The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-27 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, SEPT.I2,

The optimists of Wall-street, and a few news-
papers which support their views, still affect to be-
lieve that the " audacious rebels" have rushed to
inevitable doom by the invasion of Maryland and
Pennsylvania, the occupation of Kentucky, and the
beleaguerment of Cincinnati; that the Confederate
army is in a trap, and is certain to fall an easy prey
to M'Clellan. But the rest of the world is in a very
different frame of mind, and sees nothing in store
for the Republic but dismemberment and ruin—
unless in a turn of iluck and a display of some
amount of genius and daring, accompanied by suc-
cess, in the Federal Generals. But Wall-street sees
all things en couleur de rose. Gold is but at 191
per cent. premium and silver at 12, while Govern-
ment securities hold their ground as firmly as if the
country were in the full tide of peace, prosperity,
and happiness. But Wall-street has fed upon fat
contracts and illimitable paper, and is apoplectic
and sleepy. When it wakes up, as it must before
many days, it will see sights the like of which it
never saw before, and which were never seen in
America, or perhaps anywhere else, Meanwhile it
snores loudly. Foreign trade is all but annihilated.
Domestic trade flourishes only on war contracts and
Mr. Chase's greenbacks ; and such business as Wall-
street loves can be transacted by somnambulists al-
most as easily as by waking men. But all others
than the people of that Sleepy Hollow, and the con-
tractors who sniff the spoils of civil war with as
much gusto as the vulture the decaying carcass,
admit that the very existence of the Federal Go-
vernment is at this moment at stake, and that not
even a victory over the Confederates in Maryland,
Pennsylvania, or Kentucky can save it from ulti-
mate perdition. Mr. Lincoln, his Administration,
and his Generals are in the position of " Humpty
Dumpty," in the nursery ballad. They have had a
great fall ; and not " all the horses" and " all the
men" of the North can set them up again.
It is the old story of the torrent's smoothness
ere it dash over the rocks. There is no panic in
this city. Everything seems to be going on in its
usual manner. The newspapers say little or nothing
to disturb the public equanimity; and the telegra-
phic wires are as discreet and well-behaved as Mr.
Stanton can desire. But letters from Washington,
Baltimore, and Cincinnati, and wounded soldiers
returned from the battle-fields of Bull Run and
Centreville, divulge a state of affairs, both civil
and military, which makes people shudder. While
Mr. Stanton has been peddling in the arrest of
small traitors in New York and elsewhere, the
whole edifice of the Government has been crumbling
beneath the feet of the Government. The Presi-
dent's name that was once a tower of strength has
become a byword. The estimate formed of his
character by Mr. Wendell Phillips is accepted by
nine people out of ten, and it would almost appear
as if that fiery declaimer had only been the first to
say what was in everybody's mind, but which
everybody lacked the courage or the wit to utter
until one bolder than the rest set the example.
There seems to be a growing desire for Mr. Lincoln's
resignation or deposition, though how either is to be
accomplished, or who would be put in his place, no
one can tell or has thought it worth while to con-
sider. And not only is the President accused of
incapacity, but the President's wife is charged with
treason. It has long been a marvel to the Federal
Generals by what occult agencies their most im-
portant secrets were constantly transmitted to the
Confederate camp. The ladies of 'Washington, who
are nearly all Secessionists, were looked upon as the
guilty parties ; but the question remained who told
these ladies secrets that ought not to be known, un-
less it were Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Lincoln's Minis-
ters ? Mrs. Lincoln's brother has been fighting in
the Confederate army, and was lately slain. Was
Mrs. Lincoln the incautious or the treacherous
lady who had access to valuable information, and
let it ooze through her pen or her tongue ? The
charge against her has often been obscurely hinted.
It is now openly made, with the addition that
General Halleck was so thoroughly aware of her
indiscretion—for he gave it no harsher name.—that
he stipulated, on assuming the office of Commander-
in-Chief, that she should leave Washington for her
home at Springfield, in Illinois, whither she ac-
cordingly proceeded three weeks ago. A placard,
headed "Mrs. Lincoln a traitress," was exhibited
yesterday at one of the newspaper-offices in Nassau,.
street, but was pulled down by the police, by order
of the Provost-Marshal. It, is a pity that a lady's
name should be dragged into the miserable
squabble that have broken out in the councils of the
North; but the condition of the public mind would
not be faithfully represented if an incident so signi-
ficant were not recorded.

