feint, and the real object at Bull’s Bay, supposing, from the number of steamers and boats, that we had several thousand men.  Now came an aide from General Gillmore, at Port Royal, with your cipher-dispatch from Midway, so I steamed down to Port Royal to see him.  Next day was spent in vain efforts to decipher-finally it was accomplished.  You thought that the state of the roads might force you to turn upon Charleston; so I went there on the 15th, but there was no sign yet of flinching.  Then I went to Bull’s Bay next day (16th), and found that the troops were not yet ashore, owing to the difficulties of shoal water.  One of the gunboats had contrived to get up to within shelling range, and both soldiers and sailors were working hard.  On the evening of the 18th I steamed down to Stono to see how matters were going there.  Passing Charleston, I noticed two large fires, well inside—­probably preparing to leave.  On the 17th, in Stono, rumors were 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.