Additional from the North.
Yankee Accounts of the progress of the siege of Charleston — the Working of the Different Forts — health of the troops — description of Morris Island — Secrecy to be observed by the Federal troops — the Contrabands must work or be shot.
The New York papers of the 14th contain very full correspondence from Charleston, as late as the 8th inst. Some of it is very interesting. The correspondents seem to be amazed at being unable to explain the partial cessation of fire from the Confederate forts.--The New York. Times correspondent, giving a resume of the week's operations, says:‘ Fort Wagner is already about non est. At any rate it is impossible for that work to use its guns to any advantage, in consequence of the expertness of our sharpshooters, who are ready to pick off the first rebel that shows his head above the fortifications. By this means it may be safely said that Fort Wagner is entirely at our mercy. When the Union forces first arrived on the Island the guns of Fort Wagner were trained on the beach so as to sweep its entire length, and in fact it was rendered anything but an agreeable promenade at that time. But now the soldiers can walk on the beach with impunity to within a mile and a half of Fort Wagner, not fearing any trouble from the guns of that work.
’ Fort Gregg, otherwise known as the Cummings Point Battery, is completely out of the question at present. The special points of interest are Forts Sumter, Johnson, and, as before intimated, Fort Wagner. Let those forts be reduced and the land forces will have achieved all that can be required of them in their present situation. The iron clads must do the rest in the reduction of Charleston. Fort Moultrie occasionally throws a shell, but for what purpose it is difficult to conceive, as the projectile invariably falls in the water without causing the slightest damage to any Union material.
Of the health of the Union troops it may be said that they are comparatively in a good condition. The cases of sickness have been greatly reduced during the past ten days, and the probability is, that in the course of another week the sick list will be very small. Those who are sick have the best of treatment and attention, being immediately conveyed to Hilton Head, where accommodations have been provided for them. As yet there have been no signs of the yellow fever or any other epidemic, and such is not apprehended on the island this season. A few cases occurred last year at Hilton Head, but such sanitary measures have been taken as, it is believed, will prevent a return of that class of disease this summer. On Morris Island not a tree or shrub is to be found.--The only thing that approaches vegetation, even in its simplest form, is a kind of rank grass which is discovered in certain spots, like the oasis in the desert. The absence of vegetation is believed to have a salutary effect on the health of the soldiers. As would be naturally supposed, the climate here is excessively warm, especially in early morning. At about 10 or 11 A.M. we have a fresh sea breeze, which continues for the remainder of the day and long into night. Within the past six days 400 men have been sent from the hospitals to their regiments. In fact, one or two hospitals have been broken up entirely.
It must not be supposed that Morris Island is a level plain of sand. There can be no doubt about the sand, but the island is by no means free from hills and low bluffs, especially on the lower or southern end. These bluffs extend about one and a half miles parallel with the island, or to the look-out tower. Beyond that point, the country is comparatively even, but abounds with marshes. From the peculiar shape of the island and the contracted limits which, can be occupied, it is impossible to conjecture upon it a very heavy number of men. Notwithstanding this, however, it is thought we have troops enough to accomplish the object intended.
It will not be a matter of news to state that work is being vigorously prosecuted on the trenches and parallels. The nature of the next conflict can be easily surmised. It will be, for the most part, an artillery duel.
Lighthouse Inlet has certainly become a famous harbor on the Carolina coast. The rebels, in looking from their observatory just below Fort Johnson, cannot be otherwise than astonished to witness the fleet of vessels of various kinds that are constantly anchored at that point. Perhaps they also witness with feelings of regret the wreck of the impudent Ruby, which was driven on the beach by the blockaders while attempting to run the gauntlet with a contraband cargo up Lighthouse creek. Communication between Morris and Folly Islands is kept up by means of a small steamer which hourly plays back and forth. In addition to the steamer, a dozen or more row-boats are always on one or the other shore, so there is never a lack of transportation.
A flag of truce was sent to Fort Wagner yesterday, but no reply has been received up to the time of mailing this letter.
In Gen. Gillmore's marquee are three elegant flags which have been captured on this island. Two belonged to the 21st South Carolina, one of the old and the other the new style. The old one has "Pocotaligo" inscribed on it, and was captured by private Poper Counslow, company D, 6th Connecticut, on the 10th ult., after shooting the rebel color-bearer.
Military news to be Suppressed — a
Stringent order.
The following order has been issued by Gen. Gillmore relative to the press:
General Orders, no. 66.
