The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-28 00:00:00

THE SUN LONDON, MONDAY EVENING; JULY 28, 1862.

Even the " rowdyism" of the streets seems to have
been exhausted, and no longer offers itself as food
for powder, or as the substratum on which is to be
rebuilt the shattered portico of the Union. The
soldiers of fortune—the Irish, the Germans, the
Norwegians, and all the non-American element who
dreamt of conquering the South in order to divide
the estates of the cotton planters among themselves
—have lost faith in the realisation of their hope.

The public mind is bewildered with the sudden
change, and asks the reason. " The reason is,"
reply the Abolitionists, " that the Government is

- :
not in earnest in the war. It tries to conciliate the

slave power. It tampers with the rebellion, and

will not use the means which ' God and nature'

have put into his hands. It will not even employ

,he black Unionists to do the digging and the
renching and other hard work of the camp, and

sacrifices its white soldiers in the unwholesome
. _

swamps of Virginia in doing what negroes would
do much better. The Government turns a deaf ear
to the cry of the Abolitionists,
and is supported by
the great bulk of the Northern people. The next
question that presents itself is, what is to be , done
in the emergency ? " Stir up the great cities,' says
the Executive to the Governors of the Northern
States. And the great cities are stirred up accord-
ingly. Mass meetings are everywhere summoned
by daylight and by torchlight. Cities, towns, and
villages, from Maine to Maryland and from New
York to Kansas, organise demonstrations to sup-
port the Government. The young men are advised
and implored to volunteer. They are told that the
State requires their aid to save the Union, which
without them is lost. They are reminded that if
they enrol themselves within a few days they will
receive bounty and a bonus, as well as pay in ad-
vance, but that if they delay for a few weeks, or
even days, the Government will be reduced to such
peril that a conscription will be necessary, in which
case there will be no bounty, and every ablebodied
man between the ages of 18 and 45, on whom the
lot falls, will be compelled to serve or pay for a
substitute. These arguments are strong, but they
do not produce the effect anticipated. The speakers
are earnest and eloquent, but they fail to lash up
the public mind to the excitement of bygone days,
or to roll the little snowball into an avalanche. The
crowd applauds the " bunkum" that is spoken, goes
quietly home, and leaves no perceptible percentage
of the listeners to swell the depleted army. The
speakers themselves, with rare exception, do not
offer to incur the personal sacrifices which they
urge upon others—perhaps, like Mr. Everett, be-
cause they are too old to wield the rifle or brave the
hardships and the malaria of the battlefield; or per-
haps, like others almost as eloquent as he, because
they imagine they can serve their country better
with their purses than with their right hands. But
whatever be the reason, there is a palpable lack of
enthusiasm in every other shape than that of talk.
The Government is painfully aware of the fact, and
striving to postpone the disagreeable arm-
ingnecessityof the negroes, which might help it out of one diffi-
cultyto plunge it into another far greater,has reduced
the term of enlistment from three years to one,
leaving the bounty money as before, with the view
of securing the services of young men with families
and others who object to the longer period. Per-
haps even this concession may fail of its effect. If
it do, there must either be a conscription, an arming
of the negroes, or an abrupt termination of the war.
In the meantime the Government is doing its best
to carry on hostilities upon the old principle, and
the great cities are lending it all the support in
their power.
A mass meeting, which was confidently cal-
culated to prove one of the most numerous ever
held in this city, took place this afternoon, at
four o'clock, in Union-square, a large open space at
the up-town extremity of Broadway, under the
auspices of the Mayor and committees of the prin-
cipal inhabitants of all shades of politics except the
democratics. Every nerve was strained to make it
effective. The banks, warehouses, and public offices
were closed at three o'clock to enable the working
and professional youth of the city to be present.
The result was a miserable failure. The corporation
of New York and the Government navy-yard at
