The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-06 00:00:00

QUEENSTOWN, Sall 4.
The Royal Mail steamship Canada, from Boston
the 231, and Halifax the 25th December, has arrived.
The Provost-Marshal, General Fry, has published
his official report relative to the enrolment and
draught of the Federal army. As far as the enrol-
ment was completed, it showed 3,113,305 men Fable
for military service, including, however, many who
would be entitled to exemptien in case of draught.
The plan of draughting was to require, as the quota
of each district, cne-fifth of the men of the first
class on the roll. This method was considered an
improvement on the calls of 1861 and 1862, which
were based upon population, and by which the
States that contained an excess of females were
charged with a greater quota than those in which
there was an excess of males. Up to the Ist of
November the draught had brought into service
about 50,000 men, including those who enlisted and
were credited on the quotas after the draught had
been ordered. Tables of rejections per 1000 showed
3191 in the United States, as compared with 321.4
in the French conscription from 1831 to 1843, and
317 in the French conscription of 1859 ; and with
335 from 1842 to 1852, 318 in 1860, and 461 in 1862
in the English recruiting. The riot in New York
is attributed to a mob " composed mainly of fo-
reigners." The writ of habeas corpus had inter-
posed great difficulties to the execution of the con-
scription until suspended by the proclamation of
the President, dated Sept. 17 ; 10,000,000 dols.
commutatinn meney had been received from 35,000
draughted men. Nearly 22,000 deserters and abieS;
tees had been arrested by the officers of the bureau
between May 1 and Nov. 1. The expenditure of the
department to Nov. 1, including unpaid accounts
requiring correction, was 1,911,959 dols.
In the Senate on the 22d an amendment relative
to classes as settled in the Conscription Bill was
offered,—
" That the national forces of the United States
not now in the military service, enrolled under this
act, shall be divided into two olasses, the first of
which shall comprise all persons subject to do mili-
tary duty between the ages of 20 and 45 years, and
who are unmarried, and the second class shall com-
prise all other persons subject to do military duty,
and persons of the second class shall not in any dis-
trict be called into the service of the United States
until those of the fiist class have been called."

The amendment, which was supported in a speech
giving reasons why married persons should be
exempt until an absdute necessity existed for their
services, was rejected.
An amendment exempting clergymen was re-
jected on division by 33 to 8.
In the House of Representatives the following
preamble and resolution was tabled by a vote•of
80 against 43 :
" Whereas, the Supreme Judicial Court of the
State of Pennsylvania has decided solemnly that the
act of March 3, 1863, commonly called the Con-
scription Act, is contrary to and violative of the
provisions of the Constitution, and therefore null
and void; therefore, resolved, that it is the sworn
duty of the Executive Department of the Govern-
ment either to acquiesce in the decision in that
State, or to bring the question involved before the
Supreme Court of the United States for final adju-
dication, to the end that, if Congress shall deem such
legislation necessary, a bill shall be prepared not
subject to Constitutional objections."
The New York papers publish the following nar-
rative of the captain of the Joseph L. Gerety, cap-
tured by Confederates in a somewhat similar fashion
to the Chesapeake :
"Captain Nichols reports that he left Matamoras
on the 16th November, bound for New York with a
cargo of cotton and six passengers; on the night
of the 17th, about 12 o'clock, the captain and two
men on deck, one at the wheel and the other aloft,
the six passengers made an assault on the captain
with revolvers, knocked him down, and threatened
to shoot him if he made any noise; they took him
forward and locked him in the forecastle, putting a
guard over him; four of them then went aft, and
the mate, hearing the noise on deck, came up, and
was taken in the same manner, and put in the fore-
castle with the captain and crew. Mr. Greenough,
the supercargo, in attempting to come on deck, was
kicked down into the cabin and two shots were
fired at him, but fortunately did not hit him ;
they confined him to his berth and kept a guard
over him, with orders to shoot him if he
attempted to make any resistance. After keeping
them in confinement for eight days they put all
hands into the small boat, and told them to find
their way to land the best way they could. They
landed on the coast of Sisal, after being two days and
nights at sea. There they got passage to Havannah
in a Spanish brig, and the crew were sent to New
York in the echooner Horace Bell, from Sisal. The
six passengers had paid their passage to New York
from Matamoras. Their names were T. E. Hogg, of
Baltimore, J. Brown, of Canada, James Clements,
Kelly, and Brown, and John Wilson. This Wilson
was mate with Gordon, the slaver, and he was in the
Tombs, in New York, four years and ten months.
They say that there are four other parties in Mata-
mores, waiting for vessels and chances like this, and
that they are sure to get them. This same party
expected to have had a steamer at Matamoras, but
it got away before they had their plans laid. After
they had put the captain and crew in the small boat
they hoisted the Confederate flag, and fired off their
pistols as a salute, saying that they had authority
from the Confederate Government so to do. When
asked where they were bound they said to Belize,
Honduras, where they could sell the vessel and
cargo. The vessel was owned by F. Gerety, of New
York, and the cotton consigned to Shepler & Co."
The Federal Commander Clary, in an official de-
spatch from Halifax to the Secretary of the Navy,
announces that the Chesapeake has been transferred
to the British authorities. The following telegra-
phic despatches have been published :
" Halifax, Dec. 19, 1863.
" Tremendous excitement prevails here this after-
noon in regard to the steamer Chesapeake, She was
delivered over to the British authorities to-day ;
but upon the landing of the prisoners upon shore
they were rescued by the citizens. The Union ves-
sels Niagara, Dacotab, Ella and Annie, Acacia, and
Cornubia, are off the harbour.

