telegraph line, he returned to Newbern after an absence of eight days. Foster thus briefly summed up the results of his expedition: CAROLINA, Dec. 20, 1862. "MAJOR-GEN. HALLECK, GENERAL-IN-CHIEF: turing the celebrated Pittsburg battery, and taking thirty prisoners, the second from the same place resulted in total failure. General Terry set out Dec. 11. with a detachment of troops and a HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NORTH pontoon train to cross the Blackwater, but being met by a superior force of the enemy, was forced to retire, though fortunately with a loss only of three killed and wounded, for which he was compensated by the capture of thirteen prisoners. "My expedition was a perfect success. I burned the railroad bridge at Goldsboro and Mount Olive, and tore up several miles of the track of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. "We fought four engagements, viz.: at Southwest Creek, Kinston, Whitehall, and Goldsboro, and whipped the enemy handsomely each time. "J. G. FOSTER, "Brigadier-General Commanding." The expedition of General Foster, however skilfully conducted, was rendered abortive by the failure of Burnside at Fredericksburg. The enemy, being relieved by their victory from any immediate danger to their capital from that quarter, were enabled to send reinforcements to defend its approaches in other directions. Thus they not only compelled General Foster to retire to his base of operations at Newbern, but | succeeded in keeping in check the movements of the Union troops from Norfolk and Suffolk, which had been occupied after the capture of the former city, intended also to be co-operative with the advance of General Burnside upon Fredericksburg. Though the first United States expeDec. dition which started for Suffolk suc1. ceeded in driving the enemy across the Blackwater River at Franklin, recap When the disaster to the Union arms at Fredericksburg became known, it was hoped that the great naval and military expedition, which had been so long preparing at New York, was destined. to operate on the south of Richmond, either by North Carolina or the James River. The people at the North hoped that thus the defeat of their army in front might be avenged by a signal success in the rear, and the capture of the enemy's capital secured, in spite of Burnside's check on the Rappahannock. These hopes, however, were disappointed. General Banks, who had sailed from New York on the evening of December 4th, in his flag-ship the steamer North Star, arrived at New Orleans on the 14th of the same month. He was accompanied by a large fleet of men-ofwar and transports, though many of his vessels had been detained on the voyage in consequence of various mishaps, owing to the unseaworthiness of the miscellaneous craft which had been carelessly pressed into the service. On the arrival of General Banks at New Orleans, he immediately assumed the GENERAL BANKS AT NEW ORLEANS. command at that city, which was established as the basis of great military and naval operations, to be carried on for the further subjugation of Louisiana, the full conquest of the Mississippi River, the capture of the enemy's posts in the Gulf of Mexico, and the re-establishment of the Federal authority in Texas. To aid in this last object, General Banks was accompanied by General A. J. Hamilton, who had been appointed by the President military governor of Texas. Hamilton, though a Southern man by birth, having been born in Alabama, whence he had emigrated to Texas, had, on the breaking out of the rebellion, signalized himself as a firm advocate of the Union. Persecuted by the secessionists, he had been forced to fly from his home, and escaping through Mexico to New York, became prominent for his advocacy of the extermination of slavery, as a means of prosecuting the war for the Union. His loyalty and political sympathy with the Government, as well as his supposed influence in Texas, where as a lawyer and a member of Congress he had been much esteemed, marked him out as a suitable person to assist in executing the design of encouraging the Union sentiment of his State. General Butler, whose rigid rule at New Orleans had, by its interference with their representatives, aroused the susceptibilities of foreign nations, was superseded, in politic concession, it was suspected, to the remonstrances of Eu ropean powers. General Butler, on yielding up his 555 command to General Banks, took leave of the army in a farewell order, in which he dwelt, with characteristic self-gratulation, upon a career whose motives and conduct had been so variously estimated. In this address to the people of New Orleans, Butler repeated the complacent remarks upon himself, and added some observations upon the conduct of others, singularly indiscreet on the part of an officer of a Government at peace with those whose actions he held up to scorn. "ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS. "CITIZENS OF NEW ORLEANS: "It may not be inappropriate, as it is not inopportune in occasion, that there should be addressed to you a few words at parting, by one whose name is to be hereafter indissolubly connected with your city. "I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious of a single personal animosity. Commanding the Army of the Gulf, I found you captured, but not surrendered; conquered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence of an army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. So far from it, you had called upon a foreign legion to protect you from yourselves. I restored order, punished crime, opened commerce, brought provisions to your starving people, reformed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such as you had not enjoyed for many years. "While doing this, my soldiers were subjected to obloquy, reproach, and insult. "And now, speaking to you who know the truth, I here declare that whoever has quietly remained about his business, affording neither aid nor comfort to the enemies of the United States, has never been interfered with by the soldiers of the United States. "The men who had assumed to govern you and to defend your city in arms having fled, some of your women flouted at the presence of those who came to protect them. By a simple order (No. 28) I called upon every soldier of this army to treat the women of New Orleans as gentlemen should deal with the sex, with such effect that I now call upon the just-minded ladies of New Orleans to say whether they have ever enjoyed so complete protection and calm quiet for themselves and their families, as since the advent of the United States troops. "The enemies of my country, unrepentant and implacable, I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion is treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any punishment short of that due a traitor gives so much clear gain to him from the clemency of the