The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-30 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)

NEN YOB:ii, July 17.
The ancient saying, that the g,,,as in granting the
prayers of the wicked alwe_ys accompany the boon
with something whichAeprives it of its value, has
received a modern exemplification in the case of Mr.
Lincoln and tl revolutionary party by whose aid
he governs. They prayed for military success, and
they have, got it, and ordered a general thanksgiving
for it But it has come upon them amid scenes of
cruelty, arson, and bloodshed which have had no

parallel in the history of the country. Their cup of
joy has a drop of poison in it. Their triumph is
marred by the outburst of a peril which they were
too self-sufficient and conceited even to dream of.

In the day of their glory the judgment of the

greatest city on the continent—the city that has
done more than any dozen cities to support, by men

and money, a war for the restoration of the Union
and the Constitution--has declared itself against a
'war for the destruction of the Constitution, the abo-
lition of State rights, and the establishment of a Fe-
deral despotism. It has declared by the voice of its
most numerous, if its humblest, citizens, that it will
not fight upon compulsion; that it has no faith in vic-
tories that are but fine words for useless slaughter an d
resultless massacres; and that, although it loves the
Union and would be very glad if it could be re-
stored, it loves its own constitutional liberties and
its permanent exemption from enforced military
duty a great deal more. This is the meaning of the
formidable insurrection that has now entered upon
its fifth day, and sympathy with the original ob-
jects of which has paralysed the arm of authority
in endeavouring to suppress it. Had the insurgents
contented themselves with the destruction of the
enrolment papers and the forcible seizure of the con-
scription offices, and themselves executed summary
vengeance upon the cowardly ruffians and assassins
who took advantage of a political outbreak to in-
dulge in arson and murder, it is probable that the
insurrection would gradually have grown into the
respectability of a revolution ; that men of influence,
position, and character would have placed them•
selves at its head, and compelled the Central Govern-
ment to adopt a new, or rather a return to the old,
policy of conciliation towards the South, to a with-
drawal of the proclamation of emancipation, and to
an armistice between the contending forces. But
this is not to be. Mr. Lincoln has taught the
people that there is a power above the law and the
Constitution. They have so far profited by the
teaching as to set the law at defiance, and to inter-
pret it according to the prompting of their own
passion or caprice, or the requirements of a neces-
sity,
of which they declare themselves to be the
sole judges.
Had Mr. Lincoln frankly authorised Governor
Seymour to announce to the people that the con-
scription in New York would not be enforced until
the question of its constitutionality had been de-
cided, it is likely that the only mob remaining in
the city after the first day's riot would have been

mobs of thieves, whose violence would speedily
have been suppressed by the police and the special
constabulary. A notification that he had done so
sensibly thinned the ranks of the insurgents on
Wednesday; but when it was discovered that the
announcement was not official—that Mr. Lincoln
had not spoken, and that at the best the draught
was only to be suspended until the restoration of
order, the crowds increased ; the half appeased mul-
titude broke out into fresh riot, and in their blind.
fury committed outrages so shocking as to alienate
from them all the support that the educated and
wealthy classes might otherwise have been inclined
to afford them.

