HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT Numbers 2,
Fort Pillow, August 21, 1861.

Brigadier General GEDEON J. PILLOW,

Commanding Army Corps, Missouri:

GENERAL: The major-general commanding has received your dispatch of yesterday, assigning to him your reasons for diverting the Fourth Regiment, not under your command, from the destination assigned it, and for declining to restore it to its assigned post. In reply thereto the general directs me to say that he disapproves entirely of the course you have thought proper to pursue in disposing of a body of troops making no part of your command, having heir own special instructions in reference to a particular duty required of the, and which the correspondence of their commander with headquarters shows to have been reluctantly complied with, if not protested against.

I am further desired by the commanding general to communicate to you his surprise that a suggestion of a subordinate engine officer, whose only office was to indicate the point to be fortified and superintend the construction of the works, would be accepted by you as an authority for superseding order issued form headquarters.

I am directed further to say that you have so arranged matters in connection with the movement and position of this body o troops as possibly to render it by this time (as advised by your dispatch of yesterday) most important he should not disturb your combinations. The regard he entertains for the safety of your command and the advantage of the service admonish him to make no change at this late hour; but, considering you have usurped an authority not properly your own, by which you have thwarted and embarrassed his arrangements and operations for the general defense, he feels it his duty to submit to the War Department the position you have thought proper to assume.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

LEWIS G. DE RUSSY.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF LIBERATION,
New Madrid, August 21, 1861.

Major-General POLK:

*GENERAL: I cannot move on the expedition ordered without more transportation. I have received only the small lot of wagons and mules that were on the Hill, 43, when you turned them back. Forty of the mules that were on the boat were never brought up at all. You write me just before that you would send me 100 more, and I sent a boat for them, and am just advised that there is not a wagon coming or on hand in Memphis to come. I learn, further, Peters is superseded, so that I am now powerless. I have only received in all from Memphis 103 wagons. My ordnance stores alone require 64 wagons, and allowing 2 wagons to the company to move my troops requires 170 wagons, and my subsistence sores, which I am obliged to have, require from 70 to 80, making a total needed to move as light as possible, 314. I have gathered in by seizing country wagons of the most indifferent character about 100, many without harness and all without beds or covers. Peters being superseded, I can now make no order on him, and I am powerless to provide for the case. I am sending forward detachments of troops, and then following with subsistence, turning back the trains, and then trying to get forward, but I can effect nothing in