The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-26 00:00:00

EVENt ffi, JANUARY 26, 1863,

THE WAR IN = AMERICA.

(From the 7imes' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, JAN. 10.

The full details of the obstinate battles of Mur-
freesborough that have at length been received from
the correspondents of the daily press confirm the
impression on the minds of those who studied with
attention the first confused and often contradictory
telegrams, that General Rosencrans has rescued the
Rupublic from a great humiliation by dint both of
consummate strategy and of high personal valour ;
but that he has not gained a decisive victory.
Rosencrans and Bragg are both in a position to re-
new the struggle. Both suffered severely. Both ac-
quitted themselves as good generals and brave sol-
diers. And if the victory remained with Rosencrans,
as it must ba conceded that it did, Bragg is not
crushed, but still bold and defiant and inclined to be
aggressive. The battles of kurfreesborough, severe
as they were, seem but to have been the preludes to
a still more tremendous stugle in Tennessee. In
the meanwhile Rosencrans is: the hero of the hour.
His success is the greatest that any Federal general
has achieved since M'Clellan saved the capital at
Antietam, and the people are not only loud in his
praise, but express theitegratitude by hoping that
they may yet be indebte to his military genius for
many similar favours. •
The expedition to Viclaiburg has not been so suc-
cessful. The fighting boa that obstinate fortress
was as severe as efts- boro, lasted as long, and
was accompanied by as fearful a loss of life on both
sides, but the Confederates, by superior generalship
and audacity, as well as by more intimate know-
ledge of the country, contrived to concentrate on
immense force at the point at a moment when. this
Federal commander was utterly unprepared for its
reception, and When he Was deprived of stisseltntiei--
pated assistance of the Federal flotilla under Com-
modore Farragut, detained below Port Hudson, 300
:ssissippi. The result was miles further down the M
a signal defeat of the Federal army. President
Davis, in a late address to the Legislature of Mis-
sissippi, insisted upon the immense importance to
the Southern cause of defending both Vicksburg
and Port Hudson to the last extremity. Vicks-
burg has answered his expectations thus far. It
remains to be seen whether Port Hudson will be as
creditably up to the mask, and whether the com-
bined forces of Gen. Banks and Commodore Farra-
gut operating against that place will be sufficient
to clear the river to that point. If they do there
will be a new struggle at Vicksburg more obstinate
than the last, in which both parties will put forth
their utmost strength, and which may prove to be
the greatest and most important battle of the war.
Notwithstanding the gleam of good cheer thrown
over the popular heart by the gallantry and success
of Rosencrans, the general aspects of the war are not
encouraging to the Northern mind. Nothing is
heard from the army of the Potomac. It is neither
in winter quarters nor in activity. Gen. Burnside
is extinguished—perhaps in his own estimation,
certainly in that of the country—and his army
once the hope of the Federal cause, is dark in the
eclipse of popular neglect. No ono speaks of it
or speculates on its movements or fate. The Pre-
sident's proclamation of emancipation is a severe
stumblingblock to men's minds. People begin to
despair of the fortunes of a Republic of which the
chief magistrate can find no weapon so ready to
his hand to damage his foes as an incentive to a war
of races. The Border States are moody and discon-
tented. Their slaves, notwithstanding that their
masters are or are supposed to be loyal, are assert-
ing or are achieving their freedom, in defiance of
Mr. Lincoln's limitations, and an agitation is spread-
ing, of which the results threaten to be disastrous
both to the white man and the black. But Nero
continues -IQ, UAW, er ta.-vjot.. G.014-4.l.eAteusitive
barometer of the fears of commerce, points to the
high figure of 39 per cent. premium, the highest it
has yet attained ; and clear-headed men of business
mistrusting everything else as unsubstantial and
illusory, are hastening to invest their superhundant
dollars in houses and land. Within the last few
days there has been a perfect rush of capital in that
direction, and the chances are that it will increase
in proportion to the alarm of the public at the pros-
pects before the country. The ordinary ruck of
speculators has been wild with excitement, and
Wall-street for the last two days has exhibited a
spectacle that is but too surely the sign end fore-
runner of:a commercial collapse. The pro's ibilitY,
if not the certainty, of an immediate issue c!' green-
backs—put down one day at 50,000,000 do.e. only
"to pay the arrears due to the army," and on
another at 900,000,000 to meet the necessities of the
Government—has opened the floodgates of specu-
lative greediness. Men that were poor last Mon-
day are rich to-day, and may be poor again next
week. Madness rules the hour. Mr. Chase, the great
magician whose potent wand has wrought the mis-
chief, has arrived in town, alarmed apparently at the
efficacy of his own spell. He has come, it is said,
to consult some of the Nesters of finance and bank-
ing as to what shall be done to allay the excite-
ment.
The message of Governor Seymour to the Legis-
lature at Albany is more emphatic than Ms friends
expected. Cautious as well as bold, it is entirely
satisfactory to the Conservative party throughout
the North. Hail there been six months ago a Go-
vernor as strongly pledged to support the law and
Constitution of the State, the Federal Administra-
tion would have been saved many aggressions on
popular rights which have scandalised it in the eyes
of the American people as well as of the world. The
habeas corpus would not have been suspended, inno-
cent men and women would not have been torn
from their homes and confined in dungeons and bas-
tilles on the testimony of spies and; informers, and
the Secretary of State and the late and present Se-
cretaries of War would not have been exposed, as
they now are, to the penalties of the State laws for
acts of injustice committed in obedience to what
they considered a Federal necessity. Mr. Seymour's
election was the first proof of their unp )pularity
which Mr. Lincoln and his advisers comic tended to
accept. Prior to that event they seemed c o labour
under the impression that the Northern people were
willing to pay the price of their own liberty for
the restoration of the Union ; that whatever Mr.
Lincoln might " decree,' or " proclaim" was as bind-
ing as the ukase of a Czar or the hatti sheriff of a
Sultan, and that he and his Ministers were only re-
sonsible to God and their consciences for all public
and private injury and wrong which they might
inflict in the prosecution of the war. The Demo-
cratic victories undeceived them, and forced the
Adminstration back into the paths of legality.
Mr, Seymour's enunciation of his policy as Go-
vernor of the Chief State of the Union—a State
that has a Constitution as sacred as that of the
Federation will keep them there, unless
they choose to risk a collision that might end in
bloodshed. Of 1 his, however, there is little proba-
bility ; and the little has been made less by the
vigorous action which Mr. Seymour has taken, and
which all the other Democratic State governors will
strengthen and extend.

