New York, December 19th, 1863. No important military or political
event has claimed public atten- tion here during the past week. Congress has confined itself to preparation for the despa.ch of public business, a very useful, but very uninteresting proceeding, but three votes have been taken which are very significant. Mr. Fernando Wood did not delay, but at the very first opportunity moved in the House the appoint- ment of " Three commissioners, empowered to open negotiations with the authorities at Richmond, to the end that this bloody, destructive, and inhuman war shall cease, and the Union be restored upon terms of equity, fraternity, and equality, under the Constitu- tion." The terms of this proposed resolution are worthy of notice. They recognize the authorities at Richmond, who are civil, not military, authorities. They stigmatize the war as bloody, destruc- tive, and inhuman. That the first two epithets are well applied no one will dispute. Wars in which both parties arein earnest are apt to be both bloody and destructive ; but whether they are inhuman or not depends, in the judgment of some people, on the object for which they are waged. Within a few years there have been wars in the Crimea, in India, and in Northern Italy, which were very bloody and destructive ; but it may be doubted whether, in the opinion of the two leading nations of Europe, they were inhuman, although it is currently reported, and actually believed, that they were attended with not a little needless inhumanity. But, to return to Mr. Fernando Wood's motion, notice particularly that he, the most abject pro-Slavery Democrat in the country, except, perhaps, his worthy brother Benjamin, and who is as bold as he is bad (remember always his proper place is the State's prison, and not the House of Representatives), only ventures to bring for- ward his resolution "That the Union be restored." Not a glance to- wards the destruction of the Republic ; even he dare not look thither- ward. The restoration is to be upon terms of equity, fraternity, and equality, under the Constitution ; which triad of political generalities means simply that the rebels are to have their slaves, to be paid for those who have been set free by the advance of the armies of the Republic, and to be guaranteed in their claim to take slavery into unsettled and unorganized territory. This motion was
immediately laid upon the table by a vote of 98 to 59. In the minority, composed entirely of Democrats, were many delegates who openly declared that their votes against the instant tabling of the resolution must not be taken as an approval of the principles or the policy of the mover. Subsequent proceedings established the truth of this assertion. For, on the moving of a resolution that, " We oppose any armistice, or intervention, or mediation, or pro- position for peace, from any quarter, so long as there shall be found a rebel in arms against the Government ; and we ignore all party names, lines, and issues, and recognize but two parties in this war—patriots and traitors,"—in the majority by which it was carried appeared some of the very men who voted against laying Mr. Wood's resolution ; and a resolution, " That we hold it be the duty of Congress to pass all necessary bills to supply men and money, and the duty of the people to render every aid in their power to the constituted authorities of the Government in crushing out the rebellion," was carried by 153 yeas, only four less than the whole number of votes on the Wood resolu- tion, there being but one vote recorded in the negative. Thus the position of the House is very sharply defined. On the extremest measures the Administration may count on an immoveable majority of thirty-nine votes, many of which, by the way, are given by men who, in consequence of a defect in the manner of our elections, do not represent the feeling of their districts at the time of taking their seats ; while, on the general question—is the rebellion to be subdued by force of arms, and without any recogni- tion whatever of the so-called Government at Richmond P the House is practically unanimous. Yet, although no proposition which involved an extension of slavery into the Territories—the anticipated issue on which the slaveholders rebelled—would be listened to, I think, nay, I am sure, that if the insurgents should offer to lay down their arms and submit to the Government under the Constitution, with all those rights under it intact which would secure them in the possession of such of their slaves as are not now, in fact, free, they would be received back again with open arms by such an overwhelming majority of the House and of the people at large that the movement could not be with- stood. The right of controlling the Territories, the right of excluding slavery from them, and the integrity and the per- petuity of the Republic, the people of the Free States will only yield when they have not the power to maintain them. But they will sustain the Government in transgressing State lines to interfere with local institutions (no matter what their nature, that is not their business) only because the existence of the nation makes such a measure compulsory. Like a man who submits to amputa- tion at the hip-joint, they avoid certain, by running the risk of almost certain death.
