The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-08 00:00:00

THE CIVIL WAR IN AIIIERTCA.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, Sm. 19.

There has been a considerable outcry in the
North in reference to the means whereby several
States have been what is called " forced out of the
Union." But it is iaot to be expected that in the
struggle for States between the Confederation and
the United Stater, some acts should net be com-
mitted by the latter which have very much the look
of " forcing them not to go out of the Union." The
practice of calling things by their right names,
though morally commendable, is socially disagree-
able, and, in certain conditions of affairs, it ren-
ders a man liable to be considered as " a
nuisance" by one side or the other. But I shall
proceed, nevertheless, to make some remarks on
the state of Maryland, based on a previous
visit before the coup d'etat of the Government
at Washington had extinguished the Legislature.
All the troubles in this State may be said to
have commenced with the lawless outrages of the
Baltimore mob always of evil repute on the
Volunteer regiments passing to Washington from
New York and Massachusetts, in obedience to the
summons of the President. It is contended by the
Marylanders that the case should have been treated
as an ordinary riot, but the sympathies of so many
of the people were clearly with the Confederate
States that an act which, in peaceful times might
have been dealt with by the tribunals, assumed an
aspect of grave political importance, and indicated
such a serious disaffection to the North that it af-
forded the Government when it was strong enough
fair grounds for occupying Baltimore with troops,
overturning the civil power, and ruling the State
by martial law, which, however, they have not, as
yet, formally proclaimed. The leading men in the
State were understood to be friendly to the South,
a large portion of the press advocated Southern
views, and the authorities were actuated by similar
opinions. In the name of States rights they received
nearly all the Acts of the Southern Confederacy as
justifiable in the abstract, though they may have
dissented from the expediency of their extreme
measures. Had the authorities of Baltimore, how-
ever, shown vigour and decision in punishing the
offenders, in hunting them out, and in securing the
peace of the city at once, it would have been diffi-
cult for the Government to have found any excuse
for the manner in which they acted, until circum-
stances had proved that it would not be safe to leave
Maryland in a condition which would have led to
her withdrawal from the Union. But their mea-
sures, if any, were lukewarm. It could not be tole-
rated that the rabble of a city should be allowed to
oppose the passage of the troops summoned by
the Federal Government. Those who permitted
such proceedings were so far responsible for them
that if they could not punish and prevent them they
could not blame the Government for supplementing
their want of power. It is said that the President
promised he would not send anymore troops through
Baltimore, but military exigencies are imperative,
and General Scott, on that point, must have been
master of the situation. Here, in fact, was one of
those instances in which State rights doctrines must
be completely annihilated when brought in contact
with the necessities of the Federal Government.
That which could not he done in South Carolina for
lack of force was done in Maryland by means of
force. There was little temporizing or negotiating.
Troops were at once poured in ; the best points were
occupied; General Banks was appointed. The State
was held in an iron grasp; notorious sympathizers
were arrested, habeas corpus was suspended, the re-
turn to the writ of the judges showed the people
what they had to expect, the Police Commissioners
Board was dissolved, the Marshal was arrested, the
Federai General in command appointed a citizen of
Baltimore in his stead, and men who are, it is said,
persons well-known to the old police and of indif-
ferent local reputations, were substituted for the old
police, and proceeded without either uniform or the
exhibition of warrant or authority to search houses,
to seize upon persons and to institute a rigorous
system of surveillance extending itself to the colours
of children's dresses and the trimmings of ladies'
gowns and the neckties of passers-by in the streets.
The Legislature of the State condemned the early
steps of the Government, and in a well-written and
a very able report, which was adopted by the large
majority of both houses, denounced the suppression
of the Police Board and the usurpation of the civil
power by the military as illegal and unconstitu-
tional. Perhaps they had the best of the argument,
quoad premisses and conclusion. On a Vauxhall
masquerade night, long ago, I heard a controversy
between a gentleman attired as Charles 11. and a
person who had, by the exercise of some city influ-
ence, obtained the loan of the Lord Mayor's suit of
armour, in which his knight is dressed—the unmis-
takable brass habiliments of our annual Feast of
Chivalry. The dispute was about a seat in an arbour
and the payment of certain moneys for creature
comforts ; and Charles 11., wise and NI itty, had suc-
ceeded in showing his antagonist he was completely
in the wrong on every point in hypothesis and in
fact, when the knight, suddenly lowering his vizor
and exclaiming, " Now, then, take that !" struck
out with his left, and, hitting the successful contro-
versialist between the eyes, wrested victory from
his grasp, and walked away with it. The satisfac-
tion of being right, no doubt, is something, but in
the present instance there are millions of people in
the United States who will not give the vanquished
of Maryland such a melancholy consolation. But
they persisted in flair course. 'They cried aloud,
" Why do you treat us as if we were enemies ? We
are still part of the Union. We are not out of it."
To which the Government replied, in effect, " We
regard you as people who would be open enemies
if you could, and who would go out of the
Union if you had the means. Hence, Millenry
and Lafayette ! We are determined not to let
you go out of the Union, and to prevent your
passing any resalution to that effect." Some days
ago I heard that the members of the Legislature
hostile to Government would be arrested before
the session opened at Frederic, and on Monday
it was announced that 22 of the most prominent
men in the State and in the city of Baltimore had
been taken prisoners on the authority of warrants
from Washington. Some of those gentlemen pro-
bably expected that such would he the ease, but
only one or two succeeded in keeping out of the
way. Still, I thought the Legislature would meet,
but I am now informed there is no possibility of
obtaining a quorum ; and it seems probable that
other members, and the officers of both Houses, will
custody as soon as the doors are open.
If, in the days of the Irish Parliament, at the time
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have furnished some type of the treatment of Mary-

