The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-20 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
BALTIMORE, Aug. 7.

Whoever would wish to sum up at one glance all
the miseries inflicted upon the United States by the
m more than civil war" now raging, should come for
a few days to Baltimore, for the impression wrought
upon the mind by a society in a state of rapid de-
composition is all the more painful, as Baltimore, by
its lively aspect, pleasant site, lovely women, and
the mild, courteous, and cordial manners of its in-
habitants, is apt to wind itself round the stranger's
heart, and incline him to give it the preference over
most other American residences.
I left Washington on Tuesday evening, shaking
its dust from my shoes at the station—the dust that
buries that dead city, now hotand desolate as Sahara,
with nothing astir in it, save cnly its scattered
gangs of Bedouin.like Union soldiers, kicking up
huge clouds, as they mercilessly urge on their worn-
out,Virginian nags at a sorry canter, patrolling the
lonely streets like uneasy spirits without apparent
errand or object, The contrast between that stag-
nant, stifling, murderous atmosphere (where no less
than seven persons are reported to have dropped
down dead ofaunstrokes in el:today, on Monday), and
the still burning-hot but breezy and elastic air of
this well-watered " City of the Monuments," affords
immediate relief; and the intercourse with the better
classes of its inhabitants, full as they aro of their
grievances, sets your heart all the harder against
the dogged, and sullen, and ruthless determination
of the Union men you have left behind at the seat
of Government, and enlists your sympathies in be-
half of the weaker side, to such an extent that you
must summon up all your sternness to be on your
guard against your own " milk of human nature,"
and look upon matters with that calm, unbiassed
judgment which befits your office as an impartial
observer.
A man fresh from the old countries of Europe is
not, alas, unacquainted with the import of such
words as " state of siege," "martial law," and the
like. He has seen or heard of despotic and arbitrary
government all his lifetime, has heard of Spielberg,
Castle St. Angelo, Piombi, and Pozzi ; he is familiar
with the most refined and cunning engines of
tyranny. But in Austria, in Poland, at Modena, or
Naples, all these were old and long-tried contri-
vances. The police in France, in Venice, in Russia
is, or was, a strongly and thoroughly organised,
system, a crushing and killing but soulless and
passionless machinery, doing its work with dull, un-
relenting steadfastness of purpose, going straight to
its goal, but actuated by no political and only very
moderate official zeal, actuated by no wanton animo-
sity against its hapless victims. The Buongoverno at
Milan or Venice had every patriot under its thumb
as completely as the metropolitan police knows the
whereabouts of every London pickpocket. It pro-
ceeded against them by order, free from rancour or
vindictiveness, and its agents, mere professionals,
were as ready to serve under a green, red, and white
as under a yellow and black banner. They were
the passive servants of every Government de facto,
which could be induced to accept their co-operation.
Fouche's machine in Paris, like the guillotine,
would be as active under an Emperor as under a
Bourbon King, a constitutional Orleans, or a repub-
lic—a keen-edged but mere mechanical instrument.
But the United States had to improvise a police as
they had to extemporise an army. For their want
of skill and practice they had to make up by pas
sion. They made of the police a party business ;
they set the Union men against the Seceders ; they
waged war against the rebels in the city by the same
means that they employed against them in the field.
Maryland and Baltimore had before the war a
perfectly organised efficient police. Its commis-
sioners were removed as " disloyal" men; the force
was disbanded ; the whole of the State and city
executive was re-established at the free will and
pleasure of the Central Government at Washington.
Yet even that new set of magistrates and agents of
its own creation, even those juries of its own pack-
ing, were slack in working out the Government's
will, and the military were invested with full
powers to wage war against " disloyalty."

