The Daily Dispatch: November 25, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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Additional from the North.

We make some additional extracts from our Northern files of the 21st inst:

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The Gettysburg cemetery Celebration — the speeches.

The Gettysburg cemetery dedication was entirely Yankeeish. The Star Spangled Banner was all over the ground, but was adorned with some strings of black in view of the occasion.--The soldiers, citizens, and music were on hand in large quantities. The cemetery contains one corner dedicated to Virginia, which contains two bodies which saw the light first, very likely, in Holland. The day before the dedication Lincoln arrived, and was called out for a speech, and gave forth the following dignified address:

‘ "I appear before you, fellow citizens, merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while, at least, were I to commence to make a speech. I do not appear before you for the purpose of doing so, and for several very substantial reasons. The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make [laughter]. It is some what important in my position that one should not say any foolish things if he can help it, and it very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all. [Renewed laughter.]

"Believing that is my precise position this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from saying 'one word.'"

’ Seward was also serenaded, and made a speech, in which he announced that he was "sixty years old and upwards," and that forty years ago he fore saw, "opening before this people, a graveyard that was to be filled with brothers failing in mutual political combat." Attending to his hope that this would be the last "fraternal" war on this continent, old Peckeniff gave the following picture of the expected subjugation of the South:

‘ "Then we shall know that we are not enemies but that we are friends and brothers. Then we shall know that this Union is a reality, and we shall mourn, I am sure, with sincerity, equally over the grave of the misguided, whom we have consigned to his last resting place, with pity for his error and with the same heartfelt grief with which we mourn over his brothers, by whose hand, raised in defence of his Government, that misguided brother perished."

’ The big gun of the occasion, of course, was the Hon. Edward Everett, of "Boasting," that secondary and most disgusting edition and representative of the Pilgrim Fathers. After giving three columns to the battle of Gettysburg, he mentioned the question of "State Rights," which caused that battle, in very few words, and begged his hearers pardon for noticing "this wretched absurdity." About the present feeling in the South this man said:

‘ "I do not believe there has been a day since the election of President Lincoln when, if an ordinance of secession could have been fairly submitted to the mass of the people, in any single Southern State a majority of ballots would have been given in its favor. No, not in South Carolina. It is not possible that the majority of the people, even of that State, if permitted, without fear or favor, to give a ballot on the question, would have abandoned a leader like Pettigrew, and all the memories of the Gadsdens, the Rutledge, and the Colesworth Pinckneys of the revolutionary and constitutional age, to follow the agitators of the present day."

’ With the stiff corpses of one thousand two hundred and eight eighty men lying in a semi-circle around him, killed dead on the field for the express purpose of giving the lie to all such statements, this Massachusetts Yankee stood on the platform at Gettysburg and read aloud this printed folly. He follows it by a little truth, however which we credit to his account:

‘ "In the next place, if there are any present who believe that, in addition to the effect of the military operations of the war, the confiscation acts and emancipation proclamations have embittered the rebels beyond the possibility of reconciliation, I would request them to reflect that the tone of the rebel leaders and rebel press was just as bitter in the first months of the war, nay before a gun was fired, as it is now. There were speeches made in Congress, in the very last session before the rebellion, so ferocious as to show that their authors were under the influence of a real frenzy. At the present day, if there is any discrimination made by the Confederate press in the affected scorn, hatred and contumely with which every shade of opinion and sentiment in the loyal States is treated, the bitterest contempt is bestowed upon those at the North who still speak the language of compromise, and who condemn those measures of the Administration which are alleged to have rendered the return of peace hopeless."

’ Exactly. The hatred and contempt for the North has not in three years abated one jot or tittle, nor will it in three hundred. There are refugees and exiles from the frontier who have not had a home for three long years, and who have suffered untold privations, and who to-day couldn't buy a good sized pocket-handkerchief with all the money they have in the world, and yet these men have not abated a shade in their hatred — that is the word — for the North. Everett thinks the old flag and Butler are very desirable to the South:

‘ "The weary masses of the people are yearning to see the dear old flag floating again upon the Capitols, and they sigh for the return of the peace, prosperity, and happiness, which they enjoyed under a Government whose power was felt only in its blessings."

’ He forgets the "weary masses" of the North who are having daily strikes for wages that they may get food, the soldiers' wives and sewing girls in New York who, at a meeting there a few days since, said they were not getting enough to eat, and the political prisoners in the Yankee bastilles who are pining away under a Government whose power is "felt only in its blessings."

