The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-30 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, JUNE I'7.
Though little is publicly said upon the subject—
the fear of Mr. Stanton andthe military censorship
being great among the journals of all shades of
polities—considerable anxiety is expressed wherever
men congregate as the position of the army before
Richmond. Gen. M'Clellan is not at the head of a
force sufficient to risk an attack upon the Confede-
rate capital, and a constant demand for reinforce-
ments reaches Washington from his camp—a de-
mand with which the Government finds much dif-
ficulty in complying, though perfectly aware of the
urgency of the case. Gen. Beauregard is still in
the field in force sufficient to checkmate the large
army of Gen. 119.11eck ; and Generall " Stonewall"
Jackson, by his brilliant raid into the Valley of the
Shenandoah, has found such ample occupation for
the four armies of Generals Fremont, Shields,
Banks, and M'Dowell, as to prevent any reinforce-
ments for M'Clellan being abstracted from their
commands. While such is the position of the Fe-
deral army, and while the Government is not with.
out anxiety for the safety of Washington, exposed
even now to any daring movement that Jackson or
any other Confederate general might attempt, the
defenders of Richmond appear to be receiving large
reinforcements every day, and to be growing in
audacity as they grow in numbers. A small force
of about 2,000 men has been bold enough to make
a sortie from Richmond in the rear of M'Clellan's
army, between him and his supplies, and to " play
the very mischief" with his Commissariat, them-
selves escaping without danger. At Charleston, too,
it appears as if the South had determined to make a
stand as obstinate as that which it certainly intends
to make before Richmond, with the view, in both
places, and especially in Virginia, of avoiding a
decisive battle until the harvest is ready for the
sickle. The beautiful and fertile Valley of the
Shenandoah, which grows grain enough to feed the
whole of the Confederate armies, and which has
the additional advantages of commanding the ap-
proaches to 'Washington, and of being entirely
Southern in its opinions and sympathies, may yet
be the scene of a new strvggle that may weaken
M'Clellan at the hour of his need and keep the
whole North in alarm and . perturbation of spirit.
The very elements seem to conspire to procrastinate
the final onslaught. The banks of the Chickahominy
are still flooded, and 111‘Clellan's inaction is dictated
by a double necessity—the want of men and the
abundance of water.
The Yankees, though they have contributed
several able generals and other officers to the war,
have not contributed very largely to the rank and
le of the Federal army Had it not been for the
aid afforded by the Irish and the Germans, who
form at least two-fifths of the whole number of
fighting men now, or hereafter to be, at the disposal
of the Federal power, the war against the South
could not have been carried on, except at odds which
would before this have assured victory to the Con-
federates. This is a grievance to the South of
which the Southern leaders make the most, and
which they take care shall rankle in the minds
of the people. It embittered the hearts of the
Americans in the war of independence to know
that Germans and "Hessians" were employed by
the British Government to keep them in subjection,
and the South has raised the same cry of
i‘ Hessians," and declared that but for the" hireling
foreigner" the detested Yankees could not even
have attempted the hopeless task of subduing a
free people. It is one characteristic both of the war
and of the Germans that, while immigration into
the United States has greatly diminished from all
other countries, Ireland included, since the Battle
of Bull Run, the immigration of Germans has in-
creased. The Germans trained to war by the mili-
tary system of their own little kingdoms and
duchies, seem to snuff the carnage from afar. They
come over here, ready material for the rough work
of war, in which they receive more than double the
pay of soldiers of Europe, and in which they are
cheered on by the hope of advancement, and, it is
to be feared, of plunder also, if half the accounts
are trine that are published of their doings in the '
Northern as well as the Southern newspapers. They
know little or nothing of the merits of the cause for
which they are so ready to fight, and there are
whole regiments of them in which scarcely a man
can speak a word of English. They pillage where-
ever they go, and are as instrumental in exaspe-
rating the already excited passions of the South as
General Butler himself. Were the Federal Govern.
went to notify to General Blenker or General Sigel
—the two most noted German officers in command
—the propriety of shooting or hanging a few of
these offenders, a great scandal might be removed
from the Northern army. The South at the same
time might be deprived of a grievance that adds no
little bitterness to the strife, if it does not tend to
prolong it.

