UNITED STATES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 829, 11 February 1868, Page 2

UNITED STATES.

The trial of Jeff Davis was to have commenced in Richmond on the 25th November. Counsel for both sides were already in that city, and Judge Chase was expected to be present to charge the jury. General Robert E. Lee had been summoned as a witness by the Government, and he had notified his counsel that' he would be in Richmond on the 25th. Joe Johnson, the rebel general, and the ex-rebel Secretary of War, James A. Seddon, are also to appear as witnesses. Davis, it is said, looks physically much better than he did in the spring, and appears in belter spirits. The trial has been postponed until the 22nd March. Mr Davis was ready and anxious for his trial to proceed ; but Chief-Justice Chase, owing to other duties, could not be present, so tho trial had to be adjourned over to the next term of the Court.— Panama Star and Herald. '

If we are to place any confidence in the accounts received here from time to time for the past month or two, we are involuntarily led to the opinion that no country on earth ever oould be in more deplorable misery than the Southern States of America, and none appeals more piteously for human sympathy. The Southern people are conquered, but as yet unpardoned ; and though they have yielded everything to their conquerors, they are still punished by a system of government the despotism of which can be understood only by the poor people who are ruled by it. The slaves of yesterday are made the masters to-day ; there are no courts to settle disputes that any one can trust; no capital can be had to work plantations ; and the sole end of everything done by the ruling powers seems to be the placing of tbe whites in the condition of their former slaves. The ignorant negroes, led by a few cunning whites, rule, and negro supremacy is established in all its hideous reality. The condition of the South is appaling, and even the Northern radicals themselves are beginning to shrink from the awful responsibility that is on them of making that section once more peaceful and happy. The sad tidings that are received by every American mail, lead us to hope that Northern politicians will take the matter of the South into serious consideration during the sitting of the present congress, and pass such remedial measures as the desperate condition of affairs demands. And the affrighted whites from several portions of the South have been hurrying to Washington to implore the Government to make such dispositions of troops as w r ill avert any rising. The Southern blacks, having tasted the pleasures of voting, are not satisfied. They want more; and, armed as many of them are, they will not be content until they procure the lands of the whites and also control the Southern State Governments. The spectacle presented by the entire Southern country, of the subjugation of the Anglo-Saxon by the African, the abject despair its people evince, and their utter hopelessness of ever extricating themselves from their miserable condition, is one which must command worldwide pity.— Panama Mercantile Chronicle.