The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-01 00:00:00

TIE F CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA,

(From tie Special Correspondent of the Times.)
ALBANY, NEW YORK, Aug. 17.

Those c rf Columbus's contemporaries who disbe-
lieved the .existence of a Western Hemisphere, be-
cause they thought that anything that went beyond
the rim of the horison must needs fall topsy-turvy,
were not, : after all, so far wrong in their apprehen-
sions as ac c'.ence and experience would make them.
The sun rises in New York only five hours later than
in London , yet many of the most firmly established
notions an ci principles of the Old World are as tho-
roughly rversed in the New as if men here stood
on their h. cads. if Europe, for instance, had learnt
anything at its great cost, if there was a point
settled beyond all dispute among us, it was this—
that war vas a great evil, the bane of a nation's
prosperity, as fatal to the conqueror as to the van-
quished, even if the former had the luck and skill to
bring back its heaviest charges to weigh on the latter,
even if he contrived to "make the war feed the war."
s, Well, Sir!" among these 'cute classes of Yankee
land the notion of the old doting wor d is exploded ;
America--the Northern "Division of the Union" at
least—contrives to fatten on war; she thrives like
Mithridates on poison, and plucks the jewel out of
thu head of the ugly toad. There is nothing my
friends seems so anxious to impress on me here as
the boundless extent of well-being accruing to this
already so prosperous community from the last two
or three years of civil commotion. The facts speak
already eloquently enough to the eyes ; but they
are eager to convince me that this is no mere gloss
on the surface ; that the well-being spreads every-
where as far as the country itself; that it sinks
deeply from the highest to the lowest ranks of

society. It is precisely with a view to test the

correctness of their assertions, to study the causes
of this alleged phenomenon, that, after tarrying for
a month among the Atlantic cities, I have now
fairly turned my back upon the coast, and resolved
upon a trip through the inland regions, with a
particular tendency towards the Western States.
The Government at Washington has raised an
army of 1,000,000 or 1,250,000 combatants. It is
the host of Xerxes in vastness no less than in ineffi-
ciency ; it has been got up in such a hurry, and with
so little knowledge and judgment, with so reckless
and wilful a waste, as to cost three times es much as
it would have done in France, in Austria, or Russia.
A Frerch fellow traveller of mine once told me that
he was fond of anything "qui fait rouler les ecus."
No human enterprise, certainly, could have set the
dollars a-going more briskly then this gigantic
armament. Money runs in the gutter like dirt
here, and it is held in no greater estimation—in
sober earnest, it is nothing but dirt. A lady of
my acquaintance, accustomed to deal with old
curiosity mongers in the Ghetto at Rome, used
to tell me that it was not merely the large sum
as expressed in mere words or figures that
tempted the cupidity of the peddling Jew ; it
was thu same sum held out to him in bright
burning gold that exercised irresistible fascination;
it dazzled and bewildered the miser; it paralysed
his higgling faculties, it took him by storm. Now,
such a charm can certainly not reside in green-
backs. American money is not fit to be touched
otherwise than with a pair of tongs. The very
omnibus driver who hands you your few cents
change seems to loathe the crumpled bits of dingy
paper that soil his unwashed paw, glad to be rid of
them on any terms. The "almighty dollar" is too
foul a god even for the most grovelling worshipper
to bow to; people lavish it about with the heedless-
ness of gamblers playing with mere counters, as if
only half aware of the conventional value attached
to the dross. The millions of millions set in circula-
tion by the war aro there, however; every one helps
himself who has a mind to a share of them; and, little
as it may seem probable, even this dirty paper, this
fictitious wealth, may be realised into fine houses,
sumptuous feasts, glittering equipages, every variety
of comfort and luxury. A littie Corsican, the
keeper of a small eating-house on the wrong side of
Pennsylvania-avenue, in Washington, told me that
he was two years ago driven to the resolution of
shutting up shop from sheer lack of custom, and be-
taking himself to New York, there to hire himself
out as a 'waiter, when, by the advice of a weather-
wise friend, he was induced to have better hopes for
the futul!e. He stuck to the shop, and the war so
enlivened his business that in two years he has
netted and sent home safe to Ajaccio no less a sum
than 100,000 f.—an independent fortune in his own
native island. The landlord of the Maison Doree,
an establishment of the same kind, but on a
larger scale, in Union-square, in New York,
reckons his earnings in dollars instead of francs.
Extend this measure to all the hotels, railway
companies, to every branch of industry, and you
will conceive how consumption has multiplied itself
throughout the country ; the very bOok trade, I
am informed on the best authority, has enlarged its
operations in the same measure as it has raised its
prices. Good times have come for people of all
classes ; so much money, I am told, at no time
within men's memory was paid into the New York
Savings Banks. Never was there so much business
done towards the extinction of private debt and the
redemption of property from mortgage. There are
good pickings for great and small ; the ill-wind
blows everybody good; and the raisers of that wind,
the mighty contractors, the " shoddy " gentlemen,
against whom you hear so loud an outcry, are crimi-
nals who can turn upon a large mass of their fellow-
citizens as sharers of their guilt ; the difference lies
between thieves and receivers of stolen goods. The
prices of the most common-place commodities are
something appalling. A thimbleful of cognac brandy
after your coffee at dinner is charged 25c.; wine at
less than 3 dols. is undrinkable; a pair of shoes for
a working man is not to be had in all Albany for
leas than 6 dols.; the garden labourer, who was
satisfied with 10s. a day (New York currency) two
years ago,has had his wages raised to 15s. ; every-
thing in proportion. Money is dirt—as freely
squandered as it is easily got. Reckless extrava-
gance keeps pace with frantic covetousness—with
ruthless? extortion.