Brooklyn are able between them to command the
presence of 6,000 people at any celebration or
gathering which they have determined to make suc-
cessful. They so determined in this instance. The
carpenters and sailors of the navy-yard—one-third,
or perhaps one-half, of the latter being British sub-
jects—marched in procession up Broadway to the
number of 1,500 ; and the street-cleaners, scaven-
gers, and lamp-lighters, and everybody else who
could be induced to be present by the potent per-
suasions of the Mayor and civic authorities, took
their places at the appointed hour at the place of
meeting. But, with all these aids and appliances,
there were at no time so many as 6,000 people pre-
sent. It was not a large public meeting such as
we see in England, in which one man's voice could
ring over the whole assembly, but a collection of small
public meetings. There were four or five stands, and
four or five different sets of speakers; and although
the newspapers of to-morrow that sympathise with
the Government may represent it as "crowded" and
" enthusiastic," I can report of it, as the result of
my own observation, that there was no crowd and
no enthusiasm ; that I walked from one stand to the
other with as much freedom from pressure as I
could walk down Regent-street or the Strand any
day in the week, and that the general opinion of
the public—expressed from man to man among the
spectators—was, that the whole affair was what the
Americans call a " fizze" and the Italians afiasco.
Guns were fired, and groups of people sang the
" Star-spangled Banner," and a few abolition
speeches were delivered from the booths or rostra
that were not heard by 20 people in a hundred, and
that was all. How long the performances might
have lasted, and what new life might have been in-
fused into them by more eloquent speakers, it is
impossible to say, because at six o'clock, when the
real business was, perhaps, about to commence, a
violent storm of wind, rain, and lightning broke
over the city. In less than 10 minutes Union-square
was left to its normal quietude, and the great de-
monstration came to an untimely end. This meeting,
as reported in the newspapers, may or may not
arouse the enthusiasm of the young men of New
York to the fighting point. if there be any left, to
whom the life of the camp and 50c. a day offer any
attractions. The probabilities are that it will fail,
for if the " almighty dollar" (40 almighty dollars
down on the nail) do not produce the men de-
manded, eloquence, however splendid, and logic,
however persausive, are still more likely to be un-
successful. The cities of New England that, per-
haps, appreciate the power of the dollar more fully
than New York, or the Yankee character is belied,
add to the inducements held out by the Govern-
ment a supplementary bribe of their own, many of
them haviik determined to offer each volunteer
75 dols. (West Cambridge, near Boston, offers as
much as 125 dols.) over and above the Federal
gratuity. Whatever the result may be in places
like these, where the old and the rich are so willing
to pay the young and the poor to fight for them,
my own impression, from all I see and hear, is
that not above half the 300,000 called for will
bo ready within the 60 days of which 15 have
already passed, and that ultimately the Government
will be compelled, against its will, to order a con-
scription. That the South should have recourse to
such a system, for the establishment of its indepen-
dence and the defence of its invaded soil, against an
enemy who commands the sea and the great rivers,
is natural; but if the North, with its territory un-
invaded, its liberties unthreatened, its indepen-
dence unattacked, and with double the population
of the South, should adopt this method of replenish-
ing its armies, it will inflict a fatal blow on its own
reputation, and make such a confession of weakness
as will go further than any event of the war to
convince the world that it cannot complete its
work. To shout that the "country is in danger"
u
is to raise a
war cry that stirs the hearts of men in
s, b
all age
with which to say, as the North does, that the
Union is in danger, is to utter too weak a charm
work enchantments. The North
knows fully well .
and the the Union might perish and
leave the liberty
as safe as they were be_independence of the people
re from all hands except
their own ; and the cry
its people to a pitch of is therefore powerless to
rouse desperation such qs
.that which impels the South to action, and makes

