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

on with delighted wonder at the spectacle of their
disagreement, and hails the day of deliver-
ance as close at hand. General M'Cle an would
conduct the war on the principles of a gentleman
• and a Christian ; and would take not ing for the
1
• needs of his army from the unhap y population
among whom he is encamped without paying for
it; and is denounced by the Abolitionists as a trai-
tor, a sham General, a digger and trencher, a man
of the spade, to whom the sword is either unfamiliar
or objectionable. Gen. Pope acts on the contrary
principle—would treat the unfortunate people
through whose country he passes like a pestilence
as Napoleon treated the Russians in 1812 ; would
make the war support the war, take what he wants
wherever he can get it, only paying for it on proof
of the loyalty of the owner, corroborated by his oath. 1
Pope is, in like manner, denounced as furiously as
M'Clellan, but by the opposite party. Add to this
list of Northern antagonisms, that a war of races is
fast growing up between the Irish labourers and
the negroes in New York and throughout the west ;
that the questions of strikes and wages and the
growth of pauperism, so long supposed to be pecu-
liar to the Old World, have produced serious riots
in more than one city of the Union during the last
week; and the social disunity of the Federals will
be evident to all who care to see and understand the
truth. Nor are these, numerous as they are, the sole
symptoms of the chaos of Northern interests, pas-
sions, and opinions that underlies all the brag and
" buncombe " of the press. The officers of the Fede-
ral army are publicly denounced as drunk and in-
efficient by the War Secretary, and the Volunteers,
though tempted by 100 dollars, refuse to serve
under them. Even a Brigadier-General was seen
to be " gloriously" drunk at the recent battle of
Malvern heights, and has since been cashiered. At

this moment the police of New York and other large
cities are publicly employed in capturing commis-
sioned officers at five dollars a piece ; and yester-
day they arrested one colonel, one captain, several
lieutenants, and a number ofsergeants and corporals.
Surely this is a picture presented to the mind's eye
which will hardly realise the idea of a harmonious
union, settled purpose, high aims, or exalted
patriotism in the North.

At a public meeting held in the suburb of
Hoboken the night before last, one of the speakers
called for a " master mind, to understand the
nation and to lead it to victory." There were loud
cheers ofcourse—expressive of the popular sympathy
with the want of greatness in military as well as in
civil life—which is so plain as to strike everybody ;
—but it will be long before there is any other
answer to the call than cheers, or derision—or of
expectation. There is no master mind in the North ;
—unless, perhaps, it be the master mind of some
unknown subaltern, who will yet open the oyster
with his sword, and gulp up the fat and lazy free-
dom that slumbers in the shell. General Sickles,
whom all admit to be a fighting General, and who
is always either found or thrust into the post of
danger, looked round him at the same meeting on
the stalwart audience that applauded his eloquence,
and exclaimed, " There are enough able-bodied
men here to form a regiment ; will none of you go P"
There was no reply. Later in the evening one
man, 50 years of age, excited by the fiery words of
another orator, volunteered to enlist; but no one
imitated his example, even although a judge pre-
sent, who thought Mr. Wendell Philipps ought to
be muzzled in Fort Lafayette, offered, if 10 Volun-
teers would step to the platform, to give them each
10 dollars in addition to the regular bounties. He
pleaded in vain. The voice of the charmer had no
effect. The rustle of his green backs (not the chink
of his gold, for gold chinks no longer in America,
except in bank parlours, where it is a commodity,
like tea at a grocer's) was not more effective than
his spoken eloquence, and the Hoboken meeting
produced but the one solitary volunteer-50 years
of age, whom nobody knew, and who probably
changed his mind before the morning. The gather-
ing was otherwise remarkable for a little incident
quite in accordance with the spirit of the day. The
judge already mentioned (Whiting) having con-
demned the mode in which the Government carried
on the war, was arrested as a traitor on the plat-
form by an over zealous lieutenant-colonel out re-
cruiting, on the charge of discouraging enlistments.
It does not appear from the published reports
that the lieutenant-colonel actually carried off
the judge to prison, and, as it was the same
judge who afterwards promised 10 dols. each to
10 Volunteers, who never appeared to claim
them, it may be presumed that the patriotic offer
condoned or neutralized the previous offence, and
that Fort Lafayette is not yet to be honoured by
his presence. But the judge must look well to him-
self for the future. Both Fort Lafayette and Fort
Warren are receiving an accession of inmates, and
his turn may come.

