The Times special in Richmond--first letter.
The London
Times publishes the first letter from its special correspondent in
Richmond.
He commences by quoting from the speech of
Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons, in 1775, in which he said:
‘
"The spirit of liberty in the
Southern States is more high and haughty than in the
Northern.
In the Carolinas and
Virginia they have a vast multitude of slaves.
Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom, Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege.
Not seeing there that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery., with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks among them like something that is more noble and liberal.
I do not mean to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it, but I cannot alter the nature of man.--These people of the
Southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward.
Such were all ancient commonwealths, such were our Gothic ancestors, such in our days the Poles, such will be all masters of slaves.
In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible."
’
He then proceeds in a very interesting letter, from which we make some extracts:
The stranger who wins his way this day to
Richmond will find the fullest realization of these prophetic words on a far mightier field of action than was within the preview of their inspired utterer.--It is not too much to say that the most fanatical believer in the ancient Union, be he
Mr. Seward himself, would despair of the faith that is in him, and acknowledge himself, in
Victor Hugo's phrase, the ‘"somnambulist of a vanished dream,"’ could he walk the streets of
Richmond this day, and guage the spirit and feeling of its people after nearly nineteen months of such warfare as the world never contemplated before.
The streets are crowded, the hotels refuse to contain their shoals of guests; everywhere the quietness and confidence of a people secure in its own strength is incontestably evident.
Everything necessary for life, most things requisite for its luxurious enjoyment, as it is interpreted on this continent, are to be found in abundance.
There is absolutely only one commodity of which the absence is gravely felt, that commodity being ice. Does the
Federal Government hope by such a frail redder to steer the Southern Confederacy back into the harbor of Union?
Effects of the blockade.
Of course, with many of the supplies sucked in through the most ridiculous of blockades, and transported over the enormous area which separates
Richmond from the cities of the
Southern seaboard, prices are high.
The board and lodging in the hotels amount to four dollars per day; clothing and boots are extremely dear, but are to be had by paying for them; medical supplies are scarce, but are constantly being introduced in not insufficient quantities across the
Potomac and through the cities of the coast.
And here, from personal experience, I may express my conviction of the utter impossibility of blockading the
Potomac and the
Ohio, and shutting off the
South from supplies, along a frontier which from
Fortress Monroe to distant
Kansas extends for some 1,500 miles. If the whole Federal navy was concentrated in the
Potomac it would be utterly inadequate effectually to block the innumerable creeks and reaches of that river.
Add to this that on both sides the stream dwells a population of which not more than five per cent are in favor of the
Union.
Ravages of the enemy in Virginia.
In nearly every county the court-house in which the assizes for each county used to be held is rudely demolished, doors and windows torn down, while within, upon the white walls, in every phase of handwriting, are recorded the autographs of the vandals whose handiwork surrounds the beholder.
Stories upon stories have reached me detailing how the wives of the
Federal officers, represented by my exasperated informants as having usually ‘"hailed from"’ detested
New England, forced their way behind the
Federal troops into the fine family mansions of the Old Dominion, and personally superintended the abstraction and transmission north wards of old family china, silver, glass, pictures, books, furniture, and piano fortes
A. Virginia lady, who remonstrated with one of these Yankee hen barriers, engaged in packing up valued family china, was met by the rejoinder, ‘"You are a rebel, and have no rights that I am bound to respect; your property, therefore, is mine?"’ In short, such a pic ture of desolation as the northern frontier of
Virginia and the lovely Shenandoah Valley, the Paradise of
America, exhibit, can be likened only to the Palatinate after
Tilly's final visit, as
Thucydides paints it, after the annual Lacedœmon incursion during the Peloponnesian war.
The United and determined feeling at the South.
I have traveled far and wide through
Virginia; I have conversed with men, women, striplings, and children, in that State, and in
Maryland; I have seen men, formerly substantial and thriving, whose everything is devoured by the
Federal; but never in one single instance have I heard a word of regret by reason of the war, a timid note sounded in regard to its issues, a sigh breathed over the departed Union, a ghost of a desire expressed in favor of compromise or reconstruction.
On the contrary, one universal chorus echoes through the length and breadth of the land: ‘"The not is broken, and we are delivered!"’
Mr. Everett and his votaries, who still believe in imprisoned loyalty as existing in the
South, might as well search in the
British Islands for a man who desired them to be annexed to
France.
