The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-04 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

corner, goaded to exasperation by the devastatingn.ehestttnd i
fairest States, and unable to cope
march of Sherman through one of
wt.si
the new
levies of the North without breaking in upon its
list; tie laheat lining-
of itfisnasellruy
palbesanadgoan;
nneerigrnogrreesmeTasn,t will'of its slaves, and call into its servic3, on the pro-
mise of -liberty and a farm to all the survivors a
quarer of a million of able-bodied blacks. The
Southern President did not think a month ago
that the time had come when it was politic or
necessary to make the hazardous experiment,
but Sherman's march, Porter's armada, the re-
verses which have befallen Hood, and Mr. Lin-
coln's call for so large an additional force—a call
which will be met by money if it cannot be met in
any other way—have so altered the circumstances as
to have created throughout the South a very general
feeling in favour of the measure, as one absolutely
indispensable not alone to the safety of the Con-
federates at home, but to its prestige abroad. It is
asserted in the Richmond Enquirer of the 15th inst.
that General Lee has become a convert, and that he
has written a letter to Mr. Porcher Miles, Chair-
man of the Confederate House Committee on Mill-
' tart' Affairs, in favour of immediately arming the
negroes. The Enquire,- argues that independence
is dearer to the South than negro slavery. " Shall
we," it asks, " prolong the war for the sake of our
negroes ? Shall we sacrifice our children to pre-
serve our slaves ? Shall we exhaust our country,
destroy our noble defenders, and endanger every
institution rather than test an experiment that may
give us the means of recruiting our army, of assum-
ing the offensive, and of conquering a speedy peace?
Neither rhetoric nor argument nor authority can
determine whether the negroes will make for us
faithful soldiers. The experiment must tea and
decide this question. General Lee asks that this
experiment be made. For us this is sufficient.
Never will we put our prejudices against his de-
liberate judgment and advice. He is a rash man
that does. He is not a wise man that imposes re-
sponsibilities and yet withholds means for their ac-
complishment We hate, detest, and
despise the enemy far more than we love and ad-
mire slavery. If our liberties cannot be gained but
by the sacrifice of slavery, we are prepared to make
that sacrifice, and to urge that sacrifice upon our.
countrymen. We would not return to the Union
if every slave could be returned to his master, and
if every guarantee that human ingenuity could de-
vise were secured for the protection of the ' institu-
tion ;' we prefer liberty with free society to reunion
upon the securest basis of slavery."
President Davis is tenacious of his individual
opinion, but he is a statesman in the best sense of
the word, and as such knows how to yield at the
proper time to the force of circumstances which he
is unable to control, and will not, it is to be fairly
presumed, set himself in vain antagonism to the
judgment of such a general as Lee, or the sentiment
of the Southern people. The closing of the ports
of the South has deprived it of the aid which the
North derives from Ireland and Germany. The
negroes alone remain to right the wavering balance,
and it is asserted that when the South employs
them it will not only strengthen its arm to achieve
the independence it seeks, but will remove the
greatest stumbling-block which has ever stood in
the way of the cordial good wishes and the recog-
nition of Europe.
