From the North.
From our latest Northern papers we make up the following summary of news:
The raid of the Yankees on the Central Railroad.
The New York
Herald has a long account of the raid of the
Federal troops on the Central Railroad.
It thinks it the most brilliant dash of the season.
A participant in it writes:
‘
Dispatches of last week in the telegraph office stated that great suffering prevailed for want of supplies, and that as soon as the bridge over the
North Anna river was rebuilt provisions would be furnished.
The bridge is just completed, and new the destruction of the track, water stations, &c., will delay them some time longer, while it compels them to guard the whole line of road with infantry — an operation which will weaken their forces not a little.
Its effects upon the minds of the rebels must have been startling if not terrifying.
It is evident that they never dreamed of our venturing so far, and, in fancied security, were sending train after train daily over a road with hardly a guard upon the whole line.
There was not even a sentry at the station, the only individuals there being the operators, a rebel captain and a few civilians.
Upon the person of the captain was found the following:
’
Headq'rs Cavalry Brigade, July 19, 1862.
General — The bearer,
John S. Mosely, late
first lieutenant first Virginia cavalry, is
en route to scout beyond the enemy's lines towards
Manassas and
Fairfax.
He is bold, daring, intelligent, and discreet.
The information he may obtain and transmit to you may be relied upon, and I have no doubt that he will soon give additional proof of his value.
Did you receive the volume of ‘"
Napoleon and his Maxims"’ I sent you through
Gen. John S. Winder's orderly ?
Major-General T. J. Jackson, Commanding Division of the
Valley.
The citizens of
Fredericksburg are to-day celebrating the anniversary of the
battle of Bull Run.
Many of the stores are closed, and the inhabitants are nearly all out on a picnic, where secession flaunts its scarlet robes unrebuked.
Printed sheets of doggerel verse, delivered by some female rebel, are being hawked through the streets, while blasphemous thanksgiving ascends from secession zealots in remembrance of the first triumph of treason.
The greatest exertions are made by the people to supply the rebels with salt, medical stores, &c., and large quantities have been seized, including a valuable supply of quinine and morphine.
Captain Hathaway, of
General King's staff, has been detailed to search every train arriving here for contraband goods, and it is believed that smuggling operations will soon be wound up.
The drafting question in the North.
A committee of prominent citizens of New York have waited on the
Governor of that State to urge the enforcement of a draft, in view of the slow enlisting going on. A letter says:
‘
There are thousands of men ready — nay, anxious to volunteer to day, who think they can make more by and by in offering themselves as substitutes for persons whose names will be drawn.
Though this is not very creditable to the patriotism of these people, yet it is well to look at facts as they are, and to deal with them as the best interests of the country would seem to suggest.
Wilkes's (N. Y.)
Spirit of the Times says the
Commissioners of Police are industriously engaged forming lists of persons of ‘"Secession principles and doubtful loyalty"’ there, and add:
The whole force of the Department has been sets employed in this good work, and the use to persuade of it will probably be made to direct the
Government, when drafting shall commence, where to, for its first levy.
Those secret traitors, therefore, will have thus far been discouraging enlistments, batter change their policy, for in degree as the prisons of recruiting is retarded does the hour of the conscription approach.
Information as to disloyal persons is solicited by the Department from all will citizens.
’
Presentations for the murder of Southern citizens.
The following is a most atrocious order, issued by
Gen. inwehr, commanding the remaining Federate in the
Valley:
Hdq'rs Second Division,
Groen's Farm, July 13, 1862.
Special Order No. 6.
Major W. Steadman, commanding 6th regiment
Ohio volunteer cavalry, will cause the arrest of five (5) of the prominent citizens of
Luray, Page county, Va., send them to these headquarters (with an hostages.
They will be held as long as we in this vicinity.
They will share my table, and as friends; but, for every one of our soldiers who may be shot by ‘"bushwhackers"’ one of these hostages will suffer death, unless the perpetrators of the deed are delivered to me. It is well known that these so-called ‘"bushwhackers"’ are inhabitants of the district, and encouraged in the cowardly acts by the prominent citizens here.
You will leave a copy of this order with the family of each man arrested by you.
Blown us own Tromps.
