Baltimore papers of the 5th instant have been received.
The following is a summary of the news:
From the Army of the Potomac.
There is no important news from the Army of the Potomac.
All sorts of tumors prevail, but nothing is known beyond the general fact that the army is fully prepared for important movements.--
General Meade has issued an order directing the shooting, without trial, of any soldier who refuses to do duty.
The trouble with the
Pennsylvania reserves has no doubt occasioned this order.
Gen. Seymour, who commanded the Florida expedition, has arrived in
Washington, and would be assigned to a command under
Gen. Grant.
He was captured Friday.]
From the Trans Mississippi.
An official dispatch from
Gen. Banks states that, notwithstanding the Reverses on the
Red river in the early part of last month, the losses to the rebels were severe, and proportionately greater than those of any battle of the war.
It is positively stated that
Gen. Banks will not be removed.
The statement that the
Federal army had returned to
Alexandria is confirmed.
Dispatches to the
Western papers state that
Gen. Steele captured at
Camden, Ark, nine fortifications of great strength, four hundred barrels of molasses, several tons of rock salt, and three prisoners. The cotton, for ten miles round, had been burned by
Price, numbering 2,000 bales.
The Yankee Congress.
In the House of Representatives, the 4th inst, the bill guaranteeing Republican Government to the rebellious States was taken up, and
Mr. H. W. Davis offered a substitute amending the bill, so as to require instead of one-tenth of the voters of a seceded State a majority to re-organize a State Government, and allowing those who have held merely instrumental offices under the rebel Government, and those who have held interior military offices, to participate in and hold office under the reconstructed Government.
The substitute was adopted.
The preamble proposed by
Mr. Stevens, to the effect that the so-called
Confederate States are a public enemy, waging an unjust war, in which they are not entitled to the privileges and immunities of civilized warfare, &c., was stricken out, and the bill thus amended finally passed — yeas 78, nays 59.
Financial.
In New York on Tuesday, 3d, gold went up to 181.
The closing quotation on the 4th, at 5 o'clock P. M., was 179¼
Gen. Grant to Prop the falling fortunes of Yankeedom — the rebel forces.
[from the New York Herald, of May 3d.]
In
Louisiana,
Florida, and
North Carolina we have had the commencement of active operations for the season; but it is a commencement that has not had a very pleasant effect upon the public mind.
Gen. Banks's whole movement in
Louisiana is publicly denounced as an Administration cotton stealing expedition — an operation in which no success could have tended to shorten the war, in which disaster must have a had moral effect upon our cause, and in which, whatever the result might be, the services and lives of many gallant men must be lost.
And the severe disaster at
Plymouth has caused quite as disagreeable an excitement and spread abroad quite as much gloom as did the earlier one in
Florida.
In all these movements we see the periodical return of the various indications of utter incapacity to carry on the war that the Administration has given at the commencement of every season of active operations.
In the case of the
Plymouth disaster the instance of incapacity is even worse than usual.
Many months ago the Navy Department was warned as to the construction of the rebel iron-clad that has been so active in our defeat at that point.
But with its usual sleepy stupidity that department seems to have taken no notice of the matter, and certainly made no provision to guard against the advent of such a foe; for upon the arrival of this formidable craft near
Plymouth her only antagonist was an old
Staten Island ferry boat.
Gen. Grant has not come to the supreme command of our armies any too soon.
Had he reached his present position earlier, and been able to take a full survey of the field, and to regulate and control the disposition and movement of all our forces before anything had been done this season, we would certainly have been spared our latest misfortunes.
But he was not in his place early enough for that, and the old arrangements and plans of the Administration had to have their legitimate results.
We may now, however, will hope that this latest series of disasters, due to the old laven, shall be the last, and that our future operations — not influenced by the ignorant incapacity of the Administration.--will be of a different nature.
And those future operations are to be, by all odds, the immensely important ones of the war.
Over the whole theatre of war the struggle is ready to burst forth with the most intense tory.
On our own side, as well as on the side of the rebels, the most gigantic preparations have been made.--Those new elements in modern warfare, negro troops and iron clad vessels, are to be perhaps more fiercely tried than ever; for, as will be seen by an article in another column from the Richmond
Examiner, the rebels promise to meet as "afloat or ashore," and "on our own terms," and darkly hint at the repetition of "the deeds of the
Merrimac."
In the same article, also it is clearly acknowledged that this struggle is to be the last, and is "for life or death." Enough has been seen of
Gen. Grant's style of operations in former campaigns, as well as of what he proposes to do in his next one, to give the country the highest hopes for success under his guidance.
And if the Administration can have the virtue to let him alone — if his plans do not have to be qualified or changed to suit the small ideas, the mere notions, the whims or the wishes of this or that member of the Administration — we shall see before the summer is over far different results from those that we have so constantly had through all the time during which the Administration has conducted the war.
