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

tUrSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 26, 1861.

THE CI

ME.RICA.

cdfti
,90.espon den I of the Times.)
i SHINGTON, Nov. 10.
The impre ion "iting itself into a conviction
teat neither General 'Clellan no: any other Gene-
ral will con*Milielnass of men under arms about

here into a well-disciplined army according to the
European standard or the notions of the most easily
satisfied military critics. There is something radi-
cally deficient—a sentiment wanting, without which
respect for the officer and obedience on the part of
the man cannot be developed into a system of uni-
form action in all times and under all circumstances.

t would take years to infuse a substitute for the
feeling which produces such results in the European
mind and facilitate the change from the man to the
soldier so readily. There is a change, and it affects
the man's intellect as well as his body, and you can
recognise it in the precision and vigorous mate-
rialism of the one as much as in the upright car-

riage, regulated pace, and even the expression of eye
in the other. The recruit there begins his career

by respecting his officer; here the lesson is scarcely
ever taught or learnt. The newly enlisted citizen
talks to his superior in an easy off-hand way, and it
is some time before the poor fellow is cured of his
little civilities in regard to his Captain's health in
the morning or can be induced to refrain when he
meets his Colonel from making kind inquiries after
his general welfare. The accounts of courts-martial
which one reads, their irregularities, the nature of
the offences tried, and matters of the sort, give an

idea of what the regular officers have to do. I have
seen processions of metrAheir arms tied behind their
backs, marching through the streets of Washington,

of whom no one sees any accounts in the papers.

No one can tell what their offence is, or where the

mutiny occurred. There is one now-12 or 14 ar-
tillerymen fastened by ropes together, and march-

ng under a guard down Pennsylvania-avenue.

Then one hears such strange-sounding language
between officer and private. " Captain, will you

come in and take a drink ?" " And so the boys
have made you leeftenant ; well, I'm reely glad to
hear it." The other day an officer dismounted

close to my door, and gavo his horse to
his orderly. Ho had aLieutenant-Colonel's shoulder
strap. "Be back here in an hour," said he ; " I
shall be here in that time." "Oh ! that be

rejoined the orderly (Our men swore horribly in
Flanders ;) " how can you expect to go there and be

back in one hour P—'taint possible.T' The Colonel
seemed struck by the force of the remark, and said,
" Well, an hour and a-half." " Why don't you salute

your officer ?" quoth a friend of mine to a passing
private_ The man drew himself up, and did so in a
sort of a way, but as he moved off he said in an

apologetical tone, " You see, Mejor, I don't know
the faces of all the chaps yet.” If the army be
turned into regulars and strictly drilled and handled
two or three years will, no doubt, eradicate the

spirit of equality in military matters ; but the task
is difficult, for the defect to be remedied is nearly
innate. The better the class from which the re-
cruits come, the greater the difficulty of reducing