As yet, brutal as the mob has shown itself in its
murder of inoffensive negroes, no less than seven
of whom were hung from the lamp posts in different
parts of the city on Wednesday night, in addition
to ten or twelve who were beaten to death or
thrown into the river, it is hard to say whether the
cold-blooded brutality of the leading Republican
journals was not the direct provocation of their
fury. At the very outbreak of the riots, when a
few words of conciliation from men in whose judg-
ment the public confided, and whose personal cha-
racter and social position were entitled to respect,
might have stormed the calm of discontent—or, at
all events, prevented bloodshed—these journals
display a feorocity that is never found except in the
hearts of people who are tyrants alike by nature
and by training. There was to be no parley with
men who resisted the draught. The draught was
the only hope and salvation of the country. For
every negro killed a hundred white men were to be
executed. Every rioter was to be remorselessly
shot down. An officer who wished to save the
effusion of blood, and fired blank cartridge over the
heads of the people to alarm them, was declared to
be "no man," but a "cowardly ruffian, who
deserved instant death. " Grapeshot, and plenty
of it," was the sole remedy for popular dis-
content. Such were but a few of the phrases
with which they influenced the angry passions of
the crowd, and manifested how little competent
they were to advise in the crisis of the national mis-
fortunes. Their columns did not contain a single
expression calculated to allay irritation. Blood!
more blood ! was the sole burden of their objurga-
tions; the blood of the only men from whose ranks
the Government can expect to draw defenders,
however imminent its peril: the blood of men,
whose original complaint against the Administra-
tion was its disregard of the law and constitution ;
the blood of the classes that bear upon their shoul-
ders the weight of all the work of peace and of all
the cost and hardship of war; blood—blood unli-
mited, and the more the better. Such was their
morning cry and their evening recommendation ;
and if the popular passion was thus exasperated
into a fiercer fever than it might have otherwise
reached, these were the men who were guilty of
piling up the fuel and throwing oil upon the flames.
The leaders of the Republican party were to the
fall as rabid as their press. Though Governor
Seymour, with a rare admixture of conciliation and
*minas, contrived to allay the anger of the crowd,
and reduce the insurrection within such limits as
might render it easily repressible by the strong arm
of the local authority, civic as well as military,
these persons, seeing as they imagined an opportu-
nity for dealing a blow at a State sovereignty which
they ri •
ghtly hold to be incompatible with the ex-
tension
and consolidation of the Federal power, did
their ntm tby .personal remonstrance and by
alarmist telegrams to Washington to induce the
are
President to declare martial law over the State and
city of New York,
and appoint General Butler to
enforce it.
than Fortunately
his
a the President was, in this
respect, wiser
.party, and did not choose
to run the risk of a
arngtfile in the then tera-
per of the people, and I
with man like Governor
Seymour to use it in d
once of a strictly
legal position, might have beeenothe commencement
of a revolution strong enough t
the Federal
sanebTidaned- The
Government before it. The preweetpheliet of the
people is that the draught will be
!
design of the Republican party is
suspended for a month or six weeks;
it shall be
until
a new
enrolment has been made in districts where the lists
have been destroyed; and that, in the meantinie
cities of the North shall be submitted to thet
opera-
tion of martial law under such administrators
Butler, Schenck, Hascall, and Milroy. But
it
would take all the armies of Rosecrans, Grant,
Meade, Dix, Banks, Gilmour, and Corcoran, even
were each cf them doubled in numbers, to accom-
plish this purpose, the probability is that the Go-
vernment will not be so insane as to make the at-
tempt. The insurrection in New York has been
quelled, not so much by the exertions of the police
and the military as by the faith of the insurgents
that they have destroyed all chance of the draught.
If that faith be shaken the multitude will be again
in arms, and scenes more frightful than those of the
present week will be enacted ; but, this time, under
the leadership of daring men, who will rather take
New York out of the Union than consent to any
form of conscription, however much it may be
modified or sweetened to the popular palate.

The Republican party may-say what it will ; it
may hurl its denunciations against the Irish
" rowdies," the French and German Red Republi-
cans, and the thieves who swelled the ranks of the
multitude ; but the riots cannot be explained away
by any arguments based upon the fact that all the i

blackguardism and villany of the metropolis took
part in them. It was an insurrection without plans
or leaders, or any concerted modes of tion, a
spontaneous ebullition of disgust and i .cignation.
Stripped of all extraneous consideration,, with full
allowance for and condemnation o 2 tne atrocities
committed by wretches who would 1)9 unworthy to
wield a musket in the field in any honourable strafe,
it means nothing less than that the working classes
and a large majority of the people of New York are
opposed to the further prosecution of the war, and
to the forcible emancipation by the North of the
slaves of the South. The extension of the riots into
New England is a further warning that the " war
Christians" for which that polemical corner of the
land is notorious have lost their hold upon the minds
of the fighting part of the people; and that if the
South cannot be conquered by volunteers it must
remain unconquered, inasmuch as the conscriptable
part of the community will rather fight its own
Government in support of the principle of personal
freedom than take up arms against Southern rebels

