POLITICAL FEELING IN AMERICA.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 36, 29 January 1864, Page 3

POLITICAL FEELING IN AMERICA.

Writing from Cincinnati, on the 7th o October, the special coi'respondent of the Times says: — . . The liepublicans hare the vast majority of their countrymen with them, and they will have a crushing success at the poll on' Tuesday next, I have little reason to question. There are 500 members at the Cincinnati Stock Exchange, and ten to one of them arc are staunch friends of the Government and Republicans to the backbone. The Enquirer is the only Democratic paper doing battle against the Gazette, the Commercial and the Times, all Cincinnati journals, wedded to the Republican interest, and the proportion of two to one is observable in all the press of the state (eighty Democratic against 180 or 200 Republican papers). Wherever wealth, or even, to a great extent, intelligence, is prevalent, there you have the stronghold of the Government party. Rich people here have been fattened by the war, and are for war a V outrance. Most of the guady cars that were driven to the shoy r of Saturday were got tip at the expense of contractors, railway companies, &c, to whom tliis civil dissension has been for the last three years a godsend. Over more disinterested and honorable citizens the idea of the Union exercises n tyrannical sway, and scarcely allows them the use of their reasoning faculties. They are all ready to sacrifice the last drop of blood and the last dollar for the Union, and they flatter themselves that they may best obtain their end by upholding the Government, and by crushing the South iinder the weight of an immediate, general, and violent abolition of slavery. It is of no use to represent to them the utter impracticability, the dire ruthlossness, of so sweeping a scheme. " Let the Union stand, and let the world fall " is their motto. Perhaps tliis determination to follow the war " to the bitter end," to drive the South to despair, to reject all compromise, may be more fatal to any chance of the restoration of the Union than a more humane and conciliatory course miglit be. But they will listen to no argument. They must have Union and emancipation, and the mere suggestion of a different policy, the mere ( exposition of democratic views, is stigmatised as arrant treason. "We shall go ihrough with it " is the clinching sentence of the fairest and most sincere Republicans, when they are driven to their wits' end in the discussion. They do not dissemble to themselves the enormous cost, but they have unlimited faith in the resources of their young community ; but " when we have brought back the fourteen Southern States to their allegiance," they say ; '■ when we have triumphed over this secession of so vast a division of the Republic, what State, or combination of States, will have a chance of again attempting a dissolution of partnership ? What fraction will ever rise in rebellion against the whole, and run the chances of so severe a punishment as we are now inflicting on the Sout hers traitors?" And, warming with the subject, they glory in the assurance that twenty years' peace will be more than sufficient, not only to he-.il the wounds, but to efface the very scars of the present contest, " when the Union," they say, "' cemented by the blood we are now shedding, will acquire so much consistence at home and so groat an ascendancy abroad, that not a cannon will be fired in the Old World without our goodwill and picasure." It is to this stnmge ambition, to this vain lust of power, that the Union owes its main charm in American eyes. It is this longing to go forth as rulers that makes these strange people so readily amenable to the despotic rule that now weighs upon them. It is this same vague love of empire and dominion that makes them so tender of the alliance of the Russian autocrat, and so eager to press the hand which is stained with the blood of a generous nation struggling for existence. For their own part, the Democrats rely on tha support of the lower classes, the mechanics in the cities, and farm-labourers in the country, by whom the enlistment in the army has been most heavily felt, and among whom weariness of the unprofitable struggle begins fo creep in. At some of the Democratic meetings held in rural districts of this state, the assembled multitude often broke out into impatient cries of •' Peace ! Peace ! " before they were even addressed by the Peace party orators. The partisans of Mr Valleudigham arc especially numerous in the southern counties of this State, which were originally settled by emigrants from Virginia, while the northorn districts were overrun by New Englanders. Throughout the whole range of these Western States — Ohio, Indiana. Illinois, &c. — the same distinction between iXorth and South is equally observable. In the North the Yankee element prevails, and with it Yankee notions, customs and principles ; the Southern zone along the Ohio river is held by a population sprung from the adjoining slave States, and is remarkable for its Southern associations, usages, and predilections. What most forcibly strikes me in the meanwhile, in the midst of this turmoil of party agitation is the almost unanimous disgust which seems to prevail among the wealthy and cultivated classes, irrespective of their democratic or republican tendencies, of the popular institutions under which they are living, and especially of the principle of universal suffrage. With the exception of a few fanatics (to be met with in a proportion of less than one in a hundred) the most respectable persons are convinced that the pacification of the country, if ever and however it may be achieved, must be followed by a revision of the Constitution, and especially by a limitation of the right of vote. The Americans, I may say most conscientiously, are sick of mob rule. They begin to fret against an order of things which scared the most worthy citizens from public life and gave the management of state affairs into tUehanus of the populace, and of the unprincipled demagogues who ministered to their vilest passions, I found the same fooling equally wide spread in the East as in the West, equally rife in the North and South. The well-to-do' people, the men of cultivation and charaetev, tlio moxtin* guisli&blo JivistQc'i'ttey of the country -—long for wi opportunity to vegtiin fcho place they avo etttjwil to in the wj>miuuuty, a pluco iVmu vlik'H thclv own remwßuesß und. pueHknhnitys no less than the senseless tuid bv'utyl jtthidyyi of absolute wjuali.ty. Imd hurled theiu, f Xl<e,y W«t the Ucsi uteii td fJtattdfiswniost;, and tkuy Jlcsye to put an cud to a system iv -which the highest i'oed»Uilo«datioH fov a candidate h tliO fact tiiat he is v, )iavf<3«U.y eßscUi'c individual, ft » K M against wlicbii tto tuiteoodcnts, goad; hx& tir itf dsW<!iifc| «m bo quoted, a nlau fiinitsliiiia lib hold ko tlio urtapatfiugf tttfil.evd.euoo of jsartisim wivftu'i?. #hoy wish tot an deckw). Mi Uiteik! iWjjii the "sense" of tk tuition, ilsid .ldiig to "do fUvdy vitl^ that plebiscite) which oin ctiwh'ts tho vota of millions upon a " kdf-'vvltttfd fellow !i (the expression is of the 2fcw. York Meruld— not mine,) who conies into tho supreme power perfectly unknown to ttt least 9D9 out of the 1000 votei's. Whether' the Wishes of tlsesd wull*iiieaum« patriot ore- insoly to be cfc'rlcd into effect, ana to what estenfc it may he found practicable to toiqU, from the populace ?i right oor( r \fW\\

tions, which may be a different question ; but that such wishes exist and that they arc widely spread and deeply rooted, I can bear witness. Among the Republicans there are not a few, indeed, who would go much further, and whom nothing -but a " strong Government " — i c., an irresponsible despotism in the Russian fashion — would satisfy ; but, at all events, the necessity for a change is everywhere felt, and this will give opportunities for future^ dissensions, should the present civil struggle be satisfactorily terminated.