they went for. They were unaware that the ob- | ject of the so-called war was the capture of escaped slaves, together with the children of negro women who had mated with Indians, on the Southern plea that the children follow the fortunes of the mother. When the truth came out, the heart-burning in the North was sore enough to account, with other like provocations, for the present conflict. Parents and all society mourned the young men slaughtered by Indians in the swamps in such a cause. But the troops made themselves a reputation for spirit and discipline which has never been rivalled by Southern soldiery. When we hear of the military genius of the South, we naturally turn to what we know. We know something of the Mexican war, of which they make their boast. We know what a miserable enemy they had there; and we know what a miserable hand they made of several of the enterprises of the campaign. There is testimony enough to prevent its being ever forgotten that the commanders were at their wits' ends to get their troops out and home again, and what to do with them while abroad. In the absence of discipline on the one hand, and of due legal authority on the other, offences were constantly occurring which there were no proper means of dealing with; and punishments were inflicted which disgusted every foreigner in the force, (and there were many immigrants from Europe.) Soldiers were tied neck and knees together, and set down by the roadside, to be mocked by the troops marching past. Whatever could break a man's spirit or torture his passions was invented to supply the deficiency of authority; and the troops grew wilder every day. When ordered to pursue the enemy they piled their arms and went to play. When appointed to any service, as part of a scheme, they announced that they were going home; and the commanders cursed the very name of volunteers. The practical question now is whether that boasted Southern army and the present are at all of the same quality. All that we can know is that that army must be composed of certain elements. The slaveholders are a mere handful of men; and of them we know that very few are likely to fight their Northern kindred and customers with any relish. The non-slaveholders are the largest element; and they showed their quality in Mexico and in Kansas. The better part, in the Kansas case, went over to Northern views as soon as they learned what they were; and the worse portion were a mere banditti. The free blacks will hardly be sent North. It is announced that the Indians of three tribes have offered their services to the Confederacy; but they will be employed near home, no doubt, if at all. It is impossible to foresee what the campaign will be like, in circumstances so singular; but we may remember, while awaiting news, that the military reputation of the South, such as it is, has been gained in fields where there was no honor to win; and that the Southern vaunt is of the bravery, and not of the discipline, of the so-called chivalry. On the whole, these four considerations seem to point to a not distant conclusion, and to a desultory kind of conflict meantime. Tidings may be on the way to contradict or to confirm this view; but the facts on which it is founded seem to be as clear in their substance as they are serious in their significance. -London News, May 29. Doc. 215. "CONTRABAND NEGROES." GEN. BUTLER TO GEN. SCOTT THE following is the material part of Gen. Butler's letter to Gen. Scott, asking for advice as to the course he should pursue: Since I wrote my last, says Gen. Butler, the question in regard to slave property is becoming one of very serious magnitude. The inhabitants of Virginia are using their negroes in the batteries, and are preparing to send their women and children South. The escapes from them are very numerous, and a squad has come in this morning, (May 27,) and my pickets are bringing their women and children. Of course, these cannot be dealt with upon the theory on which I designed to treat the services of ablebodied men and women who might come within my lines, and of which I gave you a detailed account in my last despatch. I am in the utmost doubt what to do with this species of property. Up to this time I have had come within my lines men and women, with their children-entire familieseach family belonging to the same owner. I have, therefore, determined to employ, as I can do very profitably, the able-bodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and charging against their services the expense of care and sustenance of the nonlaborers, keeping a strict and accurate account as well of the services as of the expenditures, having the worth of the services and the cost of the expenditure determined by a board of survey hereafter to be detailed. I know of no other manner in which to dispose of this subject, and the questions connected therewith. As a matter of property, to the insurgents it will be of very great moment-the number that I now have amounting, as I am informed, to what in good times would be of the value of $60,000. Twelve of these negroes, I am informed, have escaped from the erection of the batteries on Sewall's Point, which fired upon my expedition as it passed by out of range. As a means of offence, therefore, in the enemy's hands, these negroes, when able-bodied, are of great importance. Without them the batteries could not have been erected, at least for many weeks. As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity, and