The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-23 00:00:00

TEE WESTERN STATES

. ~az•

( ,From the Special Correspondent of the Timcs.)
CINCINNATI, OHIO, Oct. 7,

On Saturday last I had a curiosity to see one of
the g
,rcat monster meetings preliminary to the elec-
tion of the Governor of the State of Ohio, which is
to t ake place on the second Tuesday of this month,
the, 13th.

1 had attended not a few political reunions, in
olden times, on my first visit to the United States,
In earliest youth, especially in the New England
States, where I resided. I have a distinct recollec-
tion of caucases, conventions, and other party
gath ?zings, where I had to force my way through a
throt ig of closely-packed men, under the roof of
some =vie hall, or Dissenting meeting-house, and
whence a stern, vinegar-faced stump orator was
holeiiiig forth before an audience fully as earnest, as
fir aof purpose, as business-like as himself. Those
nYlcouth and crabbed, but high-minded Yankees
',wrought into politics not a little of the religions
seriousness which characterised their old Puritan
faith. Narrow-minded and fanatic they might be,
but they went to work with a sober determination,
with a steadiness of will which impressed the
100 R er-oa forcibly, and commanded respect.
It was a very different kind of spectacle that I
was invited to witness the other day. I was driven
sir mil es out of town to a place named Carthaget in
the op 3n country, the mere embryo of a straggling
a
Yillag( 3, a spot only famed for its racecourse,_ewtowns on n
very stately county lunatic asylum. Few towns on
this side of the Atlantic boast a more charming
nei ;hbourhood than Cincinnati. The wide circle of
hil is which encompass
century the city, and which I remem-
luxuriant green more than
be r seeing mantled with
ego,
has, indeed, been
stripped of its or
a quarter of ainal
beauty, quarries of good
building stone and
digclay
for bricks have been found
here and there, andb grubbing
utilitarian people have been
gni
cutting and
round the place till it looks
bare and
bleak, glarging and dusty, like the most
acid district in
Provence or Palestine. Beyond the
first hilly range, however, the landscape retains not
a little of its soft, verdant, original character, and
no less than at Clifton, Spring Grove,
t Carthage,
at
other favoured localities, nature, unscathed by
man's work, shows forth in her loveliest apparel.
The day was bright and fresh at Carthage, as days
usually are at the present season in this part of the
world, the gorgeous autumn tints peculiar to the
North American continent flushed vividly in the
sunshine, and the purity of the air, unsurpassed by
any thing that can be seen in the most gifted Me-
diter,:anean climates, filed the soul with irresistible
gladness.

The meeting of Saturday was intended to be the
F,rand effort of the Republican party, the great be-
speak for Brough, Anderson, and the rest of that
" ticket,', the coup de grace for Vallandigham, Pugh,
and all the Democratic platform. It was, properly
speaking, the Cincinnati meeting, and was held out
of town, simply because it was thought that the
city could afford no space sufficient to contain so
mighty an assemblage as could not fail to answer
the momentous appeal. From early morning to late
afternoon the wards of the city kept pouring out in
long gay processions through all its wide a venues.
I was o❑ the ground between two and three, at the
very moment in which the interest of the transac-
tion was expected to culminate, and excitement to
rise to fever heat.

