The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-31 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

:-.;;•tnn the Nines Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Nitireii 18.

The Confederates are apparently preparing for an
aggressive m . cement into Altayland. Lieutenant-

• General Grant has assumed the command of the

Federal armies, and has announced that for the
present his head-quarters will be with the armies of
the Potomac. General Sherman succeeds him in
the command of the army of the West. General
Banks is on the move, either towards Mobile, as
some allege, or towards Upper Louisiana or Ar-

kanses, which is more probable. Mr. Lincoln, who i 3
always calling for men, has issued a new demand for
200,000, under the usual threat cf a draught if they
be not forthcoming. Congress, having passed a Gold
Bill with the vain idea of sending gold down and
paper up to par, has relapsed into " log roiling" for
the Presidency, and into its favourite discussions
upon the negro, his political and social rights, and
the policy or necessity of "miscegenation."
Under the head of "log rolling" may be classed
a proposition for the division of Tennessee into two
States, and the passage by the House of Representa-
tives of Bills to admit the three Territories of
Nevada, Colorado, and Nebraska as States of the
Union as soon as the people thereof shall have
agreed upon the constitutions by which they are
willing for the future to govern themselves,—with
the hcpe, ao doubt, that their organisation will be
completed in time to enable them to participate in
the ensuing Presidential election, and cast their
votes for the Republican nominee. The leading
spirits of the Senate, who seems to care but little
for the more urgent questions of the day, such, for
instance, as a scheme of taxation sufficient to pay
the interest on the National debt, have, under the

guidance of :kir. Charles Sumner, achieved a socia
triumph over the prejudices of the white people o

. _
Washington, and passed an act requiring the
managers of the horse•car railways in that city to
allow negroes to ride among the white passengers.

Mr. Lincoln's call for his new 200,000 men has not
excited the slightest alarm. The working men and

the younger members of the professional classes
know that not one of them will be taken from his
home and business unless by his own consent ; that

in the plethora of greenbacks and the liberality of

the counties, towns, and cities there is abundance

of bounty money yet to be expeLded ; that the

Irish and German immigrants form a fund of men

which may yet be largely drawn upon ; and that,

'under no circumstances, will the Government dare

to en force the conscription which it threatens. In
fact, Mr. Lincoln's proclamations and calls excite
ridicule rather than alarm, and give no one the

slightest uneasiness.
The apathetic manner in which the bankers,
brokers, jobbers, and gold speculators have received

•
the news o4the passage of the Gold Bill has sur-
prised mosi:'people. It was expected that gold

would fall at least 5 per cent. at the first announce-
ment that Mr. Chase had received authority to

" bear' the market when and to what extent he
pleased ; but the obstinate metal remains at its thd

prices—scarcely, if at all,affected by thepowergiven
to its enemy. Had Mr. Chase remained a candidate

for the Presidency, Congress would never have

given him such authority ; not because it was of
opinion that it was wrong to give him, or any other
man, such power over the Money-market, but be-

