SUNDAY
NOVEMBER 15, 1863
THE DAILY PICAYUNE (LA)

“The Great Virginia Express Line.”—We find the following “advertisement” in a recent number of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican:

Great Potomac and Rapidan Through Line!
Promptness and Dispatch!

Meade and Lee’s Through Express, weekly line, between Alexandria and Culpepper; connections with the principal points North and South (especially Old Capitol and the Libby Prison).

The subscribers, having completed their arrangements and gotten their line into running order, will hereafter, until further notice, run their machines (“The Army of the Potomac” and “Army of Northern Virginia”), every week through from Culpepper, Va., to Alexandria, Va., and vice versa, giving their personal attention to the running of each train, Lee preceding Meade at a proper interval on the out-trains, and Meade preceding Lee with similar regularity on the in-trains.

The perfect familiarity of the old stagers with the whole route in question, and the frequency with which they have traversed it, enable them to calculate with perfect accuracy the time of arrival at the indicated points. Having gotten up all their locomotives and rolling stock, regardless of expense, and putting them through night and day alike, they are enabled to disregard the ordinary drawbacks of weather, state of roads, etc., as those who do a smaller business cannot.

Patronage respectfully solicited,

G. G. Meade.
R. E. Lee.

P.S.–The line through Pennsylvania has been discontinued in consequence of a painful collision which occurred there in July last, but as such things have been carefully avoided ever since, and every precaution taken for the future, it is hope that an indulgent public will not remember that unfortunate occurrence to the president of the company.

Dunn Browne, Secretary.

•••••

Trial of Two Sailors of the Florida at Brest.—Assault on Two Officers of the Kearsarge.–The Correctional Tribunal of Brest last week tried two American sailors, named Woods and Hawthorne, belonging to the Confederate vessel Florida, on a charge of assaulting Messrs. Veaton and Prebble, officers of the federal frigate Kearsarge, both of which vessels have (as is already known) lately put into that port for repairs. It was proved by the evidence that as the complainants were on their way to the theatre, on the evening of the 6th inst., they were violently assaulted from behind and knocked down by four sailors, one of whom threatened them with a poniard. The two prisoners were soon afterwards arrested in consequence of information given by the landlady of a public house, who heard them boasting of their feat. The prisoners expressed regret for having, when excited by drink, given way to the irritation caused by an attack on one of their comrades, who was lying in the hospital in consequence of wounds inflicted by Federal sailors. The Tribunal, taking into consideration the repentance of the prisoners, sentenced them to only two days’ imprisonment and to pay the expenses of the prosecution.–Paris (Oct. 11) Correspondence of the London Times.

Homicide on Shipboard.—A sailor named Sam Lester, belonging to the U. S. gunboat Lackawanna, was arrested yesterday and confined in the First District Lockup on a charge of having killed a Negro named James Johnson, who had been performing the duties of cook on board of the same vessel. It appears that Lester had been on shore, enjoying the temporary liberty which is occasionally granted to those who go down to the sea in ships, and getting out of money before his hours of absence had expired, he returned to the ship to get another supply. His application, however, proved unavailing, and being partially intoxicated, he expressed his dissatisfaction in words more emphatic than polite. Thereupon the officers of the ship ordered him to be placed in irons, and the cook Johnson) being present, seemed pleased at the tar’s misfortune and tauntingly laughed at his calamity. This aroused still higher the already excited feelings of the sailor, and seizing a block of wood used for stopping the bung hole of a water cask, he flung it at Johnson and struck him in the head. The blow stunned the Negro, but a fatal issue was by no means anticipated. This occurrence took place on Friday, and during that night Johnson died. His skull, we believe, was fractured, and death is supposed to have been caused by compression of the brain. The Coroner was called upon yesterday to notice the case, and ordered the arrest of the sailor.

•••••

Why Not Coal?—We hear that the restrictions upon the loading of steamboats and barges with provisions and other Western merchandise are removed, and that these may be expected to come to our market in quantities sufficient to feed the hungry. Why may we not hope that coal may also be permitted to come free of obstruction? Coal was included among things prohibited, when there were hostile gunboats on these rivers which could employ it, when hostile transports were to be supplied with it. Now, however, it is the people within the Federal lines who are to shiver or be impoverished by its scarcity. Will not the benevolent among those in authority use their influence to remove an obstruction now useless, yet burdensome to the people? It requires an order from Washington to make the trade in cola as free on the river as that in flour.

