Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: We have advices from Port Hudson of the 3d of July. The siege was then vigorously maintained, and there is reason to believe that re-enforcements, if thought necessary, have since been supplied by General Grant. The 8th of July gave us our last intelligence from Vicksburg, and it enables me to correct some of the details of the results of the capitulation contained in my recent telegram. More than twenty-seven thousand (27,000) prisoners had already then been paroled, and the task was not yet completed. There were found in various parts of the city, concealed and otherwise, sixty-six thousand (66,000) stands of small arms, and still new searches discovered new deposits of the same sort. The whole amount of ordnance captured, including siege and sea coast guns, exceeded two hundred (200.) The supply of ammunition surpasses belief. It would have sufficed for six years of defence, if used at the rate that it was consumed during the siege. The military stores, chiefly clothing for soldiers, is estimated at five millions of dollars, insurrectionary currency. General Sherman was in hot pursuit of Johnson’s forces.
The insurgent army, under Bragg, has been driven out of Tennessee into Alabama.
Rear-Admiral Dahlgren was expected to assault Morris island, which is one of the defences of Charleston, on the 9th.
Lee’s insurgent army has retreated before General Meade, and is now under stood to be compactly posted near the fords of the Potomac, and wholly lies between the banks of that river and the Union army. Lee’s losses in the late battles are believed to have been thirty-three thousand (33,000) men. A solution of the problem of invasion is expected hourly, and therefore I refrain from conjecture concerning it.
There is some popular disturbance at New York arising out of the draft. The journals of that city, going out by to-morrow’s steamer, will give you, probably, the full development of the movement. At present it does not seem to be formidable, although the occurrence of it is a subject of much regret.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.