September 28.—President Lincoln directed that the Twentieth and Twenty-first army corps be consolidated and called the Fourth army corps, and that Major-General Gordon Granger be the commander of this consolidated corps. He also directed that a Court of Inquiry be convened to inquire into and report upon the conduct of Major-Generals McCook and Crittenden in the battles of the nineteenth and twentieth instant. These officers were relieved from duty in the army of the Cumberland, and were ordered to repair to Indianapolis, Ind., reporting their arrival by letter to the Adjutant-General of the army.—Lieutenant Earl and thirty men, belonging to the Fourth Wisconsin cavalry, captured a party of rebel guerrillas and cavalrymen, in the neighborhood of the junction of the Amite and Comite Rivers, La., and safely conducted them into Baton Rouge. Among the prisoners were Colonel Hunter (Ten-Mile Bob) and Captain Penny, the leaders in the raids and attacks on the river steamboats in that vicinity.—Fort Sumter, S. C., was bombarded by the National batteries on Morris Island.—Mr. ——Spence, of London, England, ceased to be the financial agent of the rebel government.—Richmond Despatch, Sept. 29.
—An engagement took place at McMinnville, Tenn., in which the rebels were repulsed with a loss of a large number of prisoners.—The rebel steamer Herald was captured by the gunboat Kearny, and carried into Key West, Fla.—Major-General Grant, from his headquarters at Vicksburgh, issued Special Orders authorizing the issuing of rations to such families only, as should “take an oath to support the Government of the United States, and to withdraw all support and countenance from the so-called confederate government”—The entire cotton crop in South-Carolina was seized by order of Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton, by virtue of authority vested in him as Military Governor of the Department of the South. — General Orders were issued by Major-General Banks, at New-Orleans, La., authorizing the Commanding-Central of the Corps d’Afrique “to detail from the line an additional staff-officer, with the rank and pay of captain, to be designated ‘Corps Instructor,’ whose duty it shall be to superintend in garrison, and, as far as may be consistent with military duty, in the field, the education of men engaged in the Corps d’Afrique.”
