The Rebellion Record—A Diary of American Events; by Frank Moore

November 24.—A court of inquiry convened by order of the rebel war department to examine and report facts and circumstances attending the capture of the city of New-Orleans, in April, 1862, and the defence of the city by the rebel troops under the command of General Mansfield Lovell, gave as their opinion that General Lovell’s “conduct was marked by all the coolness and self-possession due to the circumstances and his position; and that he evinced a high capacity for his command, and the clearest foresight in many of his measures for the defence of New-Orleans.” — General Orders, No. 152.

—Herschel V. Johnson, in a speech at Milledgeville, Georgia, used the following language: “There is no step backward. All is now involved in the struggle that is dear to man—home, society, liberty, honor, every thing — with the certainty of the most degraded fate that ever oppressed a people, if we fail. It is not recorded in history that eight millions of united people, resolved to be free, have failed. We cannot yield if we would. Yield to the Federal authorities—to vassalage and subjugation! The bleaching of the bones of one hundred thousand gallant soldiers slain in battle would be clothed in tongues of fire to curse to everlasting infamy the man who whispers yield. God is with us, because He is always with the right.” He closed in counselling a firm reliance on Providence, and the cultivation of a spirit of reliance and devotion.

—The Richmond Examiner of this date contained the following: “Five balls advertised, and flour one hundred and twenty-five dollars per barrel! Who prates of famine and want? Who is suffering for the necessaries of life? Does not all go ‘merry as a marriage bell?’ If the skeleton come in, put a ball-ticket at five dollars into its bony fingers, a masquerade ball costume upon its back of bony links, and send the grim guest into the ball-room to the sound of cotillion music”

—The second day of the battle of Chattanooga, Tennessee. General Hooker, in command of Geary’s division of the Twelfth corps, Osterhaus’s division of the Fifteenth corps, and two brigades of the Fourteenth corps, carried the north slope of Lookout Mountain with small loss, and a loss to the rebels of five or six hundred prisoners.

There was continuous fighting from twelve o’clock until after nightfall, but the National troops gallantly repulsed every attempt of the enemy to retake the position.

General Sherman crossed the Tennessee River before daylight this morning, at the mouth of South-Chickamauga, with three divisions of the Fifteenth corps, one division of the Fourteenth corps, and carried the northern extremity of Missionary Ridge.—(Docs. 14 and 18.)

—The Richmond Examiner published the following: “While a furious invading enemy is laying waste our fair fields, demanding unconditional submission to its government, offering no terms of peace, not even hinting at negotiation for peace upon any other basis, but avowing the unanimous purpose to deprive us of all right, of all law and of all property; and while our devoted armies are in the field, with their arms in their hands and their banners flying, to defy and resist and beat back that foul invasion, we do not comprehend how any man in the Confederacy can—we do not say get ‘honorable peace’—but even talk of honorable peace, save by vanquishing those invading enemies. If the political system of those invading enemies break up, by reason of reverses in war, or financial troubles; if certain States of their ‘Union’ remember that they have state rights, and act upon them by seceding from the Union, and offering us a peace, so far as they are concerned, it will be well; that will aid us materially in the one single task we have to achieve—the task of defeating and destroying the military power of our enemies. But reasonable confederates would be at a loss to know how we can contribute to that happy state of things, except by continued and successful resistance in arms. Our sole policy and cunningest diplomacy is fighting; our most insinuating negotiator is the confederate army in line of battle.

“Now we perceive, that just as Congress is about to meet, certain newspapers of the Confederacy are preparing the way for discussions in that body about some other method of obtaining peace. The other method suggested, in so far as we can comprehend it, consists in the several States of the Confederacy taking the matter out of the hands of the confederate government, ignoring the government and the army, and all that army has done and suffered for the independence of the Confederacy, and then making peace, each State for itself, as best it can. There would be an honorable peace!

“We are sorry to have to mention that such an idea has shown itself. It was believed that it was confined to about two newspapers, both of Raleigh, North-Carolina. But something very similar is to be found in two other newspapers of Atlanta. As it is extremely essential that the time of this Congress should not be diverted for one instant from the business of carrying on the war by any vain palaver about peace, peace, when there is no peace, we reluctantly advert to the disagreeable circumstance in order that the small distracting element may be disposed of and made innocuous the more speedily.”

—Governor Vance, in a message to the Legislature of North-Carolina, said: “We know, at last, precisely what we would get by submission, and therein has our enemy done us good service —abolition of slavery, confiscation of property, and territorial vassalage.