•••••

Enormous Arrival of Blockade Runners.—The steamer Venezuelan, which arrived at this port yesterday, brought considerably later news from Nassau than was received by the regular mail. From this we learn that blockade running was again in the ascendancy, and was being prosecuted with vigor. No less than eight vessels from Confederate ports were reported arriving at Nassau as follows: Sept. 7, steamer Antonia, from Charleston, with cotton; steamer Mary Anne, from Wilmington, with cotton, tobacco, etc.; Sept. 9th, steamer Don, from Wilmington, with assorted cargo; and the following, whose dates of arrival are not given, but are supposed to be between the 9th and 18th: steamers Margaret and Jessie, Gen. Beauregard, Virginia, Flora, and Atlantic–all from Wilmington, with cotton. The Alice, steamer, left for Wilmington on the 7th September.–Liverpool Post, Oct. 13.

MONDAY
NOVEMBER 16, 1863
THE CHARLESTON MERCURY (SC)

The View.

The men and the party in power in the United States can never voluntarily make a peace with the Confederate States. They have not only foolishly severed a lucrative connection and plunged the Northern States into a war, but, to carry it on in the way they deem expedient, they have overturned the Constitution of the United States, with the liberties it guarantees. They have set up in the United States as absolute a despotism as exists in Russia or Turkey. Now, for these enormous injuries and crimes, as well as those against the Confederate States, they are accountable. The day of peace will be a day of reckoning with them. Whilst the war lasts, the mighty armies they control, and the war-spirit they have evoked, tend to keep down all questioning of the folly of their statesmanship, and of the abuse and usurpation of power. Nothing can save them from a powerful reaction in the Northern States, which will sweep them from power, and probably bring them to the gallows, but success in the war. If they conquer the South, they may be able to sustain themselves by the prospect of lucre and dominion which our conquest will afford. But to begin the war, and to end it with failure, and the debt and ruin which their tyranny and this failure must bring to the Northern States, is more than they dare accomplish. Not only the love of power–but respectability–life itself, compels them to go on, as long as they can. Their destruction is certain, if the South is not subjugated. Hence, as long as they can raise troops, and are permitted, they will carry on the war; and they will carry it on to our utter destruction, rather than face a failure which must produce their own personal destruction.

So far as the men and party in power in Washington, therefore, are concerned, we may as well make up our minds to the stern fact that no peace will be voluntarily made by these criminals with the Confederate States.

But neither the elements of peace at the North, nor the commercial and industrial interests of Europe, are likely to rise to potency or exercise any commanding influence in this struggle, until the Confederate States satisfy the world of military power competent to independence. It can be done only be a vigorous and successful conduct of the war.

To be sure, time is our friend, and circumstances may change to our advantage. Human obstacles may be removed by the dispensation of Providence. The death of the Empress of Russia saved Frederick the Great and the Prussian Kingdom. Seward, Lincoln, Russell, Palmerston, et id omne genus, are mortal.

•••••

The Currency.

1st. The public good requires that the redundant currency should be speedily and equitably absorbed.

2d. It is manifestly just that those persons who have made money since the beginning of the pending war, and especially those who have made it out of the war, should, even to the extent of every dollar of their gains, if so much be necessary, maintain the army in the field and the public credit.

3d. That Congress, with the view of absorbing the surplus currency, ought to pass a law requiring three-fourths of all profit from every source, or if thought necessary, a greater proportion, to be vested in four per cent Confederate bonds.->

4th. That such a law is clearly and eminently due to those citizens who have refrained from entering into the general scramble for money; to those unfortunate citizens who have been driven from their home and whose property has been plundered, and preeminently due to the brave men of the army who have fought so well and who have suffered so much.

5th. That it is plain that the capitalists of this war have made their fortunes out of the wants of their neighbors and the necessities of their defenders. It is, therefore, on their part, illiberal and unpatriotic, if not monstrous, for them now to demand from their victims unusual and extraordinary securities before they can be induced to vest in Confederate bonds their very questionable gains. Consequently all schemes having for their object the absorption of the currency by means of bonds, the payment of which is to be guaranteed by specific and extraordinary securities, are obviously unwise and unjust.–Planter.

•••••

The Siege–One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Day.

Our report this morning of the number of shots fired at Sumter begins with Thursday. On that day forty-four rifled shots were counted, thirty-four of which missed, and one hundred and fifty-nine mortar shells, of which ninety-two missed. The monitors fired twice, and struck the fort with both shots. A shot from the land batteries went through the flag.

The severest night bombardment to which the fort has yet been subjected, occurred on Thursday night. There were one hundred and eighty rifled shots, of which fifty-one missed, and two hundred and eighty-two mortar shells, of which one hundred and ten missed.

