Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams
Sir. We have unofficial information, which seems reliable, that the insurgents, are evacuating Mobile and falling back towards Selma.
Through insurgent channels we learn that a column of General Sherman’s army has passed Murphy’s swamp, and arrived, unopposed, within twenty miles of Branch ville; that another column is threatening Augusta; while a third detachment has passed up the North Edisto river, and is threatening Charleston. Re-enforcements are now reaching General Terry, and we may soon expect to hear of effective operations against Wilmington.
In a recent cavalry skirmish, at Moorfield, in Western Virginia, Harry Gilmour, the noted renegade partisan, who led the cavalry raid into Maryland last July, was captured.
The Senate’s resolution which has so long been pending in Congress, and which submits to the States an amendment of the federal Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the whole republic, was, on the 21st ultimo, formally passed in the House of Representatives by a constitutional majority of two-thirds of the whole House, and was immediately made known to the States. It has received the assent of several of them already, and sooner or later it will doubtless become a part of the national organic law.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams. Esq., &c., &c., &c. London.
(Same, mutatis mutandis, to all our principal ministers in Europe.)