The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-04 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, May 22.
The only free States now left in the North—the
States wherein a man can express his opinions, and
wherein, if he have committed any offence, he is
only liable to punishment after fair trial before a
judge and jury—are, the little States of New Eng-
land, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
All the remainder are under the operation of mar-
tial law; and the lives, the liberty, and the pro-
perty of every citizen at the mercy of dragoons, or
of truculent attorneys transformed by the Revolu-
tion into Brigadier and Major Generals, of whom Gen.
Butler is the type and the representative.i. Gen.
Butler is at Washington, soliciting employment,
with the hope, it is surmised, of being appointed
to the military dictatorship of New York. Gen_
Schenck rules supreme at Baltimore, and does
exactly as he pleases ; transports men, women, and
children to the South as if it were a penal settle-
ment; allows no newspaper to criticise his words or
actions under penalty of its forcible suppression ;
hears treason in a melody, and punishes the vocalist
or instrumentalist by fine, imprisonment, or depor-
tation, and makes it a felony in a lady to wear a
riband of a particular blend of colour, or in a gen-
tleman to exhibit the head of liberty, cut out of an
old copper cent, as a badge upon the waistcoat.
Gen. Banks rules with less outward offensiveness
but with as much real severity, at New Orleans, and
treats the population of Louisiana in the style in
which the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia was
in the habit of treating the Poles ere he goaded
them into insurrection in 1831. General Scho-
field has been despatched to St. Louis on a simi-
lar errand—to rule by terror and to trample out the
right of free discussion under the heels of armed
men. How General Burnside is acting in the same
capacity at Cincinnati all the world knows by this
time, and how be is supported by a petty and almost
illiterate village lawyer of the name of Milo S. Has-
call, whom the misfortunes of his country have con
verted iato a brigadier-general, was slightly
sketched in my last, and will be more fully de-
tailed in my present letter. Bad as the conduct of
Gen. Butler was at New Orleans, silly as that of Gen.
Schenck is at Baltimore, these officials, together with
Gen. Banks, who does his strong spiriting with a
gloved hand, as if he did not think it necessary to
cease being a gentleman when be became a Dictator,
had and have the qualified justification of military
necessity. But no such necessity exists in Ohio,
Illinois, and Indiana, which are not in a state of
siege, and no inch of whose territories is occupied
by a Confederate soldier. The high-handed out-
rage committed on Mr.Vallandigham by Gen. Burn-
side was a political, not a military, act; and seems to
have been inspired by Mr. Stanton with the view of
striking terror into the leaders of the Democratic
party, and perpetuating the possession of power in
the hands of the Revolutionary party, who have re-
solved to overthrow the existing constitution of the
United States, and form a strong consolidated Go-
vernment as the first step towards a centralised im-
perial despotism. At the present writing no one, ex-
cept the Government and a few officials, knows what
has become of Mr. Vallandigham. Gen. Burnside
sentenced him to imprisonment in Fort Warren, and
some reports insist that he was furtively and at dead
of night placed on board a Federal gunboat in the
Ohio river to be conveyed to Wheeling en route to
Boston ; while others, equally credible, affirmed
that Mr. Lineoln, in grim jest, but real earnest, had
modified the sentence of the Military Court to trans-
portation to the South, and that the gunboat on
board of which he was imprisoned was to convey
him to Memphis, and thence to some portion of the
Mississippi shore of Arkansas or Louisiana in the
occupation of the Confederates.
Does Mr. Lincoln wish to provoke a new Civil
War in the West ? It is not likely that he does.
He is a Western man himself, and ought to know
his people too well to incur so fearful a responsi-
bility ; but if Mr. Stanton, General Halleck, and
the Abolitionist senators, who form a kind of Com-
mittee of Vigilance at Washington, and have the
President in their keeping, have not imagined the
probability of such an issue to the insane violence
which they have instructed their obedient instru-
ments to adopt, the possession of power has turned
their heads, if it have not depraved their hearts.
