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

AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

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

Years ago, as 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 key al-
most in defiance of their cautious undertone, until
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 hauls, 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
rablic ap,:rtments."
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.
Fhere 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 es 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. Tne 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 arc " 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
hotels are shunned, the press is made to conceal
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 strangest efforts that
you 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 ill•will, 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 them not ; Union or
Secession are words which have lost not a little or
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