The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-23 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, May 9.

With the most sincere and kindly disposition to
support President Johnson in the discharge of the
delicate and arduous duties so suddenly and unhap-
pily thrust upon him, there is an evident feeling of
uneasiness among all cautious and reflective men
lest his administration should, in American phrase,
" breed trouble." His proclamation, in which he
broadly accuses Mr. Jefferson Davis of the diabolical
crime of subornation of murder, is too astounding
to be accepted by the mass of the people as justified
by the known or presumable facts of the case.
The inclusion of the names of Messrs. Clay,
Thompson, Sanders, Tucker, and Cleary, men not
very wisp, perhaps, and certainly not very pru-
dent, but men whose defects rather leant to
the virtuous side of conviviality and good fellow-
ship than to the vicious side of hate, malice,
and conspiracy, strengthens the conviction that
the President has listened to passion rather than
to reason in attempting to fix upon Mr. Davis
the horrible guilt of taking the life of Mr. Lincoln.
The South gained, and could gain, nothing by the
murder. The North gained nothing by it—unless
it were the substitution of an untried man for a tried
one in the chief magistracy ; which, under the cir-
cumstances, can scarcely be deemed an advantage.
No party or sect profited by it. In fact nobody
gained anything but Johnson, who, by the unerring
aim of the assassin's pistol, was taken out of the
obscurity of the Vice-Presidential station, and con-
verted into the equal of the most powerful Sove-
reigns of the earth. The new President should
have remembered before giving the credence to the
confessions of the miserable creature Harrold, or
the other disreputablerowdies who have been arrested
for a real) or supposed complicity in the crime of
Booth, that the man who would give himself up as
Harrold did, to gain a few additional hours of life,
would tell the most diabolical lies for the same ob-
ject, and that such a creature if asked to incrimi-
nate the Khan of Tartary, or the Emperor of China,
would do it as readily and glibly as he would incri-
minate Mr. Davis or Mr. Beverly Tucker; and that
being an assassin of the most cowardly sort, he must
be held to be a liar and a perjurer, unless every
statement he makes shall be corroborated by the
subtle links of circumstantial evidence, or by the
corresponding testimony of honest and unsuspected
men. The proclamation has produced a very bad
effect. There is not one man in a thousand who
believes that Mr. Jefferson Davis,. or any of the
gentlemen named in it, had anything whatever to
do with the crime, or who does not think that Mr.
Johnson has been too hasty in affixing his name to
so dreadful a document.

Another circumstance which creates an unpleasan

feeling in the minds of moderate men, who consci-
entiously believe that the constitution and the laws
of the United States are fully sufficient to meet all
the requirements of public liberty and safety, is that
the Administration has decided that the conspirators
shall be tried by a military commission, and not by
the ordinary tribunals. There can be no pretence for
asserting that any jury of Americans which could be
impannelled in Washington, New York, or any
other city of the Union, would err on the side of
leniency to criminals such as these, or that any but
a fair, full, impartial, and dispassionate inquiry into
their guilt or innocence would be countenanced by
the bench, the bar, the jury, or the public. There is,
however, a misgiving that a military commission
will neither be so just nor so patient, and that The-
mis in uniform and shoulder-straps is not the Themis
for the trial of any offence that has not been com-
mitted in the camp or the battle-field. The awful
accusation made against President Davis and the
five unhappy Southern gentlemen who for the last
12 months have made Canada their home, renders it
if possible more than usually imperative that the trial
of the conspirators should be open and full, that the
evidence should be thoroughly sifted, not simply as
regards their own individual guilt or innocence, but
as regards the individuals whom their confessions
have inculpated. It cannot be for the credit of the
American name that this conspiracy should prove to
be the deliberate act of statesmen and politicians

