The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-21 00:00:00

lowing news of the state of affairs at Vicksburg :
" Oar forces at Vicksburg are now engaged in
repairing the crevasses of last fall to keep the water
out of camp. The water in the old canal is six
feet deep, but doing little execution. The rebel
force at Vicksburg is estimated at 60,000. It is
believed that this is the largest number that can be
brought to its defence. A thousand negroes will be
sent from Memphis to work on the canal."
The Jackson Appeal has the following telegram:
" Vicksburg, Jan. 23.

"The enemy has been landing troops from his
transports below Young's Point all day, and some
20 boats are now lying a mile and a half above the
mouth of the canal. Troops can be seen from the
city, and tents and camp fires are also visible this
afternoon. Occasional shells have been thrown
from our batteries during tLe day."
The special correspondent of the New York World,
writing from Ness Orleans,
Jan. 28, says the expe-
dition to Port Hudson is likely to be delayed and
its success endangered by the weak ness of the naval
arm of the service.

A Havannah despatch of Jan. 31, contains the

bllowing :

" Her Britannic Majesty's steamer Rinaldo came
in yesterday from Galveston. An extra of the
Houston Telegraph, January 23, gives an account
of the capture of Sabine Pass, of the United States
brig Morning Light (P), and a schooner (name un-
known) on the 21st inst., by, an expedition of a
part of the Magruder fleet under Major 0. M.
Watkins. I copy two despatches from:the redoubt-
able major, which differ in the number of guns
captured. Still another account gives 11 as the
number.

"' Sabine Pass, Texas, on board C. S. Gun-
boat Bell, Jan. 21.

," Captain,—we met the enemy this morning in
the Gulf of Mexico. We whipped them, and
brought everything to Sabine Pass. I fought him
10 guns to our one. My officers and men behaved
nobly. We have captured two vessels, one of them
a full-rigged ship and the other a schooner, and 12
fine guns, medical stores, and ammunition in abund-
ance,artillery,Showalter, whom I have ap-
pointed together with 100 prisoners. I am here, Cap-
tain, awaiting further orders from the Major-Gene-
ral commanding. This communication will be sent
tayonhssei
gobnryde de Car
has CaptainF
mot afittnoh e Major-General
aontfa; a s
Commanderofshoilowanitkh.
battery.

«" Very respectfully,

" OSCAR M. WATKINS, Major and Acting Adju-
tant-General, Commanding on Sabine.
IS ITo Edmund P. Turner, Captain and Acting
Adjutant-General."