The political meeting at Carthage reminded me of
a Derby day at Epsom, only of a somewhat shabbier
character, with a dash of an Italian masquerade and
carnival frolic in it. The fair sex considerably out-
numbered the lords of creation, and Yoang America
mustered nearly as strong as the adult generation.
There were huge triumphal cars, heavy boats, and
pontoons on wheels, drawn by four, five, and even
ten pairs of good well-fed horses, with an endless
flutter of flaunting flags, monstrous devices, a din
of fife, trumpet, and drum, and the endless firing of
light and heavy artillery. Pedestrians, horsemen,
hank-carriages, long teams of draught hones, wan-
dered about the trackless turf in every direct ion,
with no apparent purpose, save only the enjoyment
of the open air:,and the jolly company. It was a
fair, b. picnic, with cold fowls and veal pies emerg-
ing from capacious hampers, and corks kno eked off
the bottles of sparkling Caawba wine. To eat,
drink, and be merry was the great business of the
political meeting. Here and there, indeed, in a cor-
ner, under the canopy of some huge tree, Mr. Some-
body from Indiana, or Mr. Nobody from Illinois,
stumped away for very life. with a cluster of listless
loafers round his extempore platform, pretending
to listen, cheering: occasionally, jeering more fre-
qu antly ; all this in the midst of the din of discor-
dant music, the rankling fire of great and small guns
and the shrill cries of apple women and venders of
fire-water. For the rest, there were children squal-
ling, young people flirting, angry men swearing,
drunken men reeling,—all the varieties of a swarm-
ing, bustling crowd, looking for amusement, and
coutributing more or less willingly and wittingly
to each other's amusement.

Most of the cars were decked out for show, and
relied for effect no less on white, blue, and red trap-
Pings than upon a shave of live'y and fresh female
beauty. Cartloads of girls, as many as 90 in a single
Conveyance, were paraded round and round, to the
Bound of merry music ; school girls from 10 to 12
Years of age, young girls further advanced in their
teens, rosebuds and roses in full blossom, all gaily
dressed,
11
pth the delighted
faces wreathed in smiles, beamed
male multitude. Attired in
motley eolaor
streaming 0 9, bareheaded, bare-necked, with hair
of them
diatae their shoulders, begarlanded, some
to personit
Y
the 3o
; here they were made
white or in
their 3o States, the Northern States in
Slave Fitates iniezrespective national colours, the
bov:hing sables. In other groups we
were taught to
the " Goddess of Liberty," to
OK, " Union," to
" Death," and a varietecilunibia'" to " Peace," to
other deities in petticoats
only known in this Transatlantic Of
an:,,tlantic Ol
with the beloved colours ympus. Mixed
and devices, among which ithe -Union were mottoes
noticed at the tail of a
huge cart the two-headed
I,e the two
Eagle, the em-
blem of the new alliance between
Giants" of the globe. The
ittr
" Young
heaviest freight of young daraselsgest
oar, with the
to muster " soldiers sweetheart,sT"le ed to bring
devices were of a more sombre of the
&Ind truculent cha-
racter. A huge piece of ordnance was
Paraded
'through the ground with the inscription
<<fL The
Cannon our only Peacemaker;'' another
the inscription, "Hell, hemp, or Canada fogr ite're
tors ;°' a third bade " those who were discontented
with with Old Abe to leave their country for their coup. !
try's good." Poor Vallandigham was to be seen
here and there suspended on huge gallows in effigy;
hanging and quartering was too good treatment for
him. One car exhibited the same unlucky Demo-
cratic candidate in the shape of a huge Guy, a colos-
sal man of straw with a mask, said to be a very
eekceaeut likeness of the illustrious exile, at which
some zealous Republicans, more than half-seas-
over, kept hacking away with their sabres and
poking with their bayonets with fell animosity,
to the intense delight of the most clamorous
part of the assembled rabble. The zeal of those
few fanatics strangely contrasted with the per-
fect serenity of the goodhumoured multitude.
Thy vast majority of the assemblage evidently
took advantage of the political occurrence for
a little bit of harmless x and peaceful holiday-
making. 'They
Brough Anderson,
dapparently cared very little for
and
by the ns
oefreon, for whom they were bidden
mtewisme marshals of the field to cheer ; and they had
against very little ill-will against Vallandigham,
were ordered to groan. The
people who looked:lmupbon the meeting as an earnest
affair might be numbered b hundreds. The tens
of thousands, magnified
the newspapers into
49,000, and 50,000, weredthbeyre, as it struck me, for
the mere purpose of making
bete
en°3ing
might well, on the
corni" Tremendous
following day, descant on thec
monstration," "The people de-
strengthened majesty," To a neetrabl out
intnrallits
myself, the whole matter seemed morehei'thee'a--: like
less than an egregious, innocent farce, nottt
exercise much influence on the issue' of to
h
preaching s:',ruggle ; as little calculated to fto e aP-
rw
the real interests of the befriended Broup.,la
as to
srd
damage the position of the anatilemviic:d Val-
landigham.
With ell this, however, I would not wish to be

