AMERICA.

Evening Post, Issue 169, 23 August 1865, Page 2

AMERICA.

American affairs were last alluded to in this journal, we had not heard of the capture of Mr. Jefferson Davis. The late President of the Confederacy was hotly pursued, and was captured with his family. The latter were speedily sent away by President Johnson, but Mr. Davis was committed to close confinement, and it is alleged, and it appears with truth, that he was manacled, and compelled to eat the coarse rations supplied to ordinary criminals. He is being tried for complicity in the murder of Mr. Lincoln, but no one believes that he was guilty of thisjwhile the witnesses for the prosecution Took extraordinarily like the class of witness that remembers anything he is told to remember, and has a wonderful aptitude for finding the exact documents which are needed by his employer. Mr. Davis is also to be tried, we are told, for treason. Yet, if he is guilty of this, so is the whole South, and Mr. Burke has said that you cannot bring an indictment against a nation. The news by recent mails has beenvery meagre and uninteresting , but there is the great fact that the war is entirely over The condition of the negro in the North at least would not seem to have much improved by the liberation of his Southern brother, as we hear that the coloured man is constantly kicked and beaten in New York, if he ventures to enter the public conveyances. A

t ;:c! i : light between soldiers at Washington ana IV negroes is also reported. In Georgia bo.iiL ukuks have committed atrocious outrages, and many have been shot, and three burned alive, so that the traditions of the slave region are in no danger of being lost. The only question of general interest is whether Mr. Johnson will execute Mr. Davis, and a large number of persons are inclined to believe that he will, in defiance of the feeling of society everywhere except in a section of tho States. I own that I am of a different opinion, and I think that Mr. Davis will not be hnnged. The President's amnesty is not a very gracious one, and his hatred of the upper classes in his own country is said to be demonstrated in his exclusion of all persons who have £4000 a year. But what may hereafter concern us most is the claim which the States make against England in re'pect of the damages done by tho Alabama to the Northern trade. It was rumoured that this claim had been suddenly and sternly pushed, but tliis iei denied. It has been made, however, and"*ill be maintained, and England is determined to resist it. Of course we all hope that no hostility will result from this, but there the claim is, and we shall not comply with the demand. — Home News.