land, always supposing there ever have been such
things as State rights. England, however, never
could have taken such steps, and in those evil days
when habeas corpus has been suspended the arrests
of State prisoners have• always been made upon
proper warrants, duly exhibited to the accused.

It is impossible, I think, to deny that the great
majority of the landholders and of the respectable
classes of Maryland are in favour of Secession prin-
ciples, and that they hate the New England States
as cordially as the Southerners detest the Yankees.
It,is not that they are slaveholders so much as that
they maintain slaveholding is guaranteed by the
Constitution, and that those who attack it are not
gentlemen. Your Marylander is a very high aris-
tocrat. If his ancestors did not come over with
Lord Baltimore to escape religions persecution,
they were actuated by similar motives. He is
generally Catholic and anti-Puritan, as his fore-
father was two centuries ago. In no part of the
Union hes slave labour been so profitless—nowhere
will so many men be found ready to condemn
slavery on principle, though it may be legally right.
They say, " We keep on our slaves because we can-
not get rid of them at once. Leave us alone, and
the thing will die out of itself." And then they
are fond of enlarging on the vulgarity of Black Re-
publicans and Abolitionists, and on the curses of
universal suffrage. To the commercial classes the
prosperity of New York, attained, as they aver, by
unfair uses of political power, is also a grievance.
The anomalies arise out cf an aristocratic sentiment
founded on pride of birth and extent of possessions,
fostered by slavery, and aggravated by the oppo-
sition of neighbouring States on the one hand, and
on an ignorant impatience of a result of republican
institutions, which, however unexpected, was per-
fectly legitimate. A man who holds his lands by
virtue of a charter signed by Lord Baltimore him-
self is as great an aristocrat in feeling, and resents
as keenly the rule of the many as though he were
owner of estates recorded in " Domesday," and de-
scended from Dives.