When Mr. Seymour leaves the question of State
and individual rights, and approaches the greater
question of the war and the restoration of the Union,
his views aro as rose-coloured as those of Mayor
Opdyke, General Banks, and President Lincoln. To
his mind, as to theirs, war is not wholly an evil ;
and geography seems imperatively to forbid a seve-
rance bet ween the North and the South. He de-
clares that war alone will not save the Union, but
that if it is to be saved, as he hopes and believes, it
can only be by compromise and conciliation, and a
yielding to the South in the matter of slavery. He
either does not know or will not prematurely con-
fess that no possible compromise or amount of con-
ciliation—no guarantees whatever which the North
could or would give to respect the existence of
slavery in the South, would induce the Southern
leaders and the Southern nation to re-enter into

political partnership with a people whom the events
of the contest have taught them to abhor. The North
does not yet hate the South, for it is only in a few
Northern pulpits that unehristi in feelings are ex-
pressed towards the slaveownere, hut the South de-
tests and abominates the North with a hatred
scarcely to be paralleled in modern times, and which
was only equalled in bygone days by the fiendish
animosities between the Christian and the Moslem,
or the Spaniard and the Moor. Whatever geogra-
phy may seek to prescribe, social antagonism and
repulsion will wcrk to a different end. Mr. Seymour
thinks that " the condition of the country is not
hopless, unless it be made so by passions and preju-
dices which are inconsistent with the government of
a great nation"— forgetting that these very passions
and prejudices are in full play, and that every day
makes them fiercer and more obstinate, both in the
South and in the North. It is his policy, and that of
his party, for the present, to persist in the prosecution
cf the war. The day for proposing an armistice has
not come, but it is coming. In the meantime he
insists that under no circumstances can the division
of the Union be conceded. To save it, the Demo •
crats, for whom he speaks, " will put forth every
exertion of power; they will use every policy of
conciliation ; they will hold out every inducement to
the people of the South to return to their allegiance;
they will guarantee them every right demanded by
the Constitution, and by that fraternal regard which
must prevail in a common country, but they will
never voluntarily consent to the breaking up of the
Union." But unfortunately the fraternal feeling has
long ago been extinguished. It scarcely survived
the attack on Fort Sumter. It is idle to say that it
must prevail—when it has ceased to prevail—and
when provocatives to a negro insurrection are con-
sidered legitimate warfare. It is not thus that the
South and the North can be made to love each other.
It is equally vain to insist that under " no" circum-
stances will a division of the Union be conceded.
When such a great and unmistakeable " circum-
stance" as physical force is the ultimate and only
arbiter who can deal with the question ? The South
knows that its independence will not be conceded,
but it knows at the same time that it may be ex-
torted. Hence the war will continue till one or the
other party is conquered or exhausted, or till mutual
friends shall counsel them to peace, and bring to
bear upon the result the calm, cool reason of which
both are deprived by the blinding passions and
maddening animosities of the struggle.
Mr. Seymour speaks of the Northern Federation
as if it were as much a unit in interest, sentiment,
and passion as it is in Government. But this is not
the fact. The New England States are fighting for
the abolition of Slavery and a high protective tariff,
by which their manufacturers may enrich them-
selves at the expense of the community. The
Western States are fighting for free trade with the
South and free access to the ocean through the
great artery of the Mississippi, caring nothing what-
ever for the freedom of the black race, and disliking
the negro as much as New England pretends
to love him. New York, New Jersey, and the
Middle States are fighting for the restoration of the
status quo ante bellum, Slavery to be included if
necessary. In spite of the war, this great section
of the Union has a higher regard for the Southern
people than it has for the New Englanders. If
there be any real bond of sentiment between the
three antagonistic nationalities of the North—for
such in effect they are, or are rapidly becoming—it
is to be found in their common passion for being
the predominate Power in the world, and, as such,
dictating to Europe, and especially to England,