The order of General Dix, which virtually
amounted to a declaration of war against Canada, if
the Canadian Government failed, as he pre-supposed
it would, to do a certain thing in a certain contin-
gency, has been disavowed by President Lincoln,
and the general has been directed to rescind such
portion of it as was offensive to Canada, and conse-
quently, to Great Britain. General Dix has borne
the snubbing with the profoundest equanimity. In
any other country so high an official would resign if
his conduct were publicly condemned by his supe-
riors. Not so in America. It costs much trouble,
much twisting, much wriggling, much sacrifice,
much eating of dirt, much expenditure of vital
energy, much adaptability, much humiliation, and
much self-abasement to get into office ; and once in,
it is the rule to hold on " like grim death" to the
last extremity, or until the periodical change of
Administration at the end of the customary four
years shall make an end of all officials, both high
and low, and leave a fair field and a tobula rasa for
the new comers. Besides, every official has the
idea that if he be not President he ought to be, and
may be, and in this expectation he consideri it to
be his bounden duty to become popular, to pander
to the passions and the prejudices of the people—to
make political capital for himself, and to be a some- '
body amid the crowd of nobodies that surrounds
him. There is no denying the fact that in issuing
his orders to his subordinates on the Canadian fron-
tier to pursue any future marauders into Canadian
territory if they could not otherwise kill or capture
them, and on no account to deliver up any prisoners
they might make on the demand of the Canadian
authorities, General Dix struck a sympathetic chord
in the hearts of his countrymen. He was, in Ame-
rican parlance, endorsed by the public, and not only
endorsed, but vehemently applauded. It is always
popular to threaten Great Britain ; always unpopu-
lar to assume towards that powerful, but in America
very grossly misunderstood, country a position of
fairness or conciliation. - hence General Dix, the
receiver, and not Mr. Lincoln, the administrator, of
the snub carries off the honours of the day in the
Canadian imbroglio ; and the friends of General Dix
believe they can safely calculate that by his prompt
and what they call truly American action he has
perceptibly strengthened his chances of a nomina-
tion for the Presidency in 1868. The unanimity
with which the Canadian press has reprobated the
conduct of the Vermont raiders, whether they be
thieves or soldiers, and the sincerity with which
" they have deplored the imperfection of the law by
means of which Mr. Justice Coursal conscientiously
felt himself compelled to discharge them, together
with the earnest determination of the Canadian
government to re-arrest the malefactors if that be
possible, and to prevent as far as the utmost vigilance
will allow the organisation of similar acts of warfare
on Canadian soil, have somewhat cooled the anti-
British war :fever of last week. There, neverthe-
less, remains a sufficient amount of excited ill-will
to portend, unless the greatest care and caution be
employed, an unsatisfactory, if not explosive, state
of public feeling towards Canada and Great Britain
during the whole continuance of the war. Hitherto
the sympathies of the Canadian people have been
almost wholly with the South. But if Southern
agents in Canada, with the view of aiding their
cause by creating animosity between the Northern
Government and that of Great Britain, attempt to
organise invasions of the Border States on Canadian
soil, they will run the serious risk of converting
friends into enemies, and arraying against their
cause the interests of a great nation. They may,
perhaps, imagine that the sympathies of Great
Britain count for little, and have been of the
smallest possible aid to them in their struggle, but
they ought to be wise enough to know that if
British sympathy had gone wholly to the other side
the Confederacy would scarcely have stood so high
as it stands to-day in the world's opinion, or had
half the chances that it now has of proxiraate ad-
mission into the family of nations.

(From the Tines' Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Dec. 20.
Seldom have the Northern people been per-
mitted to enjoy such a feast of victory as that
which within the last few days has been spread be-
fore them by Generals Sherman and Thomas. It is
difficult to say which of the two is at this moment
the most popular, or excites by his achievements
the most enthusiasm. Sherman's march through
Georgia, without, as he reports, the loss of a
Waggon," is one of the most brilliant episodes of the
war, and will secure him a high and abiding place
in the history of his country. The Confederate
forces that might have opposed him were so small
and so widely scattered, and by the mystery as
well as the mastery:of his movements he threatened
so many places at once, that there was literally no-
body to contest his progress. He swept across a
belt of territory from 10 to 20 miles wide and 300
miles long with the force and destructiveness of a
hurricane ; arrived at the seaboard with a well-fed,
unharrassed, and exultant army ; established his
communication with the Federal fleet ; assaulted
and captured a strong fort, and took up such a
sition in the rear of Savannah as, with a Federal
fleet in its front, to leave little if any doubt that the
place must speedily surrender or be reduced to
ashes. The achievements of Gen. Thomas are not
so splendid, nor have they yet reached their climax
in the destruction—a final defeat of General Hood,
who, in the face of mighty obstacles and an im-
mense superiority of numbers, has been nobly fight-
ing in defence of the cause intrusted to his safe-
keeping. No one will deny that he is a brave sol-
dier, but he has added by his conduct of the cam-
paign in Georgia and Tennessee since the removal
of General Joseph E. Johnston another proof to
the many which this and all other wars
have afforded that something more than personal
bravery is required in a generalissimo. The indivi-
dual soldier, if he be a private, a captain, a colonel,
or a divisional commander, may, without incurring
blame, be brave to rashness when he acts in obe-
dience to orders, but a general in chief who exhibits
the virtue of bravery unaccompanied by that of
prudence or adaptation of means to ends cannot
escape censure even from his friends if his bravery
be unrewarded by success. When General John-
ston was superseded by the Southern President, and
General Hood appointed in his place, there was a
very prevalent feeling throughout the North—and,
it would appear, from statements in the Richmond
journals, throughout the South also—that Mr. Davis
had made a mistake, and that either in a fit of im-
patience or acting upon misconception he had dis-
pensed with the services of one of his ablest gene-
rals, and dismissed a consummate strategist, to
make room for a mere fighter. The result appears
to vindicate the prescience of the objectors. Gen.
