June 4.—Major-General Halleck reported to the Secretary of War that General Pope, with forty thousand men, was thirty miles south of Florence, Alabama, pushing the enemy hard; that he had ten thousand prisoners and deserters from the enemy, and fifteen thousand stand of arms captured. Also that nine locomotives and a number of cars were captured.—(Doc. 131.)
—Fort Pillow, otherwise called Fort Wright, on the Mississippi River, was evacuated by the rebels. After the occupation of the Fort, the Union gunboat fleet steamed directly to Memphis.—(Doc. 54.)
—Jeff Davis threatened retaliation in the case of Major W. Van Benthuysen, who had been arrested by Gen. Butler, at New-Orleans, “for aiding the escape of a scoundrel and spy.”
—Brig.-general J. T. Boyle, headquarters in Louisville, assumed command of the National troops in Kentucky this morning.
—A fight occurred near Jasper, Tenn., between a body of Union troops under the command of Gen. Negley, and a large force of rebel cavalry under Gen. Adams, which resulted in a complete rout of the rebels, with great loss.— (Doc. 55.)
—Sixteen hundred of Gen. Prentiss’s troops, who were taken prisoners at the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, arrived at Nashville, Tenn., they having been paroled by the rebel authorities, “in consequence of their being unable to feed them.” —Nashville Union, June 5.
