The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-23 00:00:00

NEW YORK, Feb. 10.
Mr. Horace Greeley has taken a position on the
war question which makes him for the time being
the most prominent politician and statesman in
America. Those who understand the temper of the
people, and study the current of events, see at a
glance that his logic leads to peace. Consequently,
all who are in favour of the war, whether because
they are making money by it, whether they are
theorists who love the idea of union because they
think that the restoration of the Union, were it pos-
sible, would in 20 or 30 years make the United
States the most powerful nation on the globe, or
whether they are idealogues who would exterminate
the Southern people in the name of the negro, and
think they did God and humanity good service,
unite in denouncing Mr. Greeley as a traitor and
secessionist. But Mr. Greeley's argument stands
firm, and is not to be refuted. He expresses his
opinion that if the North will unite heartily in
the prosecution of the war, that if Republicans and
Democrats will forget or sink all their differences to
support the President, that if the Democrats, more
especially, will cease to embariase the Goverment
by complaining of its every act—financial, social,
or military ; that if they will forbear complaining
of emancipation and throwing obstructions in its
way ; that if they will abandon the question of State
rights, and direct all their energies to the fighting
out of the battle to the last extremity,—it is possible
to subdue the South. He for one is in favour of
fighting upon this basis, and believes that victory
would speedily crown the Nortt ern arms if hostili-
ties were so conducted. But he takes care to state
at the same time that if no great and overwhelming
defeat can be inflicted upon the South before the
, term of enlistment of the two years and the nine
months' Volunteers expires, that if the Democrats
of the North and West will persist in thwarting the
Government, that it they will coutinue to complatu
of arbitrary arrests, of breaches of the Constitution,
of the premium on gold, of the alarming increase of
the public debt, of the corruption of officials and
contractors, of the emancipation of slaves, and of the
employment of negt me as soldiers, and that if they
will obstinately decline to place faith in the honesty
and capacity of Mr. Lincoln and his Ministers, the
cause of the Union is lost; and that it is the duty of
true patriotism to make the best terms it can with
the enemy, in the interest of commerce, humanity,
and civilisation. " The nation," he states in his un-
answerable letter to Senator Doolittle, is dying not
of his or Senator Doolittle's mistakes, " but of some-
thing vastly more formidable—of the persistent and
widespread defection from her service in this trying
hour among those who profess to be loyal to the
Government and the Union." It is because these
words are true the they rankle so deeply in the
minds of the war party ; and that the fiery and
fussy demagogues. who are fattening upon the
war call for Mr. Greeley's- arrest and incarceration
in Fort Lafayette. But Mr. Greeley will not be
touched. The Provost-Marshal will not lay a
finger on him. He has no authority to speak for
Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Seward, or Mr. Blair, or
General Halleck, or Mr. Chase, but he speaks their
convictions. He feels as they feel ; he knows what
they know, and defines their position in a manner
which their official position will not allow them to
confess. Mr. Greeley, though he is the enfant ter-
rible of political life, and has a child's ignorance of
the mischief he may do to his friends and associates,
is entitled to the praise of civic courage in a higher
degree than any other man in the country. He
speaks the whole truth, careless who he may offend,
what plans he may disarrange, what ambitions he
may thwart, or what schemes he may impede. He
compels people to think. It was he who more than
anyone else forced the President to issue his procla-
mation of Emancipation, and it will be he, more
than any other writer or speaker in America, who
will urge him—if he be in a position to be urged—
to incline his mind to the acceptance of European
mediation. The Federal Government is in a dilemma.
It has the courage to go on with the war without
the ability to conduct it. It has the ability to pro-
pose terms of compromise without the courage to
name them. It is afraid of a public opinion which
it misunderstands ; and would rejoice to accept any
respectable proposal for peace, suggested by friendly
Powers, that should spare its own self-love and that
of the American people.
The manner in which the last new proposition of
the Emperor of the French, reported in the telegra-
phic despatches from Halifax by the Europa, which
arrived yesterday, has been received by the public,
shows the change that is gradually working. The
New York limes sees no harm in the proposal that
commissioners from the North and South should
meet A. Montreal to Mecums the whole
subject in the light of the existing situation—hos-
tilities meanwhile proceeding without interruption
—while the Journal of Commerce thinks the propo-
sition entitled to a respectful, perhaps even to a
grateful, consideration.