I said nothing in my last letter of the capture of the now re- captured Chesapeake. But it has an interest beyond the mere fact of the taking of a vessel which might have proved a pest upon the ocean. It is very significant, not only of the desperate and reckless character of the men who are active in this insurrection, but of the contrast between the despotic and Argus eyed energy of the rebel authorities, and the gentle, easy-going, take-the- best-for-granted way of the Government. Precedents will fail if the account of this affair (at the same' time that it may be condemned with bated breath) is not held up in London as another example of that combination of secrecy, and daring, and sagacity, so characteristic of the Confederates, and so impos- sible to the Federal mind. Indeed, who does not remember the admiration expressed by the British and the French press, includ- ing those not unfriendly to us, at the secrecy with which the Con- federates have been able to cover their brilliant and successful combinations, and the ease with which they seemed to obtain full knowledge of every design of the Government ; showing thus the great inferiority of that singular entity, the Federal mind ? The present is a good opportunity of explaining how this un- deniable difference came about. Seventeen rebels take passage on a steamer, and go on board in broad daylight, taking with them huge trunks full of ammunition. Soon after midnight they seize the vessel, killing one man and wounding two. My mind being of a certain type, which shall be nameless, I can see no reproach in the fact that seventeen armed conspirators were able at that hour to obtain possession of a vessel which was in the keeping of four unsuspecting and unarmed men, the rest of the passengers and crew being asleep in their berths. What seems to me to alone need explanation to my readers is how the affair could have happened at all, especially as any deed of a correspond- ing nature seems, and is, impossible within the reach of the insurgent Government. It is simply thus. Every one of the great
cities of the Free States, and, above all, New York, swarms with Slave State rebels, to say nothing of the scarcely less malignant Copperheads. The number of Southerners in New York is esti- mated at 25,000, and is quite surely more than 20,000. These are of all shades of political feeling. Some are as warmly loyal as the most patriotic and anti-slavery men of the Free States. One of them, a Florida planter, said to me just after he had heard that our forces had taken possession of the country near one of his estates, "There are thirty-five niggers on that plantation, and I hope that every one of them will be freed and have a musket put into his hands, and that every one of them will kill his rebel." Another, of an old planter family in Virginia, said, also to me, "It is all very well for President Lincoln to free the negroes ; but the trouble of the South is in the white slavery. We must set the white slaves free before this rebellion will end." He is now in the National army. But the majority of the Southerners are of an opposite type to these, and a large, and by far the most active class, are malignant rebels —fire-eaters. These men live here and come and go just as we do. Unless a man has been detected in actively serving the rebellion (and he can do that here without committing overt treason), he has not been disturbed, and could laugh at Fort Lafayette. How could it be otherwise ? These men are all citizens of the United States ; and unless they forfeit their rights to treason they are in the eye of the law and the Constitution just as we are. You will thus see that to prevent seventeen rebels from taking passage in a steamer from New York would be impossible, except by a system of espionage and police which might suit Louis Napoleon's Latin races, but would not be tolerated by ours. Our only protection against the repetition of such affairs as that of the Chesapeake is a strong- armed watch on every sea-going steamer.
How differently matters have been managed in this regard in the so-called Confederate States, from the very beginning, I can best show you by telling you the experience of an old acquaintance of mine. He was born in Charleston, but educated, like almost all Southerners who are educated, at a Northern college. He was, and is, the most determined, cold-blooded Secessionist and ultra- State-sovereignty man I ever met. He was in New York at the time of the out-blaze, after the capture of Fort Sumter ; and he alone, of all the Secessionists I knew, ventured to stand square up to his principles in general conversation, and not to mitigate his treason by if or but. When I told him, then, that if the slave- holders did not submit, we should march an army of 500,000 men, if necessary, down upon them, and compel them to sub- mit, he laughed me to scorn, and said that we had not the 500,000 men who would or who could do it. Soon afterwards he went down into Dixie to serve the rebellion ; and as the country was full of his acquaintances and Charleston of his friends, and he was a man of known ability, he expected to be received with open arms. He had been south of the lines but a few days when, to his surprise, he was arrested and closely impri- soned. All the influence that he could bring to bear only procured him some comforts, but no relaxation even of the rigidity of his confinement. Six months were thus spent by him in durance, when he managed to escape and pass the lines northward. His treatment did not change his temper or his views, and he has con- tinued to serve the rebellion here to the utmost of his ability. Now the reason of his imprisonment was that some years ago he wrote an article adverse to the perpetuation of slavery. Some man remembered it, mentioned it, and the hapless writer quickly found himself between four stone walls, as a person "dangerous to the Confederacy." You will now, perhaps, see that it does not require all that marvellous and mysteri- ous capacity for governing and fighting which distinguishes the Confederated rebels from the sluggish, inept, and grovelling " Federals," to account for the secrecy of movement and the knowledge of the counsels of the Government which certainly has marked the conduct of the war on the part of the former. But why does not the Government, for the sake of self-preservation, adopt a policy somewhat like that of the rebels? You will re- member that there have been many arrests made. They were of men known to the Government to be actively serving the rebellion, although, according to the terms of the Constitution, they had not been guilty of treason. You will probably also remember the howls that went up thereupon from the friends of liberty on both sides of the ocean. Yet against such treatment as that of my Charleston acquaintance whoever heard a word from those haters of despotism, the Times, the Saturday Review, or the .21'ew York World, or those whom they represent ? The Government has done its best under the circumstances, and the Federal mind is blunder-
ing on toward the end for which it set out. A YANKEE.
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