The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-12 00:00:00

THE WAR IN AMERICA.

QUEENSTOWN, SATURDAY NIGHT.
The Cunard mail steamer Scotia, from New York
on the 31st December, has arrived.
The expedition of Gen. Banks is at last ascertained
to be for New Orleans, at which city it arrived on
the 14th December. Gen. Banks supersedes Gen.
Butler in the command. The latest advices are to
the 20th, and say :
"The rebels think they see in Gen. Banks a less
rigorous commander, and are seen in the streets in
crowds. One of them on the 18th challenged Gen.
Butler. The latter put the challenge in his pocket,
and sent word to the angry rebel, if he desired an
onset with hire, to come on in the street, or wher-
ever else it might suit him. Gen. Corcoran, with
his Irish Legion, was in the river, and would reach
the city in a day or two. Dr. M'Cormack, the medi-
cal director under Gen. Butler, is relieved,and comes
in hourly consultation
north with his chief. Business was dull as usual. A
large number of speculators from New York had ar-
rived, and they may give an impulse to trade. Gen.
Banks was very busy, and
with Gen. Butler. It is due to the nation to know
that the best feeling subsisted between the two
Generals and their respective staffs. Col. Elliott, of
the Ist Louisiana Regiment, and son of the Hon. H.
H. Elliott, of New York, had resigned. It was not
known what course Gen. Banks would pursue in
regard to resignations. Gen. Banks and Gen. Butler
were serenaded on the night of the 19th by the
band of the 31st Massachusetts Regiment. The
Delta of the 20th officially announces that General
Butler would on the 22d (Monday) receive his
friends at the City Hall."
On the 16th Generals Banks and Butler met at
the army headquarters,Carondel-street, for the pur-
pose of a formal introduction. The Delta of the
17th, in its account of the meeting, says:.—

" General Butler addressed General Banks and
welcomed him to the Department of the Gulf.
He assured him that he would find here troops
who were ready to yield a cheerful obedi-
ence to every order. General Banks responded
that the only pleasure he had in taking the com-
mand of the Department of the Gulf was in obey-
ing an order of the Government of the United
States. The meeting of the two chiefs was most
cordial, and the InterchatTie of sentiment was that
which marks the coming together of old friends.
Gen. Butler now introduced each member of his
staff, and this ceremony over, General Banks intro-
duced the members of his staff. Soon after these
formalities General Banks and staff withdrew. Gen.
Butler then addressed his staff, and requested that
each member should take pains to enlighten and
assist their successors, of whom he spoke in high
terms. He praised, in the warmest manner, Gen.
Banks, and assured the gentlemen present that his
was a character of,which the American people might
well be proud. Nothing could be more generous
than the manner and terms in which Gen. Butler
spoke of his successor."
Gen. Banks has issued the following proclama-
tion : _ _ _

" Head-quarters, Department of the Gulf,
New Orleans, Dec. 16, 1862.

•
" In obedience to orders from the President, I
have assumed command of the Department of the
Gulf, to which is added, by his special order, the
State of Texas.

" The duty with which I am charged requires me
to assist i❑ the restoration of the Government of
the United States. It is my desire to secure to the
people of every class all the privileges of possession
and enjoyment which are consistent with public
safety, or which it is possible for a beneficent and
just Government to confer.

"In the execution of the high trast with which I
am charged, I rely upon the co-operation and coun-
sel of all the loyal and well-disposed people, and
upon the manifest interest of those dependent upon
the pursuits of peace, as well as upon the support
of naval and land forces.

" My instructions require me to treat as enemies
those who are enemies, but I shall gladly regard as
friends those who are friends. No restrictions will
be placed upon the freedom of individuals which
are not imperatively demanded by considerations
of public safety ; but, while their claims will be
liberally considered, it is due also to them to
state that all the rights of the Government will be
unflinchingly maintained.
"Respectful consideration and prompt reps ration
will be accorded to all persons who are wronged in
body or estate by those under my command.
" The Government does not profit by the pro-
longation of civil contest or the private or public
sufferings which attend it. Its fruits are not equally
distributed. In the disloyal States desolation has
empire on the sea and on the land. In the North
the war is an abiding sorrow, but not yet a calamity.
Its cities and towns are increasing in population,
wealth, and power. The refugees from the South
alone compensate in great part for the terrible deci-
mations of battle.

