boast of what is occurring in this department. The tide
seems to have set against us every-where. The week of battles before
Richmond was a week of defeats. I trust the new policy indicated by the
confiscation act, just passed by Congress, will have good effect. It
will, at least, enable us to weaken the enemy, as we have not thus far
done, and strengthen ourselves, as we have hitherto not been able to do.
Slavery is the enemy's weak point, the key to his position. If we can
tear down this institution, the rebels will lose all interest in the
Confederacy, and be too glad to escape with their lives, to be very
particular about what they call their rights.

Colonel Ammen has just received notice of his confirmation as brigadier.
He is a strange combination of simplicity and wisdom, full of good
stories, and tells those against himself with a great deal more pleasure
than any others.

Colonels Turchin, Mihalotzy, Gazley, and Captain Edgerton form a group
by the window; all are smoking vigorously, and speculating probably on
the result of the present and prospective trials. Mihalotzy is what is
commonly termed "Dutch;" but whether he is from the German States,
Russia, Prussia, or Poland, I know not.

Ammen left camp early this morning, saying he would go to town and see
if he could find an idea, he was pretty nearly run out. He talks
incessantly; his narratives abound in episode, parenthesis, switches,
side-cuts, and before he gets through, one will conclude a dozen times
that he has forgotten the tale he entered upon, but he never does.

Colonel Stanley, Eighteenth Ohio, has just come in. He has in his time
been a grave and reverend senator of Ohio; he never loses sight of this
fact, and never fails to impress it upon those with whom he comes in
contact.

An order has just been issued, and is now being circulated among the
members of the court, purporting to come from General Ammen, and signed
with his name. It recites the fact of his promotion, and forbids any one
hereafter to call him Uncle Jacob, that title being entirely too
familiar and undignified for one of his rank. All who violate the order
are threatened with the direst punishment.

The General says if such orders please the court, he will not object to
their being issued; it certainly requires but very little ability to get
them up.

The General prides himself on what he calls delicate irony. He says, in
the town of Ripley, men who can not manage a dray