Are not high prices and high wages symptoms of
a country's well-being ? Many of my friends here
think so, and when asked whether the supply of
labour keeps pace with the demand, they answer
"that the hands are scarce, truly, but not so much
Bo as to produce any slack or stagnation in business."
This pleasant city of Albany, I am told, furnished
to the war a contingent of 3,000 volunteers, out of
a population of 62,367 souls. The State of New
York,with a population of 3,851,563, put no less
than 250,000 men under arms. But these were not
at first the sort of people who would be greatly
missed in the community-. A good many of them
were the roughs, the rowdies, the loafer; whose
enlistment eves looked upon as a good riddance by
their fellow citizens. One of the regiments of New
York City was named to me,
"admission to whose
ranks could not be obtained by any one who had
not been at least twice committed to the State pri-
sons," The Governor of New York,
Mr. Seymour,
has given out no less than 5,000
commissions for
offic3rs since last January. Even most of the officers
were membern of a society that could bo well
spared. The Northern Army is wasted away by
death, sickness, and desertion, at the rate of no less
than 50 per cent. The "Excelsior Brigade,"a corps
which set out with 4,000 men strong, is now reduced
to something like one-fourth its original numbers.
With an army raised upon such unenviable quali•
fieations, conducted upon such loose and lavish
principles, it is no wonder it thinking men begin to
tire of the war, and look for ward to its contieua-
tion with gloomy forebodings. The (ley or reckon-
ing must come, and there are many who think it
high time that it should come. The enthusiasm of
the nation has cooled down at as rapid a rate as it
boiled up at the outset ; volunteering is out of the
qneetion, and the conscription is set down as a
blunder even by the stanchest supporters of the
Government. There is an end now of monster-
:i;:ga, glowing war-speeches, cheers, patriotic
processions of flags. All rational hopes
of a tappy termination of the struggle have been
dashed to the grcuncl by the extreme measures of a
universal confiscation and extermination of the
South, contemplated, end partly adopted, by the
ton. There are, ,indeed Cabiul:t at Washing no symp-
totns of violent opposition apparent anywhere ; but
the atrength of the people here lies in the zis inertia,

