The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-01 00:00:00

TEE CIVIL WAR,

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
ALBANY, NEW YORK, Aug. 17.
Those of Colunabea's contemporaries who disbe-
li.aved the existence of a Western Hemisphere, be-
cat se they thought that anything that went beyond
the rim of the horieon must needs fall topsy-turvy,
were not, after all, so far wrong in their apprehen-
sions as science and experience would make them.
The sun rises in New York only five hours later than
in London, yet many of the most firmly established
notions and prinaipless of the Old World arc as tho-
oughly reversed in the New as. if men here stood
on their heads. If Fearope, for instance, had learnt
anything at its great ccst, if there was a point
settled beyond all dineute are:mg us, it was this—
that war was a great evil, the bane of a nation's
prosperity, as fatal to the conqueror as to the van- I
slashed, even it the former had the luck and skill to
bring hack its heaviest charges to weigh on the latter,
e ,en if he contrived to " make the war feed the war:"
Well, Sir !" among these 'cute classes of Yankee
laud the notion of the old doting word is explcded ;
America—the Northern "Division of the Union" at
lease—contrives to fatten on war; she thrives like
Mitheidates on poison, and plucks the jewel out of
the head of the ugly toad. There is nothing my
friends seems so anxious to impress on me here as
the boundless extent of well-being accruing to this
already's° prosperous community from the last two
or three years.of civil commotion. The facts speak
already eloquently enough to the eyes ; but they
Are eager to convince me that this is no mere gloss
on the surface ; that the well-being spreads every-
where as far as the country itself; that it sinks
deeply from • the highest to the lowest ranks of
society. It is precisely with a view to test the
correctness of their assertions, to study the causes
of this alleged phenomenon, that, after tarrying for
a month among the Atlantic cities, I have now
fairly turned my back upon the coast, and resolved
upon a trip through the inland regions, with a
particular tendency towards the Western States.
The GoVernment at Washington has raised an
army of 1,000,000 or 1,250,000 combatants. It is
the host of Xerxes in vastness no less than in ineffi-
ciency ; it has been got up in such a hurry, and with
so little knowledge and judgment, with so reckless
and wilful a waste, as to cost three times as much as
it would have done in France, in Austria, or Russia.
A French fellow traveller of mine once told me that
/he was fond of anything " qui fait router lea ecus."
human enterprise, certainly, could have set the
dollars a-going more briskly then this gigantic
arinament. Money runs in the gutter like dirt
here, and it is held in no greater estimation—in
sober earnest, it is nothing but dirt. A lady of
my acquaintance, accustomed to deal with old
curiosity mongers in the Ghetto at Rome, used
to tell me that it was not merely the large sum
es expressed in mere words or figures that
tempted the cupidity of the peddling Jew; it
wrl.s the same sum held out to him in bright
baffling gold that exercised irresistible fascination;
it dazzled and bewildered the raiser; it paralysed
his hip ;ling faculties, it took him by storm. Now,
such a charm can certainly not reside in green-
backs. American money is not fit to be touched
• otherwise than with a pair of tongs. The very
omnibus driver who hands you your few cents
change seems to loathe the crumpled bits of dingy
paper that soil his unwashed paw, glad to be rid of
thorn on any terms. The "almighty dollar" is too
foul a god even for the most grovelling worshipper
to how to; people lavish it about with the heedless-
ness of gamblers playing wish mere counters, as if
only half aware of the conventional value attached
to the dross. The millions of millions set in circula-
tiea by the war are there, however; every one helps
himself who has a mind to a share of them; and, little
as it may seem probable, even this dirty paper, this
fictitious wealth, may be realised into fine houses,
sumptuous feasts, glittering equipages, every variety
of comfort and luxury. A little 'Corsican, the
keeper of a small eating-house on the wrong side of
Pennsylvania-avenue, in Washington ,-told me that
he was two years ago driven to the resolution of
shutting up shop from sheer lack of custom, and be-
taking himself to New York, there to hire himself
out as a waiter, when, by the advice of a weather-
wise friend, he was induced to he.vee better hopes for
the future. He stuck to the shop, and the war so
enlivened his business that in two years he has
netted and sent home safe to Ajsccio no less a sum
than 100,0001.—an independent fortune in his own
native island. The landlord of the Maison Doree,
an establishment of the same kind, but ou a
larger scale, in Union-square, in New York,
.I.c-ikons his earnings in dollars instead of 4ancs.
