The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-01 00:00:00

vegetables, &c., were not to be had at any price, -
even at first-rate hotels.
The worst of it all was that one co IP hardly
make out what was the matter. The p: cple were
evidently panic-struck, mortified, vex , helpless.
The mob had risen all at once, like on in their
path, and had gained the victory elm t without a
struggle. Something like 80, 90, or even as many
as 150 persons, you were told, had been killed in
the various encounters. Five or six negroes had
been hanged. Several officers of the militia had
fallen. One of them, Col. O'Brien, had rashly fired
his revolver upon a crowd; he had fallen into the
hands of the mob, and had met with a "thousand
deaths" at their hands. Then such a shop had been
sacked, such a house gutted; such a person had been
pounced upon and robbed of his watch in Fifth
Avenue. The whole town was a scene of massacre
and pillage. The evil was great, and the exagge-
ration still greater. The worst feature in the whole
affair was the ominous glare of incendiary fires
lighting up the startled city throughout the night.
Such were the topics of men's talk in New York
on Wednesday. In the evening the police, backed
by the 'Militia, made a deliberate attack on the mob
at their headquarters in First and Second Avenues,
between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, and were
repulsed, although they had two howitzers with
them, and made free use of them. One of the offi-
cers in command, Colonel Jardine, was badly
wounded, and no less than 16 of his men were killed.
The mob have plundered several gunshops, they are
armed with capital rifles, and fire with tolerably
good aim from the windows. Similar encounters
were renewed in the course of the night, and always
with the same results, unfavourable to the public
force. The Militia regiments began to arrive from
the battle-fields in Pennsylvania on that very night
—the 65th, or Buffalo corps, and the 7th, a crack
corps, to which all the young bucks of the New York
city gentry are proud to belong. I saw myself
some of the troops as they came in on Thursday
morning; dirty and ragged they looked, poor fel-
lows, and jaded and halt-killed by the oven-like
atmosphere of the terrible heat which greeted us
here at our landing. Notwithstanding such vast
reinforcements, the troops met with another check
in First Avenue, in a desultory fight between
Seventeenth and Twenty-second street yesterday
morning, and the day closed, I believe, without any
definitive success on their part, although the town
had already resumed its ordinary appearance from
the earliest hour in the morning, and perfect tran-
quillity reigned wherever I moved about in the
evening. The disturbances which had broken out
in all the suburbs and environs of the city were also
everywhere abating, and the communications were
easily re-established.
The murderous and rapacious disposition evinced
by the mob, and the outrages perpetrated by them,
at once weaned from their cause the sympathies of
those who would otherwise have looked with interest
on the movement. The " draught insurrection" de-
generated into a mere Irish riot. Party spirit was at
an end at once, and a cry arose of " Everybody for
himself !" Everywhere men stood up in defence of
their own lives and property. I went about onWed-
nesday evening till late after midnight, and saw
banking-houses protected by garrisons of resolute
men, busy with rifle and cannon, and feasting on the
sandwiches and champagne supplied by their liberal
patrons. I visited the Sub-Treasury, the stately
hall of which was turned into a regular fortress
and was being strongly barricaded, with for-
midable looking brass fieldpieces pointed at
the door. The outside look of things was quiet
and orderly ; but inside the buildings every man
was ready for a mortal strife, the hour for which
happily never came. The newspaper offices were
also strongly armed. Some of them, as that
of the New York Times, which had been threat-
ened by the mob, were blazing with gaslights, as if
out of bravado and defiance. The 7ribune office
was, I believe, attacked on Tuesday, bat the mob
were unable to effect an entrance, and all their fury
was spent on the window of an inoffensive lower
floor. The alarm at the time I speak of—Wednes-
day night—was great, yet the better class of New
Yorkers were cool and collected. Indeed, they
heard and talked of white men killed and black men
hanged with an unconcern, with a sang froid which
curdled my very blood. The indifference of these
people to the loss of human life is surprising, and I
heard black Republicans, men of a meek, inoffensive
disposition in private life, talk of the necessity of
quelling opposition by bloodshed with a glibness
and a gusto worthy of a Caligula or Torquemada.
About 12 o'clock at night I saw the wounded Col.
Jardine conveyed to the St. Nicholas Hotel in Broad-
way, where Governor Seymour was sitting up in
council. The wounded officer was driven up in a
hackney coach, and was probably not very seriously
hurt.

*Viewed as a mere thieves' riot, the draught rebel-
lion will, of course, soon be put down. Yet the
New York State and city authorities have taken
great pains to announce the suspension of the draught
and the City Council is deliberating on a grant of
2,500,000 dole. for the relief of the conscripts—i.e.,
to buy off those, or some of those, who cannot muster
300 dols, for their own redemption. The whole affair
of the draught would thus be reduced to a new en-
listment by bounties, and would bring the Conscrip-
tion Law to a dead letter. It would also be no small
bone thrown into the jaws of the barking populace.
Bat the humane intentions of the New York authori-
tier meet with anything but favour at Washington,
and give no trifling offence to thestern Republicans in
the State itself. The United States' Government, it
is understood, insists on the draught at any price—
the draught, the whole draught, and nothing but
the draught, as mere matter of punctilio, even
should Federal victories render its operations super-
fluous. Altogether, I see no very good blood spring-
ing
up between the rulers of this "Federal ,t!tate"
of New York and the Federal Government at Wash-
ington. Governor Seymour, who only came up from
Albany, his official residence, on Wednesday, pro-
claimed the city and neighbourhood to be in a
" state of insurrection," thereby thinking he had
taken all the necessary steps for the restoration of
order. But New York is now threatened with "mar-
tial law" from Washington, and people here are dis
posed to question the legality as well as the oppor-
tuneness of a measure which would place this State
at the discretion of the Federal military authorities.
On the whole, this American Union strikes a new-
comer as a rather loose bundle of sticks. There is a
latent but active struggle between State and States
Government—I mean between individual, or muni-
cipal, and Federal Government. A man at the head
of such an empire as New York is not always ready
to attend the behests of a petty functionary Whose
immediate jurisdiction extends no further than a
blank city of empty spaces, and a fifty square miles
district. True, the President represents nations:
sovereignty, and ought to rely on the support of the
men who raised him to power all over the Union and
in New York itself. But partisanship goes through
many phases in a free country, even in thesh ort
Govern-
ment space
of four years, and the power of the Central
is limited by the power which is also vested in
the Government of the individual States. The
consequences of a clash between these two powers
are beyond most men's calculations. Meanwhile,
there are men in New York who openly protest that
the language and acts of the Central Government
are " ir the very spirit and temper which drove the
South into rebellion, and would now seem to be try-
iinhgthtoe drive the North into like rebellion.' Success
South, and the very excesses of the Irish
rioters, are
likely enough to strengthen the hands
of the men of Washington for a time. Bat the game
is not up yet, and victory is sometimes more easily
got than turned to good uses.

JULY 18.
struggle begins in the council
The riot is put down in the
h streets, but the
in
Newe chamber. Yesterday
was a perfectly quiet day York. The pre-
sence of a large military force ove
and in
Ntheeetwhadsjtoiilnl adjoining
lg-
intentioned rabble. The news from the neighbour-
hood is equally reassuring,
counties, in Pennsylvania and the
States, not only have all incipient disturbances
easily suppressed, and the rebels " squelched" been
the operations of the draught have proceeded regtiu:
larly and are now happily completed. The President
has signified his desire that the draught should also
immediately And thoroughly be proceeded with in
New York ; and there seems a disposition on the