understood to disparage the strength of the Repub-
lican party, or to question the earnestness of their
zeal in the cause. The meeting of Satzrd y was
merely intended for a fete, or, as they c . it, "gala
day." I have no doubt some of their popular con-
ventions held in other places wer, - much more to
the purpose. That the Republicans have the vast
majority of their countrymen with them, and that
they will have a crushing success at the poll on
Tuesday next, I have little reason to question.
There are 500 members at the Cincinnati Stock-
Exchange, and 10 to 1 of them are stanch friends
of the Government and Republicans to the back-
bone. The Enquirer is the only Democratic paper
doing battle against the Gazette, the Commercial,
and the 7imes all Cinsinnati journals, wedded to
the Republican interest, and the proportion of two
to one is observable in all the press of the
State (80) Democratic against 180 or 200 Republican
papers.) Wherever wealth, or even to a great extent
intelligence, is prevalent there you have the strong-
hold of the Government party. Rich people here
have been fattened by the war, and are for war a
l'outrance. Most of the gaudy:cars that were driven
to the show of Saturday were got up at the expense
of contractors, railway companies, &c., to whom this
civil dissension has been for the last three years a
godsend. Over mere disinterested and honourable
citizens the idea of the Union exercises a tyrannical
sway, and scarcely allows them the use of their rea-
soning faculties. They are all ready to sacrifice the
last drop of blood and the last dollar for the Union,
and they flatter themselves that they may best ob-
tain their end by upholding
the
by crushing the South under the
weight Governovern
ofm e netn, ainand.
m ediate, general, and violent abolition of slavery. It
is of no use to represent to them the utter impracti-
cability, the dire ruthlessless, of so sweeping a
scheme. " Let the Union stand and let the world fall"
is their motto. Perhaps this determination to follow
the war to " the bitter end," to drive the South to
despair, to reject all compromise, may be more fatal
to any chance of the restoration of the Union than a
more humane and conciliatory course might be. But
they will listen to no argument. They must have
Union and emancipation, and the mere suggestion
of a. different policy, the mere exposition of demo-
cratic views, is stigmatised as arrant treason.
" We shall go through with it" is the clinching
sentence of the fairest and most sincere Republicans
when they are driven to their wits' end in the dis-
cussion. They do nJt dissemble to themselves the
enormous cost, but they have unlimited faith in the
resources of their young community ; but, " when
we have brought back the fourteen Southern States
to their allegiance," they say, " when we have
triumphed over this secession of so vast a division
of the republic, what State or combination of States,
will have a chance of again attempting a dissolution
of partnership ? 'What fraction will ever rise in re-
bellion against the whole, and run the chances of
so severe a punishment as we are now inflicting on
the Southern traitors ?" And, warming with the
subject, they glory with the assurance that 2() years'
peace will be more than sufficient, not only to heal
the wounds but to efface the very scars of the pre-
sent contest, " when the Union," they say, "cemented
by the blood we are now shedding, will acquire so
much consistence at home and so great an ascend-
ancy abroad that not a cannon will be fired in the
Oid World without our goodwill and pleasure."
It is to this strange ambition, to this vain lust of
power, that the Union owes its main charm in Ame-
rican eycs. It is this longing to go forth as rulers
that makes these strange people so readily amenable
to the despotic rule that now weighs upon them. It
is this same vague love of empire and dominion that
makes them so tender of the alliance of the Russian
autocrat, and so eager to press the hand which is
stained with the blood of a generous nation
struggling for existence.