them to proper subjection. The punishments in the
army are quaint and capricious ; they render men
ridiculous, and harden without terrifying them ;
and not a few of the officers regret that they have
no power to order flogging, which has a certain
efficacy in the case of men who cannot be reclaimed
by other means. Let the war go on, and there will
be greater results produced than the reduction of
this force to good discipline. The Americans will
learn that at last, when they see the use of it ; at
present they are a good deal like children beginning
the alphabet. They are slow to believe they are
actually engaged in something more than a large
faction fight.
It is affirmed that the Government will at last
yield to the pressure brought to bear against it by
public opinion and the advice of General M'Clellan,
and will make proposals for the exchange of pri-
soners. Without imputing to the North or South
any inhumanity, it must be said, if what I am told
and read be true, the prisoners are not well treated
-440,11.eir". Dr. Bellews of the Sani-
tary Uourraision—tv man not likely to use strong
words in reference to the conduct of the war on the
Union side,—is a report to Government on the con
dition of the prisoners ho visited in the New York
prisons, declares that " it was very trying, almost
inhuman ;" but it must be added, in justice, that he
proceeds to state the wants and privations to which
they were exposed, and which were disgraceful to
the State, had been relieved, and that they had
nothing to complain of except severe disease and
sickness. However, they had been for some weeks
in that state of suffering before they saw them, and
political prisoners who are not in the possession of
funds have full reason to lament their hard fate.
A Mr. Maury, an Englishman, brother of the young
gentleman who was arrested the other day for car-
rying correspondence directed to persons in the
South, was seized in the State Department the day
before yesterday as he was inquiring after a port-
manteau which had been detained at Cleveland, but
for the release of which he had received the order
of the Secretary of State, and was placed in a room,
as I am informed, without a table, fuel, or even a
bed, where he passed the night, having been refused
permission to communicate with his friends, or any
explanation of the grounds of his arrest.
It is always "France will not, England dare not
do" some absurd thing or other, never dreamt of
by any one except the writer. Only the other day
a respectable journal treated its readers to a long
and inflammatory article on a supposed change in
the tone and attitude of the English Government
towards the United States, founded on Lord Rus-
sell's correspondence with the Liverpool merchant,
who wanted to go to war for cotton on his own
account, and it informed the world that the imagi-
nary alteration had been caused by the recent acts
and conduct of the United States Government, not
deigning to look at the date of the correspondence
on which it rested its self-glorification. And then
they wonder we are not merely sympathetic but
active in their cause. The American people are
naturally well-disposed as any race on the face of
the earth. Their domestic affection indicates an
amiable temperament, but they are easily excited,
as democracies always are, and are exceedingly
sensitive. If their Scribes and Pharisees would
but leave them alone, if they would but permit
the national sentiment to take its own course,
there would be no fear of quarrel ; but these
mouthing rhetoricians and " mobolaters " fear
nothing so much as a friendly understanding
between the people of Great Britain, for with it
would depart one of their great levers to get into
place and power.
The result of the Maryland election would be
more satisfactory and conclusive if Gen. Dix had
not done his gendarmerie work so effectively in
Baltimore. His proclamation was so alarming that
the citizens formed a deputation to ascertain its
meaning, and were informed that his intentions
were honourable. But the wholesale rigour of his
arrests on Wednesday resembles nothing so much
as the pracesa of voting for an Imperialist deputy,
or " taking the sense of the people" at Nice on the
question of annexation. Nevertheless, the fact of
the majority for the Union remains, and the faith
of the Government in bayonets and martial law is
justified so far. Nor will they hesitate to employ
the same machinery to develops Union sentiment in
the South. Can liberty be too dear ? May it, like
life, be purchased at the cost of every consideration
which renders it of value ? The American people
now laugh at the idea of any ultimate danger to
their liberties and independence from armed force,
or national sentiment itself; but the steps by which
the ruin comes may be as stealthy as those by
which revolution, and rebellion, and civil war came
hasty and rapid. " All men think all men mortal
but themselves ;" and the Americans, relying on
the enlightment of their democracy, deride the fears
of those who think the results which follow the

conquests of armed force in republics will develope
themselves in the New World. The personal cha-
racter of Gen. M'Clellan affords a guarantee that
he is not the man who would seek to elevate him-
self on the fragments of the institutions for the

assertion of which he is now preparing an offensive
army—but it may so happen that he may be forced
to avert greater evils by assuming for a time the

chief control of the State with the consent of those

who are the masters of public suffrage, if not of

public opinion. The dangers of defeat will be
greater than those of success; but the latter will

be attended with enormous difficulties ? Even

:he Maryland apparatus of Government, though

simple and effective, is not constitutional ;
and when it is applied to the Confederate
States it will become one of the most extraordinary

organisations which ever were beheld in a country
calling itself free. Personal experience induces me
to believe that the same spirit, unanimity, and

courage which the South exhibits in its resistance

in the field will bo displayed in every form of pas-

sive opposition to the efforts of the North to reduce
it to subjection when the fight shall have ceased.
The Unionists persist in declaring there is a large
party—to be consistent they ought to declare there
is a majority—of the people in the seceded States
opposed to the principles of the Confederates and
to the independence for which they appear to be

fighting. If so, the task of re-amalgamation will be
more easy; if not, the Federalists will be reduced
to the pleas and the machinery of force exercised,
as they contend, for right, but still applied to
oppress a majority of the people in the Slaves States.
If there be a General Dix in every State, a man

capable, resolute, and active, with overpowering
force at his disposal, all the States may be reduced
to the condition of Maryland, and the polls may be

made to give Union returns, but the supposition is
very unreasonable ; and even if it be verified the
world will see with disgust the resurrection in the

great Republic of the spirit and substance of the

most absolute despotism covered with cerecloths of
liberty. The Southern people have now poured out

all their passion into the mould of a distinct nation-
ality, and their only tie to the North is a common
language and traditions, which, belonging to the

history of their short-lived career, are now old as
the stories of the lleptarchy. When the Northern

orators and writers inveigh against the men, morals,
and manners of the Slave States they bear evidence to
the fact that a broad gulf fists between them, which
they think they can cover over with the national

flag. The Abolitionists, to whom " the Constitu-
tion is a leage with the Devil, a covenant with

hell," who exclaim that " Union is dishonour,"
that " dishonour is gain," prosecute the war either
to destroy the institution of slavery and its protec-
tors, or to enjoy the luxury of conquest and re-

venge over haughty and defiant enemies; but that
party which seems to become smaller as the contest
covers more ground is divided into active belligerents
and those who would let the Slave States go with
a curse, in the sure confidence that their system
would work out the heaviest punishment of rebel-
lion, and force them to crawl back to the Union
with " bated breath and whispering humbleness,"