But the history of these latest disasters, as well as of the many that have preceded them in other campaigns, ought not to be lost upon the public.--They may have one good effect: they are the characteristic contribution that the present administration has made to our history.
Mr. Lincoln and his advisers, in their attempts to carry on their war, by their interference with the plans of
Generals; by their appointment of incompetent men to places of great importance; by their drivelling weakness, manifested in all ways, have directly brought upon the country the whole series of disasters that begins with the
battle of Bull Run and ends with the transaction at
Plymouth.
Let the people ponder this well; and if the consideration of this fact shall prevent the re-election of the present
President the country will at least have some small reason to be thankful for so many defeats.
Messrs. Hates and
Usher seem to be the only men in the present Cabinet who are competent to fulfill the duties of their positions; but against every other member, and above all against the
President, the country should wage a war of proscription.
Lincoln,
Stanton and
Welles are alike incompetent drivelers, and
Chase, according to the best authority, is a Secessionist.
Such men must never again be permitted to govern this great country.
[from the same.]
The strength of the rebel forces under the command of
General Lee is pretty much a matter of conjecture.
The highest estimate places his army on the
Rapidan at 95,000 men. We dare say how ever, that it does not exceed 75,000, and that his forces on and near the
Richmond Peninsula do not number above 25,000.
We guess, on the other hand, that
General Grant has made the necessary arrangements to grapple successfully with a rebel army of 100,000 on the
Rapidan, and for more than 25,000 on the
Peninsula; and we guess that it is not his intention to accommodate the enemy, as we have heretofore accommodated him in
Virginia by having fifty or sixty thousand men standing idle at the sides, while our main army is engaged on the centre of the field of combinations.
We expect, therefore, a repetition in
Virginia this time, not of
Fredericksburg or
Chancellorsville, but of
Chattanooga.
[from the N. Y. World, May 2d
"Co where we will — to
Charleston, Ringgold Olustec,
Meridian,
Camden, or up the
Red river — we find a force confronting us sufficiently large to accept battle." This is not so surprising as the
Commercial seems to think.
It arises from the "scatteration" policy which has governed our military movements.
Instead of confining the war to vital strategic points which could only be assaulted and defended by large armies, the Administration has scattered our forces around the whole circle of the rebellion, and made it a war of populations rather than of armies.
The Southerners have an immense and fruitful territory, have slaves to raise the necessaries of life, and as all legitimate business has been destroyed, the whole arms bearing population can take to the field.
If all the various branches of industry at the
North were also destroyed, and an English or French army of four or five hundred thousand men were scattered all around the circumference of the
United States territory, from the
Mississippi to the ocean and back again, we too could raise armies with four fold the facility of the Southerners — Notwithstanding the tens of thousands we have sent to the war from this neighborhood, they are not missed from our street; but let business be destroyed, and the army that would spring out of the earth would be overwhelming, so far as numbers go. It is the "scatteration" policy that is to blame for the hundreds of thousands of rebel soldiers that are everywhere all over the
South.
[from the New York Herald.]
Read our
Washington dispatch of this morning.
The contending factions are all in a stew; but they all seem to be apprehensive that
Gen. Grant will turn their fat in the fire.
They will all have to wait the upshot of his plans and combinations before they can arrange their own. From "Old Abe" to the last of the Presidential list, they are all in the hands of
Gen. Grant.
The number of the Confederate prisoners.
The report of the U. S.
Commissary General of Prisoners, accompanying the
Secretary of War's report, shows that the number of Confederate officers and men captured by the
Yankees since the beginning of the war is:
One
lieutenant general, five
major generals, twenty-five brigadier,
generals, 188 officers, 446
lieutenant colonel, 241 majors, 2,400 captains, 5,811 lieutenants, 6,563 non-commissioned officers, 131,156 privates, and 6,890 citizens.
Of these they had on hand at the date of the report 29,529 officers, and men, among whom were one
major general and seven brigadiers.
These had been 121,910 rebels exchanged against 110,866 list a men returned — The exchanges of officers on both sides are computed at their exchanged v in privates. --Since the date of the above report there have been less than one thousand exchanges, and very few captures on either side.
The figures are, consequently, approximately correct.
No statement has been furnished of the number of prisoners held by the
Confederates.
Washington Discussions on the Presidential question — everything to be Reversed to Gen. Grant.
A letter from
Washington, dated the 2d inst., published in the New York
Herald gives the following speculations about the Presidency.
If is probable that
Gen. Grant has as much to do now in his "change of base" as he end well attend to without meddling in the Presidential question:
‘
The political cauldron at
Washington is building and bubbling at a fearful rats, and its mixed ingredients, as they are turned up to the surface, would astonish the witches of
Macbeth.
