Twenty-nine of the Indiana regiment, man's leg, who fell down in endeavoring to dodge a ball, which rolled over his leg; and a slight scratch on another's face from the explosion of a shell." The entire expedition then returned to Roanoke Island, stopping on their way to gather the spoils left at Chicamocomico. On receipt of the news of this disaster at Washington, General Mansfield was sent to Hatteras with five hundred troops. Their presence, with the recent lesson from the fleet, gave security to the island, and no further serious attempt was made by the rebels to annoy the Union forces in its occupation. It was evident, however, that without a proper fleet of light draft gunboats on the Sound in the presence of the enemy's steamers, the possession of Hatteras was available only for guarding the inlet, without making any of the expected impressions upon the mainland of the State. Why, it was asked, should the enemy be allowed quietly to intrench themselves at Roanoke Island, and thus hold command of the waters of Albemarle and the southern communications with Virginia. The country grew somewhat impatient with the Government as the season wore on, and the angry storms of winter fell upon the desolate, isolated position, and no response was given. The answer, however, was pronounced at last, and, as we shall see, in no doubtful language. in addition to those captured on the Fanny, were missing in this retreat. From an account of the affair published in the Norfolk Day-Book, purporting to be from Captain Carsville of the 3d Georgia regiment, it would appear that the rebels, as at the capture of the Fanny, were commanded by Colonel Wright. The firing on the encampment was from the 10-pound howitzer on board the transport Cotton Plant, about a mile from the shore. The Georgia regiment, on landing, dragged their guns with them through the heavy sand in the pursuit, so that they had themselves a taste of the hardships which they were inflicting on the fugitives. Newspaper anecdotes of personal prowess are not over reliable; but as we have the authority of a Georgia captain for the story, and as a characteristic specimen of its class, we give this anecdote of the pursuit from the account just cited. The incident is said to have occurred on the morning of the second day. "When about six miles from the starting-place, Colonel Wright, being on horseback and considerably in advance of his command, overtook a party of thirteen Yankees, together with their Adjutant. He made a gallant charge on them, when the Adjutant shot his horse and commenced loading again, when the Colonel grabbed up a small Yankee and presented him as a breastwork to ward off the Adjutant's fire. With this he advanced on the Adjutant with his repeater and captured four, in- lowed General Mansfield in the comcluding the Adjutant." In the same nar-mand; constant services were rendered rative we are informed that the Monticello poured in her shell upon the rebel party at the distance of half a mile from the shore for five hours "without injury to any one except a slight bruise on one Meantime, the post was firmly held. Brigadier-General Thomas Williams, an eminent officer of the regular army, fol to the blockading squadron; the illicit commerce of the enemy was checked, and an occasional prize taken. But the most prominent, if not the most important event at Hat eras, was the political A STATEMENT OF GRIEVANCES. 553 authorize the calling of a State Convention; they have prostituted their official positions to the purpose of a secret and infamous conspiracy which had predetermined the destruction of the Union, regardless of popular dissent; and, in the unscrupulous zeal of their treason, they have assumed powers without warrant, either express or implied, in the Constitution; they have arrogated the authority, through a Convention summoned with indecent haste, and acting in flagrant defiance of the wishes of the people, to perform an act legally impossible, and therefore without effect or force, in decreeing the secession of this Common assembly of the loyal inhabitants of the island. Though necessarily but a limited demonstration, and quite insignificant as an encroachment upon the vast area of secessiondom, it yet attracted no little attention, and was the means of calling forth the sympathies of the North. On the 12th of October a Convention of one hundred and eleven delegates of the citizens of Hyde county, of which Hatteras is a part, assembled at a church near the inlet, and adopted a "Statement of Grievances and a Declaration of Independence," in which they loudly proclaimed their loyalty to the United States, and expressed in the most decided manner their abhorrence of the "spurious government desig-wealth from the Federal Union. The nating itself the Confederate States of America,' and of the revolutionary and treasonable dynasty which now usurps the governing power of our own State." Like other documents of its class, it was modelled on the national Declaration of Independence, and found no lack of ma-ized by the laws, and occupying an attiterial in the violent and injurious acts of a revolutionary government trampling upon the hallowed rights of the people, for a long and serious bill of indictment. Passing over what is common to all such usurpations, we may note what is distinctive in the case of North Carolina. The dominant secession party was thus arraigned: ordinances of this Convention have never been submitted