The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-31 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, March 17.

The Irish in America are more Irish than their
countrymen at home. St Patrick's-day is always
celebrated in this city with greater show and splen-
dour, and with fully as much of the drunkenness
and combativeness as attend it from dawn to dark-
ness in the old country. The streets of New York
present at this moment an appearance of bustle,
gaiety, and animation such as Dublin or Cork never
exhibited on any similar occasion, and probably
never will. Even on the day which ardent Americans
believe to be much closer at hand than the Fourth
of July when the South shall be finally subjugated;
the gentlemen conquered by the plebeians, of whom
the Vice-President is the representative ; and the
Union restored, with or without the liberty and pro-
sperity that preceded its disruption, it is difficult to
imagine that there can be an assemblage of greater
or happier looking crowds, a larger display of star-
spangled banners and green flags of Erin, or a more
uproarious jangle and clangour of bells, a more gene-
ral suspension of business in this mighty emporium
of the West. A stranger uninformed of the real facts
might imagine that this was neither an Anglo-Saxon
nor a composite democracy, but a purely Hibernian
Republic, and that St. Patrick was the tutelary saint
of the whole people and not of a section. In honour
of the occasion, and, perhaps, not without a prudent
wish to avoid exciting too much the combative pro-
pensities of a race that is combative enough when
sober, and apt to be a little too combative when the
whisky has begun to inflame the blood and enliven
its ideas, the draught which commenced the day be-
fore yesterday was peaceably continued until sun-
set last evening, was adjourned by authority until
to-morrow. To-day, therefore, " the wheel of mis-
fortune," as the poor call it, will not revolve ; and
Paddy fully or only half naturalised will be free
for another day to indulge in the fond hope that he
need fight in no other field than a street skrim-
mage, and with no weapon more formidable than
the national shillelagh.
The draught up to this time has proceeded with
remarkable quietude. Notwithstanding all previous
intimations, and the obvious necessity for reinforc-
ing the Federal armies if the war is to be vigorously
pushed, the final announcement that proceedings
had already commenced took the public by surprise.
The surprise, however, it must be added, is not ac-
companied by much alarm. The believe is so pre-
valent that the war approaches its end, that Rich-
mond cannot hold out another month, that if Gen.
Lee be not driven out he will be starved out by the
occupation or destruction of his lines of supply, and
that the occupation of the Confederate capital by
Grant or Sherman, whatever may be the fate of
Lee's army, will virtually restore the Union and
obviate the necessity of any future fighting, except
against a few scattered guerillas, that the draughted
men look upon the prospect before them without
the dread which a mere mention of the conscription
excited in the summer of 1863. The Government
has sagaciously taken advantage of the state of
feeling to render the draught more palatable, and
declared its intention to treat every conscription, as
far as bounty money is concerned, exactly as if he
were a volunteer. In addition to this mode of
breaking the weight of the unwelcome infliction, it
has ordered that double the number of men required
to fill the quota of New York shall be draughted,
or 26,000 instead of 13,000. By this means two
persons are irtterested in procuring one substitute.
In consequence the price of substitutes has risen
rapidly. In some instances as much as $l,BOO or
$2,000 has been paid by rich men for a duly quali-
fied deputy on the battle-field. The poor, aware
of the efforts thus made, and pacified by the assur-
rance that although the draught be nominally, it
will not be actually, enforced, if volunteering pro-
vide the requisite 13,000 men within any reason-
able period, resign themselves to the comfortable
conviction that if the worst comes to the worst
no man with a family who does not wish to become
a soldier will be torn from his home, and that the
country, the city, or private munificence will find
the means to rescue him.

The arrival of Sherman at Fayetteville unopposed,
and with his whole army in good health and spirits,
and the generally favourable character of the war
news from every quarter of the strategic horizon,
continues to fill the non-speculative and non-gam-
bling portion of the public with delight. In com-
mercial circles, however, there is wailing and
gnashing of teeth. The " bears" arc in ccstacies,
and the " bulls" roar with rage and vexation. Since
the beginning of the present year, or from the 3d of
January, when gold was at 230, until to-day, when
it touched 159, there has been a fall in the premium
of no less than 71 per cent., mainly caused by the
Federal successes consequent upon the capture of
Atlanta, the unexpected march of General Sherman
to Savannah, and the whole chain of military events
which have since that time totally changed the aspect
and the conditions of the war. Large failures have
taken place in Philadelphia and New York—princi-
pally in the produce trade ; and to-day in this city
there is something nearly approaching to a panic in
Wall_street, William-street, Exchange-place, and the
Produce-market. This, however, is but temporary, or
believed to be so ; and the "bull" interest, together
with the whole retail and some portion of the whole-
sale trade, refuse to lower prices, or, at all events,
defer doing so until military events become more
clearly defined, and victory more thoroughly out of
the reach of accident. Notwithstanding the fall,
the necessaries and the luxuries of life maintain
their war prices, while in house-rent and fuel
there has been a positive increase. The owners
of real estate, alarmed at the increase not only of
Federal, but of State, taxation have in thousands
of instances refused to let their houses as in for-
mer years, and insisted upon selling them, at
almost fabulous rates of purchase, in greenbacks.
The tendency of this has been to create such a
competition for the houses still remaining to be let
by the year or on lease for a longer term that the
landlords have as a rule added 60 and even 100 per
cent. to their previous rentals. New • York
is unprecedentedly full. So much money is to be
made in it by speculation in gold, in stocks, in
railways, and in the newest favourite, petroleum,
and so many refugees from the Border States have
crowded into it to escape the horrors of war or of
military government that if 3,000 or 4,000 addi-
tional houses had been built during the year there
would have been no risk of their remaining un-
tenanted. But no such houses have been erected.
The only building that has been carried on to any
extent has been in Broadway and its tributary
streets, where the whole business of the city is con-
centrated, and that only to the extent of converting
private residences into stores, warehouses, and
offices, and substituting marble or iron places of
trade for the modest brickhouses that were formerly
sufficient for all purposes either of utility or orna-
ment. how New York is to lodge itself during
the spring and summer is a problem of which
the only solution seems to be the erection of
new hotels and the overcrowding of all existing
boarding-houses. Lodging-houses are compara-
tively unknown. The stranger cannot hire a
couple of rooms or suite of apartments in this
city, breakfast at home, and dine at his club or at a
tavern, as he can in London or Paris, but he must
" board" and eat in public not only with men and
women of whom he knows and desires to know
nothing, but with their children under or in their
teens---a state of t
em•s once which is trying enough to
Americans, and would be intolerable to any other
people. The following advertisement, which appears
in the Herald—though an obvious joke—may serve
to convey an idea of the difficulty that besets the
quiet-loving man, who desires in this Babylon to sit
by his own fireside, with his wife and family—" To
let, a one and a half story frame house, suitable for
a man without wife or children, partly furnished by
the owner's grandmother. Rent only $l,OOO per
month, payable in advance. No objection to tenant
making repairs. Address K, box 1,266:, A
remedy for the evils of which this advertisement is
not a very flagrant exaggeration has been Enig_
gested, though as yet without exciting much atten-
tion. It is urged that if buildings were erected in
a style of architecture similar to some of the mon-
strous, but very beautiful, dry goods warehouses
and banks that line Broadway and the cross streets,
and separated into flats or apartments suitable for ,