COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA,

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Wheeling, July 3, 1861.

General G. B. McCLELLAN, Grafton, Va.

SIR: Inclosed I send you a slip from the Cincinnati Gazette. I learn there were two men taken - Messers. Miller and Waggener. ***

Yours, in haste,

F. H. PEIRPOINT.

P. S. - I have just learned that there were many of the Union men with their families driven into Ohio from Jackson County - from Ravenswood and that vicinity. It is also stated - for the truth of which I cannot vouch - that a regiment from Ohio passed into Virginia at Point Pleasant.

Yours, &c.,

F. H. PEIRPOINT.

[Inclosure.]

COLUMBUS, July 1.

Colonel Norton, of the First Regiment State troops at Gallipolis, telegraphed the governor to-day that on Saturday night a mounted party of fifty men came from Charleston, Va., to Point Pleasant, headed by A. G. Jenkins and took some of the most prominent Union men there prisoners and marched them off. Colonel Norton started with 100 men in pursuit but could not overtake them. he then scoured the country and took 30 prominent secessionists prisoners whom he now holds as hostages for the safety of the Union men in hands of the rebels. Norton says there are 3,500 rebels now at Charleston under command of [Brigadier General J. M.] Hawes.

Extract from the President's message to Congress in special session, July 4, 1861.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

* * * * *

Soon after the first call for militia it was considered a duty to authorize the commanding general in proper cases according to his discretion to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or in other words to arrest and detain without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law such individuals as he might deem dangerous very sparingly. Nevertheless the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned, and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to take care that the laws be faithfully executed should not himself violate them.

Of course some consideration was given to the question of power and property before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of means necessary to their execution some single law made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent should to a very limited extent be violated?