deprives their masters of their services. How can this be done? As a political ques- | Lieutenant, R. Wiggins; Second Lieut., Dean. tion and a question of humanity, can I receive the services of a father and a mother and not take the children? Of the humanitarian aspect I have no doubt; of the political one I have no right to judge. I therefore submit all this to your better judgment; and, as these questions have a political aspect, I have ventured-and I trust I am not wrong in so doing -to duplicate the parts of my despatch relating to this subject, and forward them to the Secretary of War. Your obedient servant, Lieutenant-General Scott. BENJ. F. BUTLER. -N. Y. Times, June 2 SECRETARY OF WAR TO GENERAL BUTLER. WASHINGTON, May 30, 1861. Company B-First Lieut., Tilden, command- -National Intelligencer, June 3. Doo. 217. MR. W. H. RUSSELL'S LETTERS, SIR: Your action in respect to the negroes who came within your lines, from the service of the rebels, is approved. The Department is sensible of the embarrassments, which must surround officers conducting military operations in a State, by the laws of which slavery is THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, April 30. sanctioned. The Government cannot recogNOTHING I could say can be worth one fact nize the rejection by any State of its Federal which has forced itself upon my mind in referobligation, resting upon itself, among these Fed-ence to the sentiments which prevail among eral obligations. However, no one can be more the gentlemen of this State. I have been important than that of suppressing and dispers- among them for several days. I have visited ing any combination of the former for the pur- their plantations, I have conversed with them pose of overthrowing its whole constitutional freely and fully, and I have enjoyed that frank, authority. While, therefore, you will permit courteous, and graceful intercourse which conno interference, by persons under your com- stitutes an irresistible charm of their society. mand, with the relations of persons held to From all quarters have come to my ears the service under the laws of any State, you will, echoes of the same voice; it may be feigned, on the other hand, so long as any State within but there is no discord in the note, and it which your military operations are conducted, sounds in wonderful strength and monotony remain under the control of such armed com- all over the country. Shades of George III., binations, refrain from surrendering to alleged of North, of Johnson, of all who contended masters any persons who come within your against the great rebellion which tore these lines. You will employ such persons in the colonies from England, can you hear the chorus services to which they will be best adapted, which rings through the State of Marion, Sumkeeping an account of the labor by them per-ter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly formed, of the value of it, and the expenses of their maintenance. The question of their final disposition will be reserved for future determination. SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War. To Major-General Butler. -N. Y. Tribune, May 31. Doc. 216. SECOND REG'T MAINE VOLUNTEERS. THE following is a correct list of the officers: Colonel, Charles Jameson; Lieutenant-Colonel, C. W. Roberts; Major, George Varacy; Adjutant, John E. Reynolds; Quartermaster, C. V. Lord; Assistant Quartermaster, L. H. Pierce; Surgeon, W. H. Allen; Assistant Surgeon, A. C. Hamlin; (nephew of Vice-President Hamlin;) Chaplain, J. F. Mines; Sergeant-Major, E. L. Appleton. Company A-Captain, H. Bartlett; First hands in triumph? That voice says, "If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content." Let there be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire cannot be gratified. But the admiration for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride of having achieved their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians' hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are they who "would go back to-morrow if we could." An intense affection for the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and literature, preeminently distinguish the inhabitants of this State, who, glorying in 66 "Im their descent from ancient families on the three | on if their deeds support their words. islands, whose fortunes they still follow, and mortal hate, the study of revenge" will actuate with whose members they maintain not unfre- every blow, and never in the history of the quently familiar relations, regard with an aver-world, perhaps, will go forth such a dreadful sion of which it is impossible to give an idea va victis as that which may be heard before to one who has not seen its manifestations, the fight has begun. There is nothing in all the people of New England and the popula- the dark caves of human passion so cruel and tions of the Northern States, whom they regard deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians as tainted beyond cure by the venom of "Puri- profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been tanism." Whatever may be the cause, this is swelling for years, till it is the very life-blood the fact and the effect. "The State of South of the state. It has set South Carolina to work Carolina was," I am told, “founded by gentle- steadily to organize her resources for the strugmen." It was not established by witch-burning | gle which she intended to provoke if it