female rebels, who were no less ferocious and bloodthirsty than the males; and skulls were mounted for goblets and punch bowls. This is not civilization; it is barbarism. These are not random stories, but facts carefully collected by the Congressional Committee. The following are among the closing words of this report:

Every step of this monstrous treason has been marked by violence and crime. No transgression has been too great, no wrong too startling, for its leaders. They disregarded the sanctity of the oaths they had taken to support the Constitution; they repudiated all their obligations to the people of the free States; they deceived and betrayed their own fellowcitizens, and crowded their armies with forced levies; they drove from their midst all who would not yield to their despotism, or filled their prisons with men who would not enlist under their flag. They have now crowned the rebellion by the perpetration of deeds scarcely known even to savage warfare. The investigations of your Committee have established this fact beyond controversy. The witnesses called before us were men of undoubted veracity and character. Some of them occupy high positions in the army, and others high positions in civil life. Differing in political sentiments, their evidence presents a remarkable concurrence of opinion and of judgment. Our fellow countrymen, heretofore sufficiently impressed by the generosity and forbearance of the government of the United States, and by the barbarous character of the crusade against it, will be shocked by the statements of these unimpeached and unimpeachable witnesses; and foreign nations must, with one accord, however they have hesitated heretofore, consign to lasting odium the authors of crimes, which, in all their details, exceed the worst excesses of the sepoys of India.'

His

NOTE.-Brig. Gen. Wm. S. Rosecrans (page 160, et seq.) was born in Ohio, Dec. 6, 1819. parents were from Wyoming Valley, having emigrated in early life to Ohio. His paternal ancestors were from Amsterdam, Holland. His mother was Miss Hopkins, a descendant of an earnest revolutionary soldier. Close application to study fitted young Rosecrans for entrance, at eighteen, to the Academy at West Point, where he graduated with very high honors, in 1842, and at once was assigned a position at Fortress Monroe. After assisting at West Point, in instruction, for three or four years, he was detailed to several important posts in the army, until 1853, when ill health compelled him to resign his commission. The services of so valuable an officer were too highly prized to be relinquished at once, and he was granted leave of absence. His resignation was reluctantly accepted in 1854. He then remained in Cincinnati, devoting himself to mercantile pursuits, until called to arms by the present fratricidal war.

Gen. McClellan, on being called into service, at once selected General Rosecrans as one of his Aids. Subsequently, Gov. Dennison appointed him colonel of 23d Regiment, Ohio Volunteers. Soon after a brigadier-generalship was conferred upon him by President Lincoln. Gen. Rosecrans succeeded Gen. McClellan in command of the forces in Western Virginia. His untiring energy, his ability to command, his gentlemanly courtesy, and his unflinching firmness in danger, have rendered him deservedly a favorite both with the men he commands, and with the nation at large.

CHAPTER VII.

HAMPTON, CARNIFEX FERRY, AND HATTERAS INLET.

RECAPTURE OF THE S. J. WARING.-RE-ENFORCEMENTS.-BURNING OF HAMPTON.-DECREE OF JEFF. DAVIS.-SOUTHERN DESPOTISM.-VALOROUS EXPLOIT.-CARNIFEX FERRY.-PETTY SKIRMISHES. FORTS HATTERAS AND CLARK.-SECRET EXPEDITION. BOMBARDMENT OF THE FORTS. SURRENDER OF COM. BARRON.-CAPTURE OF THE FANNY BY THE REBELS.-CONFLICT AT THE LIGHT HOUSE.

THE rebel privateers were now active, plundering and destroying. The schooner S. J. Waring was captured by the rebel steamer, Jeff. Davis, and a prize crew put on board to take her into a rebel port. The steward, William Tillman, a heroic young man, in whose veins some drops of Ethiopic blood mingled with the Caucasian current, by the unassisted energies of his own arm, recovered the vessel, killing three of the rebels, and compelling the other two to assist him in working the schooner to its home in the North. Thus the recaptured prize, valued at many thousand dollars, was conveyed in safety from off the port of Charleston, to the harbor of New York.