cause it was imagined that he might abase the power
to make the fortunes of such speculators as would
repay him for the kindness by electioneering in his
interest. When Mr, Chase withdrew bis pretensions
to succeed Mr. Lincoln that objection fell to the
ground, and the Bill previously rejected was rein-
troduced. The friends of the Administration, be-
lieving that:the high premium on gold was wholly
due to epeculation, that it was not produced by
natural causes, and that it was damaging to the
credit of the Federal Government both at home and
abroad, would listen to none of the reasons that
were brought forward by the Opposition, and hur-
ried the bill through its several stages with unpre-
cedented celerity. It passed the House of Represen-
tatives on Wednesday by the unexpected majority
of 83 against 57, was agreed to by the Senate on the
same day, and yesterday received the signature of
the President. But as Mr. Chase is bound by the
Act of 1862 to pay the interest of the national debt
in gold, and to set aside 1 per cent. of all the gold
he receives as a sinking fund—both of which obliga-
tions have been reimposed upon him by the new
Act—it does not appear at all clear to the financiers
and merchants of this city that he now can have, or
is ever likely to have, such a surplus as will enable
him to override the markets, unless he should break
the law and trench upon the sinking fund, which
no one suspects him of any intention of doing. He
would, it is said, have preferred that his liberty of
action should not have been cloggel by this limita-
tion ; but it is this clog, it is surmised, which has
deprived the Act of the virtue which its friends
imagined to lie in it, and kept gold at nearly the
same premium which it previously commanded.
The war Christian!, the exterminators, the con-
tractors, the shoddy aristocrats, the Union leaguers,
ail who support the Administration and the war,
are, however, delighted with the measure, and con-
sider that if it has not yet dealt as heavy a blow
against Secession as the capture of a city or the
defeat of an army it may be made to do so at a
future time. Bat these, though a numerous class,
do not form the majority, and men of business
generally, with the single exception of the importers
of foreign goods, are of opinion that, should Mr.
Chase at any future time have a surplus of 10 or
20 millions of gold not required for interest and
the sinking fund, and come into the market through
his agents to sell it, his action, though it should be
conceded that he was at once the wisest, the purest,
the most skilful, and the most unselfish of men,
would produce evils far greater than it was in-
tended to cure, disturb the whole commerce of the
Republic—both external and internal, unsettle the
value of every man's property, and impair the pub-
lic confidence in the credit of the Government. The
true way to bring down the premium on gold is not
to " bear" the market by huge operations, but
either to end the war by military victories, or pro-
vide means fur carrying it on by taxation, instead
of new loans and fresh issues of inconvertible paper.
It is because Europe will not take greenbacks for
its goods, and because the Americans begin to fear
that they have already incurred a debt which it
will be impossible for them to pay, that gold goes
up, and that the paper dollar, which ought to be
worth 100 c. if the Government were considered
stable and the people solvent, goes down to 60e.
and threatens to go down to 50c. No operations
that Mr. Chase might conduct or order in the sale
of his gold could effect more than a slight and tem-
porary change in this respect. He might lower the
premium—perhaps five or even ten per cent.—for a
week or a fortnight ; but if he did not pay his in-
terest in gold if he continued to issue paper to pay
the army and the navy and the war contractors,
and if the forces of the Republic suffered a single
defeat on the field, gold would go up to a higher
level then ever, in spite of everything he and a
thousand Congresses could do to prevent it.
As the " little bill" to be presented to Greet
Britain, when opportunity serves for the depreda-
tions committed upon American commerce by
the Florida, the Alabama, and other craft in the
service of the Confederate Government, continues to
be very generally debated, and finds much favour
in the Chamber of Commerce, and other bodies that
aspire to lead public opinion in this country, it may
be useful to show how the Federal Government
met a similar claim when it was brought forward
against the United States by one of the Powers of
Europe. The House of Representatives, on August
7, 1850, and December 17, 1851, passed resolutions
requesting the President, -Nile Fillmore, to eommu
nicate the particulars of the several claims of the
United States against Portugal, as well as the
amount and nature ofMr the claims of Portugal agrans-
ainst
the United States. Fillmore accordingly t
mitted a message to the House on Jan. 28, 1852,
accompanied by all the necessary documents, ex-
tending from so early a period as the year 1814.
The claims of the United States against Portuga
need not now be discussed, as they have no bearing
upon the point which the British Government will
one day have to consider, if the Federal Govern-
ment be unwise enough to urge it. The chtime of

131rtugal apinst the United States are, however, so
the same r‘s those which Mr. Seward has

~vowed his tietcraiinatioli, when it suit

him, t 0

prefer egainst Great Britain, under the Penalty of

war if they be not conceded, es to me: ,r not only
Mr. Seward's particular notice, but mat of the Bri-

tish Government. Letter No. 5 of the seties, ov page

165 of the Congressional Report, contains the pith
of the Portuguese claim. In the year 1816 Portugal
was at war with the insurrectionary Government