Government. Upon this thesis have I administered the authority of the United States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint. I do not feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for that harshness has ever been exhibited to disloyal enemies of my country, and not to loyal friends. To be sure, I might have regaled you with the amenities of British civilization, and yet been within the supposed rules of civilized warfare. You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were the Covenanters of Scotland by command of a general of the royal house of England; or roasted like the inhabitants of Algiers during the French campaign; your wives and daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as were the unfortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular war; or you might have been scalped and tomahawked, as our mothers were at Wyoming by the savage allies of Great Britain in our own Revolution; your property could have been turned over to indiscriminate 'loot,' like the palace of the emperor of China; works of art which adorned your buildings might have been sent away, like the paintings of the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the mouths of cannon, like the Sepoys at Delhi; and yet this would have been within the rules of civilized warfare, as practiced by the most polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city towards the friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and justification. "But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law, has been banishment with labor to a barren island, where I encamped my own soldiers before marching here. "It is true I have levied upon the wealthy rebel and paid out nearly half a million of dollars, to feed 40,000 of BANKS ON SLAVERY. the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. "I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats against the middling men ; of the rich against the poor; a war of the land-owner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no conclusion to it save the subjugation of the few and the disenthralment of the many. I therefore felt no hesitation in taking the substance of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent poor, who had suffered by the war. And I shall now leave you with the proud consciousness that I carry with me the blessings of the humble and loyal under the roof of the cottage and in the cabin of the slave, and so am quite content to incur the sneers of the salon or the curses of the rich. "I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrection. All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. "I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. "I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. "I have added a million of dollars to your wealth, in the form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. 557 tions, greater than you have ever enjoyed before. "I have caused justice to be administered so impartially, that your own advocates have unanimously complimented the judges of my appointment. "You have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of the Government against which you have rebelled. "Why, then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that Government, not with lip-service, but with the heart? "I conjure you, if you desire ever to see renewed prosperity, giving business to your streets and wharves-if you hope to see your city become again the mart of the Western world, fed by its rivers for more than 3,000 miles, draining the commerce of a country greater than the mind of man hath ever conceived-return to your allegiance. "If you desire to leave to your children the inheritance you received of your fathers a stable constitutional government-if you desire that they should in the future be a portion of the greatest empire the sun ever shone upon-return to your allegiance. 'There is but one thing that stands the way. in 66 "I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. "I have given you freedom of elec- | subject. "I have given much thought to this "I came among you, by teachings, by habit of mind, by political position, by social affinity, inclined to sustain your domestic laws, if by possibility they might be with safety to the Union. "Months of experience and observation have forced the conviction that the existence of slavery is incompatible with the safety either of yourselves or of the Union. As the system has gradually grown to its present huge dimensions, it were best if it could be gradually removed; but it is better, far better, that it should be taken out at once, than that it should longer vitiate the social, political, and family relations of your country. I am speaking with no philanthropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect of slavery on the master. See for yourselves. "Look around you and say whether this saddening, deadening influence has not all but destroyed the very framework of your society. "I am speaking the farewell words of one who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril of his life and fortune, who in these words can have neither hope nor interest save the good of those whom he addresses; and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views forced upon me by experience. graphical position, only a portion of which was heretofore yours. "BENJ. F. BUTLER." General Banks, in his new orders and proclamation, showed himself to be more modest in expression, and promised to be more lenient in policy, than his predecessor. The first act of the new commander was to arrest the further sale of confiscated property, which had been hitherto carried on so extensively and conducted in a manner so equivocal as to excite suspicion, not only of its justice, but of its expediency. In order to regulate such proceedings in the future by the forms if not the enactments of established law, Charles A. Peabody, formerly judge of the Supreme Court of New York, had been endowed by the President with extraordinary judicial powers, and sent out with General Banks to perform the anomalous duty of reconciling martial with legal requirements. In his proclamation General Banks addressed the people such words of conciliation as encouraged them to hope for a charity of sentiment and a liberality of treatment of which they had despaired under the severe rule of his predecessor. The following was General Banks' proclamation : "HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 16, 1862. "In obedience to orders from the President, I have assumed command of the Department of the Gulf, to which is added, by his special order, the State of "Come, then, to the unconditional support of the Government. Take into your own hands your own institutions; remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God, and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by geo- | Texas. |