For their own part, the Democrats rely on the
support of the lower classes, the mechanics in the
cities, and farm labourers in the country, by whom
the enlistment in the army has been most heavily
felt, and among whom weariness of the unprofitable
struggle begins to creep in. At some of the Demo-
cratic meetings held in the rural districts of this
State, the assembled multitude often broke out into
impatient cries of "Peace! Peace before they
were even addressed by the Peace party orators.
The partisans of Mr. Vallandigham are especially
numerous in the southern counties of this State,
which were originally settled by emigrants from
Virginia, while the northern districts were over-
run by New Englanders. Throughout the whole
range of these Western States—Ohio, Indiana, Illi-
nois, &c.—the same distincti .m between North and
South is equally observable. In the North the
Yankee element prevails and with it Yankee notions,
customs, and principles; the southern zone along the
Ohio river is held by a population sprung from the
adjoining slave States, and is remarkable for its
Southern associations, usages, and predilections.
What most forcibly strikes me, in the meanwhile,
in the midst of this turmoil of party agitation, is the
almost unanimous disgust which seems to prevail
among the wealthy and cultivated classes (irrespec-
tive of their democratic or republican tendencies) of
the popular institutions under which they are living,
and especially of the principle of universal suffrage.
ith the exception of a few fanatics (to be met with
in a proportion of less than 1 in 100), tae most re
spectable persons are convinced that the pacifica-
tion of the country, if ever and however it may be
achieved, must be followed by a revision of the con-
stitution, and especially by a limitation of the right
of vote. The Americans, I may say most conscien-

tiously, are sick of mob rule. They begin to fiet
against an order of things which scared the most
worthy citizens from public life, and gave the man-
agement of State affairs into the hands of the popu-
lace, and of the unprincipled demagogues who minis-
tered to their vilest passions. I found the same feel-

ing equally widespread in the East as in the neat,
equally rife in the North and South. The well-to-
do people, the men of cultivation and character, the
inextinguishable aristocracy of the country long for
an opportunity to regain the place they are entitled
to in the community, a place from which their own
remissness and pusillanimity, no less than the sense-
less and brutal principle of absolute equality, had
hurled them. They want the best men to stand fore-
most, and they hope to put an end to a system in
which the highest recommendation for a candidate
is the fact that he is a perfectly obscure individual,
a man against whom no antecedents, good, bad, or
indifferent, can be quoted, a man furnishing no hold
to the unsparing malevolence of partisan warfare.
They wish for an electoral law, based upon the
"sense" of the nation, and long to do away with
that plebiscite, which can centre the vote of millions
upon a " half-witted fellow" (the expression is of
are likelyrnh.
3t,ob leaea
'the:Yew York Herald—not mine), who comes into
()power perfectly unknown to
outiptrefnale at least
'whet.
er
t,hoo votes.
populace w
carriedi s h eso
intot h e s ee
effect, and
e antion gwphaattr patriots
pos-
session for several
tent it
a right of
practicable to wrench from the
question ;but which they have been in pos-
thm generations, may be a different
wishes exist, and that they
are widely spread and
deeply rooted, I can bear wit-
ness. Among the
indeed, who would Republicansgo
o there are not a few
nothing but a "strong Gmoe"h further, and whom
sponsible despotism in the ietrzm en t"—i.e, an irre-
satisfy ; but, at all events, the necessityBi" fashion—would
is everywhere felt, and this will for a change
for future dissensions, should gthlvoe opportunities
struggle be satisfactorily terminated, present civil
It is not easy to get at any reliable information
to the position of the armies of the Cumberland,as
the Government not only withholds all informatloa:
but strains every nerve to hoodwink and mislead
public opinion by all manner of oracular hints and
barefaced false reports. As far as I can make eta,
it would seem that General Rosencreuz is cut off
from communication with his base of operation at
Nashville, and that Burnside has fallen back from
East Tennessee, and withdrawn as far as Ltbarion,
in Kentucky, where a traveller asserts having seen
the bulk of that General's store and ammunition

waggons.
Three more steamers have been consumed by in-
cendiaries at Sr. Louis, and one at Milliken's-bent.
The destruction of the latter \YRS attended with
grievous loss of life.
The dissensions in the Cabinet at Wr.shington
have attained a very Eerioiali character. The Hen•