and the mere supineness of the masses, the collapse
of public excitement, is sufficient to paralyse the
efforts of the Central Administration. People are
here quietly waiting for the inevitable day ofreckon-
ing. The first call to arms was pretty generally, yet
unequally responded to. Men and money were
everywhere forthcoming., but there were towns and
States which outran their neighbours in the race of
patriotic sacrifices. The tribute of blood and trea-
sure was paid by the North-East with more cheer-
ful readiness than by the more thrifty and sluggish
West. New York alone contributed more than
30,000 men above its quota. The day of reckoning
must come, accounts must be squared, and the West
will have to be distrained for arrears. The burden
will fall all the heavier on the 'Western States, as
they have comparatively little or no share in the
artificial prosperity created by the war movement
in these Atlantic communities. Now, there are sen-
sible persons in America who think that the very
soul and heart of the Union lies in the vast and fer-
tile valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries.
The seaports on the border have narrow and com-
paratively barren territories; they lie at a distance
from one another, they were colonised by men of
different classes ; actuated by different views and
interests, marked by different characteristics. The
intercourse between them was at no time very brisk;
their communications are, even at the present day,
indirect and imperfect. Had the 13 original States
been for ever confined to their narrow margin be-
tween the sea and the mountains, they would hardly
ever have been blended into one people. The Bos-
ton Puritan would not readily coalesce with the Ca-
valierw s h
for o f
a Virginia;ny
e r ythe l Carolinaose
amalgamation
planter
the
motley, bustling set of New York
theork differenttraders.
a iclrtses
only
west of the Alleghanies that of
original settlers joined hands.whlicthiflw by a soonly in that
vast table land, the waters of
hun-
dred channels into the main streams of the Missis-
sippi and the Sr. Lawrence that the American cha-
racter was formed, that the Anglo-Saxon race, with
all the tribes it absorbed, found a common home, and
shared a common heritage. The Atlantic States, from
Maine to Georgia, aro no more to the vast inland
continent than the narrow slip of Liguria, the bare
and sterile Riviera is to the broad rich plain, to the
vast concentric watercourses of the valley of the Po,
the lands of Piedmont, the YEmilia, and Lombardy.
The West is the arbiter of American destinies; it is
the " master of the situation ;" and the West, I am
told, never was very eager or sanguine about a war
which, after all, had its hidden causes in the rival
aspirations of the different marginal States, in their
eager suit for the favour and custom of the West. The
seaports of the Atlantic had ail of them an eye to the
trade of the Western regions, It is not many years
since South Carolina strove hard to come in for its
own share of that trade by the great efforts it under-
went to open railways from Savannah and Charles-
ton to the cities of Tennessee and Kentucky. The
results of that enterprise were less splendid than its
projectors anticipated; and hence some of that ill-
blood between South and North which had long been
festering in the endless squabbles about slavery, and
which came at last to a head owing to the conflict of
political parties at the last general election. Anti-
pathies of political institutions furnish little more
than the pretext—electoral changes supply little
more than the signal for hostilities—but the real
source of enmity is to be sought in the collision of
material interests. A glance at the map of this con-

inent will easily satisfy the beholder that the na-

coral outlets of what is, or rather was, called the
" Far West," must be traced either through the
Mississippi, or in the low.; chain of lakes emptying
themselves in the St. Law7ence, or else, finally, in
in the narrow gap between the Alleghanies and the
Green and White Mountains of New England,
through which this noblest of rivers, the Hudson,
flows down to the harbour of New York. All and
each of the Atlantic cities have long and vainly
been striving against this irresistible necessity
of the geographical position of their continent ;
hence must all their differences be referred to
the arbitrament of that great West, to whose
wants they are all anxious to minister, whose
wealth is their wealth, and whose strength is their
strength. Should the West, and I am told, and
as I am now about to ascertain by personal oh-
tervation, be weary of the war; should its material
interests be so virtually bound up with those of the
South, that the interruptiou of its free intercourse
with it must become intolerable, it is clear that the

