We have reason to expect Savannah to come into our possession within the next ten days, and Fort Macon to fall about as soon. The insurrectionary leaders have made a conscription of all between eighteen and thirty-five. They issue new paper which sells for gold at the rate of one hundred dollars for twenty.

April 26, 1862. Our generals are crowding the insurgents before them in northern and western Virginia. We hear, at last, of course through insurgent organs, of the beginning of the bombardment of the forts on the Mississippi, below New Orleans, by Captain Porter. We constantly expect the surrender of Fort Macon. But the exciting care of the hour is divided between Yorktown and Corinth. Battles there are imminent. The gain of either of these fields would have a decisive effect. The loss of both seems hardly possible, although calculations upon particular results in war are always uncertain.

April 28, 1862.-To-day the country is assuming that the fate of this unnatural war is determined by the great event of the capture of New Orleans, which was effected by a naval expedition on the 24th instant. I trust that the anticipation will be sustained.

Captain Bullock, of Georgia, is understood to have written that he has five steamers built, or bought, armed, and supplied with materiel of war in England, which are now about leaving or are on their way to aid the insurgents.

We are prepared to meet them. But the reflection occurs, are the maritime powers of Europe willing that the suppression of this insurrection shall be forever associated in the memory of mankind with the conviction that the sympathies of Europe were lent to the abortive revolution?

May 5, 1862. — I advised you by telegram, sent out by the last steamer, of the capture of New Orleans. I have now to inform you that Fort Macon has surrendered to our siege, and that Yorktown has just been relinquished to our army on the eve of an anticipated bombardment. General McClellan is marching up the Peninsula towards Richmond, and General McDowell is opening his way downward towards the same capital from Fredericksburg.

If our information is correct, the insurgent army is evacuating Corinth. The spurious congress of the insurgents has suddenly adjourned. Their fiscal system must by this time have exploded, and their military connections are everywhere broken. It is a very

pleasant addition to this news that two of the British steamers lately fitted out at Liverpool with ammunition and arms for the insurgents have been captured by our blockading fleet. Thus the tide of success seems to be flowing full and strong. Acting upon the confidence which it has produced, we have opened New Orleans to correspondence, and we are taking measures for an early opening of that and some other ports to trade under necessary limitations.

These concessions occur simultaneously with our ratification of a treaty with Great Britain designed to effect the suppression of the African slave-trade.

May 12, 1862. — The progress of the national arms continues so auspiciously as to excite the insurgents to desperation and to require of their abettors in Europe extreme activity and diligence to rescue a cause which, without foreign intervention, seems already lost. You may now assume that the Mississippi in its whole length is restored to the Federal authority. Richmond is practically held in close siege by General McClellan. Norfolk, with all the coasts and tributaries of Hampton Roads, is cleared of insurrectionary land forces and naval forces. Our navy, already large and effective and daily increasing, is now released from two very arduous and exhausting sieges in which it has been so long engaged.

I enclose a copy of a proclamation of the President, of this date, opening the ports of Beaufort, Port Royal and New Orleans, which have recently been blockaded. The treasury regulations to which it refers will immediately follow.

May 19, 1862. The principal military event of the past week has been the recovery of the important port and town of Pensacola. Of our seaports there yet remain in the occupation of the insurgents only Wilmington, in North Carolina, Charleston, in South Carolina, Mobile, in Alabama, Galveston, in Texas - all of which are, nevertheless, very effectually blockaded.

Preparations are made for their immediate recovery. Thus we expect that, within the next four weeks, the authority of the Union will be entirely restored along the whole Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the country. Trade resuming its legitimate character will begin anew on the first of June at the several ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans, and we shall not be slow in extending the same benefits to other ports. The temptations to contraband trade are rapidly passing away, and it is to be hoped that that great and

disturbing annoyance will speedily cease to irritate at home and

abroad.

The conflict henceforth will be between land forces in the interior of the country, and perhaps the battles impending at Richmond and Corinth may close the unnatural war. It would be idle to speculate on the probabilities of the results of those combats.

May 26, 1862. — The defeat of General Banks at Winchester yesterday, and his withdrawal across the Potomac, are just now the prominent incidents of the war. A careful consideration of the affair results in the satisfactory conclusion that the movement of the enemy was one of merely energetic strategy. We suffer by it, however, only a temporary and local inconvenience, not at all likely to work any serious or extensive injury to the national cause. Abundant provision has been made for repairing the losses sustained, and recovering the little ground that has been given up.

June 2, 1862. My despatches of last week gave information of the surprise and capture of Colonel Kenley's small force at Front Royal, and of an attack by Jackson with a superior force upon General Banks, and his well-conducted retreat from Winchester across the Potomac, at Williamsport. I mentioned that all due preparations had been made to retrieve these misfortunes, and that I thought they would be followed by no serious results. The week which began so inauspiciously was filled with events indicative of a general and speedy triumph of the Union armies.