plotting with a crazy tragedian and the lowest ruf-
fians of the rum-shop and the hotel-corridor, to com-
mit a crime so abhorrent and useless. It would tend
to remove a stigma from the national character if
the crime should after all turn out to be—what most
people believe—the individual act of Booth and the
half -witted bravos who were fascinated by his man-
ners and fed upon his extravagance. Whatever may
be the judgment pronounced by a purely military
tribunal, unaided by a jury, it will be received
with distrust if it include the condemnation of any
persons not present or represented before it. Not
alone for the sake of justice, and for the truth of
history, but for the credit of the Administration, it
is essential that no suspicion should attach either
now or hereafter to the purity, the impartiality, and
the jurisdiction of the tribunal before which six
absent gentlemen are to be tried—not for their lives,
perhaps, but for that which is more than life—their
honour and their true place in the annals of this
memorable but most deplorable war. The fact, too,
that the chief criminal and arch-conspirator is be-
yond the reach of human law, and that his tongue
can add nothing to the knowledge sought to be ac-
quired of the promptings and motives of his dread-
ful deed, ought to make President Johnson and his
Government careful how by any appearance of un-
fairness in that trial they lay themselves open to the
suspicion of caring less for absolute and impartial
justice than for the chance to blacken with immortal
infamy the character and names of their defeated
political opponents.
Mexico has, and always has had, a mysterious
charm in the imagination of the North. It is be-
lieved to be the destined inheritance of the Anglo-
American race. It is known to be naturally rich, and
to be but imperfectly cultivated and developed. The
youth of the great cities look upon it as the arena
of great exploits, where every man with a strong
right arm and an inflexible purpose can, in the
event of a war between Mexico and the United
States, carve for himself with his sword as splendid
a possession as any Norman baron ever carved
out of Saxon England in the days of William the
Conqueror. The indications are many, even at this
early hour, that the impulse of the Americans to-
wards Mexico will strengthen from day to day, and
that the large class in both of the lately contending
sections, who have become inured to the life of
camps, and unfitted for the calmer pursuits which
they abandoned to become soldiers, will need but
little persuasion to try their fortune in the land
of Montezuma. As the Federal Government has
never recognised the Emperor Maximilian, but has
never discontinued its official and friendly relations
with President Juarez, whom it considers the legal
and constitutional Chief Magistrate of the Mexican
Republic, it is not likely to prevent recruiting for
his army, and even were it desirous of avoiding a
difficulty with the Emperor Maximilian, and conse-
quently with the Emperor Napoleon, who placed
him where he is, and whose arms alone can main-
tain him on the throne, it is not likely that in this
respect it could control the settled purpose and dar-
ling passion of the people. It might prevent Gen.
Ortega from openly recruiting in New York and
Washington, but could, with all its power and good-
will, no more prevent a large immigration of its
disbanded soldiery in Mexican territory than the
British Government could prevent the immense
exodus of the Irish people into America. There is
a venomous coterie in politics, and a larger section
of the army, which talks about a Fenian raid into
Canada as oue of the most necessary results of the
conquest of the South ; but there is little likelihood
that anything will come out of their evil animus but
froth and " buncombe." The danger as regards
Mexico is more real.

RAILWAY COMPENSATION CASES.—A compensa-
tion case, " Wall and Robson v. the London, Chatham, and
Dover Railway Company," for a house and land, 48, Lud-
gate-hill, was decided in the Lord Mayor's Court on Satur-
day. The claim put in was for £lO,OOO, and the jury
awarded £7,500. Another case, heard yesterday, " Simon
v. the Metropolitan Railway," was a claim for freehold pro-
perty in Little Moorfields. The claim was £4,000. A con-
ference took placo between counsel on both sides, which
ended in an arrangement. It was announced that the
co•npany would take the property at £1,900, and a verdict
was entered for that sum.

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11'51 Lc,
11'
Cirts'

HER MAJESTY.

BALMORAL, May 20.

The Queen, with Princess Helena, Princess
Louise, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold,
arrived at Aboyne station at half-past one o'clock,
and drove from thence to Balmoral.

The Duchess of Athole, the Hon. Mrs. H. Bruce,
Miss Bowater, the Duke of Argyll, Lieutenant-
General the Hon. Charles Grey, Colonel H. Pon-
sonby, Mr. Brown, Mr. Buff, and Mr. Sahl were in
attendance on her Majesty.
Major-General the Hon. A. and Mrs. Gordon
arrived at Balmoral on a visit to her Majesty.