" The people of this department who are dis-
posed to stake their fortunes and their lives upon
resistance to the Government may wisely reflect
upon the immutable conditions which surround
them. The Valley of the Mississippi is the chosen
seat of population, product, and power on this con-
tinent. In a few years 25,000,000 people, unsur-
passed in material resources and capacity for war,
will swarm upon its fertile rivers. Those who
assume to set conditions upon their exodus to the
Gulf count upon a power not given to man. The
country washed by the waters of the Ohio, the
Missouri, and the Mississippi can never be perma-
nently severed. If one generation basely barters
away its rights, immortal honours will rest upon
another that reclaims them.

Let it never be said, either, that the East and
the West may be separated. Thirty days' dis-
tance from the markets of Europe may satisfy the
wants of Louisiana and Arkansas, but it will not
answer the demands of Illinois and Ohio. The val-
ley of the Missisbippi will have its deltas upon the
Atlantic. The physical force of the West will de-
bouch upon its shores with a power as resistless as
the torrents of its giant riyers. This country MP

not be permanently divided. Ceaseless wars may
drain its blood and treasure; domestic tyrants or
foreign foes may grasp the sceptre of its power, but
its destiny will remain unchanged. It will still be
united. God has ordained it. What avails, then, the
destruction of the best Government ever devised by
man—the self-adjusting, self-correcting Constitution
of the United States ?"

" People of the South-West, why not accept the
conditions imposed by the imperious necessities of
geographical configuration and commercial supre-
macy, and re-tstablish your ancient prosperity and
renown ? Why not become the founders of States
which, as the entrepots and depots of your own cen-
tral and upper valleys, may stand, in the affluence
of their resources, without superior, and, in the pri-
vileges of the people, without a peer among the
nations of the earth ?

" N. P. BANKS, Major-General Commanding."
General Butler has issued the following farewell
to his command:—

" Headquarters, Department of the Gulf,
New Orleans, Dec.l6.
" General orders, No. 106.

" Soldiers of the Army of the Gulf,—Relieved
from further duties in this department by direction
of the President, under date of Nov. 9, 1862, I take
leave of you by this final order, it being impossible
to visit your scattered outposts, covering hundreds
of miles of the frontier of a larger territory than
some of the kingdoms of Europe.
"I greet you, my brave comrades, and say farewell.

" This word—endeared as you are by a commu-
, pity of privations, hardships, dangers, victories,
successes, military and civil—is the only sorrowful
thought I have.
" You have deserved well of your country. With-
out a murmur you sustained an encampment on a
sand bar so desolate that banishment to it, with
every care and comfort possible, has been the most
dreaded punishment inflicted upon your bitterest
and most insulting enemies.
"You had so little transportation that but a hand-
ful could advance to compel submission by the
queen city of the rebellion, while others waded
breast deep in the marshes which surround St.
Philip, and forced the surrender of a fort deemed
impregnable to land attack by the most skilful en-
gineers of your country and her enemy.
" At your occupation, order, law, quiet and peace
sprang to this city, filled with the bravos of all na -
tions, where, for a score of years, during the pro-
foundest peace, human life was scarcely safe at
noonday. _ _ .

" By your discipline you illustrated the best traits
of the American soldier, and enchained the admira-
tion of those that came to scoff.

" Landing with a military chest containing but
75 dole., from the hoards of a rebel Government you
have given to your country's treasury nearly half a
million of dollars, and so supplied yourselves with
the needs of your service that your expedition has
cost your Government less by four-fifths than any
other.

