Have vanished and fled,
And people must carry
Shinplasters instead.
A gentleman from Florida, who has been a prisoner at Fort Lafayette, in New York harbor, was brought here yesterday. At Fort Lafayette he has been in double irons since the 27th of April last, because it was alleged that he was a captain of a band of guerillas to hang Union men. He is a private attached to the 3d Florida regiment, Colonel Dilworth. The Yankees have threatened to hang him several times. He was captured at St. Johns, while within an hundred yards of his house, whither he was going on furlough. A sermon was preached in the Fort this evening, and my friend Lieutenant W., who has fortunately a religious turn of mind, heard it, and informs me that it was a fine effort, although emanating from a Yankee. The gist of it was that religion is not incompatible with a soldier’s life. For my own part, I believe that as no good can come out of Nazareth, or pure water from a foul spring, so nothing sincere can fall from a Yankee’s lips.
Look at “Old Gip” (Captain Gibson) as he winds about the yard of the fort! His slim figure is made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons. He walks with as quick a step as his left leg twisted at an angle of forty-seven degrees will permit. He carries his chin as if conscious of a stiff cravat, and his old palm leaf hat is set with a knowing inclination to the left ear. “Old Gip” is a tall, spare and ungainly looking man, of about fifty years of age, with a pale ascetic countenance, which carries with it an expression vibrating between low suspicion and vulgarity. His hair is cut tolerably close, close enough to display in their full proportions a large pair of ears, which stand out in “relief” like turrets from a watch-tower, and with pretty much the same object. His beard is short, and of pepper and salt color, and he has a malicious twinkling eye. Most persons have some prevailing characteristic, which usually gives tone and color to all their thoughts and actions, forming what we denominate temperament. The temperament of “Old Gip” seems to take delight in being as rough, uncouth, and disobliging as possible to all whom cruel fate has brought with the unfortunate limits of his tyranny. Occasionally the officers are allowed to walk on the parapet of the fort for recreation for about an half hour. Any conversation with the sentinels is strictly forbidden, and for not observing the rule in this respect, some officers have been placed in solitary confinement. Not long since, while the Confederate officers were walking on the parapet, they noticed a vessel approaching with a flag, which, at a distance, looked exactly like the Confederate flag, and the conversation became general upon the subject, in the course of which, one of the officers observed, in a jocular way, that he believed it was the “stars and bars,” and said, “Hurrah for Jeff Davis.” Soon the sentinel informed us, “Your time is up,” and we had scarcely reached our quarters when the officer above referred to received a note from “Old Gip,” in which the Yankee functionary used this language: “For this, your first offence, I warn you, but for a repetition of the crime, may God have mercy on your soul!” The sentinel must have informed Captain Gibson of the crime, for the latter was not within hearing when the remark was made.
July 14th. An old Dutch soldier in the fort said to-day, “I don’t care which side whips by Got, so I gets my thirteen dollars a month.” Another Yankee soldier remarked to a prisoner, “You have plenty of friends in this yard, but we must keep mum.” Captain Gibson has just issued an order preventing prisoners from receiving money from their friends, but allows them to buy necessaries from the sutler, and give an order on him when he has funds in his hands belonging to a prisoner. This is caused by the escape of several prisoners lately, for it is supposed that the sentinels were bribed by the parties who escaped.
The Black Republican members of the United States Congress are as far from mixing with the Democrats as oil with water. The two are always quarrelling in spite of the fact, that the Black Republicans are ever trying to be a little more Democratic, while the Democrats make constant efforts to be a little “Republican.” In this way the Black Republicans are like onions rubbed with Democratic spices; the strong original nigger odor is blended with new and foreign matter. However much the Democrats aim to conceal the fact, it is quite plain that Black Republican Onion offends Democratic nostrils, while the new Democratic spice is quite unwelcome to the genuine Black Republican.
July 15th. Ten prisoners escaped last night. From a Northern paper I learn that the following dispatch has just been received at the War Department, “Nashville,” July 14th. It was the ninth, instead of the eleventh Michigan regiment, that surrendered at Murfreesboro’, Tennessee. The eleventh arrived at the camp near the Davisville Fair Grounds, yesterday afternoon, after an unsuccessful three days’ chase after Morgan. Three members of Hewitt’s battery, who escaped from Murfreesboro’, report that the battery and the third Minnesota surrendered to the rebels. Colonel Duffield is mortally wounded, and General T. A. Crittenden, of Indiana, taken prisoner.
Mrs. Phillips, who was not long since released from the old capital prison at Washington city, and sent South, has been again arrested by an order from “Beast Butler,” on the charge of “mocking” at the funeral remains of Lieutenant De Kay, and imprisoned in one of the houses on Ship Island, intended for hospital purposes, where she is to be allowed one female servant, and no more, and a soldier’s ration a day, with the means of cooking it. Another order from the same source sentences Fidel Keller or Kelti to two years’ hard labor on Ship Island for exhibiting in his bookstore window a skeleton labelled “Chickahominy.” A third order sentences John W. Audins to hard labor for two years, for having exhibited a cross, which he said was fashioned from the bones of a Yankee soldier.
Lincoln has just had an interview with the members of Congress from the border States, the object of which is said to have been to impress upon them the necessity of urging their respective States to adopt the gradual emancipation policy, in order to avoid, says the New York Express, “immediate and bloody abolition.” The telegraph reports that General Curtis, (who is endeavoring to retreat through Arkansas to the Mississippi river, opposite Memphis,) is suffering terribly for want of forage and supplies. Also, on Monday, his command was at Jacksonport, and General Hindman had ordered the railroad bridge at Madison to be burned, to prevent Curtis from passing in that direction, and had also required all the inhabitants near Gauley bridge to burn their provisions and shoot their cattle, lest they should be seized by foraging parties sent out by Curtis. Charges have been preferred against General Mitchell by the division formerly commanded by him in North Alabama. He is accused of having permitted a portion of his troops to perpetrate upon the people of North Alabama “deeds of cruelty and of guilt, the bare narration of which makes the heart sick.” Ex-President Fillmore says “that the Abolitionists in Congress had undone what the army had done.”