I. The practice of giving information, to their friends or to the public press on matters connected with military operations in progress or in contemplation, so unscrupulously indulged in by officers, citizens, and soldiers in this Department, and by employees on transports; is fraught with incalculable evil to our cause, and must be stopped at once. No information which could in any way benefit the enemy must be divulged, directly or indirectly.
upon the following subjects in particular, the strictest silence must be observed, viz:
- 1. The names of divisions, brigade or post commanders.
- 2. The strength of regiments, brigades or divisions, except after engagements have taken place.
- 3. The numbers and position of regiments, brigades, divisions, batteries, or pieces of artillery.
- 4. Allusions to the kind or quantity of arms, cannon or ammunition.
- 5. The number of transports, or kind of supplies transported in any movement.
- 6. The description of any movement, or any allusions to its object, until the same shall have been accomplished or defeated.
- 7. Suggestions of future movements or attacks.
- 8. Any allusions whatever to scouts or reconnaissances, whether accomplished or yet in prospect.
- 9. The position or location of camps, batteries, pickets, military roads or outposts.
- 10. The publication of official reports of operations without special permission from the Department Commander.
- 11. Violations of this order will be met with the severest punishment known to military law and usage in the field.
Brigadier Gen. Q. A. Gillmore.
Ed. W. Smith, A. A. G.
Israel Sealy, Captain 47th, N. Y. volunteers,
acting Ass't Adj't Gen'l.
From Port Royal — Contrabands must work.
The New South, a Yankee paper published at Port Royal, gives a list of the deaths which have occurred in the hospitals at Beaufort and Port Royal from July 1st. It occupies nearly a column of the New York Times, and a great majority are from typhoid fever. Thirty- two died from wounds. The dead hailed chiefly from New York, Ohio, Maine, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Among the list is the name of S. Pete, civilian and refugee, who died on July 4th, of chronic diarrhoea. The employees in the Quartermaster's department, who are chiefly negroes, have, it appears, threatened to strike for higher wages, and been in other ways mutinous, a state of things which has called forth the following "circular:"
To the Employees of the Quartermaster's Department:
There must not be the least holding back or want of interest, or willingness to work all day, and all night too, when called on, or hesitation in obeying the order of the officer or chief man under whom you are placed.--Any man who is thus guilty shall be sent to work in the trenches and in the works in the very front at Morris Island.
I am determined to make short work of such worthless and wicked men as will not put forth every effort, and show an interest in the public service at this important time. Any man that will "strike" for higher wages in this emergency should be shot.
The draft at the North--the men furnished by New York city--incidents of the draft, Etc.
We published yesterday the fact that the draft is to commence in New York city on Monday next. An official report made by the Adjutant-General of the State to Governor Seymour, shows that New York city has furnished from the beginning of the war 33,623 men in excess of all her quotas, not counting 20,851 men sent by her on occasion of sudden peril for the defence of the Yankee capital. The Board of Enrollment in the New Bedford (Mass.) district out of 1,286 drafted men. "passed" into the U. S. army 121. The Orleans (N. Y.) Republican gives some incidents of the draft in that district. It says:‘ The enrolling officers had put down the names of all that they could see or hear of, including the lame, blind, deaf, and dead. This swelled the enrollment list, and of course the quota to be drawn. Among the names put in the wheel for this town we noticed that of Geo. K. Mason, who died in the United States service nearly a year since, and W. A. Shelden, who has not resided in this town in four years.
’ Among the drawn in this town are Joseph Belgard and Henry Webber, neither of whom have ever walked without artificial aid. There is one clergyman, Rev. Mr. Reddy, drawn. The editor of this paper and the junior editor of the American both took prizes. So also did the foreman of this office and two compositors in the American office. The firms of Bedell & Sears, and Foster & Collins, yield up all their members. Justice Spencer is the only legal gentleman drawn, and the medical profession loses nobody.--Henry V. Van Dusen, who lost an arm at Gaines's Mills, and is now a clerk at Washington, is also called for. Four volunteer officers, Capt. Bell, and Lts. Gaskill, Kenyon, and Castle are taken. So is O. E. Burns, whose drawing in Geneses county we mentioned last week.
In Gaines, one clergyman, Rev. Mr. Rogers, is drawn.
Ridgeway loses its supervisor, Mr. Gliddon, who is, we believe, the only first class supervisor in the country. In this town one of the drawn is a boy four years of age — at least no other person answering to the name is known here.