" You have fed the starving poor, the wives and
children of your enemies, so converting enemies into
frfends that they have sent their representatives to
your Congress by a vote greater than your entire
numbers from districts in which, when you en-
tered, you were tauntingly told there was no one to
raise your flag.
_ _

" By your practical philanthropy you have won
the confidence of the ' oppressed race' and the slave.
Hailing you as deliverers, they are ready to aid you
as willing servants, faithful labourers, or, using the
tactics taught them by your enemies, to fight with
you in the field. _ _

" By steady attention to the laws of health you
have stayed the pestilence. and, humble instruments
in the hand of God, you have demonstrated the ne-
cessity that His creatures should obey His laws,
and reaping His blessing in this most unhealthy
climate you have preserved your ranks fuller than
those of any other battalions of the same length of
service.

" You have met double numbers of the enemy and
defeated him in the open field, but I need not fur-
ther enlarge upon this topic. You were sent here
to do that.

"I commend you to your new commander. You
are worthy of his love.
" Farewell, my comrades—again farewell !
"BENJ. F. BUTLER, Major-General
Commanding."

Among the general orders issued by Gen. Banks
is one suspending all sales of property on account of
the United States. The general has assumed control
of all the telegraph lines.
The New York World publishes the following
private letter, received by a gentleman in that city:
" New Orleans, Dec. 19, 1862.

" Our streets and shops and houses are almost en-
tirely deserted. Every one has got away that could,
by fair or foul means, and the military have had
possession of everything. They have not, I regret to
say, been scrupulous in regard to right. D ;ceilings
have been sacked, stores have been broken open,
plantations seized, negroes accoutred as soldiers,
women driven into the streets, men shut up in pri-
sons, property confiscated and sold, pockets rifled,
and grave offences sanctioned as military necessi-
ties—all in the name of liberty and 'anion ; while
the grand genius of all this work and his satellites
and confederates stood by, smiling on the ruin crum-
bling around us. You have, of course, read Reverdy
Johnson's card. You get but little of the real facts
from that, but his report to the President (somehow
unaccountably not published yet) w ill reveal a record
of things here that would stagger the stoutest ima-
gination and appal the senses of belief. Just think
for a moment of the fact of the brother of the late
commanding. general, to use his own words, ' ruining
19 plantations,' and taking off the crops, with ne-
groes enlisted as soldiers, but set to work as labourers
under a guard of United States soldiers, to keep
them straight; and this brother, protected by and
under the wings of the head of the department, buy-
ing all the tobacco, whisky, cotton, &0., in the coun-
try at half its real value, under the threat that, if
not given to him at his estimate, it would be seized
by the United States (P), confiscated, and sold !
Think of these people going into the stores of quiet,
inoffensive citizens (mostly women), and turning
them into the street, anywhere, and taking in some
old, worn-out Boston or New York street-walking
strumpet, and holding orgies over the viands they
find in the larders and cellars, in the name of con-
fiscation,' the United States,' and right !' Think
of men who do not scruple to take anything that
pleases their oyes, let it be a paper of pins or a dia-
mond necklace, a kitchen stove or a bank vault !
Think of them, and you have in little what the re-
port of Reverdy Johnson, backed up and confirmed
by Commanders Farragut and Porter, will reveal,
if it states half of the atrocities of the reign of But-
ler in New Orleans during the months that he has
been in authority here. He and his brother will
leave here (if they can get away with it) immensely
rich in spoils of other persons' property. All appear-
ances indicate that Gen. Banks and the Government
are fully aware of the state of things that have ex-
isted here, and it is said that: the General invites
aggrieved parties to come before him and state their
wrongs. Be this as it may, however, there never
was a community so much delighted as thcis olno s
o_
12 deepa
mileseh o
below
et hl
oew2 9
Vicksburg.
cskasybs
when Banks arrived and deposed the ye 1) f
this department."
An expedition has been sent_
; ha t
biy)
tr
ht
ev Hudsonicks_
ned or the capture of
from New Orleans, desig up the Mississippi
Memphis that a heavy
is
Farragut
confirmed
Federal force has ascended t e Ississippi from New
ortion of which
has
Orleans, the naval P under the
haVicksburg.
reached
report A a
rnaegtaoc
hedh
has fallen into the Federal hands, and that the fleet
s
Vicks-
burg Whig of the 18th."
Tcohmisniraenprotefd advanceAdmiral

A W ashington despatch of the same date adds—
" The news from Admiral Farragut'a fleet, fol..