which they ignorantly imagine to be worn out,
effete, and at its last gasp. If the West could be
assured of the freedom of the Mississippi in union
with the South, and were not assured of it in union
with the North, it would prefer the Government of
Mr. Jefferson Davis to that of Mr. Lincoln ; and if
the Western and Middle States could effect a peace-
able reunion with the South by the extrusion of New
England from their political system, they would be
delighted to sacrifice that troublesome and revolu-
tionary corner, and make a present of it to Canada,
or to itself, and agree to remodel the Constitution
in such a way that the abolition of slavery could
n, ver again be agitated as a Federal question.
But though Mr. Seymour may seem to believe in
the possibility of the restoration of the Union, there
are many symptoms that Mr. Lincoln is not of the
same opinion. It is not only his jocular recklessness
in regard to the provocation of what Mr. Seward
called "a social revolution with all its horrors, like
the slave revolution in St. Domingo," that shows
him to be hopeless of reunion, but the arguments
which he has employed to justify the creation of a
new State out of a portion of the old dominion of
Virginia. If the Union were restored the State of
Western Virginia, illegally and unconstitutionally
formed, would immediately be re-absorbed into Vir-
ginia Proper, its mock Legislature and Government
would be dismissed, and any armed resistance to the
legitimate State Government would be properly
punished as treason. But Mr. Lincoln anticipates
nothing of the kind. He has an eye to the future
boundaries of the Northern Federation, and states,
among his reasons for admitting Western Virginia
into the Union as a separate State, " that it is the
correct policy of the Administration to secure as
much free territory as possible and se ith as little
trouble;" and, as his principal reason, "that he is
bound to take care of his friends." A magistrate
who gives such reasons for an act of such grave im-
portance—an act certain to be annulled if the Union
be restored, and that can only remain valid if sepa-
ration be the result of the war, cannot believe in the
success of the effort which he is making to conquer
the South. Western Virginia, in the inevitable
separation which is to be the end of the war, must
belong to the North. That is Mr. Lincoln's idea.
He is, therefore, quite right in securing that
amount of free territory and in taking care of his
friends—leaving his enemies in Old Virginia, to
take care of themselves in that other Federation to
which their interests and sympathies impel them.
The change of sentiment which has gradually
taken place with regard to Mr. Lincoln is such
" that he who runs may read." At the commence-
ment of his unhappy career every one was inclined
to think well of him ; every possible allowance
was made for the difficulties of his position. If some
people doubted his capacity no one doubted his
honesty. Almost everybody spoke of him with re-
spect. Bat all this has changed. His inveterate habit
of inopportune jesting and story-telling has had an
injurious effect on his reputation. People have begun
to believe that he has no heart as well as no judg-
ment. He has taken the place of first buffoon. He
has become, without his knowledge, the Joe Miller
of the American people. Every idle jest or dirty
witticism that grows up in the rank soil of
great cities is attributed to the President. Every
man who is dubious of the reception of his own
ribaldry passes it off as the last good thing said by
Mr. Lincoln. Were all the indecent jocularities and
broad stories that are launched into the conversa-
tion of the people, and repeated from mouth to
mouth in every place of public resort as undoubted
sayings of the President, to be collected, they would
form a considerable volume. Every day increases
their number, and hundreds of profane jests of
which he is entirely guiltless circulate with the
f
ornament of his name, to the sad disparagementfothe
real
his dignity in the popular estimation, and
impairment of his usefulness as the
functionary in the Republic. The confidencenghest public
felt in
months ago has dwindled to
a thoughtful
lately so
estpo
ianst,t
and
three
thhime a sensation
there
iscarcelys
man in the country who w.ould not feel
if it were announced that,
of relief and gratitude
mistrustful of his own powers to deal with the des-
tinies of the nation in this critical juncture, he had
resigned the Presidency and allowed Congress and
the country to proceed to a new election in the
mode prescribed by the Constitution. Originally,
whatever was said in his disparagement was said
privately. It is now slid publicly. Mr. Wondell

