THE WESTERN STATES OF AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1188, 26 January 1864, Page 2

THE WESTERN STATES OF AMERICA.

(riio.u Till: SPECIAL COltliKtSl'ONl.lKNT OI'TIIK 1 TIJrKS.') Chicago, Illinois, Wept. 11. To do these people justice, their confidence in ultimate success, however remote, the consciousness of their power "to undertake a foreign war immediately upon the termination of the civil straggle, or even simultaneously with it, never belied themselves at the most critical moments. The bragging faculties of these Yankees transcend all comprehension. They ought to borrow the cock from the French, and set it up instead of the spread eagle on their national escutcheon, and take " While I live I crow " for their motto. Their attachment to the Union partakes of religious fanaticism; the idea that their country is to be a world and their nation in a few years a mass of 100,000,000,000 of people is not to be shaken out of their heads. Talk to any man you list, you are immediately referred to the " stunning " results of the last census, to the " 35£ per 100 increase of the population in ten years," to " more than 50,000,000 of acres of fresh land brought into cultivation within that same period" the produce of manufactories increased in a decennium from $1,000,000,000 to $1,900,000,000. The banking capital from $227,000,000 to $421,000,000; railroads increased in ten years 22,000 miles in length, and their capital from $296,000,000 to $1,150,000,000; and an army of emigrants from Europe within the last ten years of 2,500,000 souls, most of whom have marched into these North-western districts."

The Yankees never tire of dinning these big numbers into your ears, and the augment of "hundreds of millions" in ten years, the doubling of wealth and produce, equally extend to every branch of domestic industry or foreign trade. Without placing too implicit reliance in the numbers of the census, for lam assured that its operations have been neither carefully nor conscientiously achieved, it requires no great persuasion to bring me to believe that the prosperity of the Union, and especially of the Northern division, was something enormous, and that, without any unforeseen check, the growth of the country and its well being must go on at a rate obeying the laws of geometrical progression. Only did not the civil war, breaking out just upon the publication of that astounding census, act as a material check upon the great tide of American felicity ? The answer of the West, so far as, after nearly a month's inquiry, I can make out, is unanimously negative. The West was just recovering from a succession of bad harvests. The price of provisions rose in the same measure as the plentiful supply enabled the Western producers to meet the demand of the war. The inundation of greenbacks, though puzzling and alarming at first, was hailed as a fertilizing element. It was not wealth in itself, but a means to get wealth. The Westerner was as eager to seize on that paper money as he was anxious to rid himself of it. The transmission of property when gold was up at 60 or 70 was astonishingly and almost absurdly rapid and fretful. In this city alone, with 140,000, or, as people here contend, 165,000. souls, the sales of real estate were in those stormy days reckoned at something like 150 per diem. Now, with gold at 31, or more recently at 28, the sales are about 15 a day, the average in normal times. Money and, what is more, money's worth, was within everybody's reach. Every one had a chance to settle his own affairs and look out for what seemed to him the safest investment. There has been as yet no serious abatement in this spread of well-being, which, as it certainly took place in spite of the war, the Americans rather too sanguinely ascribed to the war itself. Financially speaking, many of them consider the war as a blessing and look forward with uneasiness to its conclusion.

Neither is the loss in men very seriously felt. The battles of which we have read the long roll with awe and dismay were no doubt sanguinary affairs, and the actual losses of the Northerners in dead and wounded are something apalling. American regiments have, however, a singular knack of melting away, whether in success or defeat, so that their dwindling to mere squads is not wholly, nor yet mainly occasioned by mere casualties in the field. The freedom of the citizen greatly interferes with the discipline of the soldier, and especially during the first campaign the volunteer only considers himself bound to the standards by his own free will. Young heroes coming home from camp without leave were hardly looked upon as derserters; they were simply called " absentees." There was no one to interfere with them; no call from their officers to call them back to duty. Not a few of them were as ready to enter a second engagement as they had been to break through a former one. When we say that, for instance, Illinois had, before the 31st December, 1862, sent 135,000 men into the field, we must be understood to mean that regiments and other corps to that amount at several times left tiie State, and when we hear that a regiment which mustered 1,000 at its start is reduced to 50 or 60 combatants, we must not be too sure that all the " balance," as the Americans have it, is either under the sod or in hospital.

