TELEGRAPH. The construction of a telegraph around the earth made a considerable progress during the year. Grants and privileges were made by the Russian and British Governments, which are highly favorable, to this object. Through an arrangement with Mr. Perry McD. Collins, the Russian Government undertakes to construct a line of telegraph from St. Petersburg to the mouth of the Amoor river, in Eastern Asia, a distance of about seven thousand miles; and it has already built the line as far as Irrutsk, on Lake Baikal, nearly three fourths of the distance. Mr. Collins and his associates then take up the line at the mouth of the Amoor river, and continue it by way of Behring's strait, until it shall intersect at some point between Chicago and the Pacific coast, the present lines. The Russian Government grants the exclusive privilege for 33 years for the construction of this line through its territory on the north west coast. The British Government has proceeded with great liberality relative to its territory, known as British Columbia. Where the line crosses Behring's strait is about 66°N. latitude. From the Russian line others will soon stretch into India and China, and other parts of Asia. A line from San Francisco already extends some distance north on the Pacific coast. TENNESSEE. After the retreat of General Bragg from Murfreesboro' in July, Western and Middle Tennessee were entirely under the control of the Federal army. The advance of Gen. Burnside into East Tennessee was followed by a defeat of the Confederate force, and a reduction of their strength in that part of the State. (See ARMY OPERATIONS.) The subject of a restoration of the State to the Union was considerably discussed, and some conventions were held, one of which assembled at Nashville on the 1st of July. The military governor expressed a willingness to issue writs of election whenever the people in a suitable manner manifested their willingness and solicitude to choose legislators and commence in good faith the work of re-organization. The guerilla system prevailed so extensively that it furnished the greatest obstacle to this object. The State was exempted from the operation of the emancipation proclamation, and upon its reorganization an effort will probably be made to remove slavery. The views of Gov. Johnson were thus expressed in a public speech made in September:

Tennessee is not out of the Union, never has been and never will be out. The bonds of the Constitution and the Federal power will always prevent that. This Government is perpetual; provision is made for reforming the Government and amending the Constitution, and admitting States into the Union; not for letting them out of it.

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Where are we now? There is a rebellion; this was anticipated, as I said. The rebel army is driven back. Here lies your State; a sick man in his bed, emaciated and exhausted, paralyzed in all his powers and unable

to walk alone. The physician comes. Don't quarrel about antecedents, but administer to his wants; and sends an agent or a military governor, whichever you cure him as quickly as possible. The United States please to call him, to aid you in restoring your government. Whenever you desire, in good faith, to restore civil authority, you can do so, and a proclamation for an election will be issued as speedily as it is practicable to hold one. One by one all the agencies of your State government will be set in motion. A legislature will be elected. Judges will be appointed temporarily, until you can elect them at the polls; and so of sheriff's, county court judges, justices and other officers, until the way is fairly open for the people, and all the parts of civil government resume their ordinary functions. This is no nice intricate metaphysical question. It is a plain, common sense matter, and there is nothing in the way but obstinacy.

The provisional organization previously created by the President continued throughout the year, and on the 26th of January ensuing, Governor Johnson issued his proclamation for a State election. About twenty-five thousand of the citizens of the State entered the Union army, and several colored regiments were also organized. The desolations of the State in consequence of the war were without a parallel, especially in East Tennessee.

TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES. These are Arizona, Colorado, Dakota, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington. These vast districts have attracted considerable attention during the year, in consequence of the mineral wealth of several of them. Large numbers of persons have emigrated thither, and mining has been commenced on an extensive scale. For the details of their area, population, and civil organizations, the reader is referred to the ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA, 1862.

TEXAS. Gov. Lubbock of Texas, in his message to the Legislature on the 3d of February said that the State had contributed 68,500 men to the Confederate armies, or 4,773 in excess of her highest popular vote. He then estimated the number of men remaining in the State between the ages of 16 and 60, at only 27,000. In his message in November following, he states that the number of soldiers furnished by Texas had at that time reached the aggregate of 90,000. According to this estimate only 5,500 men were left between the ages of 16 and 60. In the latter message the governor discussed the situation of the Confederacy and the State at great length. With regard to the loss of Vicksburg and Port Hudson he makes the novel observation that those places cost the North a great deal more than they were worth, and thinks that the Confederacy could afford to fortify and lose several other places on the same terms. He denounced the system of exemptions and substitutes, and maintained that every man in the State, including aliens, should be forced into the army. He reported the revenues for the year to August 31st, at $2,

468,061 including a balance of $36,866. The expenditures were the same, with a balance of $15,819. Up to the same date the public works at the Texas Penitentiary had turned out 2,258660 yards of cotton goods and 293,298 yards of woollens, of which the larger part had been distributed among the army. The State foundry had not been successful in the manufacture of cannon. Large quantities of percussion caps had, however, been made in the State. The governor recommended the appropriation of at least $1,000,000 (to be based on cotton bonds, or that cotton be purchased and paid for in bonds, to supply the State with arms and munitions of war. He declared himself opposed to any peace which did not recognize the independence of the Confederate States. He regards reconstruction" as intolerable on any terms, and would admit no State into the Confederacy whose laws did not recognize and protect slavery.

