The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-24 00:00:00

AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
BALTIMORE, Aug. 11.

Years ago, aq I happened sometimes to sit with
friends at a marble table in one of the Florentine
cafes, conversation would, in spite of all efforts to
the, contrary, take a political turn ; when I, accus-
tomed to the free air of happier climates, too dull
to perceive that the voice of my interlocutors had
sunk to a warning whisper, warming with my sub-
ject, and yielding to that foolish instinct which
makes us heighten our tone by way of strengthen-
ing an argument, would break into a loud '
most in defiance of their cautious undertones uuui
my well-bred prudent companions, made aware that
on nod or wink of theirs would sober me into dis-
cretion, began to rise and glide away one by one,
leaving me to recollect, as I found myself alone
master of the field, that I was in a country where
walls had ears, and where men were called to ac-
count for words as often as for theds.

I was hardly prepared, as I crossed the Atlantic,
to find an American community haunted with all
the terrors of old-fashioned Italian espionage. The
gentleman who greets you at the reading-room, or
at any of the parlours of one of these palatial hotels,
casts an uneasy glance over his shoulder as he
shakes hands, fidgets in his chair as he starts the
momentous subject of the weather, and at last fairly
begs you to take him into your private room, as
" no talk can safely be carried on in these spy-beset
public apartments."
Gen. Schenk has decidedly inaugurated a petty
reign of terror in Maryland, town and country. He
is going about with lighted lantern at noon, looking
for " disloyal people," in a country where, if you
accept his own definition of the word, every man,
and, even more certainly, every woman, is " dis-
loyal." The Southern cause ought not to be gene-
rally the cause of the cities. Baltimore has little
or nothing in common with the interests of slavery.
There were not, at the first outbreak of the Civil
War, as many as 200 negro bondmen in the whole
town. Yet Southern feelings are very deep and
very widely spread in Baltimore. Out of 250 mem-
bers of the bar hardly a score are looked upon as
Unionists. The proportion among the rich merchants
and bankers is even smaller. I scarcely know a
family here—and my acquaintance begins to be pretty
extensive—that has not one or more than one mem-
ber out in the ranks cf the Confederate army. I
know of cases where as many as five or six brothers
have gone off to Lee's camp from under the same
roof ; young men, hardly full grown, rolling in
wealth at home, softly nurtured, petted, and pam-
pered, have enlisted in the ranks as privates ; they
have borne and bear unheard-of hardships, declining
all aid and subvention from their parents, cut off
from all communication with them, too happy when
a secret scout or disguised messenger from General
Stuart goes the round of the houses where anxious
mothers are watching and praying, with the wel-
come though concise verbal message that their dar-
ling is " alive and well."
And it is among a people so circumstanced that
the agents of the Federal Government are seeking for
" loyal" sentiments and are determined to enforce
them. Tue fight between North and South has al-
ready long since been fought here on legal ground;
and ever since the members of the State Legislature
were sent " to consider themselves" at Fort Warren
for 18 months, there has been no such thing as
even the pretence or semblance of law in Mary-
land. The military exercise supreme sway, and,
under their patronage, the Government has fallen
into the hands of that minority which had just been
crushed in 1860 before the outbreak of the civil
war. A stranger to local passions, and proud of
my neutral position, I shall not repeat all I hear to
the disparagement of that minority from the mouth
of their adversaries. That they are " men of no
rank, strangers to the country, Yankees for the
most part" is, however, sufficiently manifest; con-
stituted into a Union party,backed by the bayonets
of a strong garrison, and by the helpless condition
of a State cut off from all communication with its
friends, and exposed to attack by land and sea from
its enemies, these Union men have the whip hand
of their adversaries, and most unmercifully they use
it. To displease them is to be disloyal; the charge
of disloyalty is sufficient to send a man to prison or
to doom a woman to be forcibly conveyed across the
lines to Virginia.
Under such circumstances men are, as I said, soon
taught the bitter lessons of caution and dissimula-
tion. People here dream of nothing but spies and
informers ; social intercourse is at an end, letters
are deemed unsafe, the clubs have been shut up, the
press is made to conceal
hotels are shunned, the
rather than to utter thoughts.
It is only if you are admitted into the privacy of
the Baltimore houses, if you disarm all suspicion,
and win titles to free intercourse with the people,
that you get at the real state of their minds and
hearts, when such an exhibition is made of their
feelings that it is only by the strongest efforts that
Ton can prevent your own from running away
with your calm judgment. I thought I knew some-
thing of the hatred of the Lombards for Austria or
of the Poles for Russia, but I am quite sure I had
no idea of such rancorous feelings as harbour in
Southern breasts against the mere name of
Yankee. There is no amoant of education,
no polish of manner, that has power to moderate
the or at least to soften its expression. The
sternest of men, the gentlest and loveliest of women,
are equally apt to speak and behave as savages
whenever the hideous topic is brought in; and when
is there any other theme of talk introduced at any
moment among these excited people ? The mere
question of slavery moves s them not ; Union or
Secession are words which have lost not a little of
their import ; Democracy and Republicanism have
no very great weight on their mind. On all these
subjects they can reason. What stirs them up is
the word " Yankee." It is against the North, as
such, that they cherish implacable hate. Rather
than be, I will not say reunited, but reconciled to
them on any terms, there is not one among them, if
you hear them, that is not willing to give up not
only life, but, what is infinitely dearer, home and
country, the most sacred domestic and social ties.
The strong, true instinct with them is in the event
of the ultimate downfall of the South to baffle the
North by universal emigration.
Of the grievances of the South against the North
previous to the opening of the present civil war
there seems hardly anything more to be said. I
hear now no great complaints of Yankee hypocrisy
and fanaticism on the subject of slavery, of their

