March 17, 1862. The occupation of so many of the Southern ports having been effected by our forces, and all of the others being now effectually invested, I apprehend that the illicit traffic which has been so flagrantly carried on from British ports will come to an end.

March 25, 1862. The events of the week have been striking and significant: the capture of Newbern by Burnside, with the consequent evacuation of Beaufort and Fort Macon by the insurgents, and the destruction by themselves of their own piratical steamer Nashville; the rout of the insurgents, on their retreat from Winchester to Strasburg, by Shields; the victory of General Pope at New Madrid; and the bombardment of Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, by Commodore Foote.

A movement of the main army of the Potomac down the river to Fortress Monroe is quietly going on, and demonstrations will soon be made against Norfolk and Richmond.

We suppose our ocean expedition against New Orleans must, at this time, have reached the mouth of the Mississippi.

March 26, 1862. We have already, with a strong hand, recovered the control of nearly all of the coast of the insurrectionary States, and we have recaptured four of the great ports which were wrested from us by the insurgents, or betrayed into their hands before the government assumed its attitude of self-defence. While doing this we have effected a release of all our land and naval forces from the sieges in which they were held by the rebels. All these forces are, as is supposed, safely acting aggressively. Our means are ample, our forces numerous, our credit sound, and our spirit buoyant and brave. The reverse of all this is the true condition of the insurgents. They are reduced from aggression to defence. Distracted between many exposed points, they have consumed most of their resources; their credit is nearly prostrate; their forces, always exaggerated, are now very feeble; and they are considering, not so much how they shall carry on the war they so recklessly began, as how they shall meet and endure the calamities it is bringing upon them. It is under these circumstances that our army of the Potomac, under General McClellan, to-day, is descending that river, an hundred thousand strong, to attack and carry Norfolk and Richmond; that another army, under General Fremont, is moving upon Cumberland Gap, to cut off the communication of

the insurgents with the more southern States; that a third army, under General Halleck, equal in numbers and efficiency with that of the Potomac, is descending both banks of the Mississippi, flanking what has hitherto proved to be an irresistible naval force, which is making its way upon the river itself to New Orleans; while a fourth column of land and naval forces, under General Butler and Captain Porter, deemed adequate to any emergency, is already believed to be ascending the river from the Belize to attack New Orleans. Burnside has really left nothing to be done to rescue the ports between Norfolk and Charleston. Charleston cannot long hold out; and the fall of Savannah is understood to be only a question of days, not of weeks. Mobile cannot stand after the fall of these and of New Orleans, and all the ports between those cities are already in our possession.

April 1, 1862. — Earl Russell, in the House of Lords, expressed the belief that this country is large enough for two independent nations, and the hope that this government will assent to a peaceful separation from the insurrectionary States. A very brief sojourn among us, with an observation of our mountains, rivers, and coasts, and some study of our social condition and habits, would be sufficient to satisfy him, on the contrary, that the country is not too large for one such people as this, and that it is, and must always be, too small for two distinct nations, until the people shall have become so demoralized by faction that they are ready to enter the course which leads through continued subdivision to continued anarchy. All the British speculations assume that the political elements which have been brought into antagonism here are equal in vigor and endurance. Nothing, however, is more certain than that freedom and slavery are very unequal in these qualities, and that when these diverse elements are eliminated, the former from the cause of sedi tion, and the latter from the cause of the government, then the government must prevail, sustained as it is by the coöperating sentiments of loyalty, of national pride, interest, ambition, and the permanent love of peace.

April 3, 1862. The late achievement of the Merrimack in Hampton Roads at first perplexed and alarmed all our naval agents and officers. They have, however, made preparations for her coming out again, and they express entire confidence in their ability to master her. Meantime the blockade is actually becoming a siege,

which we trust will soon result in occupation of the insurrectionary ports.

April 8, 1862.- Our armies, held everywhere in the leash, are at the point of being let loose. Important transactions must occur within a few days. It is the part of wisdom to be neither sanguine of success nor disturbed with apprehensions of failure. If the tide of military success shall continue to flow full and strong, we can consent to wait the reluctant but inevitable return of maritime nations to the fraternal positions they abandoned when faction undertook to undermine their fidelity as the most effectual way to compass our destruction.

I have just signed, with Lord Lyons, a treaty which I trust will be approved by the Senate and by the British government. If ratified, it will bring the African slave-trade to an end immediately and forever. Had such a treaty been made in 1808, there would now have been no sedition here, and no disagreement between the United States and foreign nations. We are indeed suffering deeply in this civil war. Europe has impatiently condemned and deplored it. Yet it is easy to see already that the calamity will be compensated by incalculable benefits to our country and to mankind. Such are the compensations of Providence for the sacrifices it exacts.

