The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-30 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, MAY 16.
If the South is to be finally conquered—which is
not quite so certain as the North imagines—it is
palpable from every scrap of reliable information
which comes from the Cotton and Border States,
whether in the shape of official documents, news-
paper reports, or private letters, that a far more
difficult work than that of conquest remains to be
accomplished. How is the country to be governed ?
How are these eight or ten millions of people—not
an inferior or an alien race, but high-spirited, proud,
and defiant, speaking the same language with their
conquerors, and looking upon them with a hatred
es intense as that which Frenchmen would entertain
towards Englishmen, or vice versa, if either country
invaded and retained the other in subjection—to be
dealt with by a people who have conquered them
in the name of freedom and union, both of which
will be destroyed in the struggle that pretended to
establish them ? Like the Imperial Guard, the
South may die, but it will not surrender. This
truth becomes more apparent every day. General
Beauregard, in a proclamation from Memphis, ad-
dressed to the Southern planters, calls upon them
" to apply the torch without delay or hesitation to
all cotton within the possible reach of the enemy."
The order or request, whichever it be, has been very
generally obeyed throughout the whole length of
the Mississippi Valley. Such is the spirit of the
people, their bitter loathing of the Yankees, and
their determination, if they must retreat before
superior force, to leave nothing but a wilderness be-
hind them, that they will not only destroy their cot-
ton and sugar, but their towns and cities, as the in-
vaders approach. The Mayor and Aldermen of New
Orleans, nothing daunted by the military force
in possession, have refused to take the oath of
allegiance to the Federal Government, and have
been consigned to prison for their obstinacy—or
patriotism, PA they consider it,--there to remain
until they change their minds or are released by a
general amnesty or the fortune of war. Another 1
circumstance shows in quite as striking a manner
the temper of the people. General Butler having
penned a proclamation to the inhabitants, promising
the protection of the Federal Government to their ,
lives and property, sent it round to all the news-
paper and printing offices in 016 city. Every one
of them refused to publish or print it. In this emer-
gency the general was compelled to appeal to his
own army to know whether there were any compo-
sitors and pressmen in the ranks, and a sufficient
number of both having stepped forth, they were
marched under escort to one of the newspaper
printing-offices, where they set up and printed the
document, and afterwards affixed it to the walls and
public places of the city. The ladies not only talk
secession in the streets, but wave secession flags from
the windows as the soldiers pass, and no gentleman
who values his social position will exchange a word
with a Federal officer, except in reply to a civil
question. The Creole population are quite as hos-
tile as those who speak English, and, as the French
language is very little cultivated in the North, and
not one officer in a thousand adds any knowledge
of it to his other accomplishments, the Creoles hurl
Secession sentiments at their heads in French, and
utter language which would speedily consign them
to prison, along with the mayor and aldermen, if
the Federals could but understand it. In Virginia,
in the trail of the retreating army, the correspon-
dents and reporters who accompany the march to
Richmond do not find the slightest traces of Union
feeling, except among the black population. " The
negroes," says one letter, "are, I fancy, the only
Union people now in Dixie. With respect to the
whites, the feeling that their country is invaded has
overborne all antecedents. They hate us with the
hate of hell, and will yet do bloody work if they
have the opportunity." "At Williamsburgh," says
the Abolitionist on his travels, "no scrutiny
with candles or by daytime can discover a
single Unionist, man or woman." When the
people of Williamsburgh discovered that the Fe-
deral army paid in cash for what they wanted in
the stores, " they found," he adds, " the courage to
come oat and scowl upon n' " V 0 4L sohners are
largely foreigners," said a Virginian in Norfolk to
this gentleman, as the 20th New York, a German
regiment, passed up the street, but you yourselves
will be conquered soon. This is but a reverse to
our arms, and we must expect ups and downs in
war." " Yes," replied the Federal, " but does it not
strike you that we fidve all the ups and you all the
downs ?" The Confederate turned on his heel,
muttering something about Bull's Run, and closed
the parley. And while the people of the South,
even the armies of the North in actual possession of
their soil, are in this frame of mind, and while they
have yet two strong armies in the field burning
with a fierce desire to retrieve the late disasters of
their cause, does it not seem the extreme of folly on
the part of a Federal General in command of a great
department to proclaim the abolition of slavery ?
Abolition is not, or has not hitherto been, the policy
of the President or of Mr. Seward, and both have
taken especial pains to make the South understand
it as thoroughly as the North. It is not a policy
that the majority of the Northern people would re-
commend or support, but one to which they are, on
the contrary, very decidedly opposed. It meets
with no sympathy, except from a few ultra-Aboli-
tionists, who think, with Dr. Cheever, that the
" white men of America ought to go down on their
knees to the Negroes and ask pardon for the wrongs
committed on their race. For taking it upon him-
self to proclaim emancipation at St. Louis with-
out the authority of the President, and to the sore
embarrassment of his Government, Gen. Fremont was
deprived of his command at a critical moment, and
in the face of the enemy in the field; yet a second
General, unwarned by the example, has been found
to follow the same course in a still more startling
manner. Under date of Hilton Head, South Caro-
lina, May 9, General Hunter, warm with the
thanks of the Government for the capture of Fort
Pulaski, issued a proclamation which, unless imme-
diately disavowed, will be as valuable to the Con-
federates as an army of half a million of men, and of
which the logic is as wonderful as the rashness. He
declares that " slavery and martial law in a free
country are altogether incompatible. The persons
in those three States, Georgia, Florida, and South
Carolina, heretofore held as slaves, are therehre de-
clared for ever free." Most people are of opinion
that slaves and martial law are but too compatible,
and that one is exceedingly like the other, though
neither the one nor the other has any business in a
free country. But this is not what the General
meant. No one, not even an ultra-Abolitionist, has
any idea that slavery can be abolished by the stroke
of a pen, whether the penman be a subordinate
officer or the President himself. The first im-
pression in New York was that the document could
not be genuine ; but all doubt is at an end on the
subject this morning, and the greatest anxiety is
felt to know what will be done at 'Washington.
Even if General Hunter's proclamation be imme-
diately disavowed and himself superseded in his
command he will have done an imrneesity of mis-
chief ; for the leaders of the South will take care to
use his proclamation as an incentive scarcely needed
to the intensity of hatred that rages against the
Yankees, and will take no particular pains to
let it be known that his act had r.ot the autho-
rity of the Federal Government. But if, as
is not very probable, unless there has been a
sudden change in Mr. Lincoln's council, the
act be adopted, the last hopes of a speedy ter-
mination of a war that began to be prayed for in
this city are scattered to the winds. The already
exasperated South will be exasperated still further.
The proclamation will make a soldier of every man
and boy in the South, and will have an effect in
Kentucky and other Border States which may de-
prive the Union of some of its most effective legions
in the South-west. There are supposed to be at
least 30,000 Union men from the Border States in
the army of General Halleck who will either lay
down their arms or go over to the Confederates if
the President "endorse" General Hunter's procla-
mation, and the war, instead of dying out by the
exhaustion of the Sonth,will be invigorated by a
new lease of life and hatred that will carry it
through a dozen years, unless Europe should, in the
meantime, intervene between the combatants.
The public mind continues ill at ease on the sub-