14 MAY 1864, Page 12

New York, April 30, 1864. WE have lost Plymouth in

North Carolina, and a rebel ram, slow moving and light armed, but itself absolutely invulnerable to 32-pounders, has command of the Roanoke, as far as serious operations are concerned, though it cannot prevent the swift steamers which can get out of its way from going up the river and -throwing shells into the captured and garrisoned town. This loss, if it involve the holding of Plymouth for a considerable time by the rebels, is likely to prove a source of serious annoyance to the Government ; and measures are on foot in the Navy Department to send this rebel ram the way of its predecessors. But why did we not have the ounce of prevention instead of being obliged to wait for the costlier pound of cure ? The question may well be asked, and though possibly there may be a very good and sufficient answer to it, we are not a little annoyed at this recurrence of the

• Jame apparently passive and easy-going management of our naval f7 in an important position. We think that,Plyraouth is

called forth general Lncomiums, especially from Fox and Tier- exactly the place where Mr. Secretary Welles should have been prepared to meet a ram, whether there was one to be met or not. Still, it is noteworthy as showing the effect of the discipline of the war upon us, that although we feel the loss sorely we are ready to admit that the misfortune may not be the consequence of culpable neglect, and willing to wait patiently for explanation and our opportunity. Such affairs as this, over which the insurgents make great ado, no longer make much impression upon us, whichever- way they are decided. It appears not to be thought of for a moment that in themselves they are to have any influence upon the course of events ; and yet two or three more losses like those of Fort Pillow and Plymouth, one more instance of such mismanagement as that of General Banks on Red River, would do more to unseat the administration of President Lincoln at the coming election than al/ the talk of all the professed politicians in the country.- And they would have this effect precisely because the people have reached that state of mind in which no disaster short of one absolutely ruinous would have any effect in checking their action or diverting their per- pose. Knowing the worth of such weapons as these small reverses in political contests, the opponents of Mr. Lincoln on both sides are. making the most of them ; and during the next four months it will be neces-ary for the European reader of newspapers from the United States to read certain of them which are heartily loyal to the Republic with almost as much allowance for perversion as if they were the rankest Copperhead journals in the land. I an sorry to say this, but I have undertaken to tell you the truth, and( I make my confession with the greater chagrin because I suppose that such a thing as the giving a false colour to events or distorting their true proportions for political effect is unknown to British journalism. In particalar, I must caution you against all that is said by the Tribune, and all other organs and oraclea of what is called the Radical Abolition party, about General Banks. His course in Louisiana, which seemed so wise, benevo- lent, and statesmanlike to the Spectator, and, I will add, to the Spect,it9r's Yankee correspondent, has given mortal offence to. all that party. They are moved to scorn and wrath against him because he passed the Louisiana slaves through a course of train- ing, an intermediate state between absolute chattel bondage, in which they took no care even for mere animal needs, and absolute liberty, in which they should be held to no responsibility but that of their own wills, have no guidance but that of men whose interest it is to cheat and to degrade them, and to bring the system of emancipation into contempt, and have the entire care of them- selves and their families thrown at once upon them. Because General Banks has taken the former rather than the latter of these courses the Radical Abolitionists take pains to depreciate his abilities, to impeach his character for perfect honour, and, above all, to magnify his failures. Yet I am no partizan of General Banks, and cannot bring myself to speak with high approval of a march into an enemy's country with an army so divided that, without strategy, it can be attacked in detail by the enemy's whole force; nor do I think that a final victory which, under these circum- stances, is due not less to the recklessness of the enemy than to the conduct of our own army, which costs 4,000 men in killed and wounded, and which, though bloody and decisive for the time, does not decide the campaign, is one which should add much tea general's reputation. Yet how do I know that the nature of the country through which General Banks moved did not compel the distribution of his forces which well nigh cost us the entire failure of the expedi- tion? And so I wait before I utterly condemn. The final victory at Pleasant Hill did not decide the campaign ; for although the rebels were driven in disorder from the field, the Union army had suffered too much to be able to pursue ; and now we hear, how truly we cannot tell, that the rebels have again assumed the offensive, and are marching upon Grand Ecore, whither General Banks went to re-organize and recruit his army. The expedition is one of great importance. For, as Admiral Porter says in his report of his operations in aid of General Banks, "Those who have interests here [in Louisiana] and are faithful to the Government [and they are many], have a right to our protec- tion ; and when this point of Louisiana is conquered we hold Arkansas and all the right bank of the Mississippi without firing another gun."

