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siderable numbers accepted their freedom and came under the tection of the national flag. Amidst the great prejudice and many embarrassments which attended a measure so new and so divergent from the political habits of the country, freedmen with commendable alacrity enlisted in the Federal army. There was in some quarters a painful inquiry about their moral capacity for service. That uncertainty was brought to a sudden end in the siege of Port Hudson. The newly raised negro regiments exhibited all necessary valor and devotion in the military assaults which were made, with desperate courage, and not without fearful loss, by General Banks. This protracted operation engaged nearly all of General Banks' available forces. While it was going on, insurgent troops which were called up from Texas re-occupied much of the southwestern portion of Louisiana which he had before reclaimed. The surrender of Port Hudson, however, set his army at liberty, and he has already made considerable progress in restoring the national authority thus temporarily displaced.

The complete occupation of the Mississippi by the national forces has effectually divided the insurrectionary region into two parts; and among the important features of this division, one which is of the highest practical significance is, that the field of military operations of the insurrection is chiefly on the eastern side of the river, while its supplies have been mainly drawn from the prairies of Arkansas and Texas, which stretch away from the western shore. These prairies can no longer supply the insurgents with cattle for sustenance and use in the field, and, on the other hand, arms, ordnance, and ammunition can no longer be sent from the eastern manufactories and deposits to forces employed or in garrison in the west. The value of the acquisition of the Mississippi in this respect was illustrated only a few days since in the capture by General Grant, near Natchez, of five thousand beeves and two thousand mules which had crossed to the eastern bank, and at the same time many hundred thousands of cartridges and other stores which had just been landed at the western end of the same ferry.

A vigorous blockade has been maintained at Charleston; and although fast steamers of light draught, and painted with obscure colors, occasionally succeed in slipping through the blockading squadron in the morning and evening twilight, many are destroyed, and more are captured. An attack by the fleet made on the sev

enth day of April last, upon the forts and batteries which defend the harbor, failed because the rope obstructions in the channel fouled the screws of the iron-clads and compelled them to retire after passing through the fire of the batteries. Those vessels bore the fire of the forts, although some defects of construction were revealed by the injuries they received. The crews passed through an unexampled cannonade with singular impunity. Not one life was lost on board of a monitor. The defects disclosed have been remedied, and an attack is now in progress, with good prospect of ultimate success, having for its object the reduction of the forts in the harbor by combined sea and land forces. We occupy more than half of Morris Island with land forces, which, aided by batteries afloat and batteries ashore, are pushing siege works up to Fort Wagner, a strong earthwork which has been twice assaulted with great gallantry, but without success. On the 17th of June the Atlanta, which was regarded by the insurgents as their most. formidable iron-clad vessel, left Savannab, and came down the Wilmington River. The national iron-clads Weehawken, Captain John Rogers, and Nahant, Commander John Downes, were in readiness to meet her. At four o'clock fifty-four minutes the Atlanta fired a rifle-shot across the stern of the Weehawken, which struck near the Nahant. At 5.15 the Weehawken, at a range of three hundred yards, opened upon the Atlanta, which had then grounded. The Weehawken fired five shots, four of which took effect on the Atlanta. She surrendered at five o'clock and thirty minutes.

Our lines have not changed in North Carolina. All attempts of the insurgents to recapture the towns from which they had been expelled had been repulsed. Much damage has been inflicted upon their communications, and valuable military stores have been destroyed by expeditions into the interior. North Carolina shows. some symptoms of disaffection towards the insurgent league. Similar indications are exhibited in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas.

The situation on the York and James rivers has remained unchanged since the withdrawal of the army of General McClellan from the Peninsula a year ago. Attempts by the insurgents to retake Williamsburg and Suffolk have been defeated, but the garrison at the latter place has been withdrawn, for purely military reasons, to a more defensible line.

I now return to the army of the Potomac, which was left resting and refitting after putting an end to the first insurgent invasion of Maryland. General McClellan recrossed the Potomac and entered Virginia in November, and obliged the invading forces under Lee to fall backward to Gordonsville, south of the Rappahannock. When the army of the Potomac reached Warrenton it was placed under command of General Burnside. He marched to Falmouth, hoping to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, and to move at once upon Richmond. Delays, resulting from various causes, without fault of the General, permitted the insurgents to occupy the heights of Fredericksburg, and when, at length, in December, General Burnside crossed the Rappahannock, his assault upon Lee's well fortified position failed. He skilfully recrossed the river without loss. General Hooker succeeded to the command, and it was not until the beginning of May that the condition of the river and roads permitted a renewal of offensive operations. The General crossed the Rappahannock and accepted a battle, which proved equally sanguinary to both parties, and unsuccessful to the army of the Potomac. The heights of Fredericksburg were captured by General Sedgwick's corps, but the whole army was compelled to return to the north bank of the river. After this battle, Lee, in the latter part of May and in June, withdrew his army from General Hooker's front, and ascended the south bank of the Rapidan, towards the sources of the Rappahannock, entered the Shenandoah valley, and once more tempted the fortune of war by invading the loyal states. A severe cavalry engagement at Beverly Ford unmasked this movement. The army of the Potomac broke up its camps and marched to the encounter. The militia of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York flew to arms, and occupied Baltimore, Harrisburg, and the line of the Susquehanna. The two armies met at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, and after a fierce contest of three days' duration, and terrible slaughter on both sides, the insurgents recoiled from the position held by General Meade, who had then been only four days in command of the army of the Potomac. On the 4th of July, the day of the surrender of Vicksburg, Lee retreated, passing through Chambersburg and Hagerstown to Williamsport, where the proper disposition to attack him was made by General Meade. Deceived concerning the state of the river, supposed to be unfordable, General Meade, hourly expecting reinforcements, delayed the attack a day

