The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-02 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the limes' Correspondent)
NEW YORK, July 19.

The long-expected proclamation of the President
ordering a new draught appeared yesterday. It
was thought that he would not have asked for more
than 300,000, bat he has called for 500,000. No-
body, however, is much surprised. It is as easy to
say a million as half a million, and quite as difficult
in the present temper of the American people to
raise the smaller as the larger number. To call
spirits from the vasty deep is one thing. To get
them to come is another. Nothing is easier for Mr.
Lincoln than to say he must have new and immense
arcaies, but to draw them out of the vasty deep of
the American people is a feat beyond the power of
the magician. It is likely, however, that between
this time and the day of the Presidential election
about a third of the number (say 150,000 men) may
be got together by the system of high bounties
sided by the great flood of immigration ; and that,
contented with this addition to the armies in the
field--whicia will b 3 duly represented as much
larger than it is—the Administration will discover
abundant reasons for not enforcing the conscription
in any city or township where it might breed die.
content and rebellion.

It appears from a tabular statement, published
this morning, that since April,lB6l, when Mr. Lin-
coln modestly called for 75,000 men to reduce the
South to obedience, he has on successive occasions
called for upwards of 1,800,000 men, exclusive of
497,000 militiamen to protect the borders. At pre-
sent it is a very large estimate which place; the
Federal armies at more than 600,000 men. If any
one could suppose that the several calls were filled,
and the 1,600,000 men actually enrolled and sent to
battle, there would remain the enormous number:of
1,200,000 to be accounted for as having been slain,
maimed, disabled, or taken prisoners, or as having
served out their stipulated time or deserted. No
one knows, or ever will know, the number of the
elain; but when it is remembered how bloody were
all tae battles of M'Ciellan and his successors
down to General Grant, and that Grant himself
has lest 100,000 men since he crossed the Rapidan
more than nine weeks ago, one-half of whom were'
killed, it can scarcely be considered an exaggerated
computation to put down a quarter of a million
among the dead, bat, perhaps, unburied victims of
the war. The number of the maimed who have
lost arms and legs in the pursuit of victory is as
difficult to arrive at as that of the slain unless a
special census ware taken ; but any one who walks
the streets of New York may observe a sufficient
number of these mutilated heroes to justify him in
the belief that, if New York be in this respect a
fair specimen of the other cities of the North and
West, there is as large a number of wounded men
as of ?lead ones to be placed to the debit side of the
struggle. If Governor Seymour, for instance, would
but undertake to bring these living " braves" toges
thee, and pass their ghastly legions in review, there
is no open space within the limits of the city which
would contain them, and he would have to summon
them to meet in the flats of New Jersey, if be would
rd to his countrymen and to the world so new
brit so suggestive a spectacle of the horrors of war.
B ut, taking the killed, the wounded, and the dis-
a bled as at least amounting to half a million, there
'would remain still 700,000 men to be accounted for
as prisoners, deserters, and volunteers who have
suirved their time. If there be such a number in
existence, it is to them, to the emigrants, and to the
negroes that Mr. Lincoln will have to look for the
half million of new victims which his ruthless policy
requires. The working classes are notoriously indis-
posed to the fight. The traders and farmers have
had enough of it. The peace party is daily gather-
ing strength, and a Nictory achieved by the South,
.ineS,:ead of firing the heart of the North, and fan-
ning up the flickering and fading flame of the Once
lenient enthusiasm of the people, would, there
is every reason to believe, have the contrary effect,
a: ad predispose to peace many thousands and tens
of thousands whose original opinions on the justice
necessity of the war have begun to waver.
Nor is the question of money less critical than that
of men. General Sherman's troops, whether their
rtuc:tbers be 60,000 or 1‘.',0,000, have not received a
cent of pay since the 31st of December, 1863. The
Governmeut is in arrear to them for upwards of six
mouths and a half. Mr. Fessenden has been unable
to bf)rrow 50,000,000 of greenb Inks from the banks

