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558      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.      NOVEMBER, 1861

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Gen. McClellan has now ninety-six batteries of six guns to a battery in the Potomac army.

It is stated that the only persons exempted from military service at the South are overseers.

Three slaves were shot by the rebels at Munson's Hill while attempting to escape to our lines. 

The Rev. John Pierpont has been appointed Chaplain of Col. Henry Wilson's Massachusetts 22d Regiment.

It is stated that the Federal prisoners sent to New Orleans were escorted to their quarters in that city by a colored company. 

A Leavenworth (Kansas) paper says it has information to the effect that one hundred slaves leave Missouri every day for Kansas.

The rebel General, Magruder, has made a requisition upon the citizens of five counties in Virginia for one-third of their efficient male slave population, to work on the rebel fortifications.

The Secretary of War is becoming impatient with the expense of bands of music for the army, as it already amounts to a sum that will make this single item of expenditure $4,000,000.

Nearly all the Southern men in the last Congress who voted against the prosecution of the war, have either entered the rebel army within a short time past, or are preparing to do so. 

In one of the Troy pulpits, on Sunday last, the pastor offered a special prayer for Gen. Fremont, whom he alluded to as a man between two fires--the enemy in front and a distrustful and slanderous people behind.

The telegraph announced the other day that a Pennsylvania regiment had restored a fugitive slave to his master. It seems that he was not only given up, but was escorted two miles beyond our lines by a file of soldiers!

The number of serfs in Russia at the commencement of 1859, was no less than 22,563,086, which is considerably more than one-third of the whole population (61,129,480)——The number of owners of these serfs was 106,897.

The muster roll of the Tar River Rangers, one of the companies taken prisoners by our troops at Fort Hatteras, contains the names of sixty-four men, only five of whom were able to write their names ; the rest all made their marks.

The Toronto Globe says that one curious effect of the present war has been the bringing into prominent view the existence of strong affinities between a certain political party in Canada and the slaveholders of the Southern States.

Two or three days since, a slave boy, seven years of age, was carried back to bondage from the vicinity of Fortress Monroe, by his mistress, who claimed to be a loyal resident of Baltimore. So says a correspondent of the Boston Journal. 

At the battle of Bull Run, the captain of a Rhode Island battery was killed early in the action, when James Reeder, a colored servant, took command and held the gun to the last moment, for which he was highly complimented on the return of the troops to Providence. 

African slavers had discovered a new way of reaching Cuba with their cargoes. A few weeks since six hundred negroes were landed on Anguilla Island, one of the Bahamas, the slave ship burned to escape detection, and the cargo forwarded to Cuba, in two trips, by a schooner.

Daniel Ricketson, of New Bedford, Mass., in a letter to Wm. C. Nell, of Boston, says that he found the following statement in an account of the Bermuda Islands, given in 'Morse's American Gazetteer,' Boston, 1797:  'In the late war, there were at one time between fifteen and twenty privateers fitted out from hence, which were manned by negro slaves, who behaved irreproachably.'

A black girl named White, having been excluded lately from a district school in Minnesota, the matter was referred to the Attorney General of the State, who decided that the trustees had no power to exclude any one on account of color.

The arrivals of cotton at Liverpool from St. Mark, Hayti, from the 6th to the 12th of September, amounted to 279 bales.  The exports of domestic cotton from the port of New York to Hayti, for the week ending October 1st, amounted to 29 packages, and were valued at $745.

The Emperor of Russia has addressed our Government on the existing state of affairs here, manifesting the most friendly interest in the welfare of this Government and hoping for a restoration of its unity.  Secretary Seward has appropriately and gracefully responded to the letter of the Emperor.

In the local columns of a recent Baltimore Clipper is an account of the whipping of four free colored women in that city, by order of a Police Justice.  They received ten stripes each upon the back, well laid on, with an additional five for one woman, who is said to have complained too loudly of the first ten.

A decision of Marshal O'Donnell, Minister of War and the Colonies, published in the Madrid papers, and addressed to the Captain-General of Porto Rico, declares, in principle, that a slave who has touched the soil of Spain must be considered as emancipated, even without the consent of his former master.

In Missouri the secession slaveholders, by thousands, with their negroes, are leaving the State for Arkansas, preceding Price's rebel army, who have evacuated Lexington and are reported retreating before Gen. Fremont.  If the way remains open there will be such a slave exodus from Missouri this fall as was never heard of before.

At a recent immense meeting in Worcester, which was addressed by the Hon. Senator Wilson aad Mayors Davis and Bullock, while the latter was eloquently enforcing the sentiment that we must have 'One Country, one Constitution, one Union, one Future,' a voice in the crowd called out loudly, 'And one Nation without one Slave.'