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The tyrannical conduct of the rebel authori'ties in impressing men and seizing provisions produced great dissatisfaction throughout the State, alike among the soldiers and the people. Two serious riots occurred at Galveston. In one case, the troops, being short of rations, turned their guns on the town and compelled the commandant to give them what they wanted. In the other instance, the troops paraded the streets in a body, took the poor rations that had been issued in the morning and burned them in the public square, and demanded fresh and better ones, which were accordingly furnished. Desertions were numerous-sometimes as many as 50 or 60 a day. About 2,000 deserters had fortified themselves near the Red River, and defied the Confederacy. At last accounts they had been established at that rendezvous for eight months, and were constantly receiving accessions of discontented rebels and desperadoes.

The following were reported to be the prices of some articles in the State, in rebel money: corn meal, $10 a bushel; fiour, $2 per lb.; coffee, $20 per lb.; sugar, $1 per lb.; butter, $3 per lb.; eggs, $4 a dozen; calf boots, from $150 to $175 per pair.

Blockade running via Nassau was brisk during the year. It was principally done by schooners, to and from the Brazos river, taking out cotton and bringing back materials of war, provisions and selected goods. Ten schooners with cotton were counted at one time in the Brazos river waiting a chance to get out. The enemy established a signal corps all along the Texas const, in expectation of the arrival of a fleet of iron or steelclad blockade runners from Europe; but they did not come. The Anglorebel steamer, Sir Wm. Peel, with over 900 bales of cotton was captured by the sloop of war Seminole, as she was running out. She had taken to Matamoras a cargo of arms and ammunition contributed by the Southern As sociation in Europe; and it was believed that after landing her cotton at Nassau or Havana,

she was to be converted into a privateer. Her crew consisted of 50 men, some of whom belonged to the British navy.

The Legislature generally sustained the rebel cause during the year, but refused to pass a resolution recommending Congress to declare the Confederate notes a legal tender.

At the fall election Pendleton Murray was chosen governor. He is a native of Alabama, a lawyer by profession, and said to be intensely devoted to the Confederate cause.

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, an English author, born in Calcutta in 1811, died in London, December 24th, 1863. In early childhood he lost his father, a civil officer in the service of the East India Company, and when about seven years of age was carried to England. A vivid recollection of the country of his birth_remained with him through life, and traits and reminiscences of Anglo-Indian society often occur in his novels. In London he was sent to the Charter-house school, and thence went to the University of Cambridge, which, however, he left without taking a degree. Inheriting upon coming of age a property of about £20,000, he went abroad with the idea of making art his profession, and for several years pursued his studies and travels in Germany, France, and Italy. He finally decided that literature rather than art was his proper vocation, and that the latter, if followed at all, should be made subordinate to his literary labors. The loss of a considerable portion of his property by unlucky speculations induced him to rely upon his pen for support, and returning to England, at the age of twenty-five, or thereabouts, he commenced the long struggle toward fame and publicity, which was at the last crowned with success.

His first essays were in the London "Times," and were on subjects connected with art and general literature. He then became a regular contributor to "Fraser's Magazine," under the pseudonymes of Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Fitz-Boodle, Esq., and produced a variety of tales, criticisms, descriptive sketches and verses, which, though lively, and often showing originality of thought and direction, had more in them of the trifler than the worker with a purpose. Then came travelling sketches of men and manners, of which the "Paris Sketch Book" (2 vols., 1840) was his earliest separate publication, followed by the "Irish Sketch Book," and an amusing and highly characteristic account of a voyage to the East, entitled "From Cornhill to Cairo." During this period of gradually growing reputation, his hand could be frequently traced in the pages of Fraser, where his "Men's Wives," his "Yellow-plush Papers," his "Shabby-Genteel Story," his "Great Hoggarty Diamond," and his "Luck of Barry Lyndon," successively appeared. None of these obtained popularity, though the last is one of the most vigorous and dramatic tales in English literature. They are all marked by an exaggerated humor for

on.