"10 p.l

dAt 1 o'clock this afternoon the steamer Chesa-
peake and the prisoners on board of her were de.
livered over to the Government. Upon the arrival
of the boat containing the prisoners at the Queen's
wharf the excitement became intense. The pri-
soner's were immediately seized by a boat's crew in
the ship, and hurried off by the crowd in attend-
ance. Upon the Government officers moving to
arrest the prisoners, under a warrant, they were
seized and held by prominent citizens and rendered
powerless to perform their duty. The crowd finally
succeeded in getting the pirates off in a small boat,
which forthwith moved down the bay. The affsir
causes the greatest excitement throughout the city.
What course the authorities will pursue in the
matter it is impossible to say. The pirates are now
all at liberty, scattered throughout the provinces.
Union gunboats are preparing to leave. Some will
take their departure te-night, and probably all of
them will leave before Monday." _

The first-engiaeer of the Chesapeake affords the
following particulars of the capture :
"After we left St. John the first port wz entered
was Shelburne, where we arrived on Thursday
night. Here we took in ten tons of coal and some
wood. The next morning we left for Lahave river.
Seeing a steamer off the mouth of the river, we
emicyliled the vessel as best we could, and
qFeended the river on Friday night. We laid to at
this puma wail Cee,ciav diselThrging p-irt of
r!.trt.,,o, for which we rtceirc.d dols.
;.:c,A the auger for 3c. ; pound, the flour for 3 f7o:s.,