- Every indication from the North-West, as well as
from the Eastern and Middle States, betokens that
the Democratic party, which forms the large ma-
jority of the people everywhere, has lost the little
heart that it ever had in the war, and that Mr.
Lincoln's proclamation of freedom to the slaves has
been fatal to the Union, The negro was never be-
loved in America. He had his theoretical friends
who desired that he should cease to be a chattel ;
but he never had friends affectionate enough to de-
sire his intimacy, or who were prepared to grant
him social equality. The recent agitation of his
claims to unconditienal freedom has not increased
the number of his admirers ; but, on the contrary,
has excited a feeling of hatred against him in mil-
iions of breasts which, but for the war and all its
bitter questions and bitter calamities, would have
been content to tolerate him in the country as a
useful servant. But all this has been changed. In
the North-West the pre-existing antipathy to the
African has been largely envenomed ; and in the
Middle States the assertion that Washington in-
tended to found a republic of white men—and that
white men in our day ought to have more common
sense than to quarrel about black men—has become
the watchword of a party which beyond all possi-
bility of doubt will certainly carry the next Presi-
dential election, whatever may be tke issues of the
war. And the negroes know it. The mulattoes,
who do all the thinking of the race to which they
belong, see clearly that the white man looks npon
them with no favour ; and that, come what will out
of the feuds of the superior race, the inferior will
profit nothing. Mr. Frederick Douglass, theorator
of the coloured people, and a man of true eloquence,
was advertised to speak on Friday last at the Cooper
Institute, on the subject of the President's procla-
mation; and I attended the meeting that I might
learn what the leader of the negro mind thought
upon the war, and the prospects of his people ; and
that I might see what sort of an auditory would
congregate to listen to him. The large room was
about half full. There might have been 1,200 or
1,500 persons present. But the faces of the great
bulk of them were white. Not more than a hun-
dred and fifty of them were negroes. The rest were
of pure Caucasian blood, and considerably more than
half the number were women. Mr. Douglass spoke
for an hour and forty minutes, and for the whole
time never allowed the attention of his auditors to
flag. He was witty as well as wise, drew upon a
copious fund of anecdote and illustration to support
his arguments, and completely carried with him the
sympathy of the crowd. He was earnest and em-
phatic in his denunciations of the evils of slavery,
and loud in his praise of Mr. Lincoln for the pro-
clamation, but he was equally decided in his denun-
ciation of the hypocrisy of the Northern people, who
pretended to love the coloured man but treated him
as a social outcast. He said there was nothing that
the coloured race in the North so much desired as to
take up arms for the liberation of their Southern
brethren, and that if the people of the North really
required the aid of negro soldiers to save the Repub-
lic, they could have it on condition that they would
act honestly to the negroes and do them impartial
justice. But he denied that the North desired any-
thing of the kind. Fashionable preachers from
New York who maintained that slavery was not
condemned either by the Old Testament or the
New might preach in any of the pulpits of New
England ; but Dr. Cheever, the negro's friend, was
not allowed, even in Boston, the use of a pulpit to
declare that slavery was unchristian. Governor
Andrew, of Massachusetts, was offered the aid of the
coloured men to raise a regiment for the war, to be
commanded by their own officers, but he politely
declined. Governor Tod, of Ohio, was equally
courteous in acknowledging a similar offer, and
Equally earnest in declining it. The negroes tho-
roughly understood what they were about. They
would only enlist in the war on condition of per-
fect military equality with the white man. They
would have the same pay, the same chance of pro-
motion—even to the very highest military offices—
or they would stay at borne and attend to their
business, and leave the white man to fight his own
battles and save his own Republic. These asser-
tions were made with great fervour of manner, and
completely carried the sympathies of the audience.