For nearly two months Baltimore has been one
vast prison. On the first tidings of Lee's advance
across the Potomac Maryland was turned into a
camp, the city was beset with barricades, and none
of the citizens were allowed to quit the town—at this
hot season, when the whole population would have
rushed to the springs—unless he satisfied General
Schenck of his loyalty by taking " the oath of alle-
giance." The barricades were pulled down 10 days
ago, and the citizens' movements were no longer in-
terfered with; so that a great rush ensued to the
springs, to the country houses—anywhere out of
town, cut of reach of Schenck, of the Provost-
Marshal, of Gilmore-house, Fort WHenry, Fort
Warren, and the other sorrowful places where
" loyalty" is taught at so many months' imprison-
ment a lesson, and from which there is no escape
except at the price of "an oath of allegiance."
" Loyalty" in this country is, of course, understood
to mean attachment to the Northern or Federal
cause. Now, Maryland and Baltimore are naturally
disposed to uphold the principles of Secession. The
world knows it ; the President and his Cabinent at
Washington are fully aware of the fact. Their Go-
vernment had only a small and not very reputable
party among this Marylandian population; it con-
sisted of those " Know-nothings" who went by the
quainter names of "Plug-uglies," Blood- tubs," "Black
Snakes," &c. Gen. Schenck and his soldiers are
placed here to give if possible an emphatic denial to
the fact, to destroy it if practicable. They have
established a pretty reign of terror. They have not
the proper means,not the crafty machinery by which
such a work can be achieved. But they have given
political passion full swing ; they have organised a
party into a police, a clumsy and blundering one,
indeed, as may be expected, but vicious, headlong,
full of petty malice, vexatious, unbearable. Take a
few instances.

A gentleman gives a friendly dinner to six guests.
The party has no sooner broken up than the host is
called upon by the police to give in a list of his
guests, as one of the number is " suspected of dis-
loyalty."
On the ground of the real or supposed
disaffection of this individual, the dinner-giver is
thrown into prison from which he will only emerge
by taking t 1
tie oath of allegiance.
A rev.
to gentleman is called upon
some property he
in
lines. lie
remonstrates,
owns Virginia beyond the rebel
lanagnstrates, and is instantly grabbed
for " disloyal
not to be released except
by taking 4. the
oath;'
Confederate prisonersthre brought in from Gettys-
classes steps out upon
hbeurrgb.alcAonwyotmoslol at the
neumen as they pass, and, to
screen here yes from the
sh has been
she lifts up a stocking
she was knitting.
is een Waving that '° flAg"
to the captive rebels ; she
Packed off beyond the lines
herselft a rebel, and is
Virginia. A few
steps further, another woman of
a an better
pity on the thirsty wretches who are class takes
still at her door. She brings out water, made to stand
it first to the Union soldiers who
have the
e . offers
u
in charge, then by their permission to the prison
e Prisoners
themselves. Tho police revoke the per ers
granted by the humane soldiers; the good raissi°ll
b woman
is to vin
is taken up, and conveyed beyond the line -
_

gfnia.
An inoffensive British subject is accosted in the
bar of his hotel by a Union soldier, who asks hit, to
treat him to some drink. The Britisher finds the
proposal " rather cool ;" the Yankee bids him " re-
spect his uniform." "A fig for your uniform !" says
impatient John Bull ; whereupon he instantly finds
himself in good for disloyalty, and is only released
four days afterwards by the intercession of Mr.
Bernal, the British Consul, who claims him from
tho authorities, when the unwitting offender had
already been " disposed of and dismissed from their
memory."

A gentleman walks into the Enter-Louse, hie
hotel, where Gen. Schenck- has his head• qu,-..rters.
03e of the Staff officers of high rank asks him "How
he dares to wear the rebel colours ?" " Rebel colours !
what do you mean "Mean ! Now, I'll tell you."
A couple of orderlies are summoned. The luckless
Wight is brought into the dread presence of Gen.
Schenck. " That man," says the accuser, "comes
to display rebel colours under our very noses." The
man is at a loss to understand whit all this is about,