The following gentlemen are advertised to deliver lectures in the Boston Fraternity Course during the coming fall and winter:--Hon. Charles Sumner, Jacob M. Manning, Geo. Wm. Curtis, T. W. Higginson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wm. R. Alger, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, E. H. Heywood, E. H. Chapin, Wm. S. Studley, and Wendell Phillips.

Salt Lake City is now connected with the Atlantic States by telegraph.  Hon J. H. Wade of Cincinnati received a dispatch from Brigham Young, Oct. 18th, congratulating him on the completion of the line to Salt Lake City, and expressing the most patriotic sentiments for the preservation of the Union.  The line between the latter named city and San Francisco will be completed in a few days.

The pro-slavery press are making a great hue and cry about a passport granted by Mr. Seward to the Rev. H. H. Garnet, simply because the latter is a colored gentlemen.  The passport is impressed by the seal oft he Department of State, and 'requests all whom it may concern to permit safely and freely to pass Henry H. Garnet, a citizen of the United States, and in case of need to give him all lawful aid and protection.'

On the evening of Sept. 26th, a special religious service was held at the Islington Presbyterian Church in Liverpool, as a mark of sympathy with the national humiliation appointed to be observed in America on that day.  The Rev. Dr. White conducted the service.  He regarded the American war in the light of a correction from God to improve, and not as a judgment to destroy.  The cause of the war he believed to be the curse of slavery, and he argued that the war would be the death-blow of slavery.

A very large and enthusiastic meeting of the colored citizens of New Bedford was held on the 9th ult., for the purpose of using their influence in behalf of the Government to put down the present rebellion.  Wm. P. Powell presided, and made an eloquent and patriotic speech.  Resolutions were adopted calling on the Government to accept the services of colored men, asking the next Legislature to strike the word 'white' from off the statute laws of the Commonwealth, and recommending the formation of colored military companies.  Hon. Rodney French urged the colored people to commence drilling, for he thought that their services would very soon be required by the Government.  Remarks were also offered by Wm. H. Johnson, Rev. Mr. Jackson, Rev. Mr. Jones, Wm. Berry, and Mayor Taber.

BROWNSON AND CHEEVER.——The Baltimore correspondent of the [[italics]] Tribune [[/italics]] is enthusiastic in his appreciation of the efforts of these gentlemen in behalf of emancipation by the war power.  He says:

'God bless Dr. Brownson and Dr. Cheever for their admirable illustrations of the true question at issue in this rebellion!  None but inspired minds could write and speak as they have done.  it has been vouchsafed untl them to see through the darkness, and it has been dispelled by their powerful pens.  Not to be irreverent, nothing uttered by the prophets of old can compare with Dr. Brownson's argument for clear-sighed views of the future and felicitous statement, and as I regard all truth as sacred, I do not hesitate to rank his disquisition among the sacred writings.--Would that the people could rise to the level of this distinguished Christian philosophers prophetic eye!'

WHERE THE OPPOSITION TO FREMONT COMES FROM.——The St. Louis correspondent of the Tribune, a very intelligent writer, says:

'It is at least singular that not a word of all the charges against Fremont was breathed from Washington until after the Proclamation.  There are hundreds of Union men in Missouri who are heavy slaveholders; but with a large acquaintance among them I have not heard a single one, of unquestionable loyalty, object to that document.  All the denunciation of it which we hear from loyal men comes from the East.  It is certain that it stirred the great heart of the North-West as nothing else has stirred it since the beginning of the war.  Is it not equally true that Gen. Fremont was the first of the leaders who comprehened the real issue--that he was indeed the Pathfinder, pointing out the position which the Government will inevitably be compelled to take a no distant day?'

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH.——In a letter to W. W. Chapman, Chairman of the State Abolition Committee, Mr. Smith says:

'Election is again approaching, and you and others are asking me to lead in the work of bringing the Abolitionists to the polls.——Whilst confessing my gratitude for these expressions of continued confidence, I must, nevertheless, say that, if it was ever proper to regard me as one of the leaders in the Voting Abolition Party, it is certainly no longer so.

'The lessons which were read to me by Abolitionists a year ago, I can neither mistake nor forget.  In one State and another, Nominating Conventions could not bear with me because of the unsoundness of my Religion.  In Pennsylvania, this unsoundness was so abhorrent that a good man disdained to have his name on the same ticket with mine.  In some States, the complaint was not only of the unsoundness of my Religion, but the unsoundness of my Abolitionism also.

'Surely, surely, if I have any remaining modesty, such facts as these must make me shrink from putting myself forward, or from allowing others to put me forward, among Voting Abolitionists.

'My Religion and my Abolitionism must bide their time!'

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