THE DENIOCRA'110 PARTY AND GOVERNOR SEYM OUR.

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]

New York, ./luyust 15, 1863. " ARMA CEDUNT TOG/E" means here that on the Mississippi the gunboat is giving place to the passenger and freight-boat. Not rapidly, of course, but not very slowly, and I think you will find surely. More than three years ago, when the arch repudiator Mr. Jefferson Davis threatened, at Washington, secession and the closing of the great river to the north and west, a western member of Congress told him at once and bluntly that if the slaveholders attempted that, "the men of the -free West would open their way to the Gulf with their rifles and their swords." He meant what he said ; his promise has been kept, and the men of the free North, whether east or west, are as determined as ever that their peaceful passage over that great highway shall not be disturbed. They mean to have it, not by virtue of any compromise, or com- pact, or terms of any kind, but as an unquestioned and un • questionable right ; just as they have the uie of the Hudson or the Ohio, or any other internal highway of their country. This right they will insist upon, not by and bye, but now ; and all the talk about the breaking-up of commerce upon the Mississippi by guerilla parties on the banks you may be sure will amount to little more than mere talk. If, while there is a "so- called Confederate Government" at Richmond, any number of men, great or small, choose to try conclusions with the armies and navy of the Republic on the banks or the waters of the Mississippi, they will be treated as public enemies, and, if they have bad luck, as prisoners of war. But if they are caught firing upon boats which carry only peaceful passengers and freight, they will have, I think, only what they will deserve—a long rope and a short shrift.

The armies of Meade and Lee have resolved themselves into corps of mutual observation for the present. Grant, with dour determination, is perfecting his arrangements for an advance upon Mobile ; and Rosencranz is labouring to make the advanced eastern position which he has won so handsomely an effective centre for future operations. The war interest of the moment concentrates upon Charleston, where none of us believe that success is to be so quickly won as the vague and wordy tele- graphic correspondents of the New York press predict. Yet what is sure to come at last may come at any moment ; possibly before the departure of the steamer which will bear this letter. But the probabilities are against a very speedy raising of the blockade of Charleston. It is upon New York that all eyes are yet turned with an anxiety as much greater than that with which the siege of Charleston is regarded, as the importance of that commonwealth is greater than that of the fussy, perverse, and pretentious little "sovereign State" which laid and hatched the egg of this cockatrice rebellion. For if the pro-slavery Democrats prove able to array New York against the Government, there will be rebellion to be put down at the North as well as at the South; and although resistance in both quarters will be quelled by the Government, i. e., by the loyal people of the United States, such a complication would, of course, make the task before us longer and more difficult. But if the pro-slavery Democrats fail in New York, the matter at Charleston is of comparatively small importance. They will fail, but still they are untiring, persistent, unscrupulous, and able. They have the ear and the votes of the entire foreign population of the city of New York, and of the counties round it which form the metropolitan district, of the lines of railway, canal, and river travel, on which the labourers are almost without excep- tion Irishmtip ; they have with them a large body of commercial men, influential from their wealth if not from their characters; and of inferior people a multitude, whom the severe discipline of the Democratic party in former days has made absolutely subservient to the purposes of its leaders. It has long been a saying, in that

party as well as out of it, that if Satan himself had the "regular nomination" of its convention for President every Democrat would vote for him. The organization of this party has been so thorough and so long maintained, and the advancement of those who attained any prominence in it, even that of pot- house politician giving claim only to the smallest crumbs which fell from the table of National, State, or City patron- age, has been made to depend so absolutely upon unquestioning submission to and hearty co-operation with its leaders, that even the peril of their country and the agitation of a long and bloody civil war has failed to release, perhaps, a majority of its members from their traditionary shackles. The hope of the country is in the Republicans (as distinguished from the Abolitionists pure and sim- ple), and in the better-minded minority of the old Democratic party. Events are daily increasing the numbers of the latter, because events have compelled the pro-slavery Democrats to com- pletely unmask their plans as well as to avow their purposes. Those purposes have been for weeks, almost months, unmistakable ; those plans were suspected before their recent miscarriage. But now the World and the Daily News (the latter owned and edited by Benjamin Wood, a rich, unscrupulous, shrewd, illiterate, low- bred man) finding concealment useless, have assumed for audacity the guise of candour, and openly call upon Governor Seymour to resist by the power of the State "the tyranny at Washington ;" and to do this, not in obedience to any high behest of duty, not to maintain any great principle, but because "the eyes of the Demo- cratic party are upon him." Benjamin Wood, referring to Governor Seymour's recent letters to the President upon the injus- tice of the draft, which Mr. Lincoln has rendered innoxious by directing a redress of every grievance which they pretend, tells the Governor that he writes boldly enough, but that the Democracy has some doubt whether his pluck will bring him to the scratch in action ; and this in plain unmistakable terms. There is some need of such stimulus, and some fear that it may prove effective. For Governor Seymour is not a bold man, and is troubled with a kind of personal respectability. He is not dishonest; in his individual capacity he will not lie ; if he had not become a politician he would have lived and died unknown, an inoffensive and useful member of society. Now Fernando Wood, late mayor of this city and now member of Congress from the same, a man against whom you lock the strong box and after whom you count the spoons, but a man of great clever- ness and unparalleled audacity, is the man whom the peace- seeking pro slavery Democrats need for a leader at this crisis. Seymour is troubled with some "uncleanly scruples," and is cautious rather than adroit. Fernando Wood, dexterous, bold, brilliant blackguard that he is, would at least fail splendidly. But Seymour, whose hands must be held up and whose knees must be stiffened for him, will make a muddle, fail ingloriously, and fall with his faction into the pit which they have digged, and there they will soon lie cursing each other. For Seymour— note this—is not at heart a disloyal any more than he is a bad man. He is afflicted with a kind of patriotism and with a real conscience. Clogged with these unhappy possessions he, a politician once shelved as almost too respectable, and cer- tainly not clever enough for great distinction, has been brought out of his retirement and put upon the course for the next presidency. And now, if in some way or other he does not foil the Administration and prolong the war for another full year, he is a lost man and his party is a lost party; and if, on the contrary, he should bring about such a col- lision between the State authority of which he is the head and the Government as to produce general turmoil throughout the North, the rebels would succeed ; and then there would be no Union for him to be President of, and again he and his party would come to grief.

