AMERICAN WAR.

New Zealander, Volume XVIII, Issue 1719, 30 August 1862, Page 3

AMERICAN WAR.

[.From the *' Evening Mail," June 23.]

Let us spread a map of the Southern States of America before us, and splash with red the spots where men of the same tongue are now engaged in mutual slaughter. We may begin with Harrisonburg, in the North-West of Virginia, not a very long way from the banks of the Potomac, and but a short railway run from Washington. Thence General Fremont reports a sanguinary disaster, wherein the loss was heavy on both sides, and the Federal loss was very great among the officers. Here is our first red blot, close up upon the boundary line, showing the rebel spirit active and fatal even near the home of the Northern power. About a hundred miles to the SouthEast, across the mountains, we may mark with another red blotch the city ot Richmond, whence General M’Clellan reports that in the recent battle of Fair Oaks he has sustained a loss in killed, wounded, and missing of 5,739 men. A wound in such heats as now prevail but too certainly means death, and if we throw in an estimate of the Confederate loss we must calculate at least 5,000 corpses as the result of that useless battle. The crop in that spot is yet rank, and Death slid wields his sickle there. Down the James river, where the gunboats and irouclad ships are striving with undecided success to pass the forts, the carnage continues, with perhaps a mitigated vigour, and all that region must be thined with a reddish hue. If we look away westward, over the vast territories of Kentucky and Tennessee, it is all a vulcanic region, where outbursts are always expected, and are frequently occurring. Where peace exists it is tlje peace which exists under the pressure of an armed force. On the borders of Tennessee and Mississippi there are 200,000 men flying, pursuing, or resisting. We are told that the retreating Confederates have now only 80,000 men General Pope estimates the loss of the Confederates in these parts at 20,000 men, and is silent as to his own. Here, again, great armies are in the field, and a deep crimson must cover all this border laud. Then, the waters of the Mississippi roll down dead bodies There has been a naval battle, in which the Confederates have shown their wanted incapacity aiioat. Their gunboats have been destroyed, and Memphis, so often reported to be taken, has at last fallen. More slaughter, more tyranny, more destruction! These are not nearly all the scenes of bloodshed. There is fighting even in Missouri to the far West, and around Charleston to the extreme East, and there is worse than fighting down upon the shorts of the Gulf, where General Butler still bears command. Never at any time could we have stained the map of Europe so red as that of America now looks, when we have marked the spots where men are inflicting and suffering violent deaths. In all this we have counted only the least portion of that human misery which pervades the land. The frame which is destroyed by a cannon shot, a bursting shell, or a Minie bullet passes to dissolution with a single pang. The human creature who is torn by a sword or bayonet wound writhes upon the ground in the delirium of the supervening fever, but passes out of existence after a short'agony. But where one dies from lead or steel ten die of wasting disease. We know nothing from the Southerners of their miseries; but we see in the reiterated demands in the North for more men what an amount of misery is covered under the cloud resting over these red spots we have just marked upon our map. We can read symptoms that even the North must begin to led this terrible drain of life when we are told of crowds of women obtruding their destitution upon the authorities of Washington, and when it is related that pauperism has for the first time, made its appearance in that community so rich in fertile land. But what the Northerners hesitate to confess of themselves they readily testify ol their victims. General Halleck reports that hundreds of men and women and children are starving around him, and that contributions of money would be useless, for that there are no provisions to be purchased. General Pope telegraphs from the same neighbourhood that wealthiest families are destitute and starving, and women and children are crying for food. If the North want revenge, they have it. Surely, it was unnecessary for the House of Representatives to urge “ the officers commanding districts in the Confederate States to subsist their armies, as far as practicable, upon the property of the rebels !" The instinct of a necessitous army, like the instinct of a hungry locust, requires no promptin'' 1 ; wherever the red spots stud our map we may be sure that famine exists in a wide circle all around. Yet, amid all this death and disease and desolation, the evil passions of both parties only

seem to grow more and more intense. Hie mutual recriminations show that this war is losing even the colourable chivalry of civilized war, and is degenerating into unbridled butchery* General Banks complains that his retreating column was slaughtered by the Confederate cavalry, who shot or sabred “ the helpless soldier sinking from fatigue, unheeding his cries for mercy.” General Banks is indignant also that the women of Winchester threw missiles out of their windows upon the heads of his men. These women had probably read the proclamation of Butler, and, if so, we cannot wonder that they did their worst against such invaders. Unmanly ruffianism on one side has been matched by unwomanly fierceness on the other. The Confederates are now said to be fighting “ under a black flag,” to “give no quarter to the Yankees,” and to be raging with the cruelty of despair, it is very horrible; but, perhaps, it would be more hard to feel pity for an invader crying for mercy if the pursuer has in his memory a desolate home and a starving outcast family, than it would be if fighting a fair battle upon a foreign soil. These things will go on intensifying. It is the necessity of civil war that it should be so ; and the longer it lasts the more revolting will bo the facts which every mail will bring us. The last item in these recriminations is the correspondence between General Beauregard and General Halleck, wherein the Confederate accuses the Federal General of having sent into camp 200 prisoners infected with the smallpox, with the object of sowing that disease in the Confederate army. . . , • *, * Whatever may bathe result, it is plain that this wav has now reached a point at which it is a scandal to humanity. It has become a war of extermination. Utter destruction may be possible, or evi n imminent, but submission is as far off as over. The planters are still retreating and taking their Negroes with them. Memphis was found with all its cotton in flames and all its sugar des* tfoycd, Tlie pttwwd iw

another fight for Richmond; and even after another defeat a retreat into Texa* seems to be still on the cards. Persons who listen to the excited railers on either side may think that there is no alternative but to let this flood Of bloodshed pass over the land; but at this calm distancei we may perhaps more wisely calculate that such voices do not represent the mind of the American people. Both parties must by this tame be in their hearts tired of this strife. There has been blood enough shed, fortunes enough made, losff■ enough suffered, and wrongs enough inflicted and endured. The opportunity must be either present or at hand when some potent American voice prudently calling "Peace," may awaken an uni versa! echo.