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Tullahoma. Either of them is stronger than Corinth. Have pressed him through the mountains. Incessant rains and the impassable state of the roads alone prevented us from forcing him to a general battle. Sheridan's division occupied Cowen yesterday at three (3) P. M. The enemy has retreated towards Bridgeport and Chattanooga. Every effort is being made to bring forward supplies and threaten the enemy sufficiently to hold him. As I have already advised you, Tullahoma was evacuated Tuesday night. Our troops pursued him and overtook his train at Elk River. He burned the bridge. In that operation our loss in killed and wounded will not exceed five hundred. The loss of the enemy may be safely put at one thousand killed and wounded, one thousand prisoners, seven pieces of artillery, and five or six hundred tents. The country is filled with deserters from the Tennessee troops, and it is generally thought a very large portion of these troops will never leave their native state. Nothing but most stringent coercion can detain them. It is impossible to convey to you an idea of the continuous rains we have had since the commencement of these operations, or the state of the roads."

July 9, 1863. —The steamers of the 4th and 8th have carried to Europe intelligence of the defeat of General Lee in three pitched battles, equalling in the magnitude of forces, and surpassing in severity, the conflicts of Waterloo and Solferino. The defeated army, however, was not destroyed nor captured. A decisive battle is now gathering at Antietam, and information of its result will probably go out with this despatch.

The fall of Vicksburg1 on the 4th of July, undoubtedly to be followed soon by the fall of Port Hudson, must completely revolutionize the contest on the Mississippi. Our land and naval forces, relieved from the labor of protracted sieges, become a movable power, adequate to the practical restoration of commerce, or, in other words, the Union, through the centre of our territory, from our northern boundary to the Gulf of Mexico.

Indications already appear, that the work of internal dissolution is begun in the insurgent confederacy. Practically, it has lost all the states west of the Mississippi, and is confined to the Atlantic states, south of Cape Henry, and the Gulf states. Its capacity to raise new levies and new armies, if not exhausted, is greatly diminished.

1 See speech on fall of Vicksburg, page 485.

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July 11, 1863.—I have the pleasure of stating that our naval force is steadily and rapidly increasing. The navy has already in actual service forty-four thousand men. New, better, and more effective steamships, iron-clads, as well as others, are coming from the docks; and we do not distrust our ability to defend ourselves in our harbors and on the high seas, even if we must unhappily be precipitated, through injustice in Europe, into a foreign war. The fall of Vicksburg releases a large naval force for effective service, while the free navigation of the Mississippi, now immediately expected, will restore to us our accustomed facilities for foreign conflict. The same great event relieves the army of General Grant, which numbers one hundred thousand men, from the labors and fatigues of' a siege, and gives us movable columns for uncompleted purposes of the war. The capture of Vicksburg, the occupation of Tullahoma, and the defeat of the insurgents in Pennsylvania, are the achievements of the campaign which was proposed in the last autumn. The army which has performed them is still strong and effective. It will now be reinforced, easily and cheerfully, by the people, with an addition of three hundred thousand men. On the other hand, the insurgents have within the last month sustained an aggregate loss of fifty thousand men, which, I think, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to replace, and, without their being replaced, their military strength can hardly be deemed permanently formidable.

July 13, 1863.- Europe waited patiently for the end of a siege of eleven months at Sevastopol, and a year for a result of a like operation in Mexico. Forty-five days' delay at Vicksburg, and a similar delay at Port Hudson, have proved too severe an exaction upon the magnanimity of parties in Europe who desire the ruin of the United States. At the moment when I write, the scene in this country has altogether changed. Vicksburg, with all its defenders and material, has fallen, at last, into our possession. Rosecrans has driven the insurgents of Tennessee within the interior lines. The army of the Potomac has retrieved its fortunes and prestige, and the forces of General Lee are understood to be hemmed in between a flood in their front and a victorious army in their rear. Charleston is again under siege of iron-clads. Our army is being renewed by a levy of three hundred thousand men, which will swell the aggregate to eight hundred thousand, while the insurgent resources are manifestly very much diminished. Under these circumstances, the public mind, im

patient of rest, is already agitating the conditions on which peace shall be conceded. While, however, this is the exact condition of affairs in America, we have warnings, apparently authentic, of a purpose on the part of the Emperor of the French to employ all his influence to procure a recognition of the insurgents by other powers; and failing in this, to proceed alone in that injurious policy. We hear, also, of a debate upon recognition in the British Parliament, but the steamer which bore the news of the debate did not wait for the decision. Upon this statement of our case, as it is developed here, you will be able to determine for yourself the probabilities of a new foreign complication, and the spirit in which it will be met, if it must come to embarrass us.