to the people for their ratification or rejection; they have commissioned ten men as Representatives of the State in a body called the Confederate Congress, unknown to and unauthor tude of open hostility to that Constitution which North Carolina has formally and definitively ratified and accepted as the supreme law of the land. And, as if to omit no incident of a complete disfranchisement, they have withheld from the electors the poor privilege of designating such Representatives." This Declaration bears the signatures of a select committee of three-the Rev. Marble Nash Taylor of the North Carolina Conference, Caleb B. Stowe and William O'Neil. "They have recklessly disregarded the will of the people to abide by the compact of the national Union, as repeatedly declared in public meetings through- In the following month this patriotic out the State, and by the emphatic and movement was brought prominently beoverwhelming vote of the qualified elect- fore the citizens of New York at a public ors of the Commonwealth in February meeting called to express sympathy and last; they have set aside the solemn and furnish aid for the people of North Cardeliberate disapproval of the machina-olina who had been impoverished by tions of the Disunionists, pronounced by their loyalty to the Union. The Hon. a majority of the people, in refusing to George Bancroft, the eminent historian, presided, and many distinguished men the power by which these are overruled, and have been taught to obey the laws first ordained for the government of mankind." spoke on the occasion. The Rev. Mr. Taylor, one of the authors of the Declaration just cited, unhesitatingly pronounced North Carolina not a secession State. It was true that she was out of the Union, but not by the voice of her people. At two elections in reference to that matter, they had declared, by large majorities, in favor of remaining firm for the Union. "Some four thousand of the inhabitants living on the narrow strip of land on the coast," he said, "had, on the first arrival of the troops, flocked to take the oath of allegiance; and this had cut them off from their scanty resources of traffic with the interior. They were a poor race, living principally by fishing and gathering of yoakum, an evergreen of spontaneous growth, which they dried and exchanged for corn." The claim for aid was supported by the testimony of officers on the coast and the recommendation of the President and Secretary of War. Mr. Bryant, the poet, seconded the appeal at the meeting, enforcing it as an opportunity to improve the visitation of war by turning it to a lesson of mutual charities which would bring us out of the conflict "a nobler branch of the human family than before, raised to a more exalted standard, more worthy of the fortunate light shining upon us in this Western hemisphere, more worthy of the glorious institutions under which we live." Of the suffering patriots for whom charity was solicited, he said, elevating their humble lives and their cause by associating them with the grand lessons of nature around them: "Their occupation is on the great deep, but they have not copied its turbulence in their lives. They have seen in its storms and its tumults "I have General Burnside, then preparing in silence and secrecy his Expedition, to rescue the afflicted region from the power of the enemy, earnestly joined in the appeal, improving the opportunity to eulogise the military talents and personal virtues of his friend General MeClellan, who had just succeeded General Scott in the Chief Command. known him," said he, "most intimately, as students together, as soldiers in the field, and as private citizens. For years we have lived in the same family, and I know him as well as I know any human being on the face of the earth, and I know that no more honest, conscientious man exists than General McClellan. He is an honest, Christian-like and conscientious man, and now let me add one thing, that he has the soundest head and the clearest military perception of any man in the United States." Such was the ample measure of admiration and confidence with which the country welcomed the new General. It may not be out of place to note the striking declarations which were made at this meeting by influential speakers on the topic of slavery. "We have a continent," said the Rev. R. C. Hitchcock, a prominent divine of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York, "which is a unit by its very structure, and we are essentially one race of men, without one dividing line of race or language. The leaders of the rebellion are sagacious enough to understand this. They have contemplated from the start a reconstruction of the Government, but they intend its corner-stone shall be black as A STORM AT HATTERAS. 