Thursday, March 1, 2012

March 1.—Last evening the second battalion of Ohio cavalry arrived at Independence—in the capacity of a patrol guard, and this morning a portion of Col. Parker’s rebel force rode into the town and commenced firing upon the sentries and scouts of the Federals, but almost immediately retreated, followed by the Ohio boys, who kept up a sharp and spirited firing; but owing to the thick fog, it was comparatively ineffective, the rebels scattering to evade pursuit. One of the Federals was killed—private Hickins, of company L. Five rebel prisoners were taken, one of whom stated that Col. Parker was killed in the pursuit.—Louisville Journal, March 4.

—The Mobile Register says: Since the late reverses to our arms, we notice quite a deplorable disposition to growl and grumble against the government of the Confederacy; to charge upon it the responsibility of these disasters, and to complain generally of the administration of affairs. This seems to us all wrong—transparently and absurdly wrong. It evidences no judgment, and is far from speaking well for the possession of those stable qualities of fortitude and patient determination which it is believed the Southern race possesses, and which are essential to our success in this war, and to the maintainance of a sustained career of national greatness in the future. If our confidence in the ability and rectitude of our government is so little that it is to be overthrown by a few insignificant reverses; if our patriotism is of so poor a quality that it may feel disheartened by them, we are not the people to deserve, or to win, or to sustain our independence.

It is as unjust to the government to charge it with the responsibility of losses as it would be to charge with cowardice and inefficiency the brave men who are directly their victims, and experience the misfortunes of war through stress of circumstances and overpowering numbers. We must make up our minds to bear a certain amount of disaster. It is impossible that such a war as this should be a career of uninterrupted successes. We are engaged with an enemy who marshals the most majestic military strength that modern times have witnessed. He assails us along land and coast frontiers of near five thousand miles in extent. Is it possible that our government should have the means or the prescience to make every post impregnable which the foe may choose to select for an assault with overwhelming force f

The enemy is ranging along our lines on coast and frontier, and is prepared at any moment to concentrate an overwhelming force at any weak point he may detect. Our government has neither the men nor munitions, nor the supernatural foresight to enable it to have a powerful force at any position which the enemy may choose to select. With such a foe we must force ourselves to the conclusion — rendered doubly distasteful by our invariable successes in its outset—that the war is a war of “give and take.” We must take the bad with the good, and may conceive ourselves especially fortunate if the latter so far predominates that the war will be shortened as much by the successes of our arms as by the self-exhaustion of the enemy’s efforts.

We should not be disheartened if we hear of a succession of such small successes as have encouraged them, as a consequence of the grand advance and general offensive policy of the enemy. These effect little to directly weaken our vital strength, while they nerve the valor and determination of the nation to its best efforts and sternest resolve. We make them pay dearly for these small successes, and trace in blood every step that they advance upon our soil, and they do not weaken our vital strength, for our grand armies remain intact, and must be overthrown and destroyed ere the cause of the South will look gloomy.

To keep the grand armies of Kentucky and Virginia strong, and to strengthen them, will be the policy of the government, and we may probably soon hear that the forces, which are popularly considered already too small at some points, are being weakened to reenforce the grand armies. It may be that some of these points, where the forces have been so weakened, will be successfully attacked. Grumblers will then have a fine text, of course. But let them not be heeded. The great armies are the true bulwarks of our safety. On them we must rely when the enemy attempt to pour their solid columns of a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand men into the country. How could such forces be confronted with our troops scattered in squads of five thousand to twenty-five thousand at all the divers points on coast and inland frontier which the people adjacent thereto think should certainly be defended by the best efforts of the government? We must keep our great armies massed in such strength as to be able to give battle to the strongest armies of the enemy.

—John Minor Botts, Valentine Heckler, Franklin Stearns, and others were arrested in Richmond, Va., and committed to prison for “treason” against the Southern Confederacy, having openly avowed their sympathy for the Union, and loudly proclaimed their denunciations of the rebellion. The Richmond Examiner of March third, gives the following minute account of the affair:

“On Saturday night, Capt. Goodwin, by order of the government, proceeded with a party of select men to the farm of John Minor Botts, and took him and all of his papers and private correspondence, in custody. Leaving an officer in charge of the papers and house of Botts, Capt. Goodwin brought him prisoner to this city, and lodged him in McDaniel’s negro-jail, situated in Blankinship’s alley, some fifty yards north of Franklin street.

Capt. Goodwin then went to the farms of Valentine Heckler and Franklin Stearns, and took both of these well-known Union men, and all of their papers and letters, and brought them to this city.

Botts’ and Heckler’s letters and papers have not yet been examined. Stearns’ have undergone only a cursory examination, and so far, nothing of interest has been found among them, except several letters from his friend Botts, begging for money.

We are under the impression that, as yet, the government is in possession of no positive information that would convict Botts of treason. But he is known to be the recognised leader of all the disaffected— all the low Germans of the Red Republican, Carl Schurz school, and of the vile remnant of the Union Party.

