AN INSIDE VIEW OF THE REBELLION.

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPOEDENT.]

New York, November 14th, 1863. ALways fancyirg myself so embarrassed by a wealth of topics that I fear, like the man who went through the cane-brake in search of a straight reed, I present the readers of the Spectator with

the least acceptable of those which present themselves, I am now hesitating between the temptation, on the one hand, to explain the difference between the healthy doctrine of State Rights and the baneful and destructive one of State Sovereignty, which is offered by the decision (utterly futile, by the way) of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, that the Conscription Act is unconstitutional ; and, on the other, to let you see what the rebels say of themselves and their cause. Concluding that the former subject, though most important to the understanding of the nature of our Government and of our present struggle, will keep a week better than the latter, I proceed, accordingly, to give you some extracts from Southern speeches, newspapers, and writings as to the authenticity of which you may rest assured. You will remember the outbreak of disaffection at Raleigh, in North Carolina; now a still stronger and more important manifestation of the same kind comes from Arkansas. A Union paper is now published at Little Rock in that State, and in that paper Mr. E. W. Gaunt, late Confederate member of Congress and Brigadier-General in the insurgent army, addresses the people of Arkansas at great length, and with much candour, upon a very important subject—the position of the in- surgent cause. Of Jefferson Davis he speaks thus :—

" This gentleman has proved himself totally unsuited to the emer- gency. With the whole cotton crop and wealth of the South at his dis- posal, and the friendship of many European Powers, he has accomplished nothing abroad. His foreign policy has been a stupid failure. He has permitted himself to be overreached and outmanaged in everything. His policy at home, while proving him to be strong in some respects, has shown him to be weak, mean, and malignant in others. He is cold, selfish, and supremely ambitions. And under the cover of outward sanctity and patriotism, flows concealed the strongest-vein of hypocrisy and demagogueism."

This is quite too bad of Gaunt, though it was more than sus- pected by others long before he said it. It is almost as severe upon Mr. Davis as the London Times was in the days of Mississippi

repudiation, before there was any hope that the arch-repudiator might help to destroy the great Republic. Of the past military history and present military situation of the insurrection the late Brigadier thus discourses :—

" Some say, continue the struggle. Let the last man die, &c., &o. I think differently. We ought to end the struggle and submit. But you say it is humiliating. No more than to surrender when whipped. We have done that often. Always where we could do no better. I have tried the experiment twice, and found it by no means foolish. Sub- mission is but surrender. We are fairly beaten in the whole result, and should at once surrender the point. If we don't get the happiness we enjoyed in the old Government, we can get no more misery than we

have felt under Jefferson Davis But we are whipped—fairly beaten. Our armies are melting, and ruin approaches us. Will con- tinuing this struggle help us ? Every battle we might gain ought to wring tears from the hearts of Southern men. We are just that much weaker—that much nearer our final ruin. Anguish, and sorrow, and desolation meet us wherever we turn. The longer the struggle the more of it. How is it with us? The last man is in the field. Half our territory overrun. Our cities gone to wreck—peopled alone by the aged, tho lame, and halt, and women, and children. While deserted towns and smoking ruins, and plantations abandoned and laid waste, meet us on all aides. And anarchy and ruin, disappointment and discontent, lower over all the land."

Not exactly, you will see, that rosy view of the results of those brilliant-and-impossible-to-the-Federal-mind military combinations which so astonish and delight the Timei and its Liverpool corres- pondent. As to slavery, Mr. Gaunt has something to say much to the purpose. He tells the people that Mr. Lincoln has the physical force at his disposal to carry out the Emancipation Proclamation ; "but," he adds, "let, I beseech you, the negro no longer stand in the way of the happiness and safety of friends and kindred." He says that not many years since it was admitted at the South that "slavery was an evil ;" but that papers and periodicals were established to "educate the Southern mind to the belief" that it was "a divine institution ;" "because, to concede that negro slavery was morally wrong was virtually to concede the whole argument to the Abolitionists." Mr. Gaunt then goes on with a discussion of the past and present bearings of slavery, from which I extract the following notable confessions :-- " But revolutions shake up men's thoughts, and put them in different channels. I have recently talked with Southern slaveholders from every State. They are tired of negro slavery, and believe they could make more clear money, and live more peaceably, without than with it Its existence had become incompatible with the exist- ence of the Government. For, while it had stood as a wall, damming up the current and holding back the people and labourers of the North, it had, by thus precluding free intercourse between the sections, pro- duced a marked change in their manners, customs, and sentiments. And the two sections were growing more divergent every day. This wall or the Government—one must give way. The shook came which was to settle the question. I thought that the Government was divided, and negro slavery established for ever. I erred. The Govern- ment was stronger than slavery. Reunion is certain, but no more certain than the downfall of slavery."

