Additional from the North.
From the latest Northern dates we make up a summary of additional items of interest:The attack on Mobile to Commence soon.
A correspondent of the New York News, writing from New Orleans on the 13th ult., says: ‘ Mobile is going to be attacked in a formidable manner. Another corps of the army from Gen. Grant arrived here yesterday.--This corps numbers about 27,000 men, and, with the two divisions which came down a few days ago, united with the 6,000 escaped men of Gen. Banks's expedition, will make quite a respectable force of about 40,000 men. It is said that these armies are going to Mobile, via Pascagoula, while another and not less considerable army is going to operate from some other way, such as Pensacola, and in the rear of Mobile. It is reported that Gen. Sherman, seeing that he could not easily force his way through Johnston's army, has decided to take another road on foot, along the river, up to a certain distance, so as to flank the Confederates and proceed to Mobile. It is said that he is already at Natchez, starting the movement.--We may therefore hear soon that the city is attacked simultaneously from several sides, if not completely invested. At least such is the plan contemplated by the Federal.--They expect short work and a speedy success from it. But it appears that the Confederates are not idle in organizing their defences. They have several corps well distributed to check the advance of their foes, and some bloody and desperate battles will certainly take place before the yielding of Mobile, which has a fair chance of being saved, if we consider that the United States Navy can be of but little use to combine in the attack. Where there are no gunboats we know very well that the land forces are rather weak against the desperate and audacious rebels, always powerful, and frequently victorious in the field. The time when the North represented itself, with its usual modesty, under the form of a lion facing the South under the form of a jackass, is long gone by, for facts have proved the lion not to be a genuine one.--Some bitter satirist insinuate even that the two characters have been exactly introverted; and, that if it were not for the Leviathan (marine) and the elephant, (negro,) having lent their allied power to him the pretended Northern lion would have been devoured long ago by the so-represented Southern jackass! Really, the boasting propensities of that once fiery people who have fallen so low under the yoke of fanatical Republicans, merited some lesson, and Providence has wisely inflicted it. Will that open our eves to reality and truth? Is it doubtful? Quod sult perdere, Jupiter dementel. ’The brutality of the Federal commander in Baltimore — Despotic Acts in his department — treatment of the Confederate wounded.
A Baltimore correspondent of the New York Times, under the caption "Are we a Christian People?" has a long review of the official conduct of Major General Schenck, commanding the department of Maryland. He says: ‘ No one has denied or attempted to palliate his course in regard to John Glenn, who was arrested on the merest suspicion and sent South without even being allowed a servant to lead him. Although forced to go to City Point he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the South, claiming that he was a citizen of the United States, and was, consequently, sent back to the tender mercies of General Schenck, who has not yet decided what further cruelties are in store for him. The case of the causeless turning out of doors of Col. Waring and his family is familiar to all, and his recent exploit of arresting all the mourners quickly attending the burial of a Confederate officer, and marching them through the streets to his headquarters for daring to show that mark of respect to a deceased friend, and detaining them there without shadow of cause to gratify his spleen, has excited, even among his own party, feelings of profound contempt, which they have not been slow to express. Time would fail to record one title of his deeds, which bring disgrace upon us as a people. Is the heaping of insult and indignity on every arrested person a part of our national programme? Take the case of Mr. Colin Mackenzie, the son of one of the first physicians of Baltimore. He was arrested on the suspicion of being about to raise a company to go South. Not a shadow of evidence could be found against him, yet he was kept in confinement by Gen. Schenck, and ordered to clean out the area in front of the Gilmore House, facing one of the most public squares of the city. Does this come under the head of military punishment for persons arrested on suspicion? Gan we wonder that Mr. Mackenzie should send back word: "Schenck can put a bayonet through me at pleasure, but cannot force me to clean that area;" and can we wonder, knowing General Schenck, that this was followed by his separation from his family, and expulsion to the South?--Yet is there law or justice, or even decency, in this? But, perhaps, no case can compare in wanton malignity with that of the treatment of the Rev. Mr. Harrison, the father-in-law of the Rev. Dr. Hoge, and brother-in-law of the Rev. Dr. Backus, the well-known Union clergyman of a Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. This reverend gentleman pays large taxes on property in the United States; but upon being asked if he had property in Virginia, and answering in the affirmative, he was required to make out a list of it that it might be taxed also. On presenting it to the official he made the remark that it seemed rather hard that he should pay taxes on property from which he derived no income. He was arrested on a charge of "treasonable utterances," confined in a small room with six others, kept there for several days, was tried, but allowed to employ no counsel. If he attempted to speak for himself, Don Platt, the worthy tool of his prototype, General Schenck, shook his fist in his face, cursing him, and calling him fool and liar. On Sunday, between one and two o'clock. P. M., this venerable minister, sixty-three years of age, was marched down under a broiling sun, with a gang of deserters, to Fort McHenry, a distance of between two and three miles from the Gilmore House. When he reached there he was so utterly exhausted that he dropped to the earth, where he was suffered to lie, without a morsel of food or a drop of water, till the following morning. Well may we exclaim, as we read of the treatment of this gray-haired preacher of the Gospel, "Oh, Christianity, where is thy blush!" If we turn to the treatment of wounded prisoners in our hospitals, shame must mantle our checks when Fort. Delaware is brought to our recollection. Between ten and eleven thousand prisoners are there confined, and these have been dying at the rate of from seven to fifteen per day, because compelled to drink the brackish ditch water, which insures disease and almost certain death. Such strong representations have been made by Federal surgeons of the brutality of this measure that some water is now daily brought from the Brandywine, though not near enough to supply the prisoners. There is not a sheet or a pillow in the hospitals there, and the sick and wounded prisoners are only supplied with army rations — hard tack and fat, salt pork. "If thine enemy hunger, feed him with hard tack; and if he thirst, give him ditch water to drink," is the Administration's version of our Saviour's words. Who can ever point the fearful sufferings of the Confederate wounded at Gettysburg, where they lay in pools of water on the battle-field, with no shelter save a little canvas stretched upon uprights, parched with thirst, famishing for food, and delirious from unattended wounds. Our New York papers, religious and secular, told of their sufferings with shuddering of horror, but stated, as an excuse, that our own enormous losses required even more than all our surgeons in attendance, and that Gen. Lee left only four surgeons and a few nurses in care of his five thousand wounded men. Let them take pains to get at the truth, and they will ascertain that he detailed fifty surgeons, with one nurse for every five of his wounded and let it be known that these were actually marched off to swell the ranks of prisoners. --Should they not have been considered noncombatants by all the rules of war? Or, if captured as prisoners, might they not, at least, have been allowed to assuage the anguish of their wounded comrades till such time as they could be removed to the hospitals prepared for them. Is it a part of the governmental policy to let the sick and wounded die, that they may never again swell the ranks of their foes? In the Baltimore jail eight hundred and fifty men were compelled to take the cold stone flagging as their only bed, till the Federal surgeon stated that they would inevitably be disabled by rheumatism for life if this course were continued. There are some bright spots in this picture of wrong, injustice, and sin, and yet we scarcely dare to direct attention to them lest they, too, should lose their sunlight and become involved in gloom. At Chester, Pa., and at David's Island, N. Y., the sick and wounded prisoners are allowed comforts and even delicacies. What can cause the difference? Would that we might believe that the disgraceful treatment of our Confederate prisoners might arise from individual corruption and not from the Government, of whose sins we, as a representative people, must bear the punishment. But the matter needs probing. "There is something rotten in the State of Denmark." ’ A. New Englander.
