NEW YORK, March 20.
The Times dispatch from the rebel batteries at Shipping Point, Wednesday, says: A contraband has just arrived, and reports that Jeff. Davis issued a proclamation on the 18th, calling upon all male inhabitants between the ages of 16 and 60, to form themselves into companies and report immediately at headquarters, Virginia. He says he demands every sacrifice to maintain the integrity of the soil. Many are fleeing from their homes, anxious to reach our side.
Everything now is at a stand still form the Potomac to Richmond. Trade is totally suspended.
A deserter was brought in yesterday to Liverpool Point. He left home because the proclamation was issued on the 16th for all the militia to turn out. He was in Fredericksburg the day before yesterday. Troops were arriving in Fredericksburg from the Banks of the Potomac, and from twenty to thirty thousand have passed through. He heard that they were defending a line formed by Aquia Creek, Beaver Dam and Rappahannock, and a gap in the mountains.
The New York Tribune’s special states that, on Wednesday night, there returned to Camp Curtis a scouting party of the 1st New Jersey cavalry which had penetrated three miles southward beyond the Occoquan. They confirm the tidings of the complete abandonment of that portion of country by the rebels. They brought back as prisoners, one Lynn, ex-deputy sheriff of the city of Occoquan.
John. G. Giles was yesterday arrested for swindling the Government.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, March 22, 1862, p. 1