till Gen. Schenck, poking him between the ribs,
calls his attention to two roses in his button-holy,
It was a red and a yellow rose; but in the dusk far.)
latter looked white, and the "disloyalty" was t ens
manifest. The political General then asks his pri.
soner where he got the flowers. " Teey wer F put
into his button hole by a lady." Just so; 6 says
Schenck, " that is another of your d--. Secesh
women." "The lady is my niece, sir," the, prisoner
answers with some warmth. " She is a lady, a
young lady of 14, and no Secesh womi'
.11." "Per-
haps you would have no objection to take an oath
of allegiance to the best of Governmr Tits," says the
General, by way of closing the cony 'ersation, The
gentleman secs no reason why he should take an
oath on compulsion, and is warxed away to the
Provost-Marshal's, the obnoxious flowers being left
in the hands of his captors.
These are merely the com;Acal episodes of a suffi-
ciently mournful play. Now for some of the pathetic
touches. I was yesterday in a house to which a lady
had just in that moment been brought back from
one of the hospitals near Gettysburg. Her son, w ho,
like so many of the Maryland youths, was in the
Confederate army, was slightly wounded in one of
the great battles in the early days of July,
landsh
she
had gone to tend him. Most of the surge
Bal-
timore and many ladies have been going upon that
The at
same humane errand,and they have been
nbacwe
and forwards all this last month. Federals at
the camps, I believe, harbournoill-ewf eilslagmaainhyst
their rebel prisoners, but the distress
wounded is great and theGea
disorderyehihg
nrh t,
as 1 heardehospitals
appalling. For miles round
from eyewitnesses, the airise htaeindtedthe remnantswiththestencehf
of ill-buried human bodies
carcasses of horses. The youth I speak of died, not
of his wound, but of hospital fever, in his mother's
arms, and the mother brought back to her home the
same fever,of which she is dying. The reader may
judge whether this is likely to be a solitary case.
These are the inevitable horrors of war, and it is only
a pity that nations unused to such things should
aggravate its evils by reckless improvidence and
mismanagement. Another case, however, is less
excusable :—A Confederate officer, who had fallen
gloriously at Gettysburg, was conveyed, a corpse, to
his Maryland home, where he was embalmed, and
intended for the honour g a solemn burial. All
this had been done with the full permission of the
military authorities at Gettysburg. The father of
the deceased, his kinsfolk, and a great number of
• his friends attended the ceremony, which was per-
formed by a Methodist Minister at the Greenmount
Cemetery. The funeral rite was just performed,
when the attendants-19 in number (for the
greater number of them were able to effect an
escape)—were arrested and conveyed to the Provost-
Marshal's, at Gilmore-house. The offence, it ap-
pears, consisted in this,—that the body had been
given to the earth in the Confederate uniform the
hero had on when he fell, Some of the prisoners,
as well-known Union men, were released on the
following day; but the greater number were only
discharged the day before yesterday, after vain
efforts on the part of the authorities to extort from
them an oath of allegiance.
Acts of more arbitrary severity remain to be re-
corded. Two barns were burnt to the ground in
this vicinity, probably by incendiaries. An assess-
ment was made on the inhabitants of the neigh-
bourhood to make good the damages. The assess-
ment fell unequally on different individuals, accord-
ing to the reputation they had for disloyalty. I
could name ono gentleman who had to pay for his
own share no less than 472 dols. For another house
that was burnt the tax extended over all the people
for six miles round the spot, but the fire in this se-
cond instance fell with a weight proportionate to
the proximity of the inhabitants to the scene of the
offence.

A certain amount of awkward harshness and
bluntness will always and everywhere be observeu
wherever the administration of justice falls into
►nilitary hands. Civilians at Fort Warren were
confined in the company of Confederate prisoners
taken in battle. Bat, by a strange professional par-
tiality it may be supposed, these latter were allowed
the free run of the tort on parole, while the civilians
members of the State Legislature of Maryland, and
other persons of high respectability,whose alleged of
fence was at the utmost that of sympathising with the
cause of the South—an offence, be it remembered,
which was never proved, so that they had in the
end to be discharged, without even obtaining from
them the oath of allegiance—these gentlemen were
kept in durance vile in their cells, and subjected to
a harsher treatment than those who had stood up
for that same cause sword in hand. I say nothing
of the filthy state of those State prisons—the ver-
min, the odour, the horrors of the want of bed, food,
and other accommodation, for this was probably
owing rather to want of experience and proper pre-
paration than to mere fiendish malice, though it is
not easy to bring the poor victims and their friends
to view the matter in that light. But what are we
to think of the puerile precaution of Gen. Schenck
(who, by the way, was neither born nor bred a sol-
dier, but who is a mere " political General"), who
allows his convalescent prisoners only the most in-
dispensable underclothing, that in the event of their
meditating their flight they should not be able to
accomplish it otherwise than in the scantiest dis,
habille. No hats, jackets, shoes, or trousers a:lowed
to any of them !