If the President were himself equal to his posi-
tion, it would not signify to the public what Mrs.
Lincoln's sympathies were—and it is only his own
vacillation, or what it is the fashion in America to
call " dough-facedness" that gives them any im-
portance.

Mr. Lincoln—who never had much head, how-
ever large his heart may be—sways to and fro at
evEry gust of popular opinion. One day he deter-
mineslto let the negro question alone. The next,
goaded by his Republican supporters and his Aboli-
tionist opponents, he yields to the pressure of Mr.
Wendell Phillips and such men as the Hon. Thadeus
Stevens, who exclaimed three:days ago, at a public
meeting, " Abolition! Yes ! Abolish everything
on the face of the earth but the Union. Free every
slave, slay every traitor, burn every rebel mansion,
if it be necessary to preserve the Union." Ashamed
of himself for listening to savages such as these, and
alarmed at the sight of the precipice to which such
guides would inevitably lead him, if he followed
them, the President reverts to the study of the con-
stitution which he swore to uphold, and gives the
Abolitionists the cold shoulder. And thus he oscil-
lates from day to day, displeasing all parties, conci-
listing none. General Halleck, in the exercise of
his authority, is said to have deprive General
M'Clellan of command after the battle of Centreville,
for manifest and wilful disobedience of orders. But
on there boing imminent danger of a mutiny in the
capital, so indignant was the army of the Potomac
at the degradation of their favourite, the President
overrode Halleck's decision, and reinstated M'Clel-
lan rather than have a disturbance. " Anything
for a quiet life," seems to be his maxim, and the re-
sult:is in his case what it is in every one's else who
is affected with a similar weakness—perpetual dis-
quiet and daily recurring misery. And in the midst
of all this the good man perpetrates a joke when-
ever he has the opportunity as quietly as if nothing
in the world was wrong. A suppliant for office of
more than ordinary pretensions called upon him
lately, and presuming on the activity he had shown
on Mr. Lincoln's behalf during the election that
raised him to the chief magistracy, asserted, as a
reason why
the office he desired should -
ould be given to
him, that he had made hiM President. " You made
mo President, did you ?" said Mr. Lincoln, with
a twinkle of his eye. '`l think I did, said the
applicant. 44 Then a precious mess you've got me
into, that's all," replied Mr. Lincoln, and closed
the discussion.

The Republicans being in as great a mess as their
President, with the country rapidly drifting under
their management into humiliations and miseries
far worse than the mere disruption of the Union,
which might of itself be the very best thing that
could happen to the North if the North were only
wise enough to seo it, the reorganisation of the
great and once dominant Democratic party was to
have been anticipated. Many of its principal men
are languishing in Forts Lafayette, Warren, and
31‘TIenry, unaffected by the gaol delivery under-
taken by the Judge-Advocate ; but the party is
still unconquered, and gives vent to its opinions in
the press and on the platform, and notably through
such speeches as those of Mr. Vallandigham, Mr.
Fernando Wood, Mr. B. Wood, Mr. Wall, and Mr.
Ingersoll,
taking the broad ground of the restora-
tion of the " Union as it was," which not even Mr.
Stanton nor the Provost-Marshal of New York can
torture into treason. It was the dissensions of this
party, and those alone, that enabled the Republi-
cans to carry the election of Mr. Lincoln. United,
the Democrats might havegoverned the republic for
20-years longer,but as soon as they quarrelled among
themselves the cause was lost, and the disruption