. Gen. Sheridan, who is by no means
a " bashful Irishman" when he narrates his own
deeds, but who has certainly a right to be proud in
this instance, has not, up to the time at which I
write, informed the War Secretary of the number of
his own casualties or those of the enemy. Although
for political reasons the Government will make the
most of this success, it amounts to nothing more
than the repulse of an attack, and leaves ;the mass
tery of the Shenandoah Valley to be decided in
another contest. Indeed, it was currently reported
in this city last night and to-day that the struggle
was renewed on Thursday morning, and that Long.
street, as on the previous day, was the attacking
party. There is no confirmation of the report,
although the obvious indecisiveness of Wedness
day's struggle and the probability of its imme
diate renewal have operated in Wall-street to pre-
vent the rise in gold, which would have been the
sure result if Longstreet's repulse had been a signal
defeat and had left him powerless for future
ms-
chief.

Meanwhile Sheridan is the popular favourite.
Gen. Grant, in a despatch to Mr Stanton, declares
him to be what he always thought him, " one of the
ablest of Generals," and public opinion points him
out as the successor of Gen. Meade in the command
of the army of the Potomac—Meade being too me-
thodical, too distreet, too gentlemanly, and too slow
to elicit the admiration of so rash and fast a people
as the modern Americans. The dictionary is ran.
sacked for epithets of praise to heap on the head of
the victor. He is declared to be the Desaix of Ame-
rica; to have done a deed that will rank with the
greatest achievements of Julius Caesar, Alexander
the Great, Charles XII., or Wellington; to be the
real and only Napoleon of the war, and to be de•
stined hereafter to the high position of the presi-
dency. On this last question there appears to be some
doubt whether he was not born a British subject.
As he would in such a case be ineligible to the pre-
sidency, he would be more fortunate than General
M'Clellan, and might reasonably expect from the
Government that patronage and favour which no
one who aspires to fit the tear of Mr Lincoln can
expect at the hands of the present Administration.
Mr Lincoln, in common with his party, is so rt•
joiced at a success which gives a denial to the asser-
tion of the assembled Democracy at Chicago that the
war is a failure, that he has ordered a day of na-
tional thanksgiving for the event. The document at
first blush suggests a doubt whether it is not due
to the too dexterous knavery of some forger emulous
of the fame of Mr Joseph Ho ward, of the New York
Times and the Brooklyn Engle, but as it appears in
all the newspapers, without question, it must be
accepted as genuine. Mr Lincoln holds that
the prolongation of the national existence for
"another year" is a cause of thankfulness to
the Almighty. To some minds the phrase will con-
vey the idea that Mr Lincoln considers the exis-
tence of the nation to be precarious, as the life of a
man. The next phrase is still more extraordinary,
declaring as it does, that Almighty God has de-
fended the Federal cause with his guardian care
" against unfriendly designs from abroado' The
people both of America anel Europe may well ask
what foreign Powers or people have manifested un-
friendly designs against Mr Lincoln's Government,
or why, in a formal document such as a proclama-
tion for prayer and praise, the President should
depart from the recognised formula to make an in-
sinuation, either true or false, against the Govern-
ment or people of a foreign Power unnamed ; and
that too at a time when the United States are nomi-
nally at peace with the whole world except with
the unhappy citizens of the South.
The scraps of military news from all parts of the
theatre of war prove painfully that the character
of the war has greatly changed for the worse since
the assumption of command by General Grant. His
contempt for human life, and the recklessness with
which he sacrifices it, seem to have brutalised not
alone the army but the people. The greater the
number of men he destroys the higher the admira-
tion that is expressed of his genies. His order to
General Sheridan to convert the Valley of the
Shenandoah " barren waste" has been as
much applauded
ud intoed
asa if it were an sot of heroic virtue.
a
General Sheridan'e destruction of all the barns and
homesteads within an area of five miles in diameter,
in retaliation for the killing of a Federal soldier by
a party ofquite as much as his victory
a
endearedas his name to the Northern
people, t Cedar
especially to those who clamour for the re-
election of Mr Lincoln. The atrocities committed
K
in
in
ny
any
other
e r
Creek guerillas,
h
country, or at any other'
Generals
Payne and Burbridge,
monsters
time, would be held up to public execration as ene-
mies of mankind, are justified by thousands of other-
wise humane people, on the plea that rebels deserve
no mercy, and that the only true mode of procedure
eatu
whoekY
is to hang and shoot them wherever found, destroy
their property, and reduce their families to want and
misery. The effect, however, upon the mind of the
South does not seem to be that intended by the
Federal Government and its abettors in bloodshed.
Such acts do not strike terror and compel submis-
sion—they excite indignation and revenge, and
work up the feeling of the Southern people to a
pitch that will speedily•replenish the broken ranks
of the Confederate army, and make a soldier or
guerilla partisan of every man capable of holding a
weapon. A Richmond paper suggests that in
retaliation for the devastation ordered by General
Grant and committed by General Sheridan in
the Shenandoah Valley it would be easy for the
South to employ e2O or 30 trusty friends" in
the North to set New York or Boston on fire
iu as many different places simultaneously " on
some dry windy night, and publicly recom-
mends the Confederate Legislature to vote a
,million of dollars for the purpose. " The men," it
adds, " are already there, and New York would be
worth 20 Richmonds." It is evident, not only from
this passage but from the whole tenour of many
recent articles in the Southern and Northern press,
that the war has lost its original character, and is
fast degenerating into a savage contest. The North
more than the South is to blame. The North is
the invader. The North first commended hostilities
against women and children, and forget the decen-
cies and amenities of civilisation in its treatment of
the helpless inhabitants of conquered cities. The
North first appointed rowdies, pig drivers, mule
breeders, and habitual drunkards to high command,
making choice of ruffians who did not look upon