upon compulsion.
The atrocities committed against the negroes,—
thousands of whom have fled the eityawndheernec, many
in the woods in Long Island and elsewhere,
of them armed, and determinedtor
peseistiefoudrete ofher out-
ragethe to the death,—are the saddest
struggle.
h h the
Northern 'They may helvevpittho pivirorv.e tßorthose Et nagtlitshe-
nim who still
apicoutisriAstbinonlitaios
they have been,
cnheeorgwer
oawnirndong
ad that theypeop people
loveaspr eitrhsiiten,
aasnda how wrong,
also, Mr. Lincoln and his Aboli-
tionist supporters have been, in calculating that they
would gain strength in the prosecution of the war
in proportion as they took measures for the eman-
cipation of the slaves. The policy of emancipation
has proved the weakness, and not the strength, of
the Administration. It has rendered the final sepa-
ration of North and South a fixed fact, which not
all the military successes of a thousand Northern
generals will be able to overturn.
Wall-street, which is supposed, rightly or wrongly,
to be the index of the national feeling, does not
appear to have taken the riots into any very serious
consideration. Wall-street does not shine as a poli-
tician. Wall-street is so credulous as to believe
every mendacious war bulletin that Mr. Stanton
pleases to circulate. Wall-street is an optimist and
thinks that everything is for the best. ball-street
is of opinion that General Meade has achieved a
signal triumph, and that the retreat of General Lee's
army has become a rout, or as Mr. Stanton spells it
a "route." Wall-street maintains that the sur-
render of Vicksburg and Port Hudson has secured
for all time to come the free navigation of the
Mississippi, and that nothing which the hostile
population on its long line of 2,000 miles can do can
seal it up again. Wall-street insists that General
Meade has only to march against Richmond to cap-
ture it by a coup de main; that the rebellion is driven
to bay in Georgia and South Carolina ; and that

Charleston, Mobile, and Savannah are as doomed
as Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Wall-street, more-
over, is clearly agreed that the mob in New York is
only a mob of thieves, which ought to be and will
be extirpated; and that the happy day is near at
hand when peace and plenty will again smile on the
land, and an angelic reconciliation between North
and South make of the United States the greatest,
grandest, noblest, most irresistible Government on
the face of the earth; Last of all, it has the most

thorough confidence in Mr. Chase, by means of
whose beneficent legerdemain its frequenters have
made larger fortunes in two years of war than they
were previously able to make in twenty years of
peace. Under the operations of all these satisfac-
tor and fascinating convictions,—though civil war
was raging in the midst of them, and a vessel of
war lay broadside in the East River with its guns
pointing up the golden pavement where so many
millions of dollars are daily lost and won, so as
to command its full length, and blow to destruc-

tion any foolhardy mob that dare to invade
its sacred precincts, it has declared that greenbacks
were only 26 per cent. less valuable than gold, and
notified, moreover, by the mouth of its chief oracles,
that in a week from this time the difference between
the two measures of value shall be only 15 per cent.
to the disadvantage of paper. Perhaps, however,

it will be found that this is but a dream of happi-
ness, born of the dog days and of the dolce far niente
that grows out of the vaponry_ atmosphere that
shrouds the city, as in the steam of a hot bath.
There is, however, this much to be said in explana-
tion of the anomaly. Nobody wants gold. The
Customs' duo can be paid in Treasury notes. The
trade with Europe is reduced to the lowest ebb.
The merchants restrict their orders within the nar-
rowest limits. The_ speculators in the price of the
precious metals find it more profitable to speculate
in the stocks of railway and transit companies, one
of which, the Mail Company, went up 60 per cent.
and down again 20 per cent. in less than a week.
Mr. Chase, too, takes especial care to give the pre-
mium:on gold a heavy blow whenever he can manage
it. He expedites its downward progress. When.
he finds it falling he helps it to fall more rapidly
by offering the unwelcome commodity for sale in
amounts larger than commerce requires, so that not
only Wall-street, but the multitude beyond it may
exclaim " Great is the Union, but greater is Chase,
who knows how to preserve it, making us at the
same time richer in paper than we can ever expect
to be in gold."

