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the residents as perquisites.
A detachment of Fitch's men, finding them with large quantities of molasses, sugar, and provisions in their possession, ordered them to haul it to the Fort so soon as they discovered its origin, which the owner did.
He professed to be a Union man, and had been in Memphis only three days previously.
The evacuation of Corinth was not then known publicly, and our flotilla was still at Vicksburgh.
Memphis he described as being deserted; gave some account of the history of the Fort from its commencement, in which he described the actions of the rebel commanders as exceedingly tyrannical.
“An intelligent contraband” also backed up the asseverations of his master by various statements.
He was anxious to get North, and declared himself fully persuaded of the superiority of the Lincoln cause.
As the clear result of this masterly operation we have secured ten uninjured guns of various calibres.
The enemy has destroyed at least an equal number and has removed a larger number.
He has sacrificed an immense amount of stores.
He has abandoned a magnificent position, from which we could hardly ever have driven him with the fleet alone, and has shrunk from a contest with his flotillas.
The State of Tennessee is abandoned.
In less than a week we shall have no enemy in the State.
All the labor expended upon the works becomes useless.
For the hundredth time the rebels have fallen back as a matter of pure strategy, abandoning guns, ammunition, and stores.
The gain is not much to us, but the loss is great to the rebels.
Most of the guns they have left behind they can never replace.
All the guns which they took away are supposed to have been put on board the gunboats; those which burst are, of, course, a dead loss to the enemy.
Cincinnati Gazette account.
Fort Pillow has fallen I The only remaining stronghold of the enemy on the river — the much talked of “last ditch,” named after the celebrated ditch-digger himself, where the rebels have so long promised the world they would die — has at last been abandoned.
Early last evening it became apparent that the enemy were evacuating Fort Pillow.
Between six and seven o'clock dense volumes of smoke were seen rising in the direction of the Fort, and as the shadows of the coming night began to thicken, they were succeeded by fierce flames which shot up from a hundred different points, above the tops of the highest trees, brilliantly illuminating the scene in the immediate vicinity, and leaving no doubt in the minds of those on the flotilla that the immense barracks of the enemy had been fired and abandoned.
During the conflagration, some twelve or fifteen heavy discharges of artillery were heard, and before the evening was too far advanced, some of the shot and shell from these could be seen plunging into the river a short distance below the gunboats, and sending their huge columns of spray high in the air. It needed no unusual power of divination to comprehend at a glance that before abandoning their works, the enemy had loaded their guns, pointed them up-stream, and then applied the torch to their carriages.
The design of this was to keep the flotilla at a respectable distance until they could make good their escape.
The night wore away slowly.
All were anxious to advance, but the order to do so was not given till five o'clock this morning.
At that hour the flag-ship Benton weighed anchor and started in the direction of the Fort, signalling the remaining gunboats to follow.
On turning Craighead's Point, they were not a little surprised at seeing the Stars and Stripes already waving over the deserted rebel works.
It was afterwards learned that during the night, Col. Ellet, of the ram-fleet — who, it will be remembered, acts independently of the Flag-Officer--had moved down the stream with two or three of his boats, and finding no enemy to dispute his passage, had landed at the Fort, and hoisted the banner of beauty on the flagstaff where the rebel ensign had so recently waved.
The act was thought to be rather discourteous to the flotilla, some of the officers of which manifested a little ill-feeling, but this soon wore away in the general joy of the occasion.
By eight o'clock every vessel, directly or indirectly connected with the flotilla, was either at the Fort or in motion toward it. The gunboats were huddled together in the stream; the tugs were screaming and bustling about as if they had never before had quite so much business to attend to; the ammunition-boats — the Great Western, black as night, and the Judge Torrence, exactly the reverse — were lazily drifting down; the tow-boats, puffing along slowly with two or three mortars apiece lashed to them, were doing their utmost not to be behind the rest, and the rams and transports were scudding along at their highest rate of speed.
The scene was most inspiriting, and every pulse on the flotilla beat quicker at the sight.
No wonder the hospitals of our land forces were almost entirely cleared.
No wonder that pale faces grew flushed.
No wonder that each vied with the other who should be first within the deserted rebel stronghold.
The long, long canker of inaction was over, and something toward closing the account of the rebellion on the Mississippi was about to be done.
When the transport having on board a brigade of newspaper correspondents reached the Fort, we found its intrenchments thronged with our men, Col. Fitch of the Forty-sixth Indiana, having been on the ground some time with his regiment.
Our transport had hardly touched her landing before we were on shore, leaping ditches, scaling escarpments, peering into magazines, looking down the muzzles of huge guns, creeping into casemates, looking through embrasures, threading zigzag paths, climbing almost perpendicular heights, walking seemingly interminable lines of breastworks, and kicking around the charred remains