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, FEB. 6.
The town was startled the day before yesterday
by the news that a Confederate ram and iron-clad
had broken out of the harbour of Charleston, at-
tacked the blockading squadron, destroyed one or
more of the wooden ships, and dispersed the whole
fleet. Yesterday the additional news was received
that a Confederate steamer had taken advantage of
the precious moment to leave Charleston for Nassau
and notify to the British Admiral on the West India
station and to the numerous British ships that were
waiting to run the blockade the important fact that
the blockade had been raised by superior force.
There was for some time a great and very general
inclination to treat the news as a fabrication con-
cocted in Richmond to produce an effect in Europe ;
but the details were too circumstantial, and the
official documents that supported the truth of the
story were too evidently authentic, to admit any
reasonable doubt of its substantial accuracy. The
same Richmond papers that reported the raising of
the blockade also reported its re-establishment a
few hours later, and it is now known that a large
portion of the formidable fleet of iron-clads and gun-
boats under Admiral Dupont, forming the naval con-
tingent of Gen. Foster's expedition, have not only
fully re-established the blockade, but are pr€ pared to
commence the siege of Charleston. Every moment
may bring the intelligence that the ships have opened
fire, and that the fiercest, if not the most decisive,
battle of the war hag commenced. No one anticipates
that a desperate resistance will not be made, though
few of the many friends of the South in this city
believe that the resistance will be availing, or that
Charleston is not doomed to destruction.
The press, the politicians, the lawyers, and the
jurists, and all the idle crowd that discuss public
matters in hotel lobbies and bar-rooms, are engaged
in debating the law of blockade. The general im-
pression is that the blockade of Charleston is actu-
ally raised, and that, although it may have been
almost immediately re-established, it is incumbent
upon the Federal Government, if it would avoid oc-
casion of dispute with foreign Powers, to give due
notice of the fact to all the maritime and neutral
nations that have commercial intercourse with Ame-
rica. Should any British vessels from Nassau or else-
where presume on the strength of this being the law
to run the new blockade, they will be warned away,
and if they disobey the warning they will infallibly
be captured. The question of the legality of their
seizure will have afterwards to be decided before the
Admiralty Courts of the United States. In the mean-
time the Administration at Washington has already
given such instructions to its naval and military
officers as, if successful, will render all furt. her block-
ade of the offending city unnecessary, by its restora-
tion to the authority of the Federal Government.
The army of the Potomac vents its discontent in
and at the mud, while Gen. Hooker, with the pro-
verbial activity of a new broom, is reorganising its
shattered ranks, and endeavouring to improve the
discipline both of the officers and the men. General
Banks is detained at Baton gouge for want of me-
dical stores for the force that was ere this to have
attacked Port Hudson. The story runs that in con-
sequence of the secrecy with which his expedition
was arranged, and the ignorance of everybody but
himself and Commodore Vanderbilt of its destina-
tion, the stores in question were sent to James River,
on the authority of the chiefs of the medical depart-
ment, who had made up their minds, without con-
sultation with the War-office, that Richmond, and
not New Orleans, would be the place where they
would be needed. Gen. M.Clernand is engaged in
digging the " cut," or canal, that is to enable him
to flank Vicksburg with his gunboats, and the Con-
federates are as busily engaged in shelling his exca-
vators from the other bank of the Mississippi, while
on both sides such preparations are made for the
third siege and defence of Vicksburg as will make
that place, whatever the result of the attack may be,
one of the most memorable in all the history of
the war. In other districts of the South and West
the hostilities are of miner importance, but betoken
the constant vigilance as well as the growing ani-
mosities of both parties.
While these great events are in progress, and the
Federal Government sorely needs the million of men
under arms that it boasted but a month ago of pos-
sessing, to enable it to make head against the well-
managed hosts of, the South, the fact has been at
last admitted in Congress, on the high authority of
the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means,
that no such army is in the field. I endeavoured to
prove in my letter of the 23d of December that the
numbers of the army were grossly exaggerated in
the official statements of people in authority at
'Washington, and that instead of possessing a force
of a million of men the Government, though it
might issue rations and owe pay for a million, did
not really possess much more than half that number.
Mr. Stevens admitted three days ago that the army
was reduced to half a million of men, and was de-
creasing; and furthermore made the melancholy
confession noticed in my last, that it was not pos-
sible to raise 50,000 additional men by bounty
money, or any men whatever by a forced conscrip-
tion. Under these circumstances the Negro Bill
has been forced through Congress with a kind of
despondent hope that somehow or other the black
man may save the Republic, as Mr, Beecher pro-
mised, but without any preliminary calculations of
the existing number of the negro populations from
which the supply of any considerable force of black
combatants might be drawn. The Border States
having been excluded from the operation of the
Bill, lest. the recruiting officers should be introduced
to Judge Lynch by the indignant white populace,
and swung from the nearest tree or lamp-post, the
only States where negroes can be enlisted are in
the North, and in such portions of the South as
are occupied by Federal armies. It appears, how-
ever, by the census of 1860 that in all the Federal
free States, inclusive of California, there are but
225,621 negroes, male and female, of all ages. As
there is to be no force used, as the negroes must
volunteer if they go at all, and are not offered
like the Irish and Germans, it be:
bounty money
to know first what percentage c't
comes intereEting