Extend this measure to all the hotels, rat
companies, to every branch of industry, and you
will conceive how consumption has multiplied itself
throughout the country ; the very book trade, I
am informed on the best authority, has enlarged its
operations in the same measure as it has raised its
prices. Good times have come for people of all
classes ; so much money, I am told,. at no time
within men's memory was paid into the New York
Sevings,Ranks. Never was there so much business
done towards the'extinction of.private debt and the
redemption of property from mortgage. There are
good pickings for great and small; the ill-wind
blows everybody good; and the raisers of that wind,
the mighty contractors, the " shoddy " gentlemen,
agaiest whom you hear so loud an outcry, are crimi-
nals who can turn upon a large mass of their fellow-
citizens as sharers of their guilt ; the difference lies
between thieves and receivers of stolen goods. The
prices of the most common-place commodities are
something appalling. A thimbleful of cognac brandy
after your coffee at dinner is charged 25c. ; wine at
less than 3 dole. is undrinkable ; a pair of shoes for
a working man is not to be had in all Albany for
less than 6 dole.; the garden labourer, who was
satisfied with 103; a day (New York currency) two
years agoehas had his wages raised to 153.; every-
thing in proportion. Money is dirt—as freely
squandered as it is easily got. Reckless extrava-
gance keeps pace with frantic covetousness—with
ruthless extortion.
Are not high prices and high wages symptoms of
a country's well-being ? Many of my friends here
think so, and when asked whether the supply of
labour keeps pace with the demand, they answer
" that the hands are scarce, truly, but not so much
so as to produce any slack or stagnation in business."
This pleasant city of Albany, I am told, furnished
to the war a contingent of 3,000 volunteers, out of
a pOptilatiOn of 62,367:1 souls.
_The State of New
pop York,with a anon of 3 fiol 563 put no less
than 250,000 men under arms. But these were not
at first the sort of people who would be greatly
missed in the community. A good many of them
were the roughs, the rowdies, the loafers, whose
enlistment was looked upon as a good riddance by
their- fellow•citizens. One of the regiments of New
York City was named to me, "admission to whose
ranks could not be obtained by any One who had
not been at least twice committed to the State P ri-
Bons." The Governor of New York, Mr. Seymour,
has given out no less than 5,000 commissions for
offic3rs since Jest January. Even most of the officers
were members of a society that could be well
spared. The Northern Army is wasted away by
death, sickness, and desertion, at the rate of no less
than 50 per cent. The " Excelsior Brigade," a corps
which set out with 9,000 men strong, is now reduced
to something like one-fourth its original numbers.
With an army raised upon such unenviable quail •
fications, conducted upon such loose and lavish
principles, it, is no wonder it thinking men begin to
tire of the war, and look forward to its continua-
tion with gloomy forebodings. The day or reckon-
ing must come, and there are many who think it
high time that it should come. The enthusiasm of
the nation has cooled down at as rapid a rate as it
boiled up at the outset ; volunteering is out of the
question, and the conscription is set down as a
blunder even by the stanchest supporters of the
GOVEMIRCTIt. There is an end now of monster-
meetings, glowing war-speeches, cheers, patriotic
banquets, processions of flag% All rational hopes
of a happy termination of the struggle have been '
dashed to the ground by the extreme measures of a
universal confiscation and extermination of the
South, contemplated, and partly adopted, by the
Cabinet at Washington. There are, indeed , no symp.