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July 14, 1863. We have advices from Port Hudson of the 3d of July. The siege was then vigorously maintained, and there is reason to believe that reinforcements, if thought necessary, have since been supplied by General Grant. The 8th of July gave us our last intelligence from Vicksburg, and it enables me to correct some of the details of the results of the capitulation contained in my recent telegram. More than twenty-seven thousand (27,000) prisoners had already then been paroled, and the task was not yet completed. There were found in various parts of the city, concealed and otherwise, sixty-six thousand (66,000) stand of small arms, and still new searches discovered new deposits of the same sort. The whole amount of ordnance captured, including siege and sea-coast guns, exceeded two hundred (200). The supply of ammunition surpasses belief. It would have sufficed for six years of defence, if used at the rate that it was consumed during the siege. The military stores, chiefly clothing for soldiers, are estimated at five millions of dollars, insurrectionary currency. General Sherman was in hot pursuit of Johnston's forces.

The insurgent army, under Bragg, has been driven out of Tennessee into Alabama.

Rear-Admiral Dahlgren was expected to assault Morris Island, which is one of the defences of Charleston, on the 9th.

Lee's insurgent army has retreated before General Meade, and is now understood to be compactly posted near the fords of the Potomac, and wholly lies between the banks of that river and the Union army. Lee's losses in the late battles are believed to have been thirty-three thousand (33,000) men. A solution of the problem of

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invasion is expected hourly, and therefore I refrain from conjecture concerning it.

There is some popular disturbance at New York arising out of the draft. The journals of that city, going out by to-morrow's steamer, will give you, probably, the full development of the movement. At present it does not seem to be formidable, although the occurrence of it is a subject of much regret.

July 20, 1863. The insurgent army, under Lee, is understood to be either stationary or moving in the valley of the Shenandoah. The army of the Potomac, under General Meade, is in Virginia, preliminarily occupied in observing the proceedings of the insurgents. The first reports of the battle of Gettysburg appear to have been substantially free from exaggeration. It is not doubtful that Lee suffered a loss of more than thirty thousand (30,000) men.

The unconditional surrender of Port Hudson was communicated to you by telegraph. General Sherman's pursuit of Johnston through Jackson, in Mississippi, is reported as having been crowned with important results. But the details are not yet officially confirmed. We hear that the raid of Morgan into Indiana and Ohio is resulting disastrously to the insurgents. The movements of the national land and naval forces, in approaching Chattanooga, are very vigorous, and thus far reasonably successful.

The riot in New York developed features which impair, at least for the moment, its political effect. It yielded to the presence rather than to the power of the military force which was promptly gathered there by the War Department. There are apprehensions of a renewal of such resistance when the execution of the draft shall be resumed, and a sympathy with the resisters reveals itself in some other cities and towns. It is not easy to discern how far these apprehensions are just. I think, however, that by a firm yet prudent course further disturbance will be averted, while the law of Congress will be executed and the national authority fully maintained.

August 12, 1863. — Whenever the United States have complained of the premature decrees of Great Britain and France, which accorded the character of a belligerent to the insurgents, the statesmen of those countries have answered, that from the first they agreed in opinion that the efforts of the government to maintain the Union, and preserve the integrity of the Republic, could not be successful. With a view to correct this prejudgment of so vital a question, I ad

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dressed a circular letter to the representatives of the United States in foreign countries on the 14th day of April, 1862, in which I reviewed the operations of the war on sea and land, and presented the results which had attended it down to that period. The prejudice which I then attempted to remove still remains, and it constitutes the basis of all that is designedly or undesignedly injurious to this country in the policy of foreign nations. The insurgents have been enabled to protract their resistance by means of sympathy and aid they have received from abroad, and the expectation of further and more effective foreign assistance is now their chief resource. A new effort, therefore, to correct that prejudice is demanded equally by a prudent concern for our foreign relations, and by the paramount interests of peace and humanity at home.

In the battles of August, 1862, the Union forces suffered some severe and appalling reverses. But they resulted in the reunion of the army which had been called in from the Peninsula, below Richmond, with the army which had its position between that strongly fortified seat of the insurrection and this capital. The wisdom of this reunion was soon to be vindicated. The insurgent army, flushed with its recent successes, and expecting that a sympathetic interest of slavery would produce an uprising of the people of Maryland in its favor, for the first time crossed the Potomac River. Harper's Ferry, with many prisoners, fell into its hands, rather through accidents in preparing for its defence than because it was indefensible. Nevertheless, the expectation of recruits signally failed. General McClellan, commanding the now consolidated forces of the army of the Potomac, was reinforced by fresh levies from Pennsylvania, and by detachments called in from neighboring forts. He drove the insurgents from their positions at South Mountain and Crampton's Gap. About the middle of September the two opposing armies confronted each other at Sharpsburg, and a pitched battle was fought on the banks of the Antietam and Potomac. It was well sustained on both sides. Men of one race and training directed the armies whose rank and file were substantially of one blood, and even nearly equal in numbers. The arrogant assumption of superior valor and heroism which the insurgents had brought into the contest, and had cherished throughout its early stages, perished on that sanguinary field. The insurgent army, shattered in the conflict, abandoned the invasion of Maryland, and sought refuge and opportunity to recover

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