The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING. DECEMBER 7, 1863.

IjINAHAN'S LL WHISKY v. COGNAC
BRANDY.
This celebrated Old IRISH WHISKY rivals the finest
FRENCH BRANDY,
It i Pure, Mild, Mellow, Delicious, and very Wholesome.
Sold in Bottles, 3s. Bd., at the Retail Houses in London ; by
the Agents in the principal towns in England ; or wholesale

8, GREAT WINDMILL-STREET, W.
Observe the Red Seal, Pink Label, and Cork branded
Kinalian's LL Whisky."

THE best TROUSERS for gentlemen to wear
are those mad by ELSTOB, of 60, New Bond-street.
They are neither so low in price as to necessitate their being
carelessly put together, nor so dear as to gain only the
wealthy purchasers. "In medio tutisimus ibis."

ELSTOB'S TROUSERS, TWENTY-ONE SHILLINGS
PER PAIR.

PARIS.-THE GRAND HOTEL,
Boulevard des Capacities, Place de Nouvelle Opera,
opposite the Rue de la Paix, and near the Theatres.

Has been opened since July, 1862. It contains 700 bed-
rooms, prices from 4f r. to 2.5 fr. ; 70 drawing-rooms, from Mr.
to 30fr. ; a magnificent salon, capable of dining more than
300 persons, and where there is a table d'lzote at six o'clock.
Dinners and breakfasts are served a la carte in the coffee-
rooms, as well as in the apartments. There is a reading-
room with the best English and foreign papers and publica-
tions, a music-room, and a drawing-room for the use of tra-
vellers without any additional charge. There are also baths,
billiard-rooms, smoking divans, post-office ; cabs, carriages,
and omnibuses going to the railway stations. The servant.;
speak all languages. This superb hotel, possessing all that
modern luxury and comfort can combine, and situated in the
most fashionable part of Paris, is recommended to the atten-
tion of travellers.

Independently of their Two Hotels, the Compazri6 Immo-
biliere has established an extensive Private Furnished House
on the Boulevard des Capucines, opposite the ROTUNDA of
the GRAND HOTEL, where Families can reside as in their
own private residences, and where they may rely upon flnd-
ing the utmost comfort.

TUB CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From the correspondent of the Times.)
NEW YORK, Nov. 24.
The rain we had here on Saturday extended, as I
expected, to the battle-fields in Virginia and Ten-
nessee, and somewhat crippled the armies in their
movements. Yesterday we had vague rumours of
a contemplated advance by General Meade, and
cooked rations for ten days had actually been dis-
tributed to his troops. The intended attack on the
Rapidan had not, however, taken place up to last
evening. So far as our information goes, General
Lee is strongly posted en the southern hank of that
50,000 to 60,000 men. To dislodge him
by main with 50,000
will be a tough job. We have more
rain to-day—heavy rain, and the combatants will,
in all probability, be compelled to desist from their
work before it has fairly begun.
Whatever may be the fate of Burnside's army at
Knoxville, the General himself will soon be out of
the scrape. He has either been removed, or allowed
to go home on urgent private affairs, and General
Foster is on his way to take his command, and has
most likely by this time reached bis destination.
Burnside had, before leaving, assured the people at
Knoxville that he felt strong enough to hold the
place. The Confederate force outside the walls
numbered, it is reckoned, 36,000 men. The sea
wall at Sumter is entirely destroyed, but the Con-
federates are, under the very fire of their enemy's
batteries, constructing new bombproof defences.
Some of the besiegers' Monitors have come to grief.
The people here are exulting at the results of Gene-
ral Banks's expedition to Texas, by which they
think that the designs of the French upon that vast
territory have been defeated.
So far the warlike news. Speculation is afoot
respecting the probable contents of the President's
forthcoming Message, although Washington letters
assure us that up to the end of last week that worthy
Potentate had not yet put pen to paper. Truly, there
is enough in the position of American affairs to
puzzle even honest old Abe, in spite of his well-
known readiness in his own peculiar style of naive
and jocose composition. To say nothing of his per-
sonal aspirations and of his justifiable anxiety as to
the next general election, the position he has placed
himself in between the parties which contended for
mastery over his councils becomes sufficiently em-
barrassing now that all shuffling and quibbling
comes to an end, and the time draws near in which
the First Magistrate is expected to speak out.
It is early time as yet to calculate the chances of
Mr. Lincoln's re-election. The most formidable of
his riv As in his immediate entourage, Mr. Seeretary
Chase, is said to be willing to withdraw from fur-
ther competition by accepting the place of Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
now vacant by the resignation of the superannuated
Hon. Roger B. Taney. The army, however, will
have a word to say on the subject of the new
President. Whether allowed a collective suffrage
in their camp, as lately in Ohio, or sent home by
thousands to the polls, as in Pennsylvania and New
York, the soldiers have had the casting vote in
the recent State elections, and their voice-
-400,000 or 500,000 strong—will not fail to make
itself heard in the great contest for which parties
are already preparing themselves. An army
is a powerful electioneering engine, and there
never yet was an instance in the United States of a
civilian having a chance against a military com-
petitor, whenever this latter came into the lists
with the halo of recent success lighting up his brow.
The War-office at Washington have, indeed, in-
dustriously exerted themselves to clip the fea-
thers of any bird soaring so high as to rob
the present rulers of the sun of popular favour
by the shadow of its wide-spread wings, But
Grant, and Buell, and Banks, and Dix, and Gill-
more are not as helplessly laid on the shelf as Pope,
or Burnside, or Rosencranz. A conquering hero
there must be, if victory is ever to smile on the
Federal arms; and if any man ever came back on
the shields of his million of voting followers, Mr.
Lincoln must feel that even his best Joe Millers will

