August 22.
The bombardment of Fort Sumter was continued and finally reduced to a ruin, although not captured by the Nationals. Six hundred and four shots were fired at the Fort during the day, of which four hundred and nineteen struck inside and outside. The east wall was crushed and breached so that the shot swept through the Fort, the parapet was undermined, the north-west wall knocked down, and all the guns dismounted.--(See Supplement.)
A detachment of the Twelfth Pennsylvania cavalry, under command of Captain Gerry, were ordered by Acting Brigadier-General L. B. Pierce on a reconnaissance from Martinsburgh, Va. Going to Bunker Hill, and thence to Leetown, they encountered the enemy, and captured a number of the rebel Gillmore's men, one lieutenant and one horse, and returned to camp this afternoon without loss.
No attention having been paid to General Gillmore's demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter, and other rebel works in Charleston harbor, heavy rifled shells were thrown into Charleston, from a battery located in a marsh five miles distant from that city — a range, before [44] that time never attained by any piece of artillery known to the world; General Beauregard protested against the bombardment as “inhuman and unheard of.”
The United States gunboats Satellite and Reliance were captured to-night off the mouth of the Rappahannock River, by a party of rebels, under the command of Lieutenant Commander J. Taylor Wood, of the rebel navy.--Colonel Wilder, with a force belonging to the army of the Cumberland, crossed the Tennessee River, opposite Shell Mound, and burned the railroad bridge over the Nicojack, destroying for the time all communication between the rebels at Chattanooga and those in the vicinity of Bridgeport, Ala.--A riot occurred at Danville, Ill., in which three citizens were killed and a number wounded.--the schooner Wave, having run the blockade at San Luis Pass, near Galveston, Texas, was captured by the National gunboat Cayuga.
The expedition to Central Mississippi, which left La Grange, Tenn., on the thirteenth instant, returned this day, having met with the greatest success. The force consisted of detachments of the Third Michigan, Second Iowa, Eleventh Illinois, Third Illinois, Fourth Illinois, and Ninth Illinois cavalry, and a part of the Ninth Illinois mounted infantry, all under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips, of the Ninth Illinois infantry. They left the line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and proceeded by different routes to Oxford, Miss., where the force united and moved on to Grenada, via Water Valley and Coffeeville, meeting with but little opposition till the seventeenth instant, when within eight miles of Grenada. Here the rebels began to oppose their further progress. But they pushed steadily forward, driving the enemy before them and compelling him to fly from behind his fortifications at Grenada, and the victorious troops entered the town with the loss of but one man. The rebel loss is unknown. Several of their wounded were found in the hospital at that place. The Unionists captured quite a number of prisoners. During the evening Colonel Phillips was joined by a force of eight hundred cavalry from Vicksburgh, under the command of Colonel Winslow, of the Fourth Iowa cavalry. The result of the capture was that the Unionists came into possession of sixty-five locomotives and five hundred cars. As the enemy had destroyed the railroad bridges across the Tallabusha River before he retreated from the town, it was wholly impracticable to run the stock North, and so it was given over to the flames, together with the large railroad buildings belonging to the Mississippi Central and Mississippi and Tennessee railroads, which form a junction at that place. Probably the value of the property destroyed was not less than three millions of dollars, and the loss to the rebels is wholly irreparable. The forces of Colonel Winslow and Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips were joined together here, and proceeded northward on the line of the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, meeting with but little opposition on the route. After crossing the Tallahatchie River at Panola, the forces separated, and the Vicksburghers proceeded to Memphis, and the rest of the forces to their respective camps on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