At last the commercial world of New York and
the press, which has so long ignored the question,
are beginning to perceive that there may, after all,
be too much inconvertible paper money. Mr.
Chase's last proposal to add 150,000,000 " green-
backs" to the already over-inflated currency has
alarmed the bankers and the great traders, and bids

fair to create a panic if it be not withdrawn. A

year ago gold was at par. Under the operation of
Mr. Chase's "green-backs" it has risen to 7 per cent.
premium, 2 per cent, of which has been the direct
and almost immediate consequence of his proposal
of last week to double the existing amount of these
legal tender notes, based solely upon the credit of
the Government arid its power to collect a large
revenue by means of a Tax Bill and a Tariff which
have not yet become law. The probability is that
the rate will increase still further, and that before
a month has passed geld 'may be at a premium of
10 per cent. This may be an excellent state of
affairs for speculators on the Stock Exchange, and
for a certain class of bankers and merchants, but it
threatens to bring about a financial collapse, that
will cost the country as much as the war, and much
more quickly. The warnings of the English press
which have hitherto been unheeded, or ascribed to
jealousy of " our great country" are now considered
with alittle more respect ; and the science of poli-
tical economy—even though founded upon what fast
Americans consider the limited experience of the slow
and effete old world, and especially of slow and de-
caying old England—is found to be of universal
application, and not to be set at defiance with im-
pu„ity, even by so fast and exceptional a country
as the United States. With the trade of the nation
aggregate of 5,000 millions
reduced from an annual a
h
of dollars to 2,500, or, at most, 3,000 millions ; wit
few legitimate opportunities for the investment of
capital, and with 300 millions of floating and moon-
vertible paper issued by the Government, instead
Paper, which
of about 100, millions of convertible
was the average issue of the banks prior to the War,
does Mr. Chase imagine that he is building up an
thing but a house of cards by his financial legerde_
main, cards which the first breath of distrust, or the

first great military reverse to the arms of the Re..
public, will not utterly overthrow ? If he do,
America may teach the nations how to live and how
to fight, but it certainly, under his financial regime,
will not teach them how to calculate.
While the war thus languishes, and while com-
merce scarcely knows what to think or where to
turn, it may not he out of place to bestow a little
attention upon the general condition of the public i
sentiment and the new distribution of parties which
the war has created. The political parties that
divide or distract the country are still called the
Democratic and the Republican ; but this classi-
fication is no longer correct. Both have been so
violently shaken by the war that, while they
have been sundered in one sense, they have been
amalgamated in another, and have utterly lost
their ancient individuality. Neither of them has
"a platform" on which it can stand to enunciate
its principles, or a banner which it can unfurl
to summon its supporters to their former alle-
giance. Into what newh forms they will ultimately
crystallise under the ot. blast and chemical dis-
integration of ciyvililewlpar :11.1, is impossible to. fore-
-sec ; but it may
a beettEuropean student of
American history to
mighty contest that coeval comprehension of
th:;• ulses this continent
if an impartial observer attempt to describe the
actual division of parties with reference to the war,

and the question of negro slavery, which provoked
and embitters it. Perhaps the nomenclature
adopted may not be scientific; but if e whole
public opinion of North and South be classified into
the party of " Disunion," the party of the Union
as it was," and the party of " The Union as it ought
to be," the lines of demarcation thou.. h broad will
be found to be accurate, and to include every shade
and shade and variety of political feeling in the
country.