The casualties on Thursday were Private W. J. Haddin, Company I, 28th Georgia, killed by a fragment of a Parrott shell; Private A. J. Clinton, Company K, 17th S. C. V., killed by a mortar shell; Private E. Johnson, Company C, 25th S. C. V., wounded severely in the face by a fragment of a shell. All these casualties happened while the men were on post.

The monitors have been inactive for the past two or three days. On Friday seventy-four rifled shots were fired, of which nine missed, and three hundred and fifteen mortar shells, of which one hundred and twenty-eight missed. On Friday night there were one hundred and fifteen rifled shots, of which twenty-six missed. Our report, as far as relates to the number of shots, closes with Saturday, on which day twenty-one rifled shots were fired, of which nine missed, and two hundred and twenty-five mortar shells, of which ninety-six missed. On the same day Private T. G. Pound, Company K, 27th Georgia, was dangerously wounded by a fragment of a mortar shell.

The bombardment of Saturday night and Sunday was characterized, perhaps, by somewhat less vigor than the enemy has been lately displaying. Still the difference was not very marked. It will be observed that the principle fire is from mortars.

Our batteries have, as usual, not been idle.

TUESDAY
NOVEMBER 17, 1863
THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER

The emigration from Ireland is a thing which at present, we fancy, attracts more attention in England than in this country. Indeed it is quite possible that an exaggerated notion of it is given by the remarks of the London press. A shipload of seven hundred emigrants has aroused the London Times, but still, we believe, the experience of the present year does not come near that of years past. The English writer goes entirely beyond the record when he explains the present exodus, such as it is, by saying that the federal government will have the men at any cost, and it is just as certain that both he and his fellow journalists of England are altogether in error as to the number of men whom they suppose to be brought into our army from Ireland. The voracious Mr. Lindsay sets it down as a clear case that the government of the United States gets men from Ireland to fight its battles, adding that “many thousands” of suspicious looking men are leaving Ireland for New York for this purpose. But in this Mr. Lindsay is probably as widely distant from the truth as the Times itself, when it sets down the majority of the inhabitants of the United States as of Irish birth.

We may concede, however, that the subject in its present proportions is one that may well engage the attention of English observers. Men have been drained from Ireland by the million. It has long ceased to be any question of surplus population and is now a matter of the employment of labor; and in spite of the fact that the depletion of agricultural communities and the concentration around manufacturing centers is a legitimate consequence of the system of free trade on which England now prides herself,–a result predicted a priori, and observed upon trial–we suppose that few Englishmen would call it a healthy sign, that the United Kingdom continues to send across the ocean a laboring population for whom its own territory might find both occupation and subsistence. It may not be confessed that this is a natural result of the English system of political economy, but looking solely at the fact of emigration, few Englishmen, we suspect, will fail to echo the thoughts of Goldsmith in his famous lines:

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

“A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintain’d its man.
For him light labor spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more.

“But times are alter’d trade’s unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain.”

The labor, however, like other commodities, will go where it is wanted. It speedily learns when the prevailing system discourages it, and in these days of swift and easy communication, it soon learns where it is likely to be well rewarded, and follows the demand in accordance with a general law, which, we may remark, is not to be overridden upon such easy terms as stopping the calls of a few steamers at an Irish port. The great tide which follows the laws regulating all physical forces is not to be withstood by artificial dams or by closing a few artificial streams. ->

The labor which England is losing comes to the United States, not by reason of any special invitation or effort by the government, but for the same reason that millions of laborers have come in years past–because here is a good market for labor. The United States feel to a certain extent the loss of men occasioned by war, and in a natural process of recovery, are supplying the loss in the quickest way from abroad. But apart from the want thus felt in accordance with the experience of all nations who carry on war, the United States also find a necessity for an increase of their working force. While they have sent an immense force from their laboring population into the field, the amount of work to be done at home has increased rather than diminished. The demands upon every branch of industry are greater than ever before. We seem to have superadded to the call made upon our population by the war the ordinary demands of peace in hardly diminished extent. In every section of the country great industrial interests are asking for more labor, and the call is heard as plainly in Ireland as here.

Nor is it easy at present to see the mark at which this increased demand is likely to stop. Peace, instead of a cessation of activity, seems quite as likely to open new fields for industry. The dread of an influx of black laborers from among the freedmen of the South has long since ceased to move any except the most ignorant. The South, upon its return to the Union, will call for even more than is present supply of labor. With a large part of its territory thrown open to cultivation by free labor, it will ask for thousands and perhaps millions of new hands. A part of those it will have from these States and a part from abroad. As we have before pointed out, the beginning of a movement of free labor to what can now scarcely be called slave soil may already be discerned in Maryland. On a grander scale the same will soon be seen throughout the South, while Northern industry is taxed to the utmost to supply the wants of half a continent, depleted of every sort of needful article of comfort or luxury, and setting out upon a career of renewed prosperity and growth. If England finds that she is drawn upon to supply wants thus created in the world’s market of labor, she will do much better to improve the prospects which she now holds out to her laboring classes, rather than waste time in vain complaints at the consequences of her own dealing with British labor.

