The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-11 00:00:00

rim SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JULY 11, 1865.

Letter from the South.

The following letter, from a Southern gentleman
to a friend in Edinburgh, is interesting as showing
the state of feeling in the South since its subju-

gation :

Columbia, South Carolina, May 23, 1865.

The blow was sudden and entirely unexpected.
Matters had gradually culminated to that point that
the surrender of General Lee necessitated the capitu-
lation of General Johnston. The principal causes
that led to this result was the fact that the Southern
Confederacy was fighting such fearful odds—five to
one at least—directly, and the whole world besides
indirectly; for all the Governments supported the
United States Government, and the only sympathy
we had was from citizens of Great Britain (a large
number, I believe). I could never believe until
now that the Governments of England and
France would be so wanting in real statesman-
ship as to allow this country to become re-
united, and I am satisfied that the future will
prove that their true policy was to interfere, and
recognise the Southern Confederacy. If we had got
our irouclads in 1863 we could have raised the
blockade, supplied our exhausted country, and to-
day have been free and independent. We have
been overwhelmed ; not conquered. We feel no
loss of manhood. Nobly we contended against the
fearful odds—gave up our all for our cause—" The
right of self-government." The Yankees could not
conquer our men. They had to resort to a war
upon our women and children—our homes. Sher-
man's army publicly declared that. I heard many
of them say so myself. Most ruthlessly did they
carry out their design. The track of Sherman's
army—some 40 to 50 miles wide and 400 to 500
miles long--through it he carried fire and sword—
nothing left in his path but smoking ruins anddeso-
lation ; live-stock of every description driven off, or
killed, for his army ; killed what they could not
carry away ; all the grain and produce not con-
sumed by his army burned or destroyed : all the
towns in the track more or less burned ; women and
children left houseless and starving.
All this in the 19th century, by a Christian army !I
and upon those they, a short time ago, called their
brothers ! And all for what ? Why, for our simply
asserting the great principle of the right of self-
government—a principle upon which this Govern-
ment is founded, and for which their fathers and
ours fought only 90 years ago. With all these cir-
cumstances against us, we should still have con-
quered if the Yankees had not called in the negro
to their help. The negro did not render them
much assistance in fighting ; but they took him
from his labour and seriously injured our indus-
trial pursuits. The negro has given us no
trouble by insubordination ; but he could not
withstand that which was held out to him, to do
nothing and be fed and clothed—his idea of
liberty. The Yankees (except in the case of a
small number of genuine, though mistaken phi-
lanthropists) care nothing about the negro, except
to use him. Sherman's army robbed the negroes
here in Columbia (that I saw) and through the
country, just as thoroughly as they did the whites,
and many a poor slave they carried away came back
to his master, saying " he had seen enough of the
Yankee." Hundreds perished in the track of his
army.

At first, I thought a liberal policy would prevail,

and something like sound statesmanship rule the
North. Even Sherman, with all his infamy of
burning, still had sense enough to learn, by his
intercourse with the South, that the true way to
settle the difficulty between the sections was to
act generously, and thus prevent future trouble ;
but his counsels were cast away—wild, blind,
devilish fanaticism must have its way until it
has burned itself out. The " Puritans," under
Cromwell, the French, under Robespierre, could
not be stopped ; so with the present " Puritans,"
their wildest passions will have sway until the whole
nation, North and South, becomes sick of them—
then " The King will have his own again." The
sober second thought of the Northern people them-
selves must soon become disgusted with the set that
rule at Washington now. My soul sickens, how-
ever, at the thought of what we must suffer in the
meantime. We shall be overrun with a herd of the
most avaricious, thieving, unprincipled set of men
the world ever saw—the United States Government
trying to get as much as possible out of us, and the
army of sharpers robbing both us and the Govern-
ment. I think the Yankee Government intend to
take all our cotton, some 172 millions to 200 millions
bales, on some pretext or other, and all the other
property they can lay their hands upon—in other
words, we are to be generally plundered. Such is
our conviction now from all we can see.

I presume the Yankee Government intend to
emancipate the negroes, but their great problem is
" what to do with them." The Southern people,
the slaveholders, care very little about it. Slavery
has been gradually changing during the past fifty
years. The negro of the present day is no more
like the savage landed on our shores by foreign
and Yankee traders (for be it always borne
in mind that the Southerner was not engaged in
the slave-trade, it was principally carried' on by
the fathers of the very men now fighting us), some
100 years ago, than the Saxon slave of William
" the Conqueror" was like the peasant of England
of the present day. The process of emancipation
was going on silently and gradually, but surely.
We took the negro a wild beast ; to-day he is far
advanced in civilisation and Christianity, clothed,
and in his right mind, and his condition more
improved than that of the Saxon serf during a
like period. The negro was making his way up
surely—the master was giving way to his advance-
ment—in a few years their sale at auction and
separation of families would have ceased ; it had
engaged the attention of all our religious bodies,
and must soon have been effected ; public opinion
was steadily tending that way, and the negro would
have soon obtained that position in the social
scale that God designed for him ; what that is or
was, Ido not pretend to say. Five thousand years
have shown him to be inferior to the white man,
still we were willing to leave that to God to deter-
mine. His emancipation would then have come
gradually-, like that of the Saxon slave, for no one
can point out exactly when that took place. The
proof of the mildness of our so-called " slavery" is

in the fact that the Yankee has failed to incite
the negro to deeds of revenge or murder against
their masters. They were induced to leave their
masters under the allurements of no " work and
plenty to eat." Thousands of British subjects
would have done the same during the excitement of
the French revolution if an army had landed near
Manchester promising plenty of food and immunity
from toil, and the distribution of the nobles' estates
among them. If the Yankee would only consult
the Southern planters, they would cheerfully devise
a scheme that would work harmoniously and prove
beneficial to both classes, but I am afraid it will be
managed in such a way as to produce a violent shock
and antagonism between the races, in which the
negro must go down. I am satisfied the Yankees
mean to drive out and exterminate the negro ; they
have no love for them really (I mean, of course, to ex-
cept always a few honest ones). Into the future, I
confess, I dare not look ; what is to be unfolded
God alone knows, and it is only the conviction of
his superintending care that supports us in this dark
and trying hour. •If the oppression becomes too
great, the soldiers of an hundred battles will not
submit, and a new scene in the great drama of blood
will be enacted. So much for my bleeding country!
The murder of Lincoln and attempt on Seward
has been attempted to be put on the leaders of the
Southern Confederacy by the designing politicians
of the North, but be assured they had no hand in
it whatever ; it is not our way of doing business.
Assassination is not characteristic of the South,
and it was not to our interest to put Lincoln and
Seward out of the way ; for we knew we could get
better terms out of them than we could hope for out
of Johnson and the violent clique that now rule.
Johnson is a man of the lowest origin (not poor and
virtuous parents even), and a renegade Southerner ;
so from him we had nothing to expect. The
Southern people repudiate the imputation ; they
think, of course, Lincoln met but a righteous retri-
bution for plunging this country in war ; but we ,