So united, so homogeneous a community as the States of the Southern Confederacy finds no parallel in our annals.
No war that
England has waged for a hundred years has met with such cordial, unanimous, undivided support.
The war against the
French Republic had its
Charles Fox; the war against
Russia its
Richard Cobden.
There is no such character in the
Southern States.
The victory of the
Federal in this exasperated struggle means, not the defeat of the
Southern armies, not the possession of
Richmond,
Charleston,
Savannah,
Mobile, and New Orleans, which would no more lead to a conclusion of the war than the seizure of the
Isle of Man.
A Federal victory means nothing on earth but the extermination and annihilation of every man, woman, and child in the Southern Confederacy.
There is no passion, no frenzy, in the universal language.
The intensity of the hate flushes the check and clinches the teeth, but finds little expression in feeble words.
If anything, the exuberance of animosity is more perceptible in the flashing eyes and eager earnestness of the women, but the settled and unconquerable firmness of the men requires nothing to be added to it.
The possibility of
Richmond's falling is calmly discussed, and preparations have long been made for such a contingency.
Surprise is expressed that the
Federal have not long ago possessed themselves of several other Southern cities as well as New Orleans.
The possession of a capital city in these days of railroads is a very different thing from what it used to be in the days of
Wagram and
Jena.
Great suffering might be inflicted on women and children if
Mobile and
Charleston fell — suffering which there is only too much reason to fear would be most acceptable to the
Federal, judging from the record of their deeds during the last year and a half.
But every considerable city in the
South might be reduced to ashes without changing the mood or undermining the resolutions of the feeblest heart, if any feeble hearts there be, in the Southern Confederacy.
How they Bear their Losses.
I am told by the highest authority that the official statement, comprising the most minute details of the
Confederate loss at the
battle of Antietam Creek, estimates the
Confederate loss in killed, wounded, and missing, at 6,000 men. Another fact is noticeable.
A Federal loss of infinite magnitude would evoke no sigh of sympathy, no moment of sadness, except so far as it was supposed to defer the restoration of the
Union.
But the whole Confederacy bewails the 6,000 victims at
Antietam Creek with brotherly affection and sympathy.
Nor is that appalling indifference which amazes and paralyzes the spectator in
Washington and New York affected here.
Scarcely a lady but wears mourning, proud to display that she has lost a relative fighting in a cause dearer to her than life; scarcely a person but speaks sorrowfully and with affliction of a loss which seems to them appalling, though not much more than one third of that inflicted upon their
poco curante foe.
The Southern army.
Well may a nation be confident of winning its independence which can exhibit such spectacles as every day produces wherever a Southern army is in the field There, in poverty, hunger, and dirt, shoeless, with shirts ragged and rent, often without hats, their feet bleeding as they drag their weary limbs through dust and briar, are serving in the ranks the gentlemen and the
sangre azul of the
South.
Many a man who, until the commencement of the war, had scarcely a thought beyond the
Cafe Foy and the Boulevards of
Paris, and to whose morning toilet every diversity of cosmetic was as necessary as water, has for months been marching under a musket, without one single change of raiment, feeding on green maize and raw pork, lying at night on the bare earth, with a single blanket between him and the canopy of heaven.
And these men, many of them bearing some of
England's most honored names, and descended from
England's best families, are in the field, and have been so for nineteen months, fighting against mercenaries who have repudiated
England, as though she were governed by a Nero, and have escaped from German penury and conscriptions.
Whatever may have been the truth last winter, it is not pretended now that the
Northern armies are not mainly composed of men of foreign birth !--Where are the native
Americans of weight and influence serving in the
Northern armies?
Why does not
Wendell Phillips take the field?
Men older than he are serving by dozens in the
Southern ranks.
Where is
Charles Sumner's musket?--The Senate could spare
Senator Baker, in no wise
Mr. Sumner's inferior in intellect, and it were a noble answer to the
South, which sneers at non-duellists for want of courage, to show how one of that class can comport himself upon the perilous edge of battle.
It is but probable that with unopposed command of the sea and the great rivers during their autumn floods, the
South may lose thousands more of her sons, in addition to that great sea of blood which has already been cheerfully poured out in her defence.
But let her be left without a single city or village, with nothing but her internal fastnesses and her immense area of territory, and though every man in the
North under fifty were to take the field, they would be inefficient ever to make such a nation as the
South lie at the feet of her enemy.