established in Buenos Ayres, and certain persona in
Baltimore and New York, all of them American
citizens, fitted out privateers, manned them with
American seamen, and hoisting the flag of Buenos
Ayres, scoured the seas in search of Portuguese
merchant vessels. M. Joseph Correa de Serra, Am-
bassador of Portugal to the Federal Government,
writing under date of March 18, 1818, to Mr. John
Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, gave a list
of three Portuguese vessels—the Senhor de Olivio,
the Marquis of Pombal, and the St. John Pro-
tector—that had been captured in 1816 and 1817 by
these Baltimorean and New York privateers, and
expressed the hope of the King his master that the
Federal Government "would be willing to give
satisfaction and indemnity for the injury done to his
subjects, and the insult offered to his flag by these
unworthy American citizens." Mr. Adams replied
two days afterwards, stating that "The Govern-
ment of the United States, having used all the
means in its power to prevent the fitting out and
arming of vessels in their ports, to cruise against
any nation with whom they are at peace, and hav-
ing faithfully carried into execution the laws en-
acted to preserve inviolate the neutral and pacific
obligations of the Union, cannot consider itself
bound to indemnify individual foreigners for losses
by capture over which the United States have neither
control nor jurisdiction." Nothing further appears
to have been said or done on either side until the
15th of October in the same year, when the Portu-
g
nese Minister notified Mr. Adams that he had re-
ceived intelligence that a ship was fitting out in
the Patuxent (Maryland) to cruise against Portu-
guese commerce, and that the captain, an American,
had just left Baltimore toltake command of her. In
reply, five days afterwards, Mr. Adams said that if
the Ambassador would furnish a list of the names of
the persons chargeable with a violation of the laws
of the United States in fitting out and arming a ves-
sel within the United States for the purpose of com-
mitting depredations on Portuguese commerce, and
of the witnesses by whose testimony the charge
could be substantiated, " directions would be given
for their prosecution before the proper tribunal."
This was, it appears, both a slow and ineffectual re-
medy, for on the 14th of November the Ambassador
felt himself compelled to address the Secretary of
State and to say :—" Obliged by my duty to in.
quire into the nature of the armed ships that have
of late insulted the flag of my Sovereign and com-
mitted incalculable depredations on the property of
his subjects, I have found with sorrow multiplied
proofs that many of them are owned by citizens of
the United States and have been fitted out in ports
of the Union." In another letter, dated March 17,
1819, he says of the Artigan flag, under which these
privateers sailed—" The Artigan flag,which has not a
footlength of seashore in South America where it
can show itself, is freely and frequently waving in
the port of Baltimore ;" and asks Mr. Adams what
his and the world's astonishment would be "if a
Swiss flag and Swiss privateers made their appear-
ance on the open sea, and began to attack the com-
merce of any other nation." Mr. Adams made no
reply, and as far as the published correspondence
extends it would appear that thePortugueseGovern-
ment never obtained any compensation whatever
from that of the United States, for under date of
May 25, 1850, cr 30 years afterwards, we find the
new and present Portuguese Ambassador, the Com-
mander de Figaniere e Morao, reiterating in a letter
to Mr. Clayton the demands made by his predeces-
sor. "As these unlawful depredations, says M. de
Figani ere (letter No. 21, fol. 179) " were committed
by citizens of the United States in vessels owned,
fitted out, commanded, and mostly manned by said
citizens, notwithstanding the flag they hois'.ed or
the commission they purported to bear of the un-
acknowledged rebel chief Artigas, the Govern-
ment of Portugal has always held that of the
United States bound by well known principles of
the law of nations to redress the sr id wrongs
committed by its citizens upon the subjects of a
friendly Power with which the United States have
ever been at peace, and had continued commer-
cial intercourse. The said Government of her
Most Faithful Majesty has consequently directed
the undersigned, Minister resident of Portugal, to
have the honour to address the llon. John M. Clay•
ton, Secretary of State of the United States, for the
special purpose of renewing these important nego-
tiations, and urging the final settlement of these
claims by the Federal Government." M. de Figa-
niere added that the negotiations had only been in-
terrupted in consequence of the many political vicis-
situdes thrcugh which Portugal had unfortunately
passed for many years. Mr. Clayton only took five
days to frame his reply, and dismissed the claim in a
style which it is not likely he would have considered
it prudent to employ towards such Powers as Great
Britain or France. "The undersigned," he said, "is
surprised at the appearance of these obsolete recla-
mations ; accompanied by the renewal of the ancient
proposition to appoint a joint commission to deter-
mine and assess damsges—a proposition which was
rejected at the time upon substantial grounds, and
without the Ministar's personal assurance to that
fleet the undersigned would not have supposed it
credible that Portugal seriously cherished any in-
tention to revive them. In reply, therefore, to the
note which the Minister of her Most Faithful
Majesty has presented in the name of his Govern-
ment, the undersigned must now, by the President's
order, inform him that he declines to reopen the
proffered discussion." Portugal never obtained
redress or apology, or even the scant courtesy of a
friendly reply, and to this day her claims remain
unpaid and unacknowledged.
Mr. Seward may think himself wiser in the
matter of the Alabama and the Florida than
Nit.. Quincy Adams and Mr. Clayton were in the
matter of the Baltimore and New York privateers,
and may deem it prudent the first time that
Great Britain is, or seems to be, in a difficulty,
to prefer such claims upon the British Government
as the Portuguese preferred in vain against the
United States, In this not at all improbable case
it is well for the British people and Government to
be supplied with an answer to Mr. Seward out of
the mouths of two such eminent American states-
men as Mr. Adams and Mr. Clayton. Perhaps, how-
ever, under all the circumstances, the present or the
next Secretary of State may think it wiser to let
the matter rest, and refer American citizens to their
own Treasury for payment of losses incurred in the
progress of a war which Great Britain neither ori-
ginated nor could prevent, if the Federal Govern-
ment cannot more speedily settle the personal side
of the account by the capture of the vessels which
do its citizens so much damage, and the infliction
of such punishment upon the captains and the crews
as the laws of the civilised world will permit.

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