The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-22 00:00:00

THE CIVIL ivAB AMERICA.

(From the Time? Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, SEPT. 9.
The Federal Government has lost more than
battles at Bull Dann and Centreville. It has lost
the confidence of the people, in itself, in its gene-
rals, in its conduct of the war, and in its whole
system of administration, At this moment there is
not a public man, from Mr. President Lincoln
downwards, in whom the country has the slightest
faith. Each member of the Cabinet, and each
general in the army, has doubtless his supporters,
and partisans, his toadies and suppliants, who ex-
pect to profit by and through him ; but no single
individual in high office, civil or military, com-
mands the public esteem in any higher degree than
that of cold respect. With the capture of Baltimore
or Washing ton, both of which are probable, the
whole fabric of the Northern Government will be
shaken. Whether it will fall depends upon the
merest accident. Were there but half a Cromwell,
or one-quarter of a Bonaparte.in the army, its over-
throw would be the easy result of a coup avetat.
The President, his Cabinet, and his generals are at
variance, more or less envenomed with each other
and with their subordinates. The personal regard
which most people felt• for Mr. Lincoln, as a quiet,
honest, unpretending man, placed in a situation the
most unenviable in the world, is fast giving place
to a feeling of angry discontent. The cry is foi
energy, and not for good nature. If the President,
instead of continually "putting his foot down" to
maintain a friend in office, would put his foot up a
little oftener to expel a man of proved incapacity,
whether he were friend or foe, the public would be
better pleased. So suddenly has he fallen from the
pinnacle of popularity that people, undismayed by
the possible presence of one of the eavesdroppers of
the Provost Marshal, talk at street corners of his
glaring unfitness to guide the destinies of the
country, and some of the Abolitionist newspapers
openly call upon him to resign a post which neither
his natural talent nor his education qualifies him to
fill with dignity or usefulness.

Mr. Stanton is all but universally hated, as the
prime agent of thousands of illegal arrests in every
part of the country. Mr. Chase is thought an un-
safe Minister by every one unconnected with spe-
culations on the Stock-Exchange who has either
the time or the capacity to think about the matter.
Mr. Seward enjoys the small popularity he has
achieved on the sole strength of his presunied hos-
tility to Great Britain, and has lost to a great ex-
tent the confidence of the Republican party, in
which he was nurtured, by his gradual change of
view on the slavery question. The other Ministers
are duMmies, whom nobddy thinks it worth while
either to attack or defend. General M'Clellan,

though beloved by his soldiers, is distrusted by the
people as a commander, because he has fulfilled none
of the exaggerated expectations which were formed
of him, because whenever he has made an advance
it has been a mistake, and because the only suc-
cesses of which he can boast are skilful, but not al-
ways cheaply accomplished, retreats from positions

into which he ought never to have thrust himse]

General Halleck has done nothing to justify the
President's choice in appointing him to the chief
command, and shares the blame and discredit of the
recent disasters, which every one expected that he
was nominated to prevent. General M'Dowell,
damaged at the first battle of Bull Run, has been
ruined at the second and third, and, openly accused
of treachery, has been allowed a furlough of 15 days
that he may be out of the way of further mischief,
instead of being put on his trial, and honourably
acquitted if the accusation be false, and shot if it
be true. General Pope—who ought never with his
antecedents to have been intrusted with a chief
command—has proved to be the most egregious
mistake the President has made, and justified the
epigrammatic description of his "great brains,
great indolence, and great want of veracity," in every
item but the first. These estimates of their leading
men are formed by Americans themselves, are cir-
culated in every society and percolate through the
newspapers, in spite of the Provost-Marshal, the
War-office, and the censorship. To add to the
confusion, General Pope whom nobody be-
lieves, who accuses three of his subordinate
generals of disobedience, or worse ; and
who is himself accused by public opinion of fatal
incapacity, is removed by the President from the
command of the army of Virginia, and appointed to
the command of the army of the North-West ; while
the three Generals, who, if his allegations were true,
ought to be shot, and who, whether they be true or
false, ought to be tried by court-martial, are ap-
pointed by General M'Clellan, with the consent
and approbation of General Halleck and the Presi-
dent, to important commands in the army with
which M'Clellan is moving from Washington to
expel, if he can, the victorious legions of the South
from the pleasant fields and rich granaries of sym-
pathising Maryland. And while this demoralisa-
tion exists in the upper ranks of the civil and mili-
tary service it is less wonderful than deplorable
that a similar demoralization spreads to the lower.
Even in this utmost extremity of the national dan-
ger, runaway " officers" are captured by "hun-
dreds" in Alexandria and Washington and marched
off in disgrace—not to prison nor to be shot by
drumhead sentence—but to the army which they
disgrace, and which their cowardice may destroy.
The same letters, published in all the New York
papers, which narrate these facts, report that not
three-fourths of all the thousands of sick and
wounded men who make sickness and wounds the
plea of transport from the scene of battle are really
side; that they sham disease and injury to escape
service, and that such is the confusion and want of
control that pervades all departments, that any
soldier is but to go on board a Governmentyork or
trans-
port to be conveyed, unquestioned, to New
Philadelphia. When such is the condition of affairs
it is not surprising that the
South, strong in its
patriotic unity of purpose, and strong also in its
desperation, should advance against the North and
North, weak by its
itself, unable to raise
own divisions, mistrnstfutl
carry all before it, or that the
ofnumbers by piling up
volunteers in sufficient
es of green-backs, afraid
bounty money in
_ by In.
conscription, sacrificed
to enforce the
and suspecting treachery in its best
competency,
his worst generals, should stagger like
as well as in
It is possible, of course, .that '
a drunken man. v