WEDNESDAY
NOVEMBER 18, 1863
THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PATRIOT & GAZETTE

New Method of Recruiting.

A new plan has been proposed, and is being adopted by some towns, for raising their quotas of the 300,000 men recently called for. This plan is for the towns to hire their full numbers of substitutes, paying such prices as may be necessary, and take from the substitutes an assignment of their claim upon the State and national Governments for bounties. The towns will thus be compelled to pay only the difference between these bounties ($402) and the price of substitutes. The Government has agreed to pay the bounties to the towns on such assignments. It is believed that by this plan the towns may raise their quotas without much expense, as it is supposed that substitutes can be obtained for about the amount of the bounties. The advantage to the substitute in this method, over that of enlisting, is that he gets the whole amount of his bounties at once; while if he enlists, the national bounty ($302) is paid by installments–$62 on being mustered in, and $40 each in two, six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty-six months after. Now this payment of the full amount at once is a very important consideration–especially if the recruit intends to desert at the first opportunity! And it is probable that enough substitutes can be obtained to fill our State’s quota for about $400 each. Some towns have already filled their quotas in this way, at that price, and some at considerably less; and we learn that Manchester and Concord have made contracts for their full quotas at $400 each.

The pecuniary disadvantage or risk to the towns of this method of recruiting arises from the tendency of substitutes to desert. The national bounty is to be paid to the towns in the same manner as proposed to volunteers; that is, by installments; and if the recruit deserts, the payment stops of course. So that, suppose a recruit deserts in three months, only $102 of his national bounty having then become due, the town must lose the other $200. But this is offset to a certain extent by the saving of “State aid” to families, as the substitute’s family gets none, while the volunteer’s family would draw it; and it is probable that enough would thus be saved to make up all the loss by desertions. Therefore, so far as mere expense is concerned, this method of recruiting is a decided improvement upon all other plans and ways of raising troops.

But the advantages and benefits of it to the State and people, in other and higher aspects, are far greater, in our view. It saves men as well as money; it preserves the lives of our people–the very bone and sinew of the State; and it keeps from our people and our borders an amount of suffering and misery, present and future, for which no amount of money can compensate. This is the great and unanswerable argument in favor of this method of recruiting.

Another great advantage of this method is that the State’s quota may easily be filled before the 4th of January, and thus will be avoided the necessity of raising about 2500 men, being the deficiency in the late draft. For if this new quota is not filled before that time, a draft is to be made not only for the present quota, but for that deficiency also. This consideration alone should prompt the town authorities to take the most prompt and energetic measures to raise their quotas under the new call. This they should do, even if they have to pay something for substitutes beyond the amount of the bounties.

•••••

The Rebel Army.—The stories about the lack of needful food and clothing in the rebel armies are being contradicted by army correspondents. They seem to be better supplied than our own armies are. A dispatch to the N. Y. Times says:

Lee’s soldiers are well fed. Through the winter camps on the south side of the Rappahannock our advance guard found empty tin cans, once filled with prepared meats and vegetables, and bearing the stamp of New York and Baltimore.

Another to the Herald says–

The reports concerning the utter destitution in Lee’s army have not been substantiated by recent developments, it having been found that rations were liberally distributed, also good winter clothing, including overcoats and blankets. Each State furnishes clothing for its own troops in the field, North Carolina having taken the lead in this particular.

The War.

The Army of the Potomac remains quiet. The rebels have retired to the Rapidan, where they are strongly fortified, and Gen. Meade does not seem inclined to attack them. Our forces are in the vicinity of Culpepper. In the late conflict at Rappahannock Station and subsequent skirmishes, our forces took about 2500 prisoners and as many muskets. It is supposed that both armies will go into winter quarters in their present positions.

The latest from Tennessee is the following:

A Nashville letter of the 11th instant to the World states that since the partial occupation of Lookout Mountain by the Union forces under General Hooker, operations have been confined to the strengthening of the ground gained, and its preparation for further occupation. Active campaigning may be considered over for the present, and the two armies will probably occupy their time in reconnoitering and flanking.

No progress seems to be made in the siege of Charleston. Fort Sumter was a “heap of ruins” six weeks ago, and was “entirely demolished” ten days ago; still Gen. Gilmore continues to bombard it, throwing upon it an immense mass of shot and shell. Nothing else seems to be doing towards the capture of Charleston.