Many, both of the whites and blacks, rose to their
f
eet and cheered vociferously, but the whites were,
for the most part, Baptist, Independent, and other
clergymen of unfashionable churches, wielding no
influence over the public mind of this city. There
is, as everybody knows, an immensity of Buncombe
oratory in America, and of that " high-falutin" in
which Mr. Robert J. Walker, Mr. George Francis
Train, and the Rev. Mr, Beecher so greatly excel;
but there is none of it about Mr. Douglass. He not
only speaks infinitely better than any of the Bun-
combe charlatans who impose on the good-nature of
speech-loving public, but is worthy to rank as
noes as choice
high as Mr. Wendell Phil He u

English and 83 copious a flow of the exact words
that stir the heart and sway the reason of the mul-
titude as that gentleman, and has immeasurably
the advantage over him when he speaks of the
wrongs, of the negro.—because he speaks as the sic-
tiin of the oppression of which Mr. Phillips is merely
the limner; and if this able and eloquent mulatto
really speaks the sentiments of his people, is not
the Administration to be pitied in its conduct of
a war which, on its own confession and that of its
most enthusiastic friends, must either be supported
by the negroes, or come to a disastrous end P
But though recruiting among the negroes may
languish, there is no lack of white candidates to
command them. There are at least a hundred
Brigadier and Major Generals ready to organise
and command a black army, and there are more
subordinate officers, from the rank of colonel down-
wards to that of lieutenant, ready to take pay and
assume position in black regiments than there
are black soldiers to drill. 112 r. Frederick
Douglass ought to know what the negroes wish.
Between his description of the opinions and feel-
tags of his people, and that given by an Aboli-
tionist writer is the Tribune of this morning, there
is a vital difference. The Tribune's correspon-
dent, writing from Norfolk, in Virginia, a place
which he describes to be overrun with negroes, of
whom 10,000 are ablebodied men in the prime of
life, reports, as the result of his observation, that
they are all anxious to fight. But even he, negro-
lover as he is, will not tolerate theidea of black offi-
cers. "A low rate of pay," he says, " ought to be
given to the negroes. They ought not to be paid
as well as white men, or in any way placed on an
equality with them. The Government is now in-
directly, and in some cases directly, supporting this
great mass of contrabands, and is unable to find em-
ployment for them. Let us make food for powder
of them." Frederick Douglass has different notions
from this gentleman, and so perhaps have the
negroes of Norfolk, who may not feel so much in-
clined to be made food for powder of as their
cruelly kind friend supposes. However this may
be, the Northern people are strongly imbued with
the pride of race, and are coming gradually to the
conclusion that if white men cannot save the
white Republic its doom is fixed; and that the
sooner they make terms with their white brothers
of the South, the better for them and their posterity.
Even the triumphal character which General
M'Clellan's recent tour in New England has
assumed is due in great measure to his known
opinions on the slavery question. General M'Clellan
is an opponent of slavery, but he denies the right of
the Federal Government to intermeddle with or
abolish it, considering it wholly a question for the
people of the several States in which it exists act-
ing through their own Ext cutives and Legislatures,
to retain, to modify, or to abolish, as they please.
In this respect his opinions are in perfect accord
with those of the Democratic party of the North
and North-West. For this reason, as well as for
the fact that he has been made the victim of aboli-
tionist intrigue and persecution, he has become the
most popular man in the country, and would be
elected President to-morrow if the election were
pending. If there be any other as popular as he,
it is General Stonewall Jackson, " old Stonewall,"
as he is affectionately called, whose praises, rebel
though he be, are upon all tongues, and whose
portrait graces the windows of all the book shops
and photographic stores of Broadway. To General
M'Clellan—disagreeable as the fact may be to the
President and his Administration, and to the Re-
publican party generally—the eyes of the whole
people are turned. He has never sought popularity,
but he has won it. He has never obtruded himself
on attention; he has always been patient and dig-
nified ; he has always avoided Buncombe, and even
the fair retaliation which he might have inflicted
upon his opponents; he has invariably kept a
single heart for his duty, and done his best; and the
result is, in connexion with the popular belief in his
military talents, which may or may not have been
overrated, that his reputation obscures that of every
other man in the country. The Army of the Potomac
has ceased to be an army in the true sense of the
word since he was removed from its command, and
is fast falling to pieces from desertion, discourage-
ment, and demoralisation. Were the President to
re-appoint him, that army might possibly be re-
stored to its old efficiency, and gold in Wall-street
would fall 5 per cent. on the mere announcement
of the intention. For the last ten days there have
been constant repetitions of a report that the
President, wiser and more forgiving than his
Ministers, had resolved upon this course, that he
had actually proposed it to his assembled Council,
and that every member of the Government, with
the exception of Mr. Seward, had threatened to
resign if he persisted, and that thereupon he had
ceased to argue the question. The story has ob-
tained all but universal credence ; but those who
best know the President attach the least importance
to it. Mr. Lincoln is a shrewd man, and he knows
that to take M'Clellan back again at this moment
of despondency would be to take back a master.