Two recent legislative acts, one at Albany and one at Washing- ton, will, I fear, do much to prevent that establishment of good. feeling between our two nations which I, and I trust some of my readers, so much desire—I mean the decision of the Legislature of New York that the foreign holders of the State bonds shall receive their interest, as our own citizens receive theirs, in Treasury notes, and the sudden, and indeed immediate, increase of 50 per cent. by Congress for sixty days upon import duties. The latter certainly

does seem one of the most capricious, extraordinary, and unwise legislative acts on modern record. If, as merchants say, commerce can adapt itself to almost any policy, so it be systematic, con- sistent, and maintained for a course of years, bat cannot thrive under a policy of continual change, even for the better, what could be more detrimental, more disturbing, than this sudden and enor- mous increase of duties,—an increase, too, during a period hardly long enough to enable correspondents on the two continents to adjust their business to it. How free trade will growl at this ! How all trade will grumble ! And I confess that I think trade will be right, and only ask you to observe that all our respectable and really influential organs of opinion protest as loudly as you can do.

As to the interest on the New York State bonds, I record the decision of our Legislature with chagrin, but not with shame. If that body represented the mass, not to say the more respectable, of my fellow-citizens, if it were any other than the merest political labour-saving machine, if we even pretended that it was not in the main made up of venal demagogues, I should feel the shame which now I do not feel. My blush is for the defects of political struc- ture, and the consequent political corruption on the one hand and supineness on the other, which have made such a misrepresentation of the State of New York possible. And again I as'r you to observe that such papers as the New York Times and the Evening Post (one of the oldest, most widely circulated, and most influential papers in the country, whose readers are chiefly cultivated people, and which yet seems to be unknown in England) denounce this "breach of State faith" in unmeasured terms, which meet the hearty approval of every person I have heard mention this subject. On two pre- vious occasions two comptrollers of the State, at times when the banks had stopped specie payments, assumed the responsibility of maintaining the good faith of the State ; and they were heartily aided by the banks themselves, and afterward sustained by the people in the handsomest manner. What effect the facts that Treasury notes are the legal currency of the country and that the State Legislature has acted in the matter may have upon our present comptroller I cannot surmise, but I can assure you that if he also assumes the responsibility of acting upon the true intent and meaning of the State's contracts, as far as her foreign creditors are concerned, he will be cheered and held safe against all con- sequences by every man worthy to be called A YANKEE.

P.8.-1 need hardly commend President Lincoln's "Kentucky Letter" to your attention. Comment upon it I leave to you, merely saying that it is not only a singularly candid and clear state- ment of his reasons for his course of action, but a fair representation of the feeling and the purpose of the people in all the Free and, now, some of the Slave States.

New York, April 22, 1864. THERE are signs that the spring campaign is opening in the East, in the West, and in the South, and that we have entered upon what promises to be the final stage of our struggle for national existence. In Virginia, the field to which you look with greatest interest, no movements except those of preparation are yet apparent. There are reports that General Lee has sent detach- ments of his army here, there, and elsewhere, that it is 75,000 strong, that it is only 25,000 strong, that General Grant means to do this, that, or the other ; —all of which is not worth the slightest attention. What General Lee has done only he and his subordi- nates, and perhaps General Grant, General Halleck, and the War Department know ; what General Grant means to do, only he and perhaps the War Department know ; it is more than possible that as yet even he is ignorant upon this point. But in Louisiana there has been severe fighting, with a result, perhaps, unfavourable to the insurgents.

General Banks, who, as I know of personal knowledge, has felt from the time when he went into Louisiana that he had too small a force for the work expected of him, and who has yet gone quietly and earnestly at that work, encountered the enemy on the 8th of April at a place called Sabine Cross Roads, a few miles from Plea- sant Hill, which is a village about twenty miles from Natchitoches, on the Red River, and about fifty miles from Shreveport, which is above Natchitoches, and which was the objective point of General Banks's march. The insurgents were under General Kirby Smith, who had Magruder, Holmes, and Taylor under him as generals of division. The insurgents attacked the Union advance, consisting entirely of cavalry, with a strong force of all arms, and drove it back in confusion upon its infantry supports, which coming up hastily and in detachments, were beaten in detail, and that day was lost. It is said that the insurgents took four guns and that