too long, and the insurgents, partly by fording and partly by floating bridges, succeeded in withdrawing across the river by night, with their artillery and a great part of their baggage. Much of this baggage, as well as of the plunder which Lee had collected, was destroyed by cavalry, or thrown out of the wagons to make room for the wounded whom Lee carried off from the battle-field. He had buried most of his dead of the first day's conflict at Gettysburg. The remainder, together with those who fell on the second and third days of the battle, in all forty-five hundred, were buried by the victorious army. Many thousand insurgents, wounded and captives, fell into the hands of General Meade. It is not doubted that this second unsuccessful invasion cost the insurgents forty thousand men. Our own loss was severe, for the strife was obstinate and deadly. General Meade crossed the Potomac. Lee retired again to Gordonsville, where he is now understood to be in front of our forces.

While the stirring events which have been related were occurring in the east and in the west, General Rosecrans advanced upon Bragg, who, with little fighting, hastily abandoned his fortified positions of Shelbyville and Tullahoma, in southern Tennessee. General Rosecrans took, and yet holds them, while Bragg with severe loss in a hurried retreat has fallen back to Chattanooga. It is understood that his army had been already much weakened by detachments sent from it to reinforce Johnston, with a view to a raising of the siege of Vicksburg.

I must not overlook the operations of cavalry. General Stoneman, in connection with the movement upon Chancellorsville, made a rapid and effective passage through the insurgent country, from the Rappahannock to the York River, which will be remembered among the striking achievements of the war. While our forces were operating against Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Colonel Grierson, with a force of fifteen hundred men, left Corinth, on the northern border of the State of Mississippi, and made an expedition, in which he broke military communications, destroyed stores, and effected captures through the length and breadth of the state, and finally, without serious loss, joined the army of General Banks, then engaged in the siege of Port Hudson.

John Morgan, hitherto the most successful of the insurgent partisans, recently passed around the lines of General Burnside, and

crossed the States of Tennessee and Kentucky. Moving northward, and avoiding all large bodies of our troops, he reached the Ohio River at Brandenburg, below Louisville, and seized two steamboats, with which he crossed into Indiana. Thence proceeding rapidly eastward, subsisting on the country and impressing horses as his own gave out, he traversed a portion of Indiana and nearly the whole breadth of Ohio, destroying railroad stations and bridges, and plundering the defenceless villages. The people rallied to arms under the calls of their governors. Some of them occupied the most important points, while others barricaded the roads or hung upon the rear of the intruders. Morgan found no disaffected citižens to recruit his wasted ranks, and when he reached the Ohio his force was prevented from crossing by the gunboats and driven backward with great slaughter. His force was between two thousand five hundred and four thousand horse, with several pieces of artillery. Only some three hundred succeeded in recrossing the Ohio and escaping into the wilds of western Virginia. Many perished in battles and skirmishes, and the remainder, including Morgan himself, his principal officers, and all his artillery, were finally captured by the national forces. An attempt has just been made by the insurgents to invade eastern Kentucky, which probably was begun with a view to make a diversion in favor of Morgan's escape, but the forces, after penetrating as far as Lexington, have been routed by detachments from General Burnside's army and pursued, with the capture of many prisoners and of all their artillery.

This review of the campaign shows that no great progress has been made by our arms in the east. The opposing forces there have been too equally matched to allow great advantages to accrue to either party, while the necessity for covering the national capital in all contingencies has constantly restrained our generals and forbidden such bold and dangerous movements as usually conduct to brilliant military success. In the west, however, the results have been more gratifying. Fifty thousand square miles have been reclaimed from the possession of the insurgents. On referring to the annexed map it will be seen that since the breaking out of the insurrection the government has extended its former sway over and through a region of two hundred thousand square miles, an area as large as Austria or France, or the peninsula of Spain and Portugal. The insurgents lost in the various field and siege operations of