1 Central States will put an end to the war, no matter
on what terms, or with what results. The West is
a vast granary, a boundless cornfield. It has for a
long time found it impossible to dispose of its pro-
duce otherwise than by selling it in the South, and
converting it into cotton, thus effecting its sale in

the Eastern American and in the European mar-
kets. It is not only an outlet for its corn, for its pork,
&c., that the West must have in the South ; it must
have a vast market there,
in produce of a different nature fromits
an extensivedisotrwmutprircoh
..
duce, a market where its own produce may either
be consumed or pushed further, after an opportune
assimilation and transformation.
Such are the views entertained about this momen-
tous American question, as they have been ex-
pounded by some of the leaders of the Democratic
party to me here, on the threshold of the great
Western or Central region which I am now about to
explore, and in which I shall, I hope, have fair op-
portunities to test the correctness of their theories.
These gentlemen profess themselves eager for peace,
and they think that the South should be com-
pounded with on terms which might allow it to
live. They do not think the total and sudden aboli-
tion of slavery a feasible or even a plausible scheme;
they feel sure it would lead to the extinction of the
black no less than of the white Southern race. "The
negro," they say,
" Dies out, and his race withers and decays while in a
state of freedom in the midst of superior numbers of the
whites. In New York the negroes increased from 25 978 in
1790 to 39,367 in 1820, when slavery was abolished. 'Up to
1840 they increased to 50,000. From that time to 1860 they
have fallen off to 49,000 notwithstanding the additions to
their numbers by manumissions and escapes. At the end of
40 years of this kind of emancipation their numbers were
less than at the end of 20 years. In Boston, during a period
of five years, the deaths of the negroes exceeded their births
two to one. In Philadelphia the result is the same. In
the whole Union the in crease of free blacks, including the
additions by manumissions and escapes, in ten years, is only
about 12 per cent., while the natural increase of the slaves
is equal to that of the more favoured nations, irrespective
of emancipation, and greater than that of any country in
Europe, and this in spite of the 20,000 manumissions which
aro believed to have taken place during the last two years
They add that the number of Africans brought over to this
country was only about 300,000. To-day they number more
than 4,500,000, slave and free. The number of slaves car-
ried from Africa to the British Antilles from 1680 to
ITh 6 was
Those islands at this time have only
10,f48th30.
a,OtOnu
number of blacks and mulattoes,'
one-third

In sight of these grave and melancholy facts,
these Democrats shrink from a sweeping measure
which would only aggravate the misery of the
African race. They think that " The negroes
should be separated from the whites, and gradually
carried to the South, where they could show such
capacities as they may have to sustain themselves.
Before the war this process of segregation and
concentration was rapidly going on, slavery was
being removed from the Border States of Virginia,
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, to those lower
Mississippi regions which might have become for
them the safest and most genial home, and the
removal was being effected without expense, in a
way that promoted the commerce and arts of the
worli, and gave wealth and prosperity to the
would
lathered
Whole country. Tied this process been undisturbed,
n a few years this race, removed from the
Wiie.rig ieilen
i the cxt
urijority,orttm m
e r
Southhitemoiri
Wmd have be,it
ofa
at
such superior numbers as to save them from the
depressing sense of, bearing a
g despised colour."
There may be not a little tof 1
the slavatold ar
er's speciousness of
guru
specalatinns. Bat that the scheme"in these Deteß-lratie
caifiteation and exterrninatia of the general
Cabinet at Wishington is Ott. least
by the
as chimerical, and
by far more inhuman, there Ca•
n be no manner of
doubt.

i be accom-
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etibrushes,
The illumination of coal mines mightsureyo
power is
by the magnet. The development
daily increasing, one instance is Herring's magnettsi
&c. Dr. Hassall remarks " I regard them
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construction construction and their rnagmetical action."
They arc theeal
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L QLtiVil.