little avail him in retaining the chair once pressed
by such soldiers' idols as Andrew Jackson and
Zachary Taylor.
But, whatever may be the President's views as to
the trial which is to come off a twelvemonth hence,
he must feel that it behoves him to make up his
mind from this moment, and so to weigh the relative
strength and steady the drift of the different parties
as to enable him to choose the one which is to recog-
nise him as its head. Hitherto his policy has been
one of compromise. Surrounded by a Cabinet
half-black, half-blue, he cat his Presidential mantle
out of a cloth reflecting a variety of hues. His
famous Emancipation proclamation was dictated by
Abolitionist advisers. He was subsequently heard
to say " that proclamation was the greatest folly he
ever committed in his life." His answer to the
Missouri delegation, refusing to remove ' General
Schofield, was given in obedience to Conservative
influence, and several rabid placemen have Nen
recently removed, as guilty of no other offence than
ultra-Republican principles. In spite of all this the
faith of the Abolitionists in the President continues
unshaken,
and now, on the first report of Mr.
Chase's honourable retirement, the hopes of the
party are again centred on old Abe, and their great
mouthpiece, Mr. Wendell Phillips, has proclaimed
in Boston that " the man who had the heart to
originate
remain
int he
power
at least Emancipation
a i
zyears
llonger."
Proclamationger . ought,,to
However divided the President's councillors may
be, and whatever influences the Blair-Seward clique
may still exercise upon the mind of a wary bat irre-
solute man like Mr. Lincoln, there is in my mind
little doubt that the Abolition cause is carrying every-
thing before it out of doors. The arming of the
g
irretrievable step.
nteaer o
President regiments
e wasf
Brown a
decisive,
University, in Providence,
on the occasion of the departure of one of these
swarthy legions from Rhode Island, did not hesi-
tate to assert that " this war, whatever its mission
was at the outset, has now no other object than the
by which he meant, as
e
abolition of slavery ;" and Mr. Frederick Douglass,
the well known coloured orator, stood up for the
chaeuseexopfla"ieGedod, anndetliebeelrytyt,'h emancipation of the'
negroes, but also their "initiation into the body
politic," or, in other words, the extension of the
suffrage to the whole coloured race.
The continuation of the war for another year or
bold, outspoken, uncom-
two will lead almost infallibly to such results.
Abolition had a few,
promising friends in the North years ago; but it
had also a vast number of timid shilly-shallying,
temporizing well-wishers. Had the Southerners
never fired on Fort Sumter,tor:had the Confederacy
C onservatism would
oafffteerredGteottycoebmeerg, N
to teerrtmhe after Antietam, or even
ern
still have it in its p
o
" peculiar institution." But the war draws to weary
elder to befrs
end the
before its iron tread,
laenndg tt hh se ,
Northerslavery
eggi
ivness tl' lc
before
that the quickest and
es
with the rebellion is to
trampleurt
crush it and slavery—
cause and effect—once and for ever. If there ever
surest way
utterly, t o compound
aed to
was a wish strongly cherished in the hearts of the
Blackest Republicans, it was for an indefinite pro-
longation of the war. Southern
staney give them all they p yra ed for. The very
heroism of the armies of the Rapidan and the
valour and
Tennessee, the the very endurance of the defenders of
Sumter will, without some unforeseen intervention
of Providence, end in their self-destruction.
Already there is no doubt that slavery, to all
intents and purposes, has ceased to be in all the
Border States ; it is on its last gasl3 in the other
invaded regions. The proportion of slaves to the
white population in Delaware, Maryland, West
Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri was before the
Arkansas, In Old Virginia, Tennessee,
to six free whites war in 1860, 469,401 to 2,780,523—i.e. one slave
1 Mississippi, and Louisiana, the lands
I now already partly occupied by the Northerners,

