R u m ( st a i r5 .—News was received early on Sunday morning
that a new defeat had been encountered by the Federal forces in Missouri, under General Lyon, on the 13th August, and that the general was killed. The last item of news was true, but the rest scarcely so. The magnitude of the action was at first altogether ex- aggerated. It seems that the Federal forces under General Lyon, though vastlyinferior innumbers,badtaken the aggressive, and attacked the rebels under Generals McCulloch and Price, at a place called Wilson's Creek, not far from Springfield (Missouri). General Lyon succeeded in driving in the linesof the enemy, but was himself killed in a charge, and General Siegel, who succeeded him in the command, found his force so small that he was obliged to retire, lest he should be cut off from St. Louis. He retired towards the Illinois frontier, first on Springfield, then on Rolla, and lastly to a point still nearer St. Louis. Major-General Fremont, who is in command at St. Louis, has had to declare a kind of martial law there, and to suppress rebel newspapers. On the whole, though, the battle can scarcely be said to be a victory for either side, and the number of killed and wounded was perhaps greater on the side of the rebels than on that of the Federals, it must be admitted that the battle has not im- proved the Federal position in Missouri. From Washington come no new military tidings. Mr. Chase has not got. his loan of 150,000,000 dollars in any very satisfactory sense. We annex the more important conditions : "The banks of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, with such other banks as may be associated with them under regulations to be established by the banks of the three cities named, to take of the United States Government a loan of 150,000,000 dollars.
"The whole of the loan to be placed at the credit of the United States on the books of the several banks, and to draw interest at the rate of 7 3.10 per cent, per annum from this date. "The Secretary of the Treasury to draw the sums required from time to time, but not exceeding 50,000,000 in the aggregate before October 4, 1861, nor exceeding an additional 50,000,000 in the ag- gregate before November 23, 1861. "Provided, That if the Committee of the Associated Banks give notice to the Secretary of the Treasury, on or before October 1, 1861, that the Associated Banks desire not to take beyond 50,000,000 of said loan, the agreement is entirely at an end for any amount beyond 50,000,000, in which case the banks shall have no claim for interest on any amount beyond 50,000,000 of the original subscription." It was also determined that 'freasury notes are receivable in pay- ment on the subscriptions, a step which enables the banks, if they please, rather to renew old loans, than to subscribe afresh. It will be seen by this that Mr. Chase gets only 50,000,000 dollars at present, and that his other expectations are not a little problematic. The banks may give notice on or before October 1st that they desire to take no more of the loan, and in this case the first instalment of 10,000,000/. sterling seems to be all Mr. Chase is likely to obtain. On the whole, Mr. Chase is pretty well at the mercy of the banks.
The military news from Washington is scarcely more reassuring. There have been mutiny and desertion on a large scale, especially in the 79t11 New York and 22nd Maine regiments, which General McClellan had shown much firmness in suppressing. The President bad resolved on a day of fasting and humiliation, which he had fixed for the last Thursday in September. The feeling that the war, if successful at all, must be conducted on the basis of an anti-slavery movement, was gaining rapid ground. The following official statement had been put forth by the American Government : The American Secretary of War had replied to General Butler's request for instructions as to the disposal of slaves taking refuge with the Federal forces to the following effect : "it is the desire of the President that all existing rights an all the States 139 fully respected and maintained. The war now prosecuted on the part of the Federal Government is a war for the Union ; for the preservation of all eon.
