The Daily Dispatch: July 12, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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An English view of the situation.
[from the London Times, June 11.]

An earnest glass over the American Battle fields is like peering into thick darkness where we hear men fighting. Nothing is visitors except now and then when a flash gives a partial and uncertain light. We then see columns retreating and advancing, bodies of infantry and cavalry flying and pursuing, but nothing is certain except that men are killing each other, and that certain flag are flying upon certain fortresses. War secrets were never better kept than they have been by the Southerners. Secrecy was never more perfectly accomplished than by the Northern Government since it has adopted the plan of dressing up a hundred false images of truth. Great defeats appear as little skirmishes, and little skirmishes are magnified into great victories.

Even that great battle of Pittsburg Landing has appeared in as many forms as a handful of glass in a kaleidoscope. It was a great Federal victory; it was a Confederate stampede; it was a drawn battle; it was a Federal defeat. Again, it was an engagement in which 50,000 men were slain; it was a battle in which the Federal loss was about 900 men. Then the Federal loss in killed, wounded, and missing were allowed to amount to 35,000, and now it is said, upon the authority of a private letter from Gen. Sherman, that 35,000 have been lost to the Federal colors since that day. The Confederate retreats are always at first disorderly routs. But after a while the Federal officers remonstrate at having their work represented as so easy, and a second version appears describing them as in the highest degree orderly, and the resistance as being most desperate.

Different flashes of official light show the same transaction as a victory and a defeat. There was ‘"Gen. Franklin's victory at West Point,"’ which loomed out as a victory under a transient gleam, but retired from sight to come out as a defeat under a later illumination. It is quietly admitted now that Franklin's force ran at creditable speed to their gunboats. Above the hurly-burly and through the darkness we can see, however, a few things distinctly. We know that the Stars and Stripes are at New Orleans, and that there is a General there so intolerant of the saucy tongues of American ladies, that he answers a scornful phrase with brutal outrage, and replies to a sarcasm in much the same manner as a revolted negro would punish the previous scoldings of his master's daughter.

We know also that the Mississippi has been gallantly swept up and down, and that, so far as the guns of the iron ships can reach, the valley of that river is in the power of the Federal. But the principal fact is that after the great invasion had seemed to have almost completed its work, and when the United States had just resolved to celebrate the Fourth of July as a double jubilee, everything goes back to its original condition. A Federal army has been once again in full flight across the Potomac; Washington has been in its old state of panic; and Boston and New York have been again hurrying off new armies to save Washington from hostile occupation.

People who have the power of making for us our facts, of course have the power of tendering to us our conclusions. But what do they themselves think? What are they doing who having the power of seeing the undistorted truth, can judge rather better than we can? There are men in the Northern States who can tell why it happens that the darkness is made so thick about many transactions. Some people know how it occurs that we never hear any report as to the health of the troops or the state of the wounded. People exist who could, if they cared, say that shiploads of fever stricken wretches daily come northward to die, and who could repeat the tales those pallid wretches tell of the condition of those they have left behind.--The secret explanation of the new call for fresh levies could be given by those who know what is happening in these hospitals where wounds never heal, and where fever and ague so seldom give up their prey. If men fight in a darkness only fitfully lit up, they die in a gloom which no ray ever penetrates.

If we know of American battles only what Mr. Lincoln choose to tell us, we know of the sweeping ravages of disease nothing but what comes in mysterious whispers — the hushed consternation of surviving friends. This silent death is, in all probability, as active in the Confederate as in the Federal camp, for of the Confederates we know even less than we know of the others. But how shall we guess what the knowing ones on the Federal side really think of the prospects of their own cause and of the decisive successes they proclaim? Their words have proved to be worthless. May we not, however, put more faith in their acts? When New Orleans fell and the ports were opened the world was told that the cotton famine was stayed, that cotton was again plentiful, and that the world might return to its ordinary industry.

When intelligence reached New York, the credit given by the speculators of that city to this assurance was shown in this — that cotton rose 1½c a pound. Every one of these speculators, in all probability, declared in public and in private that the rebellion was crushed and the Union restored.--But, for his own proper profit's sake, he acted on the supposition that those events were further off than ever. Would we seek a further sign of the real belief of the better informed men of America, let us wake the great commercial facts. Although America has almost ceased to import, we see the premium on gold gradually advancing, the exchanges gradually rising, and the price of provisions gradually getting up.

These facts, occurring during the frenzy which makes the populace drive State stocks up to nominal premiums and prefer paper to gold show that there is a very large class quietly and silently realizing, and making everything safe for the crash they foresee. These are not signs that the really informed people in America think peace near, or solvency probable. The very fact that Mr. Chase is buying gold with paper, in order that he may pay his dividends in gold, is a sign that he at least believes he has to deal with some people who like the glitter of the metal.