them are able-bodied males, fit for war, and secondly
what percentage out of that number will leave their
present avocations to fight for pay, for love of the
cease, or for the emancipation of their race. Grant-
ing that 1 in 7 is an able-bodied male of the fight-
ing age—from 17 or 18 to 45 or 50—there would be
an available force of only 32,230 men, supposing
that every one of these were willing to take up arms.
If these, a comparative handful, are the forlorn
hope of the republic, it is forlorn indeed. Mr.
Beecher is the most sanguine, if not the most san-
guinary, of men, and Mr. Greeley is right in his
opinion that the day is fast approaching when a
further prosecution of the war will become impos-
sible by the defection as well as disheartenment of
the Northern people.
It is impossible for the most careless observer of
passing events not to see that great discouragement
has taken possession of the public mind, and that
confidence in Mr. Lincoln and his Government is at
the lowest ebb. No one knows where to look for
hope, the only hope existing being that which ani-
mates the sordid bosoms of contractors, stock-
gamblers, and others who are making money by the
war. Their hope is that no ill-omened words of
peace, whether breathed by despairing Republicans
or indignant Democrats, or insinuated by France or
England, may have the least avail in calling toge-
ther a Grand National Convention of North and
South, to debate the terms of compromise or con-
ciliation, or, if these be impossible, the boundary
lines between the estranged but not necessary hos-
tile nations. In all other quarters the deepest
r
gloom and anxiety prevails. Those who desire the
of the Union admit it to be hopeless
under Mr. Lincoln's managements and those who
think the South ought to be allowed to work
out its own destiny in its own way, by its own
appointed rulers, are equally hopeless that the
result can be attained under the auspices of the Re-
publican party. Mr. Lincoln and his generals can
neither conquer the South nor let it go. Mr. Wen-
dell Phillips advocates the hanging or banishment
of every slaveholder—without exception—as the
first preliminary to success in the restoration of the
Union ; but as that ruthless decree could only be
carried into effect after military success—which does
not come and cannot be expected to come, with in-
efficient generals and a dispirited, demoralised, and
rapidly decreasing army—the specific of Mr. Phil-
lips cannot be administered, for the all-sufficient
reason that before you can either hang or banish
347,000 men and women, you must first catch them.
And this is precisely what Mr. Phillips and Mr.
Lincoln and the noble army of preachers on the one
side and of soldiers on the other have failed and are
likely to fail in accomplishing, unless some new
life and energy shall be infused into the soul of the
North, and unless that public opinion which is now
split and divided into warring sections shall be as
firmly united as the spirit and opinion of the South.
But of this there is no prospect. The slaveholders
are safe from the truculent orator, even were Mr.
Lincoln and the North disposed to act upon his ad-
vice, which they decidedly are not.
The city and State of New York make no move-
ment either in favour of or adverse to the Adminis-
tration. A meeting advertised to be held, to give
vent to the rapidly accumulating dissatisfaction of
the public, has been indefinitely postponed, but the
Chamber of,Commerce has spoken mildly out, in a
series of resolutions which were yesterday proposed
at a full meeting of that body, and agreed to by a
large majority. While supporting the Government
generally, and urging the prosecution of the war
for the restoration of the Union, which it by nomeana
admitted to be hopeless, the Chamber confessed the
uselessness of disguising that there was wanting at
this time that unanimity of sentiment which existed
a year ago; that public confidence in the Adminis-
tration had been impaired, and that a feeling pre-
vailed that the war had been conducted on partisan
principles to the injury of the public service.
This gentle rebuke is, however, but the precursor
of some plainer speaking, or the ordinary signs of
the rising of the storm of public displeasure are
not to be depended upon. The Chamber at the
same sitting passed another resolution to the effect
that it "heartily deprecated the attempt of sympa-
thisers with Secession or others to injure the credit
of the United States by depreciating its notes below
those of non-specie banks. The Chamber is not
so powerful as it thinks itself. It is an indisput-
able fact that notes of the city banks command a
premium of one, two, or three per cent, over Mr.
Chase's greenbacks; just as it is a fact that gold
commands a premium of 58 per cent. over the same
paper promises to pay ; but the Chamber has no
