The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-08 00:00:00

THE CONFEDERATE STATES,

;From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
RICHMOND, March 23.
In the Illustrated London News of Feb. 21 the
'ollowing passage has caught my eye :
" From the Cumberland River, in Tennessee, fur-
ther atrocities committed on unarmed negroes and
mulatto men are reported. The coloured cabin-boys
and cooks captured on board some Federal steamors
taken at Harpeth shoals, on the Cumberland River,
were taken to an open field and shot in cold blood.
Two others got down by the rudder of the steamer,
and held on with only their heads above water.
Tney were discovered by the Confederates, and
several soldiers were ordered into a skiff, who rowed
close up to them and blew out their brains. The
life of a chambermaid was saved with difficulty by
the clerk of a steamer claiming her as his slave
whom he was removing into Kentucky."
As our opportunities of seeing English journals in
the Confederate States are like angels' visits, and as
there are indications from the use of the term "further
atrocities," that many similar stories have been con-
tributed to the enlightenment of the British public,
let me venture to ask your readers whether it is
necessary that a voice should come from this aide of
the Atlantic to demonstrate to them the ludicrous
improbability of fictions like this? At this moment
the Confederate States, no less or scarcely less than
the Federal, are floating swiftly along a current
which, if this war be protracted for ten months more,
will plunge both sections alike into that great ocean
of repudiation which is consciously and without a
shudder contemplated at Washington, but towards
which there is at least great repugnance professed at
Richmond. In both sections alike the result is that
everything resembling property is eagerly sought
for, as a safe vehicle for the conveyance of a fraction
of those paper promises to pay with which every
man, ragged and tattered though in some instances
be may be, is heavily freighted. In the category of
Property, in spite of Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation, no
man can deny that the negro is still emphatically
included. At the slave market in Richmond not a
day passes but negroes and negresses are eagerly
bought at prices varying from 2,000 to 2,500 dols.;
and if an English eye could ever learn to look with
indifference upon so sad a sight many a smile might
be provoked to see the proud satisfaction with
which a negro, who in ordinary times would have
fetched 1,300 dols., and who has little conception of
the meaning of such recondite terms as depreciation
of the currency, finds himself knocked down at
at an e.d.vance upon that figure of 1,000 dols. " I
told you," said a female slave recently, impe-
rial in tl.e dimensions of her crinoline, and point-
ing proudly to her gold earrings, " that it worn't
for nothing that I wore them things ;" her meaning
being that the large price of 2,300 dols. which she
had just fetched was attributable to her hijouterie.
Under these circumstances is there any other man
in England but Mt. Baptist Noel who believes that
captured Africans are likely by Confederate soldiers
to be taken to an open field and shot in cold blood ?
Is it conceivable that (as I have read in some other
extract from the English press) negroes taken from
the Federals should by the Confederates be lashe
o trees, cowhided, and left there to perish of star-
-- " Is it likely that Mr. Baptist Noel's other
story, about negroes hiding arms and being shot at
Charleston, should contain a grain of truth ? As•
some that it were possible that in such a commu-
nity as Charleston negroes should have sufficient
independence of character to breathe otherwise than
through their masters' nostrils, is there no other way
of punishing them, if insubordinate, than by instant
death ? There are proprietors of coal mines in
Virginia and North Carolina offering at this
moment, by public advertisement, fabulous Prices
for the hire of refractory or disaffected negroes.
And what safer or more remunerative disposition of
such ticklish property as Mr. Noel's imaginary re-
cusants could possibly be found?
It should be remarked that stories such as these,
which bring down the roof of Exeter-hall, are
wisely seasoned for the palate of the English public,
but are seldom ventilated upon this better informed
continent. The Southerner, cavalier though he
may be, has lived too long in affinity with the
Yankee to be wholly insensible to the fascinations
of the almighty dollar. It is possible that some of
the miserable sufferers who are perishing with cold
and hunger at Craney Island, and Cairo, and Wash-
ington may be soothed into uncomplaining silence
by such stories as these, and checked in their aspira-
tion for a return to the tropical savannahs of Dlxie
by that dread of physical palu which the African

vation