Bennett, of the is determined not to let his light be hid un a bushels In nothing aspinwall's gift to the United States Government of $25,000--his profit on a contract — Sawsey says:
Why, this is not so liberal a donation as the
three thousand dollars and one year's service of the
Henrietta, which we contributed to the
Government out and out, from our private purse, and without any gun or ship contracts whatever.
But the best of this rich like is that
Mr. Aspinwall is said to have made more money than
Morgan by buying and selling ships for the
Government.
The twenty-five thousand dollars profit on his gun contracts
Mr. Aspinwall returns to Government, but the one hundred thousand dollars profit upon his Government ship operations he puts in his own pocket.
Can't see it.
The
Newark (N. J.) Journal can't see how the
Federal Government knows the
Confederate losses to a-man but can't tell its own loses.
It says:
‘
Retreating from an advancing foe, so rapidity that we are compelled to leave our dead and dying in the enemy's hands, our troops are reported as knowing to a fraction the number of men killed of the enemy.
Have we any kind of shell or ball that, whenever it strikes down a Confederate, reports the fact within our camp ? If not, how is it that we obtain so soon the
Confederate loss, while it has taken us months to ascertain our own?
That the
Confederates lost heavily, we can very well believe; but that a pursuing enemy should lose more than the pursued, is an absurdity.
We saw a captain yesterday who has returned wounded, who says our losses will foot up nearer forty thousand than thirty, while the loss in stores, wagons, cannon, etc., will amount to several millions.
He says that our siege guns that were mounted on the entrenchments were all left to fall into the hands of the enemy.
The general impression of the officers of the army that he conversed with is that an advance movement cannot take place for several months.
Why is it that the
Government holds back information from the people?
Do they conceive this is the way to inspire confidence?
No other Government would dare thus to trifle with the people.
’
Necessity of a short War.
[From the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 23.]
It is not to add a shadow to the present hour of national glooms that we recall the fact that this day, the 21st of July, is the anniversary of the
battle of Bull Run, or, more properly speaking, of
Manassas.
That affair, in fact, has now become a matter of history upon which we speculate without a feeling of passion, or a thought of national discredit.--We can clearly trace the causes of our disaster; and we can see how, as things went, it was unavoidable.
The courage of our army, as a whole, on that occasion, is unimpeached; and we have, in our national calendar, no finer heroes than many of the officers and soldiers who fought and fell on that day. The consequences of our defeat on that field, too, we now clearly see. It has been the means of prolonging the war until now. It gave the
South time, which to it was all important.
It gave it nearly a whole year in which to consolidate its power unmolested; to fix and settle its so-called Government; to raise an army five or ten times as great as it then had; to unite, by necessity or force, the public sentiment of the entire
South, and to crush out every vestige of Unionism; to raise provisions for the support of its army; to obtain warlike supplies from abroad, or from its own soil and manufactories; and, in short, to present such a defiant front as it yet shows to the nation.
Had our arms achieved victory on that day, and had our army marched onward to
Richmond, and scattered the rebel host.
we believe that it would virtually have ended the war, and that the nation, after a brief struggle, would now have been enjoying peace.
Prolonged resistance in the far
South at that season, and under such circumstances, would have been out of the question; and the masses of the
Southern people would have regarded secession as an abortion, and would have returned to the
Union after administering justice to the false prophets who had betrayed them.
But we recalled the day and the event to our readers this morning with another object than to follow up such speculations as these.
We did it for the purpose of reminding them that a year has passed away since the
battle of Manassas--a year in which a bloody and, as yet, indecisive civil war has raged over the length and breadth of the
South--a war which, as yet seems to be at its beginning, though the nation has power enough to end it in a month.
We recalled
Manassas the more forcibly to urge upon every man, when he reflects upon the past, and looks at the present aspect of the country, the imperative, the peremptory necessity of doing all that he can to bring this war to a triumphant and quick termination.
Why should this rebellious South, with its small population, its internal elements of weakness, its resources, cause, hold long a time this great, populous, rich and warlike nation at bay?
Why should it thus disgrace us in the eyes of the world, demean us in our own sight, and belittle us in the book of history?
Why should it be permitted to create confusion in the whole land, jeopardize our freedom and our institutions.
lives, and make shipwreck of our National power?