555 ebony. This, then, is the issue issue-not The next that we hear of the North between dismemberment and unity, but Carolina loyalists is an announcement between a unity based upon freedom of the formation of a Provisional Govand a unity which is based upon human ernment at Hatteras Island on the 18th bondage. But we must have a unity of November," in which forty-five counbased on the old Constitution, which ties were represented by delegates and allowed slavery as evil-found an evil and tolerated,-which in the good providence of God it was hoped by and by might be ejected from the system." Dr. Francis Lieber saw in the attempt to foist the institution upon the reluctant world at the present time, the source of much of the acrimony with which the rebellion was undertaken and maintained. "There are a great many things," he said, "which distinguish the operation of Slavery in modern times-Slavery, that great anachronism, out of time, out of place in the nineteenth century. Now, one point has always struck me--and I may say that I have had a great deal of experience on that subject—is, that slavery because out of time and out of place, if once adopted, if once proclaimed as a good thing, leads people invariably at this time to a great degree of vindictiveness. I do not know any period in history in which any fanaticism has shown itself more vindictive than Slavery at the present period." As a result of this meeting and appeal, a large sum of money was contributed by the city of New York for the distressed Carolinians, and expended in various articles of necessity, which were in good time transported to Hatteras Island. By the time they reached there, however, a profitable employment had been afforded to the natives by the soldiers, which relieved the wants of the people, so that a considerable portion of the produce sent for charity was sold and the money returned to the New York Committee. authorized proxies." The Rev. Mr. Taylor was appointed Provisional Governor, and his Excellency ordered an election for the 2d Congressional District, at which Mr. Charles Henry Foster was elected a member of the National House of Representatives. But that body, when he presented himself at Washington the ensuing month, did not think the certificate of the Provisional Governor, or the proceedings at Hatteras, of sufficient importance to justify his admission. The fearful storm of the 2d of November should be chronicled among the incidents at Hatteras. It was the gale in which the fleet of Commodore Dupont's Port Royal Expedition suffered so severely on its passage. Its onset at Hatteras was most alarming. The waves dashed over the island in the night, submerging its lower portions between the forts, sweeping away a vast quantity of provisions and stores, which had just been landed at the wharf, driving the soldiers from their tents, threatening both forts, and rendering them quite uninhabitable. The Indiana 20th Regiment, which had not yet recovered from its early experience of Hatteras in its disasters at Chicamocomico, was most unfortunate. Its stock of winter clothing had then been captured by the enemy; now half of the new supply was carried off by the ocean, and the regiment was momentarily in expectation of being compelled to abandon its quarters at Fort Clark, and wade through the waters to such resting place as could be found on the higher making her way North. She struck on grounds above. The storm, however, in a few hours expended its first violence, and the garrison escaped without loss of life. But they had suffered serious discomfort particularly in the fearful removal of the sick.** It was in the sequel of this gale, three days afterward, that the French steam corvette Prony, Captain M. de Fontanges, carrying six guns and a crew of one hundred and forty officers and men, was wrecked to the south of Hatteras, off Ocracoke Inlet. She was cruising on the Southern coast, and was at the time Special Correspondence of the New York Tribune, Hatteras Inlet, Nov. 2, 1861. the sand, and there remained without assistance till she was in immediate danger of destruction, when two Confederate steamers of light draft arrived and took off her crew. They were received by the small fleet of Commodore Lynch in Pamlico Sound, and after returning to burn the vessel, "that nothing belonging to her might be made use of by either belligerent," were conveyed, by way of Albemarle Sound and the Dismal Swamp Canal, to Norfolk, whence they came by a flag of truce to Fortress Monroe, and were transported in safety to New York.* * Statement of Captain De Fontanges, New York Times, Nov. 14, 1861. V CHAPTER XXX V I. THE CAMPAIGN IN SOUTH-WESTERN VIRGINIA. WHEN General McClellan crossed the Ohio he sent Brigadier-General J. D. Cox, with a sufficient force of Ohio and Kentucky troops to oppose the movements of General Wise, the "chivalric" ex-Governor of Virginia, who, gathering around him a body of insurgents, was stimulating and assisting the revolt in the southerly and westerly part of the Kanawha river. His proclamation of the 6th of July, dated at Ripley, the capital of Jackson county, on the Ohio, summoned the citizens of that border region "to return to their patriotic duty and acknowledge their allegiance to Virginia and her Confederate States as their true and lawful sovereigns. You were Union men," was the conciliatory language of the appeal; so was I, and we held a right to be so until oppression and invasion and war drove us to the assertion of a second independence. The sovereign State proclaimed it by her Convention and by a majority of more than a hundred thousand votes at the polls. She has seceded from the old, and established a new Confederacy. She has commanded, and we must obey her voice. I come to execute her command-to hold out the olive branch to her true and peaceful citizens-to repel invasion from abroad and subdue treason only at home. Come to the call of the country which owes you protection as her native sons." We have seen General McClellan's anticipation from General Cox's column, in his despatch of the 13th of July, immediately after the victory of Rich Mountain, |