Against Stearns’ and Heckler’s loyalty the government has been for a month in the possession of the most conclusive evidence; and it feels confident of its ability to prove that both of these men have been loud in their denunciations of what they have been pleased to term the “Rebellion,” and have, over and again, expressed their willingness to sacrifice their entire property to restore the dominion in the South of the United States Government.

The man Wardwell, another party arrested, has, since the beginning of the war, been known to every citizen as a blatant and defiant Union man.

Miller, who has also been lodged in jail, is the chief or high-priest of the secret Black or Red German Republican Societies of Richmond, some of whose members, it can be proved, have, since the reverse of our army at Fort Donelson, boasted that they had thousands of arms and abundance of ammunition concealed in the city, and that the men were enrolled who would use them on the first approach of the Yankee army.

An Irishman, named John M. Higgins, has also been arrested and put in the same prison. Higgins is a connection of Col. Corcoran, of the Yankee army. Two of Higgins’ aunts married two of Corcoran’s uncles. A letter from Corcoran to Higgins, advising the latter to send his wife and family North, and containing assurances that he (Corcoran) would have them safely conveyed under flag of truce, has recently been intercepted by our government Whether our government has any evidence of Higgins’ intention to follow Corcoran’s counsel has not transpired.

It is said that Stearns, the whisky man, on approaching the prison, surveyed it with a most contemptuous expression, and remarked: “If you are going to imprison all the Union men, you will have to provide a much larger jail than this.” Mr. Stearns will, we think, be not a little mistaken in his calculations. If the government use its power wisely and firmly, this great Union party, on which Stearns, and others like him, have based such great expectations, will, in a day, dwindle into ridiculously small proportions. By neglect, idle, ignorant, and vicious persons have been allowed with impunity to boast their treason in our streets.

The rumor that the above-mentioned parties had been arrested was on every tongue yesterday morning, but no one could, with certainty, say whence the rumor originated, or whether it was authentic And not until a late hour in the evening was it known to be a fact that the parties were confined in McDaniel’s jail Very soon after the information became generally diffused, a crowd collected in the vicinity, and the matter was freely discussed. Not a man was there but expressed himself in unmeasured terms of approbation of the course of the government. The only apprehension that seemed to be felt was, that the government would not be thorough and summary enough in its treatment of traitors. The universal Yankee sympathizers dangling from as many lamp-posts would have a most wholesome and salutary effect.

While standing in the crowd, near the jail, our attention was attracted to a great quantity of burning paper flying out of one of the chimneys. It was immediately suggested that the prisoners, not having been properly searched, were destroying private and perhaps treasonable documents which they had about them.

We have reason to believe that many other arrests will be effected within the next twenty-four hours. We forego to mention names, lest we might throw some impediment in the way of the authorities.

Now that the government appears really in earnest in the suppression of treason, it becomes every citizen who knows a man or set of men inimical to our country and cause to point them out.—Richmond Examiner, March. 3.

—The rebels have established powder-mills in Virginia, South-Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and have au abundance of powder, such as it is —a very weak article and deficient in power. As an evidence of this, it may be stated that many of the Federal soldiers wounded at Fort Donelson picked the buckshot out of their merely skin-deep wounds without the assistance of surgeons. —St. Louis Daily News.

—Yesterday Lieut. Orlando Houston, of Capt. Carlin’s Second Ohio battery, while on a foraging expedition ten miles west of Gen. Curtis’s camp in Missouri, was attacked by three companies of Texas Rangers, and himself, eight men, and three horses captured. The balance of the Lieutenant’s men retreated to camp, bringing in their wagons, forage, and a fine stallion which they captured. No lives were lost on the National side.—N. Y. Commercial, March 11.

—The Raleigh (N. C.) State Journal of this date, has the following: “We have no more doubt of the ultimate independence of the South than we have that there is a heaven above us. The simple virtue of patience and endurance on the part of the people of the South will break down the war and the Government of the North, as surely as the war now rages. It is this truth which tends to strengthen the belief of our independence, and the short duration of the war, amongst the statesmen of Europe. Let us, then, continue to show to the world that subjugation is simply impossible, and the war will speedily end without the intervention of Europe. But we predict that our recognition as a government will shortly be announced.”

—Yesterday the National steamer Mount Vernon captured the British schooner British Queen — which was attempting to run the blockade of Wilmington, N. C. She was sent with a prize crew to Philadelphia.

—Gen. Curtis, at Camp Halleck, in Arkansas, in reply to a private communication from a citizen of that State, relative to the subordination of the National troops of his army, issued an address to the people of the South-west, in which he asserts that the legitimate object of war is peace, “that peaceable persons shall be protected,” and advises those in arms against the Government to disband and return to their proper employments, assuring them safety and the fullest protection.—(Doc 71.)