The great problem of domestic slavery in the United States presented itself for solution when the war began. It is in process of solution, and so the war goes It is not yet solved, and so the war is not yet ended. The people of the United States are intensely engaged in the difficult task. If it questions and rejects one process of solution after another, that does not prove that it is abandoning the task. On the contrary it is the very act of performance of the task itself. If the performer seems slow, let the observer ask where or when did any nation advance faster in a labor so complex and so difficult. The President's message will carry the public mind still more directly and more earnestly on its great work. The war would have had no terrors for the people if they had not feared that the Union could not endure the trial of solving that problem. Apprehensions of that kind are beginning now to be dismissed. In all the elements of strength, power, and stability, the Union is stronger when Congress meets to-day than it was when Congress met a year ago. In all the same elements the insurrection is weaker. Revolutions do not revive their strength or their energy. They must succeed at first, or at least gain advantage continually, or they must perish. A year ago it seemed that any foreign nation might assail and destroy us at a blow. I am sure that no one foreign nation would now conceive such an attempt, while a combination of several powers for that purpose is impossible.

In a letter addressed to the Committee on the Inauguration of the Loyal National League of New York, dated April 9th, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, thus describes the extent of the emancipation and its good faith: Nothing, in my judgment, is more certain than the fulfilment of these predictions. Safe in the States, before rebellion, from all Federal interference, slavery has come out from its shelter under State constitutions and laws to assail the national life. It will surely die, pierced by its own fangs and stings. What matter now how it dies? Whether as a consequence or object of the war, what matter? Is this a time to split hairs of logic? To me it seems that Providence indicates clearly enough how the end of slavery must come. It comes in rebel Slave States by military order, decree, or proclamation, not to be disregarded or set aside in any event as a nullity, but maintained and executed with perfect good faith to all the enfranchised; and it will come in the loyal Slave States by the unconstrained action of the people and their Legislatures, aided freely and generously by their brethren of the Free States. I may be mistaken in this; but if I am, another and better way will be revealed.

Meantime, it seems to me very necessary to say dis

tinctly what many yet shrink from saying. The American blacks must be called into this conflict, not as cattle, not now even as contrabands, but as men. In the Free States, and, by the proclamation, in the rebel States they are freemen. The Attorney General, in an opinion which defies refutation, has pronounced these freemen citizens of the United States. Let then the example of Andrew Jackson, who did not hesitate to opfearlessly followed. Let these blacks, acclimated, pose colored regiments to British invasion, be now familiar with the country, capable of great endurance, receive suitable military organization, and do their part. We need their good will, and must make them must have them for guides, for scouts, for all military our friends by showing ourselves their friends. We service in camp or field for which they are qualified. Thus employed, from a burden they will become a support; and the hazards, privations, and labors of the white soldiers will be proportionally diminished. Some will object of course. There are always objections to everything practical. Let experience dispel honest fears, and refute captious or disloyal cavil.

The postmaster-general, Mr. Blair, in a speech delivered at Cleveland, Ohio, somewhat later, thus spoke of the permanence of the emancipation:

That measure, which as commander-in-chief, the President rightfully adopted under the Constitution, and in accordance with national law, to obtain the cooperation of the whole race of people, and which involves both life and freedom in its results when proclaimed, was beyond revocation by either civil or military authority of the nation. The people once slaves in the rebel States can never again be recog nized as such by the United States. No judicial decision, no legislative action, State or national, can be admitted to re-enslave a people who are associated with our own destinies in this war of defence to save the Government, and whose manumission was deemed essential to the restoration and preservation of the Union and to its permanent peace.

In a speech delivered at Cincinnati, on October 15th, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, more fully related the cause which led to the issue of the proclamation, the design of it, and the advantages which had arisen from

it. He said:

It was very simple and very plain, that slavery depended for its existence outside of those States upon the national will, which is simply saying your will and my will, that slavery outside of those States should not exist antagonistic to free labor. But with slavery in South Carolina, we in Ohio had nothing to do, and I was just as much averse to any interference with anything within the limits of other States. Although I dislike the institution and condemn it, yet I was just as much averse to any interference with it as I should be with their interference with our institutions here in Ohio. That was my doctrine; and so when this rebellion commenced, it would have been extremely agreeable to me if we could have put our foot upon the snake-I mean the rebellion-and crushed it out without any further trouble. But while I greatly desired that, and had I been general-in-chief I should have attempted, in an awkward way, to accomplish it; still we all know the rebellion went on, and assumed greater and greater proportions. We put greater and greater armies into the field, but the slave population of the South was the real prop of the rebellion-raising provisions for the army while it was fighting in the field, so that they could have pretty much all their laboring population in the battle-field; and they had another laboring population behind them to feed and support them; and therefore it appeared evident, especially as we had to depend upon the blacks in the South for information for our armies, and the whole country was so demoralized that they were the only friends our armies