“These are the terms to win us back. Now, when our brothers bleed and mothers and little ones cry for bread, we can point them back to the brick-kilns of Egypt—thanks to Mr. Seward— plainly in view, and show them the beautiful clusters of Eschol which grow in the land of independence, whither we go to possess them. And we can remind them, too, how the pillar of fire and the cloud, the vouchsafed guidon of Jehovah, went ever before the hungering multitude, leading away, with apparent cruelty, from the fulness of servitude. With such a prospect before them, people will, as heretofore, come firmly up to the full measure of their duty if their trusted servants do not fail them. They will not crucify afresh their own sons, slain in their behalf, or put their gallant shades to open shame, by stopping short of full and complete national independence.”

November 23. — The battle of Chattanooga, Tenn., commenced this day. At half-past twelve o’clock, Generals Granger’s and Palmer’s corps, supported by General Howard’s, were advanced directly in front of the Union fortifications, drove in the enemy’s pickets, and carried his first line of rifle-pits between Chattanooga and Carter’s Creek. The Nationals captured nine commissioned officers and about one hundred enlisted men. Their loss was about one hundred and eleven men.

November 22.—A scouting-party of fifty men, belonging to Colonel Higginson’s regiment, First South-Carolina colored troops, was sent, under the command of Captain Bryant, Eighth Maine volunteers, and Captain Whitney, First South-Carolina colored volunteers, to release twenty-eight colored people held in pretended slavery by a man named Hayward, near Pocotaligo, S.C. The expedition was successful. The captives were released and their freedom restored to them. Two rebel horse-soldiers, stationed as pickets, were regularly captured as prisoners of war. These men were members of the First South-Carolina cavalry. Their comrades, seventy-five in number, under command of a major, pursued the raiding party toward the ferry at Barnwell’s Island. The negroes received them in ambush, and fired on them at twenty paces, emptying several saddles, and putting them to flight. Obtaining reinforcements and artillery, they tracked the retreating colored men with bloodhounds. The dogs dashed into the party in advance of their comrades, the rebels. One hound was shot, and left with broken legs upon the field. Five others were impaled upon the bayonets of the Union troops, and brought as trophies into their camp. The gallantry of the negroes on this occasion was manifested not merely by their brilliant bravery, but by the willingness with which they gave up the ferry-boats (in which they had crossed to the mainland) to their wounded and to the non-combatants on their return. In fording the river, two of their number were drowned. Another man, a corporal, was lost. Six of the party were wounded.

November 21.—The steamer Welcome was attacked this morning at Waterproof, La., by guerrillas, with cannon planted on the levee, and twelve balls and shells fired through and into the cabin and other parts of the boat, besides nearly three hundred Minié balls from the sharpshooters along the banks of the river.—Acting Master J. F. D. Robinson, commander of the Satellite, and Acting Ensign Henry Walters, who was in command of the Reliance, were dismissed from the Navy of the United States, for gross dereliction in the case of the capture of their vessels on the twenty-third of August, 1863. The Department of the Navy regretted “the necessity of this action in the case of Acting Ensign Walters, inasmuch as the Court report that ‘during the attack he acted with bravery and to the best of his ability, and which, in some measure, relieves his want of precaution against surprise from its otherwise inexcusable character, and shows that his failure to take them proceeded more from inexperience than negligence.'”—General Orders No. 24.

—At Little Rock, Ark., a large Union meeting was held, at which the “restoration of State rights under the old Government” was advocated, and a great number of persons took the oath of allegiance and enrolled themselves for home defence.—English Rebel blockade-runner steamer Banshee, was captured by the United States steamers Delaware and Fulton, off Wilmington, North-Carolina.

—The steamer Black Hawk, when about half a mile below Red River Landing, on the Mississippi River, was fired into from the east bank of the river by a battery of ten or twelve guns, and about fifteen round shot and shell struck the boat. One shell exploded in the Texas, setting fire to and burning that part of the boat and pilot-house. As soon as the captain and officers found the boat on fire, they ran her on a sandbar on the west side of the river, and immediately put all the passengers on shore, after which the fire was extinguished. While the boat lay aground on the sand-bar, the sharp-shooters were pouring in their murderous Minié balls, of which some three hundred struck the boat in different parts of her cabin and hull. It was the guerrillas’ intention to follow the boat, but the gunboat stationed at the mouth of Red River followed them so close, pouring in shell among them, that she drove them back, after which the gunboat took the Black Hawk in tow, and carried her back to Red River, where she repaired sufficiently to proceed on her way. The casualties on board the boat were very severe. Mr. Samuel Fulton, a brother of the captain, was shot in the leg by a cannon-ball. His leg was afterward amputated below the knee. A colored man, by the name of Alfred Thomas, had his head blown off while lying flat down on the cable-deck. James Keller, of Louisville, belonging to the Twenty-second Kentucky volunteers, received a wound in the arm from a fragment of a shell. His arm was afterward amputated, and he soon after died A passenger was slightly wounded in the arm.

