The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-18 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA..

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, July 3.
The remarkable apathy of New York continues
undisturbed. According to all present indications,
not even the capture of Washington would startle i;
into action. Perhaps, were General Lee to take pos-
session of Philadelphia, and exact from its prim
Quakers and prosperous Germans an imperial ran-
som of 10,000,000 or 20,000,000 dole. in gold, not
greenbacks, New York might be awakened to the
necessity (not of sending 200,000 or 300,000 sturdy
and patriotic volunteers to repel the invaders ; but)
of casting its voice in favour of an immediate cessa-
tion of hostilities and a conference to debate the
terms of peace and separation. There is no warlike
enthusiasm whatever. Many regiments march up
Broadway, returning frcm the war, but few march
down to take part in it. The bankers and merchants
do not, as they did six or eight months ago, open
their purses to offer hundreds of dollars in bounties
to volunteers, and if they did the volunteers would
not answer to the call or be captivated by the money.
Even the orators of the Royal League's are silent and
refrain from offering to their imperilled country the
cheap aid of their " Buncombe." An English gentle-
man who has been absent from New York for six
weeks, shooting the wild buffalo on the far wrstern
prairies beyond Kansas, returned yesterday. Having
learnt from the newspapers on the way that Bath-
more, Philadelphia, and Washington were menaced
0y one of the most stupendous invasions recorded in
history, he naturally expected to find this great city
in a state of intense commotion and filled with all
the warlike pomp, parade, and bustle that usually
attend tne crises of a nation's fate. But he found
nothing of the kind. No drum-beat or trumpet-
cdl ; no meeting of legions for the attack or the 6e-
fence ; no cessation of ordinary business; no appeals,
oral or verbal, to the patriotism of the multitude;
no meetings of grave city dignitaries to discuss the
danger and the means to avert or lessen it; no
council of the venerable heads that direct the finan-
cial and commercial enterprise of one of the chief
cities of the world ; no knots of earnest citizens
gathered at street corners in earnest colloquy on the
dangers of the present or the chances of the future
were to be heard or seen. Everything was precisely
as before; the same busy men and frivolous women
blockaded Broadway in the pursuit of business or
pleasure ; the same bounding life and exuberant
prosperity displayed themselves at every turn ; the
equipages of the " shoddy" contractors rolled
through the fashionable avenues, or hurried to the
Central-park to display the too gorgeous finery, the
too pretentious jewelry of the fair occupants, grown
too suddenly rich to be quite at ease in the unusual
position into which the good fortune of their hus-
bands and fathers and the bad fortune of their coun-
try had thrust them. And this unconcern of all
classes is so remarkable that every one sees and
admits it. The newspapers moralise over, but do
not understand it, not one having any other expla-
nation to offer than that the people are disgusted
with the war and with the Government, and hope
that Gen. Lee will take Washington and make a
prisoner of Mr. Lincoln, and so end a difficulty that
seems to present no other so feasible and so happy
a solution.