The part taken in the riots by the Irish has
induced Mr. Hughes, the Catholic Archbishop
of New York, to exert his influence with the
people in_favour of order and submission to the
laws. In a placard signed with his name, addressed
to " men who are now called in many of the
papers rioters," and altogether so singular in its
tone and phraseology as to suggest the suspicion
that it was a forgery, he summoned the people to
his residence, promising to address them from the
balcony. A crowd of upwards of 5,000 persons re-
sponded to the call. The Evening Post newspaper,
in giving publicity to the document, implored the
police and military to be in attendance, as the
Archbishop's call " would draw together a crowd of
such miscreants, assassins, robbers, houseburners,
and thieves—such a congregation of vicious and
abandoned wretches as is not often got together."
Happily for the peace of the city, this incentive to
violence was not published until an hour after the
meeting had been held and dispersed, or the conse-
quences
in might have been serious. The Archbishop
his full sacerdotal robes, and, being
unable to stand for rheumatic pains in his limbs,
appeared
seated himself before addressing the crowd, taking
care to explain that physical infirmity, not disre-
spect, was the cause of the attitude so unusual in an
seemed to betoken an intellect
of Ireland, of
orator.consequential,
H e
s paonkde
of the wrongs
of that green
noble men being driven out
and beautiful isle to make room for fat
bullocks ; said that a " man" was a higher
title than a " gentleman ; that if New York
were invaded by Great Britain or any other
Power, the women of the city, with their ten-
der babes at their breasts would look to " men"
and not to " gentlemen" for protection ; that he felt
it a disgrace that his countrymen should be called
rioters, and entreated them all to go quietly home,
and seek a remedy for all their grievances in the
ballot-box. As, however, the ballot for a new Pre-
sident and a new programme only takes effect in
' 18 months hence, and as the men to be draughted
into the armies of the Republic may be led to
butchery under incompetent Generals for a cause
in which they have no heart, a full twelvemonths or
even fifteen months before that day of
peaceful re-
volution, it is highly
probable that the Archbishop's
well-meant recommendation
may have fallen idly
upon the ears of his flock, and that he may have
done more harm than good to the cause of th e public
exhortations peace by his very weak
to his country-
men and co-religionists, with whose
the draught it is quite evident opposition to
that he sympathises.
Amid the many extraordinary circumstances of
the time, the sudden collapse of the reputation of
General Meade is not the least striking.
The note
has sounded in Washington that he has served his
turn, and he will doubtless be thrown aside without
remorse. It was not enough that he should repulse
General Lee at Gettysburg. It was his duty, pre-
scribed for him by Mr. Stanton, that he should an-
nihilate the Confederate army—even though it were
impossible, Mr. Stanton, like the great Napoleon,

does not admit the impossibility of anything, and
the safe retreat of General Lee across the Potomac
with bag and baggage, ammunition and artillery,
and all the immense supplies which he obtained in
Pennsylvania, is held to be the unpardonable sin
which is to unfit General Meade for the future
command of the army of the Potomac. Already his.
deposition is openly urged by the friends of the Go-
vernment in and out of the press. General Meade
has achieved glory enough. He must not allowed
to gather any more laurels. Mediocrity in high
places is jealous alike of his merit and his modesty,
and he is forthwith to be consigned to an inferior
command in some less conspicuous place, or sent like
Burnside to dragoon his own countrymen, so that
he may become unpopular, and therefore innocuous
to the Administration.

JULY 18.
Contrary to all expectation, Provost Marshal
General Fry, instructed by the President, has offi-
cially notified that the draught is to be enforced in
every part of the country, and that the several Pro-
vost-Marshals charged with its execution will be
sustained by the military forces of the Federal Go-
vernment. It would thus seem that Mr. Lincoln is
resolved to try the strength of the Federal arm against
the strength of the States, commencing with the great
State of New York. It is a desperate venture, and
the direct inaugural of a revolution. Already the
alarm that it has created is excessive. Dreading a
renewal of mob violence, if not a contest between the
forces of the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal
armies and those of the equally legally appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Militia and other forces
of the State of New York, crowds of timid people
are leaving the city, and those who have fewer fears
for their own personal safety are sending their wives
and children to remote rural districts and even to
Canada. Next week threatens to be an eventful
one. The city as yet is held by State troops alone,
under the supreme authority of Governor Seymour,
who has expressed his opinion that the draught is
unconstitutional, who has called upon the President
to postpone it until a legal decision could be taken
upon it, whose remonstrances have been treated
with contempt, and who, in case he should deter .
mine to make a stand in support of his opinions and
his position, will be supported by the vast majority
of the people of the State and city. Mr. Lincoln is
a rash man. It remains to be seen whether he will
be a fortunate one.