did not Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who come in the course of time. Incompatibility implanted in the North the standard of Tor- of temper" would have been sufficient ground quemada, and breathed into the nostrils of their for the divorce, and I am satisfied that there newly-born colonies all the ferocity, blood- has been a deep-rooted design, conceived in thirstiness, and rabid intolerance of the Inquisi- some men's minds thirty years ago, and extion. It is absolutely astounding to a stranger tended gradually year after year to others', to who aims at the preservation of a decent neu- break away from the Union at the very first trality to mark the violence of these opinions. opportunity. The North is to South Carolina "If that confounded ship had sunk with those a corrupt and evil thing, to which for long Pilgrim Fathers on board," says one, years she has been bound by burning chains, 66 we never should have been driven to these while monopolists and manufacturers fed on extremities!" "We could have got on with her tender limbs. She has been bound in a these fanatics if they had been either Christians Maxentian union to the object she loathes. or gentlemen," says another; "for in the first New England is to her the incarnation of moral case they would have acted with common char- and political wickedness and social corruption. ity, and in the second they would have fought It is the source of every thing which South when they insulted us; but there are neither Carolina hates, and of the torrents of free Christians nor gentlemen among them!" thought and taxed manufactures, of abolition"Any thing on earth!" exclaims a third, "any ism and of filibustering, which have flooded form of government, any tyranny or despotism the land. Believe a southern man as he believes you will; but”—and here is an appeal more himself, and you must regard New England terrible than the adjuration of all the Gods- and the kindred States as the birthplace of im"nothing on earth shall ever induce us to sub-purity of mind among men and of unchastity mit to any union with the brutal, bigoted black-in women-the home of free love, of Fourrierguards of the New England States, who neither ism, of infidelity, of abolitionism, of false teachcomprehend nor regard the feelings of gentle- ings in political economy and in social life; men! Man, woman and child, we'll die first." a land saturated with the drippings of rotten Imagine these and an infinite variety of sim- philosophy, with the poisonous infections of ilar sentiments uttered by courtly, well-edu-a fanatic press; without honor or modesty; cated men, who set great store on a nice ob- whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valor servance of the usages of society, and who are and manhood have been swallowed up in a only moved to extreme bitterness and anger corrupt, howling demagogy, and in the marts when they speak of the North, and you will of a dishonest commerce. It is the merchants fail to conceive the intensity of the dislike of of New York who fit out ships for the slave the South Carolinians for the free States. trade, and carry it on in Yankee ships. It is There are national antipathies on our side of the capital of the North which supports, and the Atlantic which are tolerably strong, and it is the northern men who concoct and exehave been unfortunately pertinacious and long-cute the filibustering expeditions which have lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy the prince of darkness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among allied powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all mere indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to the animosity evinced by the gentry" of South Carolina for the "rabble of the North." The contests of Cavalier and Roundhead, of Vendean and Republican, even of Orangeman and Croppy, have been elegant joustings, regulated by the finest rules of chivalry, compared with those which North and South will carry Doc.-31 brought discredit on the slaveholding States. In the large cities people are corrupted by itinerant and ignorant lecturers-in the towns and in the country by an unprincipled press. The populations, indeed, know how to read and write, but they don't know how to think, and they are the easy victims of the wretched impostors on all the 'ologies and 'isms who swarm over the region, and subsist by lecturing on subjects which the innate vices of mankind induce them to accept with eagerness, while they assume the garb of philosophical abstractions to cover their nastiness in deference to a contemptible and universal hypocrisy. "Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies?" a political entity has succeeded in dividing itself. The slave States held the doctrine, or say they did, that each State was independent as France or as England, but that for certain purposes they chose a common agent to deal with foreign nations, and to impose taxes for the purpose of paying the expenses of the agency. We, it appears, talked of American citizens when there were no such beings at all. There were, indeed, citizens of the sovereign State of South Carolina, or of Georgia or Florida, who permitted themselves to pass under that designation, but it was merely a matter of personal convenience. It will be difficult for Europeans to understand this doctrine, as nothing like it has been heard before, and no such confederation of sovereign States has ever