•:N V.tr S. PAP ER
1
a barrel, and other articles for propo I' t ' - -.--Jes''
r sona wr
..s- ere; : ';'?'\
We left the river at three o'clock in the tatl, l'A „ee."' ,'
lying
to at its mouth ail night, and 1., t;)- •-
. 4
schooner with goods we had not disposed 4 sea ''ee .ae-t....-.
the morning of Wednesday we steamed ea's% 7--- Peee. -:.
Mary's Bay, about 90*roiles east of Halifax. Abeeig. 11 S
nine o'clock on the following morning we sew a
steam er. Immediately we concealed the vessel by
huggii ig the shore. When the steamer disappeared
we started again. We arrived off Sambro without
meeting with any further trouble, and was boarded
by a pilot named Flynn, who took the.vessel into
Sembro harbour. Capt. Locke, now satisfying him-
eelf there was not coal eeoegh on board to completee
anchor the voyage, concluded toitchor the veaael, and h
did so at two o'clock in' the afternoon. In the
nueantime he starts A for Helifax to
procure
'Aft coal and engineers for dtsevespel - e told me (John-
son) that as soon as he 4ebtained new engineers he
intended to release me, and I told him that I would
not on any account remain with the vessel any
longer. The captain returned about 2 o'clock on the
following morning, having been successful in his
expedition. A schoone' came with. him. At about
6 o'clock on the same morning the pilot F,ynn in-
formed the captain that Union gunboats were enter-
ing the harbour. The captain, satisfying himself
that this statement was correct, ordered me (John-
son) to scuttle the vessel. I replied that mould not
do it. The captain then hastily secured what plun-
der he could, and he and his officers and crew took
to the boats as the Ella and Annie appeared in sight."
The New York, TVorld has the following remarks
on the Chesapeake affair :
" Is there something after all in a name that the
mishaps of a Chesapeake should once more threaten
to embroil us with our ‘discotwortabie cousins' over
the sea ? It was upon the deck of the Chesapeake
that an American commander, sent to sea disarreed
and short-handed, was compelled half a century ago
to see his country's flag insulted and men taken from
beneath its folds by a British man-of-war. It was
from the mast-head of the Chesapeake that Lr the
first time the people of Halifax saw the flag of the
Union..floating beneath the standard of England ,
over an'American frigate'captured in eingleleattnbare
by an enemy's ship. And now, after the lapse of
so many years, it is from the deck of the Chesapeake
again that men who had dipped their hands in the
blood of American seamen, and had treacherously
captured an American merchant steamer, meda
their escape through the ranks of a sympathetic
population, and defy the justice of taro empires. To
pronounce positively upon the legal character of
the prisoners wt .o were taken on the Chesapeake at
Sambro by an American gunboat, and who escaped
from the grasp of the colonial police at Halitax,
would be just now premature. The whole case, from
its strange beginning to its ending as strange, lies
quite outside of the ordinary course of military law.
It has a flavour of those mediaeval times when all
was held to be fair in war, when knights were wont
to disguise themselves as peasants and slips into
hostile castles under cover of meal bags and bundles
of hay, and princes did not disdain the dagger end
the bowl. But, as far as the facts have come to
light, it is not easy to see what else can be said of
the persons engaged in this business than that they
were pirates committing piracy, and that, too, in
such circumstances, that the holding of a Confede-
rate commission would scarcely exonerate them front
the charge of its consequences. If this be their
true status there can be no doubt as to the duty of
the British Government in the premises, and no
reason to suppose that Government indisposed to
do its duty fully and loyally. The circum-
stances attending the escape need to be explicated
and understood before any inference can be fairly
drawn from them, even as to the conduct
of the people of Halifax themselves, and it
is much to be hoped that nothing may be said or
done to prejudice public feeling in this country on
the subject. If in the sequel it shall be found that
either through official or popular hostility to us in
the British colonies the rights of the republic have
suffered, it will become us to seek redress in a
temper which shall insure it."
For the protection of American vessels leaving
New York, passengers are to be required to have
passports. A New York despatch of the 221
says :
" The Government has decided that the safety of
American vessels leaving this port requires that no
person shall be allowed to leave this port as passen-
gers or otherwise without first receiving a passport
from the marshal of this district. It is understood
that a gunboat has already been stationed at Sandy
Hook by Admiral Paulding to intercept every ves-
sel leaving this port by that outlet, and another
vessel at Throgg's Neck to examine vessels leaving
this port by way of the Sound, with instructions to
detain such as aro without passes."
The celebrated prize Peterhoff has been put in
commission at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a Federal
man-of-war, after having been strengthened and
getting guns on board.
A Washington letter of the 21st mentions the
following :
"About 3 o'clock on Sunday morning a detach-
ment of Moseby's guerillas and Stuart's rebel
cavalry were found in the neighbourhood of Mor-
gansburg, Fauquier county, Virginia, by a portion
of Gregg's cavalry. The rebels were commanded
by a major cf Stuart's cavalry, and were supposed
to number between 250 and 300. Oar force.
numbered some 400, and consequently the rebels,
after firing a few shots, retreated its the direction
of the Rappahannock, and crossed at Barnett's ford
upon pontoon bridges, which the rebels appeared
to have had constructed there. The only loss on
our side was one man slightly wounded, while we
captured 10 prisoners, and it is known four rebels
were killed. Among the prisoners was one of
Moseby's lieutenants."
A despatch from Washington of the 22d says :
" Information received to-night from the Army of
the Potomac says there are no indications of a re-
trograde movement towards Washington, as has
been reported, nor is it believed that the enemy, in
their present condition, are able to give us much
annoyance. Their cavalry, diminished considerably
on our front, are not able to the task of making any
formidable raid on our base of supplies,
owing to
the impoverished condition of their horses. The
insufficiency of shoes and blankets, if the state
ments of deserters can be relied on, renders it
equally improbable that Lee's infantry can be called
from their strong position and comfortable shelters
to undertake a campaign during the rigours of
winter."
Furloughs are only allowed to those soldiers who
declare their intention of re-enlisting on the expi-
ration of their term. The probable number of te-
enlistments into the veteran corps of the Virginian
army in consequence of this order is estimated at
10,000.
The following are the latest despatches relating to
the state of affairs in East Tennessee, which appears
in the New York papers :
" Cumberland Gap, Dec. 18.
"Gen. Longstreet divided his army on Wednese
day, one part making an attack on Bean's Station,
and the other at Kelley's Ford, the design being to
cut cff Generals Shackleford and Foster. A move-
ment by Gen. Ferrero frustrated the plan. Heavy
firing was heard yesterday between Tazewell and
Church River. It is reported that Gen. Longstreet
is killed, and that his forces are completely sur-
rounded."

" London, Kentucky, Dec. 20.
" General Shackleford arrived here en route for
home. He left B Cross-roads on the 16,n inst.
The battle of Bean's Station commenced on the 14th
inst. at 2 o'clock, and lasted till dark. Gen. Shackel-
ford held the ground until that time, when he with-
drew with a loss of 150 to 200 men in killed and
wounded. Our forces were concentrating, at Blair's
Cross-roads when Gen. Shackleford 'eft."

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