aud no man on the island to which they were bound, knew the object of the expedition. Articles and maps had appeared in the Herald, calculated to lead the enemy to suppose that New Orleans, if attacked at all, would be attacked from above, not from the guli. The northern public were completely in the dark; no one even guessed New Orleans. CHAPTER XII. SHIP ISLAND. It SHIP ISLAND is a long wave of whitest, finest sand, that glistens in the sun, and drifts before the wind like New England snow. is one of four islands that stretch along ten or twelve miles from the gulf coast, forming Mississippi sound. It was to one of these sand islands that the British troops repaired after their failure before New Orleans in 1815, where they lived for several weeks, amusing themselves with fishing and play-acting. Ship Island, seven miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, containing two square miles of land-the best of the four for a rendezvous-is sixty-five miles from New Orleans, ninety-five from the mouths of the Mississippi, fifty from Mobile bay, ten from the nearest point of the state of Mississippi, of which the island is a part. It lies so low among the white, tumbling waves, that, when covered with tents, it looked like a camp floating upon the sea. Land and water are menacingly blended there. Numberless porpoises, attracted by the refuse of the camps, floundered all around the shore, which was lined with a living fringe of sea-gulls, flapping, plunging, diving, and screaming. The waves and the wind seemed to heave and toss the sand as easily as they did the water. In great storms the island changes its form; large portions are severed, others submerged; new bays and inlets appear. On landing, the voyager does not so much feel that he has come on shore as tnat he has got down over the ship's side to the shifting bottom of the en, mighty swell of waters, threatening Terra firma, it is not. raised for a moment by the again to sink and disappear. It was observed that the first aspect of this island struck death to the hopes of arriving troops. They faintly strove to cheer their spirits with jocular allusions to the garden of Eden and to Coney Island; and one of General Phelps's men, on looking over the ship's side upon the desolate scene of his future home, raised a doleful laugh by exclaiming, in the language of Watts: "Lord, what a wretched land is this, Appearances, however, were deceptive. The wretched land was found to yield abundant supplies of commodities and conveniences, most essential to soldiers. At the western end there is a really superior harbor, safe in all winds, admitting the largest vessels. At the eastern extremity groves of pine and stunted oak have succeeded in establishing themselves, and afford plenty of wood. For fresh water, it is only necessary to sink a barrel three feet; it immediately fills with rain water, pure from the natural filter of the sand. Oysters of excellent quality can be had by wading for them; fish abound; and the woods, strange to relate. furnished the means of raccoon-hunting. The climate, too, in the winter months, is more enjoyable than Newport in midsummer, and the bathing not inferior. Nevertheless, it must be owned, that with all these advanta ges, Ship Island was never regarded by the troops with high favor; they never recovered from the first shock of disappointment. Before the arrival of General Phelps, in December, 1861, the island had been the theater of many events. The breaking out of the rebellion found workmen, in the service of the United States, building a fort for the defense of the harbor. They soon abandoned the place, and the rebels immediately landed, burned the houses, damaged the fort, destroyed the lantern of the light-house, and retired. Then the blockading squadron appeared, captured many prizes, and nearly stopped the coasting trade between Mobile and New Orleans. But the coast being clear for a few days, a rebel force again landed, and proceeded to repair the damage they had done, mounting heavy guns upon the fort, and erecting extensive works, Commodore McKean unable to reach them with the guns of the Massachusetts. In September, alarmed by rumors of a com ing expedition, the rebels again abandoned the island; but, in so doing, were so much accelerated by the vigilant McKean, that, though they took their guns with them, they left the fort standing, and the commodore captured a vessel laden with timber, hewn and cut for the defensive works. From September to December, Commodore McKean, with a hundred and seventy sailors and marines, under Lieutenant McKean Buchanan, had held the harbor, and labored to remount the fort, and complete the works begun by the enemy; darting out occasionally, and pouncing upon venturesome schooners from Mobile, or blockade-runners from Nassau. Five or six prizes were there when General Phelps hove in sight, and two light-draft steamers among them, invaluable for landing troops. During the next three months the island presented a busy scene. The huge steamer Constitution landed her little army of troops, sailed, and returned with more; General Phelps and Commodore McKean striving, meanwhile, to complete the defenses, and to prepare in all ways for coming events, whatever those events might be; neither of them knowing the designs of the gov ernment. General Phelps, a strict disciplinarian, assiduously drilled and reviewed the troops. He signalized his brief tenure of command by issuing his well-remembered proclamation, which must be pronounced the most unexpected piece of composition which the war has elicited. A reporter records, that during the last days of the voyage of the Constitution, General Phelps was observed to spend more time than usual in the solitude of his cabin. "He did not come so promptly as the rest of the officers to the table, and when he did appear, seemed more occupied with his own thoughts than with the current of conversation. The cause of this temporary reticence was explained on the day