The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-24 00:00:00

:RICA,

(From the Ti Ines Correspondent.)
BALTIMORE, June 7.
The remarks of a p ortion of the English press,
which seem to admit t, lilt Gen. Grant has hitherto
had the advantage in the campaign against Rich-
mond, have been received in this city with great
surprise. So far from having had the advantage,
Grant in every movement he has made has been
foiled, if not defeated. He has been forced to
abandon every position he has assumed, and after a
month's strategy and fully a fortnight of hard fight-
ing he has lost one way or another close upon
100,000 men in killed, wounded, missing, and pri-
soners, and finds himself upon the Chickahominy, a
place which he could have reached without the loss
of a battalion if either he or the authorities at Wash-
ington had not been so perverse as to reject that
mode of approach to Richmond because it was the
favourite route of Gen. liTlellan. Having made
a long detour from the North Anna he was confronted
at his next halting place at Mechanicsville by
the whole strength of the Confederate army. No-
thing daunted by his repeated and costly failures
ho essayed during a whole week to force that
position ; but finding his supplies in danger of
being out off, and having lost upwards of 7,500
men on Friday, the 3d inst., in one futile assault
upon the enemy's works in front of him, he has once
again found it necessary to change his plans, to
abandon Cold Harbour and Mechanicsville, which
he discovered to be as strongly fortified as any place
with which his brave but luckless legions have come
into contact; and to make a new and, it is to be
supposed, a final endeavour to reach Richmond by
crossing the Chickahominy below Newbridge. This
was M'Clellan's plan, and from all present appear-
ances a few days will show whether he can make
more of it than his predecessor, Up to this
moment, however, he has gained nothing. He has
exhibited a bulldog pertinacity. He has sacrificed
his men. He has practically declared that he knows
no such word as "
He has been knocked
down and got up again. He has been repulsed and
returned to the encounter. He has taken but slight
heed of difficulties, and has exhibited a degree of
courage which is the result eitner of heroism or of
ignorance. Finally he has sat down to besiege a
city which is strongly fortified in front and has all
its communications open in the rear, which rear he
cannot reach. Even the New York papers, which
are always shouting "victory" when there is no
victory, begin to admit, with wry faces and the
worst possible grace, that a siege thus begun may
last the whole summer, and that before the summer
is half over, the besieging army, settled in a swamp
and sweltering in the rays of a Southern sun, are
much more likely to lose half their numbers by fever
and dysentery than to produce the slightest effect
upon the courage or the resources of the besieged.
The battle of Friday last, of which but very
slight and cursory mention has been made by the
War Department, but of which the full details have
been communicated to the public by witnesses of
and participators in its horrors, was precipitated
by General Grant with the intention of making it
the crisis of the campaign. The position assailed
was supposed to be the key to Richmond, Ina the
Chickahominy; but as on all previous occasions
since the passage of the Rapidan, the Federal com-
mander found it impossible either to surprise or de-
feat his ever-vigilant opponent. In less than ten
minutes the battle was ended. The Confederate
shot poured through the masses of the Federals,
cutting them down by hundreds at one discharge—
so thick were their advancing ranks; and in almost
ices time than it takes to writ© down the sentence
which records their braveryand their doom upwards
of 0,000 men received their death wound and lay
sprawling and helpless on the bloody field. Even
the stoicism of Grant, though not outwardly moved,
as far as the eyes of his watchful aides could dis-
cover, gave way. He ordered no renewal of the
charge that had cost him so many thousands, inclu-
sive of five generals and 20 colonels ; and after hasty
consultation with Gen. Meade, and afterwards with
Generals Hancock and 'Warren, appears to have
made up his mind that he was not on the right
road to Richmond, and that he had either to besiege
it by regular process or find some other and
more available route by which he could carry it by
strategy or a coup de main.