Can these men read the spirit of the people? Do
they understand the very rudiments of constitu-
tional liberty ? Have they eyes to see and ears to
hear ? There was but one newspaper in the
whole North that had a word of approbation to
bestow upon General Burnside—his military
spies, his obsequious court martial, and the das-
tardly judge who refused to issue the writ of
habeas corpus in Mr. Vallandigham's case, and even
that solitary pander was converted at the eleventh
hour to a purer faith, and joined its contemporaries
in denunciation of the whole scandalous and perilous
proceedings. There has not seen anything like the
same unanimity of opinion displayed upon any one
subject since the war began, and yet the reckless
gamesters who controlthe destinies of the North re-
fuse to open their eyes, or be warned of the danger
they incur. The Western people have done more of
the fighting and less of the talking of the war than
those of the Atlantic States, and while they have
fought harder, their friends and relations who re-
mained at home to plough their fields and carry on
their business have gained less. In fact the West has
gained nothing. It has no manufacturers to be en-
riched by a protective tariff. It has not been rewarded
by fat contracts. Its magnates have not stained, or
been allowed the chance of staining, their hands
with public plunder. Its trade has not been in-
creased, like that of New York and Massachusetts,
but has been wofully diminished. It has 'lost its
beet customer, the South, and gained no other as an
equivalent ; and because, under these circumstances,
its most popular and virtuous citizens, of whom
Mr. Vallandigham was but one, have dared to ima-
gine that their country was still free, that the con-
stitutions of their own States were living and bind-
ing realities, and that the Federal constitution was
still unrepealed, and believing this, have raised
their voices to denounce the imbecility and cor-
ruption of the Government, and to express the
honest conviction that union with the South might
possibly be restored by a cessation of hostilities, but
never could be restored by war—the Government
at Washington has appointed a military despot, to
establish a reign of terror, and act as if his sword
were the sceptre of justice, and his brutal will not
ply the law but the source of law and right, and
the only tenure by
which men who but yesterday
I"re flee could hold
either life, liberty, or pro-
'Party.
a soitaall,litt_t_Mr. Yallandig ham's case is not to be
te.red and that the Government has en-
vearnor career which will end, either in a new
dition ,co the reduction of the West to the con-
intelli genee cbtlreted' r is evident from the
and disgust that """
4anlabareian:ifs forth to startle
if New York were
the publication of tibiaehla district be Who asserts that
vork
EvenTild prohibit
for presuming to doubt Express,
went to which his augatstth"b alltht4tiity9of
not ignoble, name was ap.peuntaaithertc.
unknaodwn ocu;
suppressed two Indiana newspaed: has
I'l'4 forcibly
famous order No. IX., which sidjelf"er"ielaibg
of treason against any kind of speech
'penalties
-that had a " tendency" to bring him seit),:i,oearFtrienitinvgt
The first journal that fell under his dise Was
the Columbia City News, to the editor of which he
despatched the i.ollowing curt epistle
TO THE EDITOR OF " COLUMBIA CITY NEws.,.
Head-quarters, District of Indiana, Departmentof
the Ohio, Indianapolis, May 8, 1863.
Sir,—A copy of your paper of May 5 has been handed
me, and my attention called to your comments on General
Order No. IX, from these headquarters. Yon can now take
your choice—publish an article taking back your threats of
resistance to that order, and your comments designed to
destroy its usefulness, and publish a loyal paper ; or you can
discontinue the publication of your paper until further
orders. Any violation of this order will receive prompt
attention.

MILo S. HASCALL, Brigadier-General Vols.,
Commanding District.
The editor published this letter with an indignant
scomment, surrounded by the mourning border
which is usually employed in England on the death
of the Sovereign, the mourning in this case being, it
is toeaupposed, for the murdered freedom of the
7.7 s ,
• ET said the editor, " Gen. Hanel be higher
U4tA the constitution, the supreme law of the land,