of New York—mainly because the banks do not
po..,:ess 20;000,000 among i.hem of that particuiar
'variety of the currency, and he is not authorised by
lvw to accept or put into circulation 50,000,000 of
the notes of the State banks. Without further loans
and further issues of legal tender notes, already so
depreciated that the paper dollar is worth but 35c.
in coin, the Federal Government cannot provide the
me ens for the payment of its existing armies. It is
nad.er such circumstances that Mr. Lincoln demands
more men. If be raise them, he must also raise
money to pay them, and, in default of taxes and of
loans, nothing is left for him but a paper currency,
very likely in view of events as well as of its own
independence to fall in value until it becomes about
as worthless as the Continental money of the Ame.
rican Revolution, er the French ass ignats, about 500
of which were necessary to purchase a cup of coffee.
People are asking whether Mr. Lincoln will not
now order the release of Howard, the forger, who
showed him, somewhat prematurely, the paths in
which he ought to walk. The false proclamation
ba:d the campaign of Grant was a failure, called for
a levy of 40,000 men, and appointed a day of fast-
ing, humiliation, and prayer. Mr. Lincoln has nut
only arrived at Howard's mark, but overstepped it
by 100,000 men ; confessing by his acts, if not by
his words, that Grant's failure is as great as
Howard, with prophetic impudence, represented
it to be; and that fasting and prayer are more ap-
propriate to the circumstances than rejoicings and
thanksgiving. Whatever be done with Howard, he
has shown himself to be a " smart" man, and, as
this is a country where " smartness," irrespective
of honesty, is always held in esteem, he will un-
doubtedly come out of Fort Lafayette a more con.
'Adorable personage than when he entered it.
Grant seems to be at a complete, and Sherman at
a quasi, standstill. The " raiders," if such they
were, and no more—who desolated large tracts of
Maryland, and were so near taking Washington, or
to have lost it by a hair's breadth of accident—have
retired with their booty no one knows whither. The
comfortable Government at the capital, believing
all danger to be over, has sent back the few militia-
men that rushed to arms at its call for the defence
of the border, and is once again slumbering in se-
curity, apparently without the slightest idea that
the raid may be but the first rain drop of a storm
and that Lee—and a deluge—may be ready to
fall when the clouds are heavy enough. Bat if the
battle lingers the war of words goes on—and
foolish Generals talk when they should be silent.
The only Northern commanders who have won
great battles are M'Ciellan and Grant. And these
two, among all the soldiers who one after the other
have been intrusted with high command, are as yet
the only two who know bow to hold their tongues.
Their talent for silence is as great as their genius
for war. M'Clellan only became an orator after he
had ceased to be employed in the field ; and Grant
has never yet made a speech. The talking and
writing Generals, such as Butler, Schenck, Wallace,
Banks, Burnside, Pop 6, Hooker, and Sherman, have
all proved to be military failures, with the single
ezeeption of the last, who has still the victory to
achieve which will take him out of the category.
These Generals are all more or less clever with the
tongue and the pen, but they are none of them dis-
creet enough to keep their own counsel—a kind
of diseretion in the leaders of armies which
may well be called the better part of their
Thus General Sherman has found
iJ indite a very singular epistle to his subor-
dinate General Burbridge, commanding
in the
military '-strict. of Kentucky. In this document he
orders that guerillas in Kentucky shall be "treated
as it' they were wild b:nsts," and hunted and shot
down rcrnorse!eFsly. 113 reminds Gen. Burbridge
that before earring on his campaign into Georgia
" he foresaw that they kind of person would become
and asked Mr Bramieth, the
very troublesome,"
Governor of the State, to organise in every county
a small and trustworthy band, commanded by the
aberiff, "who should at ono dash arrest every man

