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

and the question of negro slavery, which provoked
and embitters it. Perhaps the nomenclature
adopted may not be scientific; but if tLe whole
public opinion of North and South be clarified 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 th© 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 " fliunting 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 " 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 Dis-
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 Nortb, who have little or
no sympathy with negroes or their wrongs, and who
do not consider va.etz man ontitlod to tho etsms
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,
pare 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, but
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
1 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 expaneien of the free North in the wil-
d.ernesses 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 be 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,rrh end a danger to them and to their people.
These considerations, obvious as they are, do not
7,lg,ll,with the members of this party. They re-
puelatentheeirint.terfer.en.ce of Europe now and here-
tun ities. Their cry
ls. in the present and its oppor-
tunities.
rY is "sufficient for the day is the
can;Theyto alarestdaestelornmginaesdittmo
aryes,tloeraevitnhge
to another o thereof."
eirfetohfineration the task of defending it, if it
be attacked from within. In
—addition to this, many
of them though, perhaps,
neitherhope Mthra.tLnineweo\nimnoesr.
Mr. Seward—entertain the
and that a great
ed by both sections of the Republic,
may produce
new circumstances ;
foreign war wag
giving them victory and fame in common, might
weld together the broken and imperfectly mended
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
same 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 cause 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 seces-