meet Gen. Patrick, he will be at the Lacey House, at two o'clock to day. The firing upon the train this morning was through mistake, and contrary to orders. I should much regret to learn that any departing families had been injured. Very respectfully,

E. V. SUMNER, Brevet Major-General U.S.A. At two o'clock, pursuant to invitation, the afore-mentioned committee, accompanied by Gen. Kershaw, proceeded across the river. After an interview of half an hour's length the committee returned with word that a final answer might be expected from Gen. Sumner during the evening. About six P.M. the following note was received from General Sumner:

HEADQUARTERS RIGHT GRAND DIVISION,
November 22.

To the Mayor and Common Council, Fredericksburgh, Va.:

began to think the entire North was emptying itself through their streets.

I entered the town with Gen. Ross's division, or rather in advance of it, with two of the General's staff, whom he sent ahead. The main road was so thronged with columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery that it was almost impossible to force our horses past the dense masses that poured like a living avalanche along the main road. So we took to the fields and across the country. We entered the town by its eastern suburb, and in that quarter found it almost deserted by citizens. The dark masses of McArthur's division were just swarming out of the south side of the town as the head of Ross's entered the north.

Holly Springs is the handsomest place we have seen yet on our southward march. It is beautifully laid out, with wide streets, planted on each Many of the residences are large and tastefully built. It has half dozen churches, one of which, the Episcopal Church, is a little architectural gem.

side with rows of shade-trees.

Doc. 55.

ADVANCE ON HOLLY SPRINGS, MISS.

CAMP NEAR WATERFORD, MISS.,
November 30, 1862.

DAY before yesterday morning we took up our line of march from Davis's Mills to Holly Springs. The weather, which up to the time of our departure had been clear and sunny, suddenly turned cold and lowering on Friday morning, and a piercing wind blew all of our first day's march. To ward noon on Friday we passed the place where Lee's cavalry had so successful a skirmish with the enemy a week or so ago. The only relics of the fight were two or three dead horses lying by the roadside, and the remnants of several broken saddles.

But these evidences of war are not peculiar to that spot alone. Along the whole line of the road from La Grange to this place, the fences are opened for cavalry charges, and dead horses are to be seen in hundreds of places. Indeed, there is not a mile of the road between this place and La Grange which has not been the scene of some skirmish or chase within the last three weeks. Every house along the road is empty, and with their shattered doors and windows standing open, present a woful picture of the desolation that follows in the track of war.

About ten o'clock on Saturday morning, (twenty-ninth,) the advance of the Federal army passed through Holly Springs. No halt was made there, but all day Saturday, and all the fore-part of to-day, regiment after regiment, division close on the heels of division, yesterday General Hamilton's column, and to-day General McPherson's, until the citizens

The town once had six or seven thousand inhabitants, but now has probably not more than one third of that number. Every store was of course closed; some of the merchants, who had any stock left, carried it out of town as soon as they heard of the approach of the army. One man who had had large contracts for supplying the rebel army, had moved his stock to the woods a few miles south of town, where the goods were discovered secreted. The troops who discovered it supplied themselves well from a large stock of tobacco which he had brought to Holly Springs to supply the rebel army.

I was informed on good authority that a large stock of clothing which was discovered in one store in the town, was a branch of the house of Seligman & Brother, of St. Louis. The goods were here to be sold to the rebels, and if, as I have every reason to believe, the goods belong to Seligman & Brother, that firm has been acting traitorously to the Government which is protecting them in selling military goods to the Union army at Memphis, and at various other military points where the army is stationed. Messrs. Seligman & Brother have one branch too many to be loyal men.

We only remained in the town about an hour, and were then obliged to hurry out to overtake the division, which scarcely paused in its passage through. Just outside of the town, on the west, we found two fine vineyards, and procured from the proprietor of one of them some splendid Catawba wine.

Last evening, just before dark, we marched down a narrow gorge into a deep basin about a mile in width and perhaps two miles in length. On every side it is surrounded with bold bluffs inaccessibly steep.