The many infirmities of the venerable and revered Gen. Scott, now nearly eighty years of age, rendered it necessary, in his own view, that in the terrible conflict into which it was manifest that the nation was plunged, the active command of the army should be surrendered to a younger and more vigorous arm than his own. Major-General McClellan, the officer to whom we have before alluded, who had acquired some celebrity by his Report of the Crimean War, who had signalized himself on the field of Mexico, and who had just conducted a brilliant campaign in Western Virginia, was summoned to Washington to take command of the army of the Potomac. The eyes of the whole community were directed to this young general; and Gen. Burnside, at a public meeting in New York, paid the following beautiful tribute to his worth, which tribute inspired all hearts with confidence in the new commander.

"I have known Gen. McClellan most intimately, as students together, as soldiers in the field, as private citizens. For years we have lived in the same family, and I know him as well as I know any human being on the face of the earth. And I know that no more honest, conscientious man exists, than Gen. McClellan. I know that no feeling of ambition, beyond that of the good and the success of our cause, ever enters his breast. All that he does, is with a single eye, a single view to the success of this Government, and the breaking down of this rebellion. I know that

nothing under the sun, will ever induce that man to swerve from what he knows to be his duty. He is an honest, Christian-like and conscientious man; and now let me add one thing, that he has the soundest head, and the clearest military perception, of any man in the United States."

Even while our armies were on the retreat from Bull Run, orders were telegraphed from Washington, throughout the country, for large reënforcements. It is said that under the impulse which that disaster created, sixty thousand enlisted in two days. Gen. McDowell returned to his quarters at Arlington Heights, and the regiments rapidly resumed their old positions. The term of service of the gallant Massachusetts Sixth, who had enlisted for three months only, had now expired. Under the exigence Gen. Butler requested them to remain for ten days longer, and, as one man, they acceded to his request. The army of the Potomac was speedily increased by the addition of one hundred thousand men.

The rebels were greatly animated by the result of the conflict at Bull Run. Multitudes crowded their ranks, many were gathered by the energies of the most merciless conscription. Their batteries began to frown all along the Potomac. For some reason, which has never been satisfactorily explained, the rebels were permitted to rear these formidable ramparts upon the bluffs of the river, almost unassailed. Our ascending and descending ships were compelled to run the gauntlet of these hostile batteries, until finally they became so numerous and formidable, that the passage of the river was effectually closed. For many months a nation, of twenty millions of people, were humiliated by the consciousness that their capital was beleaguered, and held in state of siege by a handful of rebels.

A few miles out from Fortress Monroe, on the road to Yorktown, was the village of Hampton, one of the oldest and most attractive villages of Virginia, containing about five hundred houses, many of them quite ele gant. It was situated on the west side of a creek or arm of the sea, called Hampton river. Most of the rebels had retired from the place in consequence of its dangerous proximity to Fortress Monroe. Indeed, Gen. Butler had, at one time, occupied it with a small force, but he had withdrawn his troops, and stationed them on his own side of the river, which was crossed by a bridge, lest they should be cut off, by the formidable rebel force encamped a few miles distant at Yorktown.

At midnight of the 7th of August, the rebel General Magruder, with about 6,000 men, approached Hampton and set it on fire, in all quarters. His avowed object was to prevent the Union troops from occupying the buildings during the winter. Dwellings and shops were fired, without any warning, and many of the inhabitants, with great difficulty escaped from the flames. It was a new scene, for our once happy and peaceful country, in this horrid drama of civil war. The Union troops, though few in number, had a short but brisk conflict with the foe, and thus prevented them from crossing the river, and making an attack upon the Federal lines, though they could do nothing to save the village.

The dwellings were all of wood and burned like tinder, and the leaping, crackling flames, fanned by the high wind, in a few hours laid all în

ashes. Thus wantonly were the homes of nearly three thousand people destroyed. As a military measure it was entirely uncalled for, as Fortress Monroe, within its vast enclosure of seventy acres, presented all the accommodation the Union troops in that vicinity could require. The destruction was generally attributed to the potency of whiskey, that most mischievous. of all powers. Never did fiends enter upon war with more ferocity, than these slaveholding rebels, fighting for the perpetuation and extension of ignorance and slavery. The terrified inhabitants of Hampton, who had not already left the place, many of whom were Unionists, as the torches were applied, fled in all directions. Some were seized and forced into the ranks of the rebel army.

