The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-06 00:00:00

TILE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA:

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.
MONTGOMERY, MAY 6.
Although I have written two letters since my
arrival at Charleston, I have not been able to give
an account of many things which have come under
my notice, and which appeared to be noteworthy ;
and now that I am fairly on my travels once more
it seems only too probable that I shall be obliged to
pass them over altogether. The roaring fire of the
revolution is fast sweeping over the prairie, and one
must fly before it or burn. I am obliged to see all
that can be seen of the South at once, and then,
armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to
make an effort to recover my communications.
Bridges broken, rails torn up, telegraphs pulled
down—l am quite in the air, and air charged with
powder and fire. One of the most extraordinary
books in the world could be made out of the cuttings
and parings of the newspapers which have been pub-
lished within the last few days. The judgments,
statements, asseverations of the press everywhere
necessarily hasty, ill-sifted, and off-hand, do not aspire
to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of
use if they serve the purpose of the moment, and of
the little boys who commence their childhood in
deceit and continue to adolescence in iniquity by
giving vocal utterance to the " sensation" headings
of the journals they retail so sharply and curtly.
Talk of the superstition of the Middle Ages, or of
the credibility of the more advanced periods of rural
life; laugh at the Haly Coat of Treves, or groan
over the Lady of Salette ; deplore the faith in wink-
ing pictures, or in a communique of the Illoniteur ;
moralise on the superstition which discovers more
in the liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than
a chemical trick, but if you desire to understand
how far faith can see and trust among the people
who consider themselves the most civilised and in-
telligent in the world, you will study the American
journals and read the telegrams which appear in
them. One day the 7th New York Regiment is
destroyed for the edification of the South, and is
cut up into such small pieces that none of it is ever
seen afterwards. The next day it marches into
Washington or Annapolis all the better for the pro-
cess. Another, in order to encourage the North, it
is said that hecatombs of dead were carried out of
Fort Moultrie packed up for easy travelling in boxes.
Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that
Lord Lyons is going to interfere, or that an Anglo-
French fleet is coming to watch the ports, and so
on through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line as
though the batteries were charged with the aurora
borealis or summer lightning, instead of the respec-
table, steady, manageable offspring of acid and
metal, to whose staid deportment we are accustomed
at a moderate price for entrance. As usual in such
periods, the contending parties accuse each other of
inveterate falsehood, perfidy, oppression, and local
tyranny and persecution. " Madness rules the
hour," It was only a day ago I took up a local jour-
nal of considerable influence, in which were two
paragraphs that struck me as being inexpressibly
absurd. In the first it was stated that a gentleman
who had expressed strong Southern sentiments in
a New York hotel had been mobbed and thrown
into the street, and the writer indulged in some fit-
ting reflections on the horrible persecution which pre-
vailed in New York, and on the atrocity of such
tyrannical mob-lawlessness in a civilised community.
In another column there was a pleasant little narra-
tive how citizens of Opelika, in Georgia, had waited
on a certain person, who was "suspected" of enter-
taining Northern views, and had deported him on a
rustic conveyance known as a rail, which was con-
sidered by the journalist a very creditable exercise
of public spirit. Nay, more ; in a naive paragraph
relative to an attempt to burn the huge hotel of
Willard, at Washington, in which some hundreds of
people were residing, the paper, to account satisfac-
torily for the attempt, and to assign some intelli-
gible and laudable motive for it, adds, that he sup-
poses it was intended :to burn out the "Border
ruffians" who were lodging there—a reproduction of
the excuse of our Anglo-Irish Lord, who apologised
for setting fire to a cathedral on the ground that he
imagined the Bishop was inside. The exultation of
the South when the flag of the United States was
lowered at Sumter has been anoweroa by a. shout of
indignation and a battle cry from the North, and
the excitement at Charleston has produced a reflex
action there, the energy of which cannot be de-
scribed. The apathy which struck me at New York
when I landed has been succeeded by a violent
popular enthusiasm, before which all Laodicean
policy has melted into fervent activity. The truth
must be that the New York population did not be-
lieve in the strength and unanimity of the South,
and that they thought the Union safe, or did not care
about it. I can put down the names of gentlemen
who expressed the strongest opinions that the Go-
vernment of the United States had no power to
coerce the South, and who have since put down
their names and their money to support the Govern-
ment in the attempt to recover the forts which have
been taken. As to the change of opinion in other
quarters, which has been effected so rapidly and
miraculously that it has the ludicrous air of a vulgar
juggler's trick at a fair, the public regard it so little
that it would be unbecoming to waste a word
abort it.
I expressed a belief in my first letter, written a
few days after my arrival, that the South would
never go back into the Union. The North thinks
that it can coerce the South, and I am not prepared
to say they are right or wrong ; but I am convinced
that the South can only be forced back by such a
conquest as that which laid Poland prostrate at the
feet of Russia. It may be that such a conquest can
be made by the North, but success must destroy
the Union as it has been constituted in times past.
A strong Government must be the logical conse-
quence of victory, and the triumph of the South
will be attended by a similar result, for which, in-
deed, many Southerners are very well disposed. To
the people of the Confederate States there would be
no terror in such an issue, for it appears to me they
are pining for a strong Government exceedingly.
The North must accept it, whether they like it or
not. Neither party, if such a term can be applied
to the rest of the United States and to those States
which disclaim the authority of the Federal Go-
vernment, was prepared for the aggressive or resist-
ing powersof the other. Already the Confederate
States perceive that they cannot carry all before
them with a rush, while the North have learnt that
they must put forth all their strength to make good
a tithe of their lately uttered threats. But the
Montgomery Government are now, they say, an-
xious to gain time, and to prepare a regular army.
The North, distracted by apprehensions of vast dis-
turbance in its complicated relations, is clamouring
for instant action and speedy consummation. The
counsels of the moderate men, as they were called,
have been utterly overruled.
I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina,
which has been the Eons et origo of the Secession
doctrines and their development into the full life
of the Conferate States. The whole founda-
tion on which South Carolina rests is cotton and
a certain amount of rice, or rather she bases
her whole fabric on the necessity which exists
in Europe for those products of her soil, believ-
ing and asserting, as she does, that England and
France can not and will not do without them.
Cotton ss ithout a market is so much flocculent
matter encumbering the ground. Rice without
demand for it is unsaleable grain in store and on the
field. Cotton at 10 cents. a pound is boundless
prosperity, empire, and superiority, and rice or
grain need no longer be regarded. In the matter of
slave labour South Carolina argues pretty much in
this
way :—England and France require our pro-
ducts. In order to meet their wants we must cul-
tivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so.
The whiteman cannot live on our land at certain
seasons of the year ; he cannot work in the manner
required by the crops. He must, therefore, employ
a race suited to the labour,
o and that is a race which
will only work when it is
bliged to do so. That
race was imported fro
.n.
31
ceAfricasto r underti the sanction
of the Taw, by our
British colony, and it has be'enwfostered by us, so
that its increase here has been as great as that of
the most flourishing preaple in the world. In other
places where its lab( iur was not Productive or
imperatively essentie that race has been made