PRICE .4d.
STAMPED ....sd.

nouncing the capture of Port Hudson and the ad-
vance of the force to within. a few miles of Vicks-
burg, is hailed with joy as a partial result of the
grand plan for opening the Mississippi river. It is
arranged to have Admiral Porter's fleet co-operate
with Admiral Farragut's in the attack on Vicks-
burg, and no doubt at all is felt of a successful
issue. It things go en as is expected the river will
be open by January 1, a pleasant effect to the
Emancipation Proclamation.
" Port Hudson, which is announced in our de-
spatches from Cairo to have been captured by the
expedition up the Mississippi, is a place of but little
note, about 25 miles above Baton Rouge. It is the
terminus of a short line of railroad, and has about
300 inhabitants. It was partially fortified by the
rebels after the siege of Vicksburg was abandoned
and they had retaken Baton Rouge."
The Illemplas Argus:of the 23d gives an account
of the Confederate dash into Holly Springs :
" Various rumours of a Confederate cavalry dash
into Holly Springs, on Saturday, have been afloat
in the city during the past 48 hours. We have
nothing officially of the affair, but from different
gentlemen just from the South we obtain the sub-
joined statement :—On Saturday morning, at two
o'clock, General Van Dorn, in command of a consi-
derable force of Jackson's cavalry, made a dash upon
Holly Springs, capturing the entire Union force at
that place, which, according to the statement of a
gentleman who witnessed the raid, amounted to
fully 3,000. [Exaggerated.] It was known to
the Confederates that Holly Springs was the depot
for most of General Grant's commissary stores, and
by making a bold dash upon the place and destroy.
ing them it would inconvenience General Grant's
army no little. So Van Dorn undertook the task)
and from several sources we learn was entirely suc-
cessful. He came into the place at an hour when
the Union troops least suspected it, and opened fire
upon them in the square, killing, according to our
informant's statement, over 200. The suddenness
with which the Confederates sprang upon them
while asleep created much confusion and consterna-
tion, and it was some time before they could re-
turn the fire. Our informant states that Van Dorn
lost only three men killed and several wounded. The
Union force soon surrendered and were paroled, many
of whom have arrived in this city. Among the pri-
soners taken was ex- Governor Wood, of Illinois, who
had been speculating in cotton in the rear of Grant's
army. After the prisoners were paroled, the Con-
federates set to work destroying the United States'
property. 220 odd waggons were burnt, and all
the mules sent off to Dixie.' The large warehouse
in which the commissary stores were kept was fired
and burnt to the ground, together with its contents,
valued at half a million of dollars. A large amount
of cotton which had accumulated there, probably
4,000 bales, was also burnt. The greatest excite-
ment existed in the town during the fight, and it is
reported that the citizens fired from their windows
upon the Union forces, killing many of them. Mr.
Charles Fox was the Provost-Marshal of Holly
Springs. He was paroled. After Van Dorn had
accomplished the object of his visit to the place, he
put out towards Grand Junction, Tennessee. Gene-
ral Van Dorn has been made Chief of Cavalry of
the Confederate forces in the United States service,
previous to the war. He will, no doubt, make more
of a reputation as a commander of cavalry squad
than as a corps commander. Van Dorn, it is
thought, will join Forrest."
The Memphis Bulletin of the 21st says—