The Auburn N. Y. Advertiser says that five wagon loads of conscripts, from Lyons and other towns in Wayne county, arrived in that city yesterday morning to the tune of "Marching Along," rendered in sonorous tones from the occupants of the leading wagon as they drove up to the Exchange for refreshments to man and beast — hay for the latter and good dinners for the former.--They were a jolly set of fellows, and looked hearty and stout, as a general thing.
The draft rendezvous in New Haven was pretty nearly cleared out on the 13th by the departure in the steamer Detroit of 240 men for the army of the Potomac. Seventy-one of them are for the 2d Rhode Island regiment, and the rest for 14th Connecticut, which has previously received 280 men from that post.
The Philadelphia Ledger, of the 13th, has the following:
‘ In the several Congressional Districts in Philadelphia where Boards of Enrollment are engaged hearing claims to exemption, an average of 25 substitutes for each district is received daily. As soon as a squad of 200 is collected together the men are forwarded to the Army of the Potomac, under a sufficient guard. In view of the fact that substitutes from other parts of the State, as well as from other States, are going forward, the army will soon be filled. In a short time the drafted men of Philadelphia will be required to report for duty, and the addition to the army will prove a large one.
’ The bill in equity, filed in the Supreme Court, to test the constitutionality of the draft, by praying an injunction to restrain Provost Marshal Lehman from taking a drafted man named Nichols, will not be heard before the first Monday in September. In another instance, a writ of habeas corpus has been issued from the Court of Quarter Sessions, at the instance of a drafted man. The writ has been directed to Col. Collis, in charge of the drafted men, and he will make a return to the writ, objecting to the jurisdiction of the Court. The case may be taken up on Tuesday, at which time the Quarter Sessions meets for the purpose of disposing of habeas corpus cases.
Judge Holt's decision holds the drafted man responsible if his substitute proves to have been a deserter. Conscripts hardly feel safe in investing in Canadian New Yorkers, who may by and by be claimed for service due to Uncle Sam in a capacity other than a substitute.
The negro enlistment in the Southwest--a Northern Denunciation of the farce.
The following article on the negro regiments enlisted by the Yankees, is from a late number of the Chicago Times. It would appear that the experiment of making soldiers out of runaway slaves has proved a failure:There have been some farces of the first water enacted during the progress of this war, but there have been none so utterly absurd and ridiculous — none so destitute of the slightest result — as the mission of Adjutant-General Thomas for the enlistment of negro soldiers in the Southwest. We have been amused at the venerable prattle of his printed record, and have labored hard to ascertain from it that he ever procured the enlistment of a single negro soldier. It does not appear from his own words that he did, but we are charitable enough to suppose that he got a few, for it could not well happen otherwise. He "organized" twenty regiments — that is, he appointed white officers for that number of regiments, all of whom are doubtless clamorous at the present moment for their pay. He gave them carte blanche to enlist their recruits from the African immigration to our lines, and succeeded so well that there are now nearly privates enough to cook the officers' victuals.
Without fear of contradiction, we assert that Adjutant General Thomas's representations regarding the enlistment of a large negro military force are simple bosh and nonsense. He cannot designate as his handiwork a single regiment of negroes on the Mississippi river, and from Cairo to Vicksburg he cannot show five hundred able-bodied black soldiers. Knowing the facts, we speak thus confidently. He failed to arouse the slightest disposition on the part of the negroes to become soldiers, and the majority of those who were armed and uniformed were compelled to it like cattle, and their military duties, both past and prospective, are confined to that species of drill which is best developed in the use of the frying-pan and currycomb. In no instance during his trip did this ancient apostle of negroism witness the actual enlistment of a negro soldier, and we will confidently assert that, so far as his personal knowledge of the fact goes, he is entirely ignorant of the existence of such a thing. He gabbled, and gossiped his way up and down the river, and may have deluded his own feeble intellect into the belief that he left an army of negro soldiers behind him, but he never was more mistaken in his life.
The complete failure which marked his attempt at the creation of a negro army was not more decisive, however, than the ruin which befell his other scheme for the cultivation of sixty plantations by runaway negroes. These plantations, abandoned by their owners, were seized by his order and placed in the hands of Northern men, who stipulated to employ the negroes in the cultivation of cotton. The result was such as anybody but a blessed old dotard like the Adjutant General would have anticipated. The negroes refused to work because they were not allowed to be whipped. They stole everything their new master possessed, and, to cap the climax, the guerillas swept the experimental plantations so clean that, except in a very few instances, neither negroes nor planters have ever been heard of since. It was a wise thing to set up such a mark for ransacking guerillas. If it was to be the last piece of mischief they ever did, they would pay their respects to such an enterprise.
