The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-08 00:00:00

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THE SUN: LONDON, SATURDAY" EVENING, NOVEMBER 8, 1862.

will make him a useful, industrious citizen. We
will give him his familyo his wife. his children—
give him the earnings of the sweat of his brow, and
as a man we will give him what the Lord ordained
hire to have. I shall watch everything closely
dn wmeifg
jhatyhirlee;
suito mshallG's ransomed people.
re-
specting this experiment. It is something to be
permanent—more than for a day, more than for a
year.n
(3
toGod's Upon
be youworkeedpe out,dswhether
andh theer this
day

7HE CIVIL TVAR IN AMERICA.

Groan the Tames' Correspondent.)

NEW YORK, OCT. 24.
The attacks upon General M'Clellan increase in
virulence. It is held by his Abolitionist opponents
that if he did not utterly rout and destroy the Con-
federate army at Antietam, it was because he would
not; and by his jealous rivals, that he would have
done so if he could, but that he had not the soldier-
ship or the skill. The ultra-war party, or "exter-
minators," as they ought to be called, for they would
not only exterminate the Southern people by fire
and sword, but all Northern opposition by the
guillotine or the gallows, demand his immediate
dismissal. They allege that if he be a loyal man
he has no military genius ; and that if he be a
traitor, in collusion with the South, which they
more than hint, his genius, if he have any, is more
dangerous that his incapacity. In either case they
call for his removal. They loudl3 insist that Ge-
neral Pope was sacrificed to his offended dignity,
and allowed to be defeated with fearful loss of
life at Centreville when Fitz-John Porter and
three other Generals, whom Pope in his crimina-
tory report designates by name, might by obe-
dience to orders have won the day, and saved
the honour of the flag. They allege that his heart
is with the South ; that he does not wish to " hurt"
his many ancient schoolmates of the Military Aca-
demy at West Point, now serving in the Confe-
derate army ; and that his main object is to pro-
tract the war until the patience and the resources
of the North are both so much exhausted that the
people will be glad to listen to terms of compromise,
whether they come directly from the South or are
instigated by the European Powers. All this slan-
der, distrust, and violence flow from the bitter and
apparently inexhaustible fountain of Abolitionism.
The New England philanthropists and philosophers,
and the New York sensational preachers cry
" Negro," " Negro," in and out of season, without
loving the negro a whit the more for the fuss they
make about him ; and Puritanic tea-tables, presided
over by strong-minded women of the unmitigated
Yankee type, re-echo the savage slogan of extermi-
nation to the South with as much vehemence and
zeal as if it were the recognized and imperative
duty of Puritanism to enforce its theories at the
cannon's mouth upon every recalcitrant, native or
foreign, and as if a regular propaganda of all the
" isms," teetotalism included, were to be established
in America, to subdue the earth. It is difficult to
see how the President, who has yielded so much to
this party, can suddenly stop short ; and still more
difficult to see how he can retain his Cabinet if he
retain his General, or his General if he retain his
Cabinet. Either Gen. M'Clellan must be super-
seded in obedience to Abolitionist necessities and
ideas, or Mr. Stanton and Mr. Chase must resign.
By which way the mind of the bewildered Presi-
dent will turn depends, perhaps, less upon himself
than upon Mr. Seward ; and he, the author of the
revolutionary doctrine, that there may be in any
country a higher law than the Constitution, is be-
lieved to have been converted into a Conservative
by the responsibilities of power, and to support
Gen. M'Clellan with the whole weight of his influ-
ence. Yesterday the rumour was current all over the
city that Mr. Seward and Gen. M'Clellan had both
disappeared from the arena for awhile, and that
Abolitionism was triumphant. To-day the rumour
is denied from Washington ; but the general im-
pression is that, sooner or later, the Abolitionists
will prevail in the Councils of the President, and
that unless M'Clellan fight a great battle and win
it during the week he will no longer be allowed to
command the army of the Potomac. The person
most commonly spoken of for his successor is Gen.
Hooker—Fighting Joe, its he in called by the sol-
diers—an Abolitionist and a brave man, but some-
what too much inclined to boast, as his despatch
from the field of Antietam proves, to be considered
in every respect a reliable commander. The Nor-
thern people seem to imagine that a fighting gene-
ral is better than a thinking one, and that brute
valour and daring are all that are required to de-
feat the Southern armies. They forget that in
these respects the South is quite equal if not supe-
rior to the North, and that in the great game of
war the skill and discretion of the leaders count for
quite as much as the heroism of the soldiers, and
that Neys and Murats are more easily found to fight
battles than Napoleons to plan and win them.