The party of Disunion has its stronghold in the
Confederacy, but, even at this late period of the
strife, is not wholly confined to the South. Before
the attack on Fort Sumtner had aroused the pride
and passion of the North to an extent that is
scarcely appreciated in Europe, there were large
classes of people who had taught and preached dis-
union for years, who proclaimed the flag of the re-
public to be a " flaunting lie," who were weary and
sick of the sin and disgrace of negro slavery, and of
enforced copartnership with the political system that
was founded upon it, and who rejoiced that the
South by its secession had relieved them of a shame
as well as a difficulty. They were willing if not
anxious that the Confederacy should be allowed to
establish its independence and to go in peace. They
believed that the South was not worth fighting for,
that the North would be better, happier, and more
prosperous without it; and that the world was wide
enough for both of them to work out in peace if not
in amity their separate destinies. The precipitate
action of South Carolina, and the attack on the flag
—no longer a "flaunting lie," but a sacred emblem
—swept this party almost entirely away; and the
ultra-Abolitionists, who first raised the cry of sepa-
ration, and proclaimed the Union to be 4. a league
with death and a covenant with hell," veered round
in the tempest of indignation which the bombard-
ment,of Fort Sumter excited, and became Unionists
for the first time in their history. Some of them,
with the zeal of new converts, became fanatics in
the cause, and pronounced to be angelic that faith in
the Union which they once declared to be diabolical.
A few, but very few, of this original party of Dig-
union still remain in the North, who even now would
rejoice if the South and its " peculiar institution"
could be allowed to drift away into independence or
destruction, as time and chance might determine,
but they do not dare to express their sentiments
openly for fear of the accusation of treason and dis-
loyalty that would be hurled against them by the
Northern press. There is still another class of Dis-
unionists in the Nortb, who hold that secession is a
legal and constitutional act; that "State Rights,"
as interpreted by the States themselves, are of
greater pre-eminence and authority than any laws
that may spring from the federative principle ; that
the first allegiance of a citizen is due to his State
Government; that if his local patriotism conflict
with any supposed allegiance to the Central Power,
the Central Power must be compelled to forego its
claim by force of arms, if nesessary ; that the Con-
federate States are the sole judges of their own
wishes ; that a truly free government can only exist
by the consent of the governed; and that, having
thought fit to declare their independence, they are
as entirely in the right in so doing as Washington
and his compeers were in declaring their indepen-
dence of Great Britain. Northern gentlemen who
have travelled or resided in the South, and many
Northern merchants of the highest standing, who
have bad commercial relations with the cotton, rice,
and sugar regions, hold these opinions, utterly irre-
spective of the question of slavery, but, like the
ultra-Abolitionists, who remain firm to their ori-
ginal faith, they do not dare to avow their senti-
ments publicly, lest the terrorism of the press and
the pulpit should injure their character or their
business by publicly denouncing them as traitors.
Consequently they hold their peace and wait for
better times, content to be prudent without aspir-
ing to be patriotic.
The party of " The Union as it was" is the largest
and most influential of all, and comprises members
of both of the great parties into which the country
was divided before the war. It numbers in its
ranks the great mass of the people, who care nothing
for slavery in the South, who , are quite satisfied
with its abolition in the North, who have little or
no sympathy with negroes or their wrongs, and who
do not consider black men entitled to the same
social or even political privileges as white. At the
head of this party stand Mr. Lincoln, the President,
and Mr. Seward, his Secretary of State, who, with-
out sharing the ethnological or social opinions of
the great bulk of their followers (for they are cor-
dial enemies of slavery), recognise the right gua-
ranteed by the Constitution, and admit that slavery
or its abolition is a question for the South and its
State Legislatures only, and not for the North to
decide. They, therefore, desire to avoid the irritat-
ing topic as much as possible, and to devote their
whole energies of body and mind and the whole
force of the Federal Government to the restoration,
pure and simple, of the old Union. In the conduct
of the war they are solicitous not to outrage the
feeling, or even the prejudice, of the Southern
people. They look to victory by land and sea, bat
not for the sake of victory or for the humiliation of
men whom they still regard as fellow-citizens,
though misguided and rebellious, but for the sake of
the speedier re-establishment of the Union, which
they deem to be essential to the maintenance and
permanence of Republicanism on this continent,
and to the elevation of the American people to
the real status of a nation, second to no other in
the world. The weakness of this great section, and
at present most powerful of all the parties of
America, is that with the restoration of "the Union
as it was," supposing this to be possible, they would
infallibly reproduce and reinstate the cause of the
late disruption, and of all the dissensions and
animosities of the Republic. To restore the seceded
States with their "peculiar institution" intact would
be to reintroduce into the system the virus that
produced the fever, and to sow the seeds of a new,
bitter, and endless conflict for power and supre-
macy. If in this contest the South did not carry its
point, nominate the Presidents, appoint the judges
of the Supreme Court, shape the foreign as well
as the domestic policy of the Union, and carve
new States out of Mexico to counterbalance the un.
controllable expansion of the free North in the wil-
dernesses of the West, a second disruption and se.
cession would be inevitable in less than ten years.
All the work of the last and the present year would
have to be done over again by the North, if it still
desired to retain its unwilling and revolted partner,
with the signal disadvantage of no longer starting
unweighted in the conflict. The North in this case
would have to bear, not only the incubus of the
huge national debt already incurred, and the cer-
tainty of another as monstrous to 'oe superadded to
it, but the positive enmity of Europe—the great
nations of which would not and could not be ex-.
pected to remain neutral a second time, and allow
their material. interests to suffer as severely as be-
fore from the renewal of a struggle, of which every
day's continuance would be alike a nuisance, a
misery, and a danger to them and to their people.
These considerations, obvious as they are, do not
wweighwith the members of this party, They re-
pudiate the interference of Europe now and here-
after. Their hope is in the present and its oP or-
tunities.
Their cry is "sufficient for the day is the
evil thereof.„
They are determined to restore the
Union, if they
eau, t.o last as long as it may, leaving
to another
generation the task of defending it, if it
be attacked from tv
In addition to this, many
of them—though, perhaps, neither Mr. Lincoln nor
Mr. Seward—entertain
the hopeii
ofth atht6nßewempeutnibmdleiecds,
may produce new circumstances
; and that a great
foreign war waged by both sections
giving them victory and fame in common, might
weld together the broken and imperfectly '
halves of the Republic, and make them One and In-
dissoluble for ever.

