LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 163, 26 February 1864, Page 1 (Supplement)

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

[From the Some Sotos, December 26.] AMERICA. By the arrival of the Scotia we have news from New York to the 16th December. The army of the Potomac having become domicilated in its winter quarters, leave of absence is freely granted to numbers of the officers and men. A recently returned reconnoitring force reports the people in the country north of Culpepper and along the base of the Blue Bridge Mountains abundantly supplied with meat, poultry, breadstuffs, and forage Assistant Adjutant General Hart, of the third army corps, has officially contradicted the statement that his commanding officer, General French, has been relieved of command and ordered under arms. The following extract is from an official letter, written by General Meade just previously to the late advance south of the Rapidan : “ I am in receipt of many letters, some from persons in high position, telling me I had better have my army destroyed and the country filled up with the dead bodies of the soldiers, that remain inactive. While I do not suffer myself to be influenced by such communications, I am, and have been, most anxious to effect something, but am determined at every hazard not to attempt anything unless my judgment indicates a probability of accomplishing some object commensurate with the destruction of life necessarily involved. X would rather a thousand times bo relieved, charged with tardiness or incompetence, than have my conscience burdened with a wanton slaughter of brave men, or with having jeopardized the great cause by doing what I thought was wrong.” The Confederate Senate, in conformity with the recommendation of President Davis’s ’ Message, has passed a bill prohibiting the employment °of substitutes in the Confederate army. The Wilmington (South Carolina) papers are filled with advertisements offering for sale, by the cargo goods which have run the blockade. Sugar is selling at 8c per lb., and other goods at the same rate, owing to the immense quantity on hand. All the railways from Wilmington are at work night and day conveying supplies to the Confederate army, and goods into the interior. Over 200 vessels are engaged in running the blockade into that one port. Governor Vance, in his recent message to the South Carolina Legislature, says that clothing has been received through that channel to clothe the troops of that State to January 1865. Despatches from Bristol in Tennessee, of December 10, to the Richmond Enquirer, announced

that General Longstreet was in fine of battle at Eutledge, his rear-guard skirmishing with the Federal cavalry, who were slowly following his army. The some despatch relates that the Confederate cavalry Captain Everett, in a raid upon Mount Stirling, in Kentucky, had captured a large number of horses and 100,000 dols in greenbacks.

General Banks, at New Orleans, has forwarded to Utton a despatch from General Washburno, reporting his capture of Fort Esperanza, on Matajorda Bay, in Texas, on November 30. Tho Confederates spiked the guns; blew up the magazine, and evacuated the fort two hours previous to the Federal occupation.