May 12, 1863, The New York Herald
There is nothing to report from General Hooker’s advance today.
The rebels were at work in considerable force yesterday on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, repairing the bridge over the Rapidan.
The Stoneman cavalry expedition is immortal. We have given heretofore very full accounts from army correspondents, embracing nearly all the leading facts of interest in that brilliant raid. Today we publish the official report of Colonel Kilpatrick, describing his portion of the expedition from Louisa Court House to Gloucester Point. We commend it to our readers as a specimen of the succinct style which well befits a soldier. The story is as simply and plainly told as the deeds therein recounted were boldly executed. Wherever he met the enemy in his hasty ride of five days he defeated and scattered them. He destroyed their commissary stores at every point he touched upon; captured prisoners within the lines of the enemy; cut up their communications at the different railroad bridges, and, to sum up in his own language, […..] ten o’clock A.M. on the 7th I found safety and rest under our brave old flag, within our lines at Gloucester Point.”
Rumors were prevalent in Washington yesterday that General Halleck was about to take the field in person. It was not stated that General Hooker was to be superseded, the impression being that the presence of General Halleck at the scene of future operations would have a salutary effect upon the direction of affairs.
The rebel accounts, which we publish today from the Richmond papers, of the battle at Chancellorsville are full and interesting. While claiming, of course, a great victory, they admit a severe loss and the wounding of Generals Jackson, A.P. Hill, McGowan, Heth and McLaws.
The news from Mississippi is highly important, manifesting as it does that the movements of General Grant between Jackson and Vicksburg are bringing matters to an issue there. A despatch from Cairo last night says that according to the Memphis Bulletin Jackson is already invested, and that the rebels have no way of getting out of Vicksburg but by cutting their way through the national forces. Our map today will show the relative positions of these two points. A rebel despatch from Jackson to Richmond, dated the 5th, says that the Union troops were repulsed the day previous at Ankerson’s Ferry, on the Big Black, after four hours severe fighting. The fate of the newspaper correspondents on board the barges which were demolished by the rebel batteries at Vicksburg is cleared up by a despatch from general Pemberton, commanding there, to Adjutant General Cooper, stating that twenty-four prisoners were taken from the barges, among whom were one correspondent of the New York World, two of the New York Tribune and one of the Cincinnati Times.
General Braxton Bragg also sends an official account to Richmond of our cavalry raid in Georgia. He describes the resistance offered to our troops as stubborn, and boldly maintained from point to point, resulting, as we know, in the capture of Colonel Streight’s command by General Forrest, near Rome. General Bragg claims one thousand six hundred prisoners, with all their horses and rifles.
By the arrival of the United States transport Oriole from Port Royal yesterday we have dates to the 6th inst. All our iron-clads had left there for North Edisto, their recent damages received at Charleston having been repaired. Folly Island, Seabrook’s and Cole’s Islands were occupied by General Hunter’s troops, who were intrenching themselves at those points. The Ironsides is still at anchor inside the bar in Charleston harbor.
We have also news from Newbern, N.C., up to the 7th, by the arrival of the transports General Meigs and Ellen S. Terry – the former with dates from Hilton Head 5th, Newbern 7th, and Fortress Monroe 9th; the latter from Newbern 6th and Fortress Monroe 9th. Everything was quiet at Newbern at last accounts.