The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-20 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 20, 1862.

America is till favoured land of spirit rapping
and table-turning, but never, hitherto, has it ex-
hibited tabletnrning on such a scale as that now per-
formed before the eyes of all the world. The whole
military table is completely turned. Maryland occu-
pies the place of Virginia, Washington of Richmond
LEE and JACKSON of M'CLELLAN and POPE. A
Confederate Provost-Marshal duly issues his orders
in Frederick, the chief city in Western Maryland,
and STONEWALL JACKSON with,not a monster army,
but a manageable one, is manoeuvring North of
Washington, threatening to cut off Mr. LINCOLN'S
communications, except by sea, with the North,
and even to enter Pennsylvania itself. The whole
of Maryland, the state which surrounds the capital.
is seething and bubbling, and ready to boil over
with Secessionism. LINCOLN found it a slave state
at the beginning of the war. Instead of liberat-
ing all the slaves at once, as a strategical
necessity, he was technically tender of the legal
rights of the slaveholders, and immoveably firm
not to touch the wrongs of the slaves. He is now
repaid by finding slaveholders as bitter against his
sway as ever, and slaves more concerned to please
their masters in whose power he left them,
than to serve the Union, which would at
best deport them. Maryland is therefore
lost, except where Federal forts, gunboats, or
armies can hurl their deadly missiles. Indeed, the
Confederates have even appointed a provisional go-
vernor of the State. 1 hey announce themselves as
friends, and declare that, unlike POPE, they shall
respect private property.
Let us look at the turned table. The latest
accounts by the Persia, which reach to the 10th,
represent a campaign as fairly begun in Maryland.
M'CLELLAN has left Washington to try conclu-
sions in the field with STONEWALL JACKSON, who
was once his fellow-student at West Point. Where
he is exactly, is not told us, but he must be moving
in search of his enemy. In this new campaign the
reader must take a fresh glance at the map. He will
see the Potomac taking a north-westerly direction
from Washington, up to Harper's Ferry. The
passage there is said to be still held by a Federal
force. But between that place and Washington, a
distance of about seventy miles, there are
numerous passages which are in the possession of
the Confederates—one of them by which many
crossed, is not more than twenty miles from Wash-
ington itself, but the beaten army of the Potomac
could not think of interfering with their pas-
sage across. Frederic City, not far from the Poto-
mac, is the first important place secured by the
Confederates, and up to the last dates they had
been occupied in its neighbourhood. It is in easy
communication with Baltimore, the great commer-
cial capital of Maryland, which the Federals hold
at their mercy by means of Fort M'Heury, where
numerous citizens are imprisoned in defiance of the
Habeas Corpus Act, and by fifteen gunboats lying
opposite ; the fort and the boats being able at any
time to lay the city in ashes. Baltimore is about
forty miles from Frederic City, and both places
about that distance from Washington, which lies
to the South of both, at the southern angle of the
triangle formed by the three cities. Thus, could
JACKSON and the Confederates rouse and hold
Maryland, along the railway line from Frederic
City to Baltimore, they would completely prevent
all Northern
supplies from reaching Washington
by land.

The difficulties in their way are, first, that Balti-
more, from which the railways from the North
reach Washington, though its inhabitants are bitter
the military possession
very strong Fort Mlienry, and if he
Secessionists, is entirely in
of the Federals. JACKSON
has
not the means to
besiege the
had, he could not dispose of the gunboats. Nest,
reo he would be too far off from his Vsirtagtieniatno
supplies,
yl
n .
and Maryland is a very poor
Again, unless the Federals were utterly demoralised,
it is difficult to conceive that they would not cut his
communications with the main Confederate army.
The number of his men is variously stated; the
last accounts say 100,000; former accounts
gave less than half that number. But it has

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THE SUN.