The Sun. — 1864-08-04 (London, England)

XIV., the conduct of war by Cromwell in Ireland, of the Duke of Cumberland after the battle of Culloden, are among the instances which occur to everybody. The military student will, perhaps, recall a more modern instance in the retreat of the baffled Massena from before the lines of Torres Vedras, and will remember the ruthless. ness towards peasants, villages, and convents which wrung from Wellington the remark that, "It has seldom been equalled and never surpassed." I do net believe,lhowever—and I say it advisedly—that any of these infamous passages, in regard to which lapse of time serves but to increase the asperity of our indignation, surpasses in atrocity the system of Federal warfare in the Southern States, and notably in Virginia. In burning words of eloquent censure Mr. Motley has held up to our loathing the horrible cruelty of Also. and the bigoted tyranny of his master. Yet Mr. Motley is the complacent and contented servant of a Republic which, in the name of liberty, encourages enormities as repugnant to the civilised warfare of the 19th century as were Philip ll.'s outrages, in the name of religion, to the moral sense of the 16th. Ido not mean that throats are cut indiscriminately as they were by Alva, although many a dark tale of cupidity and assassination has issued from the forests and byways of Virginia. I could, were it not as distasteful to me to write as it is to your readers to learn such gloomy horrors, accumulate evidence substantiating the occurrence of many such murders of civilians in cold blood beyond refutation. Nor, again, do I assert that women are stripped and forced to run races in the presence of a licentious soldiery, as in the days of the brutal Duke of Cumberland. But I do mean to assert—and I challenge contradiction of this statement—that outrages such as my pen must seek a periphrasis to describe, and of which white women are the object, have repeatedly occurr©d ; that in a special degree the country called the northern neck of Virginia (ly. ing between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers) has witnessed them again and again; that the African savage, stimulated by those white agents who give:effect to Mr. Sumner's and Mrs. Beecher Stowe's theories, is the perpetrator of them, that I am in a position to mention not less than ten horrors, which during the last three months, have occurred in the county of Westmoreland alone, and which arc unsurpassed in atrocity by the most loathsome records of modern or ancient warfare. After this statement it is a relief to turn to the mere details of plunder and cupidity. Your readers can scarcely be ignorant that through every portion of Virginia Federal raiders have circulated, have killed every fourfooted or feathered animal, except the horses which have been carried off, have stripped lonely women surrounded by children of every vestige of food, have pillaged ladies' clothing and every portable article of value, have burnt ly.rns and houses at will wherever their lust of plunder has been bafflad. Will it be pretended that this is civilised warfare ? Can it be alleged that the Federals are merely exacting retribution for airliner deeds of the Southerners in Pennsylvania? I apprehend no such defence will be attempted. The truth is, that for the first time in modern warfare we are contemplating an army which is at onco republican and andiscinliced. We see officers who in many cases are more debased than their men, and who impose upon those man none of the restraints which strict discipline and organisation extracted from the Re. publican levies by whose agency Napoleon domineered over Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, and Madrid. The consequences may be imagined. Ido net deny that among the Federal officers are OM. ionaily high-minded and honourable men, such as General Meade or General Kelly, and I believe I may add General Grant, who would nom the imputation of plundt ring civilians in,war as they Would