The third party—that of " the Union as it ought to
be"—is strongest in New England, in the churches
of New York and the west, and among the philoso-
phical Republicans generally, who entertain the
Isame ideas upon the subject of negro slavery as the
people of England and other European countries.
They allege with pitiless logic that negro slavery
has been the causo of the disruption and of the
war, and that a reconstruction of " the Union as it
was" is not desirable, and would be of no value or
permanency. The seceded States, according to their
doctrine, have forfeited all rights to the protection
of the constitution by the mere fact of their ecces-

mon and rebellion. They insist that the true policy
is to conquer and to subdue them, and to abolish,
with or without compensation, but with compensa-
tion if it would make the matter less difficult, the
hateful system which has produced all the mischief.
They urge the vigorous prosecution of the war, the
confiscation of the property of all rebels, great or
small, and death to the civil and military leaders of
the Confederacy. They also deny the right of any
of the rebellious States to be considered as States one
moment after they have been conquered, and would
degrade them into the rank of territories, like the new
States that are growing in the wilderness, having
no rights whatsoever,but such as they would derive
from the paramount authority and grace of the
Federal Government, which alone would appoint
their officers until such time as the Southern people
had re-acquired the right of self-government under
the constitution by a long course of probationary
discipline, during the continuance of which slavery
should have utterly disappeared irom among them.
This party is not numerous, but it is eloquent, un-
tiring, zealous, and fanatical. Its great defect is
that it takes no cognizance of the immense difficulty
of the work it would undertake ; that it despises
or ignores facts and worships theories ; that it would
emancipate the negro, and then leave him to die ;
that, like all doctrinaires, it makes no account of
human passions, weaknesses, and errors; that it
would govern the world on the principle of pure
reason, though a thousand blood revolutions might
be the consequence ; and that in one word it is
impracticable. But it is, nevertheless, a great
power in American affairs, is represented by at least
membersto
o contendof the Cabinet,ogainst the
ed
longer he comes more
the war
twoformidable
continues.

It would be treason for an American, but will
not be so in an Englishman, to say, after a careful
and friendly consideration of all the difficulties of
the case, that the first of these three parties is the
only one whose principles are calculated to give
peace to this Continent. The second, if immedi-
ately micesisful, would reproduce the war at no re-
mote period ; while, if the objects of the third were
avowed and adopted by the Federal Government,
the threat of Mr. Jefferson Davis that the South
would carry on the war for 20 years after the loss
of Richmond, and of every city and port of the
Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf Mexico, would cer-
tainly be realised. In that case Europe would de-
cide whether it were or were not for its interest to
throw its weight into the scale to expedite a settle-
ment in favour of the Confederacy.

Thus, as " the Unionists " allege, the " Seces-
sions " and the " Abolitionists " travel to the same
terminus, though by different routes. And thus,
also, the " Unionists " themselves only postpone for
a time a result that is ultimately inevitable. Such,
dispassionately stated, is the real difficulty of the
American civil war as it presents itself to the mind
of an impartial spectator.