toms of violent opposition apparent anywhere ; but
the strength of the people here lies in the its inertie,

and the mere supineness of the masses, the collapse
of public excitement, is sufficient to paralyse the
efforts of the Central Administration. People are
here quietly waiting for the inevitable day of reckon•
ing. The first call to arms was pretty generally, yet
unequally responded to. Men and money were
everywhere forthcoming, bat there were towns and
States which outran their neighbours in the race of
patriotic sacrifices. The tribute of blood and trea-
sure was paid by the North-East with more cheer-
ful readiness than by the more thrifty and sluggish
West. New York alone contributed more than
30,000 men above its quota. The day of reckoning
must come, accounts must be squared, and the West
will have to be distrained for arrears. The burden
will fall all the heavier on the Western States, as
they have comparatively little or no share in the
artificial prosperity created by the war movement
in these Atlantic crannsunities. Now, there are
sen-
sible persons in America who think that the very
soul and heart of the Union lies in the vast and fer-
tile valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries.
The seaports on the border have narrow and com-
paratively barren territories; they lie at a distance
from one another, they were colonised by men of
different classes; actuated by different views and
interests, marked by different characteristics. The
intercourse between them was at no time very brisk;
their communications are, even at the present day,
indirect and imperfect. Had the 13 original States
been for ever confined to their narrow margin be-
tween the sea and the mountains, they would hardly
ever have been blended into one people. The Bos-
ton Puritan would not readily coalesce with the Ca-
valier of Virginia ; the Carolina planter could hardly
wish Tor any very close amalgamation with the
motley, bustling set of New 'York traders. It is only
west of the Alleghenies that the different races of
original settlers joined hands. It is only in that
vast table land, the waters of which flow by a hun-
dred channels into the main streams of the Missis-
sippi and the St. Lawrence that the American cha-
racter was formed, that the Anglo-Saxon race, with
all the tribes it absorbed, found a common home, and
shared a common heritage. The Atlantic States, from
Maine to Georgia, are no more to the vast inland
continent than the narrow slip of Liguria, the bare
and sterile Riviera is to the broad rich 1 • p ain, to the
vast concentric watercourses of the valley of the Po,
' the lands of Piedmont, the .4Emilia, and Lombardy.
The West is the arbiter of American destinies; it is
the " master of the situation ;" and the West, I am
told, never was very eager or sanguine about a war
which, after all, had its hidden causes in the rival
aspirations of the different marginal States, in their
eager suit for the favour and custom of the West. The
seaports of the Atlantic had ail of them an eye to the
trade of the Western regions. It is not many years
since South Carolina strove hard to come in for its
own share of that trade by the great efforts it under-
went to open railways from, Savannah and Charles-
ton to the cities of Tennessee and Kentucky. The
results of that enterprise were less splendid than its
projectors anticipated; and hence some of that ill-
blood between South and North which had long been
festering in the endless squabbles about slavery, and
which came at last to a head owing to the conflict of
political parties at the last general election. Anti-
pathies of political institutions furnish little more
than the pretext—electoral changes supply little
more than the signal for hostilities—but the real
source of enmity is to be sought in the collision of
material interests. A glance at the map of this con-
tinent will easily satisfy the beholder that the na-
tural outlets of what is, or rather was, called the
" Far West," must be traced either through the
Mississippi, or in the long chain of lakes emptying
themselves in the St. Lawrence, or else, finally, in
in the narrow gap between the Alleghenies and the
Green and White Mountains of New England,
through which this noblest of rivers, the Hudson,
flows down to the harbour of New York. All and
each of the Atlantic cities have long and vainly
been striving against this irresistible necessity
of the geographical position of their continent ;
hence must all their differences be referred to
the arbitrament of that great West, to whose
wants they are all anxious to minister, whose
wealth is their 'wealth, and whose strength is their
strength. Should the West, and I am told, and
as I am now about to ascertain by personal oh-
:ervation, be weary of the war; should its material
interests be so virtually bound up with those of the
South, that the interruption at its free intercourse
with it must behome intolerable, it is clear that the
Central States will put an end to the war, no matter
on what terms, or with what results. The West is
a vast granary, a boundless cornfield. It has for a
long time found it impossible to dispose of its pro-
dace otherwise than by selling it in the South, and
converting it into cotton, thus effecting its sale in
the Eastern American and in the European mar-
kets. It is not only an outlet for its corn, for its pork,
Sec., that the West must have in the South ; it must
have a vast market there, an extensive district rich
in produce of a different nature from its own pro-
duce, a market where its own produce may either
be consumed or pushed further, after an opportune
assimilation and transformation:

Such are the views entertained about this momen-
tous American question, as they have been ex-
pounded by some of the leaders of the Democratic
party to me here, on the threshold of the great
Western or Central region which I am now about to
explore, and in which I shall, I hope, have fair op-
portunities to test the correctness of their theories.