tariff, of their jealousy of Southern superior abili-
ties and political ascendancy. It is the war itself,

they say, which has set forth the Yankee character
in its true light, and has roused in Southern bosoms
a resentment which no lapse of time would seem
likely to extinguish. In a war which for the North
was one of mere aggression ; in a war in Which

NEWSPAPER
4.1:17
AZ4I;;P"
the North was at least four to
the South, why could not the fa
the same fair, honourable means as
Behold ! Virginia, Carolina, Maryland he_
taken the field with all their chivalry;
officers in their lines are gentlemen ; the law of
nations, the calls of common courtesy and humanity
are obeyed by the armies under the orders of Lee,
on the battle-field as at a tournament. Before the
-Jo victory the Southerner behaves
like a man who fears God, and whose sword has no
edge where it meets with uo resistance.
" The North," these Marylanders say, contrast-
ieg the conduct of the two belligerents, "the North
never took the field ; it fought its battles by proxy ;
it led the scum of its own cities, the refuse of emi-
grant Europ,, to the invosion of the South. I's
soldiers are mere ruffians ; its alicers, you see them,
greedy attorneys, low peddlers, crack-brained
schoolmasters—a ruthless, grasping, fanatical set, of
which the Schenks and the Butlers are the proto-
types. Ali the horrors of war, the hardships and
sufferings, either altogether inseparable from war-
fare on an extensive scale, or attributable to imper-
fect means and want of experience—the strict,
harsh, arbitrary measures attendant upon military
occupation and the infliction of martial law—all is
by these Southerners laid to the charge or the innate
base malice of Yankee nature. They have endless
tales of the refined, petty cruelty, of the coarseness of
language, of the outrageous manners by which the
mean victors wilfully, as they say, eggrovate ti
rowful condition of the vanquished. A
few or their
most striking cases of Yankee harshness and vul-
garity I gave you in a former letter. Z have one to
add to-day which, perhaps, better characterises the
mutual feelings of the contending parties than any
of the foregoing.
A certain number of ladies of the Union party,
chiefly from the North, have taken upon themselves
the management of the Baltimore hospitals, which
are at this time full of the sick and wounded from
the fields of Gettysburg. The wife of a Yankee
schoolmaster, now at the top of political influences,
under Scheni: patronage, is at the head of this cha-
'on. On one of her late visits this
zealous woman walked into the ward.,ef the Con-
federate wounded with a Federal flag in her hand,
and held the obnoxious stars and stripes over the
bed of a dying sufferer, saying, as she waved the
rustling silk in his very face, "There my friend,
you were loth to live under this glorious banner; it
must be refreshing to you at least to die under it !"
It is by these shocking, incredible outrages
against good taste, no less than good feelings, that
the Yankees have laid for themselves so large a trea-
sure of hatred among these Southerners, who be-
lieve themselves, and who are, in my opinion, so
much more humane and gentle. Unfortunately, the
North is aware of this implacability of the Southern
people, and, as I have before hinted, contemplates
no less than the restoration of its power over the
land by the utter, reckless ruin and extermination
of its inhabitants. It was only after Lee's retreat
at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg and Port
Hudson that the real intentions of the Republican
party in power at 'Washington began to reveal
themselves. It was then that the armament of
negroes on a very large scale and the all-sweeping
confiscation of rebel property were openly resolved
upon. But the thought that no quarter should be
given to the South, the,t none should be spared, and
the innocent perish with the guilty, was lurking
in many a Northern bosom at a very early time.
"Witness the following paragraph, printed on the
21st April, 1862, in the TVashington Globe--a paper
then, as now, under the immediate influence of the
Government :