But I feel humbled in my own eyes in coming be-
fore the reader as the mere chronicler of such small
matters. These mere pricks of the needle, with
which the endurance of the Marylandians is so con-
stantly tested, however bitterly they may harass
and aggravate them, are not so subversive of their
social order as the lance thrusts which are aimed at
the very life of all the Southern States.
It is now more than 16 months since General
Foster, on his way to his Southern command,
taunted the Baltimorians with the threat that
" they were going to make a St. Domingo of the
South, and that the Ahlaadryaland. iadn,s, might then
join the niggers if they
immediate
seiyeettion.
, The rulers
at Washington talk as if thullu
that threat into meant toI carry
already told you how in
con-
querors settle on the lands ofu west the
th-ethvanquished,
manumit the slaves, and hiring
labourers compel them to cultivate
Athmeelaanlscifrfeoer
their own—tne conquerors'—benefit. n g t 0 gentleman
toldnt e mmaen
high in the Government at Washi
with great glee, how a Northern soldier of fortune
'
took possession of a deserted plantation, found the
crops standing unreaped on the ground, with the
negroes lying idle in their huts enjoying the first
fruits of their blessed emancipation, how the 'cute
Yankee bade them be up and doing, promised to
feed and pay them, and so plied them with gentle
and strong measures that he induced them to bring
the harvest home—a harvest which he conveyed to
and sold in New Orleans, realising for himself the
net sum of 17,000 dols. Now, most of the land of
the Southern States occupied by the Federals lies in
a more or less helpless condition. Fields, houses,
and live stock of all kinds are at the discretion of
any man who may have a wish for them, and there
is no lack of adventurers in the Northern army ready
to help themselves to anything that may fall in
their way. There is hardly an officer, hardly a
soldier on his way back to the North, who does not
bring home a manumitted " contraband" with him.
'Wherever the victorious legions appear not only
elee
emancipation but confiscation ensues, and nothing
evidently is contemplated than the downright
dissolution
object, the fthewolesocialord
is the
re-coloni
zation
cif of
Southern land.
This the avowed
tthhean unitdearptapkeein appears
Ivbe present task of the out and out Aboli-
tionists of the
ashington Government. Should
more practicable, less desperate
the
to
oubestion would arise, how arc
these frontier Stateesspec;eallealt with ?—these States
tnhde Central
o'ivvoeefN which
nphtnshireoaehtn.
theytls, arne3de thnooenwvledbri which
open
niws
a.ll.riwariythla
the, best assurances were
and
ayrmitandaet.
lavit hoot
respected in all their rights
they should be submitted to no emancipation
adequate compensation! The answer is read:*
At the time of Lee's late invasion, when
was supposed to he in danger, and the Maryland
was given in Baltimore of the approach of the rebel
cavalry, a great number of negroes were pressed to
work in the trenches to place the city in a state of
defence.
Negroes were pressed in town and coun-
try, whether free Luca or slaver, field lands or

domestic servants. When their labours were ended,
aIL efforts were made to induce these blacks to en-
list; not a few accepted the proffered bounty, and
are off to the various coloured regiments now in the
field ; some came back either dressed in the United
States uniform, or waving the star spangled banner
in their masters' faces, and are now idling about
town and country, daring their former owners to
claim them if they can. Any slave running for
refuge here at the Provost Marshal's, or at any of
the military stations scattered all over the State,
may consider himself as safe as a malefactor used to
be in a sanctuary of the good olden times; and the
slave owner who might be ill advised enough to
lodge a complaint for the recovery of his property,
would sooner incur the risk of losing his own liberty_
than be allowed to dispute that of his former bonds-
man. A cry would ba raised against him as a
disloyal citizen, an anti-Abolitionist, a man of
Southern "proclivities," and he could hardly get
himself out of trouble by submi:ting to the indignity
of that eternal oath of allegiance.

