flying about loose of evacuation.  In course of the morning, General Schimmelpfennig telegraphed me, from Morris Island, that there were symptoms of leaving; that he would again make a push at Stono, and asked for monitors.  General Schimmelpfennig came down in the afternoon, and we met in the Folly Branch, near Secessionville.  He was sore that the rebs would be off that night, so he was to assault them in front, while a monitor and gunboats stung their flanks both sides.  I also sent an aide to order my battery of five eleven-inch guns, at Cumming’s Point, to fire steadily all night on Sullivan’s Island, and two monitors to close up to the island for the same object.  Next morning (18th) the rascals were found to be off, and we broke in from all directions, by land and water.  The main bodies had left at eight or nine in the evening, leaving detachments to keep up a fire from the batteries.  I steamed round quickly, and soon got into the city, threading the streets with a large group of naval captains who had joined me.  All was silent as the grave.  No one to be seen but a few firemen.

No one can question the excellence of your judgment in taking the track you did, and I never had any misgivings, but it was natural to desire to go into the place with a strong hand, for, if any one spot in the land was foremost in the trouble, it was Charleston.

Your campaign was the final blow, grand in conception, complete in execution; and now it is yours to secure the last army which rebeldom possesses.  I hear of your being in motion by the 9th, and hope that the result may be all that you wish.

Tidings of the murder of the President have just come, and shocked every mind.  Can it be that such a resort finds root in any stratum of American opinion?  Evidently it has not been the act of one man, nor of a madman.  Who have prompted him?

I am grateful for your remembrance of my boy; the thought of him is ever nearest to my heart.  Generous, brave, and noble, as I ever knew him to be, that he should close his young life so early, even under the accepted conditions of a soldier’s life, as a son of the Union, would have been grief sufficient for me to bear; but that his precious remains should have been so treated by the brutes into whose hands they fell, adds even to the bitterness of death.  I am now awaiting the hour when I can pay my last duties to his memory.

With my best and sincere wishes, my dear general, for your success and happiness, I am, most truly, your friend,

J. A. Dahlgren.

[General Order No. 50.]

War department, adjutant-general’s office
Washington, March 27, 1865

Ordered—­1.  That at the hour of noon, on the 14th day of April, 1885, Brevet Major-General Anderson will raise and plant upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, the same United States flag which floated over the battlements of that fort during the rebel assault, and which was lowered and saluted by him and the small force of his command when the works were evacuated on the 14th day of April, 1861.