From the centre of this valley or basin where "Dunkin's Mills" stand, one looks up at an angle of forty-five degrees to the summit of the hills that encircle it on every side. Out of these hills gush hundreds of springs, and in the bottom of the valley are half a dozen small lakes, some of

them formed by the dams built to obtain a head of water to run the mills. When we moved in, Quimby's division had passed through, ascended one of the zigzag roads, and were encamped on the eastern hill summits, McArthur's on the south side of the valley. General Ross's command soon commenced winding its way serpentlike up the hills, and bivouacked on the north side of the basin, so that the three divisions of Gen. Hamilton's column surrounded the valley. No more picturesque scene could be imagined than that of yesterday evening-the little lakes, deep set like mirrors in the bosom of the hills, the thousands of soldiers filling their canteens, the thousands of horses led down to drink and splashing in the margin of the water, the smoke of the innumerable camp-fires on the hill-tops, the whole drawn on a background of a few long streaks of fiery cloud that the sun left as he went down, formed a picture that few who saw it will forget.

Just before we came to the camping ground yesterday evening, we passed the spot on the road where Colonel Lee, who is in the advance, had four hours previous had a skirmish with the enemy's cavalry.

On one side of the road was the newly made grave of one of the Seventh Kansas cavalry, killed in the fight; and on the other side, the baggage of the artillerymen, of the two guns of the Second Iowa battery that are with Lee, was thrown just as they threw it down when the enemy was first seen. The rebels soon retreated with a loss of six killed, and the artillery and cavalry were far ahead of us in pursuit. During the evening, until quite dark, we could occasionally hear the faint report of their guns as they continued to drive the enemy back along the road toward the Tallahatchie River.

Colonel Lee, with his brigade of cavalry and two ten-pound Parrott guns, was far in the advance ever since we left Holly Springs, and his advance was one continued skirmish along the whole distance from Holly Springs to where he now is, within two miles of the Tallahatchie.

this side of the river. One of their two guns had been disabled by having the axletree shot in two, but not a man was hurt. The Thirty-ninth and Twenty-seventh Ohio regiments of infantry, which had been sent forward in the forenoon, were also returning, to take up their quarters for the night at the same place, four miles this side of the enemy's lines.

They all report the enemy strongly fortified on the Tallahatchie, having two batteries behind heavy breastworks on the north side of the river; one of these, a battery of six guns, three of which are twenty-four pound siege-guns, is just at the bridge which crosses the Tallahatchie. On the south bank of the river they have three small forts, each one of which commands both the railroad and the wagon-road bridges. If we judge by their spirited firing, the rebels are determined upon making a stubborn fight at the Tallahatchie, but let them fight as stubbornly as they will, there can be no result to them but defeat-the armies of Sherman and Grant will overwhelm them.

This evening, after Colonel Lee's forces and the two Ohio regiments had withdrawn to camp, some distant firing was heard in the south-west, which must have been Sherman attacking the enemy at Wyatt's Ford. The sky was lowering and the air was thick with mist, and the distant discharges of the guns do not come to us in sharp reports. The sound is like rolls of distant, muttering thunder, premonitions of a storm that will burst against the rebel fortifications very soon, perhaps to-morrow. If the attack is deferred longer than that, it is my humble opinion that the enemy will not wait to receive it.

Doc. 56.

W. L. F. -Missouri Democrat.

SECOND MINNESOTA VOLUNTEERS. REPORT OF CHAPLAIN CRESSY.

This morning firing was heard again in the front, and as we had learned yesterday, while we were at Holly Springs, that Gen. Sherman, with the army from Memphis, was at "Chulahoma," only eight miles west of us, we were at first in doubt as to whether he had not reached the Tallahatchie and was attacking the enemy at Wyatt's Ford, which is five miles west of Abbeyville.

This afternoon, however, when I rode down the road toward the Tallahatchie, I met Lee's cavalry coming back to camp about four miles

for these four months, is probably more varied by stirring events, severe toil, great endurance, unflinching devotion to duty, and general health and vigor of nerve, than it ever has been, or ever will be, for the same length of time, while we are in the service.

This period commences with that melancholy event, the cowardly murder by guerrillas, upon the sixth day of August, of our much-beloved Brig.-General Robert L. McCook. As a military officer, he was universally and deservedly respected and beloved by his brigade; and by none more so than by the Second Minnesota. His murder cast a deep gloom over this regiment; and his death, even to this day, is referred to among us only with deep emotions of sorrow. We shall ever cherish his memory with chasten

ed and hallowed delight, and hand his name down to posterity as a true patriot and a brave commander.