valour

in the community who was dangerous to it"—i. e.,
whom the sheriff supposed to be dangerous. The
sheriff and his trustworthy band were also to arrest
every fellow hanging about the towns, villages, and
cross-roads who had no honest calling. The Go-
vernor, however, did not see fit to t s the advice,
thinking, no doubt, as Gen. Sherman conjectures,
" that this sweeping exhibition of power seemed
rather arbitrary." Therefore Gen. Sherman, whose
sole business just now should be to fight Gen. John-
ston, has seen fit to take the matter out of the Go-
,. ernor's hands, and make an end in Kentucky not
only of the guerillas by shooting and hanging, but
of all persons, male or female, who have harboured
or encouraged such unrecognised soldiers. The
punishment of such sympathisers with rebellion is
to be transportation by batches of 300 or 400 from
the " fair garden of Kentucky," their native home.
They are to be seat down the Mississippi in a vessel
bearing the Federal flag, and thus to run the gaunt-
let of their friends, the yet uncaptured and unhang
guerillas who molest the banks of that river. If
they escape death and arrive safely at New Orleans,
they are to be put on board a sailing ship and trans-
ported to a land, which the General does not name,
" where they may if they please found a slave
colony, and take their slaves along with thorn."
The General, well aware that so extraordinary a
proceeding will require justification in the eyes of
the world, finds it ready to his hands, where tyrants
have ever found it in all ages. "My own defence,"
he says, "was and is that the civil authorities in
Kentucky would do this; bat if they will not or
cannot, we' must, for it must be done." And who
are " we?" The General answers the inquiry in
another and, beyond doubt, the most remark-
able portion of his letter. " The fact is," he
says, "in our country personal liberty has been so
well secured that public safety is lost sight of in
our laws and institutions. We are thrown back 100
years in civilisation, laws, and everything else, and
will go straight to anarchy and the devil, if some-
body won't arrest our downward progress. We, the
military, must do it." Herein the indiscreet Gene-
ral confesses too much. Under the Constitution,
and the system of State rights, personal liberty was
secured; and public safety—i.e., the safety of the
Central Government, was so little endangered that
the founders of American liberty lost sight of it in
the laws and institutions which they formed. As all
the difficulty which has plunged the country into
this fearful war arose out of an intermeddling with
the rights of the States—and an attempt, unhappily
successful, to maximize instead of to minimize the
power and authority of the Central Government, the
true remedy for the evils which afflict the land and
threaten the anarchy which the General foresees
would seem to lie in a return to the principles of the
Constitution. This, however, is not what General
Sherman and the governing party desire. Under
the plea of necessity and the danger to the public
safety, they have abrogated the Constitution, in-
creased the power of the Administration, and helped
to produce anarchy, in order to take advantage of
it to erect a despotism on the ruins of liberty,
" We, the military, will do it," says the man of the
shoulder straps. There can be no doubt of the
willingness, even if he had not blurted it out so
bluntly.

But a wiser General than Sherman has spoken, a
General who is fortunately not in command of an
army, but reduced to the less dangerous station of
civil governor of a province. General Banks, at a
meeting of the Bar of New Orleans on the 7th inst.,
took occasion to say "that the settlement of the
difficulties between North and South must proceed
from the moral power of the country, which was
something greater and more Efficacious than the
sword." He coupled this sensible admission with
a melancholy, if not with a humiliating, one—that
it was the first duty of the people to make such
sacrifices on the field of battle as success might
demand. This means that both parties are too proud
to yield to moral reasons, while a chance is left for
conquest, and that only when one or the other, or
both, are exhausted by their unavailing bloodshed,
the moral power, so much greater and more effica-
cious than thq sword, will have a chance to prevail
among a people who claim to bo the most highly..
educated and religious in the world. Perhaps,
however, General Banks is of opinion that if the
South will not yield to the North, or the North to
the South, and that they must, therefore, continue
fighting out of mere pride, till exhaustion ensue,
the " moral power" of Christendom might at this or
some not very remote day be employed to counsel
them to lay down their arms, and debate the terms
of compromise and peace by means of a general
convention of all the States in the mode provided by
the Constitution ? If such be really his belief, he
is a much wiser man than Mr. Lincoln, or any
member of his Cabinet.