The boasted Texas expedition continues to be a series of blunders and mishaps. It is reported that the land forces, after going half way to Texas, are returning. Some say they are being driven back with heavy loss. One reason for abandoning the land expedition is the difficulty of supplying the troops on account of the nature of the soil. The letter-writers say that the soil is more treacherous than the people and the climate much more rebellious. It took eight horses to draw an ambulance with a moderate load. It is, therefore, almost impossible to get supplies forward, and as the Texans have learned to live on nothing, they have greatly the advantage of our troops.

Information has been received from the naval expedition under Gens. Banks and Dana, to the 4th. It landed at or near the mouth of the Rio Grande, the Western boundary of Texas. The landing was not opposed. . . It was made a few miles below Brownsville, which is directly opposite the Mexican city of Matamoras. There was a small rebel force at Fort Brown, near that place, who evacuated upon the landing of our forces and burnt all the buildings connected with the fort. The letter also says:

From the same source we learn that about this time a squad of sixty rebel cavalry, which had witnessed the landing of the soldiers under the guns of the Monongahela, dashed into Brownsville and commenced setting fire to the buildings. Property holders and Union men resisted them, when the Secessionists joined the cavalry and a bloody street fight took place which lasted all afternoon, the buildings burning in every direction around them. The fight was still going on when the messenger left for the purpose of communicating the news to the General commanding.

•••••

The Draft Unconstitutional.—The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has decided the conscription act to be unconstitutional. Three Judges, Woodward, Lowrie and Thompson, gave separate opinions to that effect, and the other two, Reed and Strong, gave dissenting opinions. Judge Woodward based his opinion upon the following grounds:

“1st. That the power of Congress to raise and support armies does not include the power to draft the militias of the States.

“2d. That the power of Congress to call forth the militia cannot be exercised in the forms of this enactment.

“3d. That a citizen of Pennsylvania cannot be subjected to the rules and articles of war until he is in actual military service.

“4th. That he is not placed in such actual service when his name has been drawn from a wheel and ten days’ notice thereof has been served upon him.”¹

THURSDAY
NOVEMBER 19, 1863
THE SALEM REGISTER (MA)

Surrenders and Surprises.—The Richmond Enquirer is in an unhappy mood, having made the discovery that the rebel armies have made more surrenders than the armies of any other nation in the world. In an editorial on “Surrenders and Surprises,” it remarks:

“The people and army of the Confederate States have been so much complimented upon the prowess and gallantry of their arms, so much flattered upon what has been accomplished, that they have lost sight of the fact that more surrenders have been made by their armies than by the armies of any other nation. What nation in three years of war ever lowered their flag eleven times in surrender? There have been eleven Confederate surrenders since this war began.

“Near Rich Mountain, at Hatteras, Island No. 10, at Fort Henry, at Fort Donelson, at Roanoke Island, at Forts Phillip and Jackson, at Arkansas Post, At Vicksburg, at Port Hudson and at Cumberland Gap. If the history of this war will show as much gallantry in the fight as that of any other war, it will also exhibit more surrenders than ever befell the arms of any other nation in the same period of time; and we cannot point to any Saragossa, Ginona, Londonderry or Genoa to offset this long catalogue of unsuccessful sieges.”

To these numerous surrenders it attributes the refusal of foreign nations to recognize the Confederacy.² The “surprises” that have befallen the rebel armies re commented upon with equal severity. Those at Kellysville, Brandy Station, Williamsport, Bristow Station, and the later affair on the Rappahannock, are particularly mentioned, and in conclusion the Enquirer says:

“We might, by reviewing the history of the war, swell the number of surprises to the equal of that of the surrenders, but it would be useless; men, and officers, and people, and the enemy, and the world know and understand the injury they inflict, and military discipline in every army has sought to correct such evils by the severest punishment. We must do as the world does; our officers must be held to the same accountability that has always been applied to negligence.”

•••••

Fortress Monroe, Nov. 18.—The steamer Convoy, which left here Saturday last with provisions and clothing for our soldiers held prisoners at Richmond, returned to-day, bringing back the provisions and clothing. Col. Irving, who had charge of the mater, was refused the privilege of taking the rations to Richmond.

•••••

A Relic of Fort Sumter.—We have had the pleasure of seeing a fragment of Fort Sumter, which was forwarded from one of the gallant officers of the navy, on duty before Charleston, to his wife in this city. It may be remembered that, two or three weeks ago, the gallant Capt. Ferris made a night visit to Sumter, mounted the pile of ruins and looked over into the Fort, but, in consequence of his foot slipping, was discovered by the rebels, fired upon and compelled to retreat hastily. Fortunately, he succeeded in extricating himself from his perilous position and affecting his escape, bringing with him two or three bricks as mementos of his hazardous exploit. It is a fragment of one of these that has been received here and will be preserved as a precious historical relic.