These gentlemen profess themselves eager for peace,
and they think that the South should be com-
pounded with on terms which might allow it to
live. They do not think the total and sudden aboli-
tion of slavery a feasible or even a plausible scheme;
they feel sure it would lead to the extinction of the
black no less than of the white Southern race. "The i
negro," they say,
" Dies out, and his race withers and decays while in a
state of freedom in the midst of superior numbers of the
whites. In New York the negroes increased from 25,978 in
1790 to 39,367 in 1820, when slavery was abolished. Up to
1840 they increased to 60,000. From that time to 1860 they
have fallen off to 49,000, notwithstanding the additions to
their numbers by manumissions and escapes. At the end of
40 years of this kind of emancipation their numbers were
less than at the end of 20 years. In Boston, during a period
of five years, the deaths of the negroes exceeded their births
two to one. In Philadelphia the result is the same. In
the whole Union the increase of free blacks, including the
additions by manumissions and escapes, in ten years, is only
about 12 per cent., while the natural increase of the slaves
is equal to that of the more favoured nations, irrespective
of emancipation, and greater than that of any country in
Europe, and this in spite of the 20,000 manumissions which
are believed to have taken place during the last two years.
They add that the number of Africans brought over to this
un was only about 300,000. To-day they number more
cthoantr4y,
500,000; slave and free. The number of slaves car-
ried from Africa to the British Antilles from 1680 to
1786 was 1,483,000. .
and
Those islands at this time have only
one-third of that number of blacksa
In sight of these grave
ad mulattoes,"
sweepingmelancholy m efaascutree,
these Democrats shrink from
would
Theyonly aggravate
,mTihseeryneogfrtchees
wAfricanhieh
race.
carried to the South, where they could show such
should be separated from the whitas, and gradually
think that the
'
capacities as they may have to sustain themselves.
d
Before the war this process of segregation and
concentration WhB rapidly going on, slavery was
being removed from the Border States of Virginia,
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, to those lower
Mississippi regions which might have become for
them the safest and most genial home, and the
removal was being effected without expense, in a
way that promoted the commerce and arts of the
world, and gave wealth and prosperity to the
whole country. Had this process been undisturbed,
within a few yters this race, removed from the
withering influence of a majority of white men
would have been gathered at the extreme South in
such superior numbers as to save them from the
depressing sense of bearing a despised colour."
There may be not a little of the speciousness of
the slaveholder's arguments in these Democratic
speculations. But that the scheme of the general
confiscation and extermination entertained by the
Cabinet at Washington is at least as chimerical, and
by far more inhuman, there can be no manner of
doubt.

-
The illumination .of coal mines surely might be amorn
plished by the magnet. The development of its power I;
daily increasing, one instance is Herring's magnetic
&c. Dr. Hassan remarks " I regard them as the most
perfect brushes hitherto made, as respects their mechanical
construction and their magnetical action." They are the
remedy for grey hair, neuralgia, rheumatism, &c. N. ii.—
Counterfeits are beirg made. Offices, 32, tiasing hall-street,
London,