From Corinth and New Orleans

More Heavy Skirmishing – Gen. Butler Dispensing Beef and Sugar to the Poor.

ST. LOUIS, May 21. – Special dispatches from below this evening state that every heavy skirmishing is constantly going on at Corinth, and a general engagement is likely to take place at any time, as the federal lines extend close to the rebel pickets.

The steamer Platte Valley was fired into on her way up the Tennessee River, but nobody was hurt.

The rams have reached the fleet, and everything is ready for any emergency.

The Memphis Appeal of the 15th contains the following dispatch addressed to the Rebel Secretary of State:

CAMP MOORE, Louisiana,

May 13, 1862.

To Hon. J. P. Benjamin:

Gen. Butler on the 11th inst., took forcible possession of the office of the Consul of the Netherlands and searched the person of the Consul and took from him the key of the bank vault.  Butler also took possession of the offices of the French and Spanish Consulates, in the old Canal Bank, and placed a guard there.  The French Consulate went on board the steamer Milan, and had not returned up to Sunday morning.  It is said that the guard has been removed from the offices of the French and Spanish Consulates.  In the vault of the Canal Bank $800,000 had been transferred by the Citizens’ Bank to Hoper, banker of Amsterdam, to pay interest on bonds.  Butler also seized the Canal Bank and Smith’s banking house, and has issued an inflammatory proclamation to incite the poor against the rich, promising to distribute among the poor 1,000 hogsheads of beef and sugar.  He is recruiting in New Orleans. – The poor will soon be starved.  The enemy have sent a force up to Bennett’s Cave, which were marched through the swamp and destroyed the railroad bridge.

The Pittsburg Citizen of the 12th instant, says:

“The latest we can ascertain of the whereabouts of the Yankee gunboats, is that they are between Fort Adams and Bayou [Tonica], and are supposed to be in or about the Red River cut off.  The little freight steamer Whitman, which has made so many daring trips to and from New Orleans, has been captured by the Federal gunboat Calhoun.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 3