The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-14 00:00:00

pended it. To the Union P They proclaim boldly
that they are opposed to the Union as it was, and
wish to establish a new one, as it ought to be. To

the States? They piopose to blot out State lines.
To the Government ? They ignore the laws of Con-
gress, and scorn the decisions of the Supreme Court.
To the President P They propose to depose him if
he do not obey them." But Mr. Lincoln will not

drive them to any such extremity; he knows that
they are logically right ; that his proclamations for
the abolition of slavery in the South are as idle and
worthless as Mr. Jefferson Dvvis's proclamation for

the hanging of Gen. Butler; that the South hes
made itself a nation ; and that the time has come
for the North to do likewise, or prepare the way for

a third dismemberment. If Mr. Lincoln had the

civic courage (and civic courage is the great thing
wanting in this country) to act upon this convic-

tion, and boldly proclaim to the people that the
time bad come for a great National Convention to

decide the question of peace, boundaries, and a
Customs union between the too republics, he might

even now make a mark in history and take his plaoe

among greatcwett. But he has pot the courage. : e
143ves,thai Norill44lB,t, 44 %LAW
Vest_fi mity-444pr conquering nor conquered—
until some respoptful offer of mediation from a
friendly European Power shall extricate him and
the nation from a difficulty which national pride
on the one hand and Executive cowardice on the

other will permit neither to take the slightest step
for removing, except in the battlefield. If this be not

Mr. Lincoln's private belief, he acts as if it were.
Awaiting the issues of battle—which to use an
expr?ssive Americanism, will speedily " thunder all

around," at Charleston, at Wilmington, atVicksburg,
at Port Hudson, in the heart of Tennessee and Ar-
kansas, every where except on the road to Richmond,
Mr. Horace Greeley, and not the President, hes be-
come the hero of the hour and the master of the situa-
tion. It is not what the President thinks, but what

Mr. Greeley recommends, that attracts the public at-
tention, and sets critical tongues and pens at work
throughout the Federal North. Mr. Greeley has
lost heart in the struggle. If the war languish be-
tween this and the Ist of May; if the North do not

T• •••. - -
conquer the Southern armies, capture the Southern
cities, and effectually crush the rebellion before that
day, with or without the aid of the negroes, he re-
commends that tl a North should cease the useless
conflict, and make the best terms it can, He has
been to Washington to urge these views upon the
President, he has conferred with influential men
even in the Democratic ranks, and is publicly ac-

eused by his literary rivals of having had inter-
views with the French Ambassador, to court the
mediatien of the Emperor Napoleon. Three or four
weeks ago he stated his willingness, if the fate and
fortune of war should continue as hcpelessly ad-
verse as ever to all the efforts of the Federal arms,
to `accept the friendly mediation of the Swiss Re-
public. From these opinions, though attacked with
every epithet of abuse that the American dialect of
the English language can supply, he has never
swerved, unless it have been to substitute France for
Switzerland as her most available friend and peace-

maker. His hopes of final military triumphs may
have been greater on some 'Lys than on other; but
since the battle of Fredericksburg he has been
honourably persistent in maintaining that there
must be a limit to the war, and that if the success
so ardently longed for does not speedily bless the
Federal arms, it is alike wisdom, duty, and true
patriotism to accept the hostile verdict of the world
and of circumstances, and to cease the further shed-
ding of American blood. "If," he says, "three
months tabie .oT earliest fighting —6lll-11—notIerve to
make a serious impression on the rebels—if the end
of that term shall find us no further advanced than
its beginning—if some malignant fate has decreed
that the blood and treasure of the nation shall ever
be squandered in fruitless efforts, let us bow to our
destiny and make the best attainable peace.' To-
day, in answer to the charge that be had consulted
M. Mercier and Mr. Vallandigham on the subject, a
charge which he denies, he reiterates his opinion
in terms that admit. of none but wilful misinterpre-
tation. " The war," he says, " has entered upon a
phase which, in all probability, must prove final.
We are upon the eve of movements, combinatiram,
attacks, and battles whereof the result must be well
nigh decisive." He adds that if, contrary to his hope
and expectation, the South should gain the victory
in the general results of th's decisive campaign,
" impartial third parties will say that we ought to
consent to peace on the best attainable terms." In
short," he believes that " the time will come (he
does not say how soon, as that depends on the issues
of conflicts yet in the future) when the great Powers
of Europe will mediate, not by blows or menaces,
but by representations against a continuance of the
struggle es fruitless, wasteful butchery, and urge a
settlement in the interests of humanity and com-

merce."