existed in any country in the world. The northern men deny that it existed here, and claim for the Federal Government powers not compatible with such assumptions. They have lived for the Union, they served it, they labored for and made money by it. A man as a New York man was nothing-as an American citizen he was a great deal. A South Carolinian objected to lose his identity in any description which included him and a "Yankee clockmaker" in the same category. The Union was against him; he remembered that he came from a race of English gentlemen who had been persecuted by the representatives for he will not call them the ancestors-of the Puritans of New England, and he thought that they were animated by the same hostility to himself. He was proud of old names, and he felt pleasure in tracing his connection with old families in the old country. His plantations were held by old charters, or had been in the hands of his fathers for several generations; and he delighted to remember that, when the Stuarts were banished from their throne and their country, the burgesses of South Carolina had solemnly elected the wandering Charles king of their state, and had offered him an asylum and a kingdom. The philosophical historian may exercise his ingenuity in conjecturing what would have been the result if the fugitive had carried his fortunes to Charleston. Assuredly the New England demon, who has | the confederacy which Europe knew simply as been persecuting the South till its intolerable cruelty and insolence forced her, in a spasm of agony, to rend her chains asunder. The New Englander must have something to persecute, and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, and persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of his favorite passion. Next to this motive principle is his desire to make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. He has acted on it in all his relations with the South, and has cheated and plundered her in all his dealings by villanous tariffs. If one objects that the South must have been a party to this, because her boast is that her statesmen have ruled the Government of the country, you are told that the South yielded out of pure good-nature. Now, however, she will have free trade, and will open the coasting trade to foreign nations, and shut out from it the hated Yankees, who so long monopolized and made their fortunes by it. Under all the varied burdens and miseries to which she was subjected, the South held fast to her sheet anchor. South Carolina was the mooring ground in which it found the surest hold. The doctrine of State rights was her salvation, and the fiercer the storm raged against her-the more stoutly demagogy, immigrant preponderance, and the blasts of universal suffrage bore down on her, threatening to sweep away the vested interests of the South in her right to govern the States-the greater was her confidence, and the more resolutely she held on her cable. The North attracted "hordes of ignorant Germans and Irish," and the scum of Europe, while the South repelled them. The industry, the capital of the North increased with enormous rapidity, under the influence of cheap labor and manufacturing ingenuity and enterprise, in the villages which swelled into towns, and the towns which became cities under the unenvious eye of the South. She, on the contrary, toiled on slowly, clearing forests and draining swamps to find new cotton grounds and rice-fields, for the employment of her own industry and for the development of her only capital-" involuntary labor." The tide of immigration waxed stronger, and by degrees she saw the districts into which she claimed the right to introduce this capital closed against her, and occupied by free labor. The doctrine of" squatter sovereignty," and the force of hostile tariffs, which placed a heavy duty on the very articles which the South most required, completed the measure of injuries to which she was subjected, and the spirit of discontent found vent in fiery debate, in personal insults, and in acrimonious speaking and writing, which increased in intensity in proportion as the abolition movement, and the contest between the federal principle and State rights, became more vehement. I am desirous of showing in a few words, for the information of English readers, how it is that South Carolina contains 84,000 square miles and a population of 720,000 inhabitants, of whom 385,000 are black slaves. In the old rebellion it was distracted between revolutionary principles and the loyalist predilections, and at least one-half of the planters were faithful to George III., nor did they yield till Washington sent an army to support their antagonists and drove them from the colony. In my next letter I shall give a brief account of a visit to some of the planters, as far as it can be made consistent with the obligations which the rites of hospitality impose on the guest as well as upon the host. These gentlemen are well-bred, courteous, and hospitable. A genuine aristocracy, they have time to cultivate their minds, to apply themselves to poli all this in defence of the sacred right of rebellion on the part of "his State." He is not now, nor has he been for years, a slave-owner; all his family and familiar associations connect him with the North. There are no naval stations on the Southern coasts, except one at Pensacola, and he knows almost no one in the South. He has no fortune whatever, his fleet consists of two small