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Banks expedition to Texas--his Landing.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, speaking of the Banks expedition to Texas, gives the following additional particulars of the demonstration:

‘ General Banks expedition, which recently set sail from New Orleans, has safely landed in Texas, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. This river is the boundary line between Texas and Mexico, and has been the channel of a large contraband trade between the rebels and their abettors in Mexican territory.

General Magruder, it appears, had expected that General Banks expedition would attempt the capture of Sabine Pass or Galveston. Accordingly he concentrated his forces along the extreme northeastern borders of Texas for the defence of these points. The advance of General Franklin up the Bayou Techs, in western Louisiana, doubtless tended to confirm Magruder's suspicions that General Banks would land on that part of the Texan coast, which would place him within co-operative distance of Franklin's supposed invasion of the State.

While Magruder thus prepared himself to meet the threatened invasion, General Banks made a successful passage across the Gulf to Brazes Santiago, an Island about two miles above the mouth of the Rio Grande. Upon this Island, on the 2d instant, some of the troops were disembarked.--On the following day a reconnaissance was made, by the gunboats accompanying the expedition, off the mouth of the Rio Grande. No enemy was in sight, and the remainder of the troops were landed, with some difficulty because of the surf, on the northern bank of the river, near its mouth, and about twenty-five miles from Brownsville.

Near Brownsville is Fort Brown, a large earthwork. As soon as our troops had disembarked, under the protection of gunboats, and were preparing for a forward movement up the river, General Slaughter, who commanded Fort Brown, evacuated it. A squad of rebel cavalry also attempted to destroy Brownsville by fire before our forces could reach it. The property-holders and Unionists, however, resisted them, and a bloody street fight ensued. At last accounts our troops were pressing forward with all haste. Doubtless they arrived in time to frustrate the designs of the rebels.

Such is the news which has been received from Texas. Gen. Banks is now in a position to break up the blockade-running business of the rebels on the Rio Grande, and also to watch the movements of the French army, if they should occupy Matamoras, which is opposite Brownsville. The secrecy with which this expedition was conducted by Gen. Banks contributed greatly to its success. The rebels had no idea that the Rio Grande was its destination, and our troops landed without the slightest resistance. Magruder may, after he recovers from his surprise, attempt to drive back our forces. He should beware how he attacks the soldiers of the Union near the memorable battlefields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.

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Butler's Department — an order.

Butler left Fortress Monroe last week on a trip to North Carolina, to inaugurate his policy there. It is stated that all the Confederate prisoners now in the hands of the United States are to be placed under Butler's jurisdiction. A torpedo, in a box, was discovered floating down the river off Newport News last week and taken ashore without any explosion. The following is Butler's first order after the New Orleans style:

Hdq'rs Dep't of Va. And North Carolina.

Representations having been made to the Commanding General that certain disloyalty-disposed persons within this department do occasionally, by force, interfere with, and by opprobrious and threatening language insult and annoy, loyal persons employed in the quiet discharge of their lawful occupations, it is hereby announced that all such conduct and language is hereafter strictly forbidden, and will be punished with military severity.

All officers in this department are directed to order the arrest of and to bring such persons as are found offending against this order before the tribunal established for the purpose of punishing offences within this department. By command of

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Dr. Rucker in Washington.

A Washington paper has the following about the notorious Dr. Rucker, who escaped from prison in Pittsylvania:

‘ The stories of returned Union prisoners lend force to the argument of retaliation — none more than that of Dr. Wm. T. Rucker, the noted Union leader of West Virginia. While he was in prison at Pittsylvania the rebels who visited his call to taunt him said the Confederate authorities had determined to starve the Yankee prisoners until their Government should consent to the rebel terms of exchange, and leave such men as Rucker Straight, and the officers of colored regiments, to the mercy of their captors.

The report that the Union prisoners are starved because of the inability of the rebels to feed them is pronounced by Dr. Rucker to be untrue. The wheat crop this year was half an average, and corn three-fourths, and pork a third crop. These are but just gathered, and hence there can be no scarcity yet, but the supply will be exhausted before spring. The Union people with whom Dr. Rucker conversed expressed themselves strongly in favor of strong retaliatory measures, and look for relief only in the combination of fire and sword. At one place in the Alleghany Mountains Dr. Rucker was piloted to a concealed fortification created by Union men and escaped conscripts, who are fully armed and determined to defend their fortress till death.

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