power to alter either state of things by its deprecia-
tion, or by its hard words. It was long ago dis-
covered that gold was a traitor for ranking itself so
highly above greenbacks. It now appears that
notes of the city banks must be considered traitors
also for being appraised by the mercantile community
at a higher ratio than the paper money of the Go-
vernment. It might be supposed that if the laws
which regulate these matters were understood any-
where it would be in such a body as the Chamber
of Commerce; but that such is not the case is proved
by the alacrity and the unanimity with which they
passed resolutions so little creditable to their pro-
ficiency in that science of social and fiscal economics
of which they profess themselves to be the expositors.
It is a growing fashion in the North to proclaim
that the war is undertaken by the Federal Govern-
ment for the defence of free democratic institutions
against aristocratic despotism. This assertion ori-
ginated in New England, and is industriously pro-
pagated in Old England by Professor Cairnes and
others. The institutions of the South are, as regards
white men, as democratic and republican as those
of the North, the main difference in the South being
that the President is elected for six years instead of
four, and that he is not re-eligible. The Northern
Abolitionists and the English sympathisers with the
attempt of the North to subjugate, or if necessary to
exterminate ,the South go further than the Americans
in depreciation of the Southern people. They assert
that the war is a planters' war ; that the planters
are a territorial and almost feudal aristocracy ; that
between them and their slaves there is nothing
worthy of the name of a middle class; that what
there is of it is ignorant and vile, as well as syste-
matically repressed, and denied political power;
that all the white men of the South who are not
planters and slaveowners are known as " mean
whites" and " poor white trash," who lead a vaga-
bond and rowdy sort of life, and that they form the
great material from which the Southern armies are
recruited. There are Abolitionists and other
theorists in New England who know as little of the
South as they do of Kamshatka or Timbuctoo ; and
there are Englishmen who are content to derive
their supposed knowlege of the cotton regions of
America from these prejudiced or utterly ignorant
teachers • but the great bulk both of the Northern
and Southernl Americans are better informed. They
treat such notions as poor Buncombe, when pro-
mulgated by Yankee philosophers and preachers,
like Mr. Wendell Phillips and Mr. Beecher; and
when repeated by Englishmen in books or news-
papers, the fact but goes to confirm the popular
belief that it is utterly impossible for an English-
man to understand America.
The following statements, based upon official
documents, will show the real status of the white
man and non-slaveowner in the Southern States,
better than volumes of argument. In the first place
it must be borne in mind that the Constitution
of the Confederate States in respect to represen-
tation is precisely similar to that of the United
States. But an interpretation has been given to
the 3d section of the Ist Article of the Constitution
which is accountable for much of the error that
prevails on the subject of the political value of the
non-slaveholding unit. The section declares that
" Representatives and direct taxes shall be appor-
tioned among the several States which may be
included within this Union according to their
respective numbers, which shall be determined by
other
be-
lievers se in theof Constitution, all
cluding those bound to service for a term
of years [apprentices], and including Indians
not
Pointing
taxed,
to
this u
c three-fifthsclause
[slaves]." The words in brackets are explanatory.
in Southern feudalism assert that three-fifths
of the slaves are counted in the representation, Lind,
as the slaves do not vote, the masters must vote for
them. Thus, they add, the owner of 100 slaves
casts not only his own vote, but 60 votes for his
slaves, to which he is entitled by the Constitution.
If this were the correct interpretation the Abolition-
ist and English opinion would be to some extent
correct, and with the addition of the law of primo-
geniture—long since abolished, however, an aristoc-
racy might be created. But the
twhole
calculation
is a misconception.
The number representatives
for the whole Union fix
wasfixed y
b the Act of 1850,
and was limited to 233 (since altered to 241). At
every decennial period, when the census is taken,
the whole number of free persons, with three-fifths
of the slaves together, are divided by 241, the
tient being the number of persons entitle-1
one representative to Congress, p-
-1850 the ratio was one represe-
by that of 1860 it we"
Assuming,

