The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-26 00:00:00

for citizenship, are in a different position. They
are not liable to the conscription, and, if
drafted, must be released on proof of their nationa-
lity.

While the white men of the South and North are
cutting each other's throats on behalf ( stensibly of
negro slavery, but really of independence on the one
side, and of negro emancipation and centralised des-
potism on the other, it is remarkable that the
black men of the North take very slight interest in
the struggle. The slaves of the South range them-
selves for the most part on the side of their masters,
1 and the free coloured men in the Middle, Northern,
and Western States act as if they knew but too well
that no good would result, or was intended to result,
to them; and that if there were not a single slave
left bets een the Rio Grande and the Potomac the
condition of the race between the Potomac and the
St. Lawrence would be no better than before,
that they would still be paupers and pariahs, an
oppressed and degraded people, tolerated but de-
spised, and threatened with wholesale expatriation
by their pretended friends, as the best solution of
the difficulties that their presence has entailed
upon the country. A month ago, when Frederick
Deug'aise, the most eloquent coloured man in
existence, spoke publicly in the city of New
York on behalf of his maligned and injured race—
more maligned and injured in the North and West
than in the South—and explained to the negroes
their interest in the war, and their duty to the
Government, he could not attract 150 negroes and
mulattoes to listen to him. Of the comparatively
slender audience that gathered to the sound of his
voice, considerably more than one-half were white
women, young and old, deputed by the churches.
The balance was composed of preachers of the
various denominations which in England would be
called Dissenters ; and of those stray lovers of
oratory whose taste, education, and prejudices lead
them to prefer speeches and lectures to concerts of
music and theatrical representations. On Wednes-
day night last, when Mr. Wendell Phillips was ad-
vertised to deliver at the Cooper Institute his cele-
brated lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture, it might
have been expected that the free negroes and mu-
lattoes would have congregated in large numbers
to hear a noble vindication of the character and
patriotism of the most iilustrious man of their race,
made by an orator whose heart is in the subject and
who handles it with the skill of a master and all the
fervour of an apostle. But such was not the case.
From twelve to fifteen hundred persons assembled
to hear the discourse of the most intellectual speaker
in America on the theme most congenial to his mind.
The platform was chiefly occupied by ladies and
preachers. There was not one coloured man among
them. In the body of the hall there were but four
negroes, and two of these were mulattoes; and, as
on the platform, a full half of the audience was com-
posed of women. The lecture, as a literary compo-
sition, was in a high degree eloquent, pointed, and
concise; and if it did not convince every woman
present, and most of the men, that on the whole it
was rather better to be a black than to be a white
man, it was not the fault of the orator. He com-
pared his hero with Hampden, Cromwell, Napoleon,
and Washington, and declared him to be superior to
them all. Toussaint L'Ouverture established reli-
gious liberty in San Domingo when England and
America were alike intolerant of religious diversity
of faith. He knew more of political economy
and the true principles of the wealth of nations
than Adam Smith, and anticipated the free trade
measures of Sir Robert Peel by 60 years. In com-
parison with Toussaint L'Ouverture, Napoleon
Bonaparte was a mean and vulgar tyrant, and the
present Emperor of the French, if he had lived in
that day, would not have been worthy to tie his
shoe-latchet. Oliver Cromwell was a good soldier,
but no statesman ; Toussaint L'Ouverture, the
full-blooded negro, without a drop of white blood
in his veins, was both soldier and politician, hero
and statesman. Washington—the Great Washing-
toe—at the mention of whose name there was a
cheer, which was speedily checked as Mr. Phillips
proceeded, kept slaves, and therefore stood on a
lower pinnacle of genius and virtue than the noble
African who proclaimed freedom to all men, irre-
spective of race or colour, and administered justice
with mercy in a mode that might have shamed the
greatest and wisest monarchs of the earth. It was
clear that Washington was not such 'a hero as Mr.
Phillips could thoroughly admire. He admitted him
to be the best growth of the infant mind of America,
but asserted that Gen. Fremont was the best growth
of its maturity and prime. This sentiment was re-
ceived with fervent and prolonged applause. But, if
applause be the true criterion of popular apprecia-
tion and sympathy, no praise of Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture, or of General Fremont, was so much to the
taste of the audience as a spiteful hit at England.
" English neutrality," said the orator, " we all know
what that means. English neutrality sneers at
freedom, and sends arms to tyrants." This little
sentence, delivered with great animation, seemed to
drive the assemblage frantic with delight. The wo-
men waved their handkerchiefs and the men cheered
so lustily and heartily as to prove that, though they
loved the negro much, they hated England more,
The assertion that England sends arms to tyrants,
because a few English merchants and adventurers
run the blockade for sake of gain and accept the risks,
was mere claptrap, unworthy of so logical a speaker,
who knows as well as any man in America that there
is an immorality as well as a morality of trade in all
nations, and that if a government is to be judged by
the acts of its commercial citizens, the record against
the American Union would be black indeed at this
moment, when knavish contractors are imperilling
the existence of the army by their shameful robbery
of the soldiers, and when no form of corruption and
venality is too mean, base, and vile to be practised
by people who call themselves patriots, and talk of
exterminating the South with as much flippancy and
nonchalance as they would talk of exterminating the
rats in a barn. Mr. Phillips ought to look at his
own American glasshouse before throwing stones at
the Crystal Palace of Great Britain. At the con-
clusion of the lecture there was a loud call for Mr.
Horace Greeley, who was observed on the platform.
He responded with becoming modesty, and said but
little; but the little was to the point. He disagreed
with some things to which Mr. Phillips had lent the
weight of his eloquence, though he agreed with him
that there were heroes in past ages and that Tous-
saint L'Ouverture was one of them. He could not
see, however, that there were any heroes in the
present day, delighted as he would be to recognise,
if he could but discover, them.
Mr. Phillips's apotheosis of the negro merits the
respect which is due to sincerity, but nothing more.
It is out of place, out of time, and far more fitted
for Exeter-hall than for any part of America. The
women and the churches go along with him. But
both the white men and the black keep aloof, or
only listen from curiosity. The four negroes who
alone of their race listened to his beautifully rounded
and elegant periods and neat antitheses on Wednes-
day night might well have asked themselves of
what avail it was to proclaim that a negro was so
much better than a white man if scores of innocent
black men, women, and children could be maltreated
or murdered in a free city like Detroit by an infu-
riated mob of white people because one black man
had committed a crime for which none of them were
responsible; and if in Washington it is utterly
impossible for a free black man to obtain legal re-
dress for any injury or wrong he may have suffered
from a white. The negroes know that the hands
of the Northern people are not clean on this ques-
tion. They admit the fine words of Mr. Phillips and
others; but as these " butter no parsnips," they at-
tend to such business, generally of the meanest sort,
as the white race condescends to allow them to per-
form, and
quiescent,ndbeartheir lot with patient equanimity.
they detect the hypocrisy that
has made them and their cause the pretext of a
struggle the results of which will in no wise benefit
them, however the issues of battle may determine.
And while, with all their simplicity, they are acute
enough to detect this Northern hypocrisy, they are
at the same time manly enough to despise it.
The full details of the last desperate attack upon
Fort Mac Allister by the whole fleet of iron clads and
gunboats which will reach Europe by this mail will
be read with universal interest. Had the fort been of
stone it would have been battered into dust and
splinters by the tremendous fire to which it was ex-
posed; but being an earthwork, the damage done to