Mr. Greeley, in saying as much as this, is the I
boldest public man in America, and his boldness is
of the more account and significancy because of the
unmistakable control which he exercises over the
mind of the President. What, it may be asked,
has led Mr. Greeley to speak of peace so
gravely, and to curb, or endeavour to crab, the
rampant madness of the Abolition party, of which
he has so long been a spokesman and a leader?
Lit the corruption engendered by the war ? The
appaling weight of the public debt which has been
and is to be contracted ? The incompetency or im-
becility of the Administration ? The arbitrary acts
of the War Secretary ? The blundering of the
Generals ? Or the general unsuccess of the Federal
cause ? One or all of these things may have opera-
ted on his mind, but the principal cause of his want
of faith is that he is desillusionne on the subjzct of
negro emancipation and the negro himself. He urged
the President to pay his last, as he thought, his best
card ; and the card has not won the trick. He was
honestly of opinion that the proclamation of free-
dom to the slaves would end the war ; that it would
clippie and exhaust the South, be hailed by Europe
with gratitude and respect, not only as a noble act
of philanthropy and statesmanship, but as a legiti-
mate mode of warfare, and accepted readily by the
whole North as a legitimate weapon and a fair issue.
In all these anticipations he has been cruelly disap-
pointed. He not only misjudged the South, but he
misunderstood the negro, and, worse perhaps than
either, he imagined in the honesty and simplicity of
his heart that a majority of the Northern people
really cared for the freedom of the slave, or were
willing to accord social and political rights to a race
whom if they do not hate they certainly dispise. He
has discovered his error. He is disappointed in Eu-
rope and his own people. He finds that he is in
advance of his age, that his notions upon black
men are not the notions of America, that he has
imbibed his ideas of negro equality from English
literature, and not from actual American life ; and
that on this great and vital question he is in hope-
less antagonism with public opinion. So little, it
appears, was he acquainted with the history of the
race of whom he has made himself the champion
that he never read, until a fortnight ago the history
of the massacre of St.. Domingo. An ex-senator of
the United States, an able lawyer, with whom_ hee
has lately had business transactions, undertookto
read him the details. He was so painfully affected
by t Le recital of the ineffable sorrowsolanindrioattrooneliytioesf
committed by the negroes en the Pe
white men, but of innocent. women,
fn children, and
feelings found relief
infants at the breast,
.that
in sobs and tears. It is addedl thate he carried off the
book to recommend it to
for
eor careful study of the
President, as an argument peace.
If Mr. Greeley's views on the question of the ser-
vile war which his teachings urged the President to
I provoke have undergo so serious a modification as
I this little incident in his personal history would init
i t ply, it is to be hoped the clergy Whom he has hitherto
• led will follow him into the new track, and that the
1 Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, the Rev. Dr. Cheever,
1

and a newer and fiercer convert than either of them
the Rev. Dr. Bellows, will cease preaching a war of
extermination against the Southern people for their
perverMity in not seeing the way clear to immediate
and unconditional emancipation. These reverend
gentlemen require enlightenment in the humanity
as well as the ethnology of the question which they
discuss; or one of their number, the Rev. E. S. Best,
of Milford, in Massachusetts, would not have made
himself so offensive to the instincts, if not to the
reason of the white race, to which it is supposed he
belongs, as to urge publicly from•his pulpit the in-
termarriage of the blacks and whites on this conti-
nent as the best thing that could happen to both
races. This gentleman, in a recently published ser-
mon, revised by himself, says—
" Every °JO who has given the least attention to
this subj i-4.. :es that great climatic changes take
place in t • nhabitants of every nationality who
settle on these shores. The Africrurbecomes bleached
—the Caucasian gets brownsd. The time will yet
come when this difference in colour will be difficult
to trace. This blending of the two ranee is just
what is needed for the perfecting of both. Give
the Anglo-American, with li y gen .s, his
tireless energy,terd'

!Jar •
warm heart, the gushing sensibilities, and the
firm religious faith of the African-American, and
you have the highest, noblest, and most godlike
specimen of humanity. Such a race will yet con-
stitute the real people of America. Here the
human race will reach its loftiest destiny, and this
nation become the glory of all lands—the place
which, above all others, shall most resemble
Heaven, and be the nearest to it."
Perhaps tbis reverend person is himself a black
man; or, if a white man, he may have taken to
himself a bl ek wife or intends doing so. Under
no other circumstances is it easy to imagine how he
could preach a doctrine so offensive to the white
population, and one which even the strongest-
minded and most aged spinster of Boston would
indignantly repudiate.
The arrest in Philadelphia of Mr. Boileau, the
proprietor and nominal editor of the Philadelphia
Evening Journal, by order of General Schenck,
the military governor, and his incarceration in
Fort M'Henry for alleged disloyalty, has driven the
Pennsylvanians into a state of excitement that al-
most amounts to frenzy. Mr. Boileau was seized
at midnight by the military and conveyed beyond
the limits of the State of Pennsylvania—a proceed-
ing that, independently of his guilt or innocence, is
held to be an unpardonable outrage against State
rights. It is argued that, whatever Mr. Boileau's
offence may have been, he should have been tried
in Pennsylvania before the recognized tribunals.
The whole community is in a ferment, and
the grand jury, under the direction of Judge
Ludlow, have made their presentment against
the General, and the District Attorney has
been ordered to prosecute. The article prin-
cipally inculpated by the General is a review of
President Davis's recent Message, which the writer
contrasts favourably with that of President Lincoln.
Articles much more severely depreciatory of Mr.
Lincoln have been published in the New York
journals without exciting the least official attention.
The Democracy of Pennsylvania appear resolved to
make this the test case in their State, and to stop
the beginnings of evil, whatever may be the conse-
quences. Most probably Mr. Stanton, as soon as
he has official cognisance of the matter—provided
always that Mr. Boileau's incarceration was not
specially ordered by himself, will order the release
of the prisoner, to prevent the further agitation of
aatieAtion which_ al 11,ilLpaslia.a4r iesfit is peva-
liarly unlucky, or worse, to force before-as nation.
But even this concession to public opinion, suppos-
ing it to be made, will not stay the action of the
Pennsylvanian tribunals against the offending
General. The great Commonwealth of William
Penn and the city of Benjamin Franklin will assert
their dignity. The Democrats are in the majority.
The reaction is great and steady against the en-
croachments of the Executive, and General Schenck
will have the unhappy distinction of forming the
central figure in a cause celebre, destined to prove
whether liberty in one of the most ancient, most
illustrious, and most loyal States of the Union is a
mockery or a reality.