The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-02 00:00:00

71IE WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, AUGUST 15.
My ''recent letters have so often expressed the be-
lief tat M'Clellan's new base of operations at Har-
rison's Landing was unsafe and untenable, and that
he was silently taking measures to evacuate the
T,Josition, that I by no mean (hare the surprise of
the people of New York, who learn this morning
for the first time that he has commenced the with-
drawal of b's force towards Williamsburgh, to pro-
tect the city of Washington. The movement is a
wise orre. Had he remained where he was three
wee'ks, longer, fever and stench, bad water and bad
ford, heat and discouragement, would have spared
r.tie Confederates the trouble of defeating him. Yet
in the face of even so significant a confession of past
error and present weakness, the Northern press
continue to brag as lustily as ever. To read the
papers of this morning one would think that Rich-
mond had actually been taken, that the 300,000 vo-
lunteers had enrolled themselves without bounty
money, out of pure patriotism and superabundant
pluck, that f.,nere was no necessity for a compulsory
and unpordular draught, and that in lees than Mr.
Seward' a 90 days there was certain to be an end of
the w ar and a reconstruction of the Union.
T
...he real situation is very different. Unable to
capture Richmond, the Federals are compelled to
defend Washington. The voluntary enlistments
have been stimulated by the fear of the conscrip-
tion and the augmented bounty money (in one
town in Rhode Island amounting to as much as 500
dollars per man), but not to such an extent as
to have filled up the numbers required by the time
originally fixed ire the President's proclamation.
The time exPir-ed this day, and has been extended
to the Ist of 'September. The mercenaries who feel
disposed t'o enlist in the old regiments will thus have
another. fortnight in which to make up their minds,
and receive their money. The draught continues to
w in disfavour, and coming into operation simul-
tP.neously with the taxgatherer will sorely try the
patience as well as the loyalty of millions who have
never yet publicly uttered what Mr. Stanton and
Mr. Seward consider to be treason, but who may
have thought it nevertheless. So unpopular is it
and so certain to be resisted in the Western as in
the Middle Statee,, and, indeed, everywhere except
in New England, that it is doubtful whether the
President will not back out of it on the plea that
the valuntrAring is sufficient, an untruth that will
deceive r.robody on this side of the Atlantic. The pre-
Ini•urP. on gold, which was temporarily checked by
One non-arrival from England of American securities
ordered for immediate sale, has again begun to rise,
and now stands at 16 per cent. Silver has nearly
disappeared from circulation, postage stamps—too
many of them old ones already used, from which
the marks of transit through the post office have
been cleverly obliterated—do all the duty of a minor
currency. The most valuable coins handled by the
people are the one cent of nickel, and the 3 cent
piece of alloyed silver. The habeas corpus is sus-
pended. Every one's liberty is at the mercy of
spies, informers, and extortioners. The will of Mr.
Lincoln is law ; as is that of Mr. Seward and Mr.
Stanton, provided the President does not object,
which he never does; and the country is de facto a
pure despotism, with the mere form and semblance
of a freedom that has ceased in reality to exist.
New York is under martial law, the Superintendent
of Police having been appointed Special Provost
Marshal, to prevent citizens from travelling or aliens
from leaving the country without passports, and
also to arrest all persons who by word or deed dis-
courage enlistments, and to give men the choice of
the army or Fort Lafayette. Foreign trade is al-
most wholly at an end, and neither the people nor
the Government know what to think or what to do
to make things better.
And While this, broadly stated, is the condition
of the 'North, what is that of the South? Perilous,
no doubt, but full of hope for the Southern people.
Unrecognised as it is, it has succeeded in making
itself a nation. Isolation from the outer world in all
things except in :sympathy., combined with fanati-
cism, intense love of country, and enormous suffer-
ing, have welded it into adamantine unity. It has
been baptized in fire and blood, and stands before
the great commonwealth of Christendom heroic and
undaunted, an object of admiration even to three-
fourths of its late fellow-citizens who are in arms
to resist its independence. The North offers no
such spectacle. It is not a nation, and it is not
united. The immigrants from Europe who added
so largely to its wealth and power refuse to fight
for it. Its own people would rather do battle for it
vicariously than personally. It is split up into irre-
concilable factions, each clamouring for the other's
blood. Fort M'Henry, near Baltimore, is receiving
political prisoners at the rate of 25 per day. The
abolitionists of New England hurl foul epithets of
treason against such men as Mr. Vallandigham of
Ohio, Mr. Wickliffe of Kentucky, and Mr. Fer-
nando Wood, of New York; and continually urge
the sorely bewildered President to consign them,
and all who agree with them, to Fort Lafayette or
the gallows. On the other hand, the once moderate
and constitutional Democrats call upon the Govern-
ment to stop the tongues of such preachers of dis-
union as Mr. Wendell Phillips, Mr. Horace Gree-
ley, and the Rev. Dr. Cheever, and not to be afraid
of uBing the hangman's rope if no other instrumen-
tality can be made so readily available. Both par-
ties pretend to love the Union, but love something
else better ; both applaud every act of arbitrary
power, however atrocious, provided only that it be
exercised against a political opponent. Like the
ducks and geese in the Fool's Paradise of the
fairy story, who run
about with knives and forks in
their beaks, crying
aloud " Come kill me, and eat
me," the people of the North run
after their Go-
vernment, ready-trussed and bandaged,
and im-
plore it to destroy and feast upon the
public liberty.
Authority wars with authority, and every crotchet-
monger in high place either assumes
to set his
crotchet above the Constitution and the law, or to
make the Federal subservient to the local govern-
ment. The President objects to arm black men, and
calls for a draught of 300,000 citizens—meaning
white men. Governor Andrews, of Massachusetts,
who is quite as much of a rebel as President Davis,
replies that his State shall provide the proper con-
tingent, but that they shall be citizens irrespective
of colors, and that black men and white men shall
servr.: in his armies on an equal footing.
General Hunter, a man of similar opinions, has
$-m-ganised a negro'brigade in North Carolina against
-orders, and the result has been that four-fifths of
his black warriors have run away into slavery to
their old masters, rather than endure the discipline
of military life under such hard taskmasters as
the Yankees ; and that those who remain have
been so persecuted by their white fellow-soldiers,
'who think it a disgrace to serve with them,
that the philanthropic and disobedient General has
resolved to disband the corps and trust arhou3,
to white men for the .
future Illinois, by a
e against one, has decreed
popular vote of three
that no black man shall come within its limits • and,
by a vote of seven against one, that no black man
already admitted to, or born on its soil, shall be
considered a citizen, or exercise any political or
municipal function. The President has received a
deputation of free negroes at Washington; told
them plainly that they are an inferior race ; that
their presence in the land makes the whites uncom-
fortable and unhappy ; that he, and everyone else
who has a white skin, would be very much obliged
to them if they would forthwith extirpate them-
selves
to Central America, and that he will provide
the funds for the purpose, if they will but go
quickly, and take their wives and children along
with them. General Butler, at New Orleans, has
ordered General Phelps, his subordinate, to employ
"
escaped slaves in chopping wood, in cutting down
timber, • in digging trenches, and doing
the other
hard work of which they are so capable. General
declaring that lie Is
Phelps has refused to compty,
not a nigger driver," and that if • the negroes
‘tve to he employed in the army at all they
must be
ar" like the white men, and treated in all respects
in
the same manner. General Butler has repri-
mnnded him for his breach of discipline, and
General -Phelps has resigned his command. Butler
has refused to accept the resignation in face of
the enemy, and New Orleans, which longs for an op-
portunity to be rid -of both and all their host, looks