The Expedition from Detroit.

The Forest City left Detroit on Thursday afternoon with an armed party, for the purpose of making a search for the rebel privateers, which rumor had asserted were afloat on Lake Erie.

The Free Press, after giving a detailed account of the cruise of the Forest City, says:

Our citizens need have but little apprehension of danger from rebel vessels. The latest accounts from official sources rendered it absolutely certain that all rumors of privateers being on Lake Erie are entirely without foundation. To guard against any possible danger in this respect, however, guns of the most formidable pattern are to be immediately mounted at Fort Wayne, which will give a warm reception to any hostile force audacious enough to attempt the passage of Detroit river.

Official intimations have also been received that the desperate characters who have for some time past infested the Western portion of Canada, have mysteriously disappeared from that locality, which has naturally occasioned many surmises as to their probable intentions. We feel convinced that they are now perfectly harmless, and as the Governor General of Canada has been requested by Lord Lyons at Washington to use his utmost endeavors to defeat any filibustering experiments from Canadian territory, all danger may be considered as past.

•••••

North Carolina Revolutionists Joining Gen. Burnside.—A Baltimore letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer, dated November 15, says:

Information just received here from the South indicates that a large body of North Carolina and Georgia Unionists, who have had a habitation only in the mountain fastnesses of Southwestern North Carolina, have made their escape, with their arms and much valuable information, into East Tennessee, where they will swell the ranks of Gen. Foster’s (late Burnside’s) army.

These men formed themselves into an army and numbered about five thousand men, poorly armed and equipped, but with real courage and patriotism they have dared to give battle with Rebel “regulars” at a place called Warm Springs, north of Asheville, Buncombe county, North Carolina, and near the Tennessee line. These brave men were making their way towards Knoxville, when they were attacked on the 29th of October, by a portion of the 25th North Carolina regiment, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel C. Bryson, who was badly whipped and forced to beat a hasty retreat to Asheville. The Rebels lost six men killed and thirty wounded in the battle.

After the fight the Unionists advanced and took Asheville as a feint, and came near taking General Vance (son of the Governor) and his staff prisoners.

After this the patriot band fell back to the mountains, and a letter from Governor Vance dated Madison county, N. C., November 3, states that “the enemy have withdrawn from Western North Carolina to East Tennessee. They carried off several prominent citizens in chains.”

FRIDAY
NOVEMBER 20, 1863
THE CALEDONIAN (VT)

Hold up a Little.

Money was never spent more freely than now. For dress, luxury, amusement, all classes spend with a freedom close akin to recklessness and prodigality. There seems to be no thought for the future. People of moderate incomes and no reserved means spend quite as fast or faster than they receive. Workmen who find it difficult to lay in a winter’s stock of coal send their children into the street, week days, dressed in a style that would have been considered extravagant for holiday costume three years ago. The most expensive fabrics are worn by almost everybody, and there seems to be little regard paid to the cost of anything. If it is stylish and attractive it is bought, even if it takes the last dollar, and there is neither coal nor flour in store for the cold and hungry months coming. Can we go on in this way for any length of time.

We do not spend our money as the Southern people do, because it is too uncertain to keep. Its ultimate redemption in gold is so well assured that the few who have it all are hoarding it as if it were specie, and millions of dollars of it have been sold South to people who foresee the end of the present contest and want something reliable to fall back upon when the final crash comes. We squander because it is the fashion. The shoddy aristocracy begun it, and almost everybody has been swept into the prevailing current. We had better hold up a little. It is going to cost something to live through the next six months, and it will be convenient to have a few greenbacks constantly on hand. Prices are not going to improve, as the purchaser reckons improvement. In fact the mercantile classes have got so used to marking up, and the people spend with so little question or care, that many articles which cost no more [than] they did formerly are sold at greatly increased prices.

Economy is the virtue just now to be inculcated and practiced–not parsimony, but wise expenditure, limited by our means and some forethought of the necessities and possibilities of the future. To spend for mere show and ostentation is too expensive and too vulgar for any but the shoddy aristocracy. If the majority of us can get the wherewithal for substantial comfort in the house and a decent and becoming appearance in the street, we may consider ourselves fortunate, and we had better stop short with that for the present. The advice to take no thought for the morrow was not meant for our cold climate and sterile soil, and it we use up in summer all the avails of the season, we must expect to starve and freeze for the other half of the year. Why don’t somebody reproduce “Poor Richard’s” maxims and start an economical reform?–Springfield Republican.