The answer of the American volunteers to the call was no doubt very creditable. Mere patriotism would have been sufficient to supply the State with the elements of an army equal to a happy prosecution of the war, had the Government only known how to manage them ; but the waste and lavish use made by civil and military authorities of the means placed at their disposal shook the volunteers' confidence in their leaders, and tliey soon tired of being led like sheep to unavailing butcheries. The era of volunteering came to an end, and was succeedcd by enlistment by means of bounties. It ; .was then that the alien and mercenary was widely'mixed up with the native and patriotic element. The army became rougher, more brutal, and, to a certain extent, more readily amenable to discipline. The strongest pecuniary inducements failed in the end to procure voluntary recruits, and then it was that Government resorted to that most improvident of all measures—conscription.

Conscription, however,—it is well to be undeceived on that point,—was never carried into effect, and was, perhaps, never seriously contemplated. The Bill passed at a time in which the affairs of the North were at the lowest ebb, and attempts to enforce it were not made until after Gettsburg and Viclcsburg had allayed the worst Northern anxieties, till all necessity for the odious measure was providentially removed. New York and other parts of the North-East pnt fortli their demurrer, and the President, with vain obstinancy, determined to proceed with the draught, precisely because he saw that the measure was unpopular. Violent resistance was at an end instantly, but citizens, town magistrates, State authorities, and the whole communities conspired to turn the law into a dead letter, and the Government, after a vast deal of expense, danger, and disturbance, only collected at three times the cost about one-third of the force that was to spring from the draught —a force, with very few exceptions, consisting of substitutes, hirelings, and bounty men of the very worst description.

All this for the North-East; as for the West, we hear not a word of the draught in Illinois and the States further to the West, with the exception of Wisconsin, nor am I sure that a single conscript has as yet been drawn from Ohio; while Indiana has been declared exempt. With all its readiness to offer up hundreds of thousands of its' youth to the national cause, it must not be supposed that the actual loss of tlie conn try in men may be very serious. In every city on my way I have always been assured that the men who went out as soldiers were those who could best be spared as citizens. Labour in the towns has never ceased from want of hands, and the prodigious spread of agricultural implements (increasing in the last then years from $6,000,000 to $17,000,000) together with the inllux of immigrants from the North of Europe, has enabled the husbandman to pursue his undertakings with undiminished activity.

"There is," we are again assured to day, "almost no business in New Orleans excepted that connected with the army. Around the whole ' crescent,' where there used to lie 3,000 or 4,000 ships, there are now hardly 100 vessels of all classes. These are all employed, to some extent, in the military service. The charters of some of these ships are curiosities, and indicate into whose pockets-go the many millions of money extravagantly expended in the prosecution of the war. One vessel carrying 3000 sacks of corn from New York was under charter at $125 a day, and had been out 122 days, making the cost of freight alone about $15,000, or about $2 50c. per bushel. Another vessel, that had probably taken Kamtschatka in her route from New York to New Orleans, had been out so long and at so extravagant a character that the corn she brought stood the Government in nearly $6 per busljel when landed in New Orleans." The necessity of '* supplying the Department of the Gulf from the North-West, and by means of the Mississippi river," is the great topic of men's thought and talk here, and in the meanwhile all accounts agree in describing the navigation of the great river as still unsafe, and both its banks overrun by guerillas daily increasing in numbers and daring.

There are serious complaints of prevailing drunkenness in the army. The evil is less among the soldiers than among the officers, who are " the liberal patrons of the army merchant, whose tempting spirit cases go to all parts of the lines. " Could the catalogue be made out bi the shames and crimes, the sacrifices of brave men, the self-imn)olation ! of

noble souls thus squandered, the people would stand appalled. Common conversation singles out this and that commander, and once promising officer, as the victim of this vice, perhaps dismissed in disgrace, or gone home to die, not because of a southern climate, but because of a habit tiie deadly •blight of which no miasma can equal. A general lapse into drunkenness among the people is, 1 am told, one of the most striking consequences of the war. Not a few of the officers of the army are also desperately addicted to gambling.