Mr. Scofield, a Union man, originally from the North, with much difficulty effected his escape with his two motherless children, having, by this cruel conflagration, lost his home, his business, his earthly all. As he was fleeing for his life, he fell in with five little children, the family of a poor man, who were sitting on the river's brink, shivering in their night clothes, their despairing mother trying to console them; their father lost, they knew not where. It was but little after midnight when the torches were applied, and the region was illumined with the conflagration, as with the blaze of noon-day.

The rebels manifested in every way how terribly they were in earnest, while the United States Government continued disposed to treat them with great leniency, still hoping for conciliation. The course pursued, at this time, by the Border States, was very embarrassing; for, while they arrayed themselves on the side of the Government, they were ever threatening to pass over and join the rebels, unless their mild policy of war was pursued. Thus while the rebels struck the heaviest blows in their power, with all the frantic energies of desperation, the Government defended itself, as a father would ward off the assaults of an insane child. The rebels compelled every man capable of bearing arms, to enter their ranks ; they rallied the slaves by thousands, to work in their intrenchments; would allow no one, under penalty of stripes and death, to speak for the Union, and introduced a general reign of terror, unexceeded by that in France under Danton and Robespierre. All the property of those who did not side with the rebels was confiscated, and a general decree of banishment was issued against them.

"We e can not," said the New Orleans Delta, "afford to tolerate enemies in our midst, because, forsooth, they may have the discretion to keep silent, and to bear no arms in their hands. The man of Massachusetts, or the man of Kentucky, living and perhaps thriving in our midst, has no business, at this time, to be among us, if he allow a reasonable suspicion to exist that he is not also cordially with us."

The decree of Jeff. Davis, issued on the 14th of August, ordering this banishment, says, "I do hereby warn and require every male citizen of the United States, of the age of fourteen and upwards, now within the Confederate States, and adhering to the Government of the United States, to depart from the Confederate States within forty days from the date of this proclamation."

For many months, there were large numbers of Union people at the North, who had no suitable appreciation of the desperate nature of the conflict. With the lingerings of kindly sympathies for their Southern brethren, instead of regarding them as infuriate and desperate rebels, who were to be struck down by the swiftest and the hardest blows, they were disposed to treat them as alienated friends, who could be won back by remonstrance and conciliation. Their programme for the war, was first a show of power, then blank cartridges, and then, but not until every thing else had failed, shot and shell.

Thus our army on the Potomac, of two hundred thousand men, for seven months remained in their encampments, without striking an earnest blow. Another fact, which operated fearfully against our military efficiency, was the strong pro-slavery sympathies of many of our leading generals, which rendered them reluctant to avail themselves, in any degree whatever, of the services of colored men. These two mistakes cost us millions of money, and tens of thousands of valuable lives. Our soldiers had to fight with the spade in one hand, and the rifle in the other. This double toil, all unnecessary, filled the hospitals and the distant grave-yards of the army, with the noblest sons of our land. In view of this mode of conducting the warfare, so sparing of the blood, and of what was called the property, of our enemies, so reckless of the lives of our own troops, a Union man at the South, wrote frantically to the North,

"When, in God's name, will you awake at the North? It seems to us here that you are all asleep. You are contending with an armed maniac, and yet you measure your strength, as if you had only to manage a halfgrown boy."

And one of the most influential of the Parisian journals remarked, "The refusal of the American Government, when struggling for existence, to avail itself of the proffered aid of four millions of allies, thus compelling those four millions to give their strength to the support of rebellion, excites the contempt of every military man in Europe."

Bitter experience at length taught the country, that it was folly to attempt to wage war in that spirit-that we must either fight with all our energies, or submit to the domination of the slaveholders.

By the middle of August, the batteries of the rebels commanded a large part of the Potomac, and, notwithstanding urgent reports were made to the Government, that unless they were dislodged, the navigation of the river would soon be completely closed, for some unexplained reason, no efforts were made for their demolition. On the afternoon of the 16th of August, two United States steamers, the Resolute and Reliance, were making a reconnoissance in the vicinity of Matthias Point. They saw a boat filled with barrels on the shore, probably placed there as a bait. A boat from the Resolute, with six men, was sent to the beach. The moment the boat touched the sand, a volley of musket balls, from the rebels in ambush, was opened upon them. Three men were instantly killed, literally riddled with balls, and a fourth severely wounded. The steamer immediately threw canister and shrapnel into the thicket where the treacherous foe were lurking, and they were put to flight. The survivors succeeded in