The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-13 00:00:00

the newspaper correspondents, and the papers in
New York will consequently be full of idle stories
and erroneous statements of encounters and bai ties,
the offspring of the street gossip in the capital. People
are so excited here that a party of " cit;zene were
observed listening with great eagerness yesterday
to the sound of a cannonade, which eventually
proved to come from the heels of a horse against the
planks of an adjoining stable. The correspondents
in question, being much irritated by the refusal,
have resolved that they are thereby absolved from
their promise to keep back intelligence of any move-
ments useful to the enemy. The new policy is a
reversal of that of General M'Dowell, who allowed
them to accompany him in the field, and jokingly
proposed that they should wear a uniform of white
as a sign of their purity. Justice compels me to say
that the correspondents of the various papers whom
I have met at Washington are gentlemen of honour
and ability, who would not violate any confidence
or break any engagement with the authorities. But
in their new policy the correspondents are menaced
with very serious difficulties, as the following order
will demonstrate :
"War Department, Adjutant-General's Office,
Washington, Aug. 26, 1861..
" By the 57th Article of the Act of Congress, entitled An
Act for Establishing Mlles and Articles for the Govern-
ment of the Armies of the United States, approved April
10, 1806, 'holding correspondence with or giving intelli-
gence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly,' is made
punishable by death, or such other punishment as shall be
ordered by the sentence of a court martial. Public safety
requires strict enforcement of this article. It is therefore
ordered that all correspondence and communication, ver-
bally or by writing, printing, or telegraphing, respecting
operations of the army, or military movements on land or
water, or respecting the troops, camps, arsenals, intrench-
ments, or military affairs, within the several military dis-
tricts, by which intelligence shall be, directly or indirectly,
given to the enemy, without the authority and sanction of
the General in command, be, and the same are absolutely
prohibited, and, from and after the date of this order, per-
sons violating the same will be proceeded against under the
57th Article of War. By order,
,
"L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General.'
General M'Clellan is rapidly becoming master of
the situation. In Washington the silence in the
streets at night is profound. The soldiers are kept
in camp, and have plenty of• work to do. One
hears very little of the President, but in reality he
is very active and naturally takes a deep interest in
the work of all the departments. He moves about
dressed in a plain gray shooting jacket and suit,
without any attendant, from one Minister to
another, now visitibg Captain Da.hlgren at the
Navy-yard, then dropping in on General Scott, or
calling at General M'Clellan's, taking a constant but
not obtrusive share in all the various business on
hand from day to day. Mr. Seaward is away for
the time, and his son, the Assistant-Secretary of
State, is acting in his place. The new passports
issued to enable British subjects to travel in or leave
the United States have the following memorandum
written by Mr. Seward across the back :—" It is
expected that the bearer will not enter any of the
insurrectionary States." It would be as well, in-
deed, just now for British subjects to abstain from
travelling between the North and the South, for
they become objects of suspicion, are liable to an-
noyance, and if, as is likely, they carry letters given
them, it may be by friends or acquaintances, they
may be unwittingly violating the law by convey-
ing information to either enemy. There are
literally thousands of British subjects seeking assist-
ance to get out of the country, and the inhabitants
of St. Louis in any way connected with the old
country seem animated by an intense longing to
re-migrate. Many cases of hardship and great dis-
tress occur there to show the severe pressure of the
times upon the people. There are some statements
calculated to mislead in respect to Lord Lyon's in-
terference in procuring the discharge of British
subjects from the United States' army. His Lord-
ship has only applied for and procured discharges
in the case of a few young men under age, whose
parents or guardians desired their release from
military service. The numerous demands made by
Irish, Scotch, and English to be freed from obli-
gations they had contracted of their own free will
have not been attended to when they were men of
mature age, nor, indeed, could they well be sac-
cesiful. There will be very rigid discipline en-
forced among men of the new army, and in-
deed, it is required. Look at the strange affair in
the Kanawha valley at Summersville. A whole
regiment halts to cook breakfast in what may be
called an enemy's country. No pickets are thrown
out, no sentinels posted, not the slightest precau-
tion taken to prevent what happened, and what was
likely, or at least possible—a surprise by the enemy,
in which the regiment suffered most severely at the
h.,nds of a superior force. If proper dispositions
had been made such an operation could not have
been effected, and it appears that the road to
Gauley-bridge must have been open, so that a judi-
cious retreat could have saved the regiment, just
as its bag gage was rescued. This Kanawha valley
is the source of much marching and fighting ; it is,
in fact, the heart of Western Virginia, and its im-
portance is so great that the Union men, as you are
aware, proposed to call the State they were going
to carve out between the Ohio and the Blue Ridge
by the name of the river Kanawha, till the opinion
of Mr. Bates, tha Attorney-General, induced them
to forego the project. The discipline which will be
enforced must prove distasteful to many of the
volunteers, but in the end they will experience
the advantages of it. Although the regiments are
generally composed of the finest men that any
army in the world could show, there are scattered
through the ranks a proportion of men who are
unfit for military service, who were enlisted and
passed muster in the early stages of organising the
army. These men will all be dismissed, and a medi-
cal examination has been directed to take place of
all soldiers in the service. One of the most un-
favourable symptoms for the United States Govern-
ment, in its endeavours to augment the regular
army is the extreme unwillingness of the popula-
tion to mist. There is no lack of volunteers, but
the nucleus of military organisation does not in-
crease in proportion. It is natural enough that when
the floating population are eagerly canvassed by the
touters for the volunteer regiments they should
not be willing to enter into the regular army,
where the discipline is supposed to be stricter and
the duties more arduous. Recruiting in New York
produced only 18 men last week ; the 12th Regi-
ment has not succeeded in obtaining more than the
materials of two good companies ; the 14th Regi-
ment, also new, was more successful, and the new
Cavalry Regiment musters about 400 men, 200
short of its full complement. In the navy there is
much greater ease in obtaining the services of a good
description of seamen than there is in the army in
procuring the proper material for soldiers. An in-
stance of the rapidity with which the United States
can obtain a navy is furnished by the Tuscarora,
which was launched in five weeks from the day her
keel was laid down in Philadelphia ; she is a steam
gunboat 211 feet long, 900 tons burden, carrying
four 32-pounders and two 11-inch guns.