Neither of these twin Bastilles (and it is a pity
that the great name of such a champion of liberty
as General Lafayette should be desecrated, by be-
stowal upon the ugly prison in New York Harbour)
is so hermetically sealed against the world as to
prevent a cry of anguish from being heard outside.
One young man, son of a former Governor of Mary-
land, lies in Fort Lafayette in solitary confinement
and in chains ; and not even his mother is allowed
to see him. His offence was the endeavour in the
disguise of a woman, to cut adrift a Federal gun-
boat in the York River ; a great crime, no doubt,
in the eyes of his captors and one that may deserve
death ; but that surely does not deserve the punish-
ment of life in chains, darkness, and total seclusion
from the face of man ? The complaint of another
unfortunate, transferred from Fort Lafayette to
Fort Warren, has reached me—l need not say how
—and the story, which is based on official docu-
ments in my possession, I forward, to tell as briefly
as is consistent with clearness. It may suffice to
afford the people of England some little idea of the
despotism which this country is for the present
content to endure without social convulsion. On
the 13th of September, 1862, Mr. W. H. Winder,
a gentleman of Philadelphia, was arrested at his
own house by telegraphic order from the Hon.
Simon Cameron, then Minister of War, and con-
veyed first to Fort Lafayette and subsequently to
Fort Warren. Immediately on his arrest, for
which no cause was assigned, his office, desks,
chests, boxes, &c., were broken open, and all his
manuscripts and papers, a collection of 30 years,
were turned over and ransacked, in the hope or
under tho pretext of finding treasonable matter.
Garbled
extracts from some of these, which per-
verted his real meaning for want of the context,
were published in the Philadelphia newspapers.
"The sanctity of
my private correspondence," says
Mr. Winder :"---
g‘ Was violated and malignantly calumniated by
the publication of pretended contents of letters thus
seized. Other parties were also grievously slan-
dered by statements of falsely alleged contents, and
I was debarred from
all opportunity of contradict-
ing the infamous publications. Even portraits that
had been for 20 years in
Prevented to slander me."
M. 'Winder being
of h:_
air,entirely
Learrest and having been inform
newspapers
of State
from
, like ever
would listen37my possession were misre-
presented
else,
a vri.son to any complaint
ignorant of the causes
informed through the
that the Secretary
coming di-
rectly
not only
but that he would
pay no attention to a,made by paid
counsel on a
to half, but that he
Priaoeg applications
Would
treat them as prejudicial:the case, and an aggra-
vation of the offence—wro
the
sth of December, requesti
o
questing to know
t Mr. Seward on
names of
his accusers, on what charge he the
permission to go to Washington tom
me°llfined, and
it might be. Mr. Seward replied
by toifftwhatever
his release if he would take the oath of a eitließiance.
he ng him
Mr. Winder declined on the ground that bi,, dnin
so would lead to the inference that
an
guilty of some crime or offence unspecified,
and -
t-
he had been pardoned on promise of better behavi„at.
;
for the future. Mr. Seward, on a subsequent
occa
sion, renewed the offer; but Mr. Winder's objection
being radical, applied to all tests or conditions which
might be supposed to admit that he had done any.
thing inconsistent with the character of a true Ame-
rican and a loyal citizen, and he declined the second
time. Thus the matter rested for five months, until
the 22d of February, 1862, when Mr. Winder wrote
'to Mr. Cameron, setting forth that he had been five
months in prison without process or form of law;
that if any charge of crime were to be brought