The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-19 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

The longer the Civil War iu America lasts, the
more evident become the signs that it is brutalizing
at least one of the combatants. If we had oppor-
tunities of watching the deeds of the Confederates
as closely as we follow those of the Federalsi we
might possibly find that the progress towards savage
vengeance is not very unequal in both parties. So
far, however, as events have publicly transpired, it
is the North which is growing fierce and blood-
thirsty ; it is the high professing Puritans who
threaten to murder in cold b'.ood ; it is the citizens of
New York and. Boston, claiming credit for civiliza-
tion and literary taste, who are exulting in the
commission of wanton destruction. War is terrible
enough at best, but even war has its mitigations
among civilized men. We do not in Eurepo when
we take a city cut the throats of all the women and
children, as the Taipings have done in China; neither
do we burn down the city and sow salt upon
the site, as was sometimes done even in Europe in
barbarous days. We do not torture our prisoners
after the manner described in Mr. Cooper's Redskin
novels. As civilized and Christian men, we put
some bridle over the worst instincts of our animal
nature, even in our moments of most intense ex-
citement. There are things we are ashamed to do
in the heat of conflict, and we count that man a
mere villain who, when there is no fight raging,
can enjoy revenge without danger, and can feel a
ferocious joy in the infliction of suffering.

There are bad signs in the recent news from
America. Already have the Northern Government
threatened to hang up all the prisoners they may
take at sea, and already have they filled prisons
with condemned victims, whom they boast that they
are about to put to death. It is quite clear, accord-
ing to all laws, Divine and human, that the Federal
Government have no more right to hang these men.
after taking them prisoners at sea than they have
to hang any prisoners they take on land. It would
be murder to do so. But we much fear that this
crime would have already been committed if it had
depended solely upon the will of the Northern Re-
public. The Southerners, however, also have pri-
soners, and prisoners of note. They have chosen.
from them, by lot a number, equal to that of the
seamen threatened, who are to undergo the same
hardships and to endure the same fate. Here are
the first steps taken towards a fiendish emulation
in human sacrifices. Meantime the two sets of pri-
soners are tortured by comfortless dungeons, har
usage, and prison diet. The House of Representa-
tives takes another eager step forward in this down-
ward path, and addresses the President to inflict
the torture of condemned cells and starvation upon
the captives taken from under the British flag.
Of course, this would be but a signal for a fur-
ther retaliation, and would but send other
officers of the Northern Army into close con-
finement in the prisons of the South. It is a
game of torture, the North leading off, and the
South following suit. Up to the present moment
no actual murder has been committed. We may,
however, expect every day to hear that some one
of these prisoners has died under the hardships he
is enduring, and that a prisoner on the other side
has been publicly hanged to revenge his death.
If this dreadful play of death for death is once
begun, it must go on till the prisons are emptied on
both sides, and the war between the Anglo.Sason
Americans will be like a war of cannibals.

Again, there are limits to the rights of destruc-
tion which even a nation at war may exercise. We
read in Groans, and other writers upon the state
of war and peace, that all people who deserve the
name of a nation have in all times respected things
which are beneficial to the whole human race. Thus
there is a rule derived from the authority of Holy
Writ that fruit trees shall be spared wherever found.
The implements of the husbandman have also been
held sacred. To conquer, and not to destroy, is the
right of a belligerent nation of civilised beings.
Yet we are told, with a dastardly exultation, that
fleets have gone forth from New London and New
Bedford laden, not with soldiers and arms, but
with stones, and that these fleets, " with their
stony burdens scuttled broadside, have obliterated
for years to come the channels of entry by sea
to those cursed cities Charleston and Savannah."
The object is to strangle these great ports of
commerce—not to repossess them, but to destroy
them for all time. "Of the ' effectiveness' of such
a stone blockade," writes the exulting journalist
of New York, "there can be no doubt. The main
ship channel leading to Savannah is but 250 yards
across in the narrowest place, and can be per-
fectly barred by half a dozen of these vessels.
Charleston harbour is equally eligible to the same
treatment. Once sunk, these old hulks become
points for the accumulation of alluvials which the
rivers bear down, and of the sands which the tides
carry back. Tnere is a natural tendency in such
ports to form obstructions, and all we have to do is,
as the physicians say, to ' assist nature.' Becoming
thoroughly imbedded in the sand, these accumula-
tions but advance with time, forming unconquer-
able obstacles to re-opening the harbours, and esta-
blishing a blockade which the highest-pressure
diplomacy of the world will be utterly powerless to
raise." If this be true,—and we believe the fact of
the attempt is esteblished,—it is an act of hostility
to the whole human race. The civilised Greek re-
fused to put out " the eye of Greece;" the savage
American sails in full security to paralyse all the
senses by which the Southern States might commu-
nicate in all time to come with the outer world.
"It must be confessed," says this exulting Vandal,
" there is something wonderfully gratifying in this
silent, resistless, piece of Rhadamanthean justice.
The calmness of the method is fine, and a chef
d'ceuvre in its way ; no vulgar theatrical vengeance.
no laying of the city in ashes, as those heated brag-
garts of Charleston threatened, but a silent blight
falling on them as though out of the night—deadly,
inevitable—and leaving those perfidious cities in a
petrified death-in-life." People who would do an act
like this would pluck the sun out of the heavens, to
put their enemies in darkness, or dry up the rivers,
that no grass might for ever grow on the soil
where they had been offended. Yet such men ask
for our sympathies, and there are a scattered few
among us who are not ashamed to identify them-
selves with them and their doings !
Once again, the Government of the North, in the
agony of its disappointment and its rage, is evi-
dently about to make an attempt to spread mas-
sacre through the unprotected dwellings of their
estranged brethren. That the division of these two
vast countries must occasion the extinction of
slavery no one who looks thoughtfully upon pass-
ing events can doubt. Two independent States
cannot stand side by side without the element of
slavery oozing forth. But this design of the North
has nothing to do with slavery as a principle. It
contemplates the negro only as an instrument of
revenge. It means, not the subjection of armed
man in fair fight, but horrible deeds committed
upon defenceless whites of every age and sex.
Here, again, we believe that the success of the
scheme will not by any means correspond with the
atrocity of the conception. But it is a terrible act
for men calling themselves civilised to have even
contemplated. it is terrible alike for whites and
for blacks ; for it seems that, after exciting these
black men to work out this unmanly revenge, the
North does not propose to endure their presence.
race,
eoeled,
slave and free, to some territory which World, undertakes to transport
sptohtes
wofhotlhee
will buy for them,
desires, but which Mr. Lincoln
no ,a hite man
All these things are as yet but in their that he may never more behold a sable face.
com-
mencement. Some are only threatened; others are
only tentatively begun. They promise, however,
in their development such scenes of horror as the
world has never seen since men fought like wild
beasts. Against such methods of war we protest
at the outset. Against such bloody reprisals, against
the wanton destruction of those harbours which a
benevolent Creator has given for the enjoyment of
all his creatures, against incitations to domestic
rapine and murder, we protest in the name of
humanity and civilisation. There is scope enough.
given by the laws of war for ruthless deeds; but
acts of mere vengeance never yet decided a great
war, and ought not to be permitted by the guar-
dins of the civilisation of mankind,—Times.