November 20.—The Solicitor of the War Department, Mr. William Whiting, in a letter to a gentleman in Boston, wrote as follows:

“There are several serious difficulties in the way of continuing an exchange of prisoners. One is the bad faith of the enemy in putting into active service many thousands of paroled prisoners, captured at Vicksburgh and elsewhere, without releasing any of our soldiers held by them. But another difficulty of still graver importance is the peremptory refusal by the enemy to exchange colored soldiers and their white officers upon any terms whatever. It is well known that they have threatened to sell colored captured soldiers into slavery, and to hang their white officers.

“The Government demands that all officers and soldiers should be fairly exchanged, otherwise no more prisoners of war will be given up. The faith of the Government is pledged to these officers and troops that they shall be protected, and it cannot and will not abandon to the savage cruelty of slave-masters a single officer or soldier who has been called on to defend the flag of his country, and thus exposed to the hazards of war.

“It has been suggested that exchanges might go on until all except the colored troops and their white officers have been given up. But if this were allowed, the rebels would not only be relieved of the burden of maintaining our troops, but they would get back their own men, retaining their power over the very persons whom we are solemnly bound to rescue, and upon whom they could then, without fear of retaliation, carry into execution the inhuman cruelties they have so basely threatened.

“The President has ordered that the stern law of retaliation shall, without hesitation, be enforced, to avenge the death of the first Union soldier, of whatever color, whom the enemy shall in cold blood destroy or sell into slavery. All other questions between us may be postponed for future settlement, but the fair exchange of colored soldiers and of their white officers will be insisted on by the Government before another rebel soldier or officer will be exchanged.”

November 19.—General Hampton and General Thomas L. Rosser returned to Fredericksburgh, Va., from a most successful expedition into Culpeper County. On Tuesday night last they crossed the Rapidan with detachments from Rosser’s, Gordon’s, and Young’s brigades, all under the immediate command of General Rosser, for the purpose of ascertaining the position of the enemy on the other side. After marching all night over a desperate road, they succeeded, about daylight on Wednesday morning, in locating the pickets of the enemy. That being accomplished, General Rosser immediately ordered a charge, which was executed by his brigade in the most gallant style, driving the advance back upon the main body, which was encamped a short distance in the rear. Here the enemy had formed a line of defence; but, in defiance of a heavy fire poured into his command, General Rosser pressed forward, and soon drove the entire force (the Eighteenth Pennsylvania cavalry) through their encampment, and pursued them some miles beyond, in the direction of Stevensburgh.

The result of this gallant exploit was the capture of sixty prisoners, among them an adjutant and one lieutenant, two flags, one hundred horses and mules, a number of tents, all the wagons, baggage, etc., of the encampment. The enemy fled through the woods in every direction, many of them without having completed their toilet for the day. Having located the enemy, (the original object of the expedition,) and obtained other valuable information, the command was withdrawn, by the way of Germanna Ford, to the other side of the river, where the prisoners and other captures had been previously forwarded.— Richmond Enquirer.

—A detachment, composed of companies G, H, T, and K, of the Fifty-eighth regiment of Illinois infantry, with a portion of the Second Illinois cavalry, under the command of Captain Franklin B. Moore, pursued Faulkner’s rebel partisans to a point on Obion River, four miles from Union City, Tennessee, where, in attempting to cross the river, the rebels were fired on, and eleven of their number killed. The Nationals captured fifty-three prisoners, a wagon-load of small-arms, thirty-three horses, and four mules. Their casualties were one man wounded and five horses shot.—Large and spirited meetings were held in all the wards in Boston, Mass., last night, to encourage volunteering. Committees were appointed, and the work was pursued with energy. A similar movement was made in cities and towns throughout the State.—At Gettysburgh, Pa., the national cemetery, for the burial of the Union soldiers who fell in the battles fought at that place in July, 1863, was consecrated.

—A combined expedition, consisting of the gunboat Morse, commanded by Captain Charles A. Babcock, and four hundred and fifty men from the One Hundred and Forty-eighth regiment of New-York volunteers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel George M. Guion, left Yorktown, Va., on Monday, November sixteenth, in search of a party of the rebel “Marine Brigade,” reported to be on their way from Richmond to Mob Jack Bay, to commit depredations on the Northern commerce.

The Morse landed the regiment the same evening at the head-waters of East River, which at once marched across the county to Matthews Court-House, where information was obtained that the “Marines” had left the place but a few hours previously. Passing the night there, early the next morning the march was continued northward as far as Shuffletown, on the Piankatank River. No traces of the rebels being discovered, the regiment turned about and scoured the country down to the mouth of the Piankatank, encamping that night at Cricket Hill.