the proportion was 1,605,191 slaves to 709,914
free whiter. In North'and South Carolina, Georgie,
Florida, Alabama, and Texas there were 1,875,063
slaves to 540,529 free whites—the coloured popu-
lation was considerably more than half the number
of the white race, and in some of those States, as in
South Carolina, the slaves :actually outnumbered
the free whites. But since the outbreak of the
war; the slaves in those territories into which the
Northerners have extended their conquests may be
looked upon as virtually lost to their owners. About
600,000 of them have been emancipated—the rest
have been driven by the Confederates themselves
into the Southern States still defended by their
arms. It, is calculated that from 1,000,000 at least,
to 1,800,000 have been thus transmigrated, and by
this time the black population of North and South
Carolina, and especially Georgia. must far exceed,
and almost double, the white. You are aware that
this enormous accession of black mouths to be fed
has been quoted as one of the causes of the distress
for food under which the South is now described as
suffering, For my own part, I confess that I
doubt the distress, and incline to think that the
Confederates had, and still have, it is their power
to utilise their slaves, and turn them to the produc-
tion no less than to the consumption of breadstuffs,
always supposing that they hold the reins tightly
on their necks, and have nothing to apprehend
from attempts at servile war. This bugbear of
negro insurrection, however, has lost not a little of
its former terror, and there is now no:doubt that,
without a great deal of pressure from without, the
black has no very earnest hankering after freedom,
and, indeed, shrinks from it, and often goes back to
his chains after a first stretching of his free limbs.
How those millions of negro bondmen may now
fare in the Carolinas or in Georgia we have no posi-
tive means to ascertain—but that freedmen in
Federal hands are not lying on a bed of roses, we
can readily assert on irrefragable Republic ea evi-
dence. With all the goodwill, the ample resources,
and the unwearied activity of the Federal Govern-
ment to ameliorate the condition of the blacks in
the Mississippi valley, with all the model
plantations, schools, asylums, and charitable as-
sociations got up in their behalf, we know
that thousands of those unhappy freedmen have
died and are dying from destitution and disease;
although hitherto the Government has had to deal
with comparatively small numbers, although the
whites, with the large bulk of their slaves, have
been falling back before their conquerors. But can
any man consider without shuddering what would
be the fate of the 3,000,000 of blacks now concen-
trated in the last citadel of the Confederacy, were
this to be suddenly broken into, and the few whites,
with all their vast black flock, to be rendered incap-
able of either further resistance or retreat ?
Such is, however, the aim the Abolition party in
the North have been from the beginning, and are
now more than ever driving to—the utter disorgani-
sation of the South, for without this they think the
work of emancipation cannot be completed. The
work of destruction proceeds in the meanwhile, and
before it is carried on to its full extent we may feel
assured that it must be as fatal to the black as to
the white race, and must turn the Southern region
into a charnel house and a wilderness.
Will, then, Mr. Lincoln take part with the out-
and-out Abolitionists? Is there any alternative left
for him ? It is matter of necessity for the President
to pay due attention to public opinion, and as far
as my own observation extends, it is impossible to
deny that the Abolition party has gained immense
ground since the late elections. Even in Missouri,
where Mr. Lincoln so lately snubbed the rabid Ra-
dical faction, the public voice has given a strong
utterance in support of that party. Missouri, as you
know, had through its Legislature decreed the abo-
lition of slavery on its own territory within the
period of seven years. The out and out Republicans,
however, are storming for immediate emancipation,
and the newly elected Legislature will obey the
popular outcry. We hear of movements in the
same sense in all the other Border States, where
slavery, indeed, had but a very feeble hold, and any
resolution the constituted bodies in those States
may come to will, for all practical purposes,
be forestalled by the dissolution of the pre-
sent social system, consequent upon the exi-
gencies of the war, and the arbitrary measures of
military rule. However unfairly and illegally the
elections may have been effected in those States,
the result will not the less have been to secure a
Republican, if not a Radical, majority, not only in
the local assemblies, but also in both Houses of Con-
gress. Every month, every day, the war is pro-
longed tolls the death knell of the peculiar institu-
tion of the South ; every day adds strength to the
uncompromising Abolition party, and compels the
Democrats and the modern Republicans to resign
themselves, and acquiesce in the inevitable. Truly,
the wholesale desolation of the South, the extinction
of their State sovereignty, and their reduction to the
condition of disenfranchised territories, agreeably
to the ruthless scheme of Mr. Charles Sumner, fil
all humane persons with dismay ; but the innate
buoyancy of the American, his faith in the vitality
of his country, soon get the better of his misgivings ;
and make him jump to the flattering conclusion
that " all will be right in the end."
It would be worth while for the English press to
keep a special correspondent here simply for the
purpose of sending home daily specimens of Ameri-
can bragging. Here are "A few facts, moderately
stated," as an article in yesterday's number of the
paper most universally read in the Union is en-
titled :
" Our discoveries and inventions in the art of war are
changing the military and naval systems of all Europe. We
have cannon against which fortifications are as fragile as
paper, and ships which are almost impregnable to the
heaviest shot. Pulsaki and Sumter are battered down off
hand, and our Monitors shed shot as a duck sheds rain. No
European navy is of any account in comparison with our
own, and no European fortress is secure if we choose to
attack it. To take Gibraltar would be child's play to the
army and navy which have taken Ticksburg. Our first
move in a war with England would be to anchor at Dander-
berg opposite to London and proclaim our ultimatum of
Greek fire or unconditional surrender. We have won for
ourselves the title of the Hercules of nations. We ar
cleaning our own Augean stables at present, but
we shall be ready for those of the other continent when our
services are required. Perhaps France and England will
wait to be whipped by-and-by. If so, wo will accommo-
date them, and have no objection to throw a few puny
Powers like Spain into the bargain," &c.
It may be said that the writer of such rodemon-
tades is only what the Italians would call a 'nano
glorioso, but other papers do not write, other people
do not talk in a substantially different strain. The
language may be more guarded or less uncoarteous,
but the notion that America is to issue from the
present struggle great and mighty enough
e to d
be d
a_
terror to " all creation" is both widespra an
deep-rooted. It was a woman who observed to me
that when the South was subdued a not a cannonll
should be fired in Europe without our good will and
pleasure."
We hear daily complaints from the own? rs of
merchant vessels that little more than one-third of
the trade of this country is new carried on under
the American flag ; that of 23 sailing vessels adver-
tised in one Boston paper, on Thursday, for foreign
voyages, 16 were described as foreign ships, being
chiefly British. Appeals ore made to Mr. Wellee,
the Secretary for the Navy, for protection to the
mercantile marine from rebel privateers. The fact
is, however, that enlistment for the navy, no less
than recruiting for the army, has led to great scar-
city of hands for all kinds of work, by sea no less
than by land, and neither the United States' Navy
nor the merchant marine could be manned at the
present time without the greatest efforts to inveigle
or kidnap foreign sailors. A
part of the crew of the
Italian frigates now in this port were hardly allowed
to land, when they were pounced upon by the laud
sharks, and smuggled away, Heaven knows where,
in spite of the tffarts of their officers, of the Consul,
and of the local police to track and rescue them.