People who are ordinarily rapid for the prosecu-
tion of the war are becoming alarmed at Grant',
contempt for human life. He values his legions no
more than if they were coveys of partridges. Al,ready
it is whispered that nearly 1,100 officers a'ee to be
included in the 90,000 or 100,000 mere who have
been killed, wounded, and taken pris driers since he
began his sanguinary march. He is spoken of as the
" butcher," and a requisition is hinted at calling
upon the President to remove him. Not only the
friends of the South but multitudes of earnest
Northern men have alrevay cone to the conclusion
that his campaign is a ailure—that he has done his
utmost and can do no
more, and that he has already
done as little as 'alaClellan at a cost ten times as
fearful. To-day some English officers and news-
paper correspondents who arrived in this eity from
the front, report that the losses on Friday last were
nearer 15,000 than 7,000; that ea Saturday and
Sunday 5,000 or 6,000 more were sacrificed to the
obstinacy of the LieutenantaGeceral, and that a
spirit of disaffection has arisen i a the army which
threatens to become a mutiny, ;_f the men continue
to be driven like machines, against impregnable
positions, without the slirahtest solicitude whether
10 or 10,000 lives are sacrificed in the attempt.
Baltimore, ariatocrPaie and fashionable, is so
engrossed with the war news that it thinks and
speaks of nothing bat Grant and Lee. Baltimore,
democratic and unfashionable, is, on the contrary,
wholly absorbed by the proceedings of the Conven-
tion. The, 'noble art of President-making seems in
its initial stages to require a vest amount of music
ae, a oratory. As the 'witches could not transform
the Thane of Glamis into the Thane of Cawdor and
King of Scotland without much incantation and a
mnsical accompaniment, so the delegates who have
C3lllO hither to boil the Presidential caldron and
threw their several weird ingredients into the mass,
cannot perform their allotted parts without the aid
of fife and drum, the brass band and the trumpet.
All day long and half the night, the delegations,
who have detcrmireed to prolong the reign of M.
Lincoln, live ;.a an atmosphere of music. Under
the balconies, of the hotels, where they are lodged
in batchce—the representatives of each State keep
togetb.er.--30M0 at Barnum's, some at the Eutaw-
hoese, some at Guy's, &c,, the minstrels gather, to
make the day unpleasant and the night hideous
'with " Yankee Doodle," " Hail Columbia," "Star-
spangled Banner," and "John Brown's Body Lies
Mouldering in the Grave," varied occasionally with
the mare agreeable melodies of the " Trovatore" and
the " Puritani." These musical performances are,
however, but baits for speeches. The crowds that
aeseenble under the windows listen patiently while
the band plays, and when the musicians have done
shout for Rome member of the delegation to show
himself, After short and coy delay he appears, and
addresses his fellow-citizens with loud voice and
violent gesticulation. If the speaker be from New
York, Philadelphia, or Boston, or any civilised para
of the Union, the speech is for the most part prac-
tical, though ornate, and dwells largely upon the
necessity of recruiting the last man, spending the
last dollar to crush the rebellion, and the equally
urgent necessity of re-electing " the statesman, the
patriot, and champion of liberty, Abraham Lin-
coin" for another term. If the speaker be from the
'West—from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or Kansas, he
is equally stong oa the last man, the last dollar, and
the peculiar fitneee of Mr, Lincoln for his place, but
far more emphatic in his denunciation of the rebels,
and profuse in the employ went of such
words as
" hell," " damnation," and the " These
and
some kindred expressions seem to form the staple
of Western oratory. " The rebels," said a Bria-
dier-General from Ohio last night to a crowd under

" have but two
the balcony of the Eutaw Hotiee,

rights to which they can lay claim. The one is a
Constitution 7AI ri,h4 and the other iE a Divine right.

They have a Constitutional right to be hung•—they
have a Divine right to be damped." Another

Western orator at Barnum's declared that "Icff

Doris would be in hell in less than six weeks, and
that Abraham Liacoln was the noblest man that

God had ever created." Ile was followed shortly