•••••

Disturbance Among the Miners.—At Maunch Chunk, Pa., Thursday night, Geo. K. Smith, of the firm of Hull, Carroll & Co., of Philadelphia, was murdered by enraged miners, because, it is said, he had given the provost marshal information enabling him to arrest drafted men. It is supposed Mr. Smith was shot while travelling from the mines to Jolesville. A force of military has been in the vicinity for some time, enforcing the draft and arresting deserters. One dispatch says: “No Union man’s life is safe in Jolesville, Yorktown, Doleraine, Beaver Meadows, and other mines of the middle coal-fields. Seven or eight murders were committed there within the last few weeks.”

Don’t Rock the Baby.

If all the ultimate consequences of one’s acts are to be laid to his charge, the man who invented rocking cradles for children rests under a fearful load of responsibility. The down-right murder of tens of thousands of infants, and the weakened brains of hundreds of thousands of adults, are undoubted results of his invention. To rock a child in a cradle, or swing him in a crib, amounts to just this: the rapid motion disturbs the natural flow of the blood, and produces stupor or drowsiness. Can any body suppose for a moment that such an operation is a healthful one? Every one knows the dizzy and often sickening effect of moving rapidly in a swing; yet wherein does this differ from the motion a child receives when rocked in a cradle? It is equivalent to lying in a ship berth during a violent storm, and that sickens nine people out of ten. A very gentle, slow motion, may sometimes be soothing though always of doubtful expediency, but to move a cradle as rapidly as the swing of a pendulum three feet long, that is once in a second, is positive cruelty. We always feel like grasping and staying the arm of the mother or nurse who, to secure quietude, swings the cradle or crib with a rapidity equal to that of a pendulum a foot long. If any mother is disposed to laugh at our suggestions, or consider them whimsical, we beg of her to have a bed or cot hung on cords, then lie down in it herself, and have some one swing it with the same rapidity that she allows the cradle to be rocked. What she will experience in both head and stomach is just what the infant experiences.

We insist that this rocking of children is a useless habit. If not accustomed to rocking, they will go to sleep quite as well when lying quietly, as when shaken in a cradle. If they do not, there is trouble from sickness or hunger or more likely from an over-loaded stomach; and though the rocking may produce a temporary stupor, the trouble is made worse thereafter by the unnatural means taken to produce quiet for the time being.–American Agriculturalist.

•••••

Fiends.—The following from the Richmond Examiner gives the lie to the assertion that the rebels care for the Union prisoners. How the savage Sepoys would blush at such refined cruelty:

“We would assure those Yankee soldiers that death on the field were far better than captivity here this winter, and would accordingly counsel them also not to be taken alive.

“The Yankee Government, under the laws of civilized warfare and the cartel, are entitled to these men, and if they will not take them, let them be put where the cold weather and scant fare will thin them out in accordance with the laws of nature.”

•••••

Important, Very.—Three of the five judges of the supreme court of Pennsylvania have declared the act of Congress for calling out the national forces unconstitutional. Two of the three judges are notorious copperheads, one of them being judge Woodward, who ran for Governor against Curtin. Our readers will bear in mind that better judges have decided directly the reverse.³

SATURDAY
NOVEMBER 21, 1863
THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER

Horrible Scenes in East Tennessee.
[From Brownlow’s Knoxville Whig, Nov. 11.]

Since the Union army has taken possession of East Tennessee, many very worthy Union men have been cruelly murdered by the villainous rebels in arms, assisted by perjured citizens, who had come forward and taken the oath. Murder, treason, robbery, infamy, and ruin are the order of the day in the counties above and below Knoxville. In the upper counties they have shot down and otherwise murdered unoffending men, neither respecting age nor infirmities, and the soldiers turning out in bands of murderers have robbed families of all in their houses and on their farms, and where they were unable to carry off all they found, the thieving villains have destroyed it, burning private property and destroying all before them. They have within a few weeks past murdered old men in the presence of their families, committing awful and infamous atrocities that would disgrace wandering Arabs.

In Washington county, but the other day, they murdered Rev. Mr. Bowman of the Dutch Church, in cold blood, and upon no other pretext than that he was a Union man. In the counties of Blount, Monroe, Hamilton and Bradley, below Knoxville, they have recently committed some of the most atrocious murders ever known to this hell-born and hell-bound rebellion. They marched an old man named Smith out from his house in Blount and shot him down the road, in his 60th year, leaving a poor and helpless family of nine persons dependent upon his labor for their daily bread. The only charge was that he was a Lincolnite. They cruelly murdered Rev. Levi Carter and one of his sons in Bradley, and the charge was that he was a Lincolnite Methodist preacher. They cut the throat of Rev. Mr. Blair of Hamilton county, a Baptist preacher, in the presence of his family, and his offence was that he was a Union man.

