AMERICA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 88, 9 February 1863, Page 3

AMERICA.

GENERAL M’CLELLAN’S REMOVAL. The most important fact in the military news of the month is that General M’Clellan lias been removed from the command of the army of the Potomac, and has virtually retired from active service. This displacement is officially explained as the'result of an inquiry into a charge of disobedience to orders. On the sixth of October, General Halleck, as commander-in-chief, ordered M’Clellan to advance against the enemy and give him' battle. M’Clellan disobeyed the order, alleging that he was short of supplies. This statement General Halleck says, could not be true, as all M’Clellan’s requisitions had been promptly supplied. The Harper’s Ferry investigation committee has also censured the removed general for the tardiness with which he pursued the enemy. There is, however, no doubt that political considerations have, made their weight in bringing about M’Clellan’s dismissal. “Had M’Clellan been a mere professional soldier,” says the ‘Daily News,’ “no one would have inquried what his political opinions were, but he never professed to be so. It was well known what he thought of the anti-slavery policy of the Government, and that he disapproved of it. But the present war partakes largely of the character of a war of opinion. And it is approaching, if it has not entered, a critical stage. Heretofore, .the Republicans have conducted the war much as the Democrats might have conducted it. But as the term fixed for the execution of Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation draws near, the period ,of neutrality is passing away. It would have surely been an act of weakness of the President and his Cabinet to leave the chief conduct of the war in the hands of a politician who believed that the method prescribed to him as a general was erroneous.”

The following is General M’Clellan’s farewell address to the army : Officers and Soldiers of the army of the Potomac, —An order of the President devolves upon Major-General Burnside the command of shis army. In parting with you I cannot express the love and" gratitude I bear to you. As an army youdiave grown up under my care. In you I havenever found doubt or coldness. The battles you have fought under my command will proudly live in our nation’s history. The glory you have achieved —our mutual perils and fatigues, the graves of our comrades fallen in battle and by disease, the broken forms of those whom wounds and sickness have disabled, the strongest associations which can exist among men, unite us still with an indissoluble tie. We shall ever be comrades in supporting the constitution of our country and the nationality of his people. G. B. M’Clellait, Major-Gen., U.S. Army.

Naturally the dismissal of M’Clellan has caused great excitement. The Republican press uphold the action, while the Democratic papers speak of it as likely to be of important service to the Confederates. At a Union Democratic Association meeting John Van Buran announced that he should support the nomination of M’Clellan as the Democratic candidate for the next Presidency. . GENERAL BURNSIDE'S MOVEMENTS. General Burnside, *who is appointed to the command of the army of the Potomac, has issued an address in which he expresses confidence in the patriotism of the army. That immediate action was intended was evinced by the fact that General Halleck had ordered all officers of the army of the Potomac to join their regiments within 24 hours under pain of dismissal. As a victory of some kind is above all things necessary to uphold the impaired power of the Government, it is probable that General Burnside will be commanded to attack the Confederates. General Lee has, it is said, evaded the Federals, so as to avoid fighting in the Shenandoah Valley, and his forces are posted at Gordonsville, whilst General Longstreet’s command is at Culpepper in order to prevent the Federals getting between the main army and Richmond. It is in this district, therefore, that a battle may be expected. The New York correspondent of the Times writes:—

General Burnside, who has been nominated some say temporarily, others permanently, to the command, is in his 40th year, a soldier by education, and one of the most popular commanders whom the war has produced. He is not prominent as a politician. Ho has twice before declined the appointment, basing his refusal mainly on the far superior firmness of M’Clellan, and partially on personal motives of private friendship for that general. Unless he shall gain a speedy victory, which is so unlikely as to be almost impossible, he, too, will have to go into winter quarters, and suffer week by week, and day by day, a dripping of the little rain-drops of detraction on the rock of his popularity, which will wear it away before the Spring. He is, of course, quite aware of the danger in which the army is placed by the sudden removal of its commander. The Confederates are not likely to miss the opportunity of striking a blow, if the weather and the state of the roads and rivers will allow, and should he be induced by the clamour of the ‘ On to Richmond’ fanatics to follow the retreating army of General Lee towards Gordonsville —which it is Lee’s evident intention he should do—General Stonewall J ackson and General Stuart may appear before Washington and again alarm the country for the safety of the capital and the person of the President. Such a hocus pocus as the simultaneous occupation of Richmond by the Federals, and of Washington by the Confederates, would be an amusing incident in this dreary war, and might incline men’s minds to pacification by the sheer force of its absurdity. GENERAL BUTLER AND THE NEW ORLEANS WOMEN. The Northern papers are greatly elated by the tactics lately adopted by General Butler, at New Orleans, against his feminine tormentors, Butler’s plan was this, By proclamation he required every person in the city, to register himself or herself as either a friend or an enemy to the United States. The ladies it might have been supposed would have had no difficulty about going to the City hall and registering hatred to the Lincoln government. But Butler’s proclamation was not so easily answered. The cunning general required that they who registered themselves as enemies should at the same time register every item of their private property; and no article could bo sued for, or sold, or enjoyed in any way which was not regularly registered. This completely altered the case, for General Butler, while he required this inventory pointed significantlp to the Act of Confiscation, and intimated that the inventory was for his convenience in future proceedings towards carrying the Confiscation Act into effect. One of the Northern journals gives a vivid picture of a certian “ little Frenchman,” who finds bis balance at the banker’s stopped, and his cheque refused, because he had not got his certificate. The same writer is unbounded in his expression of contempt and disgust at another “miserable wretch,” who, having no property at all, boldly went alone to the City Hall, and registered him - self as an enemy to the United , States. The greatest triumph, however, is over the women. To register all their clothes, and trinkets, and smart little equipages, their black lady’s maid, and their little balance of pocket money in the bank, and perhaps their heap of cotton bales, and all in order that “ that fright Butler” might toss into hia voracious maw, was noi to be thought of. The women seem to have said “ better take a hundred forced and unbinding oaths than to be thus swindled and plundered.” The result was that the women all went up and registered themselves as friends of Lincoln and Butler, and took the oath of allegiance. The correspondent of the New York Times declares the scene to have been worthy of study, He writes thus: —“ The belle and the half-starred seamstress, the dowager with her queenly daughters, and the shrinking women who hopelessly toil for a living, the swarthy creole, the pale New-Englander, and the paler faced octoroon, were mingled in the crowd.