Why should the people every now and then be brought to the verge of despair by the news of disaster, and our army be stopped or turned back in its victorious march?
Why should not the tremendous strength that slumbers in the nation's arm be at once pat forth, to the destruction of its foes?
Realizing the fact.
The New York
Tribune says:
‘
It is impossible to read the accounts of the recent daring and successful Confederate raids in the very heart of both
Tennessee and
Kentucky, directly in the rear of the main body of
General Halleck's army, and under the full operation of
Order No. 3, without realizing that the mass of the whites in the regions thus overrun are either adverse to the
Union cause or paralyzed by indifference or cowardice.
’
A Yankee view of the Probability of intervention.
The
Paris correspondent of the New York
Times writes thus, July 7th, about intervention:
‘
M. de Persigny, who was at Saturday's council for the first time since his return from
England, and who came home so thoroughly secessionist, it is said, as to recommend boldly and without hesitation to the
Emperor a recognition of the
South, favored the increase of the expedition, and laid down the theory that the
North was so tired of the war, and so far away from the end they had set out to attain, that if
France, with a formidable force in
Mexican waters as a menace, would recognize the
South, the
North would seize this as a pretext to voluntarily relax the blockade so far as to allow the exist of cotton, and perhaps even to make peace with the
South.
Now, although it is almost impossible that so sensible a man as
M. Persigny could advocate such an insensate policy, it is yet a fact that the four papers which the
Government controls — the
Moniteur, the
Constitutionnel, the
Patrie and the
Pays--have recommenced, by order, the preparation of the public mind for unlooked for events in
America.
The
Moniteur talks, for the first time, but in a mild way, of the slow progress of the
Union arms, and of the probable impossibility of subjugating the
South; the
Patrie has taken up the mediation question again, and treats the question laboriously, and with its usual want of truth; the
Constitutionnel, the especial organ of
M. Persigny, fairly hails over with malignity, falsehood and unfair citations; the
Pays follows in the wake of the
Constitutionnel, of which it is only an appendage, and from which it differs only in its greater ignorance of the questions it treats.
Now it may be that the
French Government has come to the conclusion that the
Government of the
United States is weak and exhausted, and that, while professing to be central, they can bully us through their official and semi-official journals — for here, where the press is a responsible agent, it is quite another thing from the press in
England or the
United States--and that by the menaces of their press, or by a recognition of the
South, they can manage to open the cotton ports; but I do not believe that they have gone further than to fix upon this as an eventuality that may arrive in the future, and for which their fleet and army in
Mexico will be ready in case of need.
I have never believed, for a moment.
that there was any danger of the intervention of
France between the two contending sect one in the
United States, and find it difficult new to admit that the
Emperor and
M. Thouvenal have any idea of an intervention; but
M. De Persigny's known hostility to the
North, taken in connection with the singular manner in which he is trying for a few days past to shape public opinion through the press, and the change of programme in
Mexico, if this latter should turn out true, are sufficient to create uneminess and put one on the alert.
It is hardly possible that the
Minister of the Interior would show such an active zeal all at once in the direction of the Press on
Mexican matters if it were not to conform to a programme of the
Government.
’
A letter from
McClellan's camp says the most noticeable fact there just now is the arrival of a vast amount of entrenching tools.
It adds:
Of course, noon but our chief officers can tell precisely what use will be made of them — in other words, whether the new defences which it is proposed to construct are designed to protect us in our present position, or to assist in resuming the advance to
Richmond.
I venture the opinion, however, that the Richmond
Enquirer, which thinks that
McClellan means to ‘"dig his way"’ to the
Confederate capital, is substantially correct.
These tools are not needed in our camp at present.
Unless the
Confederates succeed in obstructing the
James river below us, which it is not believed here can be accomplished, though strenuous efforts are making to render navigation dangerous, the picks and shovels and other instruments we have received need never be used here.
Our camps are so situated that the gunboats can shell the
Confederates far over our heads, and while they are too far away to do us particular harm, whatever their numbers; besides, our vast artillery, protected by strong earth-works, would play havoc among them, and perhaps keep them at bay without the aid of our infantry force, now quite equal to what it was before the battles.
