EXPEDITION TO SHIP ISLAND.
General B. F. Butler, after having been stationed for a short time at Fortress Monroe, was assigned to the North-Eastern Department, and located his headquarters at Boston, where he superintended the organization of the New England troops, and the fitting out of an expedition intended to make a demonstration at some point on the Southern coast. A portion of his troops sailed from Boston on the 23d of November, in the steam transport Constitution, which arrived at Fortress Monroe on the 26th, with the Twenty-sixth Massachusetts, and the Ninth Connecticut regiments, and Captain Manning’s battery—making a total of one thousand nine hundred men. Brigadier-General J. W. Phelps here took the command, and reached Ship Island harbor, in Mississippi Sound, December 3.
On the west end of this island there was a partly-finished fort, occupied by Lieutenant Buchanan and one hundred and seventy sailors and marines, with several ship guns in position. The rebels had evacuated the island in September, destroying what they could not carry away with them.
General Phelps, on assuming the command of Ship Island, published a proclamation “To the loyal citizens of the South-west,” in which he defined the political “motives and principles” by which his command would be governed. He then at the very opening of his address, declared that every slave State admitted into the Union since the adoption of the Constitution, had been admitted in direct violation of that instrument. That every slave State that existed as such at the adoption of the Constitution, was by that act placed under the “highest obligation of honor and morality to abolish slavery.” The rest of the “proclamation” was in harmony with these statements. General Phelps made an official report of his expedition to General Butler, who reported the facts to the Adjutant-General of the United States. General Phelps was commended for the successful manner in which he had performed his military duties, but his proclamation was pronounced superfluous and uncalled for.
The occupancy of Ship Island being secured, the forces remained in undisturbed possession, awaiting the future movements of the commander of the expedition.