The Nashville Daily Union

By Last Night's Mail.

New York, May 25.—The Lewistown (Pa.) Journal gives the report of a conversation between the editor and Gen. Grant, in which, if the report is correct, the Lieutenant General appears to have spoken out more freely than he commonly does. It is reported to have said 'That there were some parts of the country where our armies had never been, particularly in Texas, which needed to feel the blighting effects of war to bring their people to realizing sense of the enormity of their crime, and the necessity of a thorough repenting.' He said that those parts of the South which have not felt the war, and particularly those which have been within our lines, and have, therefore, escaped the rebel conscription, that they are much less disposed to accept the situation in good faith than those persons which have been overcome with fire and sword.

Referring to the temper of the Southern people, he remarked, that they are much less disposed now to bring themselves to the proper frame of mind than they were one year since. The year ago, said he, they were willing to do anything. Now they regard themselves as masters of the situation. Some of the rebel Generals, he added, are behaving nobly, and doing all they can to induce the people to throw aside their old prejudices and conform their course to the changed condition of things. Johnston and Dick Taylor particularly, are exercising a good influence, but, he added, Lee is behaving badly, he is conducting himself very differently from what I had reason from what he said at the time of surrender, to suppose he would. No man at the South is capable of exercising a tenth part of the influence for good that he is. But, instead of such, he is setting an example of forced acquiescence as pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.

The men in the rebel armies, said Grant, acquiesce in the result much better than those who stayed at home. The women are bitter against the Union and the Union men. Of course, he added, there is some bitterness of feeling among all classes. But I am satisfied it would soon die out if the leading men had not somewhat got the idea that treason, after all, was not very bad, and that the Southern cause, as they phrase it, will yet triumph, not in war, but in politics. In my judgment, said he, the tone of certain men and certain papers in the North is such as to do incalculable mischief in making the late rebels believe that they are just as much entitled to rule as ever, that if they will only stand by what they are pleased to call their rights, they will have help from the North. This (significantly added Grant) is only laying over again the incipient stages of the rebellion.

He was confident that the large majority of the Southern people would smother their resentments and become good citizens, if those mischief-makers at the North, the Copperheads, would only let them alone. For himself, if he had the power, the first thing he would do would be to seize the New York News and kindred sheets which are moving the South to so dangerous an idea of their own position and rights.

Grant said troops must be kept in all the principal points in the South for some time to come. This will be necessary to repress the turbulence of a class of the South very dangerous to all well disposed persons, and also to protect the rights of the freedmen, who are looked upon with deep hatred by a very large proportion of the people.