G

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PRICK.... ...Id.
STAMPED

Puillips and the Rev. Dr. Cheever, on the part of
the extreme Abolitionists, were the first to break
silence. The newspapers—usually so ready in this
country to abuse anybody—were tender of the Pre
,ident's good name, and treated bin, with a defer-
ence greater than was ever hcstowed upon any of
his predecessors ; but they have at last followed tht
lead of the platform and the pulpit, and begun to
complain of the unseasonable jesting of one whose
position is not only of the highest dignity but
the most serious responsibility. And from the
press and the pulpit. the dissatisfaction has gone np
to Congress. Yesterday Mr. Saulsbury, of Dela-
ware, openly declared in the Senate that Mr.
Lincoln hrid treated the awful subject of a
slave insurrection " with jocular and criminal
indifference;" that "partisan revenge had go-
verned the actions of his Administration;" and
that " the infamy of its acts would drag it down
into disgrace to the latest generations." The worst
feature of the case as regards Mr. Lincoln's per-
sonal position is that it is not only extreme poli-
ticians like Mr. Saulsbury on the one hand, and
Messrs. Cheerer and Beecher on the other, who
complain, but the great bulk of quiet and respect-
able men of business, connected with political par-
ties, who deplore and regret that the country must
endure for two years longer the government of a
weak and irreverent man, when it urgently needs a
strong and a serious one, to save it from that worse
fate than Southern secession—the loss of its own
liberty, followed by new secessions and a hopeless
disintegration.
General Butler, who is declared by a fervent
admirer standing high in the confidence of the
Government, " to possess more brains than any
300 Generals in the Federal service," has been
invited to a public dinner in this city, by a knot
of gentlemen who seem to value brains more than
heart or good manners. Most of the persons who
made themselves prominent in arranging the pre-
liminaries are members of the Puritan congregation
of the 'Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at Plymouth
Church, and officers in the Ironsides Regiment—
that highly pious corps, compcsed entirely, as its
own advertisements allege, of " good young men,"
who never drink or swear, or rob hen-roosts, like the
profane Irish and Germans who swarm in the ser-
vice of the Republic. General Butler is not a
Puritan himself, so that the entente cordiale which
has so suddenly sprung up between him and the
Puritan Chu: ch creates a certain amount of curiosity.
People ask whether it is on account of his probable
nomination to the command of the negro brigade,
that is to carry desolation into the once flourishing
plantations of the South, that he has become the
model General of the Abolitionists; or whether it
is because he closed Episcopal churches- in New
Orleans, and silenced or banished Episcopal clergy-
men, that he has endeared himself to the Puritan
heart. But, as all the Puritan churches cry out for
the extermination of the Southern slaveowners, it
is most probably on account of his politics, and not
on account of his religious faith, that he has become
their favourite. They want an exterminating
general—and who would act the part so ruthlessly
as Butler P No one yet known to fame, unless it be
Mr. Beecher himself, and he has refused to imitate
the conduct of Bishop Polk, of the Southern army,
and to don the uniform of a brigadier or major-
general. The announcement of the honour to be
conferred was so distasteful in New York that Gen.
Butler, whose shrewdness is much greater than his
vanity, took the alarm. Thinking it much better
to refuse a public dinner than to partake of one
that might cause unpleasantness, or prove a failure,
he made a virtue of necessity, and declined for the
present to be feasted. The people of New York
are for the first time satisfied with the general, and
cherish the hope that whenever a festival may be
organised for his glory it may not be in their city.

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