it has never killed or wounded, so far as I can learn, a soldier or a laborer engaged thereon; but it has damaged a number of private houses in the heart of the city, and killled and wounded some non-combatants. Indeed, it seems that, with the exception of an old man, an octogenarian, killed whilst quietly sitting by his fire at night, the only persons killed have been women and children. You know perfectly well that a fire such as I have described could not have had for its object the destruction of certain specified fixed military and naval works. But there are other pecularities about the firing that preclude the supposition that its object was what you allege. Having failed to frighten the Confederate commander into compliance with his unreasonable demands, Major-General Gillmore threw more shells (twenty-seven in all) into the city, for no conceivable object than to frighen away and kill a few non-combatants, to show how far he could throw his projectiles, and gratify a spirit of malice, and then ceased. From the 24th of August to the 27th of October not a shot or shell was throw into the city. He doubtless supposed that by that time the non-combatants, whom he imagined had been frightened away, had returned to the city, for he knew very that the mass of the non-combatant population of a large city, situated as Charleston, would not and could not abandon their houses permanently and become homeless wanderes. He knew that the climate of the country immediately around Charleston was considered deadly at the season of the year to white persons, and that if any poor people, unable to procure residences in the sparsely settled interior, had fled on the beginning of the fire to the immediately surrounding country to escape his shells, they would naturally, after so long an intermission of fire, return to the city to escape the malaria, more deadly than is projectiles. On the 27th of October, after an interval of more than two months, without a word of warning, he again opened fire, and threw a few shells into the city-just enough to frighten, irritate, and kill a few non-combatants, but not enough to produce any military result, and then ceased firing for three weeks. On the 17th of November he again opened and continued a very slow fire. It was apparent that the fire was especialy directed at churches during the hours of public worship.

Chiristmats day, 1863, the anniversary of the advent of the Prince of Peace, when the angles proclamied "peace on earth and good will to men", a day of general thanksgiving and rejoicing, was ushered in by Major-General Gillmore with a fire more than tenfold heavier and more continuous than usual. These facts, aside from the expressed declaration of Major-General Gillmore, show conclusively that the object of the fire was not and has not been what you allege, and they show, besides, that it has been conducted in a spirit of mere malice and cruetly. If, therefore, you objection in ordering or permittinhg the fire is the destruction of the works you mention, it is very manifest that your subordinates who immediately direct it are actuated by no such purposes. By your long residence in or near this city you especialy have accurate knowledge of the localities of the works in question, and if after you receive this letter your fire is directed as it has been heretofore I shall be confirmed in the belief that your object is not what you assert it to be, but simply the destruction of private property and the lives of non-combatants. This city is not, and never has been during this was, besieged in any correct acceptation of that term. It is partially blockaded on the water front. In all other respects it is as open as it ever was. Persons pass in and out of it at pleasure, and the inhabitants, a large number of whom have never left the city, pursue their accustomed avocations.