2,000 of the Union army were killed or wounded. Who was in immediate command of the beaten forces is not very clear ; according to some accounts it was General Stone, whose reputation suffered at Bull's Bluff ; according to others, General Franklin, a brave and able soldier, who yet had a cloud cast over him by his failure to move according to General Burn- side's expectations at Fredericksburg. The advance of the victorious enemy was, however, effectually checked by the 19th Army Corps, under General Andrew Jackson Smith, whose capture of Fort De Russey is fresh in our memories, if not in yours. On the next day battle was renewed, and, according to probable reports, by an advance of the insurgents ; but from all that I know of General Banks he is just the man to attack under such circum- stances, if he felt that he had the force wherewith to do so. This, it appears, he had ; for, according to all accounts, the rebels were totally defeated with the loss of four generals of brigade, and according to various reports from twelve to twenty guns and about 2,000 prisoners, — the latter number is most probably an exaggeration, as is also the 1,500 killed and wounded which they are said to have lost in the first day's battle. The fighting of our men appears to have been altogether too desultory and their discomfiture too complete on that day to have resulted in any such loss to the enemy. However, there is no knowing what General Smith and the 19th Army Corps may have done in checking the victorious advance. The rebels appear to have been fully conscious of the importance of the expedition by which General Banks proposed to obtain control of the Red River, and to have laid themselves out in a great effort to crush it ; for we learn that they mustered in force enough to venture an attack also upon the transports and gunboats upon which the expedition mainly depended for supplies, only, however, to be defeated with great loss, said to be between 500 and GOO in killed, besides wounded, including among the former one of the general officers above mentioned. Should the defeat of the rebels prove to have been as complete as it appears to have been, according to the reports up to the present time (which are dated at Grand Boors, on the Red River, one week after the first battle), General Banks can hardly fail to march on to Shreveport and attain his point, which is quite as important as the rebels evidently regarded it.

The stOry of the massacre at Fort Pillow is fully confirmed by all reports received since my last letter. The rebels were nearly 3,000 strong, the garrison, 600; both fought bravely. The negro soldiers murdered after surrender were 300, more or less, the white officers and soldiers, 56. The rebels, officers and men, with a very few honourable exceptions, declared their intention to give " negroes and home-made Yankees" no quarter. Home-made Yankees are those who are willing to sacrifice slavery to national integrity,—we may use integrity, may we net, both in its moral and its physical sense ? There has of course gone up an outcry for retaliation ; a Congressional committee has been appointed, and the President has declared in a speech made at Baltimore that there shall be a just retribution for this monstrous crime. But 0 good people, good Congress men, and good President, what do you propose to do? It has been declared that for every soldier in the Union ranks, whatever his race, who shall after surrender be treated otherwise than as a prisoner of war a rebel prisoner shall be made to suffer in like manner. This only is retaliation, and only this retaliation would be at all effective by way of prevention. But can we hang in cold blood three hundred and fifty-six prisoners of war? The thing is impossible ! Why, we could not even hang that number of Indians who had massacred our country- men, their wives, and children ; and the public was sick at heart at the mere decimation of the savages. Hang three hundred and fifty-six of our countrymen, rebels though they be ! That sort of work may do for Japan, China, India, Dahomey, but not for this country ; yet if we do not hang man for man, where is the retalia- tion? Of what effect would be a partial retribution? We might visit it upon officers ; but should we do that the rebels would quite surely hang, in retaliation, ten men to our one. It may as well be confessed, and I am not at all ashamed to confess, that the rebels have us in this matter altogether at disadvantage. We are no match for them at a massarre. Nor have we any means of pre- venting them from murdering negro soldiers and their white officers, except by killing them in battle, and showing those of them who do kill prisoners of war no quarter on the battle-field. We are in this matter in the position of a gentleman who encounters an abusive blackguard. If it be worth while for the gentleman to beat the blackguard within an inch of his life, and he can do it well ; but if he attempts to retort his abuse either in kind or by polished sarcasm, he may be sure that the blackguard will have thfr best of it, and that his wisest course will be to get out of theyry as quickly and silently as possible. So if the rebels will murder prisoners of war by the hundred, we have no resource, as far as I can see, except to bear it as well as we can, and see that the account is made as square as possible on the battle-field. Does not tim course of events justify me in having said more than once that it in quite in vain for us to hope to deal with the real, original, fire- eating secessionists otherwise than by death, by imprisonment, or by exile ? Would such an alternative fate win British sympathy for the red-handed victors of Fort Pillow ?

A YANKEE.