April 14, 1862. It is known that all the free States are loyal to the Union; that the insurrection had its spring in the slave States, and that it aims to separate them all from the Union, and embrace them in a new sovereign confederacy. There is not one regiment or battalion, or even company of men, which was organized in, or derived from, the free States and Territories, in arms anywhere against the Union. Some regiments derived from the border slave States are found in the slave States in hostilities against the Federal authorities, while others equally or more numerous are supporting them there. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, all border slave States, respectively, have contributed large bodies of men to the armies of the Union. Missouri, a border slave State west of the Mississippi, has been cleared of all organized military bodies of insurgents, and for some time past has ceased to be troubled by guerillas. The battle of Pea Ridge, in which General Curtis beat Van Dorn, Price, McIntosh, and McCullough, has firmly established General Curtis and the national colors in the northwestern part of Arkansas, an interior slave State. No

insurrectionary forces remain in Kentucky, also a border slave State. All the fortified positions of the insurgents have been abandoned, and the southern border of Tennessee, an interior slave State, has been crossed by the advancing armies of the nation, which, after the victories of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, the occupation of Bowling Green, Nashville, Murfreesborough, and Columbus, a few days since captured the fortified position of Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, with one hundred heavy guns, thirty pieces of field artillery, six thousand prisoners; and on the same day, after a two days' contest, repulsed and beat the insurgent army, said to be eighty thousand strong, at Pittsburg Landing, with the loss of their chief, General A. S. Johnston. Four days afterwards General Mitchell, with a column of the same Federal army, by a forced march, occupied, without loss, Huntsville, in the State of Alabama, one of the Gulf slave States, and captured some two hundred prisoners, fifteen locomotive engines, and many railroad carriages, which will be very useful in future operations. Immediately afterwards he captured Decatur and the Chattanooga Junction, and thus got possession of one hundred and ten miles of the railroad. This stroke is important, as it cuts off the great artery of connection by railroad between Memphis and Richmond and the southeastern slave States. Jacksonville, in Eastern Tennessee, has been visited by our forces, and thus it is seen that they are approaching Knoxville, the principal city in that always intensely loyal part of the State of Ten

nessee.

April 19, 1862. All the grievances which disturb our people and tend to alienate them from Great Britain seem deducible from the concessions made by her to the insurgents at the beginning of this civil war. All the explanations we receive from Great Britain seem to imply a conviction that this civil war must end in the overthrow of the Federal Union. The ultimate consequence of such a calamity would be that this great country would be divided into factions and hostile states and confederations, as Greece and Italy and Spanish America have been.

You can do no more in the present conjecture than to give his lordship, from time to time, fresh and accumulating evidence of our purpose and our ability to pursue to a successful end the course which we have learned from our British ancestry, namely, to hold the constituent States of our great realm in perpetual and indissoluble union.

The western part of Virginia has been cleared of insurgents and General Frémont has put his army in motion. From Monterey and Moorfield two columns are advancing. General Banks is ascending the valley of the Shenandoah, while General Blenker's division is on the march from Warrenton towards Strasburg, to unite with General Banks in the moment which promises to cut the Virginia and Covington Railroad first, then the Southwestern Valley Railroad of Virginia, and thus sever communication which connects Richmond, the seat of the insurrection, and Knoxville, before named. General McDowell, with the army covering Washington, occupies the region between Washington and the Rappahannock, and the news comes to-day that the insurgents are abandoning their entire line on that river and retiring to the vicinity of Richmond. The Eastern Shore of Virginia has been relieved by General Lockwood's brigade from the small insurgent force which early organized itself there. General McClellan on the York River, and General Wood at Fortress. Monroe, with the main body of the army of the Potomac, lay siege upon Yorktown, which is defended by the insurgent leaders Lee, J. E. Johnston, and Magruder.

General Burnside occupies the cities and sounds and coasts of eastern North Carolina, and besieges Fort Macon, which is cut off from all succor. These forces have cleared all the insurgent bodies out of a slave territory once occupied by them, containing one hundred and fifty thousand square miles and a population of three mil

lions.

One half of the coast of South Carolina, the whole coast of Georgia, and the harbors, cities, and coasts of East Florida, are occupied by the army which lately was under the command of General Sherman, who has been replaced by General Hunter; and the fortresses of the Florida reef, situate at Key West, the Tortugas Islands, and at the harbors of Tampa Bay and Cedar Keys; Fort Pickens, commanding the entrance to Pensacola; Ship Island, Biloxi, and Pass Christian, on the coast of Mississippi, as well as the head of the delta of the Mississippi River, all are occupied and securely held by national forces. Fort Pulaski, on the Savannah River, after a bombardment of several days, surrendered yesterday. There is scarce a harbor on the whole coast, from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi, which is not hermetically sealed by a force occupying some island or headland, as well as by the blockading squad