Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: We have satisfactory information that the operations of the rebel Price against Missouri have failed, and that he has retired southward beyond the line where pursuit would be consistent with the strategy of our commanders.
The brief season of military repose on this side of the Mississippi seems to have come to an end. Direct communications with Major General Sherman have ceased. We hear through the rebel newspapers that he is advancing in Georgia, and they say that on the 17th instant he was at Jonesburg. General Gillen suffered a defeat at the hands of Breckinridge in East Tennessee, with the loss of four hundred killed, wounded, and missing. Hood is manoeuvring in Alabama, on the borders of Tennessee river; but the commanding [Page 358] general in that region thinks himself able to maintain his position in Tennessee. It is understood that at least one column of the enemy’s force which has so long been operating under Early in the Shenandoah valley has been withdrawn to Richmond. We have good grounds for believing that the report of the death of Major General Canby, which fills the morning news-papers, is erroneous, as I pray God it may be.
I give you for your information a copy of a despatch which I addressed, on the 11th instant, to Mr. Webb, our minister at Rio, on the subject of the capture of the Florida at Bahia. We have not yet received any communications, or indeed any information whatever relating to the transaction, from Rio.
The exigencies of civil war have at last brought the treasonable cabal at Richmond to a serious debate upon propositions for arming, and, of course, emancipating a portion of the slave population. Thus it is seen that the so deeply deprecated irrepressible conflict has at last broken out in the very seat and citadel of slavery itself.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
[Same to other ministers in Europe.]