The news of the fate of the Harvey Birch and the visit of the 
cruiser Nashville in Southampton harbour reached New York on 
November 29, but does not seem to have provoked the sensation 
that was every bit as expected in certain circles here as it was 
feared in others, hostile to the war.'** This time, one wave broke 
on another. For New York was stirred up by the campaign for the 
election of the Mayor on December 3. The Washington correspon- 
dent of The Times, Mr. Russell, who spoils his Celtic talent by 
affecting English ways, pretends to shrug his shoulders in wonder 
at this excitement over the mayoral election.* Of course, Mr. 
Russell is flattering the illusion of the London cockney that the 
election of the Mayor in New York is the same kind of 
old-fashioned tomfoolery as the election of a Lord Mayor in 
London. It is well known that the Lord Mayor of London has 
nothing to do with the greater part of London. He is the nominal 
ruler of the City, a story-book character who strives to prove his 
reality by producing good turtle soups at banquets and bad 
judgments in cases of violation of police regulations. A Lord 
Mayor of London is a government figure only in the imagination 
of Paris writers of vaudeville and faits divers.” The Mayor of New 
York, on the contrary, is a real power. At the beginning of the 
secession movement the then Mayor, the notorious Fernando Wood, 
was on the point of proclaiming New York an independent city 
republic,’ in collusion, of course, with Jefferson Davis. His plan 

foundered owing to the energy of the Republican Party of the 
Empire City." 

On November 27, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a member 
of the American Senate, where he had been beaten with a stick by 
a Southern senator at the time of the Kansas affair, delivered a 
brilliant speech before a large meeting in Cooper Union’ in New 
York on the origin and secret motives of the slaveholder 
rebellion.” After his speech the meeting adopted the following 
resolution: 

“The doctrine enunciated by General Frémont, with respect to the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves of rebels, and the more recent utterances of General Burnside, 
Senator Wilson,“ George Bancroft (the famous historian), Colonel Cochrane and 
Simon Cameron, foreshadowing the eventual rooting out of slavery as the cause of 
the rebellion, indicate a moral, political, and military necessity. In the judgment of 
this meeting, the public sentiment of the North is now fully in sympathy with any 
practicable scheme which may be presented for the extirpation of this national evil, 
and it regards such a result as the only consistent issue of this contest between 
civilisation and barbarism.” 4 

The New-York Tribune comments, in particular, on Sumner’s 
address: 

“The allusion of Mr. Sumner to the coming discussions of Congress on the 
subject of slavery will kindle a hope that that body will at last understand where 
Southern weakness and Northern strength really lie, and will seize the instrumen- 
tality by which alone the rebellion is to be brought to a speedy and final 
extirpation.” € 

A private letter from Mexico states among other things: 

“The English ambassador‘ pretends to be a warm friend of the administration 
of President Juarez. Persons well acquainted with the Spanish intrigues assure us 
that General Marquez has been instructed by Spain to bring the scattered forces of 
the Clerical party together again, its Mexican as well as Spanish elements. This 
party is then to take advantage of the opportunity soon to be offered to beg Her 
Catholic Majesty8 to provide a king for the Mexican throne. An uncle of the 

November 28, 1861.— Ed. 

Tribune, No. 6444, November 28, 1861.— Ed. 

Queen ? is said to have been selected for the position already. As he is an old man, 
he would soon leave the stage in the natural course of events, and since any clause 
concerning the nomination of his successor is to be avoided, Mexico would thus 
revert to Spain—so that the same policy would triumph in Mexico as in Haiti.” !87