Public opinion may point to M'Clellan as the com-
ing man, but the President does not believe it, and
there are those around him who think that the real
coming man" sits at the Council Board at Wash-
ington; that the day and the hour are the day and
the hour of the lawyers, and not of military dicta •
tors ; and that M'Clellan, once got rid of, should be
got rid of for ever.

- The future historian of the great Rebellion will
have copious materials for an interesting chapter
on the action of the clergy in a time of civil strife.
The noble army of Puritans, Baptists, and Indepen-
dents, aided by the lay lecturers who strive to
indoctrinate with intolerance the American mind
from the platforms of Lyceums, institutes, and lec-
ture-halls, have in this struggle ranged ihemselves
en masse against the right of private judgment, and
in favour of a bloodthirsty prosecution of the war.
One of them declared at a " Christian" meeting on
Sunday evening last that it ought to be considered
high treason, and a crime justly punishable with
death, to caricature or speak in disparagement of
Mr. Lincoln ; while the once tolerant Dr.
Bellows, who declared that ministers of the Gospel
ought to frequent the theatre, if they took any
pleasure in dramatic representations, went the
length of declaring that. Abraham Linco!n was in
himself the State, and might say with Louis XIV.,
" L'Etat, c'est rnoi," " The President," he argued,
"represented both the constitutional and the re-
served rights of the people"—his oath of office was
binding not only on him but on the people for
whom he took it—that his will in a time of public
danger was a will having an official right to respect
and obediehce ; that it was the duty of all people to
rally around him without dispute or question ; that
he was the official judge of the national peril and
necessity, and that if his testimony were not ac•
cepted there was nothing to trust to." "This war,"
added the bellicose doctor, "is no longer a war in
defence of the Union, the Constitution, and the en-
forcement of the laws ; it is a war to be carried on
no longer with the aim of re-establishing the Union
and the Constitution, with all their old compro-
mises. God means not to iet us off with any half-
way work. lam now convinced, and I consider it
the most humane, the most economical, and the
most statesmanlike policy, now to take the most
radical ground possible, to assume that this is a
war for the subjugation,l or the extermination, of
all persons who wish to maintain the slave
power—a war to get rid of slavery and of
slaveholders, whether it be constitutional or not."
When sentiments like these are uttered by one of
the most eloquent and accomplished scholars and
orators in America, all that can be said is, that if the
American people are not ripe or ripening to endure
a despotism, it is not the fault of some of their
ablest teachers. The man who is the slave of a
theory is a tyrant at heart—whether he be a New
England priest or a Spanish inquisitor. Unhappy
is the country which, in a time of civil commotion,
is encumbered with the advice or assistance of many
such citizens—whether they be lay or clerical.
New York has for the whole of this day been in a
fluster of excitement. Broadway has swarmed with
crowds that blocked the passage against pedestrians,
unless they chose to take the middle of the road
and mingle with the stream of omnibuses and car-
riages. At Grace Church there was a jam of vehicles,
and the police had the utmost difficulty in preserving
order amid a multitude of almost frantic women,
clamouring, shouting, and pressing to force their
way into the sacred edifice. Opposite the Metro-
politan Hotel was another multitude, gazing up at
the windows and refusing to move or. until they had
obtained a sight of some highly-popular if not great
personage. In the evening there was a serenade to
another crowd. What, it may be asked, was the mat-
ter ? Was Richmond taken ? No. Was Charleston
captured, and had the victorious Admiral Dupont
returned to receive the laurel wreath at the hands
of his countrymen ? No. Had Mr. Jefferson Davis
held out the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Abraham
Lincoln, and restored the Union, and were both these
mighty personages in secret session, waiting to show
themselves at the proper time to the impatient and
grateful people ? No. It was but the marriage of a
male and a female dwarf, under the auspices of Mr.
Piaineas T. Barnum, that set the mob of New York
wild with delight and enthusiasm. General Tom
Thumb, 31 inches high, had married Miss Lavinia
Warren, 27 inches high, and Barnum had given
away the bride. President Lincoln, General
M'Clellan, and Mr. Seward might have walked
down Broadway arm in arm at the time, and ex
cited no notice. The heart of New York was not in
them, nor in the war, but was set on the marriage of
two lusus nature, under the auspices of a charlatan.
If it be true that every tragedy ought to have the
elements of a farce in it, the tragedy of the great
American Civil War conforms to the aesthetic ne-
cessity, and the philosophic observer may
laugh or
a cep at the exhibition, us his nature prompts aim.