The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-26 00:00:00

LOINDOIY, TUESDAY, NOV. 26, 1861.

The possession of Beaufort will produce consid-
erable effect on the South. Hitherto the slight
advances of the North have been into districts where
slaves were comparatively few, and the great article
of Southern produce was far away—Northern Vir-
ginia, the disputed ground in Missouri, and the
immediate vicinity of Fort Monroe did not abound
either in the " contraband of war," or in cotton.
At Beaufort it is just the reverse. The whole
country is one of plantations. Rice and the famous
Sea Island cotton are the growth of the district.
Indeed, it is just these islands which fringe the
coast exposed to marine air, and possessing a rich
soil, that produce that peculiar staple which Man-
chester covets, and which, we are told, though we
but half believe it, cannot be obtained from India.

Here, therefore, the North will be able to try
what it can do with cotton, and what it can
do with slaves. We read, indeed, that the
planters have locked up their crops and re-
fused to let a bale be shipped to Massa-
chusetts, lest it should sustain the trade of its
enemies, or even to France or England, lest
necessity should not drive is to a breach of
blockade. Yet facts are not quite consistent with
this abnegation of cotton selling. When the abject
is to show the inefficiency of the blockade, we are
told of even cotton cargoes being curried out with
impunity; and the very last accounts mention
the evasion of the blockading squadron by the
Bermuda, with 2,000 bales of cotton on board, for
Liverpool. Considering, therefore,the want of money
in the South—know ing that the whites there must be
taxed beyond all endurance to raise money for the
Government, as well as to supply their own wants,
we much doubt whether anything can prevent the
Nortborn Agents, who will rizit the point of which
they have taken possession, from obtaining supplies •
of the cotton which one side is so eager to sell, and
the other so eager to buy. It has even been sug-
gested, that as the North is master of the sea, it
could take possession of these sea islands along the
coast, and converting the slaves into freemen, could
grow there all the cotton needed for their Northern
mills.

But these slaves—what will the North do with
them—that is we apprehend the greatest question
of all ; not only in a philanthropic, but in a military
point of view. In no part, probably, of the Southern
States are the slaves more locally numerous in com-
parison with the white population. It is a slave
population, in fact, with planters scattered thinly
among them, as owners or managers of rice and
cotton plantations. No accounts represent the
slaves as fewer than 32,000 out of 40,000 inhabitants
of Beaufort county. Here, therefore, if the North
were disposed, it could show its power. Nothing,
one would think, could be easier than to send the
first slaves who came to the Federal camp as com-
missioners amongst the thousands of their fellows,
to disabuse them of the stories which the planters
have industriously circulated among them of the
Northern cruelties to be perpetrated on them, and
to invite them to come and work as freemen under
white protection. It would doubtless, at first, be
difficult to find them all employment. Between the
camp works, however, and the confiscated rebel
estates this difficulty, in the hands of an able ad-
ministrator, would soon vanish, and the Slave
States would receive their first lesson of the effects
of war on the domestic institution.

As other expeditions of a similar kind are said to
be in contemplation, it world seem to be of the
utmost importance to make them as efficient as pos-
sible. Now, it hardly appears of what value they
can be towards a successful termination of the war
if they axe not used to strike terror into the slave-
holders through their favourite institution. Nothing
will withdraw more troops from the North than the
fear of the slaves generally placing themselves under
the protection of the Federal camps. To this will
be added tha fear of insurrection ; and hence, with
camps of from fifteen to twenty thousand men along
the Southern coast, these small armies may have a
distracting and paralysing power out of all propor-
tion to their numbers. Unless some such plan as
this be resorted to, as military movements these
expeditions will be of little value. Their efficiency
entirely depends on the disquietude they cause, and
the necessity they create for dividing the Confedel
rate force—and the disquietude created by them
will be just in proportion to their effect on the
slave population. The Potomac will be as formid-
ably defended as ever on its Southern side, if it is
known that an expedition like that now success-
fully encamped at Beaufort will create no disturb-
ance amongst the negroes.
Whether the
.
reader will observe that,oua st
military
people of the North will ever be
drawn by the most obvl
necessities to
become übplitionists, we
shall see before long. The
least In one case, the
1 people cheered the historian 'BANCROFT loudly for
the sentiment that slavery must be given up if in-
compatible with the Union. Nov, we have not the
I shadow of a doubt, that if that feeling spreads, Mr.
LINCOLN, And Mr. SEWARD, and Mr. CAMERON,
andbecome the
a :
stanch abolitionists hole batch of heartless politicians, will
as Mrs. BERCEIER
STOWE herself.
They but reflect the sentiments of
the North. Hitherto the views of the people there
have been hostile, paradoxical, as it may seem,

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THE SUN.