" If such is really the will and purpose of the body of
the Southern people, and not merely the vain bravado
or desperation of. their ruined leaders, who would pull
down everything with them, in their own certain ruin
before Heaven let the final trial of power and truth and
justice in this question be made at once and for ever.
If with no complaint against the Government—for they
have never yet made any—they choose traitorously to resist
to the death the efforts of that Union, like a chastening.
father, to bring them back, repentant, to its fostering arms,
let them die the death, let their very memory fade for ever,
and let their desolated fields be given to some better race who
will know how to cultivate them for the good of all man-
kind."

Here the doom—not of the Southern combatants
alone, but of all the race—was R ith sufficient clear-
ness foreshadowed. That doom is now being ful-
filled, and without inconceivable prodigies of valour,
or without foreign interference, it will not be
averted. It is true, there are noble hearts in the
North, and there are not ungenerous parties who
revolt against this unheard-of abuse of victory.
There are wary men and jealous parties who look
upon the subjugation of the South on these un-
sparing terms as an evil fraught with serious con-
sequences to themselves, a danger for the future
libertieid the Union, and for the independent ex-
ercise of single States. Opposition is already to
be heard thundering loudly in many an influential
Northern organ, and Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet
are made the subject of the most virulent attacks.
The blackest republicanism is rampant, however,
and the moderate, conservative, or " Democratic"
party, seem to have neither head nor heart. The
" Copperhead? are likely enough to stand by and
see the South immolated, though they ought to be
aware their own turn will come next.
The intense beat under which we' are all suffering
seems to have prostrated, and to some extent dis-
organised, both the armies in Virginia. That of
General Meade, who has repeatedly tendered his
resignation, and is likely to be superseded by Grant,
is said to be about to be drawn back "in front of
Washington." Lee is reported to have sent :leveret
brigades to Charleston. His army is reduced in
numbers, and the sufferings, both in the camp and.
in Richmond, are described as severe. The ther-
mometer is often up at 100 deg. there (we had it at
94 deg., and even 98 deg. here yesterday in the
shade). Illness is rife among the troops. All au-
thorities agree that "ouch a heat was neeer expo.
rienced in these parts of the American Continent." -
There is in one of the Northern papers an article
which I hope will not escape your attention, as it is
the best picture the Americans can draw of them-
selves, political state, and of the
men ::c their
gu social
iding and
theirdestinies.
The article is
entitled " Saratoga : Past and Present," and it con-
trasts the brilliant reunions of that favourite water-
in-place in the days of President Van Buren, a
quarter of a century ago, with the riffraff which
congregate on the same cool spot now-a-days.
"That," says the paper, "was the classic age. This
is the age of shoddy. Then the destinies of the nation
were controlled by statesmen. Now a pack of poor,
crazy fanatics rule to ruin. The then Goddess of
Liberty was represented as a young and lovely
woman, fresh, vigorous, immortal. Now the repre-
sentative cf Liberty is supposed to be a halt-witted
fellow, who wears his trousers tucked into his boots,
and his old white hat on the back of his head, as if
the disorder of his dress were typical of the dis-
order of his mind Our politicians
used to be gentlemen, but now the majority of them
are arrant scoundrels. Society, politics, and, indeed,
the whole Republic, have lost their tone," &c. The
writer goes on to build his hopes on the future, and
in the " reconstruction of the Union, followed by a
general regeneration ;" but it remains to be seen
whether a restoration of the Union brought about
by " pour crazy fanatics," under the guidance of a
half-witted fellow," and at the suggestion of
arrant scoundrels, calling themselves politicians,"
—a restoration grounded on the extermination of
the white and the ruin and confusion of the nee,-ro
race in the South, will be conducive to that " rapid,
triumphant, and glorious progress" which this out-
spoken laudator Import's acti anticipates.