Sherman is reported to have had a high opinion of
Johnston, but none of Hood, and to have seized the
opportunity of Johnston's removal to march through
Georgia with the larger half of his army, leaving
the smaller half behind under General Thomas to
cope with the dashing but unwary favourite of
Air. Jefferson Davis. It is reported on high autho-
rity—if not the highest—that the reasons given for
Johnston's removal were—first, 44 his failure to ar-
rest the advance of the enemy in the vicinity of
Atlanta, far in the interior of Georgia ;" and,
secondly, " the non-expression of any confidence
that he could defeat or repel Sherman." Military
critics—some who are friendly to the Confederate
cause, and some who are not, but who look upon
war as a game to be scientifically criticized by those
who are competent to form an opinion—assert
that General Johnston's strategy was sound ; that
the Fabian policy was the only one he could
employ when pushed by an enemy three if
not four times his superior in numbers, and that
until the day of his removal such policy had been
pre-eminently successful, it is asserted that Gen.
Lee, whom everybody, North and South, admits to
be The first general of the age, adopted after the
battle of the 'Wilderness precisely the same policy
as Gen. Johnston, and gained great glory by it ;
that the relative strength of Sherman's army and
Johnston's was such that had Johnston been the
attacking party, the chances would have been in
Sherman's favour ; that at Dalton Sherman had a
fortified pass in his rear, as a place of refuge to
which he could retire in case of mishap ; that in
moving south he advanced fortifying, and that con-
sequently he had always an intrenched position close
behind him ; that under such circumstances victory
could not have been decisive for Johnston! while
defeat would have been ruinous ; and that the true
strategy—that which Johnston employcd—was to
keep near the enemy, to take advantage of any ex-
posure of himself which he might make, and to re-
pel his almost daily partial assaults by the infliction
of much greater loss than he suffered. It is alleged
by the true friends of Gen. Johnston that he so im-
peded Sherman's faarchfrom Chattanooga to Atlanta
as to hold him for 72 days in advancing 93 miles ;
and that while in successive encounters with the Fe-
deral armies he inflicted a loss in killed, wounded,
- and prisoners, of 40,000 men, he lost but 10,000 of
his own; and that this course, if continued, would
speedily have so reduced the disparity of numbers as,
if not to have given Gen. Johnston the superiority,
to have made the ultimate battle one of equal to
equal. As regards the second allegation—not a very
serious one at the best—it is easily disposed of. No
sensible man, in high or low position, regards the em-
ployment of boastful language as evidence of merit,
or modesty as a proof of incompetency. Whether
the defence thus made for General Johnston be suffi-
cient, it is, unfortunately for the South, too clear
that its interests in Georgia and Tennessee have
suffered by his removal ; that General Hood, though
brave, has been rash ; or, if not rash, unsuccessful ;
and that the supersedure of Johnston has created
political divisions in the South, which have a ten-
dency to weaken, if they have not already weakened
• the hands of the Executive.
The great Armada, as it is called, of Admiral
Porter, composed of no less than 65 vessels of vsitr,
exclusive of 85 transports and smaller cr:cdt, and
having on board General B. F. Butler, and at least
20,000—some accounts say 241°0—men detailed
,
from the army of the Potom forthis special service
,
has appeared off Cape 'Aar, bound for Wilmington.