the women and the old men as warlike and as
patriotic as the young.
But, if the conscription be deemed unwise or
dangerous, there remain the free negroes and the
runaway slaves to aid the now veteran armies of
M'Clellan and Pope. The President and his
advisers seem to lack the courage to employ them.
The pride of race and caste is so strong that
millions of people who love the Union are ready to
see it fall rather than fight its enemies with thelassist-
ance of black men. The President is not per-
sonally of this opinion, but yields to it, every now
and then giving an unmistakeable indication that
that the day may speedily come when he will throw
himself more heartily on the side of the Aboli-
tionists, The longer the war lasts the more
powerful these become. At every defeat of the
Federal arms their voices are heard above the
tumul, crying aloud, " Arm the negroes, and your
reverses will be changed into victories; your
humiliations into glories."
The mishaps of M'Clellan at Richmond have
brought them many converts, who admit at the last
moment, what Mr. Wendell Philipps and other
leaders of the party have all along proclaimed,
that either slavery or the Union must perish,"
and who, if the matter were left to their decision,
would let the Union go as the easier alternative.
Though this party has failed to persuade the Go-
vernment to proclaim the freedom of the slaves, or
to arm the blacks, it has bee❑ powerful enough in
Congress to introduce a series of Confiscation Bills,
which all aim at those results. So many of these
bille were introduced by individual members on
their own responsibility that they were submitted
some weeks ago to a joint committee of both houses,
which, after due deliberation, consolidated them all
into one sweeping measure, which was passed in the
House of Representatives on Friday by a majority
of 82 to 44, and by the Senate on Saturday by a
majority of 27 to 13. It is so severe and vindictive
as to justify the supposition that the North has at
last relinquished all hope of conciliating the South,
if not the Border States, and that it is preparing to
deal with the Cotton States as William the Con-
queror and his barons dealt with Saxon England.
The measure has not yet received the signature of
the President, and the representative of the Border
States, most of whom voted in the minority in both
houses, are understood to be using their utmost in-
fluence to induce him to veto some of the most Dra-
conic of its provisions. The measure provides that
the President shall immediately issue a proclama-
tion offering an amnesty to all who within sixty
days shall return to their allegiance. After the ex-
piration of that term, he is is empowered to seize
the property of all rebels, and confiscate it to the
use of the Government and the army, with the ex-
ception of the slaves, who are to be set free. The
punishment of treason, in addition to confiscation,
is to be death, or, at the opion of the President,
imprisonment for five years, with a fine of 10,000
' dollars. No rnnaway slave is to be delivered to
any one claiming to be his owner, unless the latter
can prove that he never aided or abetted the rebel-
lion, and is prepared to take the oath of allegiance.
Furthermore, the President is authorised to employ
the negroes, and use them for the suppression of
the rebellion in any manner he may deem
expedient. It needs but little knowledge of the
South to foretell that, should this measure receive
the Presidential sanction, it will act like oil upon
flame, and harden the hearts of the whole people
into fiercer hostility. As if the President were him-
self of opinion that all future conciliation of the
Cotton States was impossible or inadvisable, and
deeply impressed with the importance of weaning
the Border States from the affection which they still
entertain towards the South, he invited the whole
of the Border delegation on Saturday to a confer-
ence at the White House. At this interview he
presented them with the draught of a bill which he
forwarded to Congress yesterday, imploring them
to study it attentively, and telling them, morse suo,
that the time had come when they must make up
their minds whether they would or would not sup
port:the Administration in its scheme for the gra •
dual emancipation of the slaves in their respective
States, and " that they must either catch fish, cut
bait, or go ashore." From the temper displayed by
these gentlemen it looks as if they would prefer to
go ashore, and leave the Presidential boat altoge-
ther, with all its fish, present and prospective. The
President's bill contains nothing new, and is merely
the legal setting forth of the idea contained in his
previous proclamation, promising the aid of the
Federal Government to purchase and set free the
slaves in any State in which the Legislature may
constitutionally vote the emancipation, with this
difference, which may perhaps prove essential, that
he he no longer proposes to pay them in hard money
but in Mr. Chase's " green-backs."
There was much alarm in New York as well as
in Washington, to learn that the President was
again about to deliver himself on the negro ques-
tion, but it subsided as soon as the publication of
the bill made it clear that no new measure was in-
tended, and that slavery was still to be left to the
action of the States, which alone have a right under
the Constitution to meddle with it.
It is a favourite theory with many influential
talkers and writers, that the bulk of the people
of the South really love the Union, and would re-
turn to it with joy and gratitude if the tyrannical
pressure exercised upon them by a few leading
traitors were removed. The courtly Mr. Everett
has more especially taken pains to promulgate this
notion. In a recent oration at Boston he declared
that the whole country would be at peace and har-
money if a few disturbing Robespierres were re-
moved. Facts do not confirm the philosopher's
theory. The Irish labourers at New Orleans em-
ployed in clearing the streets by General Butler at
a dollar and a half per diem—about as much as they
could have earned at a similar job in a week in the
old country—have taken the oath of allegiance ; but
all the members of the municipal Government re-
signed their offices rather than comply, and almost
every one in the city, above the social status of a
day labourer or a negro, refused to take the oath.
The city clergy continue obdurate, no prayers are
offered up for the Union except in the Federal bar-
racks or camp ; and the women, if they no longer
insult the soldiers in the streets for fear of the
Calaboose, contrive to show their hatred by a thou-
sand little expedients of spite and malice, which not
even the legal subtlety of General Butler can con-
strue into punishable offences, though they wound
the sensibility of his " gallant" officers to the quick.
Wherever the Northern armies have penetrated in
the South the same feelings prevail, and are em-
bittered every day. Every battle that is fought,
whatever may be its result, widens the gulf that has
separated the North and South into two irreconcil-
able nations. The hatred between Frenchmen and
Englishmen, and the social antipathies that kept
them apart for centuries, were newt so strong—not
even during the wars with Bonaparte—as the hatred
that the South entertains towards the Yankees. As
yet the hatred is not mutual, for the Yankees are
rather proud of the pluck that the Southerners
have displayed in the struggle, and boast that
none but Americans could have acted with such
heroism; but on the part of the South it is
too intense for the good-natured people of the
North to understand or appreciate. One reason,
in addition to that afforded by the great question
of slavery, is that the South are one people and the
North are many. The Southerners are, in the
main, of British stock. The Northerners are not
British, either in sympathy or in descent, in any-
thing like the same degree. They are a composite
or cosmopolitan multitude ; and, with the excep-
tion of a few old families in New England and else-
where who boast of their descent from the Pilgrim
Fathers, or other early settlers, they have no bond
of social or political union, and neither sympathy
with nor knowledge of any part of Europe.
Twenty -five years age, when South Carolina
raised the question of nullification, under the in-
spiration of Mr. Calhoun, and when the seeds of
secession, long before planted, first assumed vitality,
the whole population of the Union, North and
South, was 13,000,000. The South has now about
10,000,000, including the slaves, and the North
about 20,000,000 including the free blacks ; so that
the increase of population in the quarter of the
century has been 17,000,000. The South has only
increased at the natural ratio, having received little
or no aid from immigration. The North and West