THE PRIMMEST, 'MINCING SYMPATHY—perhaps
ever put into words, is that expressed by the Queen
of Prussia in a note accompanying her Majesty's contribu.
tion of 59 Fredericks d'or to the Cobourg committee for the
erection of a monument to the late Prince Coneort, a note
expressed in the manner following :—" I have followed the
project of erecting a monument to the departed Prince
Albert in his native town with great sympathy, and desire
se much the more to participate in ita execution, as the
ever-memorable Prince constantly stood on terms of close
acquaintance with me both as relation and friend; mid his
memory is esteemed and dear to me. With these feelings
I accompany your noble enterprise, for which the enclosed
contribution is intended, with my best wiehes.—AUGUSTA,
Queen of Prussia—Coblentz, July 25, 1563."_

k

ROUNDELL PALMER, Q.C•
La Vie de Cesar par L. NI ipoleon—Fashionable Intelli-
gence—in FUN this week. On e Penny.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.
Lessee, Mr. George Vining
Under the 3lanagenient of Mr. Walter Montgomery.
THIS EVENING, VIIE M:ERCIIANT OF VENICE and
NOT A BAD JUDGE, Shyaock and Lavater, Mr. Walter
Montgomery.

NEW THE ATI VE-11.0 YAL, ADELPHI.—
sole Pronrtutor td Manager. Mr. B. Webster.
THIS EVENING. at 7, a new comic drama, entitled THE
BEN AND CHICKENS ; or, A Sign of Affection. Messrs.
Billington, R. Phillips, St, Thenson ; Mrs. Stirling and Miss
11. Simms.
After which, at a quarter- past 8. the new drama of THE
HAUNTED MAN ; OR, T • E GHOST'S fiARGAIN, in
which will be exhibited Professor Pepper's adaptatfon of
the Great Spectral Illusion. Messrs. J. L. Toole, E. Phillips'
efton C. J. Smith; Mrs. Alfred Mellon and Miss 11. Simms.
Followed by n new Burlesque, ent+fled ILL-TREATED
TRO VATORE. Misars. Toole. P. Bedford, R. Phillips,
}Marne. C. .f. Smith, Romer ; the Sisters Nelson, Carry and
Sara, and Miss K. Kelly.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE.
Manager, Mr. W. 11. Swanborough.
THIS EVENING, .HIS FIRST CHAMPAGNE. Mr.
Leigh Murray.
Followed by (31st time) THE MOTTO, "I'M ALL
THE,II,E." Messrs. Honey, Turner, E. Danvers, Collier,
Clifton ; Mesdames Ada Swanborough, F. Josephs, Maria
bimpson, Wallace, and Jenny White.
To conclude with TURN HIM our. Mr. Turner, Miss
Thorne.