" We have information that a large rebel force,
estimated at 8,000 strong, was encamped eight miles
from Jackson, Tennessee, on Wednesday evening. It
was supposed to be Forrest's cavalry, supported by
considerable infantry. The people of Jackson were
greatly alarmed and were pressing all the cotton to
be found, in order to make breastwork of it. The
artillery in the place has been planted in the
best possible position, and the Union commander
is making all his arrangements for a vigor ous
defence. The rebel force is supposed to be a part
of Bragg's army. On Friday morning, about 7
o'clock, the regular passenger train from Columbus
for Jackson, started out. When between Humboldt
and Carroll station, about 10 o'clock, it was attacked
by a large force, who poured a destructive fire upon
the locomotive, perfectly riddling the caboose. The
engineer put on a full head of steam and laid down
on the floor of the locomotive, and thus preserved
his own life and saved the train. The rebels then
tore up the track and telegraph south of Humboldt,
so as to cut off Gen. Grant's supplies, and then re-

tired. At last accounts the railroad train had come
back up to the place of attack, but it is impossible to
get back towards Columbus. Fortunately, though
there was a large number of passengers on the train
fired upon, there was nobody hurt. This is a bold
movement of the enemy and may cause great incon-
venience, but it will not be permitted to last long.
It is announced that the army of Gen. Rosecrans
is engaged. The following is the only despatch
that has appeared :
" Louisville, Tuesday, Dec. 30,10.5 p.m.

" General Rosecrans captured several cannon on
his approach to Murfreesboro, and reports from be-
low indicate an engagement progressing at that
place."
A fight with the guerilla leader Morgan is re-
ported, in which the Federals claim a victory. The
following despatches have been received :
" Louisville, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 10.5 p.m.
" Colonel Harlan attacked Morgan at Rolling
Fork yesterday morning. The engagement lasted
an hour and a half. Harlan killed and wounded a
number of rebels, losing two killed and three
wounded. Among the latter was Lieut. Pollis, of
Southwick's battery, since dead. The rebels retreated
towards Bairdstown, having lost several killed and
wounded, and a captain and six privates captured.
Morgan spent last night at Bairdstown, and moved
eastward on the Springfield Turnpike. This morn-
ing scouts report that Basil Duke was seriously
wounded at Rolling Fork. A messenger reported
to Harlan that our forces had an engagement at
New Haven this morning, and repulsed the rebels
there. Sheppardsville and Rolling Fork bridges
are safe. The trestlework on Muldraugh's-hill is
so seriously damaged that it will require a month
for its restoration. Two small bridges, which can
be easily restored, were burnt by the rebels near
Lebanon Junction. The above comprises all the
damage done by the rebels to bridges on the Louis-
ville and Nashville Railroad, and its tributaries.
Lieut. John Speed, of General Gilbert's staff, was
taken prisoner by the rebels, near the trestle work,
and robbed of his clothing, watch, and purse.
" Cairo, Tuesday, Dec. 30.
" New Madi id is to be reoccupied. The 38th lowa
Columbus."
went there to-day. All is quiet at s
General Curtis reports as follow from Arkan.
sas Louis, Dec. 29, 1862.
<<Headquarters,
"The army of the frontier Blunt and
under Gens.
Herron moved over the Boston ountains on Satur-
day, and advanced, without halting, to Van Buren.
d, They drove the enemy across the Arkansas
River, killed and wounded a few, and took three
steamboats, some camp equipments, and 100 pri-
soners.

The march of 45 miles, with arms and service,
over the mountains and through the deep mud of
the valley was a most gallant and arduous affair.
" S. R. CURTIS, Major-General.
" Major. General H. W. Halleck, General-
in-Chief, Wash in gton."
A despatch from Fayetteville of the 29th gives a
fuller account of the affair :
" One of the most difficult and daring raids of the
war has just been made by a part of the Army of
the Frontier. Saturday, General Herron started
with a portion of his cavalry and infantry for the
other side of the Boston Mountains. General
Blunt left Cane-hill at the same timelby another
route. The columns, about 6,000 strong, went.
light marching order, with six days' cooked rations,
General
and marched $2 miles without stopping.