Hon. Eli Thayer’s scheme for colonization by
armed men of Southern States meets with much favor by the President, Secretary
of war and others. It has been discussed
several times in Cabinet meetings, and will probably soon receive formal
official sanction.
The project contemplates an expedition of
10,000 colonists enlisted for 6 months and supplies with transportation,
subsistence, arms and a guard by the government, whose business it shall be to
hold, occupy and possess the public lands of Florida and other lands belonging
to rebels, and seized under the law of the last session of Congress for
non-payment of direct tax.
Mr. Thayer promises, if allowed to carry out
his plan entire, to bring Florida into the Union as a free State by the first
February next. Texas and Virginia are
already talked of as States to be subjected to the same process.
This, like the proclamation of this morning,
will be another step in the path of a more vigorous policy which the
Administration, in its proclamation of freedom, advertised that it should
henceforth pursue.
Surgeon General Hammond has returned from the
battle-field of Antietam, where he has been stopping at McClellan’s
headquarters. He thinks the whole number
of Union killed will come within 1,200, and from a careful inspection of
hospitals and lists of those brought off, judges that the wounded will not
exceed 6,000. Maj. Davis, Assistant
Inspector General, informed him that he himself had caused to be buried 3,000
of the rebel dead left on the field from which he estimates their wounded to be
at least 10,000.
S[u]rgeon General Hammond saw, as a part of
the fruits of our victory, twenty-seven standards, which we captured from the
rebel regiments, and also reports among our spoils twenty or thirty thousand
small arms, mostly those left by the enemy along the line of their retreat.
A man signing himself R. P. Noble communicated
to this evening’s Star a statement,
which he professes to make on direct information, that Col. Ford did not
evacuate Maryland Heights until he had received the fourth and peremptory order
from Col. Miles to do so—and besides, his long range ammunition has been
exhausted. He asks a suspension of
opinion.
