The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-25 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' (Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Nov. 11.
No one who knows anything of the character of
Mr. Lincoln's mind, or of the immense pressure that
has been brought to bear upon it by the Abolitionist
and extreme war party, will be surprised to learn
that he has a second time relieved Gen. M'Clellan
from the command of - the Army of the Potomac.
Near midnight, in the midst of a frightful snow
storm on Friday last, the General was officially ap-
prised of the fact by Brigadier Buckenham, and
ordered to report himself at Trenton, the capital of
New Jersey, a little city, 57 miles from Ncw York,
where his wife sad family had gone to pass the
winter. A whisper of what had happened had been
heard by a few persons in New York before the close
of business on Saturday, and there was a consequent
fall in public securities of about / per cent., but
the general public was nit informed until Sun-
day morning. Little or no surprise seemed to be
felt by anybody, tat a good deal of alarm, not un-
mingled with disgust and indignation, was expressed
whenever the commentators happened to belong to
the Democratic party. The ultra-Republicans and
" Exterminators" who raise in pulpit and on plat-
form the savage slogan, " war to the knife, and the
knife to the handle," are of course delighted—and
Governor Sprague' of Rhode Island, a wealthyjma-
nufacturer, enriched by the war tariff, and known
for his zeal in the cause of abolition—Zed that 'hie
led him to raise and arm a negro brigade, which the
President will not allow to leave Rhode Island—
went so far as to order a salute of 100 guns to be
fired yesterday in Providence iu commemoration of
the event. The dismissal has been no hasty move-
ment. It appears to have been resolved upon in the
Cabinet immediately on the President's return
from his visit to the camp after the Battle of Antie-
tam—but Mr. Lincoln, always kind; always dila-
tory, always dubious, always over-polite, delayed
the stroke as long as possible, partly, perhaps, from
a desire not to seem to act harshly, and partly, no
doubt, from a disinclination to take a step of such
importance while the elections were pending. The
grounds of the dismissal are set forth in a despatch
from Gen. Halleck to the Secretary of War, dated
the 28th of Oct. The report accuses Gen. M'Clellan
.se .u...ucaieuee of orders, in refusing to advane.
against the enemy after the Battle of Antietam,
upon the plea that the army lacked shoes, tents,
stores, and other necessaries, which plea General
Halleok holds to be entirely unfounded, asserting
that all the wants of the army were duly cared for,
and that any delays which may have occurred were
trivial and speedily remedied. He furthermore
charges M'Clellan point flank with wilful neglect
of a peremptory order of the 6th of October to
cross the Potomac immediately to give battle to
the enemy, or to drive him south. teen. Halleck
shows himself a stern critic. He writes like a
lawyer, and the brief it unexceptionably drawn.
Perhaps, however, it would not be very difficult
to indite as unfavourable a criticism against
himself. He is a General who never fought
a battle, and all that the world knows of him, be-
yond the fact that he is nominally Commander-in-
Chief, is that he was splendidly befooled by General
Beauregard at Corinth, and suffered an army of
100,000 opponents to withdraw from a strong posi-
tion which he beleagured before he knew that a
single man had disappeared, and entered Corinth to
find no living creatures in it but a few dogs and two
negroes. Simultaneously with General Halleck's
accusation, which the friends of General M'Clellan
maintain that he can satisfactorily answer, the Com-
mittee of Generals and lawyers appointed to inves-
tigate the circumstance, attending the surrender of
Harper's Ferry have, in plain terms, censured Gen.
M'Clellan for neglecting to send reinforcements to
Colonel Miles, whom the committee also stigmatise
i
as an incompetent officer. Had the President been
capable of resisting
the political influence directed
against him night ala
day by the Abolitionist
party in the Cabinet,
the lecture-room, and
in the press, in the pulpit, in
thep aifor
resultsm —0
f hisbatesparty
visit
to
to M'Clellan's camp after the battle of Antietam
might have satisfied his •
mind that the Abolitionists
were demanding impossibilities of the General, and
that the advance so imperatively urged by an im-
patient, if not rabid, faction would have led to the
destruction of the army which attempted it ; and
that M'Clellan, who had twice preserved the
national capital from capture and destruction, might
not have been equally successful the third time if
he had yielded his own judgment to act on that of
uninformed and prejudiced people, who envied him
for his success and hated him for his politics.
With M'Clellan has fallen his friend and disciple
General Fitz-John Porter, who has been summoned
to Washington to be tried by court-martial for
charges preferred against him by General Pope
after the luckless battle of Centreville—charges
amounting to treasonable disobedience of orders.
It is even hinted that M'Clellan himself will have
to submit to the same ordeal on the prosecution of
General Halleck. Whatever may be the real merits
of the case as regards the military genius or the
loyalty of IVl'Clellan—for both are impeached by his
political enemies—his dismissal has increased his
popularity, and made him by far the most prominent
man in the Federal States. Around his name—
which will be to them a tower of strength—will
rally the triumphant Democrats, as well as all the
quieter people who are weary of the war, hopeless
of its success, pinched by its taxation, or ruined, as
thousands must be, by the inevitable collapse of the
rotten financial system on which it is based. Last
night, at a great meeting of the Young Men's Demo •
cratic Association the mention of his name elicited
the most obstreperous demonstrations of applause ;
and when Mr. J. Van Buren declared that M'Clel-
lan, and M'Clellan alone, must be the next Demo-
cratic candidate for the Presidency, the cheers burst
forth with a volume and a will sufficient to prove
that if a Presidential election were near, and not
remote, his chances would ever weigh those of every
competitor. Some of the general's friends say that
he is not ambitions, and that having cleared his
military character from the aspersions thrown upon
it by Gen. Halleck and the Harper's Ferry Com-
mittee, he will wash his hands alike of war and
politics and retire into private life, the severest and
most flagrant example of the proverbial ingratitude
of Republics. Others, however, maintain that