“The enemy recommenced shelling again yesterday, with but few casualties on our part. We had, in the battle of the 18th inst., about 150 killed and wounded. The enemy’s loss, including prisoners, was about 2000. Nearly 800 were buried under a flag of truce.
“Col. Putnam, acting brigadier-general, and Col. Shaw, commanding the negro regiment, were killed.
“(Signed) G. T. Beauregard, General.”
It is said the raiders that dashed into Wytheville have been taken; but not so with the raiders that have been playing havoc with the railroad in North Carolina.
Another letter from J. M. Botts, Culpepper County, complains of the pasturing of army horses in his fields before the Gettysburg campaign, and asks if his fields are to be again subject to the use of the commander of the army, now returning to his vicinity. If he knows that Gen. Lee is fallen back thither, it is more than any one here seems to know. We shall see how accurate Mr. B. is in his conjecture.
A letter from Mr. Goodman, president of Mobile and Charleston Railroad, says military orders have been issued to destroy, by fire, railroad equipments to the value of $5,000,000; and one-third of this amount of destruction would defeat the purpose of the enemy for a long time. The President orders efforts to be made to bring away the equipments by sending them down the road.
Col. Preston, commandant of conscripts for South Carolina, has been appointed Chief of the Bureau of Conscription; he has accepted the appointment, and will be here August 1st. The law will now be honestly executed—if he be not too indolent, sick, etc.
Archbishop Hughes has made a speech in New York to keep down the Irish.
July 24th.—Nothing from Lee, or Johnston, or Beauregard, or Bragg—but ill luck is fated for them all. Our ladies, at least, would not despair. But a day may change the aspect; a brilliant success would have a marvelous effect upon a people who have so long suffered and bled for freedom.
They are getting on more comfortably, I learn, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Only about 25 of the enemy’s troops are said to be there, merely to guard the wires. In the Revolutionary war, and in the war of 1812, that peninsula escaped the horrors of war, being deemed then, as now, too insignificant to attract the cupidity of the invaders.