PRICE.— —..ld.
STAMPED ....sd.

Experienced masters never allow a seaman to come
on shore in an American port, and even then, in
spite of all the strict watchfulness and discipline,
not unfrequently the vessels must be content to set
back with only half their crew.

NOVEMBER 24 (Afternoon).
Telegrams from Cincinnati inform us that Bragg's
army was yesterday withdrawing from its position at
Chicamauga, and that the Federals occupied all the
high ground this side of Missionary Ridge. A great
battl - between Grant and Bragg was expected to
take place today, There was to-day a report that
Grant had obtained a great victory over Bragg ; all
that was certain, however, was that the heavy rain
had rendered military operations on a large scale
almost impracticable.
No news from Knoxville besides vague reports of
the firing of cannon at rare intervals. No further
intelligence as to Meade's projected advance.

Evening.

Particulars of the encounter at Chattanooga are
this moment published, but they contain no mate-
rial addition to the above.

IRELAND.

DUBLIN, Saturday Evening.
The Dublin and Kingstown Steam Packet Com-
pany have come to the resolution of giving an im-
pulse to rative manufactures, so far as they can
aid that depressed branch of industry, by ordering
a new iron steamer for their line from Messrs.
Walpole and Webb, of this city. Shipbuilding is a
trade which the spirit of combination, still che-
rished unfortunately by the Irish artisan, helped to
drive out of Dublin ; and it is to be hoped that the/
efforts now being made to revive it, and to which
the Dublin and Kingstown Steam Company afford
such practical aid, will not be defeated by a mis-
chievous system, to combat which was amongst the
most useful of the labours of O'Connell; and so
tenaciously did the trades of Dublin cling to the
delusion that combination, which was the bane of
their well-being, was the prop and guardian of
their interests, that the great agitator, at the very
time that they almost adored him as something
superhuman, used to require a guard of police to
protect him from their fury on his way home from
meetings at which he had sought to convince
them of the fatal errors of their combination policy.