The great merchants are affected by the atmo-
sphere in which they live, and Baltimore has some-
what the pretensions of an old cathedral town in
England struggling against manufactures and
Chartism. Some considerable towns have sprung
up in the State recently, which are the rallying
points for the Union men, and which are thorns in
the side of the country gentlemen, but, generally
speaking, the majority of the people in most of the
counties are opposed to the Government, and there
are few landed proprietors who are not Southern
Rights' men, Many families have representatives
in the army of the Confederate States, and all the
efforts of the Federalists have not sufficed to pre-
prevent intelligence and aid being sent across the
Potomac into Virginia, and could not frustrate the
attempts of bodies of armed gentlemen and others
on horse and on foot to join their friends. It
was only the other day I was speaking to a gen-
tleman who mentioned that he had a large num-
ber of relatives in the Southern army, as if it
were a matter of common notoriety; "And how
did they get there ?" Why, they belonged to a
body of cavalry which we have had for many
years, composed of the young gentlemen of the
county to keep down negro insurrection. They
heard one night that the negroes were going to rise,
and appearances justified the rumour. So they
assembled and sent in word to the General at Balti-
more that they had met, and that they would pro-
bably require some aid. He ordered them at once
to disband or to wait till he sent out an officer to
make each of them take the oath of allegiance.
Deeply offended by this conduct nearly all of them
rode off, crossed the river that night and joined the
enemy. The women have embraved Beauregardism
with the greatest devotion, and their beauty and
grace render them powerful proselytizers. It may
be true that the State has been nearly disarmed by
frequent and rigid searches; but, if there are not
bows and flags and resettes of the orthodox colours
forthcoming in profusion whenever the Confede-
rates make their appearance, I am much deceived
in the ingenuity and zeal of the fair Marylanders.
On my first visit to Baltimore there was a report
that the South Carolinians had opened fire upon
Sumter, and the feeling which displayed itself
was certainly not one of regret. On my second
visit, on my way from Fortress Monroe, Balti-
more had the air of Warsaw ; pickets at the street
corners, patrols in the thoroughfares, camps on the
hills, soldiers cooking in the public places, the
people sullen and angry. The report had been
presented to the Legislature respecting the sup-
pression of the police, and the inhabitants were
satisfied they had been very badly used. But from
the first there were strong hopes that " the tyranny
would be overpast" when the Confederates invaded
Maryland ; and it must have been a bitter dis-
appointment, particularly after the battle of
Manasses, to find there were no traces of their
deliverers'-footsteps, and that their voices were as
distant as ever. General Scott's foresight, in fact,
was never better exhibited than in the measures he
took to secure Maryland at a time of enormous
difficulty. Notwithstanding all her writhings and
convulsions the State is so firmly manacled
that nothing short of a victorious army's strength
can liberate her. It would not have been
possible to let Maryland go, nor can any one,
I presume, suppose that in any contingency the
United States could ever resign the seat of their
Government, the Potomac, and the waters of the
Chesapeake, to an independent Power. To do that
the North must be subjugated as thoroughly as she
intends to subjugate the South. But has the North
ever considered that in Maryland, where there are
many Union men, she is obliged to use the means
which probably will be needed to a greater extent
in the South, and then calmly considered what
those means are ? There are 10,000 men in and
around Baltimore; the General, Dix, in reply to
certain representations, has stated that, if the city
falls into the hands of the enemy, he will be forced
to lay it in ashes from his batteries. There are
probably not less than 25,000 troops in other parts
of Maryland. The social and political condition of
the State is best estimated by these facts, notorious
to the English public. If the North could but
make an equation, and see whether she has the
force to act the same part in the Southern States,
it is not reasonable to suppose she could any longer
deny that her mission is one of conquest and sub-
jugation, in which success is not certain, and in
which it is impossible to persist permanently.
Conquest may be achieved. By some extraordinary
effort of military spirit even an armed occupancy
of the seceded States may be effected for a time.
But what becomes of the Constitution, of Republi-
can institutions, of the Federal compact, of the
rights of the people, and of the undoubted States'
rights of internal government? There is, 1 know,
a pretence that there is Union sentiment in solution
in the South which will tumble down in a thick
precipitate on the head of the Confederates the
moment it is stirred by a Federal bayonet ; but
there is no trace of foundation for the hypothesis.
Look at North Carolina! Even the ultra-Union
papers ridicule the "bogus,'' or sham member, Mr.
Foster, and his claims for stationery, and the autho-
risation which has been issued for the creation of
one regiment of North Carolinians is regarded as
a matter of form, not likely to be of any great
use. If the expectations be unfounded, what
course will the Government pursue ? Acknow-
ledge their error, and agree to a compro•
seise ? They dare not in the present temper
of the people. Accept the situation, and make
a Maryland of every State ? Even the wealth
and the energy and population of the North might
well shrink from the task. But will South Caro-
lina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennesse be
more at the mercy of the United States in the full
development of their programme than Maryland is
now ? The future is full of difficulties, which even
faith, the evidence of things not seen, cannot pre-
tend to solve.

