Grant and his family — operations on James river, Etc.
The Yankee sanitary boats go down the James river always fully loaded with sick and wounded. --Their transports, for the last several days, have been plying regularly between City Point and Old Point; some taking away troops, others bringing troops back. Grant appears at a loss to know what to do.
The lower country is overrun by bands of marauders from Newport News, and the Yankee Vandal's naval brigade, under the "Brandon" Graham, ply up and down the river, preying upon the farmers along its shore, making clean sweeps of horses, negroes and crops.
On Friday last, the 2d instant, two gunboats visited Smithfield and landed a force. They carried off several citizens and all the negroes they could get hold of. At the same time a party made a dash on Day's Neck and secured some horses, which the proposed embarking in flats they have for that purpose, but they were driven off by a detachment, of men under Lieutenant James R. Woodley, of the Signal Corps, and had to leave their plunder with precipitate haste. These predatory excursions of the enemy will come to grief yet.