The responding members of the dominant party of the two are beginning to work diligently.
They are anxious to get their heavy business off their hands in season for the Baltimore Convention.
They seem to be on hand among the jugglers of that body delegates or no delegates. " Old Abe" for the succession, like
Captain John Tyler in his day, excepting a corporal's guard, is without a party in either house.--The anti-Lincoln men are mostly for
Chase, a few of the red hot radicals are for
Fremont or
Butler; but the whole pack agree in this one thing; that
Gen. Grant has the entire case in his hands.
The game of the Chase faction to put off the Baltimore Convention is played out, or put off fill the meeting of the convention.
They expect a great and decisive struggle in
Virginia in the interval, and that something may "turn up" that will create such a noise and confusion at
Baltimore as to compel the convention itself to postpone the nomination of a ticket till August or September.
’
The "fears of "Old Abe" stick deep in Banquo — that is,
Secretary Chase.
You may believe that our amiable
President was not very sorry for the severe castigation administered to his over ambitious
Secretary by
Frances P. Blair, Jr., in the
House the other day. Why else should
Gen. Blair be rewarded with the command of the 13th army corps?
But the Chase men are resolved to make him out, and, besides calling for the papers, they have been calling on the
Secretary of War.
Stanton, however, gives them the cold shoulder, and save when we have settled with
Gen. Lee he will be ready to talk politics, Old Abe refers all inquiring visitors to
Gen. Grant, and shrugs at shoulder as if he thought it a good joke.
As a last result, the Chase men will really upon
Gen. Grant should he win this coming fight.
The
Lincoln men, with a knowing work, say that that's all right, that Old Abe and
Gen. Grant thoroughly understand each other, and that Old Abe will be the man.
Grant, they say, will not have his head turned by success or disappointed and hungry politicians.
He will not fry the fish of the outsiders, who want to get in, because he has other fish to try. What all this means time will tell; but it is a fact that Old Abe is working as faithfully to secure success to our arms in
Virginia as if his nomination and re-election can only be defeated by the defeat of
Grant.
Unquestionably
Grant's defeat would be had for the
General and the
President, and would be very apt to make an opening for
Chase.
As for the Copperheads, like the Jacobites or
England, in the time of King William of
Orange, after their model of a sovereign,
James the Second, like Old Buck, had been driven into an ignominious exile, they are watching every little straw that floats in their way, and doing all they possibly can to embarrass the
Government in everything; and are getting up all sorts of scare crows, and plots, and Federal defeat, and conspiracies in the administrative camp, and Cabinet quarrels with
General Grant--and all for the purposes of a violent political revolution in the
North, upon the scum of which they may rise to the surface again.
They are working in this view for disasters to our armies and confusion to the currency, and with the tenacity to their bad cause and with the venom of the
English Jacobites of the seventeenth century.
The out and out copperheads have no other Presidential programme than that of a general row and a bloody scramble, with a glimmering hope of worshipping in the end at the fact of
Jeff Davis, niggers and all.
The war Democrats have great faith to
Gen. McClellan, but for all that they are beginning to canvass the chances of a fusion with the independent
Fremont movement; because, you know,
Fremont has really a powerful faction at his back, and is as fixed in his purpose in break the Republican party machine of 1864 as was
Marun Van Buren to knock the regular Democratic nomination in the head in 1848.
But enough for the present.
All hands on all sides have their eyes and ears fixed on
Virginia.
We expect, too, before the end or another week, such events in that quarter as will result in a speedy and define solution or the Presidential problem.
In the meantime the pious and counterplots the scheming and trickery of this faction, that faction and the other, are more naming than the book of "Old Abe's Jokes."
The charges against the Treasury Department.
The charges against
Mr. Chase and the management of certain bureaus of the Treasury Department, and the appointment of the Committee of Investigation by the
House on Saturday, are creating much talk and excitement.
Speculation is rife as to what the effect will be upon the course of the
Secretary of these matters, and many are confident that he will shortly resign his seat in the
Cabinet.
Those who are best informed, however, say that he will do nothing of the kind, and that everything will be satisfactorily explained, as far as
Mr. Chase is concerned.--Of course he cannot but feel aggrieved at the action of the
President in restoring to
Frank Blair his commission of
Major General, offer the attacks made upon him by that gentleman.
This may however, be only one of
Mr. Lincoln's Jokes, in knowing that such restoration, without a reappointment and confirmation by the Senate would be illegal, and so declared, thus getting rid of a troublesome member of Congress, gratifying the Blair interest, and leaving him eventually out in the cold.
It is understood that the investigating committee propose, as their first step, to obtain a list of the females employed in the Treasury Department, and of the parties, members of Congress and others, upon whose recommendation they were appointed.
