The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-14 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the times' Special CArrespondent.)
NEW YORK, DEc. 30.
The fierce proclamation of the Southern President
has not surprised any one. Something of the kind
was anticipated before the Ist of January, to warn
President Lincoln of the dangers of retaliation, in
case he should persist in exciting a servile war in
the Cotton States. It is not likely, however, to
have much, if any, effect on the course of Northern
policy. Gen. Butler, who is the especial object of
the wrath of Mr. Jefferson Davis, had been recalled
six weeks before the 23d inst., the date of the issue
of the document, and the fact must have been known
in Richmond by the 20th. To order Gen. Butler
to be hanged if captured, to declare his subordinate
officers to be felons, not soldiers, and to reserve
them for the felon's doom should they fall into the
hands of the Confederate authorities, is as useless,
under the circumstances, as Mr. Lincoln's " bull
against the comet." General Butler is by this time
safe at Washington, or speedily will be, and, hav-
ing had no command since the 15th inst., when he
formally took leave of his army, he had no subor-
dinate at the time when Mr. Davis fulminated his
decree against his neck and theirs. The only re-
sult of the proclamation on the penal fate of the ex-
tyrant of Louisiana will be to goad Mr. Lincoln to
appoint him to high office; perhaps to a command
in the field, but more probably to Mr. Stanton's seat
it", the Cabinet.
General Butler's portrait as painted by himself
contrasts amusingly with his portrait as painted by
Mr. Jefferson Davis. In his farewell address to the
army he recapitulates his own services in thanking
the troops for theirs. He restored law, order,
quiet, and peace to a city filled with the bravos
of all nations, where for a score of years,
during the profoundest peace, human life was
scarcely safe at noonday. He illustrated with his
army the best traits of the American soldier, and
encuained the admiration of those who came to scoff.
Landing with only 76 dollars in the military c est,
he gave his country's treasury nearly half a mi lion
of dollars, and supplied the wants of the troops at
la
so economical a rate that his expedition cost the
Government less by four-fifths than any other it
had sent out. He fed the starving poor, and the
wives and children of his enemies, and by so doing
converted his enemies into friends. By his practi-
cal philanthropy he won the confidence of the slaves,
who hailed him as their deliverer, and aided him as
willing servants and faithful labourers. By steady
t i u
handl picture, a
s Hamlet's dhra :
e n
wheni
nt
fh byfall
il a
al se h e affectionatelength
graces of Hype-
the and
front attention to the laws of health he stayed the pesti-
lence, and, a humble instrument in the hands of
God, he demonstrated the necessity that his crea-
tures should obey His laws if they would preserve
locks,fnt tender
like
a
the inestimable blessings of health. This is a beau-
f
portrayed his father.
JWovee'ss, th see the
the yaw e
eye like Mars'to threaten and com-
rrnioann.d,"Naonrd is thallte picture altogether untrue, for
General Butler, whatever his ungallantry and ra-
pacity may have been, was unquestionably an en-
lightened sanitary reformer, and thoroughly under-
stood his business. But the companion picture, the
Satyr to the Hyperion, will be studied by all who
really desire to know what sort of a man was Ben

jamin Franklin Butler, pro-Consul of New Orleans.
Mr. Jefferson Davis has drawn it in broad, vigo-
rous outlines, that all the world can recognise. For
hanging Mumford for hauling down the flag of the
Federal Government three days before Butler came
into military occupation of the city he is painted as
"a cold-blooded and deliberate murderer," and as
an " outlaw and common enemy of mankind." He
is one who committed outrages and atrocities not
permitted by the rules of international law, Or the
usages of civilised warfare. He imprisoned peace-
ful and aged citizens, unresisting captives and non-

combatants, in dungeons and fortresses with chains
attached to their limbs, and treated the selling of
medicines to sick and wounded soldiers as a crime
worthy of savage and degrading punishment.

He encouraged his brutal soldiers to insul t and
outrage ladies ; he tore helpless and inoffensive
women from their homes, and subjected them

to solitary confinement in fortresses and pri-
sons, and fed them upon loathsome rations which
had been condemned as unfit for the use of the
Federal soldiery. He sought and invented pretexts
for plundering the inhabitants of a captured city
and forced them to elect between confiscation of all

their property and consequent starvation, or take
an oath against their conscience to bear allegiance
to the invader of their country. He drove the slaves
from their plantations in the neighbourhood of New
Orleans, unless their owners would consent to share
their crops with him, his brother Andrew I. Butler,
and other officers; and by his act of sequestration
west of the Mississippi he subjected a quarter of a
million of human beings of all ages, sexes, and con-
ditions to starvation. And, finally, he incited the
slaves to insurrection against their masters by every
license and encouragement, and actually armed
numbers of them to engage in servile war—a war
far exceeding in its horrors the most merciless
atrocities of savages. This portrait also is neither
untrue nor unlike, and will probably go down to
posterity as that by which General Butler will be
most easily recognised in that historical picture gal-
lery where the Neros, the Caligulas, and the Alvas,
as well as the Couthons, the Marats, and the Fou-
quier Tinvilles have already found a place. History,
like Madame Tussaud, has its " Chamber of Hor-
rors," and in that niche posterity when it looks for
Benjamin F. Butler will be certain to find him.
It is likely that the Federal Government will pay
no attention to the charges which Mr. Davis brings
against
will General Butler, and that the General him-
selftreat them with silence if not with indiffe•
rence. But in that great and supreme court of
Public Opinion—that court the jurisdiction of which
embraces the civilised world, the indictment, of
which the counts aro mercilessly stated by the
Southern President, will be tried and decided. If
the whole charge be not sustained, much of it will.
General Butler need not expect, and certainly will
not obtain, the love even of his own Puritanical
New England, but he will certainly extort its admi-
ration for the possession and display of qualities
which would have re;idered him the model Pasha
of a model Sultan.

The proclamation, or address, of General Banks
on assuming the command vacated by General
Butler is much approved as a specimen of what
may hereafter be expected of one who knows how
to combine in a higher degree than his predecessor
the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re. The
general, who is known to have accepted this com-
mand with reluctance, and only from an imperative
sense of duty, will have a difficult task to perform.
Being one of the honestest, if not the ablest, men
whom the war has produced, every possible allow-
ance will be made for him, should he not by his
first achievements come up to the popular expecta•
tions. General Banks has no enemies ; and the only
regret among his friends is that he should have
been sent to a place where the chances of success
are so greatly against him, lie is strongly in favour
of the unity of the Republic for geographical
reasons, and writes in this sense in his proclama-
tion. All that can be said in reply to a train of
argument which facts may overthrow, if other
logic do not, is that the very same arguments drawn
from geography might be adduced for the unity of
Europe under one Government, if its map were at
this moment, like the map of North America, at the
arbitrament of the sword. All such considerations
arc idle. The sword will decide in the New World,
as it long ago decided in the 041, and political geo-
graphy will assume its own lines as circumstances
may dictate. There is a social as well as a
physical geography of which General Banks takes
no account,
and social geography has already
•
declared that the South and the North are

different peoples, who neither think nor act