stitutional rights of States, and the citizens of the States in the
Union. Hence no question can arise as to fugitives from service within the States and territories in which the authority of the Union
is fully acknowledged. The ordinary forms of judicial proceedings
must be respected by military and civil authorities alike, for the en- forcement of legal forms. But in the States wholly or in part under insurrectionary control where the laws of the United States are so far opposed and resisted that they cannot be effectually enforced, it is obvious that the rights dependent upon the execution of those
laws must temporarily fail; and it is equally obvious that the 'Vita
dependent on the laws of the State within which military operations are conducted must be necessarily subordinate to the military exi- gencies created by the insurrection, if not wholly forfeited, by the treasonable conduct of parties claiming them. To this, the general rule of right to services forms an exception. The Act of Congress, approved August 6, 1861, declares that if persons held to service shall be employed in hostility to the United States, the right to their services shall be forfeited, and such persons shall be discharged
therefrom. It follows, of necessity, that no claim can be recognized by the military authorities of the Union to the services of such persons when fugitives. A more difficult question is presented in re- spect to persons escaping from the services of loyal masters. It is quite apparent that the laws of the State under which only the service of such fugitives can be claimed must needs be wholly, or almost wholly, suspended as to the remedies, by the insurrection and the military measures necessitated by it, and it is equally appa- rent that the substitution of military for judicial measures for the enforcement of such claims must be attended with great incon- veniences, embarrassments, and injuries. Under these circumstances it seems quite clear that the substantial rights of local masters are still best protected by receiving such fugitives as well as fugitives from disloyal masters, into the service of the United States, and employing them under such organizations and such occupations as circum- stances may suggest or require. Of course, a record should be kept, showing a name and description of the fugitives ; the name and the character, as loyal or disloyal, of the master; and such facts as may be necessary to a correct understanding of the circumstances of each case, after tranquillity shall have been restored. Upon the return of peace, Congress will doubtless properly provide for all the persons thus received into the service of the Union, and for a just compen- sation to loyal masters. In this way only, it would seem, can the duty and safety of the Government and the just rights of all be fully reconciled and harmonized. You will, therefore, consider yourself instructed to govern your future action in respect to fugitives from services by the premises herein stated, and will report from time to time, and at least twice in each month, your action in the premises, to this department. You will, however, neither authorize nor permit any interference by the troops under your command with the servants of peaceful citizens in a house or field, nor will you in any way en- courage such servants to leave the lawful service of their masters. Nor will you, except in cases where the public good may seem to require it, prevent the voluntary return of any fugitive to the service from which he may have escaped."
The New York Daily Tribune, which (as our readers are aware) is a thoroughly republican paper, has a letter from its correspondent at Richmond (Virginia), whither the writer had gone, as he says, at much personal risk, throwing a more distinct light on the state of things at the South than anything we have yet read from that hermetically sealed region. From such a quarter the following testi- mony is practically incontestable. "For all practical purposes," he says, "Union sentiment has ceased to exist in Eastern Virginia, and in the rebel states generally. For all practical purposes Union sen- timent is dead, dead, dead. Unity of purpose is exhibited on all sides by a hearty determination to annihilate the invading foe. Dis- tinctness of purpose is likewise exhibited on all sides by an all-per- vading consideration that the war is waged for the defence of Southern homes and firesides, of Southern nationality. The hatred of the Yankee is fierce and bitter. It is a hatred bottled up for years past, and now exploding with indescribable fury. To compare it to the hatred of the English Cavaliers against the Puritans would be slandering those Cavaliers." The same writer gives a most interesting and graphic account of the condition of the Southern army, and the esteem in which its • generals are held: "Discipline is apparently laxer iii the Southern than in the Northern 'army ; a certain good fellowship exists between the Southern officer and the private which does not exist in the North. Many of the army are young men fresh from school, boiling over with all the enthusiasm of youth ; others are genuine or decayed gentlemen; the first anxious to give a good account of themselves, the others rejoicing over an occasion to retrieve their reputation; the briefiess lawyers, patientless doctors, constituency-less politicians, the acreless planters, who make up the genteel society of the South, constitute another large proportion of the army, and all these men, who for years have been brawling in the pot-houses of Richmond and Washington, have now an occupation most congenial to their fighting proclivities. Add to these the loafers, paupers, and vagabonds of the South, and the miscellaneous rabble which makes up the plebeian population of Dixie's Land, and you have a glimpse of the elements of our opponents. Some of the privates, however, in the South as in the North, are men of wealth and high social position, while those who belong to the less aristocratic classes bring the same indivi- dualism to the battle-field. Every one seems anxious to repel the Yankee upon his own hook, and to kill as many ofthe enemy as pos- sible.
