The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-07 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the ?imes Correspondent.)

NEW YORK, April 24.
The outcry against England has partially subsided.
The mails of the Peterhoff have been surrendered;
and the main interest of the war has been once more
transferred to Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The
Confederates appear to have relaxed their usual
vigilance at the first named place, or so large a force
of gunboats and rams as safely ran the gauntlet of
the batteries could not possibly have got through.
The friends of the South in this city affect to treat
the matter lightly, though what grounds they have
for their comfort are not easy to discover. In other
quarters there is little doing. Charleston and the
Atlantic cities are relieved from the immediate
prospect of danger, and the rams and Monitors are
tinder repair, preparatory to active operations above
Baton Rouge. " Sail, says the King ; hold, says,
the wind," is a proverb that finds illustration to day
upon the Rappahannock. President Lincoln has
ordered General Hooker to advance ; but rain and
mud, two more powerful potentates, have impera-
tively commanded him to stay. And when General
Hooker is thus incommoded by too much water, the
safety of Generai Rosecrans is endangered by too
little; and generally throughout the wide regione
drained by the Mississippi and its feeders there is a
likelihood of such a continued fall of the waters as
to cause considerable anxiety for the safety of all
Federal gunboats which have ventured into any but
rivers of the first magnitude. General Banks, be-
lieved to be in imminent peril between Baton
Rouge and Port Hudson, has made his appearance
unexpectedly in the rich region of the Bayou Teche
—called the garden of Louisiana—and, if successful,
will no doubt endeavour to make his way into the
country of the Red River, to co operate with the
fleets of Admirals Porter and Farragut—which can
either ply on that stream or the Mississippi, as cir-
cumstances may dictate.
Neither the President, General Burnside, nor
General Hooker appear to much advantage in Burn-
side's general order No. 8, under the date of the
231 of January, which was suppressed by the Con-
gressional Committee on the conduct of the war,
with the prudential and patriotic motive of pre-
venting scandal. By some means or other the
document has been permitted to see the light. It
discloses the ugly fact that the demoralization of the
army of the Potomac, after M'Clellan was deprived
of the command, was extreme, and that either Gene-
ral Burnside or General' Hooker is unfit to lead an
army. In that order General Hooker is accused by
General Burnside of insubordination, disrespect to
and disobedience of his superiors, and unmilitary
as well as ungentlemanly conduct which almost
amounted to mutiny, and for such misconduct he is
ordered, subject to the President's approval, to be
dismissed the army. Three Brigadier-Generals for
the same offences are subjected to the same degra-
dation ; and five other officers, of whom two are
Mjor Generals, two Brigadiers, and one a Colonel,
are relieved from duty, and ordered to report to the
Adjutant- General. These chargee are either true or
false. If true, the President ought to have con-
firmed the action of his Commanding-General, or
brought General Hooker to trial. If false, General
Burnside was unfit to hold his position and should
himself have suffered the doom which he wished to
inflict upon others. But the good-natured President
adopted a very original course of proceeding which
did justice to nobody. He allowed General Burn-
side, who made the charges, to resign his command,
and immediately appointed General Hooker to the
vacant place, showing, one would think, that he
believed the charges to be unfounded. But that he
could not have believed General Burnside to be
guilty of the crime of making false charges against
his subordinates would also appear from the fact
that he shortly afterwards appointed him to a high
command in Ohio, which he still holds. Nor is the
case more intelligible when it is considered that no
less than eight other officers were either rightfully
or wrongfully accused on the same authority, and
that a stain must rest upon the purity of their
military fame as long as these charges remain
uninvestigated, or, at all events, as long as General
Burnside keeps silence and refuses to admit pub-
licly that he was in error. It was notorious at the
time when he planned the ill-judged attack against
Fredericksburg, in which he was so thoroughly, and
it may be said so cruelly defeated,that all, or nearly
all, the General officers under his command disap-
proved his temerity and predicted the results.
Everybody said he was a gallant soldier, but no one
admitted that he was a wise one. In any other
country the publication of these facts, humanely
suppressed by the committee, would render it im-
perative upon the Commander-in Chief to order a
court-martial, if the accused officers did not them-
selves demand it. But, as the Commander-in-Chief
and the President are the same person, and as the
President's own judgment is impugned either by the
appointment of Hooker or the re-appointment of
Burnside, it is probable that as far as Mr. Lincoln
is concernFd nothing further will come of it. It only
remains to be seen what steps, if any, will be taken
by the incr.lpated officers in vindication of their
characters.

Mr. Horace Greeley has offended the Abolitionist
party, and efforts are to be made to withdraw its
support from the Tribune, which his zeal and abili-
ties have converted into one of the most influential
journals of the country. Mr. Greeley's position is a
singular one. More than any living writer he has
moulded and guided the Republican party. It was
his influence more than that of any other person that
defeated Mr. Seward for the Presidency, and secured
the election of Mr. Lincoln. Hence Mr. Lincoln has
always treated his opinions with marked respect,
and Mr. Seward has as uniformly mistrusted and
disliked him. It was Mr. Greeley who goaded the
Administration into ordering the advance upon
Manassas, which led to the first battle and route of
Bull Run. It was Mr. Greeley who urged the Pr-
esident to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation.
In all cases of difficulty Mr. Lincoln is known to
have well considered what opinion would be passed
upon his decision by the Tribune and the party
which it led, and, even when he disagreed with Mr.
Greeley, has declared that he could not afford to
quarrel with him." Mr. Greeley has been far too
honest a politician to be a thoroughly consistent
one. He has had the man iiness on several occasions
to admit that he was wrong, which is more than can
be said for any other public man in America. When
the first faint murmurs of discontent from the South
proved to the satisfaction of all far-seeing statesmen
that there would be a rupture of the Union Mr.
Greeley expressed himself strongly in favour of let-
ting the South depart in peace. This was the true
pc licy to adopt, and if patiently acquiesced in by the
Northern people might have rendered the estrange-
ment temporary which has now become permanent.
But when the attack
was made -
on Fort Sumter he
was carried away, with the rest of his countrymen,
in the whirl of passion which
that event excited.
He could not see that so trivial a
matter did not in
reality affect the question at issue,
and that it it were
wise to allow the South to depart before
that vexatious but harmless bombardment,
returnedit was
equally wise afterwards. He has not yetttly
to his original position in this respect, though there
are symptoms in his writings and throughout
the
editorial columns of the Tribune that he has mis-
givings of the policy of bloodshed, that he is dis-
heartened with the spirit no less than with the con-
duct of the war ; and sincerely anxious for peace if
he can discover hot a mode by which, without loss
of dignity and prestige, the North may withdraw
from the eut,fl er, and, leaving the South to the ma-
nagement of its own affairs, wait patiently for the
healing influence s of time, and the paramount inte-
rests of commerce to bring together in a Leagut—if
net in a U:iion—the kindred people who have come
so violently and so unnaturally into collision. To
this point he will probably veer round at last ; and
if he do, he will find thousands of people to agree
-with him. All the members of the Administration,
together with the bulk of the Abolition or Ultra-
Republican party, have endeavoured during the
whole course of the war to diminish the rights of
the States, and to increase the power of the Cen-
tralt Government. They have striven to construct a
callro , strong consolidated absolutism, to save what they
the life of the nation," heedless if in so doing
they
lost all the liberties that would k
tionality desirable ma e their
• Mr. Greeley has seemed to