have increased enormously, and not in the natural
ratio. The Northern people are not prolific, and
social causes are in operation in New York and in
religious New England, which medical men are
fully aware of, which place the natural,increase only
on a par with that of France, where the same re-
sults flow from the same causes ; so that the great
bulk of the extraordinary Northern increase is due
to immigration. Comparatively few Englishmen
and Scotchmen have swollen the stream that has set
steadily towards the North, but immense numbers
of Irishmen, Germans, Swedes, and Norwegians
have annually poured into New York and Boston,
and then spread over the great West. From the
ranks of these people the bulk of the Federal armies
have been recruited ; and if the fight between the
North and South had, by mutual consent, been
fought out by native-born Americans only it is all
but certain that the North would have been beaten
long ago. These Irishmen, Germans, and Swedes,
and their children born on American soil, have no
knowledge of the South, which is as unfamiliar to
`them as Japan or Kamschatka. Neither have they
any sympathy with England. They have, in fact,
nothing in common with Englishmen except the
language, which they are doing their utmost to
deteriorate ; while the South, with blood less
mixed, with purpose more defined, and with sym-
pathies with the Mother Country that may have
been wounded, but that have never been extin-
guished, would rather vote itself back into the
condition of a British colony than resume a
place in the Union on any other terms than com-
plete mastery of the republic. The North has yet
much to learn in this matter, and the Federal troops
who now occupy Southern cities will have strange
tales to tell when they return of the settled ani-
mosity of the people among whom their lot has
been cast—hatred that cannot be conciliated, and
that would make the restoration of the Union, were
it politically possible, the one result which the
North, if it valued its own liberty and prosperity,
would, above all things, endeavour to avoid ; but
the Union is a foreign, not a domestic question.
Were the Union restored at any cost, America could
be dictatorial to England and to all Europe. If it
remain broken, the North must learn to be a little
more humble in her diplomacy. That is the sore
point, and the South is quite aware of it.

The North continues to look to Richmond as the
one great pivot on which the destinies of the Re-
public are to turn. The South, I have reason to
believe, is not of the same mind. It meditates the
recapture of New Orleans, and has the means to
effect it. It also meditates a raid into Kentucky,
the mere whisper of which has alarmed the great
city of Cincinnati and the whole of Ohio, and which
may yet alarm the Federal Government for other
places in which defeat would be still more disas-
trous.

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

HOME CIRCUIT.-MAIDSTONE, July 26,

Both 3ourts were opened thi3 morning at ten
o'clock, Mr. Baron Martin presiding on the Civil
Side, and Mr. Baron Bramwell in the Crown Court.
There are 29 causes entered for trial, of which
nine are to b© tried by special juries.