The condition and prospects of the army appear
to be bad enough to justify Gen. M'Clellan's hesi-
tation in advancing. New York swarms with vo-
lunteers who have never yet smelt powder, and who
cannot be sent to Washington for want of firearms.
The great army of the Potomac suffers for want of
blankets as well as of shoes, and the men, having
nothing to do, sell their bullets and ammunition to
suttlers and camp followers for surreptitious and
execrable whisky. Tne surgeons, who are required
in enormous numbers after every battle, are such
bungling apprentices in the art that they kill by
their ignorance a full half of the wounded men,
who, if more skilfully treated, might survive, and
resort to amputation in hundreds of unnecessary
cases with appalling recklessness. The volunteers,
having spent their bounty money, and heard or
read in the interval of the surgical atrocities com-
mitted, desert or skedaddle at the first opportu-
nity, until, in one famous lash brigade, that has
not yet been to battle, the numbers in camp do
not amount to one-half of those who have received
bounty during the last six weeks. The pay
of Gen. M'Clellan's army alone is said to be in
arrear to the extent of 50,000,000 dole., and many
regiments have not received a cent since the Ist of
June. Of course all these facts, and they are not
the worst that can be alleged, would be denied if
they were put forward on the sole authority of some
correspondent, or of any other person not an Ameri-
can, but they are notorious enough to find their way
into the New York daily papers and to form topics
of conversation in every society. A correspondent
of the New York limes, dating from the head-
quarters of the army of the Potomac the day before
yesterday, says,—
"The morale of our soldiers is not what it has
been. I hardly care to give the detailed revelations
that would justify this averment, but the fact is
owned by all who have the opportunity of judging.
• . . . Plunder, liceace, abandonment of self-respect,
and general demoralisation are sufficiently wide-
spread in the army to be alarming. And these are
aggravated by ills which American soldiers should
not be called upon to bear. Many are deficient in
clothing,
the cold
in the miserable open •
snhi °gel:
tt a
wind
si a
se
wl t ee
er ,p
sa and swh
lvl e. r bThousands
s
tentes d'abri, through which
have not yet received the knapsacks they left be-
hind on transports on
landing, and the Governemmebnatrkhiansgnoatt
yHetasroripsponli'esd-
them with others..... Higher up there are other
and more perilous elements at work. Among those 1,
places,
rankly. feuds,
Probably
never,
oauntdofanimositiesf
opera singers, were there such bickerings and heart-
burnings as exist among our General officers. It is
always the case where an abundance of well-matched
flourishin high
mediocrity is brought together without any mind of
commanding superiority to subordinate these petty
differences. I know not what far-back subtle in-
fluences have been at work, but all patriotism seems
eaten out of the heart of the regular army men,
. An able officer said to me the other day
NlClellan is magnificent up to a certain point ;
but at that point his mind seems to lose its momen-
tum.' .. . . Yet all (the army) reel—it is useless
to deny it—that no man better than he has yet
shown himself ; no man even as good as he. It is
a pathetic state, this, we are in."
The correspondent of the World, writing on the
same day from the same place, is equally out-
spoken :

" Close observation with impartial feelings has
convinced me of several things concerning the spirit