They murdered F. Carter of Bradley county in like manner, as refugees from that quarter report to us. They are said to have murdered two of the Carsons in Monroe county, for no provocation whatever. They murdered Rev. Hiram Douglas of the Presbyterian church, under circumstances that would disgrace an Algerine mob. They shot down a man named Coxart for no other offence than that he was a Union man.

And these are only items in the long list of wrongs and cruelties daily perpetrated by a set of scoundrels, acting under leaders who have been false to their allegiance to friends, neighbors, States and the nation. And yet, when these imps of hell are arrested, Union men come forward, impose on the authorities, and procure their release. God forbid that we should ever be found indorsing for one of these scoundrels, or those baser villains on our streets, who exult over their deeds of carnage, and are daily smuggling letters through our lines to the enemy. They have had and still have in the hills and mountains of Sevier county 400 Cherokee Indians, under the command of that prince of marauders and thieves, Col. Thomas of Western Carolina. These savages, less cruel than their white rebel associates ad companions in arms, are robbing houses and scalping citizens.

Does any man in his senses suppose for one moment that the Union men of East Tennessee, in all time to come, will not shoot down these Indians wherever they find them, and those also who have had the command of them? We say, slay them right and left! They take the oath only to give them facilities in the work of murder and robbery. They are going through the country notifying their paroled men from Vicksburg that they have been exchanged, and, under these false pretenses, violating every principle of honorable warfare!

•••••

To confess that, with resources which are claimed to be the most remarkable on earth, they are unable to feed a few thousand prisoners, is an admission to disagreeable that we do not wonder the rebels try to avoid it. It sometimes seems that they almost prefer to have the reputation of starving our men purposely, rather than admit that they do so from the failure of their supplies, of so little account is a charge against their morals compared with a point made against their political strength or prospects. And at any rate, no amount of inconsistency on their part in relation to this subject can be surprising.

We have a curious example of the embarrassment which the case presents, in some comments made by the Richmond Dispatch a few days since. “The persistent lies of the Yankee journals about the starvation and cruel treatment of their prisoners at Richmond” forms the text upon which the ingenious writer undertook to debate. These “lies,” he argued, are a mere plan for raising the war spirit, and for justifying “new cruelties” upon the rebels now in our hands. At any rate, he was ready to brand them as “lies” and “malignant falsehoods.” This strain, however, could not be kept up in the face of facts, and so the Richmond writer easily slid into an explanation of the starving and suffering. The rebel authorities, he says, are doing all that they can for their prisoners, but then, “if we are starving ourselves, how can we keep them from starving?” The people of Richmond, he tell us, are greatly straightened for the means of life; people once in affluence would be glad to have even as good a supply of food as is furnished in the Libby prison, and in the Richmond market citizens are often denied the opportunity to purchase beef, that it may be served out to the prisoners. This tells the whole story, the Richmond writer says; there is little food to be had in Richmond, but the prisoners have their share. If they suffer, they suffer in common with the people of the place. And so, too, as to quarters, Richmond is “deficient in the means of comfortably accommodating” a great number of persons. There are few large buildings and little building going on, and therefore, until they can be sent away, the prisoners “must submit to a disagreeable position with the best philosophy they can, knowing that it is the result of necessity.”

This is very well, but it is not what we were promised at the outset, when the talk about starving prisoners was said to be a “malignant falsehood.” We are willing to admit, however, that the final admission and excuse present the real state of the case. Certainly we would much rather suppose that the rebels starve their prisoners because their means of supply fail, than believe that any association of men claiming the Christian name can be guilty of such an enormity as voluntary and systematic cruelty of this sort towards their prisoners. Remembering that we have at least our humanity in common with the rebels, we would rather not suppose that they can have reached the maximum of deliberate atrocity implied in such a charge.

But if not, if they simply starve their prisoners because they themselves are starving, what becomes of all their magnificent boasts about the capacity of the South to wage an eternal war of defence if need be, and what are their prospects for the future? Upon their own showing, while we are only half through with the third year of the war, they have come to actual famine–not universal famine, for if this were so the rebel power would sink before another rising of the sun–but a famine in their chief State and in their capital. The fact is one to go upon the record, as an index of the progress made towards the conclusion of the war, and of the failing power of the rebellion.

¹ See 20 November 1863, “Important, Very.”

² And the connection between lack of recognition and surrendering is . . . ?

³ See 18 November 1863, “The Draft Unconstitutional.”