This is the expedition which was to have started in
October, and which it was hoped would have won a
great victory before the first days of November, so
as to gain votes for Mr. Lincoln and re-seat him in
the Presidential chair, amid a blaze of triumph and
rejoicing. The necessity under which Gen. Sherman
found himself of evacuating Atlanta—attained at so
much cost and trouble, but afterwards found to be so
worthless and untenable, and his consequent retreat
through Georgia to the sea—led to the postponement
of Admiral Porter's expedition until such time as
Sherman's safety should be officially known, and his
new base upon the coast securely established. Sa-
vannah and Wilmington were then to be simulta-
neously attacked. This, it is now asserted, was the
programme
arranged at Washington, with the full
concurrence of
ary movement
General Grant, Mr. Lincoln, Mr.
Stanton,• and General llalleck, and which, it is
expected, will this week be
a combined naval and
milit
ones -ed to completion by
both cities—the
and Admiral Dahlgren, the other by byGeneral General against
Sherman
Butler and Admiral Porter.
speculators have been " discou Already
the gold
t
and prospective victories in this dirtenegtio
effect as to reduce the premium from 131- he actual
11 th such
or nearly 20 per cent. The reduction, toho 114,
has not been maintained, and the speculators for the
rise have been able to exhibit the dark
side of the
picture with such success as to bring up the premium
again this morning to 127.
The shadows in the future, which the too sanguine
refuse to see, but which are obvious enough to all
who look dispassionately upon events, are that the
successes of the North, gratifying as they may be
to the popular pride, and welcome to the party
necessities of the Administration, will aid but little,
if it all, in the termination of the war. Already Mr.
Lincoln has confessed that he has not force enough
.for the ends in view by calling for a new levy of.
300,000 men, to be drawn by conscription, if there
is not patriotic zeal enough in the country to pro-
vide them by voluntary enlistment or by high boun-
ties. It is feared also that the South, driven into a

CONVOCATION OF YORK.—The Archbishop has
appointed this Convocatton to meet for despatch of
business on Tuesday, the 21st of February. His Grace
subject for discussion :—Subscrip-
tion the following
f Lay Helpers ;
the Table of lessons- from
has named
the Position o
; the Burial Service the
Scripture.
LOST IN THE SNOW ON DARTMOOII.—A melan-
choly Saturday.
-- A young
eholy occurrence took place on
had just been appointed
who
married man named Sweeney,
prison, had gone
Schoolmaster to the Dartmoor convict
town
on foot to
into Tavistock on business.
He
left
the
k in the evening.
return to Prince Town soon after 8 o'clock .
ind blowing
A heavy snowstorm came on, and, a fierce w—
many feet
at the time, the is in some places became. h
deep. [Sweeney took two hours and a quarter to reach
errivale-brige, a diktance of four miles. There is a pub-
andlic-house at the bridg, and there ha stopped for a while
partook of refreshment. The gale had by that time
increased in fury, and the landlady urged the poor fellow
to stop the night, but being, anxious to get home to his
wife and and young children he refused the hos-
proffered
pitality with thanks, and set out for his home He never
reached it, his dead body being found the following morn-
ing about three-quarters of a mile from Prince Town, in a
, crouching position, close by the hedge.

rHE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 4, 1865.

be felt by the middle and upper classes, but especially by
the middle class, who, he hoped, would take a prominent
part in promoting the system, for the education of the
middle class was becoming of increased importance. One
of the great objects now was that the education of all classes
should be harmonised. Much had been done in promoting
the education of the lower class and in revising and re-
modelling upper-class education, but it was essential
that the middle class, the great depo-sitory of political and
social power, should be harmonised with the rest. Although
the education of one man should not be the same as that of
another who had a different object 'in life, still no class
should be left to think that what was important to one class
it was waste of time and foolish in another to acquire.
Whatever study could be commonly agreed upon as con-
ducive to formation of good character, of improved taste,
and instrumental in cultivating the faculty of accurate ob-
servation, that study was one:which no particular class
should acquire, but to which all classes should devote
themselves. (Cheers.)