October 10, 1862, The Charleston Mercury
(CORRESPONDENCE OF THE MERCURY.)
RICHMOND, Monday, October 6.
At last we hear something from the West, BUELL has advanced 21 miles from Louisville, 500 Confederate prisoners have been taken, and a great battle was daily expected. This we learn from the Philadelphia Inquirer of the 3d. The same paper gives a list of 19 vessels of the ‘Ohio Navy.’ Had Bragg taken Nashville, the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers might have been fortified against this Navy. The Inquirer also gives the reply of the Altoona Governors to Lincoln. They sustain his emancipation act on the ground that the war separates father and son, husband and wife in the free States, ergo it ought to separate master and slave in the rebellious States. Fiddle-faddle.
Major Peyton is the bearer of a handsome present from Gen. Beauregard to Stonewall Jackson. It is a splendid silver-mounted pistol, of a new pattern, made in Paris expressly for Jackson. It is a revolver, navy size, constructed to throw balls as a cannon throws grape-shot. With this formidable weapon, an officer hard pressed in action might destroy half a dozen enemies at a single discharge. An appropriate inscription is engraved on the silver plating.
Trouble has broken out between Loring and Floyd. A captain in Loring’s command claims a company in Floyd’s army, and asserts that four fifths of Floyd’s men are within the conscript age. Loring endorses his captain. Randolph forwards the correspondence to Gov. Letcher, who transmits it to the Legislature, and it is published in this morning’s Examiner, together with a rebutting letter from Gen. Floyd. It is unfortunate the Examiner has taken the matter in hand, for the devil does not hate holy water half as bad as the Government hates the Examiner. Nor does Mr. Davis dote on Floyd. If it costs Northwestern Virginia, Floyd will be floored.
After positive predictions of a general engagement on the Potomac, after sending up ambulance committees, &c., we, in official circles, now conclude that the enemy is on the other side of the river, and that there will be no battle. With a telegraph quite to Winchester, and Lee within six miles of the town, we are permitted to hear nothing definite. It may be wise.
McClellan has been looking up his […..]. He figures up a rebel loss of 30,000 in the Maryland campaign. His despatches read like newspaper correspondence done by a green, gullible hand.
It will gratify the country to know that a distinguished Southerner, whose name carries with it more weight perhaps than that of any other American, has at length been sent abroad in an official or quasi-official capacity.
Westover, one of the oldest and most famous estates on James river, worth $150,000, has been sold for $50,000. The land is so filled with unburied and half-buried Yankee corpses, that it will not be habitable or cultivable for years to come. Berkeley, another old James River estate, will be sacrificed in like manner for like reasons.
HERMES.