Items from the North.
The Louisville
Journal says three more of the gunboats fitted out at
Cincinnati are almost ready to leave for some point more immediately in the vicinity of the war. This will make in all thirteen vessels of this character sent from that city since the beginning of December.
The greater number have been dispatched to join the fleet under
Farragut, while some few will be attached to the line destined for protection of the river commerce.
In reply to a committee of free negroes from
Louisiana, who recently waited upon him with a memorial asking that negroes in that State who were always free might be permitted to vote.
Lincoln said he saw no reason why intelligent black men should not vote, but as it was not a military question he would refer it to a constitutional convention.
The Louisville
Journal says: ‘"If
Smith and
Grierson are brave men, as we have no doubt they are they must feel that there is no more unendurable bell than the situation in which they find themselves."’
A gentleman of
Louisiana, recently deceased has left $250,000 to be used in establishing a weekly paper for the benefit of the blind.
So says a Northern paper, without giving the name of the donor.
The piano forte workmen of New York city, numbering several thousand are engaged in another strike.
Mechanics in the different branches of business are doing the same thing, owing to the exorbitant price of life necessaries.
The court-house in
Nashville took fire on the 1st inst. The flames were extinguished before much injury was done to the building.
The delegates of the Democracy of New York to the National Convention embrace the ablest and most distinguished men of the party in that State.
Hieratic
Seymour,
Washington Hunt,
Amasa J. Parker,
Sanford E Church,
John J. Taylor, and
Samuel J. Tilden are among them.
And, which is a novelty for New York, there will be no contesting delegation.
The delegation are instructed to cast the vote of the
State in the
Convention as a unit.
The speculators in New York are on the increase.
The
Times says the crowd of outsiders in William street is now swelling to the proportion of the most excited times of last summer.
The business is protracted to a late hour in the afternoon, and renewed by many of the operators at the evening exchange on Fifth avenue.
The Wisconsin Legislature is seeking some constitutional mode of punishing those who have run away to
Canada to escape the draft
The State Senate of
Ohio proposes to take a step for the suppression of secret political societies.
The bank committee from New York city intend to lay before the Ways and Means Committee their views soliciting a modification of the national banking law, so that old city banks may retain their original distinctive titles, and yet enjoy the privileges of the national banking law.
Jeff Davis's coachman now ornaments the lecture desk, being announced to speak in
Gardiner, Maine.
The oil wells at
Oil Creek, Pa., were on fire on the 2d inst. Between twenty and thirty thousand barrels of oil had been consumed, and the fire was still raging