to send
—y the census of
utative for every 93,702,
one for every 127,000.
iur the sake of illustration, a commu-
.-ornposed of 100,000 slaves (estimated in the
representation as the equivalent of 60,000 persons)

nits f-

owned by 10,000 individuals, and 57,000 persons
who are non•slaveholders, these 67,000 white men,
each having one vote and no more, would be en-
titled to one representative in Congress. There is no
plurality of votes. The master does not vote for his
slaves, but the whole white male population votes
for them collectively. Presuming a contest in such
a community, it is evident that, man for man, the
non-slaveholders would have it in their power to
carry their candidate by a majority of 47,000. Thus
in point of fact the non-slaveholder in the slavehold-
ing States, so far from being a mean white, is, as a
political unit, a greater power in the State than the
white Yankee, whether he be mean or the reverse.
By the census of 1830 the whole number of slave-
holders in the United States was found to be 347,525.
Of this number but two owned 1,000 slaves and
upwards; nine owned 500 and less than 1,000;
fifty-six2o o and
less
ow n
thaned 303007; dll:4;sothan
owned
1;
01
than 200; 6,196 owned 50 and less than 100 ;
29,733 owned 20 and less than 50 ; 54,595 owned
10 and less than 20; 80,765 owned five and less than
10 ; 105,683 owned two and less than five ; while
68,820 held one slave each. It will thus be seen
that more than one half of the slaveholders owa less
087 ando w lessned
than five slaves each, and that the cry of a slave-
holding aristocracy oppressing the " mean whites"
has no tangible foundation.
The phrases, " poor white trash," " mean whites,"
and " poor white Buckras," originated with the
negroes. For many years in the towns and villages
of the slaveholding iStates, cooks, chamber-maids,
waiters, coachmen, footmen, &c., were exclusively
negroes and mulattoes—a white coachman evennow
is a rarity. They also monopolised the positions of
draymen, carters, barbers, porters, stevedores, mar-
ketmen, &c. Poor Yankees coming to the South or
from European countries, who had been brought
up to these several occupations, came into competi-
tion with the negroes if they sought employment
in them. Th© competition prejudiced the negro
against them. The negro ideal of a white
man is like the oriental ideal of a Sultan. It is
associated with wealth, dominion, and power, and
a white man possessing neither was mean in
Sambo's estimation. Following the example of their
brethren in the towns and villages, whom they con-
sider their superiors, the country negroes applied
the term in derision to any poor white man living
in their neighbourhood who did not own slaves,
and who happened to fall under their displeasure.
In negro estimation Mr. Lincoln, when he honestly
earned his bread by navigating a barge on the Mis-
sissippi, would have been a "mean white ;" but no
white man, rich or poor, slaveholding or non-slave-
holding, would have applied such an epithet to him.
The truth is that the white man in the slaveholding
States, whatever his pecuniary condition, holds so-
cially a high, and politically a higher, rank than
one similarly situated in the free States. If there be
an aristocracy in the South it is the aristocracy of
colour, and the same aristocracy exists in the North
and West, where the negro is free but a pariah. The
idea that the mercantile and professional classes,
the artificers, shopkeepers, merchants, and small
traders, should be considered " mean whites" by men
who had no other claim to superiority than their
plantations is ludicrous to all who know the facts.
Poverty is no greater bar to 'political advancement
in the South than it is in the North. If Mr. Lincoln
was a bargeman and a rail-splitter before he became
a lawyer and a politician, the Vice-President of the
Southern Confederacy was the son of parents too
poor to give him an education, and the Secretary of
the Confederate Treasury took his first honours in
an orphan school.
In the yet unsettled, wild, and swampy regions
of the South-West, in Arkansas, and is Mississippi,
there is no doubt a large class of white people who
deserve to be called " mean"—rude, rough rowdies
of the worst possible kind ; but many of them are
Yankees, Germans, and Englishmen and Irishmen
who have left New England became New England
was too small for their predatory instincts, and
Europe because they had made it too hot to hold them.
The war has converted thousands of these into ex-
cellent soldiers and such of them who happen to have
been born in New England are distinguished above
their fellows for their love of the Southern cause
and their detestation of the Yankees. Perhaps these
are the " mean whites" of whom Professor Cairnes
and others in England make such constant mention.
If not there are no others, except in the slang of the
negroes, who associate dignity with a white skin,
and think a white man must be meow indeed who
consents to fill a menial position.