With the recognition of Southern independence
would come the most serious questions of all, and it

is not possible that some of them could be settled
without a renewed struggle. The North can never
be made to admit the right of the Slave States to
recover their vagrant chattels within their domi-
nions; nothing but the complete prostration of the
North at the feet of the South could induce her to
allow that which the Constitution now argumenta-

tively yields as a right when the Constitution sha

have been rent asunder. An extradition treaty
would be a record of infamous defeat. But how are
the raw edges of the Slave States to be applied to
the caustic of the Free States, in which opposition
to slavery shall have become an article in the new
Constitution ? For many hundreds of miles, take
what frontier you may, a mere geographical line or
navigable river will separate the two Confederacies
in which every interest and every principle of com-
merce will be in extreme antagonism. Both States
forus, UUUU CILISLOLLILIVIA.,.,
frontier guards along marsh and mountain, to fight
the battles of hostile tariffs and to watch the smug-

glers of men as well as of goods. 'Wherever the
frontier runs that must be the case, but its line is
yet to be drawn in blood if the contending parties
are deaf to the voice of mediation. Nor can any
one pretend to say what issues may not be raised
concerning the territories or the States purchased
for the Union by the funds of the United States, or
the national forts and arsenals, and property seized
by the people in insurrection. The politicians here
can only see one result—conquest. It will cure all
wounds ani settle all controversies ; but, if events
prove they are mistaken, the time may come for an
armed truce on both sides, and an active media-
tion in an honest and impartial spirit, which
shall lead to a peace and the most satisfac-
tory adjustment of these questions the nature
of them permits us to expect. Any solution
will lead to "a strong Government"—that summum
bonum of aristocratic South and democratic North.
Either one centralized strong Government or two
will arise in this country, but no one can say whether
the development will take place at once or after a
terrible interregnum of disorder and political
trouble, and universal suffrage will find its master
in its own favourite creation—armed despotism.
The other day a soldier said to an officer who was
about to punish him for neglect of duty, " If you
do I'll not vote for you at the next election."
"You spoke too late," quoth the officer ; " here I
am now with the power to punish you, and I'll
double it for your threat,"—a very pregnant little
story for people to think over in all its bearings.
NOVEMBER 8.
As I am two days from Boston by mail, and the
electric telegraph will carry the latest news up to the
sailing of the packet on Wednesday, I shall not in-
dulge in any speculations in reference to the news
from the Great Expedition, meagre and unsatisfac-
tory, and even doubtful as it is; but I may be allowed
to record my opinion, from the tone of those in the
public departments, that the success is not very
decisive, and that the ships have been receiving a
very warm reception. When I was in Port Royal
this spring, on Mr. Trescot's Sea Island, the advan-
tages of the position and the probability of an at-
tack struck me ; but I was told that the inhabitants
were aware of their danger, and that batteries had
bern erected to cover Beaufort and the banks of
the river at the entrance of Port Royal. That was
so far back as May. Since then the defences have
probably been greatly strengthened, and although
Broad River and Port Royal afford depth of water
for any vessel except the very largest men-of-
war, there is a bar on the branch to Beau-
fort which will prohibit the entrance of the
heavy frigates of the expedition. I am informed
there were 28 vessels inside pounding away at the
place ; the town itself will no doubt be destroyed,
but, even if the troops land and take possession of
it, they will not find it of much use. There is—
there can be—no intention of marching the force
inland. If there should be any movement of the
kind it will be a fatal error, for the country can be
inundated at pleasure, and is, above all that I have
ever seen, suited for defence, and the force would
be too small to take military possession of the dis-
trict. But if they land and entrench themselves at
Beaufort they can cause immense inconvenience
and constant anxiety to the Confederates; and they
come close on Pocotaligo, which is a station on the
railway from Charleston to Savannah, and cut off
the
adhabl et-tcwleeaerneathecsoetptolnace
plantations,
rccommunication
line rune through vast swamps and forests,
e
fields, and
spanning rivers and creeks, on wooden bridges
easily destructible, and running for
many miles on
trestle work, so that it can be rendered useless by
cutting the woodwork, or, better still, by flinging
the rails into the water. The planters are scattered
widely apart through thin region, which bccomea