following our arrival at Ship Island. Observing that he was more than usually busy about some interesting matter, your correspondent, in the exercise of that watchfulness which is requisite in the reporter, but, at the same time, with that diffidence not always characteristic of the profession, seized a fi vorable moment for putting himself en rapport with the commande, and ascertained that he was about to issue a very important paper, defining the animus of the expedition to the people of the country. General Phelps explained that he regarded the occasion as a peculiarly fitting one for setting forth, in a frank and at the same time a tolerant spirit, the sentiments which would govern his conduct in prosecuting the war against rebellion in the southwest. The document was copied in a plain hand, and on the evening of our arrival in Ship Island Roads, it was read aloud in the presence of the passengers and officers, who were convened in the steamer's saloon. On the following morning, other copies were made, one of which was read to the officers on board the United States steamer Massachusetts, in the hearing of several secession prisoners who had been taken on board of the rebel steamers and other prizes in port.' The document, it should be observed, was addressed to the loyal people of the southwest, not to the enemies of the United States. PROCLAMATION. "HEAD-QUARTERS MIDDLESEX BRIGADE, SHIP ISLAND, "MISSISSIPPI, Dec. 4, 1861. "To the loyal citizens of the Southwest: A "Without any desire of my own, but contrary to my private inclinations, I again find myself among you as a military officer of the government. proper respect for my fellow-countrymen renders it not out of place that I should make known to you the motives and principles by which my com. mand will be governed. "We believe that every state that has been admitted as a slave state into the Union, since the adoption of the constitution, has been so admitted in direct violation of that constitution. "We believe that the slave states which existed, as such, at the adoption of our constitution, are, by becoming parties to that compact, under the highest obligations of honor and morality to abolish slavery. "It is our conviction that monopolies are as destructive, as competition is conservative, of the principles and vitalities of republican government; that slave labor is a monopoly which excludes free labor and competition; that slaves are kept in comparative idleness and ease in a fertile half of our arable national territory, while free white laborers, constantly augmenting in numbers from Europe, are confined to the other half, and are often distressed by want; that the free labor of the North has more need of expansion into the southern states, from which it is virtually excluded, than slavery had into Texas in 1846; that free labor is essential to free institutions; that these institutions are naturally better adapted and more conge *Correspondence of the V. Y. Daily Times, Docember 17, 1861. nial to the Anglo-Saxon race, than are the despotic tendencies of slavery; and, finally, that the dominant political principle of this North American continent, so long as the Caucasian race continues to flow in upon us from Europe, must needs be that of free institutions and free government. Any obstructions to the progress of that form of government in the United States must inevitably be attended with discord and war. Slavery, from the condition of a universally recognized social and moral evil, has becoine at length a political institution, demanding political recognition. It demands rights to the exclusion and annihilation of those lights which are insured to us by the constitution; and we must choose between them which we will have, for we can not have both. The constitution was made for freemen, not for slaves. Slavery, as a social evil, might for a time be tolerated and endured; but as a political institution it becomes imperious and exacting, controlling, like a dread necessity, all whom circumstances have compelled to live under its sway, hampering their action and thus impeding our national progress. As a political institution it could exist as a co-ordinate part only of two forms of governments, viz: the despotic and the free; and it could exist under a free government only where public sentiment, in the most unrestricted exercise of a robust freedom, leading to extravagance and licentiousness, had swayed the thoughts and habits of the people beyond the bounds and limits of their own moderate constitutional provisions. It could exist under a free government only where the people in a period of unreasoning extravagance had permitted popular clamor to overcome public reason, and had attempted the impossibility of setting up permanently, as a political institution, a social evil which is opposed to moral law. "By reverting to the history of the past, we find that one of the most destructive wars on record, that of the French Revolution, was originated by the attempt to give political character to an institution which was not susceptible of political character. The church, by being endowed with political power, with its convents, its schools, its immense landed wealth, its associations, secret and open, became the ruling power of the state, and thus occasioned a war of more strife and bloodshed, probably, than any other war which has desolated the earth. Slavery is still less susceptible of political character than was the church. It is as fit at this moment for the lumber-room of the past, as was in 1793 the monastery, the landed wealth, the exclusive privilege, etc., of the Catholic Church in France. It behooves us to consider, as a self-governing people, bred, and reared and practiced in the habits of self-government, whether we can not, whether we ought not to revolutionize slavery out of existence, without the necessity of a conflict of arms like that of the French Revo..ation. "Indeed, we feel assured, that the moment slavery is abolished, from that |