After spending twelve days near Dechard, Tennessee, at the great springs, we left that place, August twentieth, for Pelham, twelve miles east. Here we bivouacked upon a dreary, rocky bluffside for six days, challenging in every honorable way the rebel Bragg to fight us, who was, with a powerful army exceeding ours in number, passing north within a few miles east of us. But all to no purpose. He would not accept the challenge.

September fourth and fifth found us at Murfreesboro, where our train, after a hazardous trip from Dechard, rejoined us, and we were again in tents, after having been without them for ten days.

From September seventh to the fourteenth, we were in Nashville, engaged in guarding the city, and in fatigue duties upon the extensive fortifications then being erected.

On Sabbath afternoon, September fourteenth, by the approbation of Gen. Stedman, I secured one of the principal churches in Nashville, for the special use of our brigade, where we could have preaching every Sabbath, in a place dedicated to the worship of God, instead of being exposed to all the inconveniences of field-preaching. While thus dreaming, in common with the whole regiment, that we should spend many months in Nashville, the order came at three o'clock P.M. on that day, that we must march for Louisville, Ky., in one hour, with five days' rations in our haversacks, leaving our tents all standing.

This order came like a thunderbolt upon us. But such a folding of blankets, filling knapsacks and haversacks, saddling horses and harnessing mules, leaping of men from tent to tent, and rushing of teams to and fro, I am sure are seldom seen. But when that hour had passed, all were in line for that long and never-to-be-forgotten march, which we had in no sense anticipated at the beginning of that hour.

The weather was warm, the roads excessively dusty, the springs were low, many of the streams were entirely dried up, and for days constantly marching in a thick cloud of dust, nothing but stagnant water in sink-holes could be obtained to slake our thirst. At the same time we had nothing but hard bread and pork, and very light rations of these, without coffee or sugar. At Bowling Green we drew flour, but had no means of baking it but by throwing it into hot ashes. But all this was endured with that patriotic, soldierly bearing which is the pride of our American

army.

September 27th.-In thirteen days we arrived at Louisville. When actually marching-for we made a few halts for a part or all of a day-we varied from twenty to thirty miles per day in making the two hundred miles from one city to the other.

After spending three days in Louisville, in receiving rations, clothing, and a payment, we left

that city as we came, with thousands of others in pursuit of the enemy. We cannot forbear mentioning two or three incidents, which occurred in that pursuit, that are especially associated with this regiment, here of a similar character might have occurred, had it not been for our reserved position. Our division was the reserve of our corps, and our brigade was the reserve of our division.

Monday, October 6th.-Not anticipating an attack, we left our camp at sunrise. That day our regiment will not soon forget. Our brigade led the division, and our regiment the brigade. Thus we were thrown on that day in front of all our forces, upon that route. At Springfield we were unceremoniously met by a spirited and ra pid cannonading in our front, while round shot and shell were dealt out to us more bountifully than was for our convenience. At five different times during that day, upon our march, we were in like manner fiercely attacked, and at each time, though the enemy had a chance to choose their own positions, by the skilful and masterly movement of our able colonel, and the spirited and undaunted energy of our men in skirmishing, flanking and charging, the rebels were driven back each time by our regiment alone. In one of these skirmishes we left eight of the enemy upon the field. How many of them fell in the other four we have no means of knowing, as we were making a rapid march and clearing the track for the thousands of forces coming in our rear. In all these running fights not one of our men received a wound, though some of us had narrow escapes, especially from the bursting shells.

In the bloody battle of Perryville, October ninth, on account of our reserved position, we were not ordered up until late in the afternoon. A part of McCook's corps, after a fierce resistance, were falling back before the enemy. Our whole brigade were brought up to arrest their progress, and that, too, under a terrific fire from their artillery. Our battery-Loder's-one of the most powerful in the service, replied with such skill and energy that soon disabled and silenced the strongest battery in Bragg's army. But while this murderous duel of batteries was raging, our brigade was exposed to their cross fire, and the bursting of the shells from each. A hotter and more dangerous place in this world no man has a right to anticipate as a test of his valor. The going in of our brigade at that critical moment saved that portion of our army there engaged from a perfect rout.

By a kind Providence, not a man of us was in the least degree injured. God's hand seemed in a wonderful manner to protect each and all.

The darkness of night soon put an end to this murderous fray, and our whole brigade, like herds of tigers crouching for a last murderous pounce upon their prey, laid down upon their arms in line of battle, to await, as they supposed, an appalling strife at the dawn of the morning. But when that morning came the enemy had fled, and we had nothing to do but to take our breakfast