The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-15 00:00:00

We were obliged to get out a narrow lane and
walk towards the encampment on foot ; a sentry
stopped us, and we observed that there was a sem-
blance of military method in the camp. The cap-
tain was walking up and down in the verandah of
the poor, deserted hut for which he had abandoned
his splendid home. A " Book of Tactics"(Hareie's)
—which is, in part, a translation of the French
"Manual"—lay on the table. Ou:: friend was full
of fight, and said he would give all he had in the
world to the cause. But the day before, and a
party of horse, composed of 600 gentlemen in the
district, with from £20,000 to £30,000 each, had
started for the war in Virginia. Everything to be
seen or heard testifies to the great zeal and resolu-
tion with which the South have entered upon the
quarrel. But they hold the power of the United
States and the loyalty of the North to the Union at
far too cheap a rate. Next day was passed in a
delightful drive through cottonfields, Indian corn,
and undulating woodlands, amid which were some
charming residences. I crossed the river at Nat-
chez, and saw one fine plantation in which the corn,
however, was by no means so fine as I have
seen. The cotton looks well, and some had already
burst into flower—bloom, as it is called—which had
turned to a flagrant pink, and seemed saucily con-
scious that its boll would play an important part in
the world. In this part of Mississippi the Reces-
monist feeling was not so overpowering at firsts it
has been since the majority declared itself, but the
expression of feeling is now all one way. The rage
of Southern sentiments is to me inexplicable, mak-
ing every allowance for Southern exaggeration. It
is sudden, hot, and apparently causeless as summer
lightning. From every-place I touched at along
the Mississippi a large proportion of the popula-
tion has gone forth to fight, or is preparing to do
so. The whippers which rise through the storm
are feweddleeble. Soave there are who- sigh for
the pOce pad -happine'ss they have :seen in .Eng-
land,;n7Atit they cannot, seek thoie things; they
mustlook aftertheir property. Each man maddens
his neighbour hy.desperate.resolves, and threats, and
vows. .Their faith,is in Jefferson Davis's strength,
and in the necessities and weakness of France and
England. The inhabitants of the tracts which lie
on the banks of the Mississippi, and on the inland
regions hereabout, ought to be, in the natural order
of things, a people almost nomadic, living by the
chase and by a sparse agriculture, in the freedom
which tempted their ancestors to leave Europe.
But the Old World has been working for them. All
its trials have been theirs; the fruits of its expe-
rience, its labours, its research, its discoveries, are
theirs. Steam has enabled them to turn their rivers
into highways, to open primoeval forests to the
light of day and to man. All these, however, would
have availed them little had not the demands of
manufacture abroad, and the increasing luxury and
population of the North and West at home, enabled
them to find in these swamps and uplands sources of
wealth richer and more certain than all the gold
mines of the world. But there must be gnomes to
work those mines. Slavery was an institution ready
to their hands. In its development there lay every
material means for securing the prosperity which
Manchester opened to them, and in supplying their
own countrymen with sugar. The small, struggling,
deeply-mortgaged proprietors of swamp and forest
set their negroes to work to raise levees, to cut down
trees, to plant and sow. As the negro became valu-
able by his produce, the Irish emigrant took his
place in the severer labours of the plantation, and
ditched and dug, and cut into the waste land. Cot-
ton at 10 cents. a pound gave a nugget to every boll.
Land could be had for a few dollars an acre. Negroes
were cheap in proportion. Men who made a few
thousand dollars invested them in more negroes and
more land, and borrowed as much again for the same
purpose. They waxed fat and rich—there seemed no
bounds to their fortune. But threatening voices came
from the North—the echoes of the sentiments of the
civilised world repenting its evil pierced their ears,
and they found their feet were of clay, and that
they were nodding to their fall in the midst of their
power. Ruin inevitable awaited them if they did not
shut out these sounds and stop the fatal utterances.
The issue is to them one of life and death. Whoever
raises it hereafter, if it be not decided now, must
expect to meet the deadly animosity which is dis-
played towards the North. The success of the South
—if it can succeed—must lead to complications and
results in other parts of the world for which neither
it nor Europe is now prepared. Of one thing there
can be no doubt,—a slave State cannot exist with-
out a slave trade. The poor whites who will have won
the fight, will demand their share of the spoils. The
land is abundant, and all that is wanted to give
them fortunes is a supply of slaves. They will have
that in spite of their masters, unless a stronger
power prevents the accomplishment of their wishes.