For the desire, the supreme if not the only desire, of the pro- slavery Democrats is to obtain the "reconstruction" of a confeder- ation of sovereign States, entering into a compact with each other as high contracting powers, being each one of them to all intents and purposes an independent nation, except in their foreign rela- tions; as to those, being one. This would ensure the propagation as well as the perpetuation of slavery, or any other abomi- nation, by giving the States as units so much power that they would not only be beyond the control of Congress, but able to shut out entirely any moral and intellectual. influence which was inimical to the interests of the ruling class. In the Free States no such class, as a class, exists ; in the Slave- States that claw is composed of the larger slaveholders. Thus secure for ever in an ally at the South, ever faithful to his own interests, they would again rule the land, and in their share

of the patronage of the National Government, and in that of such States as they could control, they would find at once the prize which they seek and the bond of unity which they fear is about to be for ever broken. I am ashamed to confess to what a pitch this greed and use of patronage has reached. You will hardly believe it, but one great reason of the opposition to the draft by the pro-slavery

Democrats is because the men are not to be made. into new regi- ments, which would be officered by the Governor as State militia, but

drafted into old regiments, thus leaving Govern ;r Seymour without the means of making friends by rewarding and promising, and of punishing enemies by deprivation. Why, let me tell you that our last Governor of New York, Morgan, a Republican and an honest, honourable, and judicious, though not very bright man, made "his calling and election sure" as United States Senator by the use of his patronage in the formation of the two hundred regiments which New York has furnished for the war. Governor Morgan meant honestly, and did as well under the circumstances as a politician could; but, other things being equal, and sometimes, indeed, being unequal, he kept an unwavering eye upon the furtherance of his political interest. Good soldiers had no better chance for appointment than clever politicians influential in a small way ; sometimes not so good. I say this not upon surmise or report, but knowledge. All this patronage and commander-in-chief- ship the draft blows to the winds, and sweeps the residents of New York, upon whom the lot falls, into the national army as citizens of the United States, placinj them where they are most wanted. These pro-slavery Democrats mean mischief, and will certainly make trouble—to speak plainly, organize an insurrection—if they can ; but I think that their game is blocked, and that they more than suspect it. The decisions supplementary to that in the Dred-Scott case have "returned to plague the inventors." It was decided by

a full Bench of the Supreme Court, in case of a writ of hakes corpus issuing from a State court to produce the body of a fugitive

slave held by the United States Commissioner, that no other return was necessary than that the prisoner was in the custody of the National Government, which was only responsible to its own tribunals. They are thus deprived of even the semblance of constitutional or legal right in using State authority for the release of a person under arrest like Vallandigham, or in the hands of a provost-marshal as a deserter after the draft.

They now talk of the need of caution and preparation, of the folly of wasting strength in premature and irregular move- ments like the late riots, and say that there must be no forcible resistance except in defence of the ballot. But if they do not take up arms until that is attacked they will all die in their beds

This they know ; and it would seem as if, foiled by the sudden and shocking revelation of—I will say no more than the spirit and character of their faction in the riots, by the decision of the Supreme Court, which leaves them without the law on their side, and by the President's determination to give them no ground of

complaint except that the war is prosecuted at all—they mean simply to create doubt and confusion, out of which they hope to derive present comfort and future opportunity. Rioting in the city is at an end. The Government is fully able to protect its drafting officers and to guard its recruits. It will attempt no more. The protection of private persons and property it will leave to the county officers and the citizens, to whom it is a matter of the liveliest personal interest. In'the State at large there does not seem to be a chance to get up an insurrection of even respec- table dimensions. And yet we are all troubled and, for the moment, uncertain ; which is, doubtless, one object gained to the conspira- tors. Until the draft is completed and the men marched off, we shall all be on what is called at camp meetings "the anxious seat."

Let me correct what I think is one error in your judgment upon the draft. You compare it to the press-gang. There is no resem- blance whatever between the two. I shall, and need, go no farther in explanation than to remind you that the draft is in pursuance of an Act of Congress passed by the representatives of those very men, among others, who are denouncing it. What British sailor, in the days of the press gang, had directly or indirectly any voice upon the question whether he should be taken, or, if taken, in what war he should fight?

The Laird correspondence has amused us here not a little. It contains internal evidence that Mr. Laird has been duped. The only letter of any importance contains half a dozen expressions—.

one of them, the" Minister of the Navy," which no man, I will not say born and bred here, but even accustomed to this country, ;would think of using. Once in a great while the general phrase "a Cabinet Minister" is heard here ; but the members of the Cabinet are invariably called Secretaries of State, the Navy, War,

&c. Mr. Laird's anonymous friend was after a commission. There were scores of your countrymen who were trying that in the

I beginning of the war. I encountered some of them myself. i Peter's speech did not more surely bewray that he was a Galilean ' than Mr. Laird's friend's letters that his sovereign was the Queen of Great Britain and not the People of the United States.

A YANKEE-