It is thus that emancipation has been carried on
in the State of Maryland. In the city of Baltimore
you would look in vain for a single male slave. In
the country, only those for whom freedom had no
attraction abide with their owners, or those who,
after a first expe-invent in the bush, have found
their cage more to their taste, and have voluntarily
gone back to their thraldom. No man need be a
slave here who has no fancy to be, and the negroes
as property are utterly valueless.
Now this may seem a great gain for the cause of
humanity; and, for what concerns Maryland itself,
it may imply no irreparable evil. But some justice
ought to be done to the slave-owner no lees than to
the slave; and in more Southern States this sudden
breach in all domestic relations, this wholesale, all-
sweeping spoliation and confiscation, will prove
equally ruinous to maser and servant. The most
ruthless Union men have no compunction about it,
and theydwell with complacency on littleless than the
extirpation of the whole Southern race, and the sub-
stitution of Northern colonists in their stead. The
scheme would be too monstrous if it were practicable,
When the Franks took two-thirds of the lands of
1 the vanquished Gauls, or the Lombards shared the
land, slaves, and cattle of the prostrate Latins, they
did nothing so barbaric as the cold-blooded politi-
cians of the Northern Republic now contemplate.
Granted that slavery was a great evil—the greatest
of evils—it may be questioned whether the remedy
is not a thousand times more grievous and iniquitous
than the evil itself; it may be questioned whether
the remedy will cure, or only a thousand times ag-
gravate the evil. Granted that the Southern pee-
were " rebels and traitors," it may be questioned
whether they were all equally guilty, or whether
many of them were guilty at all; yet the punish-
ment must needs falls indiscriminately on the whole
race; granted even that they all deserve the same
punishment, was there ever a case of mutiny by
land or by sea in which a whole regiment was shot
or a whole crew hanged ? Surely it was always
considered an act of utmost severity to decimate the
offenders. It is only your frantic and savage abo-
litionist that puts no limits to his bigotry, and ap-
plies his theory without reserve or exception.
Meanwhile, strange to say, in the midst of their
grievous afflictions, nothing can have power to
subdue the spirit of these Marylandians, or bring
them to despair of their sinking cause. " Lee is
still unbroken," they say ; " he may yet come forth
and smite the Northerners a third time. No doubt
the contest has been unequal from the beginning,
and the south begins to feel the exhaustion of its
own efforts. But no one can foresee what the chap-
ter of accidents may bring forth. Come what may,
the restoration of the Union is an impossibility.
The South may be overrun, prostrated, annihilated,
but not reconciled to its destroyer."
It is not difficult to find men equally confident,
equally determined, on the other side. The re-
establishment of the Union is matter of unshaken
faith with the Republicans, and they are ready to
sacrifice to this their idol, not only the whole
Southern race, white and coloured, but themselves,
their prosperity, and, what is more, their liberty—
that liberty which, it might seem, gave that Union
ell its value. The tendency in the North is towards
a concentration of all powers in the hands of the
Washington Government, with an utter disregard
of the independent of the States as sanctioned
by the Constitution. It is on that account that
General Schenck and other military rulers are so
anxious to wrench from their p-isoners an "oath of
allegiance." The oath administered to public
functionaries in this state, for instance, was the
following—" I, A B, do swear, or affirm, that I
will support the Constitution of the United States,
and that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance
to the State of Maryland, and support the Consti-
tution and laws thereof." By the transfer of this
allegiance from the individual State to the Federal
Government, a reform is contemplated in the whole
Union, the tendency of which will be the extinction
of all local freedom. May be, this encroachment of
the Central Power may sooner or later raise strong
opposition in the North no less than in the South;
but, in the meanwhile, the basis of strong military
government is every where laid, and the President,
at the head of a million of combatants, will not be
visited with impunity, particularly if, after the ex-
piration of the present administration, Mr. Lincoln
were superseded by such a lawyer-soldier as Gene-
ral Butler, General Schenck, or any of his present
champions and instruments. No doubt the day
will come when the Republicans themselves will
fret at the yoke they have so eagerly taken on their
neck ; but will they be able to shake it off ?

- •
Yesterday was Thanksgiving-day here by order.
The Marylanders were bidden to give praise for the
victories which have cost them so much of their
best blood, which have damaged a Cause to which
two-thirds of their population are so strongly at-
tached. Most of the shops were shut, and a very
few of the churches were opened. A very scanty
display of flogs was made from the top windows
but the town was quite empty, most of the citizens
having disappeared for the day. The whole of the
Catholic and most of the Episcopal clergy, with the
exception of the Yankee Bishop, are Secessionists
at heart, and they refused to officiate. Decidedly
had a stranger beard nothing of the festivity, he
would have been struck with nothing besides the
utter desolation and silence of the holiday-making
city.

From the various battle-fields there is no news.
From the Rappahannock nothing bat unmeaning
skirmishes. At Charleston no progress. In the
south-west no important movement. The heat
every where overpowering, yet with less fatal re-
sults to the belligerent parties than might have
been anticipated.

A FRENCH MURDERER.—A man named Lefevre
has just undergone the extreme penalty of the law
at Compiegne,
accompanied him
wine. The
u expected in
his
to
for having murdered a farmer named Vilcoq,
at Armancourt
(Oise),cellar,
la r, a
sumwhere
of
fLr eo fr
ne v
ir
,a 2
oho af d.
under the pretence of purchasing some
to 1,4001. in the h murderero
before placed
an y t in
the house, but the farmer had only a few days
Not fi
money, ands of a lawyer at Compeigne.
.this led to his arrest and
Lefevre took a razor, which he
nding
sold to a barber at Len,meii
conviction, as the murdered '
man's name was scratched on
of the execution, being
the handle. On the mornin
once
ho ascended the
'''lm
Thnee'sn'ealtd maptioene,
moment all was over.—
brought from Beauvais to Cogm
ce gave himself up
tsoc atffhoel de
xue-ictuht
igorneearts c.
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