First. Recruiting, except under heavy restrictions, had been suspended for some months by order of the government. The reverses alluded to favored a removal of those restrictions, and an order for renewal of enlistments, with a view to reinforce our army in Virginia and supply the waste which had occurred in all the armies. The country responded at once, with even greater enthusiasm than a year ago. This is a third uprising of the people in behalf of the Union, inspired by confidence in the administration and in the land and naval forces.

General Banks's army, which was reduced to six thousand men, and so unfortunately put hors de combat, swelled in the course of the week to twenty thousand men, and it is now, in its turn, pursuing the enemy who had driven it out of the valley of Virginia. Large forces were also sent into the valley from the east, the south, and the west, to meet the retiring insurgents, and, as we trust, to bring the war in that quarter to a prompt conclusion.

While these transactions of minor importance were engaging the most careful consideration of the government, the attention of the nation, and of the world, so far as it occupies itself with our affairs, was all the time fixed upon two points, Corinth and Richmond, where battles seemed imminent, which, resulting in our favor, must be decisive of the painful controversy. The insurgents, demoralized and broken, on the 28th day of last month, evacuated the former position with all its advantages and its prestige, and thus the war in the Mississippi valley may be deemed virtually ended. During the early part of the week General McClellan fought battles and won advantages at Richmond of great moment. On Saturday the insurgents, availing themselves of a severe storm which, flooding the valley of the Chickahominy, seemed likely to divide our forces, attacked our left on the south side of that river with a superior force and caused it to break, with some loss of ordnance and stores. Reinforcements, however, were soon brought forward, and the position lost was regained. The two armies bivouacked on the field at night. The battle was renewed the next morning with the result of a repulse of the insurgents at every point. The army of General McClellan will be rapidly strengthened, although it is already deemed adequate to the capture of Richmond.

A wholesome moral sentiment is already rapidly revealing itself in the insurrectionary region. It shows itself somewhat slowly indeed, but nevertheless distinctly at Norfolk. Regiments for the Federal army are forming in North Carolina.

In Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana there are unmistakable signs of returning loyalty. No American now indulges any doubt that the integrity of the Union will be triumphantly maintained.

June 6, 1862. During the past week General Pope has cut off the railroads on which Beauregard's army was retreating from Corinth, and has made captures of prisoners, arms, vehicles, &c., on a scale so large that that great force may be considered as no longer existing. With these successes the entire commands of the Mississippi and its banks must by this time have been abandoned by the insurgents.

Jackson, with the forces which expelled General Banks from the valley of Virginia, was met and repulsed at Harper's Ferry, and is now, in his turn, harassed by the Union forces in his flight from Northern Virginia.

A fearful battle the greatest and the most desperate one in the whole warwas fought at Fair Oaks, seven miles in front of Richmond, on Saturday and Sunday last (May 31 and June 1). The enemy was driven at all points, and the Federal advance now rests within four miles of that city. A final combat is expected to take place within a few days. I forbear to speculate upon its probable result or consequences, since certainty must so soon be developed.

June 9, 1862. — You will receive herewith information of a naval conflict at Memphis, resulting in the surrender of the city and in the restoration of the national commerce throughout the whole navigable courses of the Mississippi and its tributaries.

Of all the important ports and towns, only Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond remain in the hands of the insurgents. The investment of the three former is going on successfully. Floods have swollen the Chickahominy, which, in ordinary seasons, is only a few yards wide, into a river two miles in breadth. This inundation now for a few days delays the operations against Richmond, but they will be prosecuted with vigor as soon as the condition of the field shall permit.

June 24, 1862. "The statesmen of France, including the Emperor, are no less skeptical about the restoration of the Union since. the capture of New Orleans than they were before. In England they still point to the delays at Richmond and Corinth, and they enlarge upon the absence of displays of Union feeling in New Orleans and Norfolk." Ah, well! skepticism must be expected in this world in regard to new political systems, insomuch as even Divine revelation needs the aid of miracles to make converts to a new religious faith. Corinth had already fallen on the very day when its supposed possession by the insurgents was deemed by the British public a ground for withholding their faith. A battle had also then been fought at Richmond, which, we think, was preparatory to the surrender or evacuation of that city. Trade has actively begun at New Orleans, and cotton is shipped from Memphis to New York. Unbiased observers would discern no sign of a possible. recovery of the Mississippi and its immediate and remote tributaries by the insurgents. Unbiased thinkers would conclude that the authority of the nation whose naval and merchant marine navigate every river in the United States would not long be denied by