The next morning, the eighteenth, crossing in small boats to Gwynne’s Island, the men were deployed across it, and the cover beaten as they advanced. About noon, near the lower end of the island, their labor was rewarded by the discovery of the entire party for which they were in search, consisting of an acting master in the rebel navy, named Webb, and fifteen men. The marines were hidden in the reeds and bushes of swamp, and offered little resistance. Each man was armed with a carbine, cutlass, and pistol of English manufacture. They had with them a twelve pounder breech-loading brass howitzer, which, however, they had previously concealed in the woods. A sloop, with which they intended to commit depredations on passing vessels, was discovered up a creek, and burned.

They were expecting to capture a large vessel, and eventually to attack one of the mail-boats plying between Fortress Monroe and Baltimore, from which city Webb and nearly all of his gang of pirates hailed. In the possession of Webb was found his commission as master in the rebel navy, together with a letter of instructions from Secretary Mallory, ordering him to proceed to the rivers and creeks of Eastern Virginia, organize his party, and annoy commerce as extensively as possible.

The One Hundred and Forty-eighth returned to Yorktown to-day with their prisoners, who were sent to Fort Norfolk.

November 18.—The firing on Fort Sumter from the National batteries continued. A rebel mortar battery on Sullivan’s Island shelled Gregg and the Cummings Point defences all day.— General Longstreet made an attack upon the Union outposts, on the Kingston road, near Knoxville, Tenn., and compelled General Sanders, in command of the forces there, to fall back to the town.—Doc. 19.

—General Averill arrived at New-Creek, Va. At or near Covington he encountered and dispersed a portion of Imboden’s command on their way to reenforce Echols, and captured twenty-five prisoners in the skirmish.

—The cavalry belonging to the Union forces under the command of Brigadier-General J. C. Sullivan, sent out from Harper’s Ferry, Va., returned this day, having been up the Valley to near New-Market, fighting Gilmore’s and White’s commands at Mount Jackson, bringing in twenty-seven prisoners, two commissioned officers, ninety head of cattle, three four-horse teams, besides thirty tents and all the horses and equipage of the prisoners; the party was under the command of Colonel Bayard, of the Thirty-first Pennsylvania cavalry.

He destroyed a number of tents and a quantity of salt. The men helped themselves to a wagon-load of tobacco, weighing about five hundred pounds.

The Union loss was two men killed, three wounded and three missing. — General Sullivan’s Despatch.

—Corpus Christi and Aranzas Pass, Texas, were captured by the National forces under the command of Major-General Banks. Yesterday afternoon at about three o’clock, the gunboat Monongahela, with a fleet of nine vessels, transports, etc., arrived at the bar and commenced landing troops through the surf on the south point of Mustang Island. This morning at sunrise, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Maine regiments, Thirty-fourth Iowa, Eighth Indiana, and company F, First Missouri artillery, with a part of the Twentieth Iowa volunteers, were ashore and in column en route up the beach toward Aranzas Pass. About eleven o’clock the Monongahela opened her two hundred-pound Parrott on the enemy’s battery, which was planted behind the sand-hills so as to completely cover the channel and southern point of St. Joseph’s Island. In the mean time the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Maine, the two advance regiments, succeeded in getting in the rear of the works within two miles, without being discovered. The armed transport McClellan, Captain Gray, drawing less water than the Monongahela, worked up close on to the battery, soon making it untenable. They abandoned the battery, sought shelter from the sand-hills, until their flag of truce was discovered, when they were permitted to surrender without terms. Their battery consisted of three twenty-four-pounders and one eight-inch sea-howitzer. The force of the garrison consisted of one company of regular artillery and two companies of drafted Texan militia, in all, about one hundred and fifty men.

November 17.—Nearly a hundred prisoners captured by General Averill in his engagement with the rebels in Pocahontas County, Va., arrived at Wheeling this morning, and were committed to the Athenæum. There was scarcely a whole suit of clothes in the party, and many of them were without shoes. Judging from the fact that a fall of snow was lately announced in the vicinity of where the fight took place, these shoeless rebels must have suffered terribly from the cold.

—The schooner Joseph L. Gerity, on a voyage from Matamoras to New-York, with a cargo of cotton and six passengers, was seized by the latter, who overcame the captain and crew; and after keeping them in confinement eight days, set them adrift at sea in a small boat, in which they eventually landed on the coast of Sisal. After the crew and captain were put in the boat the captors hoisted the rebel flag and fired a salute with pistols, declaring that they would carry vessel and cargo into Honduras and sell them.

November 16.—General Burnside retreating on the advance of Longstreet, evacuated Lenoir, Tenn., but fought a battle at Campbell’s Station. The fight lasted for some hours. The Federal troops retreated to the protection of their batteries, which opened upon the rebels with effect, and checked their advance. They fell back to the river; a second battle was fought in the afternoon, which continued until nightfall, Burnside remaining in possession of the ground. Loss of the rebels estimated at one thousand killed and wounded. Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, Twentieth Michigan, was killed.—Doc. 19.