LETTER FROM A BRAVE WOMAN.

THE Montgomery, Alabama, papers publish a letter from Miss Emma Sansom, who so heroically guided General Forrest in his memorable capture of General Streight and his raiders. This letter is in response to one written by Governor Shorter, when transmitting the resolutions of the legislature to Miss Sansom. Streight and his men were captured in Cherokee county, Alabama, within a few miles of Miss Sansom's home.

GADSDEN, ALABAMA, December 20th, 1863.

To his Excellency Governor Shorter:

Respected sir, I must acknowledge the receipt of your quite complimentary communication of November 27th, 1863, and in doing so, tender my gratitude for the more than expected respect shown me for having done my duty. At the time the duty was performed, it was a pleasure to be able to render some service to my country, and give aid to our noble cause. There are other duties that would seem more becoming and adapted to my sex, but feeling it my high privilege upon such an occasion, I went forward, inspired by a sense of duty, and of the purest motives, willing to hazard woman's timidity in giving aid to impede the onward march of the marauding foe.

In conclusion, I must acknowledge my profound gratitude for the very liberal donation by the State; and while I continue to live, I shall endeavor to render myself not more unworthy of your high respect than heretofore.

I have the satisfaction to be, very respectfully, your friend.

EMMA SANSOM.

SPOKEN LIKE CORNELIA.

A YOUNG lady of Louisiana, whose father's plantation had been brought within the enemy's lines, in their operations against Vicksburg, was frequently constrained by the neces sities of her situation to hold conversation with the Federal officers. On one of these occasions, a Yankee official inquired how she managed to preserve her equanimity and cheerfulness amid so many trials and privations, and such severe reverses of fortune. Our army, said he, has deprived your father of two hundred negroes, and literally desolated two magnificent plantations.

She said to the officer-a leader of that army, which had, for months, hovered around Vicksburg, powerless to take it with all their vast appliances of war, and mortified by their repeated failures: "I am not insensible to the comforts and elegancies which fortune can secure, and of which your bar barian hordes have deprived me; but a true southern woman will not weep over them, while her country remains. If you wish to crush me, take Vicksburg."

THE DESOLATION IN TENNESSEE.

THE correspondent of a northern paper, writing from Tennessee, gives the following description of the sad condi tion of the country, which was held for so long by the Federals:

In years agone, and not long ago, Tennessee was a para dise. Peace and plenty smiled, law and order reigned. How 18 is it now? After a week's journey I sit me down to paint

you a picture of what I have seen. To the east and to the west, to the north and the south, the sights are saddening, sickening. Government mules and horses are occupying the homes-aye, the palaces-in which her chivalric sons so often slumbered,

The monuments of her taste, the evidences of her skill, the characteristics of her people, are being blotted from existence. Her churches are being turned into houses of prostitution, her seminaries shelter the sick and sore, whose griefs and groans reverberate where once the flower of our youth were wont to breathe the poetic passion and dance to the music of their summer's sun. Her cities, her towns, and her villages are draped in mourning. Even the country, ever and always so much nearer God and Nature than these, wears the black pall. Go from Memphis to Chattanooga, and it is like the march from Moscow in olden time.

The State capitol, like the Kremlin, alone remains of her former glory and greatness. Let this point (Murfreesboro) be the centre, and then make a circumference of thirty miles with me, and we will stay "a week in the womb of desolation." Whether you go on the Selma, the Shelbyville, the Manchester, or any other pike, for a distance of thirty miles either way, what do we behold? One wide, wild, and dreary waste, so to speak.

The fences are all burned down; the apple, the pear, and the plum trees burned in ashes long ago; the torch applied to thousands of splendid mansions, the walls of which alone remain, and even this is seldom so, and where it is, their smooth plaster is covered with vulgar epithets and immoral diatribes. John Smith and Joe Doe, Federate and Confederate warriors, have left jack-knife stereotyping on the doors

and casings, where these, in their fewness, are preserved The rickets and the railings-where are they?

But above

Where are the rosebushes and the violets? all, and beyond all, and dearer and more than all else, where, oh where, are the once happy and contented people fled, who lived and breathed and had their being here? Where are the rosy-cheeked cherubs and blue-eyed maidens gone? Where are the gallant young men? Where are all-where are any of them?

But where are they gone-this once happy and contented people? The young men are sleeping in their graves at Shiloh, at Corinth, at Fort Donelson, and other fields of socalled glory. The young women have died of grief, or are broken-hearted; the children are orphans. Poor little things, I pity them from my heart as I look at them-black and white-for they seem to have shared a common fate, and like dying in a common destiny.

Their lives-I mean the master and slave, and their off spring-scem to have been inseparably blended. In many cases, I found two or three white children, whose parents were dead, left to the mercies of the faithful slave; and, again, I have seen a large number of little negro children, whose parents were likewise dead, nestled in the bosom of some white families who, by a miracle, were saved from the vandalism of war.

BEN. McCULLOCH AND JOE BAXTER.

GENERAL BENJAMIN MCCULLOCH was in many particulars a remarkable man. Though a very common looking person.

he was very vain of his personal appearance and proud of his fame. When the general was returning from Richmond, not long before the fatal battle of Pea Ridge, a little incident occurred-such as, perhaps, he was more than once the subject of. The party consisted of the general, Captain Armstrong, his A. A. G., and Colonel Snyder, of the Missouri army, with two or three black servants, travelling in a four mule ambulance. They stopped for lunch by the wayside, about two days' travel from Fort Smith, in Arkansas, and were discussing the prospects of the Confederacy and the contents of a basket and a demijohn, when a stranger rode up and inquired the way to Colonel Stone's quarters. The stranger was a perfect specimen of the genus "butternut." IIe was dressed in bilious looking jeans, with a home-made hat and coarse boots, and wore his hair and beard very long. He was mounted on a good horse, and carried on his shoulder a long, old-fashioned rifle. Before there was any time to answer his inquiries he cast his eyes on General McCulloch, and seemed to recognize him. Dismounting at once, he advanced eagerly to the general, with extended hand and a hearty "Bless my soul, Joe! how do you do? What on earth are you doing here?" The general saw that the man was mistaken, but answered him pleasantly, and invited him to partake of the lunch, to which said lunch and demijohn the stranger did full and ample justice. IIe told the general (for to him he addressed all his conversation, as to an old friend) that he was a volunteer, and had joined Colonel Stone's regiment of Texan Rangers, and that he intended to fight with "Old Ben McCulloch until we had gained our independence." Old Ben enjoyed the man's mistake until they were about ready to start on, when he said to his Texan copatriot⚫