It is but a month since I was driving through
magnificent undulating fields, hemmed in by broad
belts of forest, and heavy with crops of Indian corn
and tobacco. The rough wooden and brick huts
huddled together in the neighbourhood of the coun-
try scats were peopled by men, women, and ail-
then with black faces, hut for which they might
have done duty easily for Hungarian or Lithuanian
peasantry, attired in uncouth clothes and great
lumbering boots, shuffling and hulking through the

fields as if in search of moonstones. Their master,
a good, easy, ,kindhearted gentleman, polished and
well read, looked on them very much as the Irish
squires of the old time regarded squatters—crea-
tures who ought to be made useful, who were net
profitable, who had no business to be where they
were, and who, nevertheless, could not be got rid of
without imputations of cruelty which would make
him odious in the land. He was perfectly satisfied
the free labour of whites would be more profitable;
but what was he to do with his blacks ? where
was he to get even the white labour he wanted ?
With these sentiments, he felt bitterly the snsults
of the Abolitionists, who called him a slave-driver
and a nigger breeder. In his case most of the fathers
of these blacks had been transmitted to him by his
ancestors, and had lived as families on the estate
for several generations. To look at the fields, luxu-
riant with weeds and filled with stones, was to be
satisfied the system of agriculture was patriarchal
if the system of labour was not. But, in fact, their
condition was very different from that of the
slaves on the Southern plantations. Tha pro-
prietor of these broad domains is, like many of
the Maryland gentry, a Roman Catholic, and a
priest, belonging to a• religious and educational
institution founded by the piety of his fore-
fathers, is engaged to look after the religious
welfare of his flock, and I saw a full congregation of
the slaves trooping through the meadowfk to chapel,
looking, in their gay dresses and natural group-
ings, very unlike the beings who are cribbed up
like rabbits in hutches in the South. Then, after
service was over, came flocks of woolley-headed
children of both sexes to the priest for examination
in the Catechism. The houses in which they lived
were larger and better than the slave quarters on
most plantations, but were not cleaner er more
tidy, and it appeared to me as if the inhabitants
were a little less respectful in their demeanour.
In the name of crinoline, yellow shawls, pink
and white dresses, wonderful bonnetry, and very
quaint booting, how did the proprietor afford to
turn out such gay nymphs of Africa ?• He did not
afford it at all. Granted that home-reared chickens
and pigs paid for some of it, still enough came
out of his pocket, in addition to feeding and sup-
porting them, to leave very little between their
labour and positive loss. It was no use to call them
early, for they dawdled about the fields all the
more. Here, in fact, was a state of things which
would soon cure itself if let alone. The greater part
of the estate, indeed, was farmed out to others on
the principle of one-half or one-third of the produce
in lieu of rent, and I suspect that was far
the most profitable mode of dealing with these
widespread acres. lam assured that there are
many estates in Maryland in the same condition.
It may be imagined how their proprietors resent
the propaganda which threatens to ruin them
utterly, and how this last blow, dealt at the Legis-
lature of the State in which they feel so much pride,
is felt by men as tenacious and haughty as any
Magyar or Pole who ever lived. If there be any
large Union_element in Maryland, let it be developed
now, or the world will not believe in its existence.