If anything was needed to stamp the whole affair with utter and undeniable absurdity, the action of Gen. Grant in suspending the Adjutant General's much-vaunted commissioners from duty would furnish the convincing proof. It was necessary, of course, that so great a work should be left in the hands of a "commission." The entire uselessness either of the work or the commission was probably the cause of their very peremptory suspension. They are among the things that were, and with them passed away the remotest semblance of an excuse for longer perpetrating the farce of negro enlistments in the Southwest. May we not hope that we have heard the last of this extensive and widespread lie?
Miscellaneous Items.
Three table-waiters at the American House, in Boston, were recently drafted, and immediately absconded to Wolfboro', N. H. They were found by the Provost-Marshal. On hearing that they were about to be taken back to Boston the Copperheads of the place got up a meeting in opposition, which was inaugurated by an ex-naval officer belonging in the Tenth Ward of Boston, and bearing the name of a celebrated Mormon prophet, who held forth on the "unconstitutionality" of the Conscription law, &c. The proceedings were cut short by one of the officers announcing that they had nothing to do about the law except to enforce it, and that they should take the prisoners by the boat about to leave, at the same time exhibiting a loaded revolver. The opposition at once subsided, and the deserters were brought away without further trouble.A strong, able bodied man attempted to get an exemption on the ground that he was under height, in one of the Rhode Island districts. But the doctor untied a peculiar twist in his back, and he at once grew two inches.
One of the singular incidents of the conscription at Middleboro', N. H., was the drawing of two blind brothers, John and Joseph Haiton, of East Wareham.
A substitute in the 1st Rhode-Island district gave his name as Samuel Bruns. On examination the letters B. C. were handsomely marked on his breast. When asked if his name was Samuel Burns what was the meaning of the above letters, with a twinkle of the eye he exclaimed, "That's for Bridget Connelly, my sweetheart."
Gen. Hunter is at the Fillmore House, Newport, and Gen. Don Carlos Buell is at the Ocean House. Gen. Sherman attended Church last Sunday week, but the excessive heat caused this gallant son of Mars to faint. He was speedily taken to the open air and recovered. Brig. Gen. Butterfield, wounded at Gettysburg, passed through Boston on Tuesday, en route from the White Hills to New York. Col. C. C. Doolittle, 18th Michigan volunteers, was, a few days since, presented with a silver tea-set by the subordinate officers of the regiment at Nashville, Tenn.
Gen. McClellan, of the Yankee army, had a narrow escape from drowning at Sag Harbor the other day. James Tallmadge, a nephew of Rev. S. L. Mershon, of Easthampton, was drowned while bathing in the surf, and Major-Gen. George B. McClellan and several others, bathing at the same time, were in imminent peril from the heavy undertow.
Hurlburt's latest order is that the penalty of banishment from Memphis will not be enforced upon widows and orphans, persons of either sex above 50 years of age, or persons dependent for their livelihood upon their actual daily labor.
Last Saturday twelve guerillas from Bloomfield, Mo., attacked a Government train of thirty wagons from Cape Girardeau, killed nine and wounded six drivers, destroying the entire train, capturing a supply of arms, taking off the horses, and escaping. The leaders of the band had recently had their houses burned by Union soldiers.
In Kansas the Sioux Indians are desperate, and no white person is safe. They have destroyed several steamers.
The burning of the steamer Ruth, at Island No.1, is attributed to "rebel" incendiarism. Thirty lives were lost, including several paymasters, with $2,600,000 to pay off Grant's army, 120 mules, 1,000 tons of commissary stores, and 100 tons of private freight. The boat, valued at $100,000, is a total loss.
The cavalry division sent by Rosecrans to Huntsville found nothing of value. Turchin has been removed.
An effort was made by rebel emissaries to fire the naval depot at Cairo on the 5th.
A Colonel and Captain, sent by Gov. Harris, with Roddy's command, to protect the elections in West Tennessee, were captured by Dodge, near Corinth, and their purpose defeated.
Port Hudson is garrisoned mostly by negro troops.
Gen. Payne, who lost a leg at Port Hudson, had arrived at Memphis.