Mr. Gaunt, whom the masterly statesmanship and brilliant mili- tary combinations of the Confederates have made a sadder, if not a wiser man, closes his address by saying that, although he dis- likes to be abused and slandered, and, more than all, to live under a cloud with those friends who have not reached his stand-point, he has determined to sever his connection with "an enterprise so fruitless and so full of woe," no longer to help to keep the masses of the people under "this terrible despotism of Davis," but to do what he can to save the remnant of them from the wreck.

Very different in style, but much the same in tone and purpose, is a letter found on the body of a rebel soldier at Rappahannock Station, written to the poor fellow by his father, a Mississippian, on his birth-day, September 21st. 'I hese people, if not "mean whites," are evidently of the poorer classes. The old man says, among other things :—

" There is not a day but that some deserters pass by going home. We have plenty in our neighbourhood that have come home and will not go back to the army. A great many have gone to Vicksburg and claimed protection. The State has gone under, and the negroes have all left and gone over to the Yankees. My son, it seems hard that you all have to stay there and fight for the rich men's property when they will not themselves fight for it. There are 130E00 nal men who are gentlemen, and go in with them all. But whore you find one who does this, you find ten who do not. . . . . If France had come to our assistance when we hold Vicksburg, it would have done some good. But it is too late now. Our men are too much divided, as too many have gone back to the Union. This war was got up drunk, but they will have to settle it sober."

You will see that, according to those who know something about it, the American " Iliad " will not be the story of half a ten years' war, and that it will end and leave Troy standing. Now, what the war is about we have already been told in the pages of Macmillan's Magazine, by a gentleman who has not been to the war either as soldier or minstrel, and by the following paragraph from a late Richmond paper you will see how truly he stated the cause for which the South is fighting :— " Nine free negroes, men and women, were brought into the Mayor's Court yesterday, charged with being in the city with Henrico papers. The negroes, when arrested, grumbled extensively that they should be hauled up before the Mayor for nothing. The Mayor decided that they should not say they came for nothing this time, and, therefore, ordered them fifteen lashes each."

Do you not see,—I am not speaking to the editors of the Spec- tator, but to Thomas Carlyle, and the disciples of his "Nutshell 'Iliad '"—do you not see that the South is only seeking the privilege of hiring its servants for life? And hiring servants for life is taking nine negroes, free negroes, mind you, nine men and women, —be particular to observe the women,—who are charged with heinous crime, to wit, the crime of being in Richmond with Hen- rico papers, and who grumbled at being hauled up before the Mayor, because they thought that being free, that is unhired for

life, it was nothing whether they were in Richmond or in Hen- rico ; it is the taking of these inm and women, and showing them that they should not say they came for nothing this time, and giving them, by order of his Honour the Mayor himself (and very grateful they ought to ftel for such a distinction) fifteen lashes each, women and men, upon the bare back, with an instru- ment to which a cat is merciful, for being in Richmond when they had only ilenrico papers, they being yet nnhirecl for life. 0 Homer in a nut-shell ! After which it will be comfortable for you to learn from the same paper that, at the same place, "a great revival of religion is progressing at Centenary Church, Grace street: . The church is thronged nightly, and much interest per- vades the meeting." Negroes not hired for life . are admitted, unless, indeed, they have ifeurico papers. Then quickly with them to the flagellant, and let them repent that unpardonable sin under the lash.

I could go on, for the material is ample ; but this is enough. I

will only add that, during my visit to Canada, from which I re- turned just before writing my last letter, I saw and heard enough to prevent me from being at all surprised at the official announce- WOO of the plot hatched thcre to free the prisoners on Johnson's Island and burn Buffalo. It is thought there to be the fine thing, the true British thine., to be blindly inimical to this country. So most Of them overdo thematter, and are plus Sece.sh que lea Seceshes mimes. The course of the Governor and of Lop:1.413ns; iacii'eates a feeling which we wish had existed twe Tears and more ago.

.13.•8•77.7! Wish to enter my protest against one judgment of a man whose writings we all admire. Mr. Hawthorne says that he found the women in England all ugly alike. I am sorry for him. My lines have fallen in pleasanter places. I am hard to please in women and poets, and I have never been across the water ; yet some of the most beautiful and the loveliest women I ever saw were your countrywomen. And they were beautiful and lovely just as their cousins, my own countrywomen, are beautiful and lovely. Put a dozen of each of them in a room together, and except in some trifling, very trifling, peculiarity of dress and speech, you could not tell which was born in the Old England and which in the New. For, Mr. Anthony Trollope, your Ophelia Gledd, name and all, is a creature to set a Yankee's teeth on edge.