"All this gives to the army a guerilla character, and the com- manders, fully understanding the element with which they have to deal, shrewdly pander to this individualism, and the relation between the officers and privates is more that of friends, all bent on one and the same purpose, than of superiors and subalterns, though the officers belong almost exclusively to the higher classes, and are sur- rounded with the prestige hovering in the South round the gentle- men.' Beauregard, more than any other Southern general, seems to excel in the handling of these peculiar elements of Southern troops ; a dashing little Creole, standing thoroughly- upon his dignity with strangers and equals, he has the knack of ingratiating himself with the soldiers by the mingled simplicity, naturalness, and impetuosity of his manner. He impresses one rather as a soldier of action and sagacity, than of a great anti comprehensive mind ; as a man of thought and intellect he seems to be inferior to Johnston, but he blends Southern fire with Northern smartness ; his features are mobile; his eye sparkling; his motions denote restless activity, while his countenance indicates steady composure. He has the coolness of a Yankee, and the impulsiveness of a Creole, and looks like a cross between the two. He was lucky at Sumter and lucky at Bull Run. He has the advantage of this prestige of success, and the little man is the idol of the soldiers and the hero of the South. The Southern army is in many instances barefooted and ill-clothed and ill-pro- visioned; it lacks powder and money and means of transportation ; but it derives strength from the element which I have described ; and if we take into consideration that the Southron has a military nature (the children handle horses and fire-arms from their infancy), while the Northerner has rather industrious instincts, the North must come to the conclusion that it has to overpower an enemy who may be its inferior in all that makes up the higher issues of civiliza- tion, but who is formidable in all the brutal and murderous features of the present contest." The writer goes on to narrate that Beauregard and Johnston allow no drinking of spirits or wine amongst their troops, they themselves setting the example of strict temperance. And then he comes to the point on which lie has seen and tested the weakness of the South. "But the weakest of all the weak points of the South, as it was from the beginning and as it will be to the end of time, is Slavery. The slaves in Virginia are treated with greater rigour now than they formerly were ; the ferociousness engendered by war will render still more fierce the brutal instincts of the Southern overseer and slave-dealer. The sauciness and independence of the coloured man increases in proportion as he approaches the boundaries of
freedom. He is less docile in North than in South Carolina; in Virginia he becomes more and more restless The want of money in Virginia fearfully increases the restlessness of the slave, as he constantly trembles for fear of being separated from his wife and children, and of being sold at auction and con- verted into cash by his needy owner. The consciousness of this gigantic weakness, and the monstrous fear and cupidities which cluster around it, play an ominous part in the hatred of the Yankee. The ladies of the South look forward with horror to the day when they will have, like other women, to live by their own honest industry, or by that of their husbands and fathers. Beneath that glow of in- dignation which frowns upon the Northern invader, lurks the hideous sense of self and pelf, and the brilliant eyes of those beautiful planters' daughters are flashed into wild fury by a womanly intuition of the real cause of the war ; by a prescience of the day which shall strike down the planter's whip, and by loosening the fetters of the slave, deprive them of their lady-like ease, and compel the father and husband and brother to do, as the men in the North do, work for their living, and cease to keep their fellow-men in bondage. In connexion with this formidable enemy of the South, I cannot forbear quoting the remark of a shrewd Virginian politician. He said : Our purpose is distinct. We fight for the integrity and independence of our soil; for our national independence. Our object is tangible; but that of the North is not. The North fights for an abstraction. It fights for the restoration of a Union which has ceased to exist, and which can never be restored except by force of arms. Europe under- stands this and will recognize us, were it only to put an end to the civil war, and to put an end to the destruction of a prosperity which must react upon her own prosperity. Europe sees no object in the Northern war, as at present waged against us ; but if the North were to make the war a downright war for the abolition of slavery, the prejudices of the Old World against that institution would militate against us, retard recognition, and, above all, it would inspire the Northern army with a moral foundation for the prosecution of the war.'" This is an impressive picture, and gives us, we think, the true key to the policy by which alone it is now possible for the North to secure success. If they make the war an anti-slavery war, they may yet reach shore. But Mr. Lincoln, with his constitutional and legal instincts, still shrinks from so bold a step.
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