river or coasting steamers, without guns, and as he said, in talking over the resources of the South, "My bones will be bleached many a long year before the Confederate States can hope to have a navy." "State Rights!" To us the question is simply inexplicable or absurd. And yet thousands of Amer tics and the guidance of public affairs. They travel and read, love field sports, racing, shooting, hunting, and fishing, are bold horsemen, and good shots. But, after all, their state is a modern Sparta-an aristocracy resting on a helotry, and with nothing else to rest upon. Although they profess (and I believe, indeed, sincerely) to hold opinions in opposition to the opening of the slave trade, it is nevertheless true that the clause in the Constitution of the Confederate States which prohibited the importation of negroes, was especially and energetically resisted by them, because, as they say, it seemed to be an admission that slavery was in itself an evil and a wrong. Their whole system rests on slavery, and as such they de-icans sacrifice all for it. The river at Savannah fend it. They entertain very exaggerated ideas of the military strength of their little community, although one may do full justice to its military spirit. Out of their whole population they cannot reckon more than 60,000 adult men by any arithmetic, and as there are nearly 30,000 plantations, which must be, according to law, superintended by white men, a considerable number of these adults cannot be spared from the state for service in the open field. The planters boast that they can raise their corps without any inconvenience by the labor of their negroes, and they seem confident that the negroes will work without superintendence. But the experiment is rather dangerous, and it will only be tried in the last extremity. SAVANNAH, Ga., May 1. It is said that "fools build houses for wise men to live in." Be that true or not, it is certain that "Uncle Sam" has built strong places for his enemies to occupy. To-day I visited Fort Pulaski, which defends the mouth of the Savannah River and the approaches to the city. It was left to take care of itself, and the Georgians quietly stepped into it, and have been busied in completing its defences, so that it is now capable of stopping a fleet very effectually. Pulaski was a Pole who fell in the defence of Savannah against the British, and whose memory is perpetuated in the name of the fort, which is now under the Confederate flag, and garrisoned by bitter foes of the United States. Among our party were Commodore Tatnall, whose name will be familiar to English ears in connection with the attack on the Peiho Forts, where the gallant American showed the world that "blood was thicker than water;" Brigadier-General Lawton, in command of the forces of Georgia, and a number of naval and military officers, of whom many had belonged to the United States regular service. It was strange to look at such a man as the Commodore, who for forty-nine long years had served under the Stars and Stripes, quietly preparing to meet his old comrades and friends, if needs be, in the battle-field-his allegiance to the country and to the flag renounced, his long service flung away, his old ties and connections severed-and is broad as the Thames at Gravesend, and resembles that stream very much in the color of its waters and the level nature of its shores. Ricefields bound it on either side, as far down as the influence of the fresh water extends, and the eye wanders over a flat expanse of inud and water, and green osiers and rushes, till its search is arrested on the horizon by the unfailing line of forest. In the fields here and there are the white-washed square wooden huts in which the slaves dwell, looking very like the beginnings of the camp in the Crimea. At one point a small fort, covering a creek by which gun-boats could get up behind Savannah, displayed its "garrison" on the walls, and lowered its flag to salute the small blue ensign at the fore which proclaimed the presence of the Commodore of the Naval Forces of Georgia on board our steamer. The guns on the parapet were mostly field-pieces mounted on frameworks of wood instead of regular carriages. There is no mistake about the spirit of these people. They seize upon every spot of vantage ground and prepare it for defence. There were very few ships in the river; the yacht Camilla, better known as the America, the property of Captain Deasy, and several others of those few sailing under British colors, for most of the cotton ships are gone. After steaming down the river about twelve miles, the sea opened out to the sight, and on a long, inarshy, narrow island near the bar, which was marked by the yellowish surf, Fort Pulaski threw out the Confederate flag to the air of the Georgian 1st of May. The water was too shallow to permit the steamer to go up to the jetty, and the party landed at the wharf in boats. A guard was on duty at the landingtall, stout young fellows, in various uniforms, or in rude mufti, in which the Garibaldian red shirt and felt slouched hats predominated. They were armed with smooth-bore muskets (date 1851), quite new, and their bayonets, barrels, and locks were bright and clean. The officer on duty was dressed in the blue frockcoat dear to the British linesman in days gone by, with brass buttons, emblazoned with the arms of the State, a red silk sash, and glazed kepi, and straw-colored gauntlets. Several wooden huts, with flower gardens in |