Today in History:

723 Series I Volume II- Serial 2 - First Manassas

Page 723 Chapter IX. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.

There are twenty Kentucky well-month guerrillas. Five of them took the Connecticut man prisoner. The Connecticut man seemed well pleased with being a prisoner. Subsistence, chiefly ship biscuit and fresh beef. Crops-wheat very fine; grass, corn, and oats indifferent. They seemed to be expecting an attack from us. Saw no guns at Germantown. Saw five guns harnessed at Court-House. Saw five guns at Centreville. Saw four guns at Bull Run.

I have the honor to remain, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

IRVIN McDOWELL,

Brigadier-General.

WASHINGTON, June 25, 1861.

Honorable JOHN S. CARLILE,

Wheeling, Va.:

SIR: As the President has now been appealed to by his excellency Governor Peirpoint to aid in repelling the Southern marauders and their confederates from Virginia, you are requested to take your instructions for him in organizing forces in Virginia for that purpose, and the company and field officers of the troops now or hereafter to be organized will be commissioned by him.

Allow me to tender you my sincere thanks for the patriotism, intrepidity, and intelligence which have characterized your intercourse with this Department in the trying times during which you have aided its efforts.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

SIMON CAMERON,

Secretary of War.

WASHINGTON, June 25, 1861.

Honorable FRANCIS H. PEIRPOINT,

Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Wheedling:

SIR: In reply to you application of the 21st instant for the aid of the Federate Government to repel from Virginia the lawless invaders now perpetrating every species of outrage upon persons and property throughout a large portion of the State, the President directs me to say that a large additional force will soon be sent to your relief. The full extent of the conspiracy against popular rights which has culminated in the atrocities to which you refer was not known when its first outbreak took place at Charleston. It now appears that it was matured for many years by secret organizations throughout the country, especially in the slave States. By this means, when the President called upon Virginia in April for its quota of troops, then deemed necessary to put it down in the States in which it had shown itself in arms, the call was responded to by an order from the chief confederate in Virginia to his armed followers to seize the navy-yard at Gosport, and the authorities of the State, who had till then shown repugnance to the plot, found themselves stripped of al actual power, and afterwards were manifestly permitted to retain the empty forms of office only because they consented to use them at the bidding of the invaders.

The President, however, never supposed that a brave and free people, though surprised and unarmed, could long be subjugated by a class of political adventurers always adverse to them, and the fact that they have already rallied, reorganized their government, and checked the march of these invaders demonstrates how justly he appreciated them.


Page 723 Chapter IX. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.